Guy Fawkes – Bad Man or Just a Bad Idea?

After all of the bad publicity concerning MP's expenses, there can't be many alternative comedians these days that haven't a joke somewhere in their repertoire along the lines of Guy Fawkes being a hero if he was living today. Of course, it's not a good idea to plan to blow up the legitimately elected members of the country's Parliament, but then Fawkes lived in an era when “plot” was the in-word.

There was always a plot somewhere, people plotting against other people who were plotting and possibly double plotting. One subject in particular that tended to outplot all of the other plots, was the thorny question of there being a Catholic monarch on the throne. As we prepare to celebrate Bonfire Night yet again, it's worth just scratching the surface to see how old Guy stands up to the test of time.

It is a peculiar fact that despite his wish to see a Catholic monarch on the throne, Guy Fawkes was actually born into a Protestant family. Guy was eight when his father died, and when his mother remarried, the Catholic influence was introduced into the family. Having turned to Catholicism, Guy even went as far as travelling to Spain to fight for Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers.

It was there that he first met people who wished to kill James I in order to place a Catholic on the throne. The conspirators knew that James would be at the State Opening of Parliament on 5th November 1605, and despite worries that Catholic Members of Parliament would also be killed, the Gunpowder Plot (that word again!) was hatched.

At first, I couldn't understand how they had managed to get all that gunpowder into the Houses of Parliament, but apparently they had rented an undercroft to be found beneath the House of Lords. The gunpowder was duly stored, but acting on a tip off, the authorities made a search and found Guy Fawkes on guard.

As a final twist, I also learned that Guy Fawkes jumped from the scaffold immediately prior to his planned execution. He broke his neck and therefore avoided the sentence that would have included mutilation.

It all sounds so naïve and poorly planned as compared with this sophisticated world that we live in today. Radio signals, miniature bombs, etc etc, would have meant that Guy could have carried out his wish and have been many miles away when he did it. But you can't escape the fact that despite all of this, as plots go, it really was Premier Division stuff at the time.

What I find the strangest part of this vibrant part of our history, is that despite that fact that everyone seems to think of Guy as the “baddie”, why do we use the term “celebrate” when we refer to Bonfire Night?