The Far-Reaching Story Of Guy Fawkes

On the subject of northern England let's have a look at this.

England, starting with King Henry VIII (the eighth), went to the Protestant side during the Reformation, which began in 1517. But that choice was not unanimous throughout the country and a significant Catholic presence remained.

Henry's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, would ultimately form the Anglican Church, also known as the Church of England, as an attempt at compromise between Calvinistic Puritans, on one side, and remaining Catholics, on the other side. Even today, the Anglican Church is said to have a "High Church" side, closer to the liturgy of Catholicism, and a "Low Church" side, closer to the Puritan liturgy.

Northern England was the region that had the strongest Catholic sympathies. There were several unsuccessful rebellions against the new Protestant order. Liverpool, in the north, is today considered as England's most Catholic city.

The new Anglican Church continued the Catholic pattern of having two archbishops in England. The senior of the two is at Canterbury, in the south of England. The junior archbishop is in the north, at the city of York. Both are automatically members of the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament.

Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and founder of the Anglican Church, was followed by the beginning of a new royal house. James I was the first king of the House of Stuart. Elizabeth I had been the last of the House of Tudor, as she had died childless.

James I was king of England and Scotland at the same time. The two were still separate countries at the time but this was the beginning of the eventual unity of the two, in 1707, to form Britain, as both England and Scotland had landed on the same side of the Reformation.

Elizabeth I had been preceded as queen by her half-sister Mary I, also daughter of Henry VIII. Unlike Elizabeth I, Mary I had been a devout Catholic, and had tried to bring England back to Catholicism by force. Although the attempt had not been successful, it got her a mixed drink named for her, the "Bloody Mary".

But the Catholic hope of getting England back wasn't quite finished yet. A native of York, the northern city where the Catholic archbishop was now the Anglican archbishop, became involved in a plot. Guy Fawkes was still a devout Catholic. The new king, James I, had disappointed Catholics by reaffirming Protestantism for England. A plan was developed to destroy the parliament, when James I and members of his Protestant government were in the building, by detonating a massive amount of gunpowder.

Gunpowder was used in guns at the time but this was before the invention of high explosives, like dynamite.

Guy Fawkes did not originate the assassination plot but became the one associated with it. Someone, it is still not known who, wrote a letter as a warning not to be in parliament on that day, apparently mistakenly thinking that the recipient of the letter was a Catholic sympathizer of the plot. The authorities were informed and the parliament building searched.

This was not the same parliament buildings of today, which were built in the Nineteenth Century. Apparently there was some excess space in the building where people could rent rooms. The search found that a room had been rented to store a large amount of firewood.

A man was guarding the firewood. But why would anyone rent a room in the parliament building to store firewood, and why would anyone be needed to guard the firewood?

The guard gave his name as the suspiciously generic "John Johnson". It turned out that the firewood had been stacked to conceal many barrels of gunpowder, which would have resulted in a catastrophic explosion if detonated. The real name of the guard was Guy Fawkes.

This episode is known as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It's failure hardened anti-Catholic sentiment and was thus a great triumph for Protestants in England. This was the end of any serious attempt to bring England back to Catholicism.

November 5 became a national holiday, which was celebrated with bonfires or fireworks, and known as "Bonfire Night" or "Guy Fawkes Night". I suppose that the bonfire represents the firewood and the fireworks represents the gunpowder that never exploded. The holiday was made official by an act of Parliament known as the "Thanksgiving Act".

James I was the king who began English settlement of North America and for whom Jamestown, in Virginia, is named. Jamestown is considered as the beginnings of the United States and history would have been very different if this Gunpowder Plot had succeeded.

November 5 is at about the same time as autumn harvest, and festivals to celebrate a good harvest. America's first Thanksgiving holiday is believed to have been celebrated in 1619, fourteen years after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot was deemed a national holiday by the "Thanksgiving Act". This is where the name of the Thanksgiving holiday almost certainly comes from.

Fireworks were used as a celebration of the holiday because the gunpowder that was to destroy the parliament, and kill King James I, didn't explode. How much of a coincidence is it that America also uses fireworks to celebrate it's Independence Day, representing the rockets from British ships that were used to bombard Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, but failed to bring down the large U.S. flag that was flying over the fort, and this became the basis for America's national anthem? ( Although this actually took place in the War of 1812, which was a generation after America had already become independent).

What would our language be like today if this Gunpowder Plot had succeeded? The single greatest influence on the English language is considered by many to be the King James Bible of 1611. We saw this in the posting on this blog, "Hampton Court Palace And The King James Bible". There is a long list of King James Idioms that entered the language through this Bible, that was commissioned by King James I and published in 1611.

But celebrations of the event have not been entirely against Guy Fawkes. His likeness, in the form of a mask, became the general symbol of protest against the establishment, for anything from poverty to global warming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_mask#/media/File:Protest_ACTA_2012-02-11_-_Toulouse_-_05_-_Anonymous_guy_with_a_scarf.jpg

Does this seem familiar? What about Che Guevara? Isn't Che Guevara a modern, global version of Guy Fawkes, who traveled the world promoting revolution against an unjust establishment? Except that his establishment was Capitalist rather than Protestant. Perhaps the most familiar image in the world is that of Che Guevara, which borrows the legacy of the likeness of Guy Fawkes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#/media/File:4CheFaces.jpg

What about his first name? After the plot, a "guy" was a male that was plotting something or was up to no good. But now it has come into use as a general term for any male.

Finally, we come to something that I have never seen referred to about the bombing campaign of the Irish Republican Army in the late Twentieth Century. Remember that Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who was attempting to use a bomb against what he saw as an overarching and unwanted Protestant establishment. The Irish Republican Army was simply picking up where Guy Fawkes had left off.

But the ultimate modern incarnation of Guy Fawkes is Timothy McVeigh. Instead of barrels of gunpowder, McVeigh used drums of fertilizer mixed with racing fuel, although both were to be detonated by a fuse. Instead of being detonated in a rented room in parliament, they would be detonated in a rented moving truck. Instead of striking at the overreaching Protestant establishment, McVeigh was striking at the overreaching federal establishment.