Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm to blame a chocolate boarding and I'm fair and
Speaker 1: the topic we're about to discuss isn't exactly obscure, and
Speaker 1: at least some of our listeners, the British contingent that is,
Speaker 1: probably won't be able to say that they missed it
Speaker 1: in history class. It has to do with a certain
Speaker 1: celebration that's coming up in England on November five. Some
Speaker 1: call it Bonfire Day, others call it Fireworks Night, and
Speaker 1: still others know it as Guy Fox Day, referring to
Speaker 1: the man whose name is most associated with the notorious
Speaker 1: gunpowder plot afwarded attempt to blow up Parliament on November five.
Speaker 1: It's also called the Powder Treason. Yeah, And people celebrate
Speaker 1: or commemorate this day in different ways, and it's changed
Speaker 1: a lot over the years, but the alternate names for
Speaker 1: the event really give you a good general idea of
Speaker 1: what goes on. People set off fireworks and they light
Speaker 1: up their bonfires, and often a top of those bonfires,
Speaker 1: they'll burn Guy Fox in effigy. So that might throw
Speaker 1: some of you guys for a loop. Children will often
Speaker 1: sell those effigies. Eventually they call them guys. They'll go
Speaker 1: out and they'll sell them on the street and they'll
Speaker 1: ask for a penny for the guy. And those same
Speaker 1: kids are probably also pretty familiar with a famous rhyme.
Speaker 1: Do you want to read it off for our listeners
Speaker 1: to Blaine and sure, it's remember remember the fifth of November,
Speaker 1: gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder
Speaker 1: treason should ever be forgot and thanks at least in
Speaker 1: part to pop culture references. And we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that later. But many people outside of
Speaker 1: the UK have heard this rhyme too, and perhaps they
Speaker 1: even know the name guy Fox. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen the two thousand six movie V for Vendetta,
Speaker 1: for example, this will surely ring a bell, or if
Speaker 1: you just work in the house Stuff Works office. One
Speaker 1: of our coworkers, Jonathan strick And of tech Stuff, is
Speaker 1: definitely a fan of of rattling off this rhyme from
Speaker 1: time to time. It's always fun to hear. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he and I were actually talking about that in reference
Speaker 1: to the fact that there are a lot of misconceptions
Speaker 1: out there about who exactly guy Fox was and what
Speaker 1: November five is commemorating. Some simply think that Fox was
Speaker 1: the hero of the day, and they might be surprised
Speaker 1: to learn what we just told you, that he's burned
Speaker 1: in effigy, or they at least think that he was
Speaker 1: the mastermind of the Gunpowder plot, which wasn't the case
Speaker 1: at all. He's actually kind of a minor character, not
Speaker 1: a master criminal at all. Really, right, So we're going
Speaker 1: to take a closer look at the Gunpowder plot, the
Speaker 1: motives behind it, and the players involved, including who really
Speaker 1: instigated the whole thing. And we're also going to discuss
Speaker 1: some conflicting theories over the origins of the plot, but
Speaker 1: we're going to get to that later. First, we're gonna
Speaker 1: give you the generally accepted version of events, and to
Speaker 1: do that we need to kind of set the scene
Speaker 1: a bit. So there's an overarching conflict at the time
Speaker 1: which ends up leading to the events will discuss, and
Speaker 1: conflictus between English Catholics and English Protestants. And by the
Speaker 1: time the Gunpowder plot was devised, Catholics in England had
Speaker 1: had pretty rough go of it for many years, being
Speaker 1: persecuted during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, who
Speaker 1: was a Protestant. They had been subject to religious legislation
Speaker 1: that required them to attend a parish church every Sunday.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just that they had to go to
Speaker 1: church every Sunday. If you didn't go, it was known
Speaker 1: as recusancy, and according to an article by Simon Adams
Speaker 1: in History Today, the penalty for recusancy was originally a
Speaker 1: one shilling fine, but that ended up going up to
Speaker 1: twenty pounds a month by fight one, which I mean
Speaker 1: that still sounds like a lot of money today twounds
Speaker 1: that's pretty set. Forty dollars or so about that. So
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had been excommunicated by the pope, and she saw
Speaker 1: recusants as potential traders. Thus the really high fine and
Speaker 1: the strict rules about what Catholics had to do right.
Speaker 1: And there were other parts to these anal laws as
Speaker 1: they were called um one that declared that it was
Speaker 1: treason basically to convert a subject to Catholicism, and also
Speaker 1: treason for a jesuit or a priest to enter the country.
Speaker 1: People who broke these laws were executed, but toward the
Speaker 1: end of the fifteen nineties, Catholics started to have a
Speaker 1: little bit of hope. Elizabeth was getting older and she
Speaker 1: was childless and didn't have an air so there was
Speaker 1: the thinking, hey, maybe the next monarch would be a
Speaker 1: little bit more tolerant of Catholics. And when James the
Speaker 1: sixth of Scotland took the throne in sixteen o three
Speaker 1: after Elizabeth died, making him King James the First of England,
Speaker 1: he kind of seemed to be that guy. His wife,
Speaker 1: for example, Anne of Denmark, she was Catholic, and with
Speaker 1: Anne's help, James had sort of campaigned for support from
Speaker 1: other Catholic powers in Europe and from the Pope also
Speaker 1: before Elizabeth's death to kind of prepare himself to not
Speaker 1: have opposition when he took the throne in England. So
Speaker 1: those things kind of gave Catholics a little bit of
Speaker 1: They're like, okay, he seems friendly towards Catholics. And also,
Speaker 1: according to an article in History Review by Pauline Croft,
Speaker 1: James was pretty open minded at least seemed that way
Speaker 1: at first. He said to have commented that he didn't
Speaker 1: really want there to be more Catholics in England, so
Speaker 1: he didn't want there to be more converts or for
Speaker 1: more people to come in, but if they kept their
Speaker 1: Catholic nous kind of on the down low and followed
Speaker 1: the law, he wouldn't bother them, or at least there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be major violence, like a live and let live philosophy.
Speaker 1: Almost so Catholics caughtland of this, and some people thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it means the end of the recusancy laws period,
Speaker 1: and some Catholics even went as far as to petition
Speaker 1: James before his coronation for toleration, really hoping that something
Speaker 1: would come out of this new monarch. James wouldn't go
Speaker 1: that far, and he said that he'd suspend the monthly
Speaker 1: recusancy finds for as long as they continued to support him,
Speaker 1: So he kind of offered a halfway bargain there, and
Speaker 1: he also added a few people with Catholic sympathy to
Speaker 1: the Privy Council, including the Earl of Northumberland. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that seems like a bit of a win,
Speaker 1: especially coming after Elizabeth. But for many Catholics, they were
Speaker 1: just disappointed that they were disappointed that there weren't more
Speaker 1: changes than they saw under James. And as evidence of
Speaker 1: how disgruntled some people were, with James already. Two plots
Speaker 1: against the king were discovered as early as June and
Speaker 1: July three, just to give you an idea of exactly
Speaker 1: how soon that is, Elizabeth had died in March um,
Speaker 1: so really just a couple of months. These plots were
Speaker 1: called the Bye and the Main plots, and there were
Speaker 1: different people involved in each, but just to give you
Speaker 1: a summary of these. In the by plot, the goal
Speaker 1: was to kidnap the king and his eldest son, Prince Henry,
Speaker 1: and forged James to replace his chief ministers and to
Speaker 1: declare Catholic toleration. And the main plot, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: conspirators hoped to get rid of James entirely and to
Speaker 1: put his English born cousin, Lady Arabel Stewart, on the throne.
Speaker 1: According to Crofts article, though both of these plots were
Speaker 1: pretty incompetent, which I guess is probably why they didn't
Speaker 1: work out, But the fact that they were found out
Speaker 1: didn't stop others from cooking up their own conspiracies, which
Speaker 1: is where the Gunpowder plot begins. So we're going to
Speaker 1: start talking about this conspiracy by talking about the conspirators specifically.
Speaker 1: The plot began with a man named Robert Catesby, and
Speaker 1: Catesby was a devout Catholic and he had become very
Speaker 1: disillusioned with the government early on when he saw his
Speaker 1: father being persecuted for not conforming to Church of England rules,
Speaker 1: and Katsby himself had been imprisoned for a brief time
Speaker 1: after fighting in an uprising lad by Robert Devereaux, who
Speaker 1: was the second Earl of Essex back in sixteen o one.
Speaker 1: So Katesby really wasn't like the Catholics who were entering
Speaker 1: James Rain with a lot of hope and thinking there
Speaker 1: was a lot of promise. He didn't trust in those promises,
Speaker 1: and he he wasn't counting on anything. Catesby was also
Speaker 1: kind of a ringleader of a small group of men
Speaker 1: who had taken part in Essex Revolt with him, including
Speaker 1: Jack and kit Wright and Francis Tresham. Other men related
Speaker 1: to them were also sympathetic to their cause. Thomas Percy,
Speaker 1: for example, who worked for and was related to the
Speaker 1: Earl of Northumberland, was brother in law to the rights
Speaker 1: and then Robert and Thomas Wintour, who were known for
Speaker 1: giving priest refuge in their homes, were related to Katesby,
Speaker 1: so at first they hoped that maybe Spain would invade
Speaker 1: England to help the Catholics, and they offered their support
Speaker 1: to Spain in that regard. But Spain was actually hoping
Speaker 1: to end hostility with England at the time and was
Speaker 1: in the process of starting to negotiate a peace treaty
Speaker 1: to that effect, so Katesby and his buddy started to
Speaker 1: give up on Spain as a solution. We're not sure
Speaker 1: exactly when the idea for the plot started brewing, but
Speaker 1: by the beginning of sixteen o four, Katesby shared with
Speaker 1: tom Win Tour that he thought of a way to
Speaker 1: solve their problem al right, So in January, the King
Speaker 1: had announced that he was going to call parliament soon,
Speaker 1: and Katesby's idea was to blow up the House of
Speaker 1: Parliament while they were in session, and apparently when Tour
Speaker 1: was kind of hesitant about this, but Katsby was a
Speaker 1: smooth talker and ultimately convinced the gang. So Kidsby held
Speaker 1: a meeting of people who were to be involved in
Speaker 1: the plot on May sixteen o four in London at
Speaker 1: the Duck and Drake lodging house in the Strand, and
Speaker 1: he had three of his posse there, Tom Wintour, Thomas
Speaker 1: Percy and Jack Right. But there was a fifth person
Speaker 1: to a very important one, none other than Guy Fox himself.
Speaker 1: So Fox is an interesting character in this whole discussion
Speaker 1: about the tensions between the Protestants and the Catholics. He
Speaker 1: was a militant Catholic convert from Yorkshire. He was born
Speaker 1: April thirteenth, fifteen seventy, to a Protestant dad and a
Speaker 1: Catholic mom. His dad died when he was young, though,
Speaker 1: so his mom and her actions in the underground Catholic
Speaker 1: community in England really ended up being a big influence
Speaker 1: on him. Fox also went to St. Peters School in York,
Speaker 1: which also had Catholic leaning, so that probably had a
Speaker 1: big influence in how his views turned out he grew up,
Speaker 1: and that's also where he might have met the Wright brothers.
Speaker 1: He ended up going into military service abroad, serving in
Speaker 1: the Spanish Army in the Netherlands from Fife to about
Speaker 1: sixteen o four. In sixteen o three, though, he was
Speaker 1: sent on a diplomatic mission to Spain to try and
Speaker 1: convince them to invade England, much like Katesby and friends
Speaker 1: did before and that's also where he might have come
Speaker 1: into contact with Katesby's crew through these interactions, So just
Speaker 1: looking for areas where he might have met up with
Speaker 1: them or where they may have heard of him. At
Speaker 1: any rate, Katesby and his fellow plotters needed someone like
Speaker 1: Fox in the mix. He was their muscle of sorts.
Speaker 1: He knew something about guns and ammo, and since he'd
Speaker 1: been away from England for so long, his face was unknown,
Speaker 1: and that's a key point to remember, very important because
Speaker 1: he was going to have to do some sort of
Speaker 1: reconnaissance type work. So those five conspirators had their meeting
Speaker 1: in the Strand and they took an oath of secrecy
Speaker 1: and they said mass and then they talked about the plan.
Speaker 1: So by that time, Parliament had been in session since
Speaker 1: March and was expected to last at least a couple
Speaker 1: of months more so. The plan was to lease a
Speaker 1: house next to the House of Lord's Chamber in the
Speaker 1: Old Palace of Westminster. Then they would dig a tunnel
Speaker 1: from the sellers of the Least House to the foundations
Speaker 1: of the Chamber and put some gunpowder in there. They'd
Speaker 1: bring the gunpowder in at night from Catesby's house across
Speaker 1: the tents, so you can start to get the sense
Speaker 1: of why it would be important to not be a
Speaker 1: guy everybody recognized around town. Yeah, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be recognized because there was a lot of at stake.
Speaker 1: If this worked, they were going to be blowing up Parliament.
Speaker 1: They were going to be killing the king also his son,
Speaker 1: and his other son was sickly. So the plan after
Speaker 1: this was to kidnap young Princess Elizabeth and basically make
Speaker 1: her their puppet queen. But I mean, the details surrounding
Speaker 1: this were still kind of sketchy, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit more later. But once
Speaker 1: they settled on a general plan, or part one of
Speaker 1: the plan at least, they set to it. Percy leased
Speaker 1: the house with the help of his connections to the
Speaker 1: Earl of Northumberland. But then on July seven, Parliament was
Speaker 1: postponed and scheduled to reconvene in February of sixteen o five.
Speaker 1: Before that meeting ended, though, they did manage to reconfirm
Speaker 1: all of those penalties that applied to Catholics and recusancy
Speaker 1: fines were reinstated, so adding fuel to this potential explosive
Speaker 1: fire exactly, so they agreed to start working again in
Speaker 1: the fall keep moving towards their plot. But Parliament was
Speaker 1: delayed again until October sixteen o five, and eventually it
Speaker 1: was rescheduled again until November five, so they agreed to
Speaker 1: start work again that February. That march, though, they had
Speaker 1: a stroke of luck the lease for a ground floor
Speaker 1: seller between their tunnel and the House of Lords meeting
Speaker 1: space became available. According to the BBC, that seller extended
Speaker 1: right underneath the House of Lords, so it allowed the
Speaker 1: waters to pack the gunpowder, thirty six barrels of it,
Speaker 1: in fact, right where it would be the most dangerous.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to end with a bang for
Speaker 1: this episode. We're gonna keep you hanging and continue with
Speaker 1: a part two. I know those of you in England
Speaker 1: will probably get to your celebrations now. You can email
Speaker 1: us maybe and let us know what you what you
Speaker 1: do for Guy Fox Day, whether you have a bonfire
Speaker 1: or sell effigies in the streets, or whether you do
Speaker 1: anything at all. We're kind of interested to see how
Speaker 1: many people observe and commemorate this day. And I've read
Speaker 1: all kinds of strange and neat things that people do
Speaker 1: to celebrate it. I think I read something about rolling
Speaker 1: flaming barrels down the street in certain towns. So let
Speaker 1: us know what you do. UM, if you do anything
Speaker 1: fun or different where you live. UM, we'd love to
Speaker 1: know where History podcast at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: or you can look us up on Facebook or on
Speaker 1: Twitter at mst in history and I think we do
Speaker 1: have a blog post. Molly Edmonds wrote it for how
Speaker 1: to Stuff like stuff you can do for Guy Fox Day,
Speaker 1: mostly involved food you can eat. I get the idea
Speaker 1: there are some traditional foods, but you can find that
Speaker 1: by looking on the blogs on our home page at
Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: iPhone up has a ride. Download it today on iTunes