Mini-Episode: The Gunpowder Plot
Introducing the first of our Mini Episodes!
In these mini-episodes, we’ll be exploring topics that are related to Shakespeare but aren’t necessarily connected to whatever play we’ve been discussing.
And they’re mini, because well, they’re shorter than our other episodes. They’re like quartos if the regular episodes are folio editions.
In this episode, we dive into the Gunpowder Plot--an event which shook Early Modern England and shaped Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Kourtney Smith (KS): Welcome to another Shakespeare Anyone mini-episode! In these mini-episodes, we’ll be exploring topics that are related to Shakespeare but aren’t necessarily connected to whatever play we’ve been discussing.
Elyse Sharp (ES): And they’re mini, because well, they’re shorter than our other episodes. They’re like quartos if the regular episodes are folio editions.
KS: In today’s mini-episode, we’ll cover the Gunpowder Plot!
ES: Let’s set the scene for you!
KS: On November 4, 1605, the day before King James was going to appear in person to open a new session of Parliament, officers of the Crown received an anonymous letter that uncovered a nefarious plot. At the scene of the plot, they discovered Guido (aka “Guy”) Fawkes in a cellar that went under the Parliament House. In the cellar, and hidden under a load of lumber and coal, were barrels and barrels of gunpowder and iron bars. On his person, Guy Fawkes was carrying a watch, fuse, and tinder.
ES: He was arrested and, as he was viciously tortured, Fawkes revealed the names of his co-conspirators, who had been embittered by King James I’s apparent unwillingness to extend tolerance to Roman Catholics. Those named were hunted down and either killed on the spot or hung, then drawn and quartered for their part in the treason.
KS: This failed plot to blow up Parliament and assassinate James is remembered as the Gunpowder Treason Plot, or the Jesuit Plot.
ES: And it is… intense. But how did we get here?
KS: The main motivator behind this plot is religious freedom, which was quite a controversial topic at this point in English history. You see, tensions between Catholics and Protestants had been building and building throughout the last hundred years or so. Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church in Rome in 1534 to create the Protestant Church of England, for his own personal gains, remember the Intro Series? Nevertheless, Protestantism became the religion of England and Catholics became marginalized. And although Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, loosened the medieval punishments of her predecessor, Queen Mary (who was referred to so warmly as Bloody Mary) she was not exactly tolerant of Catholics.
ES: One example of this intolerance by Elizabeth was a portion of the English Religious Settlement Act of 1558, which, though it did some good for religious practices (go back to the Intro Series for that!), it also forced all English citizens to convert to Protestantism and attend a Protestant service every Sunday. (And, apparently, they were keeping track of attendance and if you missed one too many services, you could be fined or sent to jail…) This was a direct effort to steer Brits away from the Pope as their connection to God and towards the Church of England. Seriously, if you haven’t listened to our Intro Series yet, pause this episode, listen to it and then come back. We’ll wait.
KS: Now, the Roman Catholic Church did not take the Settlement Act lightly. Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth from the Catholic Church. In 1570 he issued a Papal Bull that encouraged all Catholics to depose the Queen and no longer show loyalty to the English monarchy. He called her “Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime.” Now the Catholics in England were seen as enemies.
ES: Poorer and uneducated Brits promptly switched to Protestantism because they couldn’t afford the fines nor could they read Latin, the language of the Roman Catholic Church. But the educated upper class were a different story. “Recusants”, as they were called, were individuals who knowingly broke the law and continued to practice Catholicism because they still thought the Catholic Church was the true church and this defiance was a quest for them to save their immortal souls. Recusing Catholics began to hide priests in their homes, which was punishable by death. So yeah, Catholics had to practice their religion in secret. Nice, Elizabeth.
KS: As Elizabeth, the heirless final Tudor monarch, saw the deterioration of her health around 1600, the Privy Council and other factions began advocating for different successors to the throne. As the son of Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots (who was executed by Elizabeth… oh! And she’s not the same Mary as Bloody Mary… don’t get them confused!) her son, King James, was a strong contender for the crown. But Catholics favored alternatives to James, who was a Protestant. And, yes, they were mostly Catholic alternatives. But James’s claim to the throne was successful and he ascended to the throne on March 24, 1603.
ES: If you listened to our first episode on Demonology, you already know that James was a Protestant king who was...very intense about how great Protestantism was. While James cared more about hunting witches and partying than cracking down on Catholics practicing in private, that doesn’t mean that English Catholics were entirely comfortable with his ascension to the throne after 70+ years under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I and her English Settlement Act.
KS: English Catholics waited to see how James would rule. Would he be fair to Catholics? Intolerant? Repeal Elizabeth’s laws? Convert to Catholicism himself in honor of his mother (who was a Catholic)? He was very vague about how he would handle the tensions between Catholics and Protestants, which gave some Catholics confidence they needn’t stress.
ES: What ended up happening was, he kept his Protestant faith. And, actually, he started his reign as a relatively tolerant king to his Catholic subjects. He was sort of a live-and-let-live... but-be-quiet-about-it-and-don’t-break-the-law kind of king. One notable stance he took was, rather than punishing practicing Catholics with capital punishment, he merely exiled them, believing exile to be a better alternative.
KS: But that doesn’t mean James trusted the Catholics. His paranoia surrounding assassination by Catholic factions grew quickly. But don’t think James’ nerves about assassination were in vain. Prior to his reign, many Protestant rulers in Europe had seen assassination attempts. Soon James's political writing was "concerned with the threat of Catholic assassination and refutation of the [Catholic] argument that 'faith did not need to be kept with heretics." Nice, James.
ES: On top of that, English Protestants noticed that James, having halted collecting fines for skipping Protestant mass and raids on Catholic households, pressed James to be harsher on their Catholic brethren. Many Protestants believed that if the Catholics were not stamped out, they would spark an uprising. James was pressured to revert back to enforcing Elizabeth’s harsh laws that treat Catholics like criminals. The Catholics felt betrayed by James. They felt he had given them hope. Now they were angry.
KS: And this leads us to the Gunpowder Plot. But who are our plotters...?
ES: The most infamous is Guy Fawkes, who we mentioned earlier as being caught in the cellar amongst all the explosive paraphernalia. Not much is known about his childhood. He was born in 1570 into a mixed family: his father was Protestant and worked for the Church, while his mother was Catholic. Years after his father died, his mother remarried a Catholic man and Guy was baptized. The family secretly practiced Catholicism in a community with a lot of Recusant Catholics. He continued to practice Catholicism into his adulthood. After maybe getting married and maybe having a son, he left England for Flanders after continuous struggles for employment. While abroad, he fought with the Spanish in the Eighty Year War against the Protestant Netherlands.
KS: But Guy Fawkes was not the ringleader of the plot. That would be Robert Catesby who first began plotting in 1603 and recruited a man named Thomas Winter. Catesby and Winter wrote to friends in Spain and requested help, but their Spanish contacts did not want to get involved. They decided that, if they want something to be done, they’d have to find support home in England. The two recruited John Wright and Thomas Percy who then recruited Fawkes.
ES: In May of 1604, the men had their first meeting in which they probably dined and drank together at the Duck and Drake Inn, Wintour’s usual residence while in London. They whispered around their table and swore an oath of secrecy. Following the meeting, they started to prep. Thomas Percy purchased land near the Palace of Westminster and Fawkes was hired on as a footman with a pseudonym “John Johnson” (how original), to not raise suspicion. They purchased gun powder in small quantities and disguised this purchase as a practical matter to defend themselves against pirates if they went overseas. Again, to not raise suspicion. Percy rented a cellar underneath the Palace of Westminster, claiming he was renting it to store firewood for his cousin, the Earl of Northumberland.
KS: The plot kept being pushed back and, all the meanwhile, the conspirators grew in number from five to thirteen men. Unfortunately for the original plotters, increasing the number of people involved also made it more likely for someone to blow the entire thing. And that’s just what happened.
ES: On Saturday October 26, a servant handed Lord Monteagle a letter from an anonymous source, which read: “My lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation, therefore I would advise you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this parliament or though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow.” That letter was delivered to Robert Cecil, the Spymaster and Secretary of State to King James.
KS: Historians debate the identity of this anonymous author. It could have been any of the thirteen conspirators. Others have suggested Lord Monteagle, a Catholic, wrote it after hearing of the plot. Lord Monteagle was rewarded 500 pounds a year for his loyalty to the Crown, which seems like reason enough to oust the plotters. Others believe it was Robert Cecil, the spymaster, who orchestrated the reveal to look like the hero.
ES: But on November 4, 1605, royal guards searched the Palace of Westminster and, upon finding nothing, thought the letter was a hoax. Then, someone mentioned there was a room in the cellar that was storing firewood that had not been checked yet. The guards headed downstairs to check it out.
KS: Now we are back at the scene of the crime.
ES: Fawkes was immediately arrested after the royal guards discovered the gunpowder and matches. King James, himself, interviewed Fawkes to ask if he regretted anything. After all, it was a ruthless plan that would have killed so many people, including children present at Parliament. Fawkes replied that his only regret is that the plan failed.
KS: Because Fawkes refused to give up his identity, referring to himself as “John Johnson”, as well as the identities of his co-conspirators, James ordered he be tortured. After a day of torture, likely on the rack, he caved and, as we said at the top of the episode, revealed the names of those involved.
ES: The remaining conspirators were on the run. Catesby, the ringleader, rode on horseback claiming to his neighborhood that James had been blown up and it was time for the Catholics to rise up. Unfortunately, the army he was trying to recruit only amounted to about forty people. And, ironically, without the expertise of gunpowder that Fawkes had, he and his small army accidentally blew themselves up with the gun power they brought with them. They spread the now-soaked gunpowder in front of a fire to dry out. A spark from the fire landed on the gunpowder and… you get the picture. Badly injured, Catesby told the remaining men “We mean here to die.”
KS: On November 8, the sheriff of Warwickshire showed up with an army of 200 men. Both sides engaged in a shoot-out. The weakened Catholic men put up a fight, but, ultimately, they didn’t stand a chance against the King’s men. Robert Catesby was shot and crawled to the nearest Catholic Church. He was found dead, hugging a statue of the Virgin Mary. The remaining conspirators were arrested and sentenced to execution, along with Guy Fawkes.
ES: On January 31, 1606, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were found guilty of treason. Their punishment was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Essentially, they were dragged through the streets before they were publicly hanged almost to the point of death, emasculated, disemboweled, beheaded and, lastly, quartered, or chopped into four pieces. When they arrived at the gallows, James told the crowd that the traitors were intending to blow up all of England! (Really? The whole Isle? Sounds…doable... ) Regardless of the ridiculousness of this statement, it made the audience mad. They booed the traitors. Fawkes jumped prematurely, breaking his own neck, to avoid feeling the pain. The rest weren’t so lucky.
KS: Many others associated with the plotters were either interrogated, searched, fined, stripped of titles, charged or imprisoned in the Tower of London following the failed plot.
ES: One of those individuals was Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest who ran an underground Catholic mission in London, and was arrested as part of the conspiratorial group. However, he denied the charges and pleaded innocence. While there was very little evidence against him, the prosecutors made a huge deal about how he had written a book entitled A Treatise on Equivocation that defended “the morality of giving misleading or ambiguous answers under oath.” But Garnet was linked to Catesby and the families and friends Catesby and the other conspirators frequented. His absolution of Catesby’s blame in the plot was seen as enough proof that the Jesuits were central to this plot, hence the alternative name “Jesuit Plot''. It is widely accepted that the Porter’s mention of an equivocator in Macbeth is a reference to Garnet.
KS: If Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded, they would have blown up the Palace of Westminster and nearby buildings. It would have killed the king and other princes and princesses, as well as members of the Privy Council, Parliament, judges, and members of the aristocracy. The throne would have been left to James’ young daughter, Princess Elizabeth. However, that did not happen. Instead, anti-Catholic rhetoric and legislation became stronger throughout England and Catholic Emancipation took about another 200 years. A Thanksgiving Act was passed in 1606 which required citizens to pray and give thanks to God that the terrorists did not succeed in killing the king. Oh, and inspired by the event, Shakespeare wrote a whole play warning of the dangers of regicide. (Hello, Macbeth!)
ES: If you are an American, you may know about the plot because it is the inspiration for the film V for Vendetta. “Remember, remember, the fifth of November.” If you are a Brit, you know about the plot because Guy Fawkes Day, also called Bonfire Night, is celebrated every fifth of November often with fireworks and traditionally with burning an effigy of Guy on a bonfire. You can also read the confessions of Guy Fawkes and Thomas Wintours in the King’s Book, a written official account of the conspiracy published in late November 1605.
KS: And that’s the infamous failed Gunpowder Treason Plot!
ES: Thank you for listening to this episode.
Quote of the episode:
ES: From Richard III, act one, scene four, said by First Murderer, “What, art thou afraid?”
Shakespeare Anyone? is created, written, produced, and hosted by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.
Mini: Gunpowder Plot was written by Kourtney Smith with contributions by Elyse Sharp
Our theme music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.
Works referenced:
Arnold, Catharine. Globe: Life in Shakespeare's London. Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., 2016.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W.W. Norton Et Company, 2016.
Quinn, Shannon, and Jennifer Da Silva. Guy Fawkes and the Conspiracy of the Gunpowder Plot. Performance by Simon Whistler, Youtube, Biographics with Highlight History, 5 May 2019, Accessed 17 Dec. 2020, from www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWZIbnkkI9U&t=300s
