The Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament was foiled
On this day · 5 November 1605
In the early hours of November 5, 1605, a search beneath the House of Lords found Guy Fawkes guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder.
By 1605 a band of English Catholics, frustrated by King James I’s treatment of their faith, had hatched a spectacular scheme. Led not by Guy Fawkes but by Robert Catesby, they smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar directly beneath the House of Lords, intending to detonate it during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605 and wipe out king, lords, and bishops in a single blast.
The plan unravelled when an anonymous letter warned a peer to stay away. A search party swept the cellars, and in the early hours of 5 November they found Fawkes, the group’s explosives man, waiting in the dark with fuses, matches, and spurred boots—ready to ride.
Caught with the powder and the means to light it, he had no alibi worth the name.
Fawkes was tortured into naming his co-conspirators, and the survivors were tried and brutally executed. The foiled plot still lights up Britain every November 5, when bonfires and fireworks mark Guy Fawkes Night.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
