Guy Fawkes
Ring the bells ring
Holloa boys, holloa boys,
Goda save the King!
Hip hip hooray, Hip hip horray.
A penny loaf to feed ol' Pope
A farthing cheese to choke him
A pint of beer to rinse it down
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar
Burn him like a blazing star
Burn his body from his head
Then we'll say old Pope is dead.
Hip hip hooray, Hip hip hooray
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes
'Twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow
By God's providence he was catched
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys,
Guy Fawkes was born in 1570 in York. When he was five he went to St Peter's school where he worked at English grammar and Latin. At school he became friends with Jack and Kit Wright, two boys who were more keen on sword fighting than study. When Guy was eight his father died and his mother married a country gentleman named Dennis Bainbridge. He and his two sisters moved to Scotton where Guy studied and lived at school. He would go to his new home in the holidays where Bainbridge, a 'secret Catholic', brought him up. Soon Guy was as devout a Catholic as his stepfather.
Fawkes returned without help. Thomas Wintour had the same luck two years before. Spain wanted peace and the Pope had warned that an invasion of England would lead to the deaths of many Catholics. Guy Fawkes returned to his soldiering but had changed his name from Guy Fawkes to Guido Fawkes to show his sympathies for the Spanish cause. Early in 1604 Thomas Wintour went to the Netherlands to meet 'Guido'. He believed that the new King would never be a friend to the Catholics. He told Fawkes of a new plot and they both returned to England. On the day that he next opened parliament, the King and all the leading members of parliament would be together in the same room. An explosion underneath would kill all the main enemies of Catholicism in England at the same time.
Everything was ready for the opening of parliament early in 1605 when bad news arrived. Due to the plague the King would not be arriving until October 1605. This gave the plotters more time to perfect their plan but also gave them more time to be discovered. In the London of 1605 the Houses of Parliament was little more than a handful of houses grouped around Westminster Hall. It was easy for the plotters to rent one of the houses with a small cellar downstairs while upstairs was a small room with a door that led into the House of Lords. 'Guido' Fawkes would be the custodian of the gunpowder barrels. By March the group had grown to number thirteen in all. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were taken from Catesby's house in Lambeth to Westminster by ferryboat across the Thames. By July the coal store had become a bomb! Fawkes was to be the one to light the fuse. On the 4th of November 1605 Guy Fawkes crouched waiting in the cellar for parliament to open the next morning. Suddenly the doors flung open and soldiers arrested Fawkes.
Guy Fawkes was bundled into the Tower of London where he was questioned.
After two days all he gave away was that he might be a Catholic. King James subsequently
ordered that the strongest methods be used. Fawkes was subjected to the vilest of tortures
under which he admitted that his name was not John Johnson but Guy Fawkes.
Eventually the torturers dragged out details of the whole conspiracy and left Fawkes a broken
man barely able to sign his own confession.
The remaining plotters were arrested or killed during a
siege of Holbeach House in the Midlands. Four of the plotters were shot and
killed and the rest were imprisoned and tried. The trial lasted two hours. On 27 of January 1606
Guy Fawkes and seven other conspirators still alive were sentenced to a traitors death - to
be hung, drawn and quartered. The executions took place on the 30th and 31st of January.
Guy Fawkes the ' great devil of all ' was executed last. Barely able to walk up the gallows steps he just managed to utter a prayer. Unlike any of the others he died at once and was thus spared any further pain.