“Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot; for there is a reason why gunpowder and treason should ne’er be forgot.”
That is how the children’s nursery rhyme goes that marks Guy Fawkes night or Bonfire Night, often chanted as fireworks fly and bonfires gradually consume the effigy known as ‘Guy’.
Everyone knows the tale of the Gunpowder Plot, a foiled attempt to assassinate King James I by a ring of English Catholics.
Years of religious tensions preceded the plot. The group was led by Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby whose main goal was to burn down Parliament and the King with it.
Despite being a well-known story, some historians have questioned its credibility, doubting whether the true extent of the plot’s events unfolded as drastically as they have been told.
One week before the attack was planned, one of the group became nervous and sent a letter to the Catholic Lord Moteagle warning that an attack was being planned.
Alterations were going on at Parliament at the time, which allowed the group to gain easy access to parts of it undetected.
After receiving the letter, Parliament’s rooms were searched, and Guy Fawkes was found with gunpowder in the building’s cellar.
Initially managing to convince the guards that he wasn’t a threat, a second search made it clear that he was plotting to blow the building up, and he was subsequently hanged, drawn, and quartered, dying as his neck broke while trying to escape the gallows.
However, Professors Penelope Middelboe and Jon Rosebank, historian hosts of the hit podcast, History Cafe, suggest that things may have been different, with evidence for the plot “vanishingly thin”.
Instead, they argue that the Protestants could have exaggerated or even completely fabricated the story to justify an increased persecution of Catholics.
“Had this evidence been produced in modern … Iran, ….Sudan or any of the other brutally intimidatory regimes listed by Freedom from Torture, it would be dismissed out of hand, with loud outrage,” the pair wrote in The Tablet magazine.
“In the case of the gunpowder plot, if we strip out all the evidence derived from torture (or the very present threat of it) and the government’s own contradictory accounts, there is effectively nothing left.”
They highlight the fact that confessions had been gleaned from the men through torture methods, which could have forced the men to admit crimes they were not guilty of.
Similarly, they said the government’s account of events was inconsistent.
Multiple dates have been given for when the tip-off was received. While one account says the gunpowder was left in Parliament for months before the attack, the experts say the explosives would have likely decayed at this time.
The professors’ interpretation has been contested, with the mainstream of the view that the Gunpowder Plot is as it has been told.
Regardless of what happened, fireworks and bonfires will light the night sky come November 5.
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
