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I'm to blame a chuk reboarding and I'm fired out and by the time this episode airs, some of you, especially if you live in England, may have observed something known as bonfire or night or Guy Fox Day on Saturday, November five, and these events commemorate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, which was an attempt to murder King James the First of England, his son Henry and many English noblemen. By blowing up Parliament on November five, six oh five. It was also known as the Powder Treason. Yeah, and we've talked about it a little bit already. In part one of this story. We looked into some of the historical events and situations that set the stage for the plot, and we introduced some of the conspirators involved too, and gave a basic rundown of what their initial plan was. So, I think, just for people who haven't heard that episode, let's give them a quick recap of what we talked about earlier. Yes, Well, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, Catholics were subject to religious legislation that basically required Catholics to live kind of a double life. If you were Catholic, you had to at least outwardly conform and act like you were accepting a Protestant lifestyle. If you didn't, then you had to pay these steep procusancy fines. At the very least, I mean, if you were harboring a priest or something like that, that was a difficult. Yeah, that could be worse. So when King James the First took the throne in sixteen oh three, Catholics hoped that he'd be more tolerant, but all he did was temporarily suspend recusancy. Find So it was really disappointing to a lot of Catholics in general, and some of them were actually proactive and started dreaming up ways to overthrow the king and the Protestant government. Yeah, they decided to do something about it, and the Gunpowder plot was one of these plans that certain groups dreamed of. It was devised primarily by a wealthy Catholic man named Robert kates Me and a group of young Catholic activists, mostly from Katesby's own social circle, and a lot of the players were related somehow to wed By Blood or by Mary. Yeah, we talked about that. We're gonna refresh some of the players later on too, Except there is one guy who is a total outlier. He is not related to any of them, yet he is the most famous. That's of course, Guy Fox. He was a militant English Catholic who had spent years fighting with the Spanish army. And remember we talked about earlier, the key to his involvement in the plot was that he had been away for so long and nobody knew who he was, right, and we'll talk about that's more in a minute, but basically their plan was to Lisa House adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, dig a tunnel beneath them, and then stash gunpowder under the chamber where the King, the House of Lords and the House of Commons would all be meeting when the next parliament session opened on November five, six oh five. So when we saw them last March of sixteen o five, our conspirators had just looked out and they had gotten the chance to Lisa Seller, which would was used at the time for coal storage. I believe that extended right underneath the House of Lords, so it made the tunnel unnecessary. There's a really good break for them, exactly. So the plotters started filling up the feller with barrels and barrels of gunpowder, sneaking in at night, and they kept it pretty well concealed too. They covered it with iron bars and lots of bundles of kindling, so you can just tell it was a cellar full of gunpowder. So over the next few months they managed to get about thirty six barrels of gunpowder in there, which was definitely enough to demolish everything in the mediate area, including of course the King and his heir and the members of parliament. But that was only if the gunpowder was fresh enough by the time they actually ignited it, and some folks have suggested that the gunpowder might have decayed um others say, well, maybe they were able to replace some of it, but that turns out to be a moot point, and it still would have done some damage, we can assume. But during this time Fox assumed the role of the seller's caretaker, posing as a John Johnson, a servant of Thomas Percy, who was the plotter who would lease the space. And Fox was really well suited to this role too, because, as we mentioned in the previous podcast, he'd been out of the country for some time. So his appearance, which Gunpowder plot historian Antonio Fraser has described as quote tall, powerfully built, with thick reddish brown hair, a flowing mustache in the tradition of the time, and a bushy, reddish brown beard, was pretty much unknown in London at that time, which is fortunate because he does sound like a guy you probably would recognize if he saw him. Twice Yes, very distinctive. So the plot seemed to be progressing steadily but before fall even rolled around, the conspirators did something you should probably never do if you're really trying to keep a secret. They let more people in on it. Kind of a lot, but we'll just give you a refresher because there are a lot of names here, and they worked to add many more names to their party. But the original conspirators were Catesby, Tom Wintour, Thomas Percy, Jack Wright, and Guy Fox. So in the spring of sixteen o five, they included Robert Wintour, who was Tom's brother, Kit Wright, who was Jack's brother, and John Grant, who was Wintour's brother in law. Another guy, Robert Keith, who was probably related to the wind Tour brothers somehow or another, was also led into the group, as was Katesby servant Thomas Bates. So, I mean, I guess you figure you can trust your your brother. So they're telling a few people, but this is already starting to swell to a pretty large group of men. Yeah, And then it got even worse when the plotters took a break from the preparations they were doing over the summer. Katesby also brought Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby, and Francis Tresham, Katesby's cousin by marriage into the fold, mainly because of their wealth. Katesby had been funding this whole thing by himself so far and he really needed some help to see it to its completion. And Rookwood and Digby were also supposed to have a role in what will refer to as part two of this plan. They both had a lot of horses that were going to be useful in the uprising at Katesby was planning after the explosion, but more specifically after the explosion, which would take place after Fox slit a slow match in the cellar. As soon as the king had come into the House of Lords, kate Spy would ride from London to the Midlands, where he'd made Digby and Digby would have been waiting beforehand with some servants that the Red Lion and dun Church disguised as a hunting party. From there they would supposedly go to kidnap Princess Elizabeth, the King's daughter from the home of her governor and proclaim her queen. And we mentioned her in the previous podcast as well, and the reason that they were going to proclaim her queen is because Prince Henry would have died in the explosion. He was the oldest son of the king, and four year old Prince Charles was too sickly. There were some there was some question as to whether or not he was gonna survive, and they didn't want to place all their hopes on him. So yeah, that was the general idea of the plot. But what was going to happen next after they had kidnapped Princess Elizabeth, It's sort of unclear. In an article for History Today, Simon Adams says that's quote one of the major mysteries of the plot. So presumably they would just try to marry Elizabeth off to some their Catholic European prince and solidify their Catholic regime that way, and they would create their own puppet queen essentially. According to an article by Pauline Croft in History Review, though, Tresham was uneasy about the whole plot pretty much as soon as he heard it. So giant red flag here. He's not liking what he hears, and you can't take it back once you tell somebody all about your plot, either. But regardless of how everyone felt about it, I mean, that's still more than ten people. That's just a lot of people to be involved in what's supposed to be a secret plot. So maybe what happened next really isn't that surprising. On October o five, just days before Parliament was set to meet, William Parker, who's better known as Lord Monteagal, received an anonymous letter warning him to quote devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this parliament to avoid quote a terrible blow. So basically, stay away for your own good, don't go to parliament. So Lord Monteagal was a former Catholic himself. He had also participated in that ethics uprising with Katesby and friends that we mentioned in the earlier podcast, and he had at least publicly converted to the Protestant religion. Still, he had Catholic connections, especially through his marriage. Tresham was Montegal's brother in law, so um, Unfortunately for Kate's By, Tresham had a few brothers in law to consider. But that's why the letter is often attributed to Tresham because of that family connection. But we really don't know for sure who sent it, who warned Lord Monteagle. Yeah, Croft actually throws out some other potential sources of the letters. She writes, for example, that Tom Winter sometimes served as Montegal secretary, so there's a connection there. But there's another theory that's even more interesting to me at least. Croft also suggests that it's possible that Monteagle himself wrote the letter and just incorporated information that he gleaned from some of his Catholic cohorts to tip people off under under the guise of an anonymous letter. Right, but regardless of where it came from, Monteagle shared this letter with Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, the head of the monarchy secret police, and the King's Secretary of State. Salisbury, in turn, of course, shares the letter with the King, and there aren't any specifics in the letter, so they wait a couple of days before they raise any sort of alarm. Katesby in the meantime he hears about the letter too, and he's obviously worried that the plot has been betrayed, so he consults with his co conspirators and they actually decided just to go ahead with the plan they suspected. I've read that Tresham was at fault, but he swore to them that he didn't do anything, so they just said, okay, let's go. They weren't going to just completely rush into it blindly though just named case. On November four, Percy visited with his boss and his relative, the Earl of Northumberland, whose connections had of course helped Percy leave the house in the cellar in the first place. He checked with him to try to gauge whether or not the all of Northumberland knew anything about the plan. Ironically, Percy did not warn his relative to try to stay away from Parliament himself that day, but Percy left the meeting feeling pretty reassured that they were in the clear. Nobody knew it was good. So it is all just full speed ahead for the gunpowder plotters, or so they think, because Saulisbury by this time has ordered the area all around the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament, to be searched. During the first search, though they didn't find anything, though they did run into Fox there. He was of course posing as John Johnson, and so they took him basically for what he was posing to be. They took him for a servant. The gunpowder, as we mentioned, was concealed, so they didn't see that in the search either. They did notice all of that kindling, though, the kindling that we mentioned that was concealing the gunpowder, and they thought it was a little weird that that was all there. But when they realized that Thomas Percy, who was of course a well respected gentleman pensioner, was leasing a space, they figured, all right, it's probably okay. But then, according to that Craft article, again Montego raised suspicion about the fact that Percy was leasing the space even though he had his own home in London, you know, like, why does Percy need this place? Anyway? The King ordered another search after that, and they found Fox at about midnight on November four, along with the gunpowder, very incriminating slow match and a watch that Percy had given him to check the time with. So the plot was done caught red handed. So Fox was arrested as John Johnson and thrown into the Tower of London, where it said that he was interrogated and tortured to reveal the names of the other conspirators, even though torture was illegal in England at the time. It took two days to break Fox down for him to finally give up the names of the others who were involved in the plot. Percy's name, of course, had already been linked with the leases, so there was already a warrant out for his arrest. Meanwhile, though katesby Rook would the right brothers, Percy and Bates all roads in the Midlands where part two of the plan was supposed to happen, but of course that wasn't going to happen now. Instead, they met up with the other co conspirators, raided Warwick Castle for fresh horses, and then went looking for help and apparently got refused by several Catholic safe houses. They just kept going from house to house, but nobody would join them, and nobody would offer them help. I was interested in that point because, I mean, it suggests me at least that word of the plot must have spread really quickly, I mean, all the way up in the Midlands to houses to know better than to actually accept these people into your home. Well, a big deal was made out of it, which we're going to touch on a little bit later, But at that time, yeah, I guess people knew it wasn't a good idea to to protect these people, so they eventually stopped at whole beach House in Staffordshire, where they thought they could at least put up a defense there. But they messed up right in the beginning by putting their damp gunpowder by the fire to dry, so of course the gunpowder exploded and it burned a couple of them in the process. It minded one guy. It's all rather ironic if you think about it long and hard. But of course at this point the odds were even worse for them. Not only are they on the run for high treason, but they are injured, and according to Kroff, they considered just getting out of the whole thing blowing themselves up at this point. But by November eight men led by the High Sheriff of wush sure did them. In the rest of the way. They had this quick battle. Katesby the rights and Percy ended up dying from their wounds. It sounds like it was probably the best way to go. Thomas, Wintour, Rookwood, and Grant were captured. Five of the guys were still free, but not for very long. By the new year, all of them were captured, and then Trusham, when he was contained in the tower, fell ill and died, and some people think that maybe he was poison Maybe even Monteagle took mercy on him because of that letter of warning and slipped him some poison helped him escape what would ultimately be a far worse punishment of drawing and quartering, which is the fate the rest of them were destined for. Yep, all the plotters who weren't dead were put on trial January sixteen o six, and of course they were all found guilty of high treason and executed over the next couple of days. They were all hanged, drawn and quartered. So the plot was ultimately unsuccessful, and maybe because of that, it's been the subject of debate for many years. Some have even suggested that there was no plot, that the plotters were actually set up by the government, specifically the Earl of Salisbury, who knew that the backlash after the plot was exposed would just reinforced Protestantism and strength and hatred toward Catholics in England. Yeah, and in a nineteen interview with The New York Times, Fraser, who we mentioned earlier, said that the reason the origins of the plot are up for debate is that researchers are trying to quote draw conclusions from imperfect records and testimonies taken under torture. She says that you really have to assess the evidence and make up your own mind. And for her part, she does believe there was the plot. According to Teaching History, most historians do generally accept this idea. Now they do think there was something going on, but the results of government conspiracy would have been aiming for still came to pass. The Gunpowder plot just made anti Catholic feelings in England more intense. There were new laws preventing Catholics from practicing law, serving as officers in the army or the navy, and they weren't allowed to vote. On the evening of Guy that Guy Fox was caught. November fifth, sixteen o five, the first Guy Fox type celebration took place. The people of London rang bells and lip bonfires to celebrate the fact that the king and his nobility were safe. In sixteen o six, the English government passed an act to make the celebration an annual event, which at first was religious in nature, with sermons and everything, and then later it became more of a raucous social event. In the seventeenth century, people started burning effigies of the pope on the fires. And in the eighteen century is when the little guy Effi g appeared. Yeah, And in eighteen fifty nine, since there was an increased emphasis on religious toleration, the sixteen o six Act was finally abolished and the Bonfire Night. At that point the celebrations really started to morph into private bonfires and fireworks parties that children would go sell the guys on the street to fund. And over the years it really became more of a family event in a lot of places with fireworks displays, kind of how we would celebrate Fourth of July here on sounds sort of similar to that, although people can definitely correct us if we're wrong about that, but certain similar elements. Right. So now Bonfire Night celebrations still exist, but they compete with other false celebrations like Halloween, and I'm really interested. We asked during the last podcast for people to send us um some examples of things that they do to celebrate Bonfire Night, if they celebrated it at all, and so hopefully we'll get to read some of those on an upcoming podcast. Kind of awesome to have this always, Like I guess the week after Halloween to you can bring out your costumes again. Maybe I don't know, if you celebrate both and it's just like a two week long celebration or something exactly. The Gunpowder plot didn't leave a mark, though, of a more serious mark than just all these bonfire parties. The Houses of Parliament are still searched just before the State Opening, which has been held in November since nine even though Parliament's website says this is retained as a picturesque custom rather than a serious anti terrorist precaution, for which of course there are proper mean I'm glad they qualified that for us. But Guy Flox in the Gunpowder Plot have also been invoked quite a bit in art and pop culture. One of the most well known examples is the one that we mentioned in part one of this podcast, which is the two thousand six movie V for Vendetta, based on the comic book series by Alan Moore, in which an anarchist known as V tries to bring down the government. Basically that's the basic plot line of this and V where is a guy Fox mask? And if you haven't seen this movie, I do highly recommend it, especially now that we've kind of gone over the story. I did enjoy it, Sarah, you haven't seen it, right, haven't seen it? And I know now that I've admitted that. Whenever we admit there's a certain movie we haven't seen, we usually hear from people telling us, I can't believe you haven't seen that. You're still getting Harry Potter email. I'm still getting Harry Potter emails. We're still getting ned Kelly emails. So you know, I'm sure you'll get emails about this one too. But maybe because of the movie and its association with popular revolution and anti establishment ideals that mask. The Guy Fox mask has shown up in other places to members of the hacker group Anonymous have been known to wear it. I was talking to Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff about that recently. He brought it up to me when he found out we were doing this, and recently people involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement have been wearing it too. So it is interesting to see how this idea of Guy Fox is still very political. It makes me wonder, though, how many of the people wearing the masks today really know the story of Guy fa Box, or even if they know who Guy Fox is and they know about the bonfires did they know the whole history of the plot? Yeah, And to Robert Catesby, is I mean Catesby to research your studying him now? Was really a true terrorist? He didn't kill He didn't care that he was about to kill a life people. He didn't care that he might have killed Catholics too, and people he knew for sure right in what he was doing. Um So, I'm curious to know what people think about this phenomenon of people wearing Guy Fox masks for different reasons. Um so right to us. You can write us at history Podcast at how stuff works dot com, or you can look us up on Facebook or on Twitter Atmston History. And we were also talking to our colleague Kristen Conger of stuff Mom never told you earlier. She's writing an article on how Occupy Wall Street works, and I bet that'll be published by the time this episode publishes, So that might be a good opportunity to learn a little bit more about this modern offsheet of Guy Fox. Um para nail, Yeah, I guess that's what we'd call it. You can check that out. It's how Occupy Wall Street Works on our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. This podcast is brought to you by audible dot Com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers. To try Audible free today and get a free audio book of your choice, go to audible podcast dot com slash History Stuff That's Audible podcast dot com slash History Stuff the House, Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. This podcast is brought to you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of audio books, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature. One audiobook to consider is Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. This biography is based on many personal interviews with Steve Jobs, his family, his friends and colleagues. Here the real story of one of the greatest innovators of our time. That's Steve Jobs. Available from Audible. To try Audible free today and get a free audio book of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com slash history Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash history Stuff. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm to blame a chuk reboarding and I'm fired out and by the time this episode airs, some of you, especially if you live in England, may have observed something known as bonfire or night or Guy Fox Day on Saturday, November five, and these events commemorate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, which was an attempt to murder King James the First of England, his son Henry and many English noblemen. By blowing up Parliament on November five, six oh five. It was also known as the Powder Treason. Yeah, and we've talked about it a little bit already. In part one of this story. We looked into some of the historical events and situations that set the stage for the plot, and we introduced some of the conspirators involved too, and gave a basic rundown of what their initial plan was. So, I think, just for people who haven't heard that episode, let's give them a quick recap of what we talked about earlier. Yes, Well, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, Catholics were subject to religious legislation that basically required Catholics to live kind of a double life. If you were Catholic, you had to at least outwardly conform and act like you were accepting a Protestant lifestyle. If you didn't, then you had to pay these steep procusancy fines. At the very least, I mean, if you were harboring a priest or something like that, that was a difficult. Yeah, that could be worse. So when King James the First took the throne in sixteen oh three, Catholics hoped that he'd be more tolerant, but all he did was temporarily suspend recusancy. Find So it was really disappointing to a lot of Catholics in general, and some of them were actually proactive and started dreaming up ways to overthrow the king and the Protestant government. Yeah, they decided to do something about it, and the Gunpowder plot was one of these plans that certain groups dreamed of. It was devised primarily by a wealthy Catholic man named Robert kates Me and a group of young Catholic activists, mostly from Katesby's own social circle, and a lot of the players were related somehow to wed By Blood or by Mary. Yeah, we talked about that. We're gonna refresh some of the players later on too, Except there is one guy who is a total outlier. He is not related to any of them, yet he is the most famous. That's of course, Guy Fox. He was a militant English Catholic who had spent years fighting with the Spanish army. And remember we talked about earlier, the key to his involvement in the plot was that he had been away for so long and nobody knew who he was, right, and we'll talk about that's more in a minute, but basically their plan was to Lisa House adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, dig a tunnel beneath them, and then stash gunpowder under the chamber where the King, the House of Lords and the House of Commons would all be meeting when the next parliament session opened on November five, six oh five. So when we saw them last March of sixteen o five, our conspirators had just looked out and they had gotten the chance to Lisa Seller, which would was used at the time for coal storage. I believe that extended right underneath the House of Lords, so it made the tunnel unnecessary. There's a really good break for them, exactly. So the plotters started filling up the feller with barrels and barrels of gunpowder, sneaking in at night, and they kept it pretty well concealed too. They covered it with iron bars and lots of bundles of kindling, so you can just tell it was a cellar full of gunpowder. So over the next few months they managed to get about thirty six barrels of gunpowder in there, which was definitely enough to demolish everything in the mediate area, including of course the King and his heir and the members of parliament. But that was only if the gunpowder was fresh enough by the time they actually ignited it, and some folks have suggested that the gunpowder might have decayed um others say, well, maybe they were able to replace some of it, but that turns out to be a moot point, and it still would have done some damage, we can assume. But during this time Fox assumed the role of the seller's caretaker, posing as a John Johnson, a servant of Thomas Percy, who was the plotter who would lease the space. And Fox was really well suited to this role too, because, as we mentioned in the previous podcast, he'd been out of the country for some time. So his appearance, which Gunpowder plot historian Antonio Fraser has described as quote tall, powerfully built, with thick reddish brown hair, a flowing mustache in the tradition of the time, and a bushy, reddish brown beard, was pretty much unknown in London at that time, which is fortunate because he does sound like a guy you probably would recognize if he saw him. Twice Yes, very distinctive. So the plot seemed to be progressing steadily but before fall even rolled around, the conspirators did something you should probably never do if you're really trying to keep a secret. They let more people in on it. Kind of a lot, but we'll just give you a refresher because there are a lot of names here, and they worked to add many more names to their party. But the original conspirators were Catesby, Tom Wintour, Thomas Percy, Jack Wright, and Guy Fox. So in the spring of sixteen o five, they included Robert Wintour, who was Tom's brother, Kit Wright, who was Jack's brother, and John Grant, who was Wintour's brother in law. Another guy, Robert Keith, who was probably related to the wind Tour brothers somehow or another, was also led into the group, as was Katesby servant Thomas Bates. So, I mean, I guess you figure you can trust your your brother. So they're telling a few people, but this is already starting to swell to a pretty large group of men. Yeah, And then it got even worse when the plotters took a break from the preparations they were doing over the summer. Katesby also brought Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby, and Francis Tresham, Katesby's cousin by marriage into the fold, mainly because of their wealth. Katesby had been funding this whole thing by himself so far and he really needed some help to see it to its completion. And Rookwood and Digby were also supposed to have a role in what will refer to as part two of this plan. They both had a lot of horses that were going to be useful in the uprising at Katesby was planning after the explosion, but more specifically after the explosion, which would take place after Fox slit a slow match in the cellar. As soon as the king had come into the House of Lords, kate Spy would ride from London to the Midlands, where he'd made Digby and Digby would have been waiting beforehand with some servants that the Red Lion and dun Church disguised as a hunting party. From there they would supposedly go to kidnap Princess Elizabeth, the King's daughter from the home of her governor and proclaim her queen. And we mentioned her in the previous podcast as well, and the reason that they were going to proclaim her queen is because Prince Henry would have died in the explosion. He was the oldest son of the king, and four year old Prince Charles was too sickly. There were some there was some question as to whether or not he was gonna survive, and they didn't want to place all their hopes on him. So yeah, that was the general idea of the plot. But what was going to happen next after they had kidnapped Princess Elizabeth, It's sort of unclear. In an article for History Today, Simon Adams says that's quote one of the major mysteries of the plot. So presumably they would just try to marry Elizabeth off to some their Catholic European prince and solidify their Catholic regime that way, and they would create their own puppet queen essentially. According to an article by Pauline Croft in History Review, though, Tresham was uneasy about the whole plot pretty much as soon as he heard it. So giant red flag here. He's not liking what he hears, and you can't take it back once you tell somebody all about your plot, either. But regardless of how everyone felt about it, I mean, that's still more than ten people. That's just a lot of people to be involved in what's supposed to be a secret plot. So maybe what happened next really isn't that surprising. On October o five, just days before Parliament was set to meet, William Parker, who's better known as Lord Monteagal, received an anonymous letter warning him to quote devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this parliament to avoid quote a terrible blow. So basically, stay away for your own good, don't go to parliament. So Lord Monteagal was a former Catholic himself. He had also participated in that ethics uprising with Katesby and friends that we mentioned in the earlier podcast, and he had at least publicly converted to the Protestant religion. Still, he had Catholic connections, especially through his marriage. Tresham was Montegal's brother in law, so um, Unfortunately for Kate's By, Tresham had a few brothers in law to consider. But that's why the letter is often attributed to Tresham because of that family connection. But we really don't know for sure who sent it, who warned Lord Monteagle. Yeah, Croft actually throws out some other potential sources of the letters. She writes, for example, that Tom Winter sometimes served as Montegal secretary, so there's a connection there. But there's another theory that's even more interesting to me at least. Croft also suggests that it's possible that Monteagle himself wrote the letter and just incorporated information that he gleaned from some of his Catholic cohorts to tip people off under under the guise of an anonymous letter. Right, but regardless of where it came from, Monteagle shared this letter with Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, the head of the monarchy secret police, and the King's Secretary of State. Salisbury, in turn, of course, shares the letter with the King, and there aren't any specifics in the letter, so they wait a couple of days before they raise any sort of alarm. Katesby in the meantime he hears about the letter too, and he's obviously worried that the plot has been betrayed, so he consults with his co conspirators and they actually decided just to go ahead with the plan they suspected. I've read that Tresham was at fault, but he swore to them that he didn't do anything, so they just said, okay, let's go. They weren't going to just completely rush into it blindly though just named case. On November four, Percy visited with his boss and his relative, the Earl of Northumberland, whose connections had of course helped Percy leave the house in the cellar in the first place. He checked with him to try to gauge whether or not the all of Northumberland knew anything about the plan. Ironically, Percy did not warn his relative to try to stay away from Parliament himself that day, but Percy left the meeting feeling pretty reassured that they were in the clear. Nobody knew it was good. So it is all just full speed ahead for the gunpowder plotters, or so they think, because Saulisbury by this time has ordered the area all around the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament, to be searched. During the first search, though they didn't find anything, though they did run into Fox there. He was of course posing as John Johnson, and so they took him basically for what he was posing to be. They took him for a servant. The gunpowder, as we mentioned, was concealed, so they didn't see that in the search either. They did notice all of that kindling, though, the kindling that we mentioned that was concealing the gunpowder, and they thought it was a little weird that that was all there. But when they realized that Thomas Percy, who was of course a well respected gentleman pensioner, was leasing a space, they figured, all right, it's probably okay. But then, according to that Craft article, again Montego raised suspicion about the fact that Percy was leasing the space even though he had his own home in London, you know, like, why does Percy need this place? Anyway? The King ordered another search after that, and they found Fox at about midnight on November four, along with the gunpowder, very incriminating slow match and a watch that Percy had given him to check the time with. So the plot was done caught red handed. So Fox was arrested as John Johnson and thrown into the Tower of London, where it said that he was interrogated and tortured to reveal the names of the other conspirators, even though torture was illegal in England at the time. It took two days to break Fox down for him to finally give up the names of the others who were involved in the plot. Percy's name, of course, had already been linked with the leases, so there was already a warrant out for his arrest. Meanwhile, though katesby Rook would the right brothers, Percy and Bates all roads in the Midlands where part two of the plan was supposed to happen, but of course that wasn't going to happen now. Instead, they met up with the other co conspirators, raided Warwick Castle for fresh horses, and then went looking for help and apparently got refused by several Catholic safe houses. They just kept going from house to house, but nobody would join them, and nobody would offer them help. I was interested in that point because, I mean, it suggests me at least that word of the plot must have spread really quickly, I mean, all the way up in the Midlands to houses to know better than to actually accept these people into your home. Well, a big deal was made out of it, which we're going to touch on a little bit later, But at that time, yeah, I guess people knew it wasn't a good idea to to protect these people, so they eventually stopped at whole beach House in Staffordshire, where they thought they could at least put up a defense there. But they messed up right in the beginning by putting their damp gunpowder by the fire to dry, so of course the gunpowder exploded and it burned a couple of them in the process. It minded one guy. It's all rather ironic if you think about it long and hard. But of course at this point the odds were even worse for them. Not only are they on the run for high treason, but they are injured, and according to Kroff, they considered just getting out of the whole thing blowing themselves up at this point. But by November eight men led by the High Sheriff of wush sure did them. In the rest of the way. They had this quick battle. Katesby the rights and Percy ended up dying from their wounds. It sounds like it was probably the best way to go. Thomas, Wintour, Rookwood, and Grant were captured. Five of the guys were still free, but not for very long. By the new year, all of them were captured, and then Trusham, when he was contained in the tower, fell ill and died, and some people think that maybe he was poison Maybe even Monteagle took mercy on him because of that letter of warning and slipped him some poison helped him escape what would ultimately be a far worse punishment of drawing and quartering, which is the fate the rest of them were destined for. Yep, all the plotters who weren't dead were put on trial January sixteen o six, and of course they were all found guilty of high treason and executed over the next couple of days. They were all hanged, drawn and quartered. So the plot was ultimately unsuccessful, and maybe because of that, it's been the subject of debate for many years. Some have even suggested that there was no plot, that the plotters were actually set up by the government, specifically the Earl of Salisbury, who knew that the backlash after the plot was exposed would just reinforced Protestantism and strength and hatred toward Catholics in England. Yeah, and in a nineteen interview with The New York Times, Fraser, who we mentioned earlier, said that the reason the origins of the plot are up for debate is that researchers are trying to quote draw conclusions from imperfect records and testimonies taken under torture. She says that you really have to assess the evidence and make up your own mind. And for her part, she does believe there was the plot. According to Teaching History, most historians do generally accept this idea. Now they do think there was something going on, but the results of government conspiracy would have been aiming for still came to pass. The Gunpowder plot just made anti Catholic feelings in England more intense. There were new laws preventing Catholics from practicing law, serving as officers in the army or the navy, and they weren't allowed to vote. On the evening of Guy that Guy Fox was caught. November fifth, sixteen o five, the first Guy Fox type celebration took place. The people of London rang bells and lip bonfires to celebrate the fact that the king and his nobility were safe. In sixteen o six, the English government passed an act to make the celebration an annual event, which at first was religious in nature, with sermons and everything, and then later it became more of a raucous social event. In the seventeenth century, people started burning effigies of the pope on the fires. And in the eighteen century is when the little guy Effi g appeared. Yeah, And in eighteen fifty nine, since there was an increased emphasis on religious toleration, the sixteen o six Act was finally abolished and the Bonfire Night. At that point the celebrations really started to morph into private bonfires and fireworks parties that children would go sell the guys on the street to fund. And over the years it really became more of a family event in a lot of places with fireworks displays, kind of how we would celebrate Fourth of July here on sounds sort of similar to that, although people can definitely correct us if we're wrong about that, but certain similar elements. Right. So now Bonfire Night celebrations still exist, but they compete with other false celebrations like Halloween, and I'm really interested. We asked during the last podcast for people to send us um some examples of things that they do to celebrate Bonfire Night, if they celebrated it at all, and so hopefully we'll get to read some of those on an upcoming podcast. Kind of awesome to have this always, Like I guess the week after Halloween to you can bring out your costumes again. Maybe I don't know, if you celebrate both and it's just like a two week long celebration or something exactly. The Gunpowder plot didn't leave a mark, though, of a more serious mark than just all these bonfire parties. The Houses of Parliament are still searched just before the State Opening, which has been held in November since nine even though Parliament's website says this is retained as a picturesque custom rather than a serious anti terrorist precaution, for which of course there are proper mean I'm glad they qualified that for us. But Guy Flox in the Gunpowder Plot have also been invoked quite a bit in art and pop culture. One of the most well known examples is the one that we mentioned in part one of this podcast, which is the two thousand six movie V for Vendetta, based on the comic book series by Alan Moore, in which an anarchist known as V tries to bring down the government. Basically that's the basic plot line of this and V where is a guy Fox mask? And if you haven't seen this movie, I do highly recommend it, especially now that we've kind of gone over the story. I did enjoy it, Sarah, you haven't seen it, right, haven't seen it? And I know now that I've admitted that. Whenever we admit there's a certain movie we haven't seen, we usually hear from people telling us, I can't believe you haven't seen that. You're still getting Harry Potter email. I'm still getting Harry Potter emails. We're still getting ned Kelly emails. So you know, I'm sure you'll get emails about this one too. But maybe because of the movie and its association with popular revolution and anti establishment ideals that mask. The Guy Fox mask has shown up in other places to members of the hacker group Anonymous have been known to wear it. I was talking to Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff about that recently. He brought it up to me when he found out we were doing this, and recently people involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement have been wearing it too. So it is interesting to see how this idea of Guy Fox is still very political. It makes me wonder, though, how many of the people wearing the masks today really know the story of Guy fa Box, or even if they know who Guy Fox is and they know about the bonfires did they know the whole history of the plot? Yeah, And to Robert Catesby, is I mean Catesby to research your studying him now? Was really a true terrorist? He didn't kill He didn't care that he was about to kill a life people. He didn't care that he might have killed Catholics too, and people he knew for sure right in what he was doing. Um So, I'm curious to know what people think about this phenomenon of people wearing Guy Fox masks for different reasons. Um so right to us. You can write us at history Podcast at how stuff works dot com, or you can look us up on Facebook or on Twitter Atmston History. And we were also talking to our colleague Kristen Conger of stuff Mom never told you earlier. She's writing an article on how Occupy Wall Street works, and I bet that'll be published by the time this episode publishes, So that might be a good opportunity to learn a little bit more about this modern offsheet of Guy Fox. Um para nail, Yeah, I guess that's what we'd call it. You can check that out. It's how Occupy Wall Street Works on our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. This podcast is brought to you by audible dot Com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers. To try Audible free today and get a free audio book of your choice, go to audible podcast dot com slash History Stuff That's Audible podcast dot com slash History Stuff the House, Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes