Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November!

Many, many people go “huh?” when I go around chanting this, but Anglofiles just smile and nod. In England, November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day, or sometimes Bonfire Night. Children would dress up dolls as poor Guy Fawkes and parade him through the neighborhoods, asking “A penny for the Guy?” In the evening, bonfires would be lit and fireworks set off. As Poirot mentioned to Hastings one fateful November 5th in Murder in the Mews, it’s “a perfect night for a murder.” But what about the origins of the holiday?

The answer to the first is both easy and complex. Guy Fawkes plotted, with twelve other Catholic malcontents, to blow up the Houses of Parliament on November 5, 1605, the day of their opening session. The timing was crucial, because all members were required by law to be present on that day, both the Commons and the Lords, and the King would address the assembly.  In other words, this act of terrorism was designed to wipe out the entire government in England in one huge boom. They would then kidnap the King’s children, and control the throne. Guy Fawkes was the munitions expert that was supposed to guard the kegs of gunpowder and set them off at the appropriate time.

Of course, the plot failed and most of the conspirators were tried, convicted and hanged as traitors. Guy Fawkes endured two weeks of torture before he finally confessed the names of all of them, and even went so far as to implicate the pope. For years, people simply thought that the plotters were evil Catholics trying to take over the government. Nowadays, research is beginning to show that the situation was a bit murkier than that, and that the true conspiracy was designed to use the Gunpowder Plot conspirators to discredit all Catholics. If you are interested, you can read about it in Antonia Fraser’s Faith and Treason: The Story of Gunpowder Plot.