The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which James's nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed.
Introduction
Gunpowder Plot
Gunpowder Plot | Introduction
Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. Securing greater religious tolerance Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
where did the gunpowder come from in the gunpowder plot
user
They were discovered hidden under piles of faggots and coal.
assistant
what was the main aim of this plot?
user
To kill King James.
assistant
this plot was led by whom?
user
A group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.
assistant
what was to restore by killing the king?
user
Thomas Wintour (1571–1606) was chosen as the emissary, but the Spanish king, although sympathetic to the plight of Catholics in England, was intent on making peace with James. Wintour had also attempted to convince the Spanish envoy Don Juan de Tassis that "3,000 Catholics" were ready and waiting to support such an invasion. Concern was voiced by Pope Clement VIII that using violence to achieve a restoration of Catholic power in England would result in the destruction of those that remained. According to contemporary accounts, in February 1604 Catesby invited Thomas Wintour to his house in Lambeth, where they discussed Catesby's plan to re-establish Catholicism in England by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament.
Gunpowder Plot | Initial recruitment
James received an envoy from Albert VII, ruler of the remaining Catholic territories in the Netherlands after over 30 years of war in the Dutch Revolt by English-supported Protestant rebels. For the Catholic expatriates engaged in that struggle, the restoration by force of a Catholic monarchy was an intriguing possibility, but following the failed Spanish invasion of England in 1588 the papacy had taken a longer-term view on the return of a Catholic monarch to the English throne. During the late 16th century, Catholics made several assassination attempts on Protestant rulers in Europe and in England, including plans to poison Elizabeth I.
Gunpowder Plot | Early reign of James I
English Catholics hoped that the years of persecution they had suffered during Elizabeth's reign would end when James I came to the throne, as his attitude appeared moderate, even tolerant towards Catholics. In Robert Catesby's view however, James had reneged on his promises, and he quickly lost patience with the new dynasty. He therefore planned to kill James by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, and inciting a popular revolt during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the throne. Catesby enlisted the help of six fellow Catholics, and by 25 March 1605 he had recruited three others: Robert Wintour, Christopher Wright, and Grant.
John Grant (Gunpowder Plot) | Plot
The failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a conspiracy among a group of Roman Catholic gentry to re-establish Catholicism in England by assassinating the Protestant King James I and replacing him with a Catholic monarch. To this end, they placed large quantities of gunpowder beneath the House of Lords, which one of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, would detonate during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605. If successful, the explosion would have destroyed the Palace, killing the King, his family and most of the aristocracy. However, the plot was discovered and most of the conspirators were either arrested or killed while trying to evade capture.
Palace of Westminster | Incidents
English Catholics had hoped that the persecution of their faith would end when the apparently more tolerant King James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth I, but Robert Catesby, a Catholic zealot from Ashby St Ledgers, remained unimpressed by the new royal dynasty. He therefore planned to kill James by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, following which he would help incite a popular revolt to install James's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, as titular Queen. His role being to guard the gunpowder and other items stored at Catesby's house in Lambeth, Keyes joined the conspiracy in October 1604. The Jesuit priest John Gerard described Keyes as "a grave and sober man, and of great wit and sufficiency".
Robert Keyes | Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot was an attempt by a small party of provincial English Catholics to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament, thereby killing James I and his court, as the prelude to a revolt during which a Catholic monarchy would be restored to the English throne. It was after the failure of the plot that the fugitives took shelter in Holbeche House, owned by Stephen Lyttelton. They had taken supplies from Warwick Castle on 6 November and weapons and gunpowder from Hewell Grange on 7 November, but the powder became damp in the rain.
Holbeche House | Gunpowder Plot
Guy Fawkes, who was born and educated in York, was a member of a group of Roman Catholic restorationists that planned the Gunpowder Plot. Its aim was to displace Protestant rule by blowing up the Houses of Parliament while King James I, the entire Protestant, and even most of the Catholic aristocracy and nobility were inside. In 1644, during the Civil War, the Parliamentarians besieged York, and many medieval houses outside the city walls were lost. The barbican at Walmgate Bar was undermined and explosives laid, but the plot was discovered. On the arrival of Prince Rupert, with an army of 15,000 men, the siege was lifted.
York | 16th to 18th centuries
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which James's nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed.
Gunpowder Plot | Introduction
The Protestant James I, who became King of England in 1603, was less tolerant of Catholicism than his followers had hoped. Catesby therefore planned to kill him by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder during the State Opening of Parliament, the prelude to a popular revolt during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the English throne. Early in 1604 he began to recruit other Catholics to his cause, including Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes. Described latterly as a charismatic and influential man, over the following months he helped to bring a further eight conspirators into the plot, which was planned to be carried out on 5 November 1605.
Robert Catesby | Introduction
He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder that they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes fell from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of being hanged, drawn and quartered.
Guy Fawkes | Introduction
On November 5, 1605, a group of conspirators led by Robert Catesby attempted to destroy the English Parliament on its State Opening by King James I. They planned in secret to detonate a large quantity of gunpowder placed beneath the Palace of Westminster. The gunpowder was procured and placed by Guy Fawkes. The group intended to enact a coup by killing King James I and the members of both houses of Parliament. The conspirators planned to make one of the king's children a puppet monarch and then restore the Catholic faith to England. The conspirator leased a coal cellar beneath the House of Lords and began stockpiling gunpowder in 1604.
History of terrorism | Gunpowder Plot
An invitation by seven leading Englishmen led William to land in England with 40,000 men on 5 November. In Edinburgh there were rumours of Orange plots and on 10 December the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, the Earl of Perth, quit the capital for Drummond Castle, planning an abortive escape to Ireland (he was later captured as he embarked for France). As rioters approached Holyrood Abbey they were fired on by soldiers, resulting in some deaths. The city guard was called out, but the Abbey was stormed by a large mob. The Catholic furnishings placed there when it was restored as a chapel for James were torn down and the tombs of the Stuart kings desecrated.
Restoration (Scotland) | James VII and the Glorious Revolution (1685–1689)
Two years after the execution of his father (Charles I), 21-year-old Charles II and his men fail miserably to free his kingdom from the tyrannical rule of Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester. The King would rather die trying to restore the monarchy, than sit by and watch the power of the English Commonwealth grown under its corrupt leaders. He decides to disguise himself as a peasant; at his first hiding-place at Boscopel, an estate wherein lived five catholic brothers called Pendrell, the king is dressed in a coarse noggen shirt, with breeches of green coarse cloth and a doeskin leather doublet.
Royal Escape | Plot summary
While there he met Robert Catesby, who at some point asked him to swear an oath of secrecy before introducing him to what later became known as the Gunpowder Plot. English Catholics had hoped that the years of persecution they suffered during Elizabeth's reign would end when James I came to the throne, as his attitude appeared moderate, even tolerant towards Catholics. In Catesby's view, however, James had reneged on his promises, and he had quickly lost patience with the new dynasty. He therefore planned to kill James by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, and then inciting a popular revolt during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the throne.
Everard Digby | Robert Catesby
Greater freedom for Roman Catholics to worship as they chose seemed unlikely in 1604, but the discovery of such a wide-ranging conspiracy, the capture of those involved, and the subsequent trials, led Parliament to consider introducing new anti-Catholic legislation. The event also destroyed all hope that the Spanish would ever secure tolerance of the Catholics in England. In the summer of 1606, laws against recusancy were strengthened; the Popish Recusants Act returned England to the Elizabethan system of fines and restrictions, introduced a sacramental test, and an Oath of Allegiance, requiring Catholics to abjure as a "heresy" the doctrine that "princes excommunicated by the Pope could be deposed or assassinated".
Gunpowder Plot | Aftermath
His defence was in vain; his arguments were rebuked by Coke and Northumberland, and along with his seven co-conspirators, he was found guilty by the jury of high treason. Digby shouted "If I may but hear any of your lordships say, you forgive me, I shall go more cheerfully to the gallows." The response was short: "God forgive you, and we do."
Gunpowder Plot | Trials
The Gunpowder Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The conspirators' aim was to blow up the House of Lords at the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, while the king and many other important members of the aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirator who became most closely associated with the plot in the popular imagination was Guy Fawkes, who had been assigned the task of lighting the fuse to the explosives.
Gunpowder Plot in popular culture | Introduction
Fawkes, using the pseudonym "John Johnson", took charge of the building, posing as Percy's servant. The building was occupied by Scottish commissioners appointed by the King to consider his plans for the unification of England and Scotland, so the plotters hired Catesby's lodgings in Lambeth, on the opposite bank of the Thames, from where their stored gunpowder and other supplies could be conveniently rowed across each night. Meanwhile, King James continued with his policies against the Catholics, and Parliament pushed through anti-Catholic legislation, until its adjournment on 7 July. The conspirators returned to London in October 1604, when Robert Keyes, a "desperate man, ruined and indebted", was admitted to the group.
Gunpowder Plot | Further recruitment
After the discovery of the failed 1683 Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved Parliament in 1681, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685.
Early modern Britain | Restoration 1660–1688
After the English Restoration, Bellings was rewarded by Ormonde, (now Lord Deputy of Ireland) for his loyalty to the Royalist cause by being one of the few Confederates to recover their confiscated estates in the Act of Settlement 1662. In later life, he wrote a several volume history of the 1640s, called "The Confederation and War in Ireland". Bellings' account was written in the 1670s, from the perspective of a sound royalist, whose property had been recovered after the Restoration. He therefore presented the rebellion as a tragic accident caused by the King's untrustworthy ministers, and which was joined only reluctantly, and under extreme provocation, by him and his fellow Palesmen and Irish nobles.
Richard Bellings | Restoration
The Jesuit Juan de Mariana's 1598 "On Kings and the Education of Kings" explicitly justified the assassination of the French king Henry III—who had been stabbed to death by a Catholic fanatic in 1589—and until the 1620s, some English Catholics believed that regicide was justifiable to remove tyrants from power. Much of the "rather nervous" James's political writing was "concerned with the threat of Catholic assassination and refutation of the [Catholic] argument that 'faith did not need to be kept with heretics'".
Gunpowder Plot | Early reign of James I
Measuring devices placed in the chamber to calculate the force of the blast were recorded as going off the scale just before their destruction by the explosion; a piece of the head of the dummy representing King James, which had been placed on a throne inside the chamber surrounded by courtiers, peers and bishops, was found a considerable distance from its initial location. According to the findings of the programme, no one within of the blast could have survived, and all of the stained glass windows in Westminster Abbey would have been shattered, as would all of the windows in the vicinity of the Palace.
Gunpowder Plot | Reconstructing the explosion
The plot may also have influenced his later work, "Paradise Lost". The Gunpowder Plot was commemorated for years by special sermons and other public acts, such as the ringing of church bells. It added to an increasingly full calendar of Protestant celebrations that contributed to the national and religious life of 17th-century England, and has evolved into the Bonfire Night of today. In "What If the Gunpowder Plot Had Succeeded?" historian Ronald Hutton considered the events which might have followed a successful implementation of the plot, and the destruction of the House of Lords and all those within it. He concluded that a severe backlash against suspected Catholics would have followed, and that without foreign assistance a successful rebellion would have been unlikely; despite differing religious convictions, most Englishmen were loyal to the institution of the monarchy.
Gunpowder Plot | Aftermath
Early in 1604 Robert Catesby, a Catholic convert who had lost patience with King James I's lack of toleration of Catholics, invited his cousin Thomas Wintour to a meeting at which John was also present. Catesby proposed to blow up "the Parliament House with gunpowder", killing the king and his government, as in "that place, have they done us all the mischief". Catesby had not then given up hope on foreign help, and so he sent Wintour to the continent to meet with the Constable of Castille. Wintour also met with Welsh spy Hugh Owen, who introduced him to Guy Fawkes, a man with whose name Catesby was familiar.
John and Christopher Wright | Gunpowder Plot
There was no place for him to be buried, so rejected was he from England and his religion. Empress Maud gave the title back to the younger namesake son, but she could not grant the lands – a fairly empty gesture. The rest of England was relieved as they learned by the passing of small bands of brigands looking for places to lay low, that they could again venture out without fear of seizure or murder by his organised band of brigands and marauders. As de Mandeville is dying, his allies who hope to mend fences wrote grants returning church property to its owners, including Ramsey Abbey.
The Holy Thief | Introduction to plot
On 14 May 1651, Love was ordered to be arrested on charges of high treason and was confined to the Tower of London. In late June and 5 July, he was tried before the high court of justice. Love was defended by Matthew Hale; presiding at the trial was Richard Keble.
Christopher Love | Plot to restore Charles II
Soares, who was abroad, returned with his men (all 39 of them), and he was warmly received by Bayinnaung. Two months after the assassination, Bayinnaung was ready to start the restoration project. He faced the following adversaries:
Bayinnaung | Interregnum
For the most part, the actual revenue was much lower, which led to attempts to economise at court by reducing the size and expenses of the royal household and raise money through unpopular innovations such as the hearth tax.
Charles II of England | Restoration
On 6 January 1661, about 50 Fifth Monarchists, headed by a wine-cooper named Thomas Venner, tried to gain possession of London in the name of "King Jesus". Most were either killed or taken prisoner; on 19 and 21 January 1661, Venner and 10 others were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.
The Restoration | Venner rebellion (1661)
Charles spent his time attending plays in France, and he developed a taste for Spanish plays. Those nobles living in Holland began to learn about mercantile exchange as well as the tolerant, rationalist prose debates that circulated in that officially tolerant nation. John Bramhall, for example, had been a strongly high church theologian, and yet, in exile, he debated willingly with Thomas Hobbes and came into the Restored church as tolerant in practice as he was severe in argument. Courtiers also received an exposure to the Roman Catholic Church and its liturgy and pageants, as well as, to a lesser extent, Italian poetry.
Restoration literature | Historical context
The foiling of the Gunpowder Plot initiated a wave of national relief at the delivery of the King and his sons, and inspired in the ensuing parliament a mood of loyalty and goodwill, which Salisbury astutely exploited to extract higher subsidies for the King than any (bar one) granted in Elizabeth I's reign. Walter Raleigh, who was languishing in the Tower owing to his involvement in the Main Plot, and whose wife was a first cousin of Lady Catesby, declared he had had no knowledge of the conspiracy. The Bishop of Rochester gave a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, in which he condemned the plot.
Gunpowder Plot | Reaction
The effort, unfortunately, came to nothing in a new and harsher round of suppression by local authorities. Beeston had better luck at the start of the Restoration, when he was able to recruit a new troupe of Beeston's Boys for a time. They played at the Cockpit and the Salisbury Court Theatre in the first few years of the Restoration era.
King and Queen's Young Company | Aftermath
In his speech to both Houses on 9 November, James expounded on two emerging preoccupations of his monarchy: the divine right of kings and the Catholic question. He insisted that the plot had been the work of only a few Catholics, not of the English Catholics as a whole, and he reminded the assembly to rejoice at his survival, since kings were divinely appointed and he owed his escape to a miracle. Salisbury wrote to his English ambassadors abroad, informing them of what had occurred, and also reminding them that the King bore no ill will to his Catholic neighbours.
Gunpowder Plot | Reaction
He survived attempted rebellions, but alienated much of the political nation by his Catholicism and policies. When William of Orange of the Netherlands, James' Protestant son-in-law, invaded England in 1688, James fled and William and his wife took over the throne as William II and Mary II. William called a Scottish Convention, which was dominated by the Presbyterians. It offered William and Mary the crown, and after the defeat of James' supporters the bishops were abolished and a Presbyterian system reinstated in the kirk.
Restoration (Scotland) | Introduction
However, deep divisions among the three men, particularly on the question of whether dispossessed Roman Catholics should be allowed to recover their lands, seriously weakened the effectiveness of the regime. He built Rush Hall near Mountrath, which was the family's main residence for several generations.
Charles Coote, 1st Earl of Mountrath | Restoration
After the Restoration of the monarchy and government by Charles II, the son of defeated and executed king Charles I, there was still division in the nation. Fear of Catholicism continued, fed by the success of the Counter Reformation in Europe. The religious settlement had re-established the Church of England, but presbyterians and other dissenters were suspicious of what they considered its 'Popish' practices. Charles II was at least sympathetic to Catholicism. This wave of radical dissension was found throughout the country but was particularly pronounced in the north, leading to its characterization as the 'Northern Rebellion'. The Crown took steps to suppress the movement by arresting known agitators.
Farnley Wood Plot | Background
Virginia had provided sanctuary for Cavaliers fleeing the English republic. Sir William Berkeley, who had previously been governor up until 1652, was elected governor in 1660 by the House of Burgesses and he promptly declared for the King. The Anglican Church was restored as the established church.
Restoration in the English colonies | North America
The Restoration was the return of the monarchy to Scotland in 1660 after the period of the Commonwealth, and the subsequent three decades of Scottish history until the Revolution and Convention of Estates of 1689. It was part of a wider Restoration in the British Isles that included the return of the Stuart dynasty to the thrones of England and Ireland in the person of Charles II. As military commander of the Commonwealth's largest armed force, George Monck, governor-general in Scotland, was instrumental in the restoration of Charles II, who was proclaimed king in Edinburgh on 14 May 1660. There was a general pardon for offences during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, but four individuals were excepted and executed.
Restoration (Scotland) | Introduction
On the Restoration, he went abroad. He received a pardon and a pass as one of those whom the king wished to call home.
John Nicholas (of Chepstow) | Introduction
Geoffrey refused to restore the incomes unless the offenders came barefoot into York Minster and begged for the archbishop's forgiveness. This all but Marshal did and they had their official revenues restored.
Peter de Ros | Introduction
On the eve of the state opening of the next parliamentary session on 5 November 1605, a soldier called Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the parliament buildings guarding a pile of slaves, not far from about twenty barrels of gunpowder with which he intended to blow up Parliament House the following day and cause the destruction, as James put it, "not only...of my person, nor of my wife and posterity also, but of the whole body of the State in general". A Catholic conspiracy led by a disaffected gentleman called Robert Catesby, the Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly became known, had in fact been discovered in advance of Fawkes's arrest and deliberately allowed to mature in order to catch the culprits red-handed and the plotters unawares.
James VI and I and the English Parliament | King and Parliament
Restoration began again under Thomas Ken who was appointed by the Crown in 1685 and served until 1691. He was one of seven bishops imprisoned for refusing to sign King James II's "Declaration of Indulgence", which would have enabled Catholics to resume positions of political power, but popular support led to their acquittal. Ken refused to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II because James II had not abdicated and with others, known as the Nonjurors, was put out of office. His successor, Richard Kidder, was killed in the Great Storm of 1703 when two chimney stacks on the palace fell on him and his wife, while they were asleep in bed.
Wells Cathedral | 1660–1800
By an edict of 22 February 1604, King James ordered all Roman Catholic clergy ("Jesuits, Seminaries and other Priests") to leave his kingdom by 19 March. This edict had been drafted in July 1603 on the discovery of the plots. Anthony Copley was condemned to death; but he was pardoned on 18 August 1604, having made a full confession on the history of the plot.
Bye Plot | Aftermath
Robert Catesby (1573–1605), a man of "ancient, historic and distinguished lineage", was the inspiration behind the plot. He was described by contemporaries as "a good-looking man, about six feet tall, athletic and a good swordsman". Along with several other conspirators, he took part in the Essex Rebellion in 1601, during which he was wounded and captured. Queen Elizabeth allowed him to escape with his life after fining him 4,000 marks (equivalent to more than £6 million in 2008), after which he sold his estate in Chastleton. In 1603 Catesby helped to organise a mission to the new king of Spain, Philip III, urging Philip to launch an invasion attempt on England, which they assured him would be well supported, particularly by the English Catholics.
Gunpowder Plot | Initial recruitment
Most of the conspirators fled from London as they learned of the plot's discovery, trying to enlist support along the way. Several made a stand against the pursuing Sheriff of Worcester and his men at Holbeche House; in the ensuing battle, Catesby was one of those shot and killed. At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the survivors, including Fawkes, were convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Gunpowder Plot | Introduction
Some Catholic widows tried to ensure their safety by marrying Anglican widowers. The House of Commons was searched – without result – in the expectation of a second Gunpowder Plot. Anyone even suspected of being Catholic was driven out of London and forbidden to be within ten miles (16 km) of the city. William Staley, a young Catholic banker, made a drunken threat against the King and within 10 days was tried, convicted and executed for plotting to kill him. Oates, for his part, received a state apartment in Whitehall and an annual allowance. He soon presented new allegations, claiming assassins intended to shoot the King with silver bullets so the wound would not heal.
Popish Plot | Height of the hysteria
In 1683, a plot was uncovered to assassinate Charles and James and spark a republican revolution to re-establish a government of the Cromwellian style. The conspiracy, known as the Rye House Plot, backfired upon its conspirators and provoked a wave of sympathy for the King and James. Several notable Whigs, including the Earl of Essex and the King's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, were implicated. Monmouth initially confessed to complicity in the plot, implicating fellow-plotters, but later recanted. Essex committed suicide and Monmouth, along with several others, was obliged to flee into Continental exile. Charles reacted to the plot by increasing repression of Whigs and dissenters.
James II of England | Return to favour
The headsman's assistant had held up the severed head to spectators, and contemptuously thrown it aside afterward, but he omitted the usual pronouncement 'This is the head of a traitor'; as a leading preacher Peters's voice would have been easily recognized. According to witness testimony Peters had ordered a carpenter to drive staples into the scaffold (for tying Charles to the block if he resisted), been present at the scene on the day of the execution, disappeared for an hour during it, and was seen drinking water with the presumed headsman, Richard Brandon, afterwards. He was tried on 13 October and found guilty of high treason.
Hugh Peter | Restoration and Stuart retribution
Temple returned to Parliament with the recall of the Rump and Long Parliaments by General Monck, but following the Restoration in 1660, he was excluded from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, because of his role in the trial and execution of Charles I. He was captured in Warwickshire while trying to travel to Ireland, under his first wife's maiden name of Busbridge. He was held in the Tower of London before being tried as a regicide. He tried to avoid the death penalty by saying that he had only acted as a judge in Charles I's trial in order to give information to the Royalists.
James Temple | Restoration
Robert Wintour and other conspirators devised a plan to blow up the new Scottish Protestant King James I at the Wintour's home at Huddington Court. Robert Catesby, the main figure behind the Gunpowder Plot, was from Northampton, but most of the plotters were from Worcestershire's Catholic families.
History of Worcestershire | Gunpowder Plot
Gennings next proceeded to procure a house for the English friars at Gravelines, but in 1618 he obtained leave from the minister general to establish a settlement at Douai. As a matter of fact, most of the friars who had joined Gennings were graduates of Douai College, and in transferring the residence to that town he hoped to obtain a continuous supply of recruits. The work of restoring the English province was definitely entrusted to him by the general chapter of 1618, and he was nominated "Vicar of England". To assist him in the work of restoration, the commissary general of the Belgian nation was empowered to gather together all the English and Scottish friars from any province in the order.
John Gennings | The Restoration of the English Franciscans
Thomas Wintour begged to be hanged for himself and his brother, so that his brother might be spared. Fawkes explained his not guilty plea as ignorance of certain aspects of the indictment. Keyes appeared to accept his fate, Bates and Robert Wintour begged for mercy, and Grant explained his involvement as "a conspiracy intended but never effected". Only Digby, tried on a separate indictment, pleaded guilty, insisting that the King had reneged upon promises of toleration for Catholics, and that affection for Catesby and love of the Catholic cause mitigated his actions. He sought death by the axe and begged mercy from the King for his young family.
Gunpowder Plot | Trials
Garnet wrote to a colleague in Rome, Claudio Acquaviva, expressing his concerns about open rebellion in England. He also told Acquaviva that "there is a risk that some private endeavour may commit treason or use force against the King", and urged the pope to issue a public brief against the use of force. According to Fawkes, 20 barrels of gunpowder were brought in at first, followed by 16 more on 20 July. The supply of gunpowder was theoretically controlled by the government, but it was easily obtained from illicit sources. On 28 July, the ever-present threat of the plague again delayed the opening of Parliament, this time until Tuesday 5 November.
Gunpowder Plot | Undercroft
Around 20 January, Bromley was ordered to search Hindlip Hall for Catholic priests: “to pull down the wainscoat, bore the ground, drill the boards and chimney corners, examine the attics and roof, &c., in search of concealed hiding-places.” He was having great difficulties when two of concealed men, Nicholas Owen and Hall, broke out and were captured. It was another week before Henry Garnet and Edward Oldcorne emerged, and even then the priests were misidentified. He took the prisoners to London, after a suitable delay to allow Garnet to recover his strength: Garnet later reported the kind treatment he had received at Bromley's hands throughout the stay and the journey, although he was on his way to brutal execution.
Henry Bromley (died 1615) | The Gunpowder Plot
Written in a simple, moving and straightforward style in the form of a diary, the book combines irenic prayers urging the forgiveness of Charles's executioners with a justification of royalism and the King's political and military programme that led to the Civil War. It is by no means certain that Charles wrote the book. After the Restoration, John Gauden, bishop of Worcester, claimed to have written it. Scholars continue to disagree about the merits of this claim, though assuming that if Gauden wrote it, he had access to Charles's papers when he did so. Jeremy Taylor is also said to have had a hand in its revision, and to be the source of its title; an earlier draft bore the name "Suspiria Regalia", the "Royal Sighs".
Eikon Basilike | Contents and authorship
Measuring devices placed in the chamber to calculate the force of the blast were themselves destroyed by the blast, while the skull of the mannequin representing King James, which had been placed on a throne inside the chamber surrounded by courtiers, peers and bishops, was found far from the site. According to the findings of the programme, no one within 100 metres of the blast would have survived, and all windows within a large distance of the palace would have been shattered, including the stained glass windows of Westminster Abbey. The power of the explosion would have been heard at least five miles away, and seen from much further.
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend | Synopsis
On 15 January a proclamation named Father Garnet, Father Gerard, and Father Greenway (Tesimond) as wanted men. Tesimond and Gerard managed to escape the country and live out their days in freedom; Garnet was not so lucky. Several days earlier, on 9 January, Robert Wintour and Stephen Littleton were captured. Their hiding place at Hagley, the home of Humphrey Littleton (brother of MP John Littleton, imprisoned for treason in 1601 for his part in the Essex revolt) was betrayed by a cook, who grew suspicious of the amount of food sent up for his master's consumption. Humphrey denied the presence of the two fugitives, but another servant led the authorities to their hiding place.
Gunpowder Plot | Jesuits
Fawkes left the country for a short time. The King, meanwhile, spent much of the summer away from the city, hunting. He stayed wherever was convenient, including on occasion at the houses of prominent Catholics. Garnet, convinced that the threat of an uprising had receded, travelled the country on a pilgrimage.
Gunpowder Plot | Undercroft
While there he sought out Guy Fawkes (1570–1606), a committed Catholic who had served as a soldier in the Southern Netherlands under the command of William Stanley, and who in 1603 was recommended for a captaincy. Accompanied by John Wright's brother Christopher, Fawkes had also been a member of the 1603 delegation to the Spanish court pleading for an invasion of England. Wintour told Fawkes that "some good frends of his wished his company in Ingland", and that certain gentlemen "were uppon a resolution to doe some whatt in Ingland if the pece with Spain healped us nott". The two men returned to England late in April 1604, telling Catesby that Spanish support was unlikely.
Gunpowder Plot | Initial recruitment
In the 2005 ITV programme "", a full-size replica of the House of Lords was built and destroyed with barrels of gunpowder, totalling 1 metric tonne of explosives. The experiment was conducted on the Advantica-owned Spadeadam test site and demonstrated that the explosion, if the gunpowder was in good order, would have killed all those in the building. The power of the explosion was such that of the deep concrete walls making up the undercroft (replicating how archives suggest the walls of the old House of Lords were constructed), the end wall where the barrels were placed by, under the throne, was reduced to rubble, and the adjacent surviving portions of wall were shoved away.
Gunpowder Plot | Reconstructing the explosion
When Cromwell died and his son, Richard Cromwell, threatened to become Lord Protector, politicians and public figures scrambled to show themselves as allies or enemies of the new regime. Printed literature was dominated by odes in poetry, and religious writing in prose. The industry of religious tract writing, despite official efforts, did not reduce its output. Figures such as the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox, were jailed by the Cromwellian authorities and published at their own peril. During the Interregnum, the royalist forces attached to the court of Charles I went into exile with the twenty-year-old Charles II and conducted a brisk business in intelligence and fund-raising for an eventual return to England.
Restoration literature | Historical context
He and his family returned to London in 1660 after the English Restoration. Their Irish estates were returned to them and his father was created Baronet Donalong in 1660 by Charles II. However, the king refused to go further than that because the family was Catholic.
Richard Hamilton (officer) | Restoration (1660–1667)
Acting in Charles II's interest, Sir Charles Coote seized Galway while Lord Broghill held firm in Munster. On 9 January 1660 a council of officers declared Edmund Ludlow a traitor, and he fled to England. The regicide Hardress Waller re-took Dublin Castle in February 1660 but with little support he surrendered to Sir Charles Coote. Waller along with fellow regicide John Cook was arrested and sent to England. The officers in Dublin supported General Monck.
Restoration (Ireland) | End of the republic
The Restoration of the monarchy began in 1660. The Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland (1649–60) resulted from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms but collapsed in 1659. Politicians such as General Monck tried to ensure a peaceful transition of government from the "Commonwealth" republic back to monarchy. From 1 May 1660 the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under King Charles II. The term "Restoration" may apply both to the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and to the period immediately before and after the event.
Restoration (Ireland) | Introduction
When he realised the plot had been uncovered, he took his horse and made for his sister's house at Norbrook, before continuing to Huddington Court. The group of six conspirators stopped at Ashby St Ledgers at about 6 pm, where they met Robert Wintour and updated him on their situation. They then continued on to Dunchurch, and met with Digby. Catesby convinced him that despite the plot's failure, an armed struggle was still a real possibility. He announced to Digby's "hunting party" that the King and Salisbury were dead, before the fugitives moved west to Warwick. In London, news of the plot was spreading, and the authorities set extra guards on the city gates, closed the ports, and protected the house of the Spanish Ambassador, which was surrounded by an angry mob.
Gunpowder Plot | Flight
Father Oswald Tesimond claimed that Keyes had "tasted persecution himself, having lost his goods because of it" while historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson's image of him was of a "desperate man, ruined and indebted". Tall, with a red beard, despite his relative poverty Catesby declared him "a trusty honest man", and may have paid him for his services. Like fellow plotter Guy Fawkes, he was thought capable of looking after himself. Several conspirators expressed concerns about the safety of fellow Catholics who would be at Parliament on the day of the planned explosion; Keyes was particularly worried about Lord Mordaunt, his wife's employer.
Robert Keyes | Gunpowder Plot
Sir Everard Digby (c. 1578 – 30 January 1606) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Although he was raised in a Protestant household, and married a Protestant, Digby and his wife were converted to Catholicism by the Jesuit priest John Gerard. In the autumn of 1605, he was part of a Catholic pilgrimage to the shrine of St Winefride's Well in Holywell. About this time he met Robert Catesby, a religious fanatic who planned to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, killing James I. Catesby then planned to incite a popular revolt, during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the English throne.
Everard Digby | Introduction
Between 1533 and 1540, King Henry VIII took control of the English Church from Rome, the start of several decades of religious tension in England. English Catholics struggled in a society dominated by the newly separate and increasingly Protestant Church of England. Henry's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, responded to the growing religious divide by introducing the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which required anyone appointed to a public or church office to swear allegiance to the monarch as head of the Church and state. The penalties for refusal were severe; fines were imposed for recusancy, and repeat offenders risked imprisonment and execution.
Gunpowder Plot | Religion in England
Celia is then sent to Bidnold by the King after displeasing him. One night Merivel drunkenly makes advances towards her, and is promptly reported to the King by Elias Finn. The result is that Merivel is evicted from Bidnold and left close to destitute.
Restoration (Tremain novel) | Plot summary
Here, due to the respect in which he was universally held, Mansell was given rooms in his old college. He was left in peace, and at the Restoration of Charles II briefly resumed the office of Principal, but due to his failing eyesight he resigned a year later in favour of Jenkins. He was possibly the Francis Mansel who, as a wine importer from Chichester, Sussex, helped King Charles II escape from England to France in 1651 after he had been on the run from the Battle of Worcester. He lent the King a ship so that he could escape to France.
Francis Mansell | Civil War and Restoration
On 8 July 1659, shortly after the fall of the protectorate, the London-based Committee of Safety gave Phaire a commission as colonel of foot to serve under Ludlow in Ireland. At the Restoration he was arrested in Cork (18 May 1660), and sent prisoner to Dublin. Thence he was removed to London, and sent to the Tower of London in June. He doubtless owed his life, and the easy treatment he experienced, to his connection with Sir Thomas Herbert; Bishop Clancarty, whose life he had spared, also pleaded for him. On 2 November (Hacker had been hanged on 19 October; Huncks had saved himself by giving evidence) he petitioned the privy council to release his estate from sequestration, and permit him to return to Ireland.
Robert Phayre | Restoration
Following James's accession to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with the new king, who he supposed had reneged on his promises of toleration for English Catholics. His meeting in June 1603 with Robert Catesby, a religious zealot similarly unimpressed with the new royal dynasty, led the following year to his joining Catesby's conspiracy to kill the king and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy helped fund the group and secured the leases to certain properties in London, one of which was the undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords, in which the gunpowder was finally placed.
Thomas Percy (Gunpowder Plot) | Introduction
A few members of the previous regime were tried and found guilty of treason. Some were executed: Archibald Campbell (8th Earl of Argyll), beheaded 27 May 1661, James Guthrie and Captain William Govan hanged 1 June 1661, and Archibald Johnston (Lord Warriston) hanged 22 July 1663. John Swinton (1621?–1679) was condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle, where he remained for some years before being released. In 1661 John Home of Kelloe had his estates sequestrated for being with the English army against the King's army at the battle of Worcester in 1651. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the estates were restored to his son George.
Restoration (Scotland) | General pardon and exceptions
The Restoration of the monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the republic that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The term "Restoration" may apply both to the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and to the period immediately following the event.
Restoration in the English colonies | Introduction
In 1604 Robert Catesby, a devout Catholic with a magnetic personality, recruited friends and rebels to meet and discuss his plot to blow up the House of Lords in an attempt to reestablish Catholicism in England. Those present at that first meeting with Catesby were Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes. With the imminent threat of plague, Parliament postponed re-opening until 5 November 1605, which gave the plotters ample time to lease out a small house in the centre of London where Fawkes would live under the alias "Jhon Jhonson" as Thomas Percy's servant while gathering the gunpowder necessary (Fraser 174).
William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle | Background
In March 1660 the Long Parliament finally dissolved itself, and elections were held for the Convention Parliament, which sat in May. This body, dominated by royalists and Presbyterians, formally proclaimed Charles II as king, and he was restored to the throne on 29 May 1660. In order to minimize acts of reprisal and vengeance for acts taken during the Interregnum, the parliament passed the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, under whose terms most actions were forgiven. Specific exceptions were made for those directly involved in the regicide, and after long debate, Vane was also named as an exception. The act was not passed until August 1660, and Vane was arrested on 1 July 1660 on the orders of the king and imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Henry Vane the Younger | The Restoration
On 20 January the local Justice and his retainers arrived at Thomas Habington's home, Hindlip Hall, to arrest the Jesuits. Despite Thomas Habington's protests, the men spent the next four days searching the house. On 24 January, starving, two priests left their hiding places and were discovered. Humphrey Littleton, who had escaped from the authorities at Hagley, got as far as Prestwood in Staffordshire before he was captured. He was imprisoned, and then condemned to death at Worcester. On 26 January, in exchange for his life, he told the authorities where they could find Father Garnet. Worn down by hiding for so long, Garnet, accompanied by another priest, emerged from his priest hole the next day.
Gunpowder Plot | Jesuits
Of the plotters, only the singed figures of Catesby and Grant, and the Wright brothers, Rookwood, and Percy, remained. The fugitives resolved to stay in the house and wait for the arrival of the King's men. Richard Walsh (Sheriff of Worcestershire) and his company of 200 men besieged Holbeche House on the morning of 8 November. Thomas Wintour was hit in the shoulder while crossing the courtyard. John Wright was shot, followed by his brother, and then Rookwood. Catesby and Percy were reportedly killed by a single lucky shot. The attackers rushed the property, and stripped the dead or dying defenders of their clothing.
Gunpowder Plot | Last stand
The act mentioned him by name as being exempt from its indemnity provisions if he ever again were to accept public office. On 12 October 1660 he gave evidence at the trial of the regicide Thomas Scot, swearing that Scot had spoken in parliament in favour of executing the king; an act that disgusted many in the light of his famous defence of parliamentary privilege in 1642.
William Lenthall | The Restoration
Fifth Monarchist Thomas Harrison, the first person found guilty of regicide, who had been the seventeenth of the 59 commissioners to sign the death warrant, was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered because he was considered by the new government still to represent a real threat to the re-established order. In October 1660, at Charing Cross or Tyburn, London, ten were publicly hanged, drawn and quartered: Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scrope, John Carew, Thomas Scot, and Gregory Clement, who had signed the king's death warrant; the preacher Hugh Peters; Francis Hacker and Daniel Axtell, who commanded the guards at the king's trial and execution; and John Cooke, the solicitor who directed the prosecution.
The Restoration | Commonwealth regicides and rebels
When the fire started in 1676, inside the tower there were large quantities of grain, projectiles, breastplates, halberds, two long guns and a big amount of gunpowder. The explosion of gunpowder provoked the destruction of the upper side of the tower and of the North-west corridor. The current appearance is due to the restorations occurred after the fire. Immediately after restorations the North-west corridor was turned into a warehouse, at least until 1935; after that the vault was restored and brought back to its original shape and reopened to public.
Tailors' Tower | Restorations
However, things become complicated when Merivel breaks the King's cardinal rule by falling in love with Celia. Elias Finn, a painter commissioned by the King to paint a portrait of Celia, tricks Merivel into revealing his romantic feelings for Celia, who does not return Merivel's affections. After finding out about Merivel's romantic feelings toward Celia, the King banishes him from court back to his life as a physician. Merivel rejoins his old friend, John Pearce, who has opened a Quaker sanitarium. There, Merivel meets Katherine, a troubled young woman whose husband walked out on her after their daughter drowned in the river.
Restoration (1995 film) | Plot
He was attended by his old friend, Peter Gunning, who preached his funeral sermon, and Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London, performed the obsequies. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.
John Barwick | After the Restoration
However, on the eve of the planned explosion, Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding the explosives the plotters had positioned in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and arrested. As the government searched for Fawkes's accomplices, Grant and the others engaged in a futile mission for support for the uprising. They stole horses from Warwick Castle, and further supplies from Hewell Grange, before stopping at Holbeche House. The plotters laid in front of the fire some of the gunpowder they had collected, to dry out, but a stray spark ignited the powder, and in the resultant conflagration Grant was blinded.
John Grant (Gunpowder Plot) | Introduction
The Plot was the attempted assassination of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy in a single attack, by exploding the Houses of Parliament. Another Jesuit, Oswald Tesimond, managed to escape arrest for his involvement in this plot.
Society of Jesus | Political intrigue
Although Catesby and Percy escaped the executioner, their bodies were exhumed and decapitated, and their heads exhibited on spikes outside the House of Lords. On a cold 30 January, Everard Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant, and Thomas Bates, were tied to hurdles—wooden panels—and dragged through the crowded streets of London to St Paul's Churchyard. Digby, the first to mount the scaffold, asked the spectators for forgiveness, and refused the attentions of a Protestant clergyman. He was stripped of his clothing, and wearing only a shirt, climbed the ladder to place his head through the noose. He was quickly cut down, and while still fully conscious was castrated, disembowelled, and then quartered, along with the three other prisoners.
Gunpowder Plot | Executions
Richard mobilised 4,000 soldiers to restore order. Most of the rebel leaders were tracked down and executed; by November, at least 1,500 rebels had been killed.
Peasants' Revolt | Introduction
The following day, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes were hanged, drawn and quartered, opposite the building they had planned to blow up, in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster. Keyes did not wait for the hangman's command and jumped from the gallows, but he survived the drop and was led to the quartering block. Although weakened by his torture, Fawkes managed to jump from the gallows and break his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the gruesome latter part of his execution. Steven Littleton was executed at Stafford. His cousin Humphrey, despite his co-operation with the authorities, met his end at Red Hill near Worcester.
Gunpowder Plot | Executions
In 1651, Love became involved in a plot to restore Charles II as the king of England. In the plot, the Presbyterians sent Colonel Silius Titus to France to deliver letters to Henrietta Maria, the mother of Charles II; Colonel Ashworth brought the replies to Love's house in London. On 18 December 1650, Love's wife obtained an official pass to travel to Amsterdam. During this period, Love also received letters from Scottish Presbyterians who were sympathetic to Charles II. Love also hosted discussions in his home how to raise money for firearms from the English Presbyterians. On 7 May 1651, Love and other prominent Presbyterians were arrested and confined in Liverpool.
Christopher Love | Plot to restore Charles II
Claypole was therefore remanded back to the Tower; but at the next term, as no evidence appeared against him, and what was, perhaps, much more fortunate to him, a counter plot began to work, he was discharged. When writing the Dictionary of National Biography article on Claypole, Charles Harding Firth concurs with Noble, but Ivan Roots in the more recent Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does not, and thinks it is a case of mistaken identity because although a man called John Claypole, whose profession is given as a printer, was held on suspension of being involved in a plot given his character, it was unlikely to be John Claypole who resided at the manor of Northborough.
John Claypole | During the restoration
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend was a British television show, hosted by Richard Hammond that recreated elements of the Gunpowder Plot in which Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Lords. First aired on the ITV Network in 2005, this £1 million programme centres on a reconstruction of the Houses of Parliament as they were in 1605 (the current ones had not yet been built at the time of the Gunpowder Plot), constructed using period equivalent methods wherever possible. This was stocked with mannequins to represent notable commoners, members and the king before the bomb was detonated.
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend | Introduction
On 30 June 1688, a group of seven Protestant nobles invited the Prince of Orange to come to England with an army; by September it became clear that William would invade England. When William arrived on 5 November 1688, James lost his nerve, declined to attack the invading Dutch and tried to flee to France. He was captured in Kent; later, he was released and placed under Dutch protective guard. Having no desire to make James a martyr, William, Prince of Orange, let him escape on 23 December. James was received in France by his cousin and ally, Louis XIV, who offered him a palace and a pension.
The Restoration | End of the Restoration
The novel tells the story of Robert Merivel, who begins the book as a medical student, studying alongside his serious, practical friend John Pearce. John is a studious, pious counterpart to Merivel's shallow obsession with status, drinking and eating to excess. Pearce condemns the sinfulness of Merivel's lifestyle, but Merivel is unaffected by his comments. Merivel is asked by his father to visit the King with the aim of continuing their family's connection with the royal family, but Merivel embarrasses both of them by his nervousness. However, later, King Charles II asks Merivel to care for one of his dogs, which is grievously ill.
Restoration (Tremain novel) | Plot summary
In the Bye Plot of 1603, two Catholic priests planned to kidnap King James and hold him in the Tower of London until he agreed to be more tolerant towards Catholics. Most dramatic was the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. It was discovered in time with eight conspirators executed, including Guy Fawkes, who became the iconic evil traitor in English lore.
Elizabethan era | Plots, intrigues and conspiracies
This was not the case in free England. Pamphleteers wrote tracts voicing the fear of a people who within living memory had experienced the Rule of the Major-Generals and had liked neither the imposition of military rule, nor the costs of keeping the New Model Army in being when the country was not at war with itself or others. People also remembered the "Eleven Years' Tyranny" of Charles I and feared that a standing army under royal command would allow monarchs in the future to ignore the wishes of Parliament.
English Army | Restoration
The explosion would have been seen from miles away and heard from further away still. Even if only half of the gunpowder had gone off, which Fawkes was apparently prepared for, everyone in the House of Lords and its environs would have been killed instantly. The programme also disproved claims that some deterioration in the quality of the gunpowder would have prevented the explosion. A portion of deliberately deteriorated gunpowder, of such low quality as to make it unusable in firearms, when placed in a heap and ignited, still managed to create a large explosion. The impact of even deteriorated gunpowder would have been magnified by its containment in wooden barrels, compensating for the quality of the contents.
Gunpowder Plot | Reconstructing the explosion
Even his conduct during the Siege of Newcastle was questioned, and there were wild accusations that he had been bribed to betray the town. By 1665 he was prospering again. Hearth Tax records for that year show his house had more than ten hearths. The average for other merchant Hostmen was 5.7.
John Marlay (MP) | Restoration
Catholicism became marginalised, but despite the threat of torture or execution, priests continued to practise their faith in secret.
Gunpowder Plot | Religion in England
The King sent his brother and heir to Edinburgh largely to remove him from London as a result of the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–1681, during which the English "Country Party" attempted to exclude the openly Catholic James from the three British thrones. He took up residency in Holyrood Palace the early 1680s, running what was in effect a small court. The dissenters, led by Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron called themselves the Society People, but would be become known after their leader as the Cameronians. Reduced in number, hiding out in the moors, they became increasingly radical. On 22 June 1680 the Sanquhar Declaration was posted in Sanquhar, renouncing Charles II as king.
Restoration (Scotland) | Duke of Albany (1679–1685)
A dissident Catholic, Guy Fawkes, was discovered in the cellars of the parliament buildings on the night of 4–5 November 1605, the eve of the state opening of the second session of James's first English Parliament. He was guarding a pile of wood not far from 36 barrels of gunpowder with which Fawkes intended to blow up Parliament House the following day and cause the destruction, as James put it, "not only ... of my person, nor of my wife and posterity also, but of the whole body of the State in general". The sensational discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly became known, aroused a mood of national relief at the delivery of the king and his sons.
James VI and I | Gunpowder Plot