Backstabber Report

Guy Fawkes – Backstabber to King James I

Guy Fawkes belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Fawkes was born and educated in York. His father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes later converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years’ War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch rebels. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England but was unsuccessful. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England.

Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to a storage room beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there.

Authorities received an anonymous letter and searched Westminster Palace early in the morning on November 5th, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days he was tortured, and eventually he answered questions to which the authorities knew many of the answers previously.

Fawkes was due to be executed, quite gruesomely, as was the custom of the time, but immediately before his execution on January 31st, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and succeeded in breaking his neck. Doing so mercifully allowed him to avoid the agony of the drawing and quartering that would have followed.

In England, Fawkes has become synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, which has been commemorated since November 5th, 1605. His effigy is burned on a bonfire, often accompanied by a firework display in a celebration that matches that of America’s 4th of July.