Remember, Remember the Fifth of November: The Real Story of Guy Fawkes

Are you still picking the candy wrappers (or possibly even leftover candy) from their hiding places and wondering whether you should do something about the decaying pumpkin outside your house? And are you wondering whether you’d have these problems if you were a Brit?

Halloween is catching on in England, although the decaying matter outside your house there might be the cardboard from a toilet roll, a melon, turnip, or even a pineapple, anything big enough to hold a candle, following a run on pumpkins. But will the lure of candy (we call them sweets) and costumes supplant the traditional British celebration of November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night?

When I first came to the US and was asked if we celebrated Thanksgiving (seriously?) or Halloween, I politely responded that no, around that time of the year we burned traitors in effigy.

Let me explain.

Going back to the very early years of the seventeenth century, Queen Elizabeth I died without a direct heir and was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, son of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, who became James I of England in 1603. Although the crowns were united, the two countries were still independent sovereign nations. James inherited many of Elizabeth’s ministers, including her Secretary of State Robert Cecil, who was instrumental in arranging for the succession. Cecil was also head of a sophisticated and widespread espionage system created in large part to keep Catholics in check. (You can learn about this from the PBS series Queen Elizabeth’s Secret Agents.)

Half a century after the creation of the Church of England, about 5% of the population clung to their Catholic faith. Elizabeth’s policy of tolerating Catholics, so long as they behaved and paid fines for missing church services, worked to a certain extent. But her government, and that of James I, feared foreign interference as personified by Catholic recruiters, European Jesuit priests, even though they had been banned from entering the country since 1584. It became clear that James I wanted to take a harder line, reviving the argument that Catholics’ allegiance to the Pope meant that they were potential traitors to the English crown. Naturally Catholics, who had hoped for more tolerance under their new ruler, were disappointed and feared that their position would become worse.

In 1604, charismatic aristocrat Robert Catesby became the leader of a group of 13 like-minded Catholics. Catesby had been in trouble before, taking part in the Essex Rebellion against Elizabeth, but was forgiven by the Queen who had a soft spot for him. Spymaster Cecil, who did not, almost certainly kept a very close eye on him for years afterward.