The Gunpowder Plot As It Happened

'Remember, remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot...' Every year across Britain, people come together to burn bonfires in commemoration of the failed plot to blow up Parliament and the King. It's often portrayed as a simple story, but in today’s episode Anthony and Maddy delve into the details of this audacious plan and ask the question: where did it all go wrong? View the painting described by Maddy & Anthony in the episode here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guy_fawkes_henry_perronet_briggs.jpg Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello After Darkers. Now brace yourselves for a public service announcement.

• 0:04Anthony Delaney?

  History Hit, the production company behind After Dark, also makes documentaries. And I'm talking beautifully shot, fantastically told, immersive histories on screen. There's hundreds and hundreds available to watch right now, online at historyhit.com, with a new release each week.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  There's a lot to digest there, but guys, take a deep breath because there is more. Anthony and I have made two new History Hit TV documentaries. I have recently made one about London's most notorious haunting, the Cock Lane Ghost, based on my new book Hoax that is releasing for Halloween.

• 0:36Anthony Delaney?

  And I've got one following that about the Great Irish Famine, which is coming soon.

• 0:41Speaker 00

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• 2:17Anthony Delaney?

  Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot. It's 1605, beneath the streets of Westminster, in a dark, dingy undercroft, a man waits in the shadows. Beside him sit thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, enough to blow the Houses of Parliament sky-high and send the heart of the English government crashing down in flames. His name, Guy Fawkes. But he isn't alone in this scheme, because for months, a group of conspirators have been plotting to assassinate King James I, destroy Parliament, and strike a devastating blow against the English establishment.

• 3:01Anthony Delaney?

  Now their plan is on the brink of becoming reality. As Fawkes waits for the moment to light the fuse, the conspirators' fate hangs in the balance. But their carefully laid plans are about to unravel. From the undercroft beneath the English Parliament, welcome to After Dark.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  Hello, everyone, and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.

• 3:29Anthony Delaney?

  And I'm Anthony.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  And every year, on the 5th of November, ever heard of it? People in Britain gather in their local parks, or their own back gardens, just to throw that in there, in this script, to burn bonfires and to light fireworks to celebrate the failed plot to destroy Parliament and the King.

• 3:47Anthony Delaney?

  Apparently, it's often called Guy Fawkes Night. But Fawkes was one of thirteen conspirators, if you didn't know. He was just the one unlucky enough to get caught red-handed. So in today's episode, we'll be delving into the details of their plot to take down the King and discuss whether this awful, or was it that awful, plan really had any chance of working at all.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Bit judgmental calling it an awful plan, just gonna say that right off the bat. I think I've said on this pod before, but I am very distantly related, I think, to Guy Fawkes.

• 4:18Anthony Delaney?

  Oh!

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:19Anthony Delaney?

  That's weird. How?

• 4:22Speaker 00

  So my mum's maiden name is Fawkes, and that portion of the family are English Catholics. It is that part of the world that we can trace that to that period. And Fawkes has become Fawkes, it basically changes. And we're definitely related to, like, some people he was related to. So it's very distant, but we are part of, we're like a branch of the same family. So obviously, I do not partake of Guy Fawkes. Also because I grew up with a fireman dad who was just like, stop burning things down. Although he did once burn a fence down by putting a Catherine wheel, nailing it too hard into the fence, and it just all went up in flames. Oh, yeah.

• 4:58Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, good.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:59Anthony Delaney?

  Well, it's him you want there, if that's the case, because he's a fireman.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Exactly. He was very chill about it and put it out, but he did start it.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Talk to me about the context. In my script, it says, what's the vibe in England? Talk to me about the context of the 16th going into the 17th century. What's happening? Who's on the throne? Before we get to the point of the plot, who is the King? Who we are plotting against, please?

• 5:22Anthony Delaney?

  Well, James VI and I is on the throne. He is the Scottish James VI, and now the English James I.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  I feel like you're very interested in James.

• 5:31Anthony Delaney?

  Not very interested in James particularly. No, but I do. I'm like, okay. Yeah, no, Gareth's book, of course, Queen James, that's a really good one. And there's been a lot of interest in him recently. He is such, I think he is an interesting character in that, you know, the homosexual attraction and the witchcraft, which he does and then doesn't believe in. I think we've lumped too much witchcraft at his door, I think.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 5:56Anthony Delaney?

  So, yeah, he's like, God, I wrote that thing, I know. It's like when you write a book and you're going on the tour for two years later, and you're like, yeah, I know.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  Stop asking me about witchcraft!

• 6:05Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. So there's a little bit of that going on. But no, he's down now in England, and he is an Anglican king. But bear in mind, his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was a Catholic.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:17Anthony Delaney?

  And so after the kind of religious wars that we're having in Europe in the 16th century, now we're in the very beginning of the 17th century, we also have the idea in recent memory of Mary Tudor. So the first Queen Regnant in England, who was a Catholic, of course, and then had, you know, was Bloody Mary and killed Protestants and all this kind of thing. So there is this religious tension. However, with James's coming to England, despite the fact that he is Protestant, there is an idea that for Catholics, this could be a time of relative freedom and relative ease through the political and social systems.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  Why, and to James in particular?

• 7:00Anthony Delaney?

  Well, it's always landed that it's because his mother was Catholic.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Okay, so we believe inherently he's gonna be a little bit more easygoing.

• 7:09Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, and I also do think there's an accommodation thing that happens, right? Because he is a Scottish king in England, and he's still in Scotland too. But what you see across a lot of the Stuarts, or the more successful Stuarts, or the ones that, well, even the unsuccessful ones, actually, is that they are very interested, to a point, in accommodation. Now, forget Charles the First in that equation, because there is so much going on. The kingdom is in flux, even though, yes, it's a Protestant nation, and it's very much settled in that point by now. We've had Elizabeth, so, you know, it's really settled into that Protestant idea. But not every, it's not monolithic. There's still a good old Catholic and an important influential Catholic faction in England at this time.

• 7:52Anthony Delaney?

  So we're going to have to court them in order to bring some stability to the kingdom, particularly after the long reign of Elizabeth I. So it benefits James VI and I to have some accommodation with Catholics at this time, too.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Okay, but we know that there is gonna be a plot against him. So he's not entirely popular in this moment.

• 8:17Anthony Delaney?

  No, yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  So we'll unpack that as this episode goes on. Introduce me, please, before we go any further, to the people at the heart of the story. Obviously, we've got James on the throne. Talk to me about the men who are gonna become the plotters.

• 8:31Anthony Delaney?

  So there's thirteen plotters that we know of in the end. And obviously Guy Fawkes is at the centre of that, but not at the head of it. He's not the leader. That is a man.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  It's so fascinating, isn't it, that it's named after him?

• 8:44Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, and it really does. Attach itself and we'll see why. There's a reason narratively that this happens. By the time we get to the end of the episode, we'll definitely be clear why that's happened. But Robert Catesby is probably the guy that's really spearheading this. And the interesting thing about him is if you are related to Guy Fawkes, you know, who's related to Catesby? And who played him in a period drama is you know, nothing, Jon Snow, Kit Harrington.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Kit Harrington, yeah, it's his direct ancestor, isn't it?

• 9:10Anthony Delaney?

  Apparently so.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Robert Catesby is an inherently hot name. I will not take any questions as to why. I can tell you now he was hot.

• 9:18Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, no, I'll buy that. As is the name Kit Harrington, actually. That's a hot name too, right? So he's inherited that from Robert Catesby. Let's just say that there. There are, of course, other people involved in this. We have, so we have Robert Catesby. We have Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter or Wintour. I wonder if that's related to Anna Wintour. All the relations. Yeah, and black glasses.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Under the rim of his wide brim.

• 9:46Anthony Delaney?

  That's iconic. They need to do, Vogue need to do a gunpowder plot shoot. Robert Winter or Wintour, John Wright, Christopher Wright, Thomas Bates, and of course, Guy Orgido Fawkes. Now, I want to say, just in terms of how their paths all cross. So Guy Fawkes is in Europe and we'll come to that and he's, you know, a mercenary soldier essentially. He looks for assistance from European powers to intervene in England following the succession of James VI and I to help the Catholic cause. They all kind of go, we've had a lot going on recently. We don't really want to do that. But Robert Catesby is in Europe at the same time, asking for the same kind of assistance.

• 10:32Anthony Delaney?

  So they cross paths, but it's not until they come back to England that they, and it's apparently in a meeting in May 1604,

• 10:41Anthony Delaney?

  in the Dog and Drake Pub and Drake pub on the Strand, if you must know, that the idea for the gunpowder plot starts.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  I always love a pub history.

• 10:49Anthony Delaney?

  You do actually, don't you?

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I really, I really, really do. I mean, I love, you know, so much happens in taverns in the 17th and 18th century. And I love when you can be that specific about what it was. I also love a pub name history. I do think that's really interesting.

• 11:04Anthony Delaney?

  The only thing about pub names in history, because I've been looking at one recently, is that they change so much that it actually, and they change within a small group of names. So the hare and the hound and then the fox and the duck can overlap and it's the fox and the hound. And it's like, bloody hell, it's difficult to track them.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  I love when you can tell a pub was named and maybe even built sometimes in the sort of, I don't know, post Napoleonic era through to maybe the end of the Victorian era. When you get them named after either military battles or soldiers themselves, not individual people, but like, you know, you get one that's called like the privateer or the lieutenant or, you know, the captain or, I don't know, the rifleman is a really popular, something like that. And I just, I love that you can just feel and hear like a little bit of social history from that particular moment. But anyway, we digress. Okay, so they, they meet in 1604 on the Strand in the Dog and Drake Pub.

• 12:01Anthony Delaney?

  To formalize this plan a little bit more. And again, just to point out, Guy Fawkes is there apparently, but he's not leading this.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  He's not leading it.

• 12:10Anthony Delaney?

  He's had a different history until this point.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  They meet, they're having these discussions about their aims. What are their aims in this particular moment? Is it to bring down the king? Because this is what that's going to turn into. It's going to turn into mass murder. We know that is the, the desired outcome of the gunpowder plot. Are they meeting? What is on the agenda in that pub? Is it, let's make things better for Catholics? Is it, how can we fight possibly with violence for Catholic rights, for a better life for our community? Or is it, have we cut straight to how do we get rid of James?

• 12:49Anthony Delaney?

  Well, as luck would have it, I was the secretary there at that meeting on that day. No, but I think all of those things are kind of up for grabs. There is a sentence that is assigned to Thomas Percy that says, shall we always gentlemen talk and never do anything? And so I think it's, this meeting is reminiscent of all the quabbling that's going on, maybe over the last kind of 30, 40, 50 years. And everyone's getting slightly sick of this idea that Catholics are sidelined, that there is now the Protestant rule is established and something has to be done as opposed to just talked about.

• 13:30Anthony Delaney?

  Now, you asked there if it was a plot against James specifically. And I suppose you could argue yes, but I would say not necessarily. The reason it's, it's targeted there is because it's a relatively new reign. So by, by 1604, when they're meeting, the reign's a year old or just not even a year old yet. So it is, oh no, it is just a year old. And it's, it's, you know, it's new, it's unsteady in that sense. And so there's an opportunity. So it's not James specifically, it's the establishment that is now in focus.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Okay, so we have this, this movement, this desire to change something for Catholics. Obviously for several years at least, there has been, you know, this feeling of nothing getting done. Thomas Percy's words there, you know, speaking to the frustration that people are feeling. I suppose also speaking to the, the oppressive atmosphere that has been in England over the last few decades with the reign of Elizabeth and, you know, the, the fear that Catholics have felt to act, to do something that they have not been able to get organized enough because of the promise of retribution and the sort of might of the state that will come down on them.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  But they are now going to do something. They start to make preparations.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Are we moving straight to let's blow up the Houses of Parliament? I mean, this just feels, it's a, it's a pretty quick escalation of things. And I, I see what you're saying about it's in this long context of wanting something done.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  But it feels we've gone right to.

• 15:11Anthony Delaney?

  The heart of it, right?

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:13Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I mean, we don't know if there was other iterations. I'm sure over the course of those years that I've talked about and those frustrations that there were different things.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  They wrote a strongly worded letter.

• 15:22Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that got discarded and maybe they were going to target something else. But certainly we get to Parliament very quickly, as in the idea that Parliament as the centre of power should be the locus of the attack. And the idea is that state opening of Parliament in 1605 will be the time because everybody will be gathered there. All the MPs will have come in and of course, who's present at the state opening of Parliament, the King. So we're going to get all of them together at one point. Now, some issues start to present themselves with that plan because, because of plague, the state opening is pushed back. It was initially supposed to be February 1605, plague that delays it to October.

• 16:04Anthony Delaney?

  And then again, it's finally settled for November the 5th. And it is going to be, terrible, terrible pun, apologies. But it is supposed to be an explosive event. It is supposed to be, I know, I died a little bit inside as well. It is supposed to be this, this eye catching, we are striking at the heart of this Protestant regime in order to bring it down.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. So, I mean, something that's actually occurring to me, which I don't know if I'd ever really thought about it in these terms before, because it seems so obvious. I'd never consciously thought this, that really it's an attack on Parliament as much as on the King. Yes, the King is there for the opening. But actually, you know, the Parliament that are there are not secondary victims. They're not collateral damage. It's very much intended for this moment of state power, you know, to strike at the heart of what that system looks like, actually. It's not just trying to get rid of James himself.

• 17:06Anthony Delaney?

  Absolutely. And I think in the aftermath, where Guy Fawkes becomes the figurehead, so too does James in later retellings. So what we get is this one-on-one adversarial retelling because it's easier to do that, right? But it's, it's a little, it's a, it's more systematic than that. And that to me makes it more interesting.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Okay, talk to me about the practicalities of blowing up the Houses of Parliament. Obviously we have our 19th century version of Parliament in London today.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  On the same site, there was a different building, series of buildings.

• 17:42Anthony Delaney?

  Yep.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  What did this site actually look like? Were you to plan an explosion there? What would you be up against?

• 17:48Anthony Delaney?

  Well, the first thing that happened is that Thomas Percy has rented a house nearby Parliament and puts Guy Fawkes in there by the name of, the very inventive name of John Johnson.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  No.

• 18:01Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, I know.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Okay, hold on.

• 18:03Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  But I know, I know this episode is meant to be about how awful their plan was. Immediately, no. Come on.

• 18:10Anthony Delaney?

  I know, that's the one thing you're gonna be like, what do you mean your name is Tim Timpson?

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:14Anthony Delaney?

  You know what I mean?

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Well, it's like when you absolutely panic when you're like

• 18:17Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  seventeen with a fake ID and they're like, what's your name? And you're like, I don't know.

• 18:22Anthony Delaney?

  It's the Nadine Coyle of it all. Just like whatever that date that she gave was.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Nadine Coyle of it all. Oh, my God.

• 18:29Anthony Delaney?

  So she's, she, now I'm seeing Nadine Coyle being in this house. Anyway, one of the reasons I suppose we should point out is that because of Fawkes's military career on, on the continent, he has knowledge of explosives.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:46Anthony Delaney?

  Now, it's been overstated in the very simple narrative that comes out that he's this explosive expert, that he's like a crack shot at all of this kind of thing. That's not necessarily the case.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  He wasn't like in bomb disposal unit.

• 18:58Anthony Delaney?

  No, no, no, no. He has some experience, but he wouldn't have been the only one. But he probably has the most of this group, which is why he finds himself so closely attached. But in terms of what you asked about Parliament, what does it look like? This is a collection, it's a, it's Westminster Palace. It's a collection of medieval buildings. You get the big old hall, which is busy and buzzy and there's lots going on. And you also then have little offshoot rooms where meetings are happening, discussions are happening, deals are being brokered. It has a big old Warren, and Warren's a good name, actually. I pat myself on the back for that because underneath there is this series of tunnels. And they're running all across, so people would have used them for storage, but also to get quickly from one point to the next and pop up at different places.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:41Anthony Delaney?

  And this is where the conspirators plan to house some gunpowder, hence the gunpowder plot, quite a bit of gunpowder. And to, that Guy Fawkes will, on the 5th of November, when everyone's in place, set light to this and then, you know, fireworks.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  I mean, it's, it is a plan that makes sense in that, as you say, this is a space in which people are coming and going all the time. This is a busy building, series of buildings, getting access presumably relatively easy, certainly compared to today.

• 20:11Anthony Delaney?

  Yes.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Um.

• 20:13Anthony Delaney?

  And I suppose I should point out here, one of the reasons why they have such access to that under, underground part of it is because the underground part was part of the rental of the house that Catesby had put Guy Fawkes in.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  John Johnson's in.

• 20:27Anthony Delaney?

  John Johnson's in. So it's, it's that thing of kind of going, it's underground parking if you're hiring a, a flat in London.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Okay. So we, we have the house, we have access. Where are we getting that much gunpowder from? Is this just floating around freely available in London at this moment?

• 20:45Anthony Delaney?

  Well, I mean, actually, not, not necessarily. I mean, we're talking about 36 barrels, by the way. So it is quite a, it's quite a lot. But you, but yes, you can buy it.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  I think it would flag something up if you tried to order that on the internet today.

• 20:59Anthony Delaney?

  And they did actually, but he tried to order it via Amazon in 1605. But no, but so I think they're slowly gathering this and there's 13 of them, remember? So we can kind of divide the labour. And just to point out that there is a plan afterwards as well. So it's not just a case of bam, Parliament's blown up.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:18Anthony Delaney?

  We're, now what? We're all gonna go crazy. No, they're gonna put James's daughter, Elizabeth, on the throne.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:24Anthony Delaney?

  And then there's gonna be an uprising, a Catholic uprising in the Midlands. So i- it's not a-

• 21:29Speaker 00

  And is Elizabeth in the Midlands in this moment? Is she, because she's presumably not in London.

• 21:33Anthony Delaney?

  No, she, I think she is in London.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Okay, okay.

• 21:35Anthony Delaney?

  No, the Midlands is just because there's a Catholic stronghold up there. And they wanna take it across the country as well. So it's like, that's where they're going to, like the heart of the country, it's gonna bleed out from there. This uprising's gonna bleed out.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  I, I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but I do find the idea of the Midlands as the centre of England really interesting. It's something that we've completely lost now, I think.

• 21:56Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  You know, as someone who grew up sort of on the very northernist part of the Midlands, you know, I think it's a, a region that has sort of been forgotten or, you know, unless you, you live there or are from there, it's, it's sort of dropped off a little bit in terms of sort of national focus, I think, compared to other areas, in terms of tourism, in terms of the histories that are told. And I think so much English history is centred in those, that was now, you know, the selection of counties, that middle bang of, of the country. And I think we sometimes maybe don't have that kind of map, that version of, of that map and that understanding of England in our minds. And I actually think there's something to be said there and something to be done about

• 22:42Speaker 00

  the Midlands as the heart of the nation for so many centuries.

• 22:45Anthony Delaney?

  I think that's very true, actually. And, and I lived in Kettering for a while and the, the, the investment is bad in the Midlands.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  The Midlands?

• 22:52Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Is that a bit too south? Okay.

• 22:54Anthony Delaney?

  Well, apparently it's not.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Oh, I'll watch.

• 22:56Anthony Delaney?

  It's Northamptonshire.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  I'm not policing who, who gets to be in England.

• 22:59Anthony Delaney?

  Apparently you are, no. But it, it, you're right, like you, you go and you see all these incredible villages and towns that are old, you know, like they're, they're really surrounded by the investment.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Huge castles, Warwick amongst them, you know, thinking about things like that. Anyway, it's just, just an aside, but it's interesting. Well, it's not an aside, it's thinking about, you know, this, how these people would have understood, you know, if they took out a power base in London, retreating to the Midlands and setting something up there is, yes, as you say, is a Catholic stronghold there, but it's also that mentality of like an old version of England.

• 23:31Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  You know, I think, I think that's, that is interesting.

• 23:45Anthony Delaney?

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• 25:37Speaker 00

  Okay, so we have this all in place. We have the plan. Boom. The building's getting blown up on the edge of the River Thames. Little Elizabeth, James's daughter, who's nine, I think, at this moment, is gonna be taken and put on the throne. Is she Catholic then? Is that why they pick her? Or is it simply, we've gotta get rid of James? That's the next best thing. She's legitimate to the, as an heir, she'll do.

• 26:03Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, no, she's not Catholic, but she can be easily made to be Catholic because-

• 26:07Speaker 00

  I mean, she's nine, so she'll, yeah.

• 26:09Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, exactly. So no, no, no, at that point she's not, but she, she will be in their world.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  We know this is not going to succeed. Talk to me about the series of errors that happen forthwith.

• 26:21Anthony Delaney?

  Are there that many errors that come thick and fast? I think there's one key error, right?

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Okay, well, that's the point of this episode, so hit me with the one key error at the very least.

• 26:29Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I think so, anyway.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 26:31Anthony Delaney?

  There are things, there are things that go wrong, but like, this is, this is the one for me. So we know that there are these 13 conspirators and we know-

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Well, named that we know of.

• 26:41Anthony Delaney?

  Yes.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Also, women.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Just women exist, women are married to some of these men. And women are waiting back in the Catholic Midlands for news that this deed has been done. They are able to take messages, they're, you know, presumably in on what's happening. And so I, again, thinking about the simplicity of this history, thinking about how Guy Fawkes has become this figurehead. I think women have been cut out of this history. So, yeah, with the women involved in this, who are, you know, on the, on the edge of, of this conspiracy of 12, of 13 men who are married to them, who are, you know, their sisters, their mothers, whatever. They, they are in the Midlands waiting for news.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  They will have known about this plot to a certain extent. Um, they, you know, are involved in the next steps. Uh, if little Elizabeth is taken off, she's going to need looking after, she's going to have to have women around her as well as men. Like, all this is in place. So in the, the way that there is this simplification of, um, the history with Guy Fawkes as, as the figurehead of it. And this idea that there's only 13 conspirators, I think is, um, is again, another simplification. But anyway, well, for the purposes of this, we will get, but that's just an interesting aside, I think. But let's, let's go with the 13, um, in the run up to the attack. Talk to me about that.

• 28:03Anthony Delaney?

  It's not an aside at all. It is about to become the pivotal point of this history. Because there is, one of the conspirators is called Francis Tresham. And Francis Tresham decides that he is going to break his oath that the 13 have taken in order to inform one of the MPs. Cause remember MPs are Catholic at this time, some of them are, not, not the majority, but some are. And there is one of the MPs called Lord Montego, who happens to be Tresham's brother in law. So the whole hinge of that is a woman.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:46Anthony Delaney?

  And.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  And those domestic lives that are invisible in the historical record, you know, is that a case that he's already told his wife? And she's like, you've got to tell my brother, I don't want him to get blown up. Is it that she has no idea and he's thinking, oh my God, you're never going to talk to me again if I blow your brother up. Uh, you know, what's going on there? We probably don't have it in the historical record, do we?

• 29:06Anthony Delaney?

  No, not those details, no, no.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  But, but that, you know, again, why, one of the reasons why we should always look at the women in the story is that even if we can't exactly pinpoint what the dynamic is there, there is a dynamic there. That is the connection. Uh, it's invisible until it becomes absolutely crucial to the story.

• 29:25Anthony Delaney?

  Well, I had heard that, that the only reason Tresham had got in touch with Montego is because they were both Catholic. And he didn't want the Catholic, in the Catholics in Parliament. So he was like, look, we're mates, don't be there on the 5th. Now, he did do that, that's, he did warn him and he did say, don't be there on the 5th. Um, but, but the brother in law thing is surely, or the, the, the shared woman in their lives is clearly a key point there, right? So, so either way, he receives a letter on the 26th of October. This is Lord Montego now, warning him to skip the state opening of Parliament because, yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Not very subtle.

• 30:05Anthony Delaney?

  Well, this is less subtle. It says, "They shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them."

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Ah, Tresham.

• 30:16Anthony Delaney?

  And this is why I kind of go, yeah, there's, there's some other things that will happen now that seem unfortunate. But I think that's the key piece of, of, that's the key event that starts on, because then Montego goes to, uh, goes to the authorities.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Okay, and this also tells us so much about Tresham as a person and about his understanding of the world. You know, we always talk about the extent to which people believe in religious ideas, in magic, in superstition, whatever. And I think here, Tresham's, uh, conscience, and, you know, he's, obviously he's concerned for his immortal soul. He's a Catholic, a devout Catholic, you know, takes over. And he's trying to save a life here, albeit one life, whilst also being involved in taking the lives of many other people. But there's some, there's something there in his motivation that, you know, obviously there's a personal connection, that's, that is crucial. But why does he act on that? Because he feels it's important.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  And so we get such a sense of, of, you know, all of this is, is being driven by belief in God, about a religious position, about the spiritual life of people beyond their own brief existence on earth. This is what is motivating people. This is why they feel able and brave enough to put their head above the parapet, as it were, and, and plot this in the first place. Knowing the consequences for if they are caught will be so severe. I mean, let's not forget how high the stakes are here and how much danger they are putting themselves in. Um, and I, I think, you know, it's, it's maybe easy for us now to, I think this is one of those histories where, because we know all the blow by blow moments of it,

• 32:01Speaker 00

  that we're so zoomed out, but to remember that these are people who, I mean, there must have been like a rasping nervousness in everyone's breath in the days leading up to this, right? A tightness of the chest, but an absolute conviction in that they would have felt in their hearts. Literally, I think it would have had a physical feeling in their bodies of like, this has to happen. It's terrifying, the risk is enormous, but we are doing it. And I think this is, for me, it's just one of those flashpoints where you're like, oh, you're a real, you're a real person in here with real concerns, some of which we can access, some of which we can't, we can only speculate and guess at. But it's a flashpoint of just a little bit of visibility of the extent of their belief and their conviction.

• 32:46Anthony Delaney?

  Montego doesn't share that belief and conviction despite his Catholicism.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:51Anthony Delaney?

  And so by the first, so he receives that letter, when, on the 26th, is it? Yeah, 26th of October.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  I mean, he's quite cryptic, like, shall we just talk about the letter for a second though? That he's, he says, "They'll receive a terrible blow, and yet they shall not see who hurts them." I'd be like, right, if you've sent me this, can you, can you actually just say what the threat is, please?

• 33:10Anthony Delaney?

  But also, blow, don't go to Parliament, they're going to receive a terrible blow. They're going to blow, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, there's going to be.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Okay, so it's more like they should receive a terrible, oh, I couldn't wink at all.

• 33:24Anthony Delaney?

  And it's a podcast, so it's kind of, totally, not necessarily, but yes.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  I just blinked really weirdly. Um, okay, yeah, terrible, right.

• 33:32Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, so, but, but Montego is like, ah, okay, I'm not up for this gig actually. And the last thing we need is blowing a Parliament. So by the first of November, so he's what, four or five days later? He is by now, so he's taken the letters to the authorities and James has actually seen the letter by the first of November.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  James the King.

• 33:52Anthony Delaney?

  James the King. And as a result, so now we're five days ahead, they've got a five day head start on this. There is now sweeping going on around Parliament, looking at different places that this might be going on. What would this look like exactly? Cause as you say, yeah, okay, there is, there were blow is in there, but they don't necessarily exactly know what they're going to do.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  My husband, one of his jobs that he's had has been, um, bomb search with the military. And he, or he did, um, all the political party conferences, um, for the couple of years that he did that job. And he said, that was really interesting. Um, and like just the, the level of searching and stuff and everything they do, it's quite fascinating.

• 34:28Anthony Delaney?

  I'd be very nervous all the time.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  So, yeah, really, super interesting. So, so they're, they're now sweeping what is, you know, a vast, complex, uh, of buildings with all these hidden corners, tunnels. This is, if you are doing the bomb search on this job, it's pretty extensive, difficult. Um, so, but, but importantly, they're now, they are looking for gunpowder specifically. They're looking for some kind of threat. I mean, they must have been knowing they're looking for an explosive setup of some kind.

• 34:57Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, and so, and I know this sounds a little bit silly, but actually I want to point something out. Because there is an awareness that they might be looking for this. There is a pile of wood that the conspirators, or potentially that Fawkes alone, I'm not sure if it's, if it's a group effort, but certainly the, the gunpowder that's been stashed by now, because let's say we're on the fourth, early 5th of, of November here, so we're, we're right up to it now.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:21Anthony Delaney?

  It's been hidden by planks of wood. Now, that sounds silly because it sounds like, uh, you know, we're just, oh, we're just shoving loads of wood. But actually, they've already, they've been down to where the gunpowder is, these people doing the sweeps. There's no dogs in the, well, there are dogs, but there's no like.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  There are no dogs in this century.

• 35:40Anthony Delaney?

  Spoiler, but they're not trained to hunt for gunpowder, they're not necessarily looking with BP machines. So if there's a pile of wood in a corner.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Oh God, you're not in charge of bomb search.

• 35:50Anthony Delaney?

  Would be doomed. If there was a pile of wood in the corner that looks like a pile of wood, it was a pile of wood. And they did think it was a pile of wood. So again, this idea that they're hiding it under wood. Seems comic and silly, but actually initially at least, it's a convincing subterfuge for what they're doing. So they do manage to keep it, to keep it, to keep it hidden for another couple of days. They encounter Fawkes as well on that because he's coming and going with it. And, and he says, you know, that, that, that's fine. And that this is what he's doing and all the rest of it.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  He's like, I am John Johnson going to my house.

• 36:24Anthony Delaney?

  No, but they do, he does tell them he's John Johnson. Yeah. So it's like, you know, it's, it's easy. Again, it's this thing about like zoomed out and with all the layers of

• 36:32Speaker 00

  It seems so silly.

• 36:33Anthony Delaney?

  Silly, but actually he has hidden it relatively well to, to begin with at least.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  How would you be in that moment if you were Fawkes and they encountered you down there?

• 36:45Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, this would

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Would you be cool, man?

• 36:48Anthony Delaney?

  No, I wouldn't be at all. But nobody would ever choose me for this.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  That's very true.

• 36:53Anthony Delaney?

  You know what I mean? That's not, I mean, the sweaty palms, I'd be absolutely

• 36:57Speaker 00

  I think I'd be pretty good. I think I'd be able to do it. I'd be, I'd be chill. And then once they were gone, I'd be like, I'd have a full breakdown, but I'd, I'd keep it together for that. I'd be a convincing John Johnson for like five minutes.

• 37:10Anthony Delaney?

  John Johnson. Now bear in mind that this is now the final sweep that we're going to get. And, and Fawkes is there in place under Parliament, but Catesby and a few of the others have gone to the Midlands. Because think about it, Parliament's going to blow up. The plan is that then there is this rising. Catesby is going to be at the head of that rising presumably. So he's going to become the, he's the public face of this.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  So there he's removed himself from danger, gone back to stronghold in the Midlands, ready for action.

• 37:42Anthony Delaney?

  Ready for when he gets notice or when they have agreed that this is going to happen. And then he's off and he's, he's going to, he's going to do it. But yeah, they, they cross Guy Fawkes and he says he's John Johnson and that's fine.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  And it's fine just to be chilling in the undercroft under Parliament.

• 37:58Anthony Delaney?

  Well, yeah, because it comes as part of the higher and yeah, it's, it's not like there's nobody else down there. I think that's another thing that gets too misunderstood, that it's like absolutely empty, apart from this one guy and this one pile of sticks. Do you know what I mean?

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yes, it's, it's a thorough

• 38:13Anthony Delaney?

  There's more going on down there than just that.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. So talk to me now. So we've done, we've done the sweeps. We've done the final sweep, which is on the evening of the fourth, going into the fifth of November. So we're coming to the day we now know as bonfire night. They accept that he's, he, he says he's the servant of Thomas Percy, doesn't he? When he's down there, by the way, that's his excuse and why he's, and I suppose this is the other thing, right? In this period that we have servants running errands for people constantly. And so you can say, and a lot of crime happens, right? When people say that they're servants. I came across one of the, the tricksters in my book who, she waits outside of butchers for when servants

• 39:01Speaker 00

  come and so when the, so the butcher sends the delivery boy out to deliver like big chunks of meat to certain houses. And she interrupts the journey halfway through to the delivery boy and is like, oh, I'm the servant for the big house on the hill. I've been sent out to meet you.

• 39:15Anthony Delaney?

  Because they can move around.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  And then she just walks off with like a leg of lamb or something, you know? And that kind of thing, you're getting that constantly in this world where servants are invisible. People don't take a second look at them. If you're in the upper classes, you know, they're just sort of irrelevant movement in the background, doing their job. And so if you came across one and they were like, oh, I'm actually, I'm just doing something for my lord, you'd be like, yeah.

• 39:35Anthony Delaney?

  Fair enough.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Whatever. Yeah.

• 39:36Anthony Delaney?

  The servant thing is key here. The servant mindset is key here because one of the reasons Guy Fawkes is also picked for this, along with the, you know, whatever experience he has with explosives, is because he'd been out of England for so long, he wasn't well known in London. So they didn't know who he was.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:52Anthony Delaney?

  Whereas they would have potentially known some of who the other people were because they were more prominent. They'd been around. They were maybe in circles that they would be familiar with.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  So he can move in that world.

• 40:00Anthony Delaney?

  So he can move because he's unknown. So it really is a key element. And so again, it's not that this is not thought through. There is a plan here.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  There is, there is a plan. And it makes, it makes sense in this world in which they are operating. And, okay, so, so that he's discovered at a certain point.

• 40:16Anthony Delaney?

  The first time.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  The first time. Hi, I'm John Johnson. I'm the servant of Thomas Percy. I'm just cracking on with my job. Great. Go about your business. They find him again the second time. Now, if you see the second, a guy hang around a second time in the undercroft, you're going to be like, so what, what was that job you were doing for Thomas Percy?

• 40:34Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Just clarify, who were you again? Remind me of your name.

• 40:38Anthony Delaney?

  John, John, John, John Johnson. I can't even say it now. John, John, John. It is the fifth now as well, you see. So this is the literal last minute ditch attempt to make sure everything's okay. He's down there again, but apparently now this could be

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Well, also you say it's a last minute ditch attempt. If you're the security team doing this, and you know, the threat has been specifically mentioned as happening on this day, you're doing a thorough job this time. Like if you've just been doing the lead up sweeps, like, well, just check there's nothing big, you're getting twitchy now. You're down to the last minute.

• 41:10Anthony Delaney?

  King's about to arrive.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:12Anthony Delaney?

  So this is time number two now that they're doing the undercroft and they, they find John again, John Johnson. But this time now, this could be narrative constructivism afterwards, right? Because apparently what leads them to be more suspicious this time is he's wearing his cloak. So where are you going? Where are you going after this immediately? But apparently he's also wearing spurs. So it's like, well, why, why would you need to be wearing those if you're not going to do a very quick exit?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  If you're not about to get on a horse. Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 41:38Anthony Delaney?

  And so this is the time that they're like, well, now we're going to have to search you. And he's like, no. And there's a tussle. And apparently then again, this sounds very convenient, but it's possibly true as well. They find matches on him. And so therefore

• 41:50Speaker 00

  It's got a little gun that's a lighter.

• 41:53Anthony Delaney?

  A letter saying light the thing now.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Saying boom.

• 41:56Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he is uncovered. The plot is in, in an instant uncovered after all of this time. And it all, that part of it at least falls apart.

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• 44:02Anthony Delaney?

  If you can't imagine it, I have a picture here for you, Mari. Now, this of course is not from the time, this is from the 19th century, but give us an hour description of what's going on in this.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Okay, this is a painting from 1823. So it's as romantic and sweeping as you could possibly get. Okay. So this gives the impression it's a really big canvas. I don't know why it's got the sort of big, almost Renaissance vibe to it actually. It's got some brilliant sort of chiaroscuro lighting going on. Okay. So it's a big piece of drama. We have got in the sort of centre, the focus, the light falling across his breastplate on a, that's covering his red tunic, a parliamentary guard soldier. And he is reaching out his left hand to touch the shoulder of who is presumably Guy Fawkes. And his right hand, he's holding

• 44:52Speaker 00

  a sword that interestingly is kind of glinting in the light, but the menacing tip of it is hidden in the shadows. So he's not quite raised it to fight yet. So this is a moment of just tapping on the shoulder. Excuse me, who are you? Guy Fawkes and it looks like two other men with him are turning around. Guy Fawkes has a really fantastic moustache that looks like he's in the Wild West. I don't know what, is it almost a handlebar moustache that's sort of going, when it goes like across and then down?

• 45:24Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  How do you feel about a moustache, by the way?

• 45:27Anthony Delaney?

  Don't like. My dad has one, but no.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, Matt's had one for a while now and he texts me. I let you say he shaved it off. And I was like, oh.

• 45:34Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, no, that's not for me.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Shame. It's okay until it gets too thick and then arsenic. Anyway, I'm not loving this moustache. But he's, he's sort of turning in this really dramatic fashion, this really defensive fashion with a, with an elbow held up. And he's drawing what looks like a pistol. You can see the butt of the pistol in his hand there, again, just catching the light. It's a really dramatic moment. It looks like it's taking place. This is like absolute 19th century kind of creative license here, on the steps going out of a building because you can see part of London in the background as the sun is setting. It's very sort of dramatic.

• 46:11Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I didn't even see that.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they're not in the undercroft as they were, as they should be. So it's, it's not very historically accurate.

• 46:18Anthony Delaney?

  It's also then kind of saying he almost did get away, right?

• 46:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. He's, he's fleeing. He's got his cloak on. He's, he's got his boots. You can't see his spurs, but you can see some like big riding boots he's got. So he is good to go. He's got his hat on, sort of classic hat that you imagine him in.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  It's a, it's a great moment. It's also, um, kind of, uh, just with my art history hat on. It's, it's conjuring up the art historical tradition of, um, it was a classical tradition, really, of the ascents out of hell. It's bringing to mind, um, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, uh, you know, where, uh, they're in love, she dies. Orpheus makes a deal that he can go down to the underworld and get her and bring her back up. He must not, uh, look back at her while they're on the ascent up. And of course he does look back at her and her soul is dragged back down to hell. And there's this idea of like temptation at the last second or something going wrong at the last second. And what we're getting here is Guy Fawkes almost getting away, almost ascended out of hell.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  And he looks back and it's gone wrong. So it's, it's got, it obviously it's not a love story, but it's got that art historical, uh, kind of undercurrent in it, this, this reference to like, ah, so close.

• 47:28Anthony Delaney?

  Unless it is a love story and we've gotten, we've got this wrong all the time.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Dun, dun, dun.

• 47:33Anthony Delaney?

  It is James VI and I first after.

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, very true.

• 47:36Anthony Delaney?

  Great. No, I, I, it's, that's a lovely, lovely little description of that. I love, I love when Maddie goes into art history. But I say this to her all the time. It's like, I want you to do more art history because it's just, I love, I love art history so much.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Okay, we're back in. Guy Fawkes has been caught. He's arrested.

• 47:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yep.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  He's got the evidence on him. He's got his matches or his little gun lighter or whatever, um, and his list of instructions saying boom. Um, false news. Um, what happens to him next? It's pretty famous, but let's, let's go over it. Um, I can think of a very famous piece of evidence that's going to be coming up in this conversation. Talk me through.

• 48:16Anthony Delaney?

  So he is interrogated and not only is he interrogated by people who catch him, et cetera. He comes face to face and, and this is, this is true, that there is documentation to show this with the king himself. I was always suspicious of this as like, Betcha never did, but he, he did by all accounts.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  See, this is what I find fascinating about James. He's, he is constantly wanting to meet people who want to harm him or who he thinks want to harm him at least. Because it's the same in the witch trials early on in his kingly career. He's like, bring me the witches. I want to meet them. I want to stand in the room. I want to look into their eyes. Um, there aren't that many monarchs in history that are willing to do that. And certainly not, you know, I, I mean, we might look at it and think now, well, he's in no real danger when he brings the witches before him. If anything, they are the ones in a huge amount of danger and who, who face terrible consequences. But of course, in terms of James's belief, the witches are a threat to him. This is a threat to him. He's coming into contact with people he believes to be and knows to be extremely dangerous.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  What's that about? Is that unusual? Does that make him stand out? Does that interest you about him?

• 49:19Anthony Delaney?

  I think it does interest me about him. I think it's very medieval in terms of its kingship style. Which might say something about the kind of Scottish kingship style coming down into England at that point.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  I don't know what this actually says, but Andy Burnham would do this.

• 49:35Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, he would. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. He would. But, but, and, and, and he does get something out of him. He says that Guy Fawkes says the whole plot was to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains and that he was acting under a Roman resolution. So there you have it. We want to get this.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Very eloquent.

• 49:52Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, we want to get this out. But what he doesn't necessarily do is give away the network of conspirators. And James knows and the other interrogators know that there's no way he could have managed these 36 barrels on his own. And there's something else going on here. And so James apparently gives the instruction that now torturers go to the Tower of London and tortures to be applied in order to extract the, the name of the other conspirators.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Yep. Um, I was at the Tower recently. Um, one of our researchers, Phoebe, when she's not working for After Dark, works at the Tower and she got me and producer Charlotte, who's been off on maternity for a year, in for free. And we went and had a look around.

• 50:33Anthony Delaney?

  Hey, and it's expensive in there.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  It is. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was good. And she took us to see the crown jewels. We bypassed all the crowds. We also had two very screaming babies strapped to us. So it was not a great experience, but thank you, Phoebe. Um, but I was, we were, you know, discussing while we were there about, about Fawkes being there in that space. And, you know, the, I think in this moment, if you get taken to the Tower of London, you know, it's not good. You know what's coming. This is a fortress. Yes. You know, we think of it in terms of execution and torture, but this is, this is like the stronghold of, of power in, in England and Britain. It's symbolic. It's intimidating. Um, and it is a place, you know, steeped in violence and soaked in blood.

• 51:16Anthony Delaney?

  And by now it's become the centre of these events because this is happening, the interrogation is happening here now, the torture is happening. He's being racked. So he's being pulled, stretched in opposite directions. He dislocates his joints, the soft tissue tears. And what we have, and this is what you were alluding to earlier, is this signature before the interrogation, the torture and the signature afterwards. And you can really see the physical degradation of the body and the effects that this has had. And while this is happening in this really concentrated area in the Tower of London, the news is spreading very quickly. And people are saying there's a plot, there's something else going on. Obviously folks must give up some of that information because we then start to know that the Midlands becomes a focus.

• 52:01Anthony Delaney?

  Cause remember those lads have run and they're up there to try and.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Case waiting.

• 52:05Anthony Delaney?

  Raise that, raise that, rising.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 52:08Anthony Delaney?

  November 8th, a siege breaks out, shots are fired.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  This is in the Midlands.

• 52:12Anthony Delaney?

  This is in the Midlands now. So this was, this is the plan, right?

• 52:16Anthony Delaney?

  And Catesby and Percy are killed. Um, there's reports saying they were killed by the same bullet, but I'd nearly tell you that they weren't having not been there.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  That's, that's, yeah. It's a, it's quite romantic idea, isn't it?

• 52:29Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also very 19th century.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, absolutely.

• 52:32Anthony Delaney?

  There are lots of others of, in this uprising are then thwarted and they're either killed or captured. Tresham actually stayed in London.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  So Tresham is the one who, who really has given this all away, who wrote to his brother-in-law saying, don't go to Parliament on this day.

• 52:47Anthony Delaney?

  And he was arrested on the 12th, I think. Yes, 12th of November. And he died in the Tower of London on December 23rd, 1605. I, I would point out here that there's another thing that happens, you know, when they, they brought, um, thingamajiggy, what's the name of Guy Fawkes? There you go. The whole, the whole guy. They brought him to, to the Tower of London to interrogate him. They also took some of the gunpowder. And this is another thing where they say, oh, actually we did analysis on this and it would never have worked anyway, because it was degraded. Now, it had degraded, but the idea that it wouldn't have exploded is not right.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  There's how many 30, is it five, 38 barrels or something?

• 53:27Anthony Delaney?

  36. Yeah, yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Surely that's enough that if you light some of it.

• 53:30Anthony Delaney?

  Because the other conspirators had some of the same batch and they used it, they used it fall to lead. Now, this one is a bit ridiculous. And it did explode for them. So they didn't mean it to explode, but it just kind of went off. Now, it was only a small explosion. Didn't, you know, it was fine, but.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  It was fine. It was only a small explosion.

• 53:46Anthony Delaney?

  But as you say, that volume would have caused an explosion and potentially enough of an explosion. So what I think is happening as we will, because we're going to, as our way out, we'll talk about the aftermath of this now in a second.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:58Anthony Delaney?

  But this is this thing of going, that the Protestant narrative, again, after the fact gone, this would never have worked.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  They're incompetent Catholics, they know what they're doing.

• 54:06Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. This was a silly idea.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  What I want to know is, has anyone done that science? Has anyone calculated what would have happened in that space, what we know about that space? If that had ignited, how much of the building above would have been damaged? What would that have looked like? Would the king have died? Can we know that? Has anyone done that?

• 54:25Anthony Delaney?

  We can't know because I have looked at this very briefly, granted, but I have looked. And we can't know that the king definitely would have died.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Okay, well, yeah.

• 54:33Anthony Delaney?

  But we know there probably would have been loss of life and it would have been catastrophic is the word that they are using for it.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Okay. And so it really, it really would have had.

• 54:42Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, it would have. Had it, had it been dry, had the, had the gunpowder been dry and fully functioning, that would have been catastrophic. As it was, it could have done serious damage still.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 54:53Anthony Delaney?

  So whether the king would have died, who knows? But yeah, it would have, it would, it would have made an impact for sure.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  Tell me this, how are we feeling about Tresham?

• 55:06Anthony Delaney?

  Um, annoying, he's annoying. It's kind of like, why did you have to ruin it?

• 55:13Speaker 00

  He couldn't just-

• 55:13Anthony Delaney?

  That sounds bad, it sounds like I wanted them. But for the drama, can you imagine if that had happened? Bloody hell.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  How, well, okay, how different English, British history would have been?

• 55:23Anthony Delaney?

  I don't think it would have been that different, because I don't think the uprising could have ever worked. I don't think the Catholic support was there, was widespread enough.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Would we still have Bonfire Night? No.

• 55:32Anthony Delaney?

  No, no. So, yes, in terms of that cultural thing, then yeah, it would totally be different. But I don't think this ever would have, even if James had died.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:40Anthony Delaney?

  I don't think this would have, have changed the Protestant course of English history.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  So we know Catesby and Percy are killed. I'm buying that it's the same bullet.

• 55:51Anthony Delaney?

  Sure.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  I've decided I want that to be true.

• 55:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Um, their heads are cut from their bodies and they're, and they're placed on spikes. Um, in London, are they taken all the way down to London presumably?

• 56:01Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, I don't know actually where they are, I just know that they're, yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  I imagine that they're transported to London, even though they're killed in the Midlands, that would make sense. Um, but that was a miserable journey for whatever poor servant had to take their heads down. Um, obviously, Fawkes himself is the last plotter to die. So we have Tresham dying in the Tower on the 23rd of December, but, but Fawkes is killed on the 31st of Jan 1606.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  It's an interesting death that I think says a lot about him, actually. Talk us through that. Because it's another kind of flash moment of like, I can see something of you in what you believe.

• 56:37Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, true. It, it, so he is sentenced to be hanged, which he goes to the scaffold. But rather than wait, apparently, rather than wait to be pushed or for the lever to drop, whatever it was.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Well, it's going to be hanged, drawn and quartered, right? Like-

• 56:49Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  So it's going to be bad.

• 56:51Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. He jumps.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:54Anthony Delaney?

  And so he breaks his neck.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:56Anthony Delaney?

  And so he doesn't have to endure any of the rest of it. And, and he makes himself a quicker exit than, than they had planned.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  I mean, it's, in some ways, you'd have to, because, I mean, it's unimaginable, isn't it? The amount of suffering he'd already gone through with the torture and then, and now this death. Like, it's, it's the quickest, easiest way out in some ways. But I think it's incredibly brave that he does that. I find it quite moving.

• 57:20Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. I mean, and, and so the, so what I, I kind of want to highlight through this, that this is in some ways seen as a joke history. And actually, we've been told that it's a joke history. And we've been told that it's a joke history from 1605. And so-

• 57:34Speaker 00

  And we continue to make it a joke history with Bonfire Night, with the guy. Um, because, you know, this is something that I find really fascinating, just thinking about like the cultural legacy of this, right? This, the thing about, um, you know, having, making the literal guy to, to burn on the bonfire. And of course, that has a, a much, much older medieval history of sort of like mumming, uh, performance that takes the piss out of, um, the hires up in your village, in your town, whatever. Um, even though in this case, it's celebrating someone who was defeated, but it's, it has this kind of, um, comic overcurrent, that it's, it's about mockery.

• 58:14Anthony Delaney?

  And bear in mind, he wasn't, Guy Fawkes wasn't always represented in those bonfires to begin with. So immediately afterwards, there were bonfires, for years afterwards, there were bonfires, but no-

• 58:24Speaker 00

  Yes, no.

• 58:25Anthony Delaney?

  No Guy Fawkes.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  I'm sure that I've read somewhere before, that the bonfires, you know, I think, again, we've, we've attached the bonfire to this particular history.

• 58:33Anthony Delaney?

  Yes.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  Um, and that's what we think of now on the 5th of November. But actually, bonfires being lit for particular events, either to commemorate or to mark things happening, was actually commonplace. So-

• 58:43Anthony Delaney?

  Oh my God, all, all over the place.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  So I think there's, um-

• 58:46Anthony Delaney?

  Bonfires all the time.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  I've read before about when the Spanish Armada is defeated, all along the coast, bonfires are lit. And it's, you know, sort of, I mean, it's a literally sort of beacon system of communication to be like, hey.

• 58:57Anthony Delaney?

  Celebration, yeah, absolutely.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  And, and so it's, it's that tradition as well. So it's, it's the kind of the mumming and the mockery mixed with this, just, yeah, we just set fire to a big pile of stuff to mark something happening.

• 59:10Anthony Delaney?

  And it's interesting then, because obviously we move into V for Vendetta and see how the Fawkes imagery gets out of the fire again, and then becomes this-

• 59:18Speaker 00

  Oh, nice, hold on.

• 59:19Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. And then becomes this kind of thing for taking down the powers that be, even though he didn't. So he very much failed at that. And, you know, if you see the, what is it, anonymous collective and all that kind of thing? They use the Fawkes mask or the, the supposedly Fawkes mask. And so he really has become co-opted. But what we have is somebody who is far more flesh and blood, I think, in this history than we, he has been allowed to be. And for that, I think it's so much more interesting. Nonetheless, and I think this is still, as historians, important that we, we preface the whole thing with this.

• 59:58Anthony Delaney?

  There would have been no Catholic usurpation happening, even if the, the thing had gone off. There, it was a naive plot, regardless of the fact that it wasn't clownish in the ways we've been told it is. But it still wouldn't have had the popular support, I don't think, to, and, and, you know.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  It's too small a group.

• 1:00:16Anthony Delaney?

  It's too small a group.

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  Um, and the fact that, I, I suppose one of the, the things that always frustrates me about it is the fact that it's just Guy Fawkes who's left to do the heavy lifting.

• 1:00:26Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Had more of them stayed behind, you know, maybe there could have been a little sword fight down in the undercroft. There could have been like, you know, he's lighting the match and others are holding off the guards or something. The fact that he's just there, doing it and gets caught, you know, it's, it's, I find that frustrating. I think there are obvious mistakes in here. Um, I don't think it's comic. I don't think, you know, it's, it's a decent attempt. Um, but yeah, I think it's, it's, it's an interesting history. I think, I think you're right, actually, the, just thinking about the V for Vendetta stuff. And I think the fact that Fawkes, yes, is a comic figure on the one hand, but also is a symbol of resistance, is fascinating.

• 1:01:05Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, because they don't tie up those two things.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:01:07Anthony Delaney?

  You know, the images and-

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  They're two very different versions of him, actually. Um, I don't really know what to do with that. But it's, but it's, it's interesting and I'm going to think about that a little bit more after this episode.

• 1:01:19Anthony Delaney?

  And isn't it more interesting just to, that it lives in that world, rather than, here's this silly mustachioed man with a big old hat and spurs?

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Anthony Delaney?

  Maybe, that, that did a silly old Catholic plot, fiddly I, diddly do, even though he's not Irish, but you know what I mean, I just-

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Can't claim him.

• 1:01:34Anthony Delaney?

  No, no, no. Um, but we would, I'd say, if we were given half the chance. But like, it's, it's, yeah, I don't know, it's, it's, it's interesting. And, and you know, there's talk about it being, is it a terror attack in the context of the time? And yet, people are like, well, we can't really necessarily call it terror, historians, this is. But either way, I, I, I think it is quite interesting.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  I mean, that's, that's a good question, isn't it? Because I don't think the, the main purpose of the attack is to cause terror, is to cause chaos, is to, um, you know, breed fear into people's hearts. I think it is a strategic thing to take out part of power as many as possible, and specifically the king.

• 1:02:13Anthony Delaney?

  And actually, and maybe this is a good point to finish on, you know, that co-option of the Guy Fawkes mask for anonymous and anti-establishment groups?

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Anthony Delaney?

  It's really important that we recognise, they weren't trying to upend society. They were replacing one monarch with another. It was a religious order they were trying to change. They weren't trying to change-

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  It's not freedom and flowers for all.

• 1:02:34Anthony Delaney?

  This wasn't a, there weren't being a socialist democracy or anything near that. They were keeping a monarchy in place, they just wanted it to be a Catholic one.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, you know, if you are interested in, obviously, we're at the start, very beginning of the 17th century here. But if you're interested in sort of ideas of potential socialism in the 17th century, there's a lot that comes in the civil wars. There's a lot of interest in sort of building a utopian society, building real equality, real fairness in. Doesn't work, but, you know, there are those histories, those conversations happen in the decades that follow this. Um, this is not that.

• 1:03:08Anthony Delaney?

  No, no, that's not what the aim is. So it's, again, it's interesting that he's co-opted for that, because he is not that.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  How have we not done the English Civil War?

• 1:03:14Anthony Delaney?

  I'm literally sitting here the same day. We've done this podcast for three years and we've never done the English Civil War?

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  We should do a whole month's English Civil War.

• 1:03:20Anthony Delaney?

  I'm up for that, big time.

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  Okay, well, it's happening then, we've agreed. Um, if you've, yeah, if you've enjoyed this episode, if you want to hear more from the 17th century, we hardly do the 17th century.

• 1:03:30Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, it's true, actually.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  And you love the 17th century. I'm getting more into it, I have to say.

• 1:03:35Anthony Delaney?

  This podcast is really good for that, for, for us, I mean, not just for the listeners.

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  This podcast is really good.

• 1:03:41Anthony Delaney?

  Since doing this, I've become interested in history. That before, I would have just eye-rolled and been like, no, but don't care about ships, but now care about ships?

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  Oh, love a ship, as we know. Um, if you want to hear more specifically from the 17th century, it doesn't have to be in England. The 17th century across the globe. Get in touch at [email protected].

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