Among the many plots against the monarchy and government following Henry VIII’s audacious act removing the English church from the pope’s authority to his own, none was so unanticipated and horrendous as what became known as the Gunpowder Treason. It was horrifying to imagine what would have happened to the country if practically the whole government had been destroyed all at once by an enormous explosion that would literally bring down the house. Perhaps it was all the more horrifying that it was foiled at the last moment, since it left everyone free to imagine the worst.
If there had been an actual explosion, it might not have been as powerful as one might imagine. As a scientific experiment early in the 21st century conclusively proved, there is no question that if all 36 barrels had been dry, the explosion would indeed have blown the House of Lords to bits and killed everyone in it. But it is also quite possible that some of the barrels would have been too wet to explode. That seems to have been the plotters’ motivation for taking the time and effort to bring in an additional 16 barrels after the first 20 had been installed.
In some ways it was like Osama bin Laden’s astonishing attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, by an unprecedented means that was totally unforeseen by anyone in America even though authorities had been monitoring terrorist activities for years. The difference was that bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda almost completely succeeded, while Catesby and his Gunpowder Plotters were utterly foiled.
In bin Laden’s case, one of the four hijacked airplanes was prevented from hitting its target by the efforts of its passengers. That left everyone free to worry and speculate: Would it have been headed toward the White House? Or another vital or symbolic target?
In Catesby’s case, English Protestants could speculate unchecked, understandably imagining their darkest fears of Catholic uprisings. Who knows what would have happened afterward?
The fleeing Gunpowder Plotters looked for support from spontaneous uprisings of recusant Catholic supporters, and perhaps an invasion from Spain or France, or maybe a personal appearance by the Devil himself—anything might have been possible. Or there might have been an all-out civil war.
But there was also great jubilation in England when news of the plot was accompanied from the very beginning by news of deliverance. It was a matter for fear but even more for rejoicing. To the king and most of the population, even some recusant Catholics, it seemed a manifest sign of God’s favor, especially to the Church of England. All the more the feeling grew as days went on, as every one of the plotters was killed or arrested, and those arrested were tried, convicted, and put to a traitor’s public death. Everyone involved in the Gunpowder Plot was dead and gone before the end of January. The victory over unthinkable evil was complete.
On November 5, 1605, celebrating news of the defeat of the Gunpowder Plot, the population of London lit up the city with bonfires, cheerful tokens of the terrible explosion Guy Fawkes intended. It was an occasion to remember, but also one that might have faded from memory, or at least from celebration, in a few years. By the end of January the next year, all of the plotters were gone for good, and the celebrations might have gone too.
That didn’t happen, however, because of the “Observance of Fifth November Act,” more formally titled “An act for a publick thanksgiving to Almighty God every year on the fifth day of November.”
It was introduced to the House of Commons in Parliament on January 23, 1606, and approved two days later. It explains:
many malignant and devilish Papists, Jesuits and Seminary Priests, much envying and fearing, conspired most horribly, when the King’s most excellent Majesty, the Queen, the Prince, and all the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, should have been assembled in the Upper House of Parliament upon the Fifth Day of November in the year of our Lord One thousand six hundred and five, suddenly to have blown up the said whole House with Gunpowder: An Invention so inhumane, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of.
Backed by the parliamentary mandate, the celebration soon burst into prominence in the English calendar of feasts. It had everything, high and low: sermons and prayers in solemn religious services of thanksgiving, on the one hand, and bonfires and fireworks and burning effigies on the other. It was a holiday to boot. Soon it became “the most popular state commemoration in the calendar,” according to Kevin Doyle’s research into the history of the celebrations.
What’s more, the combination of All Hallows’ (or Saints’) Eve (October 31, Halloween) and All Saints’ Day (November 1) with Gunpowder Treason Day, November 5, created in effect if not in name another holy week.
So starting on Gunpowder Treason Day in 1606, churches were instructed to use a service involving half a dozen special prayers, including:
ALMIGHTY God, . . . We yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our gracious Sovereign King James the First, the Queen, the Prince, and all the Royal Branches, with the Nobility, Clergy and Commons of England, then assembled in Parliament, by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages. From this unnatural Conspiracy, not our merit, but thy mercy; not our foresight, but thy providence delivered us.
The service was added to the English church’s Book of Common Prayer in its next edition and remained until removed by royal warrant in 1859, a full two and a half centuries later.
Back in 1606 Parliament also made sure the religious service would have a guaranteed audience. Everyone was required to attend a Church of England morning service on November 5.
From the start, numerous sermons were preached that day, declaring that God indeed had shown His love and favor for England by intervening to save England from the pope, Catholics, and the Devil. God’s waiting until the last minute to intervene was His way of showing that He was almighty and on the side of Protestant England.
That was the pious beginning of the day on each Fifth of November. The rest of the day involved bonfires and fireworks, uniquely apt for the nature of the Gunpowder Treason. Fires and fireworks in public places were intended to delight rather than damage, in contrast to the same intended by Catesby, Fawkes, and the other conspirators.
It was also inadvertently providential, indeed essential, for the “guys” we use so familiarly today that the most devastating plot in English history was foiled; it was also providential, and necessary, that the point man, the military expert intending to light the fuses, the first to be arrested and caught in flagrante delicto at midnight November 4, was the one known at first as John Johnson; and that under interrogation, after several days under torture, the stalwart soldier confessed not only the details of the plot but also his real name (Guido or Guy) and those of his co-conspirators.
And it was also providential that so much of the plot was thereby known so soon that the other conspirators were quickly arrested and interrogated or killed while fleeing; that the ringleader Catesby was among those killed, so that his own confession and testimony were not available to focus attention on him rather than Fawkes; that a public trial was promptly conducted, presenting again details of the plot, and recorded for the benefit of posterity as well as the public at that time; and that the conspirators were given yet more publicity by being promptly hanged, drawn, and quartered when the trial was over.
And yet one more providential circumstance, perhaps even more important than all the rest: the celebration of deliverance from the plot by bonfires throughout the kingdom, and the proclamation by Parliament on January 23, 1606, that henceforth every November 5 should repeat the celebration of that deliverance with more bonfires.
Even thought there was no internet, no smartphones, not even a telegraph system to deliver messages quickly, by the end of the day on November 5, 1605, everyone in London and vicinity knew that a terrible plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament had been stopped very early that day, that the man with matches ready to light the fire had been apprehended, and that the king, members of Parliament, and other government officials thus had been spared certain death. It seemed like a miracle, or in any case the hand of providence that had saved the Protestant country.
It helped the celebration that King James himself ordered bells rung and fires to be set throughout the town. On that first Bonfire Day, however, we can be sure that no mention was made of Guy Fawkes, because the prisoner being interrogated was known only as John Johnson.
The Church of England soon became involved, not at first by official decree but by the initiative of enthusiastic priests, emphasizing thanksgiving to God for escaping from destruction. Among the first to preach along those lines was William Barlow, Bishop of Rochester. On Sunday, November 10, just five days after the failed attack, he preached outdoors in the churchyard of St. Paul’s to several thousand people.
At one point in a long sermon, the bishop compares the plotters to famous villains in Roman history.
Caligula, was but a shadow, for he wished that all the Citizens of Rome, had but one necke, that at one blow hee might cut it off: but this Blood-sucker, not only wished it, but contrived it, prepared for it, and was ready to execute it. There was but one famous Nero, which for his crueltie got the name of Nero fro all the rest, him hath he matched in Affection for when one of Nero his dissolute company, had said Me mortuo, when I am deade, let heaven & earth goe together. Nay said Nero, Me vivo, while I am alive. So meant Guy Faulkes (the true name of a false traytor) to have beheld as (hee said) the houses and bodies flying up; he living & laughing at it. If hee had solde us for bond-slaves & hand maides, saith Hester of Haman, yet there had been life, and so hope of returne, but to make an utter dissolution of the whole State, had beene a misery incurable was a project most damnable.
Why single out Guy? Because he was the one plotter already caught and implicated for sure. Or perhaps more important, because he was the one who stood by the gunpowder with matches. The name Guy was new enough to the population that Barlow thinks it necessary to follow it with the explanation, “the true name of a false traytor.”