REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER

The following narrative is from

The Year of Lear : Shakespeare in 1606

by James Shapiro 

(2015, Simon & Schuster, New York)

The Masque

On the evening of January 5, 1606, the first Sunday of the new year, six hundred or so of the nation's elite made their way through London's dark streets to the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace ... With their dazzling staging, elegant verse, gorgeous costumes, concert-quality music, and choreographed dancing ― overseen by the most talented artists in the land ― masques under the new king were beyond extravagant, costing an unbelievable sum of three thousand pounds or more for a single performance ... Though it would have been impossible to tell from reading a contemporary account of that evening's masque, exactly two months earlier most of those who gathered to see it were almost killed in what we would now call a terrorist attack, one that had been prevented at the last moment. A group of disaffected Catholic gentry had plotted to blow up Parliament, kill the king and the country's entire political leadership, then roll back the Protestant Reformation begun under Henry VIII. Thousands of other Londoners would also have died in the explosion and ensuing fires. Remembered today as the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Plot exposed in late 1605, it reverberated powerfully through the winter and spring, when the captured plotters were tortured, tried, and then publicly executed.

The Letter

On the evening of October 26 at Whitehall, where members of the Privy Council were conducting state business ... [Lord] Monteagle had brought a letter that he thought the councillors should know about ...

      My Lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care for your preservation. Therefore I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this Parliament. For God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness of this time, and think not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself into your country, where you may expect the event in safety. For though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament and yet they shall not see who hurts them. This counsel is not to be contemned because it may do you good and can do you no harm for the danger is passed as soon as you have burnt the letter. And I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it to whose to whose holy protection I commend to you.

The Vault

Five days later on October 31, [King] James returned to London ... He and [Lord Salisbury and Lord] Suffolk had figured things out pretty quickly ... intuited that no other insurrection, rebellion, or whatsoever other private or desperate attempt could be committed attempted in time of Parliament, and the authors thereof unseen, except only it were by blowing up of powder ... guessed that the attack was likely to come from a great vault under the said chamber, which was never used for anything but for some wood or coal ... At last, on November 4, a search was made of the great vault underneath Parliament. They found it filled with piles of billets and faggots heaped up ... James ordered that the search be resumed late that night ... During this painstaking search some of the billets and coals were overturned, underneath which barrels of gunpowder were spotted. Further searching led to the discovery of thirty six barrels in all.

The Arrest

... Thomas Percy's alleged man standing without the doors [a very tall and desperate fellow, booted and spurred] was then frisked and three matches and all other instruments fit for blowing up the powder were found on him ... was immediately apprehended ... was hauled off to Whitehall to be interrogated in the early hours of 5 November. He told the authorities that his name was John Johnson and that he was a Yorkshireman from Netherdale, and a Catholic ... Johnson refused to reveal the name of his confederates, other than Percy, though he freely admitted that if he had not been apprehended this last night, he had blown up the upper house, when the king, lords, bishops, and others had been there ... He did provide a motive: When this act had been done they meant to have satisfied the Catholics that it was done for restitution of religion ... And Johnson brazenly told the Scottish courtiers gathered in the king's bedchamber where he was being interrogated that he hoped the explosion would have blown them back again to Scotland.

The Confession

King James personally drew up a detailed list of questions he wanted put to Johnson (and added, ominously, If he will not confess, the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him, et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur ― that is, and step by step until the ultimate is reached) ... After several rounds of interrogation and debilitating torture [in the Tower of London], the defiant Johnson was finally broken. When he supplied the authorities with a full confession on November 9, he was so weak he could barely sign it. But he did so with his real name, Guido Fawkes. Guy Fawkes ― as he was universally called ― and his fellow conspirators had plotted to blow up the king with all the nobility about him in Parliament, then resolved to surprise the Princess Elizabeth and make her queen ...

The Conspirators

The originators of the conspiracy [early 1604] had been Robert Catesby, his cousin Thomas Wright, and Thomas Winter ... They then recruited Thomas Percy and [Guido] Fawkes ... The five soon realised that more manpower and money were needed and over the course of the next year or so handpicked eight others to join them ... Three new recruits, John Grant, Christopher Wright, and Catesby's trusted retainer [Thomas Bates] ... Two others, [Everard] Digby and Ambrose Rookwood were invited to join ... Expanding the group one final time was its undoing : the well-to-do Francis Tresham, recruited just three weeks before the plot was discovered, was probably the author of the letter delivered to his brother-in-law Monteagle ... All were recusants ['refusers' or 'objectors' to compulsory attendance of Anglican Church services] who chafed at the mistreatment of Catholics in England.

The Trial

On January 27 the eight surviving plotters ― Guy Fawkes, Thomas Winter, Robert Winter, Robert Keyes, John Grant, Thomas Bates, Ambrose Rookwood, and Sir Everard Digby ― were brought from the Tower to stand trial at Westminster Hall ... The verdict was read ... After being drawn to the place of execution, each traitor was to be hanged, then cut down before strangling to death. While still alive, he was then to have his privy parts cut off and burned before his face and his bowels taken out and burned, before his head would be cut off. Lastly, his body was to be quartered, and the quarters set up in some high and eminent place, to the view and detestation of men and to become a prey to the birds of the air.

The Spectacle

On January 30, Digby, Robert Winter, Grant and Bates were bound and drawn on wicker sleds [through the rough and filthy London streets] to St Paul's to be hanged, castrated, eviscerated, then cut to pieces. Having plotted not only to make our kingdom headless but memberless, as the preacher Samuel Garey put it, they would now suffer that very fate themselves ... Digby was the first to mount the scaffold, followed by Winter, Grant, then Bates ... It was not the wisest time to criticize how the government chose to stage these executions, but Sir Arthur Gorges took that chance, complaining to [Lord] Salisbury about the choice of site, not finding St Pauls a fit place to make a butchery in the churchyard, and almost under the eaves of the most famous church in our kingdom ... and therefore too worthy to be now polluted with gibbets, hangmen, or the blood of traitors. Salisbury saw that Gorges was right, and the cumbersome set was dismantled and hastily moved to a new site, the Old Palace Yard at Westminster, so that on the following day Londoners could witness a repeat performance. On this day Thomas Winter went first, followed by Rookwood, Keyes, and last of all the star attraction, Guy Fawkes. His body broken by torture, Fawkes was scarce able to go up the ladder. But his end was luckier than that of others, for his neck snapped when he was hanged, killing him before he had to endure the horrors then visited upon his body. When the carnage ended, their quarters were placed over London gates and their heads overlooking London Bridge.