Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated in York; his father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic.
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of English Roman Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, who considered their actions attempted tyrannicide and who sought regime change in England after decades of religious persecution.
Robert Catesby was the leader of a group of English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Warwickshire, Catesby was educated at Oxford University. His family were prominent recusant Catholics, and presumably to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy he left college before taking his degree. He married a Protestant in 1593 and fathered two children, one of whom survived birth and was baptised in a Protestant church. In 1601 he took part in the Essex Rebellion but was captured and fined, after which he sold his estate at Chastleton.
Henry Garnet, sometimes Henry Garnett, was an English Jesuit priest executed for high treason, based solely on having had advanced knowledge of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and having refused to violate the Seal of the Confessional by notifying the authorities. Born in Heanor, Derbyshire, he was educated in Nottingham and later at Winchester College before he moved to London in 1571 to work for a publisher. There he professed an interest in legal studies and in 1575, he travelled to the continent and joined the Society of Jesus. He was ordained in Rome some time around 1582.
Francis Tresham was a member of the group of English provincial Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I of England.
William Parker, 13th Baron Morley, 4th Baron Monteagle, was an English peer, best known for his role in the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In 1605 Parker was due to attend the opening of Parliament. He was a member of the House of Lords as Lord Monteagle, the title on his mother's side. He received a letter; it appears that someone, presumably a fellow Catholic, was afraid he would be blown up. The so-called Monteagle letter survives in the National Archives, but its origin remains mysterious.
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and fireworks displays. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605 O.S., when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. The Catholic plotters had intended to assassinate Protestant king James I and his parliament. Celebrating that the king had survived, people lit bonfires around London. Months later, the Observance of 5th November Act mandated an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure.
Robert Wintour and Thomas Wintour, also spelt Winter, were members of the Gunpowder Plot, a failed conspiracy to assassinate King James I. Brothers, they were related to other conspirators, such as their cousin, Robert Catesby, and a half-brother, John Wintour, also joined them following the plot's failure. Thomas was an intelligent and educated man, fluent in several languages and trained as a lawyer, but chose instead to become a soldier, fighting for England in the Low Countries, France, and possibly in Central Europe. By 1600, however, he changed his mind and became a fervent Catholic. On several occasions he travelled to the continent and entreated Spain on behalf of England's oppressed Catholics, and suggested that with Spanish support a Catholic rebellion was likely.
Ambrose Rookwood was a member of the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant King James I with a Catholic sovereign. Rookwood was born into a wealthy family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits in Flanders. His older brother became a Franciscan, and his two younger brothers were ordained as Catholic priests. Rookwood became a horse-breeder. He married the Catholic Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, and had at least two sons.
Sir Everard Digby was a member of the group of provincial members of the English nobility who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Although he was raised in an Anglican household and married a Protestant, Digby and his wife were secretly received into the strictly illegal and underground Catholic Church in England by the Jesuit priest Fr. John Gerard. In the autumn of 1605, he made a Christian pilgrimage to the shrine of St Winefride's Well in Holywell, Wales. About this time, he met Robert Catesby, who was planning to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder as an alleged act of tyrannicide and a decapitation strike against King James I. Catesby then planned to lead a popular uprising aimed at regime change, through which a Catholic monarch would be placed upon the English throne.
Ashby St Ledgers is a village in the West Northamptonshire district of Northamptonshire, England. The post town is Rugby in Warwickshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 173. The Manor House is famous for being a location for the planning of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. As of 2023, the property had been restored and could be rented for a fee.
Thomas Percy was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was a tall, physically impressive man; little is known of his early life beyond his matriculation in 1579 at the University of Cambridge, and his marriage in 1591 to Martha Wright. In 1596 his second cousin once removed, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, appointed him constable of Alnwick Castle and made him responsible for the Percy family's northern estates. He served the earl in the Low Countries in about 1600–1601, and in the years before 1603 was his intermediary in a series of confidential communications with King James VI of Scotland.
John (Jack) Wright, and Christopher (Kit) Wright, were members of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords. Their sister married another plotter, Thomas Percy. Educated at the same school in York, the Wrights had early links with Guy Fawkes, the man left in charge of the explosives stored in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords. As known recusants the brothers were on several occasions arrested for reasons of national security. Both were also members of the Earl of Essex's rebellion of 1601.
Robert Keyes (1565–1606) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605. He was the sixth man to join the plot.
Thomas Bates was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Holbeche House is a mansion located approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Kingswinford, now in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley but historically in Staffordshire. Some members of the Gunpowder Plot were either killed or captured at Holbeche House in 1605.
John Grant was a member of the failed Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant King James I of England with a Catholic monarch. Grant was born around 1570, and lived at Norbrook in Warwickshire. He married the sister of another plotter, Thomas Wintour. Grant was enlisted by Robert Catesby, a religious zealot who had grown so impatient with James's lack of toleration for Catholics that he planned to kill him, by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Grant's role in the conspiracy was to provide supplies for a planned Midlands uprising, during which James's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, would be captured. However, on the eve of the planned explosion, Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding the explosives the plotters had positioned in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and arrested.
The novel Guy Fawkes first appeared as a serial in Bentley's Miscellany, between January and November 1840. It was subsequently published as a three-volume set in July 1841, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The first of William Harrison Ainsworth's seven "Lancashire novels", the story is based on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Ainsworth relied heavily on historical documents describing the trial and execution of the conspirators, of whom Fawkes was one, but he also embellished the known facts. He invented the character of Viviana Radcliffe, daughter of the prominent Radcliffe family of Ordsall Hall – who becomes Fawkes's wife – and introduced gothic and supernatural elements into the story, such as the ability of the alchemist, John Dee, to raise the spirits of the dead.
The Gunpowder Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The conspirators' aim was to blow up the House of Lords at the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, while the king and many other important members of the aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirator who became most closely associated with the plot in the popular imagination was Guy Fawkes, who had been assigned the task of lighting the fuse to the explosives.
Gunpowder is a British historical drama television miniseries produced by Kudos and Kit Harington's Thriker Films for BBC One. The three-part drama series premiered on BBC One in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2017 and on HBO in the United States on 18 December 2017.
