SYMHC Classics: Gunpowder Plot

This 2011 episode covers the discriminatory laws English Catholics faced under Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, which led a group of Catholics to attempt regicide. But the plot was discovered days before the event. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Since it is November five, also known as
Guy Fox Day or Guy Fox Night, we are replaying
prior hosts Sarah and Deblina's episode on the Gunpowder Plot
as today's Saturday classic. This originally came out as two
parts that were separated by an entire week that was
on November two and n Each of those parts is

(00:24):
shorter than today's episodes typically are, so we are running
both of them together today, so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,

(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblina Chocolate Boardy and
I'm Sara Dout And the topic we're about to discuss
isn't exactly obscure, and at least some of our listeners,
the British contingent that is, probably won't be able to
say that they missed in history class. It has to
do with a certain celebration that's coming up in England
on November five. Some call it Bonfire Day, others call

(01:06):
it Fireworks Night, and still others know it as Guy
Fox Day, referring to the man whose name is most
associated with the notorious Gunpowder Plot. Athwarted attempt to blow
up Parliament on November five. It's also called the Powder Treason. Yeah,
and people celebrate or commemorate this day in different ways,
and it's changed a lot over the years, but the

(01:27):
alternate names for the event really give you a good
general idea of what goes on. People set off fireworks
and they light up their bonfires, and often a top
of those bonfires, they'll burn Guy Fox in effigy, so
that might throw some of you guys for a loop.
Children will often sell those effigies eventually they call them guys.

(01:48):
They'll go out and they'll sell them on the street
and they'll ask for a penny for the guy. And
those same kids are probably also pretty familiar with a
famous rhyme. Do you want to read it off for Scenarstaplina? Sure,
it's remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be

(02:09):
forgot and thanks at least in part to pop culture references.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that later.
But many people outside of the UK have heard this
rhyme too, and perhaps they even know the name Guy Fox.
I mean, if you've ever seen the two thousand six
movie V for Vendetta, for example, this will surely ring
a bell, or if you just work in the house

(02:29):
Stuff Works office. One of our coworkers, Jonathan Strickland of
tech Stuff, is definitely a fan of of rattling off
this rhyme from time to time. It's always fun to hear. Yeah,
And he and I were actually talking about that in
reference to the fact that there are a lot of
misconceptions out there about who exactly Guy Fox was and
what November five is commemorating. Some simply think that Fox

(02:51):
was the hero of the day, and they might be
surprised to learn what we just told you that he's
burned in effigy, or they at least think that he
was the master mind of the Gunpowder plot, which wasn't
the case at all. He's actually kind of a minor character,
not a master criminal at all. Really, right, So we're
going to take a closer look at the Gunpowder plot,
the motives behind it, and the players involved, including who

(03:13):
really instigated the whole thing. And we're also going to
discuss some conflicting theories over the origins of the plot,
but we're going to get to that later. First, we're
gonna give you the generally accepted version of events, and
to do that we need to kind of set the
scene a bit. So there's an overarching conflict at the
time which ends up leading to the events will discuss,
and the conflict is between English Catholics and English Protestants.

(03:36):
And by the time the gunpowder plot was devised, Catholics
in England had had pretty rough go of it for
many years, being persecuted. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth
the First, who was a Protestant, they'd been subject to
religious legislation that required them to attend to parish church
every Sunday. And it wasn't just that they had to
go to church every Sunday. If you didn't go, it

(03:56):
was known as recusancy. And according to an article by
i'm in Adams in History Today, the penalty for recusancy
was originally a one shilling fine, but that ended up
going up to twenty pounds a month by fight one,
which I mean that still sounds like a lot of
money today. Twenty pounds that's pretty stee forty dollars or

(04:17):
so about that. So Elizabeth had been excommunicated by the
pope and she saw Recusans as potential traders, thus the
really high fine and the strict rules about what Catholics
had to do right. And there were other parts to
these penal laws as they were called um one that
declared that it was treason basically to convert a subject

(04:39):
to Catholicism, and also treason for a Jesuit or a
priest to enter the country. People who broke these laws
were executed. But towards the end of the fifteen nineties
Catholics started to have a little bit of hope. Elizabeth
was getting older and she was childless and didn't have
an air so there was the thinking, hey, maybe the
next monarch would be a little bit more tolerant of Catholics.

(05:02):
And when James the sixth of Scotland took the throne
in six o three after Elizabeth died, making him King
James the First of England, he kind of seemed to
be that guy. His wife, for example, Anne of Denmark,
she was Catholic, and with Anne's help, James had sort
of campaigned for support from other Catholic powers in Europe
and from the Pope also before Elizabeth's death, to kind

(05:25):
of prepare himself to not have opposition when he took
the throne in England, so those things kind of gave
Catholics a little bit of hope. They're like, okay, he
seems friendly towards Catholics. And also, according to an article
in History Review by Pauline Croft, James was pretty open
minded at least seemed that way at first. He said
to have commented that he didn't really want there to

(05:45):
be more Catholics in England, so he didn't want there
to be more converts or for more people to come in.
But if they kept their Catholic nous kind of on
the down low and followed the law, he wouldn't bother them,
or at least there wouldn't be major violence, like a
live in, let live philosophy. Almost so Catholics caught wind
of this, and some people thought, well, maybe it means

(06:06):
the end of the recusancy laws period, and some Catholics
even went as far as to petition James before his
coronation for toleration, really hoping that something would come out
of this new monarch. James wouldn't go that far, and
he said that he'd suspend the monthly recusancy finds for
as long as they continued to support him, so he

(06:27):
kind of offered a halfway bargain there, and he also
added a few people with Catholic sympathies to the Privy Council,
including the Earl of Northumberland. So yeah, I mean that
seems like a bit of a win, especially coming after Elizabeth.
But for many Catholics, they were just disappointed that they
were disappointed that there weren't more changes than they saw

(06:47):
under James. And as evidence of how disgruntled some people
were with James already, two plots against the king were
discovered as early as June and July three, just to
give you an idea of exactly how all soon. That is,
Elizabeth had died in March um, so really just a
couple of months. These plots were called the Bye and
the Main plots, and there were different people involved in each,

(07:09):
but just to give you a summary of these. In
the by plot, the goal was to kidnap the King
and his eldest son, Prince Henry, and forced James to
replace his chief ministers and to declare Catholic toleration. And
the main plot, on the other hand, conspirators hoped to
get rid of James entirely, and to put his English
born cousin, Lady Arabel Stewart, on the throne. According to

(07:31):
Crofts article, though both of these plots were pretty incompetent,
which I guess is probably why they didn't work out,
But the fact that they were found out didn't stop
others from cooking up their own conspiracies, which is where
the gunpowder plot begins. So we're gonna start talking about
this conspiracy by talking about the conspirator specifically. The plot
began with a man named Robert Catesby, and Catesby was

(07:56):
a devout Catholic and he had become very disillusioned with
the govern ment early on when he saw his father
being persecuted for not conforming to Church of England rules.
And Katsby himself had been imprisoned for a brief time
after fighting in an uprising led by Robert Devreaux, who
was the second Earl of Essex back in sixteen o one.

(08:16):
So Katsby really wasn't like the Catholics who were entering
James Rain with a lot of hope and thinking there
was a lot of promise. He didn't trust in those promises,
and he he wasn't counting on anything. Katsby was also
kind of a ringleader of a small group of men
who had taken part in the Essex Revolt with him,
including Jack and kit Wright and Francis Tresham. Other men

(08:38):
related to them were also sympathetic to their cause. Thomas Percy,
for example, who worked for and was related to the
Earl of Northumberland, was brother in law to the Rights
and then Robert and Thomas Wintour, who were known for
giving priest refuge in their homes, were related to Katesby.
So at first they hoped that maybe Spain would invade
England to help the Catholics, and they offered their support

(09:01):
to Spain in that regard. But Spain was actually hoping
to end hostility with England at the time, and was
in the process of starting to negotiate a peace treaty
to that effect, so Katsby and his buddy started to
give up on Spain as a solution. We're not sure
exactly when the idea for the plot started brewing, but
by the beginning of sixteen oh four, Katesby shared with

(09:21):
tom Win Tour that he thought of a way to
solve their problem al right, So in January, the King
had announced that he was going to call parliament soon,
and Katsby's idea was to blow up the House of
Parliament while they were in session, and apparently when Tour
was kind of hesitant about this, but Katsby was a
smooth talker and ultimately convinced the gang. So Kidsby held

(09:46):
a meeting of people who were to be involved in
the plot on May four in London at the Duck
and Drake lodging house in the Strand, and he had
three of his posse there, Tom Wintour, Thomas Percy and
Jack Right. But there was a fifth person to a
very important one, none other than Guy Fox himself. So

(10:07):
Fox is an interesting character in this whole discussion about
the tensions between the Protestants and the Catholics. He was
a militant Catholic convert from Yorkshire. He was born in
April thirteenth, fifteen seventy to a Protestant dad and a
Catholic mom. His dad died when he was young, though,
so his mom and her actions in the underground Catholic
community in England really ended up being a big influence

(10:29):
on him. Fox also went to St. Peter's School, in York,
which also had Catholic leaning, so that probably had a
big influence in how his views turned out grew up,
and that's also where he might have met the Wright brothers.
He ended up going into military service abroad, serving in
the Spanish Army in the Netherlands from fifteen ninety three
to about sixteen o four. In sixteen o three, though,

(10:50):
he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Spain to
try and convince them to invade England, much like Catesby
and friends did before. And that's also where he might
have come into contact with Katesby's crew through these interactions,
so just looking for areas where he might have met
up with them or where they may have heard of him.
At any rate, Katesby and his fellow plotters needed someone

(11:11):
like Fox in the mix. He was their muscle of sorts.
He knew something about guns and AMMO, and since he'd
been away from England for so long, his face was unknown,
and that's a key point to remember, very important because
he was going to have to do some sort of
reconnaissance type work. So those five conspirators had their meeting
in the Strand and they took an oath of secrecy,

(11:33):
and they said mass, and then they talked about the plan.
So by that time, Parliament had been in session since
March and was expected to last at least a couple
of months. More so, the plan was to lease a
house next to the House of Lord's Chamber in the
old Palace of Westminster. Then they would dig a tunnel
from the sellers of the least House to the foundations

(11:56):
of the Chamber and put some gunpowder in there. They'd
bring gunpowder in at night from Catesby's house across the towns.
So you can start to get the sense of why
it would be important to not be a guy everybody
recognized around town. Yeah, you wouldn't want to be recognized
because there was a lot of at stake. If this worked,
they were going to be blowing up Parliament. They were
going to be killing the king. Also his son, and

(12:19):
his other son was sickly. So the plan after this
was to kidnap young Princess Elizabeth and basically make her
their puppet queen. But I mean, the details surrounding this
are still kind of sketchy, and we're going to talk
about that a little bit more later. But once they
settled on a general Plan, or part one of the plan,
at least they set to it. Percy leased the house

(12:40):
with the help of his connections to the Earl of Northumberland,
but then on July seven, Parliament was postponed and scheduled
to reconvene in February of six five. Before that meeting ended, though,
they did manage to reconfirm all of those penalties that
applied to Catholics and recusancy fines were reinstated, so adding
fuel to the potential explosive fire exactly. So, they agreed

(13:04):
to start working again in the fall keep moving towards
their plot, but Parliament was delayed again until October six
oh five, and eventually it was rescheduled again until November five,
so they agreed to start work again that February. That March, though,
they had a stroke of luck the lease for a
ground floor seller between their tunnel and the House of

(13:25):
Lords meeting space became available. According to the BBC, that
seller extended right underneath the House of Lords, so it
allowed the plotters to pack the gunpowder, thirty six barrels
of it, in fact, right where it would be the
most dangerous. So when we saw them last March, of

(13:51):
sixteen o five. Our conspirators had just lucked 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. It's a really good break for them, exactly.
So the plotters started filling up the cellar with barrels
and barrels of gunpowder, sneaking in at night, and they

(14:13):
kept it pretty well concealed too. They covered it with
iron bars and lots of bundles of kindling, so you
couldn't 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 immediate area, including
of course the king and his heir and the members

(14:34):
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

(14:57):
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 Frasier has
described as quote tall, powerfully built, with thick reddish brown hair,

(15:20):
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

(15:43):
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 Right, and Guy Fox. So

(16:03):
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 Keys, who was probably related to the Wintour brother
somehow or another, was also led into the group, as

(16:23):
was katesby servant Thomas Bates. So, I mean, I 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,

(16:47):
Katesby's cousin by marriage, into the fold, mainly because of
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 so 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

(17:07):
useful in the uprising that Katesby was planning after the explosion,
but more specifically after the explosion, which would take place
after Fox lit a slow match in the cellar. As
soon as the King had come into the House of Lords.
Katesby would ride from London to the Midlands, where he'd
meete Digby, and Digby would have been waiting beforehand with
some servants that the Red Lion and dun Church disguised

(17:29):
as a hunting party. From there, they would supposedly go
to kidnap Princess Elizabeth, the King's daughter, from the 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

(17:52):
some question as to whether or not he was going
to survive, and they didn't want to place all their
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 is sort of unclear.
In an article for History Today, Simon Adams says, that's
quote one of the major mysteries of the plot. So

(18:13):
presumably they would just try to marry Elizabeth off to
some other 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.

(18:36):
He's not liking what he hears. You can't take 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 five, just days before Parliament was

(18:57):
set to meet William Parker, who's better and own as
Lord Monteagle, 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
Monteagle was a former Catholic himself. He had also participated

(19:19):
in that Essex uprising with Katesby and friends that we
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. Trasham was Montegal's brother in law,
so um, unfortunately for Kate's By, Tresham had a few

(19:41):
brothers in law to consider. But that's why the letter
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 letter. She writes, for example,
that Tom Winter sometimes served as montegal secretary, so there's

(20:02):
a connection there. But there's another theory that's even more
interesting to me at least. Croft also suggests that it's
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.
Montegal shared this letter with Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl

(20:24):
of Salisbury, the head of the monarchy secret police, and
the King's Secretary of State. Salisbury, in turn, of course,
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

(20:45):
consults with his co conspirators and they actually decided just
to go ahead with the plan. They suspected I've read
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 complete rushed into
it blindly though, just sname case. On November four, Percy
visited with his boss and his relative, the Earl of Northumberland,

(21:08):
whose connections had of course helped Percy lease the house
in the cellar in the first place. He checked with
him to try to gauge whether or not the Earl
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

(21:28):
pretty reassured that they were in the clear. Nobody knew
it was good, so it is all just full speed
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,

(21:51):
posing as John Johnson, and so they took him basically
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

(22:13):
course a well respected gentleman pensioner, was leasing the space,
they figured, all right, it's probably okay. But then, according
to that Craft article, again Montego raised suspicient 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

(22:34):
search after that, and they found Fox at about midnight
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 for Box was arrested as John Johnson

(23:01):
and thrown into the Tower of London, where it said
that he was interrogated and tortured to reveal the names
of 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,

(23:24):
though Kate Sby Rookwood, the right brothers, Percy and Bates
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

(23:45):
to house, but nobody would join them and nobody would
offer them help. I was interested in that point because,
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. Two houses to know
better than to actually accept the 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

(24:06):
good idea to to protect these people. So they eventually
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 blinded one guy. It's all rather

(24:27):
ironic if you think about it long and hard. But
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 Croff,
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.

(24:49):
In the rest of the way. They have this quick battle.
Katesby the rights and Percy ended up dying from their wounds.
It sounds like it was probably the best way to go. Thomas,
Wintour could 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 Tresham,

(25:10):
when he was contained in the tower, fell ill and died.
And some 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

(25:30):
were destined for. Yep, all the plotters who weren't dead
were put on trial January six, 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

(25:53):
no plot, that the plotters were actually set up by
the government, specifically the Earl of Salisbury, who knew that
the backlash after the plot was exposed would just reinforce
Protestantism and strength and hatred towards 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

(26:13):
of the plot are up for debate is that researchers
are trying to quote 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 a plot.
According to Teaching History, most historians do generally accept this idea.

(26:35):
Now they do think there was something going on, but
the results of 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 that Guy Fox was caught. November five,

(26:57):
sixteen o five, the first Guy Fox hype celebration took place.
The people of London rang bells and lit 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

(27:20):
the seventeenth century people started burning effigies of the pope
on the fires, and in the eighteenth century is when
the Little Guy effigy 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

(27:42):
private bonfires and fireworks parties that children would go sell
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 actos so
if we're wrong about that, but certain similar elements. Right.

(28:03):
So now Bonfire Night celebrations still exist, but they compete
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,

(28:25):
like I guess the week after Halloween to you can
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

(28:48):
in November since nine even though Parliament's website says this
is retained as a picturesque custom rather than a serious
anti terrorist precaution, for which of core there are proper
mean I'm glad they qualified that for us. But Guy
Fox on the gunpowder plot have also been invoked quite
a bit in art and pop culture. One of the

(29:09):
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
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 wears a
Guy Fox mask. And if you haven't seen this movie,
I do highly recommend it, especially now that we've kind

(29:30):
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
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

(29:50):
maybe because of the movie and its association with popular
revolution and anti establishment ideals that mask. The Guy Fox
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

(30:12):
in the Occupy Wall Street movement have been wearing it too,
So it is interesting to see how this idea of
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 Fox, or even if they
know who Guy Fox is and they know about the bonfires,
did they know the whole history of the plot. Thanks

(30:38):
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar over the course of the show that could be
obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at
I heart radio dot com. Our old House Stuff works
email address no longer works, and you can find us

(30:59):
all over social media. It at Missed in History and
you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
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heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

(31:21):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.