Faith and Treason

1) "Sunday 20 May 1604 was the fateful date. On this day a meeting was held between Robin Catesby, Tom Wintour, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy and Guido Fawkes. Although the band of conspirators would eventually amount to an ill-omened thirteen, these five were regarded as the prime movers of the plot that followed, with Catesby as their inspirational leader and Wintour as adjutant. This meeting, which kick-started the Powder Treason into life, was held at an inn called the Duck and Drake, in the fashionable Strand district, where Tom Wintour stayed when he was in London."

2) "On 28 July Parliament was prorogued by proclamation yet again. It would not now meet on 3 October as had been intended for the last six months, because it had been decided that 'some dregs of the late contagion' (the plague) still lingered in the capital. Since people were accustomed to return to London around All Hallows – 1 November – the new date chosen, which was in fact the third projected date, was Tuesday 5 November."

3) "Then on Saturday 26 October, apparently thanks to an obscure and ill-written letter delivered under cover of night to Lord Monteagle, everything changed.
The text of this 'dark and doubtful letter', as it would later be termed, was as follows:
'My Lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation. Therefore I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance at this Parliament; for God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness of this time. And think not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself into your country [county] where you may expect the event in safety. For though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament; and yet they shall not see who hunts them. This counsel is not to be condemned because it may do you good and can do you no harm; for the danger is passed as soon as you have burnt the letter. And I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it, to whose holy protection I commend you.'"

4) "It is Guy Fawkes who, in spite of having been generally known in his own time, including to the government, as Guido, has lent his forename to the stuffed, ragged figures on the pavement, whose placard solicits 'a penny for the guy', before being ritually burnt on 5 November. In all fairness, the reviled name should really be that of Robert Catesby, as leader of the conspiracy. But it may be some consolation to the shade of Guido, if it still wanders somewhere beneath the House of Lords, that Guy Fawkes is also the hero of some perennial subversive jokes as being 'the only man to get into Parliament with the right intentions'."

5) "It is not a position that the world can expect to see abandoned so long as the persecution of minorities – and for that matter of majorities – survives. Terrorism after all does not exist in a vacuum. 'I do not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness or because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people...' These are not the words of Robert Catesby, but mutatis mutandis they could in fact have been uttered by him had he lived to defend his actions to the world. This is in fact the speech, three hundred and fifty years later, of Nelson Mandela, in the dock for his leadership of the African National Congress, at the Rivoni Trial of 1964: he chose to quote it in his autobiography The Long Walk to Freedom as an explanation but not an excuse. [...] 'The hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought [my] people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer rights.'
The Gunpowder Plotters were terrorists and they were defeated. They were not good men – by no stretch of the imagination can they be described as that. The goodness in this tragic episode belongs to the priests and lay brothers such as Nicholas Owen (Little John) and the heroic women. But, under different circumstances, they might have been very differently regarded. One might go to the opposite extreme and represent the Plotters as brave, bad men: but perhaps brave, misguided men is a kinder verdict which may be allowed at this distance of time.
The study of history can at least bring respect for those whose motives, if not their actions, were noble and idealistic. It was indeed a 'heavy and doleful tragedy' that men of such calibre were driven by continued religious persecution to Gunpowder, Treason and Plot."