Remembering Terrorism: The Fifth of November

Today, in the United States to speak of terrorism on the fifth of November calls up memories of the shootings at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009. But the chant, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November" goes back to an event which happened, in fact, did not happen, on November 5, 1605. But, over four centuries later, Guy Fawkes Day, commemorating the failed Gunpowder Plot, reminds us that religious terrorism is not something new in our times.

The Gunpowder Plot

The Gunpowder Plot or Gunpowder Treason is the name give to a plot to blow up King James I (whose name is associated with the Authorized or King James Version of the Bible) almost all the British government with barrels of gunpowder by a small group of Roman Catholics who today would be called terrorists.

King James I and VI as he is known (since he was the first King James of England, the sixth King James in Scotland) came to power in England at the death of Queen Elizabeth. His mother was Mary Stuart, known as "Mary, Queen of Scots" (a cousin of Elizabeth I of England). She was a Roman Catholic, as was Elizabeth's half-sister, who was known as "Bloody Mary" for her persecution of English Protestants. James must have felt a special pleasure at following the childless Elizabeth on the throne, since she had had his mother executed for treason.

Elizabeth had maintained English Protestantism, but under her government, Roman Catholics suffered. Almost everyone, Catholic and Protestant alike, had hopes for England under the new king. James, although Protestant, was more considerate of Catholics. He even said, "I reverence their church as our mother church... besides that I did ever hold persecution as one of the infallible notes of a false church."

Some Catholics, however, felt that increased tolerance under James would , as Henry Tichborne said, lead to a decline in Catholic devotion. There was also concern that if Catholics were no longer so openly mistreated, their champions in other countries, most notably Spain, would lose interest in them. On the other hand, James did not find much support for his reforms. After about a year, repression of Roman Catholics once again was official policy.

Now, at this point, there are many, conflicting details. Thanks to the marvels of the Internet, we can access old books from which we can learn more than we would want to know. (You can find a list at the end of this article.)

It is enough to say that conspirators of good Roman Catholic families managed to rent a house next to Parliament and dug from the cellar of their house into a vault under the House of Lords, where they stored thirty-six barrels (more than a ton) of gunpowder, in hopes of exploding it on the opening day of Parliament, which turned out to be November 5, 1605.

The plot failed, and the plotters were killed. Guy Fawkes, the only one whose name is at all known, suffered torture before being executed and having his body mangled. According to the classic eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "They erred from ignorance, from a perverted moral sense rather than from any mean or selfish motive, and exhibited extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what seemed to them the cause of God and of their country."

And, besides, they made even worse the status of the despised religious minority, the Roman Catholics, to which they belonged, both by law and by popular prejudice, although most Roman Catholics, priests and laypeople, knew nothing of the plans.

Guy Fawkes today

Bonfires and other traditional commemorations continue in England. Pauline Dolinski has written about her experiences of Guy Fawkes Day and its traditions as she was growing up in England. You can read her article here.

"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot includes the line, "A penny for the Old Guy," more or less the equivalent of Halloween's "Trick or Treat." As Jeff Musall (source page) mentions in his comment below (I forgot), the Gunpowder Plot figures in the film V for Vendetta (more)

I am not about to try to make any sort of interpretation of this, but some members of the Tea Party themselves find an association with Guy Fawkes (more).

Original sources available online

What was the Gunpowder Plot? by John Gerard, S.J (the Catholic perspective) - Read it.

What Gunpowder Plot Was, by S. R. Gardiner (a Protestant rejoinder to Gerard's book) - Read it.

The Gunpowder Treason With a Discourse of the Manner of Its Discovery - Read it.

Guy Fawkes or the gunpowder treason: an historical romance - Read it.

It Might Have Been (another fictional treatment) - Read it.

The gunpowder-treason: with a discourse of the manner of its discovery; and a perfect relation of the proceedings against those horrid conspirators; wherein is contained their examinations, tryals, and condemnations: likewise King James's speech to both houses of Parliament, on that occasion; now re-printed. A preface touching that horrid conspiracy - Read it.

Roman Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton makes no mention of the Gunpowder Plot or of Guy Fawkes in his Short History of England. Read it. But that spokesman for England's Protestant middle class values, Charles Dickens, in his Child's History of England (read it), summed up the failed plot: "the Catholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror from the idea of the infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe laws than before; and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot."