REMEMBER REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
by James Sharpe
Profile, £15.99; 240pp
£14.39 (free p&p)
GUNPOWDER: THE PLAYERS BEHIND THE PLOT
by James Travers
The National Archives, £19.99; 192pp
£17.99 (free p&p) 0870 1608080
www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
IT IS THE MOST CELEBRATED conspiracy in English history, even though its details have now been all but forgotten. Guy Fawkes is remembered still only as the effigy, the “guy”, ceremonially installed upon the bonfire. But in Remember Remember, James Sharpe makes the pertinent point that there are no longer guys on the autumn streets and that the ritual call of “a penny for the guy” is no longer heard; he dates their disappearance to the 1970s. Can it really be that long ago? It has the enchantment of all lost things.
The details may need rehearsal. On the night preceding the parliamentary session of November 5, 1605, a party of gentlemen and soldiers apprehended a spurred and booted fellow lurking in the passages beneath the House of Lords. He was carrying the keys to an adjacent cellar and, on inspection of these premises, the officials found 36 barrels of gunpowder. The man himself was carrying three fuses.
It has been calculated by modern experts on armaments that the intended explosion would have razed the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey. The entire area would have been destroyed, with terrible loss of life, creating more devastation than the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. The destruction would have been all the more terrible in its choice of the sovereign as the principal target. It is hard to reimagine a period dominated by the idea of divine kingship, but belief in the absolute sacredness of the royal person was still deeply imbued. He was the destined representative of God, possessing quasi- miraculous powers. To assassinate James I would have been to throw the entire moral and social and religious order into confusion.
So the Roman Catholic conspirators, as they turned out to be, were doubly damned as traitors and putative king-killers. The papists had been marginalised, or victimised, by the Tudor authorities. Now all the propaganda concerning their demonic intentions seemed to have been justified. They were nefarious and bloody traitors, financed by the enemies of England and driven by an insensate desire to destroy a Protestant nation. The gunpowder plotters did not demolish the Houses of Parliament, as they had hoped, but they certainly buried the “old faith” for a generation or more.
That is why two of these books make the connection between the Catholic conspirators of the early 17th century and the Muslim terrorists of the early 21st century. They are all religious extremists, combining selfless zealotry with malicious intent. The modern terrorists bear as little relation to the Muslim people as Guy Fawkes and his colleagues bore to the Catholic population of England. But the association stuck. To judge by the history of this country, it will take a century or more before the damage can be undone.
The plotters were led by Robert Catesby, a man apparently possessed of both energy and charisma. He was connected with a wide circle of recusant families, so called simply because they refused to attend the services of the established Church. The new King, James I, was not inclined to favour their interests, despite originally being considered by them a pronounced improvement upon Elizabeth. James was, after all, the son of the “martyred” Mary Queen of Scots, a thoroughly Catholic queen. Yet the papists were discontented. The sovereign had not given them enough.
So, on a Sunday in the spring of 1604, five conspirators met in a tavern near the Strand. One of their number was Guy or Guido Fawkes who, despite his assumed Christian name, was of Yorkshire stock. He was described by contemporaries as “pleasant of approach and cheerful of manner, opposed to quarrels and strife”. It is surprising how wrong contemporaries can be. This merry man was to become the hate figure of the nation for hundreds of years. That is why a book such as Gunpowder, based on original and archival sources, is so interesting for the human and social context in which it places the opposed forces of the time.
There were 13 conspirators in all, the fateful number arranging that the destruction of Parliament should be succeeded by a Catholic uprising and the placing of the King’s eight-year-old daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, on the throne. In a charming essay in Gunpowder Plots, Antonia Fraser speculates on the alternative history of a young Elizabeth II brought to the throne after a national tragedy.
But the conspiracy unravelled, as conspiracies will. An incriminating letter had been sent, warning one of the King’s men to stay away from that day’s Parliament. It was revealed to the appropriate authorities, and the search begun.
The uproar was considerable, the consequences for the Catholic community profound. Parliament passed “An Act of Public Thanksgiving to Almighty God every Year on the Fifth Day of November”. This essentially secular festival replaced All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day at the beginning of the month, leading to satisfaction all round. Bonfire Night had begun its long and fiery history. The day of public prayer endured until 1859; the fun and fireworks continued long after.
It began as the celebration of what was essentially a religious allegory; the fireballs in the water represented, according to James Sharpe, “the papists’ conjuration with infernal spirits” and the fireworks or “chambers of light” symbolised “England's willingness to cherish the light of the gospel”. In the later years of the 17th century it became a general anti-Catholic rally when the Whore of Babylon, wearing the triple tiara of the Pope, was burned in effigy. This painted image was often stuffed with live cats, who shrieked and screamed as they burned; their cries were popularly believed to represent converse between the pontiff and the devil.
By the late 18th century the festival had become what one observer called “a pretext for a little noise”, in other words, a party. There was another important change, too, with the arrival of Guy Fawkes as the idol to be incinerated. By the early 19th century he was everywhere — in popular theatre, in pantomime, in public ballads and in novels. The reasons for his resurrection are obscure. It was no longer fashionable to mock the Pope, or to berate Roman Catholics for their allegiances, and so perhaps another fall-Guy had to be found.
In many towns and villages, the ritual became an occasion for general drunkenness, ribaldry and disorder. The Bonfire Boys of Lewes became notorious for what the Sussex Weekly Advertiser called “riotous and brutalising orgies”. They fired a giant squib known as the “Lewes Rouser”. That is the English way. It is perhaps not so surprising that this night of fireworks has remained the only major event in the national ritual calendar. The Americanised Hallowe ’en will never displace it. In an interesting essay in Gunpowder Plots, Mike Jay charts the present state of Bonfire Night in Lewes, as a “dark carnival”, fuelled by drink and magic mushrooms.
Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night may be an echo or a reprise of communal rituals that have endured in one form or another for thousands of years. James Sharpe speculates that it might represent “an amorphous early winter fire festival” with roots in the Celtic rituals of Samhain. These matters are not susceptible of proof. But it is at least suggestive that the rituals and passions of the past are still among us. We no longer execrate the Pope, but we love the alcohol and the fire.
