Bonfire Night - Gunpowder Treason and Plot

Bonfire Night is celebrated in the United Kingdom every 5th of November it is also known as Fireworks' Night or Guy Fawkes Night. The British annual tradition dates back to 1605 and it is called the Gunpowder Plot.

The Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament along with King James I.
Guy Fawkes used the name Guidio Fawkes.
The British tend to celebrate by building Large Bonfires, usually from disused wood, also a Guy Fawkes is made from clothing stuffed with straw or paper, the Guy Fawkes usually wears an hat. He is then placed at the top of the bonfire.

Fireworks fill the evening sky with smoke and bright colours along with very loud bangs.

Food and Drink play a major part of the celebration usually warming happy foods to get you through the cold night stood around the bonfire. Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Toffee Apples, Treacle Toffee, Black Peas and Jacket Potatoes are usually roasted in the bonfire.

During 1604 Fawkes and a small group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, planned to assassinate the Protestant King James I and replace him with his daughter, third in the line of succession, Princess Elizabeth.

The conspirators leased a room under Parliament to carry out their fated plot, they managed to get 36 barrels of gunpowder into the room, ready to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

Fawkes travelled overseas to get support for his plot, but he became known by a network of spies employed by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury.

Fawkes returned to London England August 1605 to discover that the gunpowder they had stored, had decayed, so he had the arduous task of getting more gunpowder to hide.

Being concerned about fellow Catholics who would be present at Parliament during the opening of Parliament the night planned for the plot they informed Lord Monteagle to stay away,

The letter recieved by Lord Montagle was shown to King James. The King ordered a search of the cellars underneath Parliament, which he did in the early hours of 5th November.

Fawkes had taken up his station late on the previous night, armed with a slow match and a watch. He was found leaving the cellar, shortly after midnight, and arrested. Inside, the barrels of gunpowder were discovered hidden under piles of firewood and coal.

Eight of the plotters where put to trial on Monday 27 January 1606. They were kept in the Star Chamber before being taken to Westminster Hall, where they were displayed on a purpose-built scaffold. The King and his close family, watching in secret, were among the spectators as the Lords Commissioners read out the list of charges. Fawkes was identified as Guido Fawkes, He pleaded not guilty, despite his apparent acceptance of guilt from the moment he was captured.

The outcome was never in doubt. The jury found all the defendants guilty, and the Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham found them guilty of high treason.

The Attorney General Sir Edward Coke told the court that each of the condemned would be drawn backwards to his death, by a horse, his head near the ground. They were to be "put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both".

Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become "prey for the fowls of the air".

On 31 January 1606, Fawkes and three others – Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, and Robert Keyes – were dragged from the Tower on wattled hurdles to the Old Palace Yard at Westminster, opposite the building they had attempted to destroy.

His fellow plotters were then hanged and quartered. Fawkes was the last to stand on the scaffold. He asked for forgiveness of the King and state.

Fawkes was weak from the torture he had been given, he had to be assisted by the hangman to climb the ladder to the noose, but either through jumping to his death or climbing too high so the rope was incorrectly set, he managed to avoid the agony of the latter part of his execution by breaking his neck.

His lifeless body was then quartered and, as was the custom, his body parts were then distributed to "the four corners of the kingdom", to be displayed as a warning to other would-be traitors.

So every year the British celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.