So, tomorrow is Bonfire Night, and like every Brit on here, I am basically super excited to put on a toasty hat and a snuggly scarf and light some sparklers and write my own name in mid-air and also maybe some swear words and celebrate a hideous marker in the bloody and senseless war between Catholics and Protestants
because yes, non-British followers, this particular festival has a very weird background, and it involves men with big hats and government conspiracies and also a king who thought that all women were witches so he kissed men instead, and it’s all an absolute romp.
Gunpowder, torture and Time Warner
So, let’s set the scene. It’s 1605, and England (and Wales and Scotland, because colonialism) is under the rule of King James I. Now, there are several things that are noteworthy about James I. Firstly, he would definitely be played by Billy Connolly in a biopic. There is absolutely no question about that. Secondly, he was the kind of guy who hated women so much that he was one of the earliest believers in witches in Britain, and he also thought that kissing dudes was totally better than kissing women – which is a fine idea, but when it’s rooted in rampant misogyny rather than anything else, it becomes a bit questionable. Thirdly, yes, he was the dude who commissioned the King James Bible, meaning that all the plebs of England (and Wales and Scotland, because colonialism) could read the word of God in English rather
than Latin. This third and arguably second most important point is because James was a Protestant, and therefore believed that the common people should be able to read the Bible.
And hey, that’s a nice idea, but it also happens to be exactly what the Catholics of England (and Wales and Scotland, because colonialism) didn’t like. They also weren’t exactly fans of the constant oppression that Catholics faced, because people who are facing persecution generally don’t really enjoy it very much, which I think is understandable.
The reason for all this bad blood, most of which was being spilt on the streets in some fashion, was because England (and Wales, because colonialism, but not Scotland, because Scotland was only brought into the English monarchy equation with the coronation of James I – it’s complicated) had been switching between a Catholic and Protestant monarchy for a good while. Before James, starting in 1547 with Edward VI, the country’s religion had changed more frequently than Miley Cyrus at the VMAs. Henry VIII had changed the religion of the country from Catholicism to the Church of England in 1534, but he’d only done that so that he could marry Anne Boleyn – he was still a Catholic in ceremonial and religious terms, and he didn’t bother
changing the country’s religious practices. This meant that Protestants were still largely persecuted, because as we all know, ruining the lives of people with different religious beliefs to you is all par for the course in British history. This all changed in 1547, when Edward VI – who had been raised a Protestant – took the throne, and until his death in 1553, Britain converted to Protestantism. That changed again when Edward’s sister, Mary I, took the throne, and from 1553 to 1558 Britain was Catholic once more, and around 280 ‘heretics’ (mostly Protestants) were burnt. After Mary came Elizabeth I, who made the country Protestant and executed thousands more heretics (mostly Catholics). So, James I – who took the throne in 1603 – was basically just continuing a long and vested tradition of persecution and religious dictatorship. How nice.
Here is a simplified diagram of the changes, because I love spreadsheets.
Anyway, back to 1605. It had been 2 years since James took the throne, and Catholics were getting fed up of waiting for greater religious freedom. A group of Catholics, who most history books refer to as ‘activists’ – because hey, white people – decided that waiting is just not getting them anywhere, and that the best way to jump the queue would be to blow up the House of Lords. The House of Lords is the upper house of Parliament, but that’s not hugely important – all you really need to know is that it’s where loads of posh people would meet up and kiss each other on the lips in a manly way and then decide which laws to pass and which poor people to screw over that year. Anyway, in late 1605, a dude named Robert Catesby and twelve of his dandy friends hatched a cunning plan to rent a house near the House of Lords and sneak 36 barrels of gunpowder into the basement on November 5th, after which they’d presumably dance around the smoking ashes of the Protestant government and sing songs about how fighting religious oppression is best done with gunpowder, or something.
Unfortunately for Catesby & co., an anonymous letter was sent to a baron at the House of Lords in October – which was probably for the best, because one of the members of the group had actually confessed the plot to a priest, who was bound by absolute confidentiality to keep it a secret and was later hanged for treason – and on November 4th, a search of the basements was conducted. Out of the thirteen plotters, one man named Guido Fawkes (‘Guy’ to his terrorist friends) was caught guarding the barrels of
gunpowder. By the next day, the whole plot had been quashed. He was tortured to the point of being unable to write his own name – and if you’re wondering how that’s possible, do a search on Google for ‘the
rack’ (but please make sure that you have safe search very much ON) – and he, along with the remaining seven of the plotters who hadn’t already been shot in a badass Mexican standoff, was sentenced to be hanged,
drawn and quartered. His sentence was only partially carried out, however, as he had the guts to jump off the scaffold and break his own neck. Probably for the best, seeing as otherwise he wouldn’t have had any guts at all (they’d have been removed and paraded around in front of him, which he probably wouldn’t liked very much).
Pretty soon after the plot was discovered, someone came up with the bright idea of increasing public morale and government unity by marking the failure of the plot by ringing Church bells and lighting fires, and that tradition has continued every year on November 5th since. We also light fireworks to represent
the failed explosion, and sometimes we burn a grotesque effigy of Guy Fawkes on a huge bonfire, because nothing says ‘fun party time’ quite like setting fire to a hideous parody of a man tortured and hanged by the government.
And yes, if you’re following closely; this does mean that all those people who wear the Guy Fawkes masks and t-shirts saying stuff like ‘down with The Man’ and ‘I hate the government so darn much’ and ‘anarchy is just so nice and good’ are really missing the point, and if they want to be more accurate, they should probably accessorise with a badge saying something like ‘the government is fine, but I’d rather it were Catholic!’ or ‘down with Protestants and other denominations of Christianity’ or ‘this mask has no fucking meaning in relation to anything other than a generally misinterpreted comic book and film, and also every mask we buy just feeds the gaping corporate maw of Time Warner due to copyright laws’. But hey, you do you.
