Today in 1570 Guy Fawkes was baptized in York. Guy Fawkes is now remembered for his role in the Gunpowder Plot. It was Fawkes who was caught beneath the Parliament building with at least 20 barrels of gunpowder, in an attempt to destroy the Protestant King James I, and the nobility who would be at Parliament’s opening the next day.
Fawkes supposedly left England in the early 1590’s to serve in the Spanish army. His upbringing left him with Catholic sympathies, and he fought in the Netherlands against the Protestant rebels. He also petitioned the King of Spain to invade England again after Elizabeth’s death in 1603.
The conspirators recruited Fawkes to join the group led by Robert Catesby. Parliament’s opening session was November 6, 1605, and they wanted to kill the king, his son, and the members of the houses of Lords and Commons. At the same time, they wanted to kidnap James’s daughter Elizabeth, and force her to marry a foreign Catholic ruler.
Of course, the plot was discovered, and the conspirators were all hanged. Fawkes managed to avoid his traitor’s death – being hung, drawn, quartered alive – by jumping from the scaffold on his way up, and breaking his neck instantly.
That’s your Tudor Minute for today. Remember you can dive deeper into life in 16th century England through the Renaissance English History Podcast at englandcast.com where there is an episode on James I.
Suggested links:
Episode 113: Remember, Remember
Episode 49: Tudor Times talks about James I of England
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.