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Song, Folk Music and Folk Customs
Guy Fawkes: a bonfire custom
Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot
Guy Fawkes is a name known to everybody, child or adult. Sam Dodds finds out the historical background to a custom observed for over 400 years.
Guy Fawkes
This was an act of treason certainly. But why should young men in the prime of life want to blow to smithereens the king and his family, leading aristocrats and landowners, and many innocents besides?
This act of terrorism was planned for the Opening of the Houses of Parliament. Brutal and uncompromising in its effect, to be executed by intelligent and able men of good family and reputation.
The reason was simple: since Henry VIII took the decision to become head of the Church of England, the birth of Protestantism, there followed a sustained persecution of Catholic families and priests over many decades. This stuck in the craw of these rebellious young men.
The conspirators: Wright, Wright, Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Winter
The gunpowder conspirators From a print published immediately after the discovery.
Catholics persecution
With James I ascending the throne English Catholics believed that life would become easier as Queen Anne was a convert to Catholicism. The hope was that James might ease the harsh laws against the religious practices of Catholics provided they did not cause trouble. Then toleration could possibly prevail.
Young Catholic men rebell
But by now some young Catholics were emboldened in their quest to re-instate Catholicism in England, intent on using the Spanish against the English which they believed would defeat Protestantism. With Spanish ascendency, this would allow the English Catholics to return to a reasonable way of life. Guy Fawkes fighting as a mercenary soldier on the Spanish side in Flanders against the English, had assumed his name of Guido.
Robert Catesby, leader
Robert Catesby, the charismatic leader, gathers like-minded men. Guy Fawkes is chosen to light the fuse with the plan to escape by means of the river. After there would follow, they believed rather optimistically, a Catholic uprising in the midlands with support from Catholic Spain.
‘Nowhere in England could the Mass be legally celebrated, neither in public no in private... To hear mass was for a laymen a felony punishable by heavy fines and jail’ A. Fraser
The cellar lease
In March the plotters lease a cellar in a house adjacent to the House of Lords in the precinct of Westminster. Most houses at that time had cellars to store firewood and coals for domestic heating and cooking, with access to the river. The cellar was untidy and dirty, an ideal choice, and it lay directly beneath where the opening of Parliament was to take place. A total of 36 barrels of gunpowder were transported in casks and hogsheads by river during the next few months, and covered with brushwood and logs.
Plot discovered
On 26th October a letter is delivered to Lord Monteagle warning of catholic stirrings, and likelihood that those attending the Opening of Parliament would be in danger. Spies were everywhere. Several searches of premises in the Westminster precinct were carried out. In the early hours of November 5th an enormous amount of firewood, faggots, were found piled high in the cellar of a very small dwelling - very suspicious. Later a figure in a cloak and dark hat, booted and spurred was discovered skulking in the area. “This tall and desperate fellow” was arrested, bound and taken to the tower. Under terrible torture Guy Fawkes eventually cracked and divulged the information required.
Escape and capture
The intention was to ride by horse to the midlands to join the planned uprising of Catholics, but after the capture of Guy Fawkes it was now revised: to escape with their lives. Catesby with the other plotters made for Catholic houses of safety. But within a few days they were hunted down and either fell to musket fire or were captured and tried along with Guy Fawkes.
Trial and execution
The trial began on January 27th 1606. Next: Torture of Guy Fawkes
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Bonfires of celebration
Bonfires of celebration were lit throughout the city and countryside, and this has carried on to this day.
For many years it was the the effigy of the pope that was villified by burning. In the 1800s it became customary to burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes. He did not, however, suffer death by burning, but by being hung, drawn and quartered. There followed severe Catholic repression for several generations.
Bonfire Night in the 1950s
Bonfire Night in the 1950s