Guy Fawkes Day-- Myth?

Did members of a government faction set up the plot themselves? So they could crack down on Catholics?

The Gunpowder Plot (Nov. 5, 1605) was supposedly a conspiracy by a number of Catholics. The best known of these was Guy Fawkes, but Robert Catesby was allegedly the mastermind, second only to the Jesuit superior named Henry Garnet. The gunpowder laid  in a cellar under Parliament for about 6 months, before it was even discovered.

The real history of the plot may never be known. But the evidence lies heavily that Lord Cecil and his minions were the real plotters.

It was an elaborate misadventure. The conspirators were supposed to have rented a house and from within this house they dug a tunnel to Parliament. But before completing the tunnel and just reaching the foundations of Parliament-- they stopped. They discovered a cellar under parliament. Thus instead of tunneling, they snuck huge barrels of gunpowder into the cellar, where the barrels remained waiting for 6 months, until Parliament's first day of opening.

The government claimed to have discovered the plot 10 days before Parliament was to meet.

Lord Monteagle, a Catholic, got an anonymous letter delivered by an unknown man. The letter, couched in incoherent language, warned him that it would be wise to be absent for the opening ceremony of Parliament.

Monteagle took the letter at once to Lord Cecil, the king being out of town on a hunt, and Cecil figured out its meaning and gave it to the king five days later.

 

Four days later the cellar was raided, the powder was found under some firewood, and Fawkes was arrested either there or in the vicinity, depending on which government version you want to believe.

There has been much speculation as to who wrote the letter.

It is  most likely that Lord Cecil wrote the letter, as part of a cover story to explain how the plot was discovered in the nick of time.

 It would not be the first time the government has pulled off such a hoax. The case of Edward Squire, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1598, is one such case.

Squire was killed for allegedly plotting to kill the queen by rubbing some poison on the pommel of her saddle, and the earl of Essex later by putting poison on his chair—these crimes being instigated by Richard Walpole, who supplied the poison, according to Squire’s confession.

Walpole apparently got off scot free after seemingly supplying the poison—the operation was designed to incriminate the Jesuits and Catholics in general, just as the Gunpowder Plot was. But few people believed in this plot.

The official story of the Gunpowder Plot is internally inconsistent, and much of what the perpetrators are alleged to have done is dubious. If they had acted in the manner described by the government, it is utterly impossible the state authorities would not have had full knowledge of the plot.

Lord Cecil is a shady character. While enjoying the confidence of Queen Elizabeth, Cecil was engaged in secret correspondence with King James (then king only of Scotland), which would be regarded as treason at that time.

And later, under King James (when he was king of Scotland and England), Lord Cecil was effectively prime minister of the United Kingdom, but Cecil was secretly receiving a “pension” from the king of Spain—a monarch with whom any correspondence was treated as treasonable.

Cui bono? Who benefits? Certainly, Cecil, whatever its origin, the Gunpowder Plot increased his power, and even his popularity. Assuring the success of his policies to persecute Catholics in the Great Britain, and for war propaganda on Catholic powers in Europe.

Innocent people lived in the house that sheltered the plotters. Additional dwellings were clustered  around, inhabited by various officials. But saw nothing unusual

Tradespeople and workmen were constantly in the vicinity. Never noticing anytime strange. How then did the plotters dispose of the large amounts of soil removed from the tunnel?

The flimsy official explanation is that the dirt was hidden beneath the turf in the little adjoining garden. This seems ridiculous.

And what about the great stones removed from the foundation(s)—an estimated 60 cubic feet of stones?

No way could these be hidden under the garden turf. Also a forest of timber would have to be smuggled into the house to shore up the tunnel—all this without anyone noticing?

These men were aristocrats, not construction workers or engineers. What are the chances they could dig through the foundations of the house without causing it to collapse or at least crack severely?

What about the noise made by the constant tunneling—assaulting a wall described as “very hard to beat through”? The striking of the picks and shovels in the shallow tunnel would be audible many yards away.

Yet we are supposed to believe none of the people swarming around had any notion something unusual was going on. We are also supposed to believe that during all this strenuous work, the “bad guys” were ignorant of the existence of the cellar. Wouldn’t they have “cased the joint” before even renting the nearby house, much less start swinging a pick? Wouldn’t anyone? Were they really that nutty or stupid?

The cellar functioned like a hallway served habitually as a passage between the different parts of the palace. With all this foot traffic through the ground-level cellar, how in the world could the conspirators store 36 barrels of gunpowder—an estimated 4.5 to 5 tons of powder—for half a

year, without anyone noticing?

The government at this time was probably the most suspicious and paranoid that had ever held power in Britain, trusting mainly in its elaborate intelligence department.

Hard as it is to believe, no one saw the powder being removed. Strange enough was that such a vast amount of explosives could be smuggled into the building, but even stranger is that no one witnessed the public spectacle of its removal. There was no reason to hide such an operation, logically.

Did anyone ever see it after its "discovery" in the cellar?

How could five tons of gunpowder remain undetected right under the House of Lords meeting room from May until November with literally dozens of people using the chamber every day as a passageway?

How did the conspirators get the barrels (each about 400 pounds) in there without anyone noticing?

And when the government removed the gunpowder, there was no need for secrecy, why was there not a single witness to its removal?

It is only reasonable to suppose the gunpowder never even existed.

The government had a monopoly on gunpowder. How could the culprits possibly get their hands on this quantity of powder—representing perhaps a quarter of the total annual production of Britain?

Why have the official records of gunpowder for 1605 mysteriously disappeared?

Torture, although illegal, was freely employed to extract “evidence” from the captive conspirators and others who were so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the government, while others were shot to death, sealing their lips forever.

The earl of Salisbury admits, in a letter addressed to a Mr. Favat, dated Dec. 4, 1605: “[M]ost of the prisoners have willfully forsworn that the priests knew anything in particular, and obstinately refuse to be accusers of them, yea, what torture soever they be put to.”

Analysis of the written confession forced out of Guy Faukes by torture, showed two distinct handwriting styles in the document, causing more suspicion of its legitimacy beside being given under torture.

Sir Edward Coke once wrote: “Ages to come will be in doubt whether it were a fact or fiction.” Yes Sir Edward we do doubt it as fact.