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This history documentary re-examines Guy Fawkes & Robert Catesby's attempts to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 - one of the most famous yet least understood events in British history. It shows how the plot was almost England's 9/11, and asks why a group of young Englishmen became so radicalized and so hell-bent on terrorism. Computer graphics recreate what the Houses of Parliament looked like in 1605, and show just how close the plotters came to success.
This history documentary re-examines Guy Fawkes & Robert Catesby's attempts to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 - one of the most famous yet least understood events in British history. It shows how the plot was almost England's 9/11, and asks why a group of young Englishmen became so radicalized and so hell-bent on terrorism. Computer graphics recreate what the Houses of Parliament looked like in 1605, and show just how close the plotters came to success.
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TVTranscript
00:00when the whole country seemed to be menaced by an atrocity.
00:07The Gunpowder Plot would have caused absolute mayhem.
00:10The King, the Privy Council, members of the House of Lords,
00:13a fair number of members of the House of Commons,
00:15all wiped out at once and probably a great fire raging through London.
00:24I think one of the frightening things about the Gunpowder Plot
00:27is just how close they did come to success.
00:58Every year on November 5th,
01:00the people of England light big bright bonfires,
01:03throw ragdoll effigies of a man onto the fire and let off fireworks.
01:10It's a celebration known as Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night.
01:21And it's in commemoration of an infamous event in English history
01:25called the Gunpowder Plot.
01:39In the 400th anniversary year of the Gunpowder Plot,
01:42Timewatch has carried out a thorough re-examination
01:45of this, one of the most famous events in English history.
01:49And to help paint a clearer picture of what actually happened
01:52400 years ago, this film, in conjunction with the curators
01:55at the Houses of Parliament, has, for the first time,
01:58created a detailed replica of what Westminster,
02:01the destined scene of the crime, would have been like.
02:16These are the Houses of Parliament today.
02:19They form the most recognisable government buildings in the world.
02:27And this is what they looked like in 1605.
02:44Guy Fawkes is the name we associate most closely with the plot.
02:49When, at about midnight on 4th November 1605,
02:54a search party discovered him lurking in the vaults
02:57beneath the House of Lords,
02:59he was just hours away from blowing apart
03:02the very fabric of the English state.
03:05Out! Out!
03:13What is your name?
03:1518 months of meticulous planning and deception
03:19were foiled by this arrest.
03:21What are the names of your accomplices in this terrible endeavour?
03:26Well, of course, this is only the beginning,
03:28as far as the government are concerned.
03:30They know nothing apart from the fact that they've caught
03:33this stranger standing guard over nearly a tonne of gunpowder.
03:36Take him away.
03:38But who were his associates? Who was he linked to?
03:41For a start, Fawkes isn't saying anything.
03:44Indeed, when he's dragged before the sleepy King
03:47on the morning of 5th November and the King asks him
03:50why on earth he should have done such a thing,
03:52Fawkes says, I wanted to blow you back to your Scottish mountains.
03:59So why did Guy Fawkes want to blow the King back to his Scottish mountains?
04:03While writing a book exploring the religious backdrop to the gunpowder plot,
04:07I looked at this question again and again,
04:09but what soon became clear was that,
04:11despite his popular association with the plot,
04:14the answer to it didn't lie with Fawkes.
04:16He is not the key to this story.
04:20The ringleader of the plot was Robert Catesby, not Guy Fawkes,
04:23although Guy Fawkes has got lumbered with it.
04:26He's got lumbered with being burnt on November 5th.
04:30I don't think we can really understand the plot
04:33unless we understand Catesby.
04:35People adored him.
04:36He was one of those men people would follow to death.
04:42There's a charisma to Catesby, if you like, a black glamour to the man.
04:47He is a mix of a very devoted Catholic,
04:52at the same time a man whose purpose in this particular plot is revenge.
04:59There were five core plotters, Catesby, Fawkes and three others.
05:06Thomas Percy, the oldest of the group,
05:09soon to become a bodyguard in the royal household.
05:16Tom Winter, who was Catesby's cousin and right-hand man.
05:23And Jack Wright, who was considered to be the best swordsman in England.
05:29They saw themselves as being soldiers of Christ, the true soldiers of Christ.
05:34They had swords engraved with the words, The Passion of Christ.
05:40In May 1604, Robert Catesby and his associates
05:44met in the upstairs room of a London drinking house.
05:47There, Catesby outlined to them his plans
05:50for the most daring terrorist attempt this country has ever seen.
05:54But what was it that had brought the five men together?
05:57What had driven them to devise such a devastating atrocity?
06:01Looking at the Gunpowder Plot and the issues that created it,
06:04we should go back at least 30 to 35 years
06:07to about a dozen years into Queen Elizabeth's reign
06:11when the Pope excommunicated her
06:13and called upon all loyal Catholics to depose her.
06:19And it was also said,
06:21in certain circles, to assassinate her.
06:26And what this did was it politicised religion in England.
06:30Which one of us has not lost money?
06:33Folks, you have bled for your faith.
06:44The restrictions placed on Catholics
06:46affected almost every element of their lives.
06:49To be a Catholic at this time
06:51was to endure severe and increasing persecution.
06:58They could not attend Mass, their own service.
07:01There couldn't be a Mass. The Mass was illegal.
07:04They couldn't be married by a Catholic priest.
07:07They couldn't have their babies baptised.
07:13They had to go to the Protestant church on Sunday.
07:16That was the law of the land. They had to make a showing.
07:19They had to be married in a Protestant church
07:22and they had to have their children educated
07:25in the Protestant religion of the country.
07:34The law enforcing these conditions was called the Act of Uniformity,
07:39which prohibited the Catholic faith in England.
07:42The plotters had grown up in its shadow.
07:45They, and all Catholics who refused to abide by the Protestant laws,
07:49were known as recusants.
07:54To be a recusant was simply to refuse to go to church,
07:58because the Latin verb recusare means to refuse.
08:01And that's a really disruptive act in the 16th century.
08:04What you're doing is fracturing society.
08:07It's not just a private act
08:09to not turn up at church.
08:11You are tearing society apart
08:13and the government could not tolerate that.
08:16And recusants had to pay fines
08:18every time they failed to attend Sunday service.
08:21Amen.
08:24And, of course, as the paranoia about Catholics increased,
08:28those fines became steeper and steeper.
08:33But in the eyes of the government,
08:35an even greater threat to the state
08:37was posed by a new order of radical Catholic priests called the Jesuits.
08:45English Jesuits, trained in Europe and smuggled home in secret,
08:49were now operating illicitly across the country
08:52in an effort to keep the Catholic faith alive.
09:00The Jesuits were the symbol of everything that was powerful
09:04and sinister about Roman Catholicism.
09:06That was, in a sense, unfair,
09:08because the society had started as a way of evangelising Europe,
09:12of bringing the good news to Europe,
09:14but very quickly it acquired the edge of attacking Protestants.
09:18And from the outside, it would look like a terrorist organisation
09:22such as Al-Qaeda, which, of course, simply means network.
09:25The Jesuits were a network.
09:28So to be a Protestant and look at this
09:31would be a very scary experience.
09:43As a result of persecution,
09:45followers of the Catholic faith were driven underground.
09:50Jesuit priests went to extraordinary lengths
09:53to uphold the faith in secret,
09:55risking their lives to hold mass illegally in Catholic households.
10:02To help them avoid capture,
10:04many Catholic houses were now equipped with ingenious hiding places,
10:08known as priest holes.
10:15To understand fully the challenges facing the builder of a priest hole,
10:19you have to understand what the searches for priests could be like.
10:22The searchers brought with them builders and carpenters
10:25with measuring rods to check over every inch of the house.
10:28The hide-builder had to be able to conjure space out of nothing.
10:33The priests and those who sheltered them
10:36engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the government spies.
10:40Any priest who was caught faced execution.
10:48I think all through history,
10:50and I don't think this age is any exception,
10:53governments have enjoyed ruling through fear.
10:56It's certainly very useful for them to say,
10:59look at those terrible, wicked Jesuits, ruled directly from Rome.
11:03Goodness knows what they're up to, plotting secretly, Machiavellian.
11:08We must stick together.
11:10Trust us to relieve you of the pain and peril of the Jesuits.
11:19The head of the Jesuit order in England was Father Henry Garnet.
11:24Garnet would become entangled in Kate's misconspiracy
11:27with tragic consequences.
11:31Father Garnet was an older man, about 1603, by the standards of the time.
11:36He was a wonderful scholar, a great musician.
11:40He loved singing, which I think is a sort of touching detail.
11:43Mild-looking, not particularly well-born,
11:47a truly holy man.
11:52As the leading Jesuit priest, Father Garnet lived in hope
11:55that the situation for Catholics in England would improve.
11:59And at the very beginning of the 17th century,
12:02it began to look as if these hopes might, at last, be realised.
12:08I think by 1603, Jesuits like Father Garnet were really hopeful
12:13that there was going to be a more tolerant atmosphere,
12:16and they really thought there was going to be a new deal,
12:19and they encouraged the Catholics,
12:21over whom they had influence, to believe that too.
12:24This new hope for Catholics came about with the death, in 1603,
12:29of Queen Elizabeth I.
12:31Her reign had been dominated by increasing hatred
12:34and persecution of Catholics,
12:36but now she was succeeded by her cousin, King James VI of Scotland,
12:41who was believed by many to be sympathetic towards the Catholics.
12:45I think that when James came to the throne in 1603,
12:49he faced an impossible situation himself,
12:52because he was coming into a country
12:54where there was very strong anti-Catholic feeling,
12:57and yet there were also a considerable number
13:00of loyal Catholic subjects.
13:03James certainly had gone to a lot of trouble
13:06to encourage the view among Catholics,
13:08both in Europe and in England,
13:10that he would be much more sympathetic to them than Elizabeth.
13:15There had been a series of hopes, if you like.
13:18There had been the hope of Guy Fawkes,
13:21that Spain would intervene on Elizabeth's death
13:24with force on the Catholic side.
13:27That came to nothing.
13:29Then they were naturally looking to the king,
13:32and there were men like Thomas Percy,
13:34who were convinced that James had promised toleration for Catholics.
13:38And so those things come together in 1614.
13:42Another factor fuelling Catholic belief
13:44in more tolerant times ahead under the new king
13:47was that his wife, Queen Anne of Denmark,
13:50was known to be a practising Catholic.
13:53James is clearly not averse to having it widely known
13:57that Anne of Denmark is Catholic.
13:59He's happy for her to be in contact with the papacy.
14:03He's happy to be seen to be affectionate towards her.
14:07All this would fit very well into his view.
14:10All this would fit very well
14:12into a strategy of calming Catholic fears.
14:15At the beginning of the reign, penalties on Catholics were relaxed
14:19and it looked fairly hopeful for them.
14:22They ceased collecting recusancy fines.
14:25And then James felt that, as a result,
14:29Catholics had taken advantage of this
14:31and that their numbers were multiplying.
14:33It's possible, in fact,
14:35that Catholics had hitherto just been extremely secretive
14:38and their numbers had been underestimated.
14:43So James felt very strongly that something must be done
14:46to bring them back under control.
14:50In early 1604, King James delivered a crushing blow to the Catholics.
14:55In a speech to Parliament,
14:57he publicly announced his utter detestation of the papist religion.
15:02Three days later, a proclamation ordered all Jesuits
15:05and Catholic priests out of the realm
15:08and recusancy fines were once more imposed.
15:18When King James spoke out in early 1604 against the papists
15:23and talked about detesting them, the scales dropped from their eyes.
15:28And, of course, it's ironic that King James was doing that
15:31in his extremely wily way.
15:33He was trying to convince the Catholic politician
15:36in order to try and keep his, what can I say,
15:39left-wing, the Puritans, on side.
15:42But in doing so, he provoked the Catholics,
15:45who up till then had been pretty content and hopeful.
15:51By 1605, James has made very clear where he stands
15:55on Catholic toleration.
15:57He isn't having any of it
15:59with all Elizabeth's anti-Catholic legislation.
16:04It's at that point that every Catholic must realise
16:08that James' initial fudging and apparent promises have come to nothing.
16:14With no end to their persecution in sight,
16:17and with all their hopes for a brighter future
16:19under the new king now effectively dashed,
16:22this had become an intolerable time for some followers of the Catholic faith.
16:30It would be infuriating being a young, talented Catholic gentleman.
16:35So much of English life would be banned to you.
16:38The law, the professions, what army the government had,
16:42all these things would be beyond you.
16:44And it's not surprising that clever, well-educated young men
16:48should be frustrated.
16:50There are parallels to the Arab world at the present day.
16:53It's the sort of radicalisation which you get
16:56among the young, well-educated, active.
17:00And that's what happened in 1605.
17:02You might say that something like it was inevitable.
17:11I think the young men who were frustrated anyway realised
17:16that for them there was a point of no return
17:19and that they wanted what Robert Catesby, chief plotter,
17:23called so desperate, a remedy.
17:27The plan is terrifying in its simplicity.
17:31It is to blow up the king,
17:34the king's nearest relations,
17:37the entire nobility, the political nation,
17:41gathered together at the state opening of Parliament.
17:48In May 1604,
17:51they actually come to a decision
17:53and in May 1604,
17:55they actually come up with the means
17:58to put this plan into effect.
18:04A house adjacent to the old House of Lords has fallen vacant.
18:09The lease has fallen vacant.
18:16It was Thomas Percy, newly appointed to the king's bodyguards,
18:20who secured the lease on the apartment.
18:23To avoid arousing suspicion, Guy Fawkes now took up residency
18:27under the alias of John Johnson,
18:30passing himself off as Percy's servant.
18:38Because he had been out of the country for ten years,
18:41he was unknown in the small world that was Jacobean London.
18:45And that's always important.
18:47If you're planning treason,
18:49you need someone who can walk about the streets
18:52without arousing attention or suspicion.
18:57The idea of Guy Fawkes, alias John Johnson, unknown,
19:01coming into the extremely busy Palace of Westminster...
19:04I mean, we're so used to the Palace of Westminster
19:07having security and needing security, we have no idea.
19:11It was like a sort of commercial rabbit warren,
19:14merchants and wine sellers and all the rest of it.
19:30Early Jacobean England was crawling with spies
19:33on the lookout for any Catholic who might be a threat to the king.
19:39The spymaster in charge of the operation was Sir Robert Cecil.
19:44He was the secretary of state and King James's chief minister.
19:53He's a workaholic.
19:55He has virtually no life except for his professional life
19:58and he'd already had long service under Elizabeth,
20:01so he was a very experienced senior bureaucrat.
20:05And across Cecil's desk
20:07comes a tremendous miscellaneous range of information.
20:11His own mind recognises immediately as the nutter letter
20:14and he gets a lot of those,
20:16but he also gets anything that might be regarded
20:19as unnerving or unsettling.
20:23And there's all sorts of bits and pieces that he's getting
20:26about increasing Catholic disaffection.
20:29Much of it wrong in detail,
20:32but adding up to a feeling that something is moving somewhere.
20:41The plotters were working towards a deadline of February 1605,
20:45the date set for the state opening of Parliament.
20:50But then circumstances changed
20:52when Parliament was prorogued, postponed for eight months.
21:02There was always plague in London
21:04and when the plague was virulent,
21:06it wasn't thought a good plan to have a meeting of Parliament.
21:09So Parliament, who should have met earlier in the year,
21:12was prorogued till October.
21:16We should be chanting, remember, remember the 3rd of October.
21:19Now, on the one hand, this gave the plotters much more time
21:22to organise things.
21:24On the other hand, of course, as with all conspiracies,
21:28the longer lead time there is,
21:31the more the danger of people finding out.
21:34With forks installed close to the House of Lords,
21:37attention now turned towards the gunpowder.
21:40Catesby had lodgings in Lambeth,
21:42directly across the river from the Houses of Parliament.
21:46As the plotters began to source the gunpowder,
21:49it was stored piecemeal in Catesby's house.
21:52But then an opportunity arose
21:54that would take the plotters even closer to their target.
22:02And Forks reports that a coal merchant is moving out
22:05of a vault actually under the Lords.
22:10So Percy takes up the lease of the vault as well.
22:15Percy's cover story for renting the storeroom
22:18was that his wife was about to join him in London
22:20and he would therefore need extra storage space.
22:25The famous cellar in which Guy Forks placed all the gunpowder
22:29was actually not a cellar at all.
22:31It was on the ground floor.
22:33It was pretty ramshackle. It was a rather good choice.
22:41But how would the gunpowder be smuggled into the House of Lords?
22:46We're here in Lambeth, on the south bank of the river,
22:49just across from the Houses of Parliament.
22:51It was here that Robert Catesby had his lodgings
22:53and from here that the gunpowder was rowed over the river.
22:56If you think of the Thames then, alive with trade and traffic,
22:59one more small boat going back and forth
23:01would never have been noticed.
23:09And they focus on stockpiling gunpowder in the vault.
23:32RATTLING
23:41By July 1605, after many trips to and fro from Lambeth,
23:46a total of 36 barrels of gunpowder had been amassed.
23:51RATTLING
23:58Effectively, with the gunpowder in the vault, everything is ready.
24:04But this strike at the heart of government would have gone much deeper.
24:09The terrorist attack on the state opening of Parliament
24:12would have killed the king and also created a political vacuum.
24:20Sixty-nine very senior men would be there,
24:23plus in attendance all the senior twelve judges of England
24:26and their legal attendance.
24:28So you would have had the majority of the bishops of the Church of England,
24:33the members of the Privy Council,
24:35the majority of the English aristocracy
24:37and the whole of the leaders of the legal system.
24:40So you would have had a very, very substantial number
24:44of the political and land-owning elite of England
24:48immediately wiped out.
25:00The king would have been seated here, in the centre of the House of Lords.
25:05Directly below the chamber were the 36 barrels of gunpowder
25:09amassed by the plotters.
25:12Father, you are a true friend
25:16and you do also know that I am a servant of the Lord...
25:20In the summer of 1605, with the plot almost finalised,
25:24Catesby chose to share the details of the conspiracy
25:27with his close friend and spiritual guide,
25:30a Jesuit priest called Father Oswald Tesemond.
25:35This confession would fatally embroil the Jesuits in the plot.
25:47Catesby, a highly religious man, if a militant,
25:51wanted to get absolution in advance.
25:53Now, the Catholic Church doesn't do that
25:56and Tesemond was absolutely horrified.
26:00I think it's very hard for people who are not Catholics
26:03and even for people like myself who are Catholics
26:06to realise that the law of the Church
26:09meant that if a Catholic priest heard from a conspirator
26:13what he intended to do,
26:15that Catholic priest was bound by the seal of the confessional
26:19to keep the news to himself.
26:21Tesemond then went to his superior, Father Henry Garnet,
26:24and under the seal of the confessional,
26:27told him what was going to happen.
26:29Now, by Catholic rules, by canon law,
26:32the seal of the confessional cannot be broken
26:35except by the consent of the person who makes the confession,
26:39which is important.
26:41So, Father Garnet, at the end of the link,
26:44now had to go to his superior, Father Henry Garnet,
26:48and so Father Garnet, at the end of the link,
26:51now knew what was going to happen
26:53and, under English state law,
26:55he's guilty of misprusion of treason,
26:58which means advanced knowledge of treason.
27:01And certainly there can be no greater treason
27:03than trying to blow up the House of Lords,
27:05so all he can do is write to Rome
27:08and try to urge everyone to calm down and do nothing.
27:14This confession left Father Garnet
27:16in a distinguished and impossible position.
27:20His refusal to give the plot his blessing
27:22only served to fuel Catesby's impatience.
27:28In another twist, Parliament was delayed yet again,
27:31this time to November 5th.
27:34Catesby seized the opportunity to gather together more men and money.
27:40In total, 13 plotters would be involved in the treason.
27:46Therefore, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy,
27:49have promised or put in some money,
27:52and Catesby himself is not without funds,
27:55but he needs more,
27:57and he has to trust the secret to wealthy men.
28:03Francis Tresham, Catesby's cousin,
28:06is the 13th man to learn the secret of Gunpowder Plot.
28:11And right from the start, Tresham is remarkably dubious.
28:17Francis Tresham was a Catholic gentleman in his late 30s
28:21who had recently inherited his father's fortune.
28:25Shortly after Tresham's recruitment,
28:27his close relative, Lord Monteagle,
28:30would be at the centre of the plot's most controversial and defining moment.
28:37On 26th October, a letter was delivered here in Hoxton, North London,
28:41to the house of Francis Tresham's brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle.
28:45This single event would completely change the outcome of the Gunpowder Plot,
28:49and it remains to this day a source of huge mystery.
28:52The letter was delivered at night by a stranger.
28:55It was anonymous. It was cryptic.
28:57But it did convey an urgent warning to Monteagle to stay away from Parliament.
29:01The secret was out.
29:04My Lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends,
29:09I have a care of your preservation.
29:12Therefore, I would advise you, as you tender your life,
29:16to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance at this Parliament.
29:21I say they shall receive a terrible blow,
29:25and yet they shall not see who hurts them.
29:31The Monteagle letter was the turning point
29:34at which the government certainly knew that something was afoot
29:38and that it was going to be a kind of explosion.
29:41Now, people will always argue about who wrote the Monteagle letter.
29:45I'm quite clear in my own mind that it was written by Lord Monteagle himself,
29:50because I ask myself, who benefited?
29:53Quibono.
29:55And the answer is Monteagle became an absolute hero.
29:58He was given pension, money, lands in America.
30:02Everybody acclaimed him for saving the nation.
30:05So he had every reason to write it himself.
30:08But he got the information from Francis Dresham.
30:16What is indisputable is that Lord Monteagle took the letter
30:20directly to Sir Robert Cecil.
30:28There's nothing to suggest that Cecil had the slightest idea
30:32of the details of the plot.
30:35So they had kept it remarkably well concealed.
30:38It's not until the Monteagle letter
30:40that something comes forward as concrete information
30:43that links a threat to the King
30:46to the forthcoming state opening of Parliament.
30:49And that's the first time those two things have been put together.
30:53King James was out of London on a hunting trip.
30:56In spite of the evidence of a plot on James's life,
30:59Robert Cecil only showed the letter to the King
31:02on his return to London five days later.
31:07To some, this delay seems suspiciously complacent.
31:11Did Cecil know more about the details of the plot
31:14than he was letting on?
31:20I don't think Cecil knew the details of the plot,
31:23otherwise he would have done something about it before.
31:26He would have grabbed the people concerned.
31:28I think he probably had heard rumours.
31:30Rumours from his intelligences.
31:32You know, he had spies everywhere.
31:34But I think he saw an ideal opportunity to get James on side
31:38and an end of this Tarsan toleration for Catholics
31:41and really let the plot ripen,
31:44let the net float on the water and get as many fish as possible,
31:48and hopefully some priests too.
31:51Here's Cecil telling the King,
31:53I think we have a plot on your life.
31:55I only found out because Lord Monteagle told me
31:58and I can't tell you any more.
32:00If James had said, you're sacked,
32:02you should do a lot better on my security,
32:04that would have been an entirely reasonable response.
32:07You can read the whole plot as a great threat to Cecil,
32:10not as an opportunity,
32:12but as an absolutely terrifying realisation
32:15that he'd missed out on something so threatening and so important.
32:21Now fully aware of the danger, Cecil still bided his time.
32:25He waited a further three days
32:27until the eve of the state opening of Parliament
32:30before ordering a search of the buildings.
32:34In today's House of Lords,
32:36the space where the gunpowder was stored
32:38forms part of a maintenance workshop on the lower ground level.
32:42400 years ago on this site,
32:45the guards would have seen a surprisingly large quantity of firewood
32:49here, on this spot.
32:52Their suspicions were further aroused
32:54when it was discovered that Thomas Percy had leased the space.
32:58He was a suspected Catholic agitator.
33:03When this news reached King James,
33:05he immediately ordered a second search of the area by his guards.
33:23And they encounter forks emerging from the vault,
33:28dressed, booted and spurred.
33:32And because he is dressed strangely for such an hour,
33:37they arrest him and they find the gunpowder.
33:43The great explosion had been averted.
33:47There are many estimates of how much gunpowder was there.
33:50It's said to be 36 barrels
33:52and that could be anywhere from one to three tonnes of gunpowder.
33:59Even one tonne would have been complete overkill
34:02if what you wanted to do was to kill the people in the room above.
34:06It would actually burn them to death.
34:09It would burn them to death.
34:11What you wanted to do was to kill the people in the room above.
34:14It would actually burn in a fraction of a second
34:18and turn to heat and gas.
34:20And that heat and gas then would try to expand.
34:23The room being 400 cubic metres,
34:25this gas would try to expand into 4,000 cubic metres.
34:29What that will do is put pressure on the walls,
34:32but they're nine feet thick.
34:34The weakest part of that room is the ceiling.
34:38And when that breached, it would be thrown upwards with huge force
34:42and anyone above it would have been killed instantly.
34:52To kill lots of Protestant politicians
34:54would not have stopped making the nation Protestant.
34:57In fact, it would have made matters worse.
34:59It really would have been a 9-11 event.
35:02I think there would have been massacres of Catholics,
35:05massacres of people who were even suspected of being Catholics.
35:08It would have made England more Protestant, not less.
35:36MUSIC FADES
35:48Catesby leaves London before the fate of the king is known.
35:53He's moving out to meet the Catholic gentry.
35:57And he wants, of course, to use them as the nucleus of an army.
36:05Catesby's conspiracy focused on Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire,
36:09home of the king's eldest daughter.
36:14It was from here that the conspirators planned
36:16to kidnap Princess Elizabeth,
36:18after the explosion had killed her father and brothers,
36:21ready to install her as their puppet Catholic queen.
36:24But as soon as the plot had been uncovered,
36:26Elizabeth was bundled away to safety to nearby Coventry.
36:29It was reported that she said afterwards
36:31she would rather have died with her father in Parliament
36:34than live in such condition.
36:37Meanwhile, still unaware of Fawkes's capture,
36:40Catesby continued his ride north.
36:46Along the route, a fellow conspirator,
36:49who has faster horses, catches up
36:52and he tells Catesby that the plot has failed.
36:58Here is the ultimate dilemma. What does Catesby do now?
37:01He decides that he really has no option
37:03but to press ahead with the plan.
37:06If he goes ahead, if he tells the Midlands gentry that the king is dead,
37:11who are they to disbelieve him?
37:13On the evening of November 5th,
37:15Catesby and his men arrived at a drinking house in Warwickshire
37:19to meet with a party of Catholics
37:21they hoped would join them in rebellion.
37:25And at the Red Lion Dunn Church,
37:28they give the news to the assembled Catholic gentry.
37:32They don't take it at all well.
37:36Most of them vanish as fast as they can into the night.
37:39They don't want any part in treason, in rebellion against the king.
37:45They don't necessarily believe Catesby.
37:48For once, his charisma lets him down.
37:53They move on to secure Catholic houses in the Midlands.
37:58Hoping all the while to drum up support, but all the while losing support.
38:07As Catesby continued his desperate flight north,
38:10Guy Fawkes was facing up to his captors.
38:13But in these early stages, Fawkes was giving nothing away.
38:23For 24 hours, Guy Fawkes had held out,
38:25maintaining his false identity and refusing to name his accomplices.
38:29So on the 6th of November, he was brought here,
38:31to the Tower of London and to the lieutenant's lodgings,
38:34now called the Queen's House.
38:36But still he refused to talk.
38:38Even the king was impressed by his self-control,
38:41but his captors were after nothing less than a full confession.
38:50Though torture in England was technically illegal,
38:53its use was permitted under exceptional circumstances.
38:58And by now, King James was losing patience.
39:01He wrote this letter authorising the use of torture against Fawkes.
39:08If he will not otherwise confess,
39:11the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him,
39:15and so by degrees, until the ultimate is reached.
39:21And so God speed your good work.
39:25James.
39:31Of all the forms of torture then in existence,
39:34the rack was said to be the worst.
39:36It seems there was only one in England, kept here in the Tower of London.
39:40On the 6th of November, King James signed the warrant
39:43putting Guy Fawkes to the torture,
39:45and all the evidence suggests it was to the rack he was brought.
39:48By the 7th of November, he'd revealed his true identity.
39:51Two days later, he'd revealed everything else.
39:55His suffering can be charted in his signature.
39:58The last was that of a broken man.
40:13This is Coton Court in Warwickshire,
40:15home of Robert Catesby's mother
40:17and another of the Midlands' Catholic strongholds.
40:20It was here that Father Garnet and his fellow priests
40:23were waiting anxiously for news of the plot.
40:27On the 6th of November, Catesby's servant rode into the courtyard here,
40:31bringing a letter from Catesby, revealing the details of the plot
40:35and containing the devastating news that the plot had failed.
40:38Catesby begged Father Henry Garnet to raise a Catholic rebellion.
40:42Hearing this, Garnet was reported to have cried,
40:45''We are all utterly undone.''
40:49This was the last thing Father Garnet wanted.
40:53In the cold light of day, people who have followed them with enthusiasm
40:57begin to realise what they've got themselves into,
41:00and even though they keep a watch on their followers,
41:04which shows which way the whole thing is moving,
41:07supporters drift away.
41:09And they move through the Catholic heartland.
41:12No-one is joining them.
41:17Catesby's misjudgement became recklessness and almost madness
41:22as the news got worse and worse.
41:24He said, ''We'll get guns, we'll get horses from Warwick Castle, we'll go on.''
41:29He couldn't envisage that his dream had died.
41:33In fact, he just turned it into a nightmare, a nightmare for himself,
41:37and, of course, all the others.
41:52This is Holbeach House,
41:54where the final dramatic scenes of the Gunpowder Plot were played out.
41:58Robert Catesby and the remaining conspirators
42:00arrived here on 7th November.
42:02They'd failed to win any support from their fellow Catholics.
42:05The following day, 8th November, the house was surrounded
42:08by the local sheriff and some 200 of his men.
42:18Tom Winter, crossing the courtyard, was shot in the shoulder.
42:25And Catesby and Thomas Percy, standing close together,
42:28were reportedly killed by the same bullet.
42:30Catesby lived on just long enough to be able to crawl back into the house,
42:34where he died, clutching a picture of the Virgin Mary.
43:05By the 9th of November, news is beginning to percolate through
43:10that the attempted rebellion in the Midlands has failed.
43:14And everyone, from that point, breathes rather more easily.
43:18In the following weeks,
43:20the King's men would round up all those involved in the conspiracy.
43:24Like Fawkes, they were also taken to the Tower of London for interrogation.
43:30There have been few instances in English history
43:33where people have been more guilty of treason
43:36than the gunpowder plotters.
43:41People convicted of high treason were hanged, drawn and quartered.
43:45There was some discussion in Parliament of a more grievous death
43:49for the plotters, because of the magnitude of their crime.
43:53But, in the end, the King was content to see that
43:56In the January of 1606, the eight surviving plotters
43:59were taken from the Tower of London
44:01to be tried on the charge of high treason at Westminster Hall.
44:05The hall was packed. Even the King was here in secret.
44:09But the verdict was never in doubt.
44:11All were found guilty of high treason
44:13and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
44:16The plotters were taken to the Tower of London
44:19for interrogation.
44:21All were found guilty of high treason
44:23and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
44:26The first executions took place three days later,
44:29at St Paul's, a couple of miles away.
44:31The next day, 31st January, the remaining prisoners,
44:34including Tom Winter and Guy Fawkes,
44:36were executed in the Palace Yard outside,
44:39just in front of the buildings they'd planned to destroy.
44:42Fawkes was still so weak from his torture
44:44the hangman had to help him to the gallows.
44:47He died, asking forgiveness of the King and State.
44:52MUSIC
45:00They were certainly brave.
45:02It's always a mistake to denigrate terrorists
45:04by saying they're cowardly.
45:06I mean, the 9-11 terrorists were not cowardly.
45:09They were frightful, but they were not cowardly.
45:12In the same way, the 1605 plotters were extremely brave.
45:17They ran enormous risks.
45:19They knew if they were caught, they would be tortured
45:22and killed horribly, which is exactly what happened.
45:25But they were bad.
45:27They were brave, bad men.
45:50So much of archaeology isn't so much the finding,
45:53it's the what happens afterwards.
45:55PBS America unlocks the relics of ancient lives
45:59in Meet the Ancestors Revisited, next.
46:19.