Gunpowder Plot

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on Tuesday 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which King James's nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was to be installed as the new head of state. Catesby is suspected by historians to have embarked on the scheme after hopes of greater religious tolerance under James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. His fellow conspirators were John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives. On 26 October 1605, an anonymous letter of warning was sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, a Catholic member of Parliament, who immediately showed it to the authorities. During a search of the House of Lords on the evening of 4 November, Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder—enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble—and arrested. Hearing that the plot had been discovered, most of the conspirators fled from London while trying to enlist support along the way. Several made a last stand against the pursuing Sheriff of Worcestershire and a posse of his men at Holbeche House; in the ensuing gunfight Catesby was one of those shot and killed. At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the surviving...