The Gunpowder Plotters

When James I became king in 1603, many Catholics hoped he would treat them more fairly. Instead, laws against Catholics continued, including fines for recusants, who refused to attend Protestant church services.

A group of Catholic plotters, led by Robert Catesby, planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament at the State Opening on 5 November 1605, killing the king and his government. They planned a rising in the Midlands, and to put the king's young daughter, Elizabeth, on the throne as a Catholic queen.

The plotters rented a cellar under the House of Lords and filled it with barrels of gunpowder. Guy Fawkes, an experienced soldier, was to light the fuse.

In late October 1605, a Catholic lord, Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him to stay away from the State Opening of Parliament. He passed it to the king's chief minister, Robert Cecil.

The cellars under Parliament were searched, and on the night of 4–5 November 1605, Guy Fawkes was caught guarding the gunpowder.

The other plotters fled to the Midlands. Some, including Catesby, were killed when government forces surrounded them at Holbeche House.

The plotters' crime was treason, the most serious crime against authority.

Fawkes was questioned under torture, which the king had approved, until he gave the names of the other plotters. The surviving plotters were tried in January 1606, found guilty of high treason, and executed in public by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Their remains were displayed in public as a warning.

Purpose: the punishment was designed for deterrence and retribution. It showed everyone what would happen to anyone who plotted against the king.

Consequences:

• Harsher laws against Catholics were passed in 1606, and anti-Catholic feeling grew for many years.
• Parliament ordered that 5 November should be remembered every year as a day of thanksgiving. Bonfire Night is still celebrated today.

Significance: the case shows that in this period, treason was treated as the worst crime of all, and punished with the harshest penalties. Religion and authority were closely linked: plotting for a Catholic monarch was a crime against the state.