Let's Find Out - Guy Fawkes and the Failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 | ASMR [soft-spoken, history]

Starting point is 00:00:00 Remember, remember the 5th of November. Are those lines familiar to you? Just one second, finishing up your portrait here. And because you are hiding behind that, it's gonna be a little hard. Can my best stab at it, though? You Brits know him very well as the man who was caught guarding a bunch of powder cakes under the House of Lords on November 5th, 1605, over 400 years.

Starting point is 00:01:04 In short, he was trying to blow up Parliament with everybody in it when it would be as packed with the king and the gentry. Politicians, were they called that back then? I don't know. They wanted Parliament to be full, have the king in there. Because they were trying to overthrow. They were trying to dismantle. the government because it was a fundamentally a religious coup.

Starting point is 00:01:41 1517. Alright, so this is 1605. Only about 90 years before that. Martin Luther had published his 95 Theses led to a division of Western Christianity into different confessions. Catholic Lutheran, Reformed Anglican, Anabaptist, Unitarian, At its heart, Guy Fox was a Catholic. The gunpowder plot was an attempt to overthrowing the Protestant, the Anglican, the Puritan, even, Dominion over England, hope Catholics,

Starting point is 00:02:36 which were, of course, dominating Spain at that time, help them re-establish the long-lasting rule over all of Europe in the Western hemisphere. Plot was foiled by a fatal mistake of trying to save the lives of a few of the members of Parliament who are sympathetic to the Catholics. And, well, we're going to get into that, but the plot was ultimately foiled. It was literally going to blow up an entire building, the House of Parliament Lawrence. I guess, left a huge power vacuum in which I think they were trying to ultimately put in a puppet leader who would have been ruled directly. So this is an interesting history. And you guys, of course, know about this bad boy from V for Vendetta.

Starting point is 00:03:49 And if not, you definitely know about the hacktivist, hacker activist group. as the Guy Fawkes mask. A group of, actually started on 4chan, started at least forming a loose group. But tonight we're talking about Guy Fawkes, the man behind the mask, the man of the mask. And, yeah, what really went down and a little bit about how it's been perceived in the last 400 years? I'm gonna sound like I got Tourette's here, but I gotta, I wanna thank, I wanna thank fuck all the hell for being generous in your support and suggesting this video topic. It's actually something I didn't know about and I'm slowly learning more, more history.

Starting point is 00:05:07 It's all, I guess what I'm saying is that it's all fresh, it's all very new to me. And so it's cool when I, when I look at a, when you, when you, focus on one. You start finding out how they're inner related and that's where that whole idea of why like history comes into play. It's a, it turns into a narrative, you know. You get to see how the puzzle pieces fit together and the puzzle piece of Guy Fawkes fits into the history of England, division, sex of religions, being the Catholics and the Protestants. You know, for centuries, for a millennium, I would say Catholic Church had a dominion over Europe. Essentially, the Pope, the Pope was like the King of Kings.

Starting point is 00:06:10 He was the direct mediator between mortals and God. And all kings had their allegiance to him, you know. It was essentially an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. and scholars dissented from the well the abuse of power

Starting point is 00:06:39 that became rampant in the Catholic Church charging indulgences to get into heaven so we had guys like Luther who were pointing out the corruption which is

Starting point is 00:06:53 kind of innate to large scale any large scale institution if it gets big enough it's inevitable. So the story that's slowly forming in my head, to me, the more I'm learning about all this, it's fundamentally a religious issue.

Starting point is 00:07:16 All these wars between the states and nations, groups of nations. You know, so I actually am finding out that most of the stuff that goes down in history is fundamentally religious. It's one group, fighting for the ultimate values, what to value, what to value most. And I think actually took the time to think more clearly about what it is they believe.

Starting point is 00:07:55 I think most of history was just a lot of people being led and being okay with not doing the heavy thinking, the heavy lifting, in bearing the burden of responsibility for ironing out in our attention. articulating their own idea of what faith should mean to them. In this series, I'm going to be referencing this book here. This is, this book here is, I actually was able to use my story of civilization books. And this one here is, it's titled, The Age of Reason begins, because it's a point at which we, we, we, our ancestors in Europe at least, those of you who, to whom that applies, began to actually, well, there was a series of inventions and the overall wealth and standard of living increased to a point at which survival wasn't the only thing on our minds. We were able to expand and elaborate on our culture, art, philosophy,

Starting point is 00:09:11 theology and it turns out that when we have leisure time and we're able to actually think for ourselves we find that paying Catholic bishops indulgences to get into heaven or to be more likely to get into heaven at that doesn't seem like a reasonable idea and so you have guys like Luther in 1517, really only less than 100 years before this gunpowder plot by Guy Fawkes and and uh, Catesby, um, was devised. Symbolic of people beginning to think for themselves. So it's called The Age of Reason Begins.

Starting point is 00:10:03 But it's not insignificant that probably one of the thickest volumes in this 11-part series was dedicated to reform. in how the church was reformed from, beginning from around 1300, which is when many of the modern universities were developed, or not many, it's when they were established in these. So it's a trend. It's useful to remember what has happened in history and to see the big picture. So let's find out what this guy did and what he meant to history. It's 400 years ago, and we're still, He's still very much a part of our, you know, especially after being revived by V for Vendetta and the anonymous groups, um, his position, his, the way we perceive him has actually been flipped, I think, to be a good thing to overthrow

Starting point is 00:11:04 what he thought was a tyranny, but you have to look at all the facts. So let's find out why this guy was so, why him and his cohorts conspired to her. overthrow one religious regime with another and replace it immediately with an older or traditional larger. He was ready to kill his king for the pope, essentially. So what actually was the gunpowder plot? In late October 1605, in English nobleman Lord Montego received a mysterious letter, along with the rest of England's peers and king and the king Montego intended to attend the opening of parliament a few days later the unsigned letter got straight to the point

Starting point is 00:12:06 it said my lord out of the love I bear to you and some of your friends being Catholic apologists I have a care of your preservation therefore I advise you in your tender know as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift your attendance on that day. And it ends with, for though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible frightening. How he cluted upon the mysterious sender urged Montego to burn the letter, of course, after reading, but Montego decided against it,

Starting point is 00:13:04 even though he was a Catholic or given the fact, then he was a Catholic. And he actually saved himself gruesome punishment. And because at that time, we're going to get to it later, the punishment for treason was to be disembound, have your fingers cut off, to be dragged through the road. And all that before you were either hanged or had your head cut off in public, by the way. So this guy, you, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:37 you know, doing this and being captured, it wasn't any inconsequential. This guy was committed. He was, he was committed, as anybody you might think would be committed today to some religious dogma, you might say. So what, what happened to this guy? So Montego forwarded it, forwarded the message to the king's right-hand man, Robert. Cecil, essentially. King at this time was James I was going to the long history but I just don't have time to right now. James the first he was originally king of Scotland. He was a mis tudors that you know lineage of the tutors all the way from Henry the 8th to

Starting point is 00:14:40 Elizabeth the first I guess Elizabeth was the last in the line of the tutors and once she died there was a vacancy open she had, she was known as the Virgin Queen, didn't have any children, so Elizabeth was the last of the line of tutors. And her older sister Mary, which was the, they're both the daughters of Henry the 8th, the long history about that, but Henry the 8th brought in Protestantism. He was, he was down with that. He was down with saying, no, I'm not going to pay, I'm not going to be like one of my subjects, chip off, a little fat off the top for the Pope, the fat Pope, sit in high and mighty on his throne in Rome.

Starting point is 00:15:33 The king wanted to be sovereign, the island of England, in France and, well, at least France, I think Denmark too, was undergoing this transformation from trying to get out from under the yoke of the grasp of the Catholics. at this time in the 1500s. So, yeah, Henry VIII, he actually started, he instantiated the Protestant, which just means anti-Catholic. It means not Catholic, not anti,

Starting point is 00:16:13 but it just means that, no, we're not Catholic, we're our own thing, we're protesting the dogma, which means the claim to the true interpretation of the Bibles. So the Bible is, it can't be denied that the Bible is metaphorical, you know. And for one person to come and say, well, this is how this metaphor is intended to be perceived. Well, that's what the Catholics did. The Catholics wanted to, well, they still do. I guess all church, sex, do in a way.

Starting point is 00:16:52 Which might be the first step in the evolution of where religion's heading, by the way. So just as a side note, it might be ultimately a tipping point where enough individuals educate themselves enough and not just educate, but actually actualize themselves in the world. And we'll recognize the true nature of the fact that we're all divine. We're all the most complex things in the universe. I always say that, but it's so true. and so at some point we're going to be able to make our own judgments

Starting point is 00:17:34 as to what what we need to gather from history in tradition, what we need and what we can dismiss in the sense of I don't need someone to be a mediator between me and God if I have developed myself in Young's terms become

Starting point is 00:17:54 if I've individuated myself enough to be able to be able to determined to determine my own destiny and relationship with whatever I define God as. So I think all of history is slowly the emergence, the realization that we are a part of the universe, which is something most people don't realize, that you're not this thing that studies the universe and learns about it, you are the universe. It's crazy to think about. think a select few people throughout history have discovered that to get back on the topic. These guys, they didn't want to kill innocent people. But the allies, it turned out,

Starting point is 00:18:44 didn't want to risk their own neck in being involved in a conspiracy to kill the king under which they were serving at the time. So Robert Cecil got this. And Mr. Mr. Montego avoided the gruesome punishments that were standard practice for treason at the time. And once Robert Cecil got this, he sent it to King James, who I think I was, okay, that's where I deviated, going back into Henry VIII. So Henry VIII was a Protestant. He claimed himself, and it does seem blasphemous, I guess, or... heretical, to claim yourself, to supplant the Pope's position, as the mediator between God and the people. Henry VIII had a couple kids, one rule, the boy rule until he died. I think that was Edward. And then there was Mary, and she actually reverted back to Catholicism. I don't know if it was

Starting point is 00:19:56 because she was coerced or not, but when she died, her younger sister, the daughter of Anne Bullitt was Elizabeth and Elizabeth actually went back to Protestantism which literally means they're protesting the Holy Roman Empire so I think the biggest point to be learned in this whole era this whole context here is that

Starting point is 00:20:28 the English Protestants and the Catholics were mortal enemies literally quite literally there was a massacre too I gotta bring that up St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, so 33 years before this. So it's like, you know, us in relation to the early 90s. This massacre was a targeted group of assassinations in a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots, which were French Protestants.

Starting point is 00:21:12 England and France, of course, being right next to each other. They, it was very, very, very. much present in their mind that Catholics were... We have a Catholic mob. Yeah, so I guess Catholics were the instigators in this one. Well, I'm sure there's a very complex history behind that as well. But nonetheless, the English, upon discovery of this conspiracy to blow up parliament, many English Protestants suspected that members of the Catholic minority were plotting to topple the monarchy

Starting point is 00:21:48 and impose a Catholic regime with foreign funding and aid. In this message seemed to confirm their suspicions. So the letter made its way to King James. He doubted it at first, but then Earl of Suffolk conducted a search of the Palace of Westminster, where England's parliament was due to meet the next day. But he did notice a privately rented ground floor storeroom that contained an unusually large amount of firewood.

Starting point is 00:22:23 So later that day, Sir Thomas Knaivit, a minor but trustworthy royal official, oversaw a second search, and there he found Guy Fawks. The same storeroom attracted his attention, as did the man Nivit found guarding it. He was not dressed like a watchman, instead he was wearing a cloak, boots, and spurs.

Starting point is 00:22:52 Clothes more suited, it seemed, for a quick getaway. Nivitt's men shifted the barwood around that they had found in the room and found 36 barrels of gunpowder, barrel like casks. The man who gave his name as John Johnson, believably enough, was found to have matches on his person. Niveit had uncovered an astonishing conspiracy to blow the members of the House of Parliament up, most of the royal family, and the leading officers of the state. The aim was to set up a Roman Catholic regime in Protestant England with James I's

Starting point is 00:23:38 daughter Elizabeth, who would not be in attendance as its puppet ruler. Arrested and tortured John Johnson, revealed that you couldn't come up with a more convincing name. revealed that he was from Yorkshire in northern England, and that his real name was Guy Fox. He was one of several Catholic conspirators in what became known as the gunpowder plot. While not the ringleader himself, Fox became the best known member

Starting point is 00:24:14 of the most famous conspiracy in English history. His capture had been illustrated in countless school books, novels, popular works of history, and movies. a tall bearded figure in boots, dark cloak, and dark, wide, brimmed hat. It is his figure that is still burned in effigy every year on November 5th. It's ultimately fundamentally a religious thing. It's like, do you want the king of this island to be directly connected with God, or do you want the king of the entire continent of Europe, called the Pope,

Starting point is 00:24:49 to be directly in connection with God? Like, God is the highest power. He's the ultimate person you bow to, the final arbiter of good and evil on earth. I think people were very upset that the tradition of Catholicism was broken by Luther and the Protestants. And I think they feared a tyranny by the kings if they allowed the kings to remain the heads. the highest religious leader. I think there were probably many bishops, many clerical personnel that were probably pretty upset.

Starting point is 00:25:34 Usually the separation of church and state, well, it had been a long debate since the Middle Ages, actually. So the history of this isn't just, you know, Luther wrote up the 95 Theses, and a couple kings decided to run away with that and claim sovereignty over the land and spiritual nature of their kingdom. It was more like this was an idea that the Pope had been disputed,

Starting point is 00:26:06 his authority as the single, the Godhead, if you will. I hope you will. On earth had been disputed because the Pope, let's be honest, the Pope's only a man, as spiritual as he might be as in touch with his inner self

Starting point is 00:26:26 as he might be he's still only a man and actually I just found this out I just found out that the Pope is actually only another bishop it's just in the western hemisphere you have Rome in the west and then the center of

Starting point is 00:26:41 you have Constantinople which is like Turkey Istanbul is actually the I think the center of Christianity in the East. But there's a really good channel out there who does history of Christianity. Very interesting snippets. But the Pope, it's unique to Western Christianity that the Pope is revered. He's the bishop of bishops. Whereas in the East, they believe that there is no pope.

Starting point is 00:27:29 there is only bishops and those bishops convene to decide what Catholicism as a whole should act out and should believe in and should hold as its

Starting point is 00:27:45 core tenets. So it's very, very interesting that there's refutation of the Pope's authority even in the church. It's been, yeah, ever since the East-West Schism of 1054s, So this wasn't, you know, the church has been split a few times.

Starting point is 00:28:04 There's been a lot of schisms because ultimately Christianity is, it comes down to the fact that Jesus was so in touch with himself that he claimed to be in direct communication with God. In fact, he claimed to be the son of God. And he claimed to speak on God's behalf. I think there's so much truth in spirituality that we couldn't help but carry on the message of Jesus. He was so confident that he understood the truth of being and his own reality, and his own nature, his own spirit, his own personality, his own soul, I guess, that he was willing to die for what he believed in. But this schism happened

Starting point is 00:29:09 because we don't know how to necessarily interpret finally, in a final sense, this profound but also metaphorical book about how to orient ourselves in the world, in which direction to lead entire nations. So this instance of Protestantism and the kings developing their own Anglican church in England, the Church of England, and claiming themselves as the head of the Church of England, which actually is apparently what Queen Elizabeth even now today. It's still a contemporary tradition.

Starting point is 00:29:55 Apparently Guy Fawkes and his buddies felt that creating a new church was divisive. and Europe should be a whole thing under the Pope. Yeah, he was willing to get killed and tortured, I guess. But if not, he was willing to blow up a bunch of people. So, political and religious instability of the times, unleashed by the Reformation, resulted in the pitting of Catholics against Protestants throughout Europe. In England, religious strife resulted in the accession of Elizabeth,

Starting point is 00:30:35 first in 1558. In the following years, she and her advisors created a religious settlement, which envisaged a Protestant national church. The monarch was at its head, although it retained bishops, along with the traditional church courts, and some pre-Reformation ceremonial practices. Many English Catholics refused to accept this, though. In this period, it was generally accepted. accepted in Europe that all subjects of a state should adhere to its official form of Christianity to achieve the religious uniformity, the Elizabethan regime forbade Catholic worship, including performance of baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Being a practicing Catholic was punishable by law, fines which could be very heavy for habitual Catholic offenders.

Starting point is 00:31:34 and even those refusing to attend England English Church services to all men taking administrative office from members of Parliament to school teachers had to swear an oath denying the power of the Pope in recognizing Elizabeth as the head of the church. Elsewhere, England was involved in constant warfare in Ireland,

Starting point is 00:32:02 which was populated by Catholics. English statesmen feared Spanish intervention on behalf of England's Catholics, while conversely English Catholics looked to Spain for armed support. English Protestant propaganda stressed atrocities committed in the name of Catholicism. The English population was also constantly reminded of the more than 280 people burned

Starting point is 00:32:30 in five years by Elizabeth's Catholic, predecessor, Mary the First, in the 1570 papal bull, which had declared Elizabeth illegitimate, and encouraged her subjects to rebel against her. By the close of the 16th century, the Spanish Armada dispatched in 1588 by Philip II of Spain, but defeated by Elizabeth was still a fresh memory, along with its mission to reimpose Catholicism in England. So he had Spain just sitting just south of England there. And I guess for you guys it would be like this. And they were fully Catholic.

Starting point is 00:33:16 So they were out there. This was Spain's heyday. They just set Columbus to a century before, I guess, to discover America, or the New World at least. They were fully Catholic. They were very, very close with the Pope, and the Pope was still trying to reach his greedy hands all over Europe. He didn't want sovereign nations.

Starting point is 00:33:45 He wanted a unified thing, which worked good in his favor. It would make him more powerful, no doubt. Lots of money coming in. That's revenue that he didn't want to miss out on, you know. People claiming sovereignty and claiming Protestant church authority would really affect. affect his bottom line. So, you know, he ultimately, St. Peter's, St. Peter's Basilica is it? I mean, he wanted to just coat that thing in gold, essentially.

Starting point is 00:34:24 And I have, you know, I mean, it's hard to pick up good and a bad guy, but obviously, it wasn't like Guy Fawkes was protesting in the way that V in the movie V for Vendez. was portrayed as clearly good and clearly a victim of a very oppressive Orwell-esque governmental and base of intrusive authority. This was the context of being burned at the stake and torturing being the norm for punishments like treason. This was in the context of continual ebbs and flows of land grabs among all Europe and England as well and the the budding philosophies and theologies of new ways to interpret religion. You know, if I want to worship God, I don't want to have to go to Mass. I don't want to have

Starting point is 00:35:37 to pay indulgences to get in the heaven. I don't want to have to worship the Pope as though he's God on earth. And that's where the Puritans popped up. They believed that they wanted it to just be a pure connection with God. Then you have the Unitarians, which didn't believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Trinity. They believed it was all unified. It was all one. There's all these ways of interpreting these deep, deep,

Starting point is 00:36:11 Bedrock Foundation believes that most people, even today, I've looked into it, and I still have no idea like the depths of these arguments. They get into such subtleties. There's so many little subtle nuance interpretations of the Bible, and people die for this. And it's, I mean, it's no wonder. It's the most important thing that we have going for. You know, we have an idea that we are divine, and we are the most complex, most fully conscious things that we are aware of.

Starting point is 00:36:51 So, of course, we think we're divine. And we are literally, the more we figure out about science and subatomic physics and cosmology, we're literally a way, we're made up of, we're made up of atoms that are forged in the hearts of stars and blown into, far corners of a galaxy that coalesce in the star systems and then are rebirthed in planets and then over four billion years we've come into existence as human beings so this is a crazy time to be alive I mean we think our time is very chaotic it's always been like this there's never been a time in peace where there's nothing to be done It's always these entities in relation to these other entities that own land and want to exert power. And, you know, for the most part, most people have just been fighting for survival.

Starting point is 00:38:02 And now, in just the last three or four hundred years, enough of the population has been wealthy enough to be able to actually think and learn and educate themselves and find out what it is that's taken place in history. and that's what we're doing today i guess you know this it's it's so compelling to believe that to see this and not it's hard not to believe that this is a it's a really long slow realization that we're that we all the individual sovereignty is paramount. So it's pretty chaotic all around the Western Europe with Spain, France,

Starting point is 00:39:07 England, essentially a religious, spiritual, civil war constantly going on. Spain is mostly Catholic. France is figuring themselves out. England at this point, although it's fluctuated quite a bit,

Starting point is 00:39:25 is mostly Protestant. So Elizabeth the first, so when Henry the 8th, one of his sons, I think it was Edward, then one of his daughters, Mary, and then one of his other daughters, Elizabeth, they were the line of tutors, D-U-D-O-R, and after Elizabeth died, she was a virgin, she didn't have a kid, so they were the last of the line of tutors who were very, who made a name for themselves, for being very heavy-handed. they were effective. They weren't passive and they weren't able to be walked over.

Starting point is 00:40:03 And then comes in this new guy from Scotland. He was known up there as James the 6th. And actually Elizabeth, interestingly enough, killed James' mother. He didn't directly kill her, but had her killed. But nonetheless, he was raised Protestant. And so he wanted to continue the thread of Protestantism in England. So the son of Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, James was Protestant.

Starting point is 00:40:45 But English Catholics were hopeful that he would be more sympathetic to them because he was actually very learned, a bit showy in his scholarship. And here to put it in the perspective, This book here actually has a part about the gunpowder plots right here. Above the economic and political strife, but deeply, deeply rooted in it, the religious warfare raged. Half the pamphlets that bruised the air were blasts of Puritans against Anglicans, Anglican bishops in ritual.

Starting point is 00:41:31 And the Anglicans, so the Puritans wanted to get rid of the, what do you call it? The infrastructure of religion. They wanted it to be more personal instead of like you have to go to a church or you have to, you have to, in deference to these people who proclaim to be more religious and more in touch with God than you were. They didn't want any intermediary. They wanted it to be a pure relationship between you and you. God. So Puritans were against Anglican bishops in the rituals that went along with it.

Starting point is 00:42:15 And Anglicans were against Puritans their rigor and intransigence. We're against the Catholic plots to restore England to papal obedience. Period. James underrated, so King James I, underrated the intensity of these hatreds. He dreamed of an entomized. Demai Cordial between Puritans and Anglicans and for that purpose he called a he called their

Starting point is 00:42:49 leaders to a conference at Hampton Court in January 1604 he says here he presided like Constantine and astonished both parties with his theological learning and his debating skills but he insisted on one doctrine and one discipline, one religion in substance and ceremony, and declared Episcopacy indispensable. But it says nothing came of the conference except the unexpectedly historic decision to make a new translation of the Bible. And this would be called, this would be called the King James version of the Bible, 1604. And then James, um, He disgraced himself by having two Unitarians burned for doubting the divinity of Christ.

Starting point is 00:43:57 So there is intermittently some resolution between, some compromise at least, between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. And there's a little bit of peace after enough people had died in mass curds. But not Katsby. And Katesby had a vendetta to settle. Some Catholic dissidents, however, sought to overthrow Protestant rule in England. King James' adherence to the 1559 settlement and public continuance of intolerant policies inspired some to take a more active role to place a Catholic monarch on the throne. So it's a tension that King James was a little ostentatious, a little obvious in his proclamation of wanting to be,

Starting point is 00:44:50 he was so well learned and I guess that's the proverbial devil coming out in him the devil is always the one that's too enamored of their own intelligence and they believe that they don't have to they don't have to bow to any outside authority

Starting point is 00:45:07 if they understand divinity enough within them they don't believe they're often marked by lacking humility and maybe that's what James's fault ultimately was. I mean, granted, he was a king and he had to deal with wars and people's lives, literally depending on his decisions all the time. So I don't think many of us could

Starting point is 00:45:41 picture having such a heavy burden. You know, heavy as the crown sort of thing, as Jack Nicholson said. Let me open this book. I threw it down. threw it down in aggravation, but I do think King James's actions will be put into context a little bit better. For the most part, James was a tolerant dogmatist. He offended the Puritans by permitting and even encouraging Sunday sports. So Sunday sports goes a long way back, provided one had first attended Anglican services. He was inclined to relax the laws against Catholics. Over the heads of Robert Cecil and the council, he suspended the resuscency laws. He allowed priests to enter the country and say mass in private homes, not public churches.

Starting point is 00:46:56 he dreamed in his loose and philosophical way of reconciling Catholic and Protestant Christendom. But when Catholics multiplied in this sunshine and the Puritans denounced his lenience, he allowed the Elizabethan anti-Catholic laws to be renewed and even extended and enforced in 1604 to send anyone abroad to a Catholic call was made punishable by a fine of 100 pounds.

Starting point is 00:47:35 I think that's pretty much like saying $100,000 nowadays. A person's neglecting Anglican services were fined 20 pounds per month. Any default in paying such fines involved forfeiture of property, including cattle on delinquent's lands, all his furniture, and wearing apparel. were to be seized by the crown. So, you know, I guess he made the mistake of trying to be too lenient and retracting his leniency over compensating

Starting point is 00:48:26 and gaining enemies by the people he oppressed. And Catesby. So this is about Guy Fawkes, but you don't know Guy Fawkes unless he was recruited by Catesby. Some Catholic dissidents sought to overthrow King James. One such person was Catesby the son of a gentry Catholic family from the English Midlands, so he was from wealth. Although less famous than Guy Fawkes today,

Starting point is 00:49:00 he was in fact the charismatic and persuasive Catsby who organized what later became the gunpowder plot. In his early 30s when he conceived the plot, Catesby had a strong, attractive personality. A Victorian historian declared he said to have exercised magical influence on all who mixed with him. He used his charisma to sell the belief that only extreme spectacular violence

Starting point is 00:49:31 would end the persecution suffered by the English Catholics. The idea of using gunpowder had occurred to him in 1603, and Cates B. began recruiting in early 1604, the plan to blow up Parliament in King James I, in the hopes that a Catholic rule could be restored in the aftermath. So the plot's first members belonged to the disaffected Catholic gentry. Thomas Winter, John Wright, and Thomas Percy. They were all in their 30s, maybe young 40s. Thomas Winter traveled to Flanders, which was under Spanish rule at the time.

Starting point is 00:50:19 time to seek out Spanish assistance, but Spain wasn't interested. Luckily, Winter found someone who was, Guy Fox. Guy Fox, a former schoolmate of Wright, going by the name Guido at the time. The English Fox was fighting for the Spanish in Flanders. Born a Protestant in York in 1570, Fox later converted to Cue. Catholicism. Intelligent, tough, and cool-headed, his qualities were noted by English Catholics. Winter learned of fox's extensive expertise and explosives and convinced them to join the plot. In May 1604, at the Duck and Drake Inn in London, the five men met and swore an oath of loyalty.

Starting point is 00:51:17 Scholars have wondered just what the impact of the gunpowder plot would have been, actually. if they'd been able to explode it. The Center for Explosion Studies at the University of Abburst-With in Wales sought to find out. If Fox had been able to ignite the barrels, there would have been total destruction within a 40-yard radius.

Starting point is 00:51:43 Walls and roofs destroyed at 100 yards and windows broken as far as 900 yards away. The houses of Parliament in Westminster Abbey would have been completely destroyed, while structures in Whitehall, about a third of a mile away, would have been damaged as well. Catesby's explosive attack on the English crown took shape in the months that followed. Percy began living in a house close to Parliament with Fox.

Starting point is 00:52:13 By then adopting his pseudonym, John Johnson posed as his servant. So that must have been, maybe that was common. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt there, hoping, assuming he was put on the spot when he got discovered and that's all he could think of. But, uh, nope, John Johnson was what he arrived at six months beforehand. So the plotters began acquiring gunpowder. And the conspiracy later grew to include members who provided funds and further resources. They were Robert Keyes, Robert Winter, John Grant, Christopher Wright, and the servant Thomas Bates. In March 1605, Percy rented a basement storeroom at the Palace of Westminster.

Starting point is 00:53:08 The gunpowder was then transported directly there, where under the expert supervision of Fox, it could do the most damage. three wealthy influential men Ambrose Rookwood Francis Tresham and Sir Evard Digby joined the conspiracy bringing the total number to 13 Should have added one more Several times they planned to launch the attack

Starting point is 00:53:36 When Parliament opened but delays forced them to wait Finally in November 1605 It appeared that the plan would finally be set in motion it's remarkable that with a total of 13 plotters the conspiracy stayed secret until Lord Montego received his letter. Scholars have long puzzled over the identity of the sender. One candidate is Montegel's own brother-in-law, Francis Treshman, one of Kate Spee's co-conspirators, but no conclusive proof is found. But in any case, once Montegel handed over the letter, the search was ordered

Starting point is 00:54:26 and Fox was arrested and brought to the Tower of London in the early hours of November 5th. So Fox was able to resist interrogation, that is, until King James ordered torture on November 6th, 1605, who only then relented and confessed. By then, many of the conspirators had fled, but the king's forces moved swiftly to hunt them down.

Starting point is 00:54:58 Catesby, Percy, and Christopher Wright were killed in a shootout and Stappertshire in Northern England with James I first soldiers. Catesby's death spared him from the grisly punishments, meted out to traitors, but also denied historians of his version of punishments. Sorry, I misread that. His versions of how the conspiracy unfolded, how the idea of blowing up parliament came to him, as well as, the way in which he recruited his team of conspirators. The rest were caught, taken back to London, and convicted of treason. Except for Francis Tresham, who died in prison before his trial, all who were tried were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Just because I know you guys are not going to be able to sleep

Starting point is 00:56:19 until you know what hanged drawn and quartered means, Well, you know what hanged means. From a 1352 statutory penalty in England for men convicted of high treason under Henry III, a convicted trader was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, which along rough terrain, even on asphalt,

Starting point is 00:56:57 even if it was paved, it would still rip the bark off pretty good. drawn by horse to place of execution where he was then hanged almost to the point of death, almost. And he was emasculating. I'll let you imagine what that means. Disembowed, beheaded, which means chopped into four pieces. The trader's remains were often displayed in prominent places

Starting point is 00:57:28 across the country, such as the London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high trees, were instead burned at the stake. I think we've come a long way since then. Fox and the others were set for execution in January 1606. James is described, he's quoted as saying, these rutches who thought to have blown up the whole world of this island. Fox was able to escape his full sentence, though.

Starting point is 00:58:17 On the day of execution, he jumped from the gallows, breaking his own neck in the fall. Smart guy. Nonetheless, his corpse was quartered and sent to the four corners of the kingdom. The other men received the full measure of their sentences, his warning to other potential rebels. King James' reaction was remarkably circumspect. He was anxious to avoid both a pogrom against the Catholic subjects

Starting point is 00:58:48 and diplomatic tensions with Catholic states. His speech to parliament and official sermons preached by leading churchmen stressed the heinousness of the plot, but also accepted that many English Catholics were still loyal subjects. The miraculous nature of the plot's discovery proved an important propaganda tool you can imagine how competent he claimed his court was in order to be able to figure out that plot.

Starting point is 00:59:22 There's a very important propaganda tool. Even before the executions of the plotters, Parliament passed the Thanksgiving Act of 1606, requiring every parish church in England to deliver a sermon on November 5th, thanking God for the deliverance from the Catholic plot. Over time, the day, of Thanksgiving, it morphed in the Guy Fox Day called a Bonfire Night throughout the

Starting point is 00:59:54 UK. Every November 5th, fireworks representing gunpowder, and bonfires marked the occasion with straw effigies of Fox called Guys being burned. Despite not being the ringleader of the conspiracy, Fox became the face of it and was elevated to lasting fame.

Let's Find Out - Guy Fawkes and the Failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 | ASMR [soft-spoken, history]

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