In the autumn of 1605, a group of young Catholic men gathered for a supper party in a private house on the Strand. They included Robert Catesby, Francis Tresham and Ben Jonson, playwright and convicted manslayer.
The topic of conversation could hardly have been more dangerous. They discussed a daring plot to blow up the House of Lords when James I would be attending the State Opening of Parliament, at one stroke assassinating the king and most of the ruling class of England.
In the following days the plot was put into action. Jonson’s friend Guy Fawkes, a soldier he had fought alongside in the Netherlands, was recruited to help. Using the alias John Jonson, Fawkes rented a cellar beneath the House of Lords. He filled it with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder.
More and more conspirators were recruited, until there were thirteen plotters in all. But the number proved unlucky. On 26 October Lord Monteagle received a letter, thought to be from his cousin, the plotter Francis Tresham. Tresham warned his friend to stay away from the opening of Parliament. The letter contained the line ‘they shall receive a terrible blow this parliament; and yet they shall not see who hurts them.’
It was the king himself who interpreted the letter as an assassination attempt. His prime minister, Robert Cecil, ordered a search of Parliament.
On the night of 4 November 1605 Guy Fawkes was discovered in Parliament’s cellars. He held a lantern with which he planned to light the fuses the very next day, 5 November.
Hearing the news of Fawkes’s arrest, the plotters fled London. On 8 November they were traced to Holbeche House in Staffordshire. Catesby, the ringleader, was killed at once. Meanwhile Fawkes was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was tortured until he confessed, then put to death. The remaining plotters were tried and executed.
Only Ben Jonson was spared. He was arrested following the plot, but freed by Cecil on condition he use his Catholic networks to identify a priest who could implicate the plotters. Although Jonson protested that he’d done everything he could, no such priest was ever found.
Many historians now believe the Gunpowder Plot may have been a conspiracy by Cecil’s government. Before it, King James was disposed to be tolerant of Catholicism, the religion of his mother – Mary, Queen of Scots – and his wife. After it, his attitude hardened and England was once again a firmly Protestant country.
There are still many questions to be answered about the Gunpowder Plot. How did the plotters get hold of so much gunpowder, when its supply was in the gift of the government? Why did it take ten days for Cecil to act on the Monteagle letter? And was Catesby killed so quickly in order to silence him?
We don’t know all the facts, but a woodcut survives naming all of the plotters. One of the thirteen was Robert Catesby’s loyal servant.
He was known only as Bates.