05/11/2022
Guy Fawkes was born in 1570 and educated in York; his father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic.
Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years' War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. Devoted to his religion he desired a return of England to the Catholic faith. While traveling the continent he met Thomas Wintour, the pair returned to England where they were introduced to Robert Catesby. At the time Catesby was planning an assassination on King James I in the hopes of restoring a Catholic monarch to the throne. Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder that they stockpiled under the House of Lords. Authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords.
Fawkes was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He was to be executed alongside three other conspirators, including Thomas Wintour. He was the last to be executed and had to stand and watch the terrible fate that awaited him. However he died when his neck was broken as he was hanged, with some sources claiming that he deliberately jumped to make this happen. His lifeless body was still drawn and quartered. While not the instigator nor one of the major players he has became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, perhaps because he was the one found red handed.The failure of the plot has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night, since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks.
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