Remember, Remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason, why the gunpowder treason, should ever be forgot.
When Guy Fawkes was arrested inside the vaults of the Houses of Parliament, he was virtually
caught red handed along with a slow match and a watch given to him.
He was arrested, but to uncover the full scale of the gunpowder plot, the treasonous plan
to blow up the King James I, along with the rest of the royal family and the government.
The plan would have seen London decimated by the sheer amount of gunpowder, and the
attempt to assassinate the majority of the monarchy and government resulted in the executions
of those men implicated in the plot.
The Gunpowder plot was shrouded in religion, led by Robert Catesby who wished to bring
back Catholic monarchy to the country, but it was Guy Fawkes who remained the most remembered
member of the plot.
But the treatment of Guy Fawkes when he was in custody was incredibly brutal, and it was
this brutality which was signed off by the King.
So join us today as we look at the Brutal torture of Guy Fawkes.
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The Gunpowder Plot was devised to blow up the House of Lords during the State opening
of Parliament on the 5th November 1605.
In England at the time, James I had been reigning for a short period of time, but the plot would
have seen James’ nine year old daughter Elizabeth to be crowned as the Catholic Queen
of England.
But the main aim was to kill James, and all those other targets including the King’s
closest relatives and members of his privy council.
Also the most senior members of the English legal system and judges would have been killed,
along with the members of the House of Commons.
If this would have happened, then the devastating effect in England would possibly still been
felt today with the whole government and monarchy blown to Kingdom come.
Guy Fawkes became involved in the plot in 1604 when he was part of a small group at
the time who planned to carry out the plot.
Fawkes was described as ‘pleasant of approach and cheerful of manner, opposed to quarrels
and strife and loyal to his friends.’
He was also a man of military experience who was skilled in matters of war, and he was
seen as peaceful but practical man.
He was tall and powerfully built, and was noted to have thick reddish brown hair, and
was a man of action.
The first meetings of the conspirators occurred on the 20th May 1604, and following this the
plan was then put into action.
One of the conspirators, Thomas Percy gained access to a house in London that belonged
to the Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe.
Fawkes worked here as a caretaker, and whilst here it was claimed that a tunnel began to
be dug from this house to Parliament, however no evidence later emerged at trial of this
part of the plan.
Later it was found out that a nearby undercroft directly below the House of Lords was empty,
and the men began to use this as an ideal place for the gunpowder to be stored.
It was said by Fawkes that 20 barrels of gunpowder were brought in at first, and then 16 more
were brought in on the 20th of July.
But there was a problem as the plague delayed parliament opening until the 5th November.
Fawkes was seen as a gunpowder expert having previously fought in Europe, but as the gunpowder
lay sitting in the undercroft of the Houses of Parliament, there was some concern over
who would be there on the planned day.
Lord Monteagle was sent an anonymous letter saying that he should stay away from Parliament,
but the conspirators continued.
The servants of Lord Monteagle thought it was a hoax, however when his suspicion was
aroused, the letter was then shown to the King.
On the 30th October, Fawkes had snuck into the undercroft and found everything was fine
and nothing was disturbed, but the King ordered a search of the cellars after hearing of the
letter sent to Monteagle.
This search occurred with Sir Thomas Knyvet doing this on the early morning of the 5th
November, the planned day of the explosion.
Found of course was Guy Fawkes inside the undercroft and on his person was a slow match
and a watch given to him so he could count down the time as to light the fuses.
Fawkes was found leaving the cellar around midnight, and was arrested.
The gunpowder was discovered hidden under piles of firewood and coal, but Fawkes refused
to give his name to authorities.
He claimed he was John Johnson, when he was first seized and he was taken to the King
to be interrogated.
He first was interrogated by the King’s Privy Chamber and he was defiant, and when
asked what he was doing in the undercrofts with so much gunpowder he said, ‘to blow
you Scottish beggars back to your native mountains,’ or something along the lines of, ‘I wish
to blow the Scottish King and all of his Scottish Lords back to Scotland,’ and he was regretful
that the plan had failed.
He admitted he planned to blow up the House of Lords, and when he was taken to the King,
the King was taken aback by his Roman Resolution and his desire to inflict such devastation.
But to extract more information from him, King James signed an incredibly warrant that
ordered John Johnson to be tortured to reveal more information of his co-conspirators.
James first authorised that the torture used should be light at first, using the manacles
before he then indicated more severe methods should be used.
Fawkes was taken to the Tower of London and the instructions given to Sir William Waad
were, ‘the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him and so by degrees proceeding
to the worst.’
Whilst at the Tower it was Waad who supervised the brutal torture of Guy Fawkes.
A list of questions were devised by James I to put to Fawkes, and he was taken to a
room which today is known as the Guy Fawkes room where his interrogation took place.
After doing a routine search, Waad the leftenant of the Tower found a note addressed to Guy
Fawkes, but he remained silent and gave nothing to his interrogators.
On the night of the 6th November, a day after his arrest, he spoke with Waad and said nothing
except that he planned to blow up Parliament for the advancement of the Catholic faith.’
Fawkes then rested but was briefly told that his interrogation would continue until he
gave over all of his accomplices.
He had been tortured using the manacles, in which he was suspended in the air for periods
of time and was then beaten also whilst in the air, but he remained resolute.
Fawkes revealed his identity on the 7th November, and he told that there were five people involved
in the plot.
Initially he said he would not implicate anyone, but then the most extreme of tortures was
applied.
To get him to name the conspirators, he was first shown the rack and then asked if he
wanted to give information, but he continued not to.
Then he was placed upon the rack, and successive times on here led him to finally give up names.
The rack was designed to stretch a human to the extremes, and it was known that people
did die on the rack such was the pain with bones and ligaments snapping, and joints being
ripped out of their sockets.
It’s most probably that Fawkes was tortured in the dungeons of the White Tower, and that
the rack was here where he suffered so much.
He would have cried out as each turn of the rack put him under such strain.
Just decades before, a woman Anne Askew was so brutalised on the device that she had to
be carried to her execution in a chair.
Whilst on the rack Fawkes was also probably cut inflicting more pain, and with every turn
he became a more broken man.
It was in the evening of the 8th November that he revealed information about his co-conspirators,
and its assumed he did this because of the rack.
He gave more than the examiners imagined naming so many men, but on the 10th November he then
signed his declaration and statement.
It was said, ‘On the 10th, this declaration was acknowledged before the Lords Commissioners,
and is signed in a tremulous hand “Guido.”
The signature is supposed to have been extorted by the rack, and the prisoner to have fainted
before completing it.’
Fawkes had been broken on the rack, completely and his signature on his confession shows
that.
When comparing this with the signature he signed at the start of his torture it is completely
indecipherable, showing that the racking caused him to be unable to write.
He was completely shattered, and it was then said, ‘Faukes confessed nothing the first
racking, but did so when told “he must come to it againe and againe, from daye to daye,
till he should have delivered his whole knowledge.’
The constant racking forced him to give up the information, and it was the rack at the
Tower that forced this.
Fawkes was later sentenced to death, and was executed on the 31st January 1606.
He had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered and Fawkes was the last of the
group that day, which included Thomas Winter, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes.
It was said that Fawkes mildly escaped justice too as he was dead before he was passed over
to the executioner.
It was said, ‘‘Last of all came the great devil of all, Guy Fawkes, alias Johnson, who
should have put fire to the powder.
His body being weak with the torture and sickness he was scarce able to go up the ladder, yet
with much ado, by the help of the hangman, went high enough to break his neck by the
fall.
'He made no speech, but with his crosses and idle ceremonies made his end upon the gallows
and the block, to the great joy of all the beholders that the land was ended of so wicked
a villainy.’
So Guy Fawkes escaped the executioner slightly by jumping off the scaffold and breaking his
neck, his body weak from the torture.
It’s considered that he would have been too weak to do this naturally and that his
racking could have left him to fall.
But his body was then quartered as was sentenced despite him being dead before hand.
Every year the gunpowder plot is commemorated on the 5th November to mark the King’s escape
from the assassination plan.
On the day of the plans foiling, Londoner’s were encouraged to light bonfires to celebrate,
and still today this tradition is upheld.
Guy Fawkes is remembered as a traitor who’s intent on causing regicide and the King’s
death was focussed in his religious convictions.
His torture at the Tower of London helped to connote the notorious reputation of the
Tower, as whilst on the rack he endured one of the most painful and awful torture ordeals
ever to occur inside of the Tower of London.
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