Remember Remember
FORGET NELSON, November 5th sees the 400th anniversary of the death of Guy Fawkes in the Gunpowder Plot (1605).
We all know the story. A group of aggrieved Catholics, whose civil and
religious rights had been sorely undermined by protestant governments, rented a
house next to the House of Lords. They burrowed into the parliamentary cellars
and placed there 36 barrels of gunpowder with a view to blowing up all their
Lordships, together with the king, James I, who was due to preside at the
opening ceremony. The plot was discovered and Guy Fawkes seized red-handed. He
was tortured to reveal the names of his co-conspirators (some of greater renown
than himself) and all were put to death. Ever since, there has been a ritual
inspection of the cellars the night before the State Opening of Parliament.
Historians, of course, cannot leave the Plot alone. Since 1897 there has been the theory that it was concocted by Protestants (specifically Robert Cecil) to further blacken the image of Catholics. This is not impossible. Our political establishment might recognise the imperatives. An article in the Times earlier this year was entitled "Remember, Remember the Spin of November" and spoke of "brilliantly fabricated black propaganda".