History Spotlight, 1/27

The trial of Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot began on this day in 1606. The Gunpowder Plot was another chapter in the fun Catholic/Protestant violence that raged in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, in this case it was Catholic-on-Protestant violence.
Let's start with the gist of the plot. At the time, the basement of the Houses of Parliament was run like a self-storage operation. You paid your shillings and rented a spot and put your stuff in it. Guy Fawkes rented many lockers and filled them with gunpowder in advance of opening day when the King James I, most of his family and all the members of Parliament would be there. Once they were disposed of the idea was to start a rebellion in the heavily Catholic north and put a Catholic back on the throne.
It didn't work out as planned.
Catholics had hoped that the James I would turn the tide of anti-Catholicism that had gripped England since at least Bloody Mary was on the throne (and she was probably the cause of a lot of it). After all, his mother, Mary Queen of Scots was practically a Catholic martyr in England having been beheaded by Elizabeth I for attempting to usurp the throne. But James was only a baby when Mary was killed and he was raised as a Protestant. Plus, rocking the boat wasn't really the way James rolled. So, while the English Catholics had hoped for James to encourage toleration of Catholics, he wasn't about to tick off the powerful Protestant factions.
The Catholics, for their part, were feeling desperate. Bloody Mary had burned plenty of Catholics, but nobody seemed to remember that. As always, the victors write the history books and, in this case the history book was John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. This book laid out in lurid, gory detail the death of every Protestant at the hands of the Catholics, with the last third being reserved for Bloody Mary's executions.
They started moving in the gunpowder in 1604 but, due to plague, the opening of Parliament was delayed again and again. By the time Parliament did open, they had managed to hide 36 barrels of gunpowder - enough to reduce the Houses of Parliament to rubble.
The plan failed for the reasons these things fail, because somebody talked. The somebody in this case was Sir Francis Tresham who had been brought on board because he was rich and could help the planned rebellion in the North. Tresham had an attack of conscience, especially when he realized that his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, was one of the ones due to go up in smoke. Monteagle received an anonymous letter saying basically, "Don't go to Parliament on this day," and promptly alerted the proper authorities who searched the basement. They found, down there, Guy Fawkes sitting on a barrel of gunpowder with a slow burning fuse, a watch and matches. You don't need to be McMillan & Wife to figure this one out.
Fawkes was tortured into giving a confession and giving up all of his conspirators. The rebellion, needless to say, failed. Guy Fawkes went on trial on January 26, 1606 and was executed on January 31, 1606. The thing that cracks me up is knowing that all of these trust-fund anarchists who run around with their Guy Fawkes V for Vendetta masks on are, in actuality, paying homage to a Catholic terrorist.