Guy Fawkes Conspiracy

“Remember, remember, the fifth of December. The Gunpowder Treason, and Plot. There is no reason, the Gunpowder Treason, should ever be forgot.” Guy Fawkes Day was yesterday. I’m not exactly sure why the English celebrate it, did they wish he had succeeded, or glad he failed? But anyway, the real problem is, was it really true? Was Guy Fawkes just another one of Robert Cecil’s pawns in his anti-Catholic schemes? The facts to the story are:

On Saturday, October 26, 1605, a mysterious letter was delivered to the Catholic Lord Monteagle, warning him to stay away from Parliament when it convened on November 5. The letter was badly written, with no punctuation and no capital letters. Lord Monteagle immediately took the letter to Robert Cecil, who stated that he feared some kind of Catholic violence against Parliament, since a Catholic nobleman had been warned not to attend. So Cecil ordered a search of the cellars of Parliament, and on November 4 found a Yorkshire soldier-of-fortune named Guy Fawkes standing guard over barrels of gunpowder, and he was quickly arrested. King James I was terrified of gunpowder because of the way his father had died. He ordered the torturing of Guy Fawkes. On November 8, Fawkes finally confessed under torture and named others involved. Cecil announced that Catholics had been plotting to blow up Parliament when the king and his two sons were there, put his Daughter Elizabeth on the throne, and bring her up as a Catholic. Fawkes and others were executed, and the English people have since celebrated every November 5.

However, many historians believe that Robert Cecil organized the whole plot precisely to turn James solidly against Catholics. Here is the evidence:

How could the plotters get gunpowder when it was a government monopoly? Why had Cecil recently refused to allow an investigation into missing stores of powder in the Tower of London? How did the plotters get access to the house next to Parliament (from which they had tunneled into the cellars of Parliament), since it belonged to a government official (who conveniently died on November 5)? Why were two leading conspirators immediately shot instead of being taken alive? The Government claimed it did not know the identity of the conspirators until Fawkes confessed under torture on November 8, yet why were a number of conspirators arrested on November 5? Why was the assembly of Parliament postponed from February (when the plotters weren’t yet ready), to November (when they were)? Even at the time, some observers thought the whole thing was a government frame-up. The result was exactly what Cecil wanted, as James turned unalterably against Catholics and increased the laws against them.

Now, what do you think? And if you are English, why do you celebrate Guy Fawkes Day? Please, join the discussion at the Kongregate forums.



NOTE: I got all of my facts from my history book, Christ the King, Lord of History by Anne W. Carroll.

All Hallow's Eve

Ahh, Halloween, as the mainstream media like to call it. A step up from this would be Hallowe'en, but the real name for it is All Hallow's Eve, or even Samhain. Why, you ask? Because it is the Christmas Eve of All Saints' Day. Back some hundreds of years ago, there were Gaelic pagan rituals that took place on this night,the end of harvest season, which served the purpose of warding away evil spirits during this night. These pagans thought that the land of the dead would overlap with the land of the living, so they would dress up as they thought the evil spirits looked, and perform ritual dances to scare them away. Later, when Popes Gregory III and IV moved All Saints' Day, or All Hallow's Day, from May 13 to November 1, Samhain, which had lost all pagan meaning, was renamed all-hallow's-even, and one thing leads to another, so it eventually became Halloween.

Anyway, last night, I went as a cow. The only "udder" joke I heard was: "You're udderly disgusting!" Jerk. But me, my lil' bros, and our next-door neighbor, were the only kids in the entire neighborhood to go Trick-or-Treating last night. So we had a slight moral dillema at a couple of houses, which just had grab bags. Do you take the whole thing, grab a few pieces, or just leave one piece?