The Gunpowder Plot, Part 2

In Part 2 of The Gunpowder Plot, we discuss how a group of English Catholics attempted to carry out their plan. Yet the Plot was discovered days before the event. Were the conspirators betrayed by someone within their own ranks? Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm to blame a
chuk reboarding and I'm fired out and by the time
this episode airs, some of you, especially if you live
in England, may have observed something known as bonfire or
night or Guy Fox Day on Saturday, November five, and

(01:04):
these events commemorate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, which
was an attempt to murder King James the First of England,
his son Henry and many English noblemen. By blowing up
Parliament on November five, six oh five. It was also
known as the Powder Treason. Yeah, and we've talked about
it a little bit already. In part one of this story.
We looked into some of the historical events and situations

(01:26):
that set the stage for the plot, and we introduced
some of the conspirators involved too, and gave a basic
rundown of what their initial plan was. So, I think,
just for people who haven't heard that episode, let's give
them a quick recap of what we talked about earlier. Yes, Well,
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, Catholics were
subject to religious legislation that basically required Catholics to live

(01:47):
kind of a double life. If you were Catholic, you
had to at least outwardly conform and act like you
were accepting a Protestant lifestyle. If you didn't, then you
had to pay these steep procusancy fines. At the very least,
I mean, if you were harboring a priest or something
like that, that was a difficult. Yeah, that could be worse.
So when King James the First took the throne in
sixteen oh three, Catholics hoped that he'd be more tolerant,

(02:10):
but all he did was temporarily suspend recusancy. Find So
it was really disappointing to a lot of Catholics in general,
and some of them were actually proactive and started dreaming
up ways to overthrow the king and the Protestant government. Yeah,
they decided to do something about it, and the Gunpowder
plot was one of these plans that certain groups dreamed of.

(02:30):
It was devised primarily by a wealthy Catholic man named
Robert kates Me and a group of young Catholic activists,
mostly from Katesby's own social circle, and a lot of
the players were related somehow to wed By Blood or
by Mary. Yeah, we talked about that. We're gonna refresh
some of the players later on too, Except there is

(02:52):
one guy who is a total outlier. He is not
related to any of them, yet he is the most famous.
That's of course, Guy Fox. He was a militant English
Catholic who had spent years fighting with the Spanish army.
And remember we talked about earlier, the key to his
involvement in the plot was that he had been away
for so long and nobody knew who he was, right,

(03:12):
and we'll talk about that's more in a minute, but
basically their plan was to Lisa House adjacent to the
Houses of Parliament, dig a tunnel beneath them, and then
stash gunpowder under the chamber where the King, the House
of Lords and the House of Commons would all be
meeting when the next parliament session opened on November five,
six oh five. So when we saw them last March

(03:33):
of sixteen o five, our conspirators had just looked out
and they had gotten the chance to Lisa Seller, which
would was used at the time for coal storage. I
believe that extended right underneath the House of Lords, so
it made the tunnel unnecessary. There's a really good break
for them, exactly. So the plotters started filling up the
feller with barrels and barrels of gunpowder, sneaking in at night,

(03:55):
and they kept it pretty well concealed too. They covered
it with iron bars and lots of bundles of kindling,
so you can just tell it was a cellar full
of gunpowder. So over the next few months they managed
to get about thirty six barrels of gunpowder in there,
which was definitely enough to demolish everything in the mediate area,
including of course the King and his heir and the

(04:16):
members of parliament. But that was only if the gunpowder
was fresh enough by the time they actually ignited it,
and some folks have suggested that the gunpowder might have
decayed um others say, well, maybe they were able to
replace some of it, but that turns out to be
a moot point, and it still would have done some damage,
we can assume. But during this time Fox assumed the

(04:39):
role of the seller's caretaker, posing as a John Johnson,
a servant of Thomas Percy, who was the plotter who
would lease the space. And Fox was really well suited
to this role too, because, as we mentioned in the
previous podcast, he'd been out of the country for some time.
So his appearance, which Gunpowder plot historian Antonio Fraser has
described as quote tall, powerfully built, with thick reddish brown hair,

(05:02):
a flowing mustache in the tradition of the time, and
a bushy, reddish brown beard, was pretty much unknown in
London at that time, which is fortunate because he does
sound like a guy you probably would recognize if he
saw him. Twice Yes, very distinctive. So the plot seemed
to be progressing steadily but before fall even rolled around,
the conspirators did something you should probably never do if

(05:25):
you're really trying to keep a secret. They let more
people in on it. Kind of a lot, but we'll
just give you a refresher because there are a lot
of names here, and they worked to add many more
names to their party. But the original conspirators were Catesby,
Tom Wintour, Thomas Percy, Jack Wright, and Guy Fox. So

(05:45):
in the spring of sixteen o five, they included Robert Wintour,
who was Tom's brother, Kit Wright, who was Jack's brother,
and John Grant, who was Wintour's brother in law. Another guy,
Robert Keith, who was probably related to the wind Tour
brothers somehow or another, was also led into the group,
as was Katesby servant Thomas Bates. So, I mean, I

(06:09):
guess you figure you can trust your your brother. So
they're telling a few people, but this is already starting
to swell to a pretty large group of men. Yeah,
And then it got even worse when the plotters took
a break from the preparations they were doing over the summer.
Katesby also brought Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby, and Francis Tresham,
Katesby's cousin by marriage into the fold, mainly because of

(06:33):
their wealth. Katesby had been funding this whole thing by
himself so far and he really needed some help to
see it to its completion. And Rookwood and Digby were
also supposed to have a role in what will refer
to as part two of this plan. They both had
a lot of horses that were going to be useful
in the uprising at Katesby was planning after the explosion,
but more specifically after the explosion, which would take place

(06:56):
after Fox slit a slow match in the cellar. As
soon as the king had come into the House of Lords,
kate Spy would ride from London to the Midlands, where
he'd made Digby and Digby would have been waiting beforehand
with some servants that the Red Lion and dun Church
disguised as a hunting party. From there they would supposedly
go to kidnap Princess Elizabeth, the King's daughter from the

(07:18):
home of her governor and proclaim her queen. And we
mentioned her in the previous podcast as well, and the
reason that they were going to proclaim her queen is
because Prince Henry would have died in the explosion. He
was the oldest son of the king, and four year
old Prince Charles was too sickly. There were some there
was some question as to whether or not he was
gonna survive, and they didn't want to place all their

(07:38):
hopes on him. So yeah, that was the general idea
of the plot. But what was going to happen next
after they had kidnapped Princess Elizabeth, It's sort of unclear.
In an article for History Today, Simon Adams says that's
quote one of the major mysteries of the plot. So
presumably they would just try to marry Elizabeth off to

(07:59):
some their Catholic European prince and solidify their Catholic regime
that way, and they would create their own puppet queen essentially.
According to an article by Pauline Croft in History Review, though,
Tresham was uneasy about the whole plot pretty much as
soon as he heard it. So giant red flag here.
He's not liking what he hears, and you can't take

(08:20):
it back once you tell somebody all about your plot, either.
But regardless of how everyone felt about it, I mean,
that's still more than ten people. That's just a lot
of people to be involved in what's supposed to be
a secret plot. So maybe what happened next really isn't
that surprising. On October o five, just days before Parliament
was set to meet, William Parker, who's better known as

(08:42):
Lord Monteagal, received an anonymous letter warning him to quote
devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this parliament
to avoid quote a terrible blow. So basically, stay away
for your own good, don't go to parliament. So Lord
Monteagal was a former Catholic himself. He had also participated
in that ethics uprising with Katesby and friends that we

(09:04):
mentioned in the earlier podcast, and he had at least
publicly converted to the Protestant religion. Still, he had Catholic connections,
especially through his marriage. Tresham was Montegal's brother in law,
so um, Unfortunately for Kate's By, Tresham had a few
brothers in law to consider. But that's why the letter

(09:27):
is often attributed to Tresham because of that family connection.
But we really don't know for sure who sent it,
who warned Lord Monteagle. Yeah, Croft actually throws out some
other potential sources of the letters. She writes, for example,
that Tom Winter sometimes served as Montegal secretary, so there's
a connection there. But there's another theory that's even more
interesting to me at least. Croft also suggests that it's

(09:50):
possible that Monteagle himself wrote the letter and just incorporated
information that he gleaned from some of his Catholic cohorts
to tip people off under under the guise of an
anonymous letter. Right, but regardless of where it came from,
Monteagle shared this letter with Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl
of Salisbury, the head of the monarchy secret police, and
the King's Secretary of State. Salisbury, in turn, of course,

(10:13):
shares the letter with the King, and there aren't any
specifics in the letter, so they wait a couple of
days before they raise any sort of alarm. Katesby in
the meantime he hears about the letter too, and he's
obviously worried that the plot has been betrayed, so he
consults with his co conspirators and they actually decided just
to go ahead with the plan they suspected. I've read

(10:34):
that Tresham was at fault, but he swore to them
that he didn't do anything, so they just said, okay,
let's go. They weren't going to just completely rush into
it blindly though just named case. On November four, Percy
visited with his boss and his relative, the Earl of Northumberland,
whose connections had of course helped Percy leave the house
in the cellar in the first place. He checked with

(10:56):
him to try to gauge whether or not the all
of Northumberland knew anything about the plan. Ironically, Percy did
not warn his relative to try to stay away from
Parliament himself that day, but Percy left the meeting feeling
pretty reassured that they were in the clear. Nobody knew
it was good. So it is all just full speed

(11:17):
ahead for the gunpowder plotters, or so they think, because
Saulisbury by this time has ordered the area all around
the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament, to be searched.
During the first search, though they didn't find anything, though
they did run into Fox there. He was of course
posing as John Johnson, and so they took him basically

(11:37):
for what he was posing to be. They took him
for a servant. The gunpowder, as we mentioned, was concealed,
so they didn't see that in the search either. They
did notice all of that kindling, though, the kindling that
we mentioned that was concealing the gunpowder, and they thought
it was a little weird that that was all there.
But when they realized that Thomas Percy, who was of
course a well respected gentleman pensioner, was leasing a space,

(12:00):
they figured, all right, it's probably okay. But then, according
to that Craft article, again Montego raised suspicion about the
fact that Percy was leasing the space even though he
had his own home in London, you know, like, why
does Percy need this place? Anyway? The King ordered another
search after that, and they found Fox at about midnight

(12:20):
on November four, along with the gunpowder, very incriminating slow
match and a watch that Percy had given him to
check the time with. So the plot was done caught
red handed. So Fox was arrested as John Johnson and
thrown into the Tower of London, where it said that
he was interrogated and tortured to reveal the names of

(12:41):
the other conspirators, even though torture was illegal in England
at the time. It took two days to break Fox
down for him to finally give up the names of
the others who were involved in the plot. Percy's name,
of course, had already been linked with the leases, so
there was already a warrant out for his arrest. Meanwhile,
though katesby Rook would the right brothers, Percy and Bates

(13:02):
all roads in the Midlands where part two of the
plan was supposed to happen, but of course that wasn't
going to happen now. Instead, they met up with the
other co conspirators, raided Warwick Castle for fresh horses, and
then went looking for help and apparently got refused by
several Catholic safe houses. They just kept going from house
to house, but nobody would join them, and nobody would
offer them help. I was interested in that point because,

(13:24):
I mean, it suggests me at least that word of
the plot must have spread really quickly, I mean, all
the way up in the Midlands to houses to know
better than to actually accept these people into your home. Well,
a big deal was made out of it, which we're
going to touch on a little bit later, But at
that time, yeah, I guess people knew it wasn't a
good idea to to protect these people, so they eventually

(13:45):
stopped at whole beach House in Staffordshire, where they thought
they could at least put up a defense there. But
they messed up right in the beginning by putting their
damp gunpowder by the fire to dry, so of course
the gunpowder exploded and it burned a couple of them
in the process. It minded one guy. It's all rather
ironic if you think about it long and hard. But

(14:05):
of course at this point the odds were even worse
for them. Not only are they on the run for
high treason, but they are injured, and according to Kroff,
they considered just getting out of the whole thing blowing
themselves up at this point. But by November eight men
led by the High Sheriff of wush sure did them.
In the rest of the way. They had this quick battle.

(14:26):
Katesby the rights and Percy ended up dying from their wounds.
It sounds like it was probably the best way to go. Thomas, Wintour, Rookwood,
and Grant were captured. Five of the guys were still free,
but not for very long. By the new year, all
of them were captured, and then Trusham, when he was
contained in the tower, fell ill and died, and some

(14:48):
people think that maybe he was poison Maybe even Monteagle
took mercy on him because of that letter of warning
and slipped him some poison helped him escape what would
ultimately be a far worse punishment of drawing and quartering,
which is the fate the rest of them were destined for. Yep,
all the plotters who weren't dead were put on trial

(15:09):
January sixteen o six, and of course they were all
found guilty of high treason and executed over the next
couple of days. They were all hanged, drawn and quartered.
So the plot was ultimately unsuccessful, and maybe because of that,
it's been the subject of debate for many years. Some
have even suggested that there was no plot, that the
plotters were actually set up by the government, specifically the

(15:31):
Earl of Salisbury, who knew that the backlash after the
plot was exposed would just reinforced Protestantism and strength and
hatred toward Catholics in England. Yeah, and in a nineteen
interview with The New York Times, Fraser, who we mentioned earlier,
said that the reason the origins of the plot are
up for debate is that researchers are trying to quote

(15:52):
draw conclusions from imperfect records and testimonies taken under torture.
She says that you really have to assess the evidence
and make up your own mind. And for her part,
she does believe there was the plot. According to Teaching History,
most historians do generally accept this idea. Now they do
think there was something going on, but the results of

(16:13):
government conspiracy would have been aiming for still came to pass.
The Gunpowder plot just made anti Catholic feelings in England
more intense. There were new laws preventing Catholics from practicing law,
serving as officers in the army or the navy, and
they weren't allowed to vote. On the evening of Guy
that Guy Fox was caught. November fifth, sixteen o five,
the first Guy Fox type celebration took place. The people

(16:37):
of London rang bells and lip bonfires to celebrate the
fact that the king and his nobility were safe. In
sixteen o six, the English government passed an act to
make the celebration an annual event, which at first was
religious in nature, with sermons and everything, and then later
it became more of a raucous social event. In the
seventeenth century, people started burning effigies of the pope on

(16:58):
the fires. And in the eighteen century is when the
little guy Effi g appeared. Yeah, And in eighteen fifty nine,
since there was an increased emphasis on religious toleration, the
sixteen o six Act was finally abolished and the Bonfire Night.
At that point the celebrations really started to morph into
private bonfires and fireworks parties that children would go sell

(17:21):
the guys on the street to fund. And over the
years it really became more of a family event in
a lot of places with fireworks displays, kind of how
we would celebrate Fourth of July here on sounds sort
of similar to that, although people can definitely correct us
if we're wrong about that, but certain similar elements. Right.
So now Bonfire Night celebrations still exist, but they compete

(17:41):
with other false celebrations like Halloween, and I'm really interested.
We asked during the last podcast for people to send
us um some examples of things that they do to
celebrate Bonfire Night, if they celebrated it at all, and
so hopefully we'll get to read some of those on
an upcoming podcast. Kind of awesome to have this always,
Like I guess the week after Halloween to you can

(18:02):
bring out your costumes again. Maybe I don't know, if
you celebrate both and it's just like a two week
long celebration or something exactly. The Gunpowder plot didn't leave
a mark, though, of a more serious mark than just
all these bonfire parties. The Houses of Parliament are still
searched just before the State Opening, which has been held
in November since nine even though Parliament's website says this

(18:28):
is retained as a picturesque custom rather than a serious
anti terrorist precaution, for which of course there are proper
mean I'm glad they qualified that for us. But Guy
Flox in the Gunpowder Plot have also been invoked quite
a bit in art and pop culture. One of the
most well known examples is the one that we mentioned
in part one of this podcast, which is the two
thousand six movie V for Vendetta, based on the comic

(18:51):
book series by Alan Moore, in which an anarchist known
as V tries to bring down the government. Basically that's
the basic plot line of this and V where is
a guy Fox mask? And if you haven't seen this movie,
I do highly recommend it, especially now that we've kind
of gone over the story. I did enjoy it, Sarah,
you haven't seen it, right, haven't seen it? And I
know now that I've admitted that. Whenever we admit there's

(19:11):
a certain movie we haven't seen, we usually hear from
people telling us, I can't believe you haven't seen that.
You're still getting Harry Potter email. I'm still getting Harry
Potter emails. We're still getting ned Kelly emails. So you know,
I'm sure you'll get emails about this one too. But
maybe because of the movie and its association with popular
revolution and anti establishment ideals that mask. The Guy Fox

(19:32):
mask has shown up in other places to members of
the hacker group Anonymous have been known to wear it.
I was talking to Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff about
that recently. He brought it up to me when he
found out we were doing this, and recently people involved
in the Occupy Wall Street movement have been wearing it too.
So it is interesting to see how this idea of

(19:52):
Guy Fox is still very political. It makes me wonder, though,
how many of the people wearing the masks today really
know the story of Guy fa Box, or even if
they know who Guy Fox is and they know about
the bonfires did they know the whole history of the plot? Yeah,
And to Robert Catesby, is I mean Catesby to research
your studying him now? Was really a true terrorist? He

(20:14):
didn't kill He didn't care that he was about to
kill a life people. He didn't care that he might
have killed Catholics too, and people he knew for sure
right in what he was doing. Um So, I'm curious
to know what people think about this phenomenon of people
wearing Guy Fox masks for different reasons. Um so right
to us. You can write us at history Podcast at
how stuff works dot com, or you can look us

(20:35):
up on Facebook or on Twitter Atmston History. And we
were also talking to our colleague Kristen Conger of stuff
Mom never told you earlier. She's writing an article on
how Occupy Wall Street works, and I bet that'll be
published by the time this episode publishes, So that might
be a good opportunity to learn a little bit more
about this modern offsheet of Guy Fox. Um para nail, Yeah,

(21:00):
I guess that's what we'd call it. You can check
that out. It's how Occupy Wall Street Works on our
homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. This
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