Although Elizabeth’s successor, James I, was the target of the Gunpowder Plot, the time Fraser spends on Elizabeth I is important because it illustrates the anti-Catholic atmosphere prevalent in England in the forty five years before James I became king.Įqually important to the Gunpowder Plot’s prelude is the fact that Elizabeth I never named an heir. Catholics were also banned from holding government offices, and could not take a university degree unless they were willing to swear the Oath of Supremacy. Priests were banned from the country, and Catholics who refused to attend Protestant services were fined for their absence, earning them the nickname Recusants. Under Elizabeth, attending Protestant services, marrying and performing baptisms in the Protestant church were all mandatory, even for Catholics. Published in 1996, Lady Antonia Fraser’s popular history of the Gunpowder Plot, Faith and Treason, predates this revival but remains an excellent account of a controversial historical event that has been largely superseded by fiction in the public imagination.įraser begins with context, starting with the final years of the reign of Elizabeth I, a Protestant queen who was virulently anti-Catholic. I can think of no reason why the Gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.” But while the rhyme is remembered, for many, it is now more closely associated with Alan Moore’s comic V for Vendetta, or its 2005 film adaptation starring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. Over here in North America, the holiday is seldom marked, but you may have seen more than a few instances of the famous rhyme on your social media yesterday: “Remember, remember the fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and plot. Yesterday the United Kingdom celebrated Bonfire Night, also sometimes known as Guy Fawkes Day. Neither Salisbury nor Father Garnet was the author of the Powder Treason, though both have been blamed for it.” In the same way, the very different foreknowledge gained by Father Garnet, in the confessional, did not mean he was, as Coke tried to suggest, the principal ‘author’ of the plot. “But foreknowledge is not fabrication, even if Salisbury, or perhaps Coke, did embellish the truth with certain vivid details afterwards, such as the celebrated – and infamous – mine which somehow vanished without a trace.

The Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser