Guy Fawkes (1570-1606)

Gunpowder Plot Conspirator

Plaque at 32 Stonegate

No, it isn’t November 5. But hey, why should we only remember York’s most famous son on one day if the year? St Peter's School old boy Guy Fawkes probably needs little introduction. But most people probably know less about him than they realise. So here goes...

The man who has been immortalised by being burned in effigy every November 5 for his part in the notorious Gunpowder Plot of 1605 came from a solidly respectable York family.

Fawkes' grandfather, William, was a lawyer in the city's church courts who served as both Sheriff and Lord Mayor of York. His father, Edward, was also a church court lawyer. The family lived in Stonegate and Guy, the only son of the household (he had three sisters) was baptised at St Michael-le-Belfrey on April 16, 1570.

England had become a Protestant state following Elizabeth 1's religious settlement of 1559. Roman Catholics were increasingly oppressed: they were, in effect, denied full citizenship, were debarred from holding office, and could be subjected to heavy fines. English Catholic priests, meanwhile, could be executed as traitors.

Guy was raised a Protestant but, after his father’s death, his mother married Denis Bainbridge, a Catholic gentleman from Scotton. By the time Guy came of age in 1591 he had converted to Catholicism.

The strife between Protestants and Catholics wasn't restricted to England, but raged across the continent. At the age of 21, Guy sold the property he had inherited in Clifton and sailed to join a Catholic Spanish army that was fighting the Protestant Dutch in the Netherlands. He was, by all accounts, a good soldier: brave, dependable and 'liked by everyone and loyal to his friends', according to the English Jesuit Priest (and fellow St Peter's old boy) Oswald Tesimond.

Back in England, Catholics had hoped things would improve when Elizabeth 1 died in 1603 and James VI of Scotland took to the English throne. They didn't. And the signing of a peace treaty between England and Spain meant English Catholics could no longer expect Spanish support.

A group of discontented Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, began plotting. And among those who attended a meeting at the Duck and Drake in London's Strand on May 20, 1604, was none other than Guy Fawkes, now returned from abroad but still an ardent Catholic.

A plot was hatched to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the official opening of Parliament. If it had succeeded, it would have wiped out most of the royal family and a large part of England's ruling class. Fawkes was probably recruited because of his military expertise with explosives.

The plot came very close to success, but was undone at the last moment thanks to a letter warning a pro-Catholic peer not to attend the opening of Parliament.

Fawkes was caught red-handed in a gunpowder-packed vault below Parliament in the early hours of November 5, 1605. He was tortured, but seems to have held out for a couple of days, giving some of his co-conspirators time to flee. He eventually broke on November 7 and began to confess.

Led by Catesby,a group of conspirators tried to start a Catholic uprising in the midlands, but were surrounded at Holbeach House in Staffordshire, and captured or killed.

Following a trial, the surviving conspirators were condemned to be publicly executed in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster by being hung, drawn and quartered in January, 1606. Fawkes' ending seems to have been mercifully quick: his neck is thought to have broken when he was hanged, sparing him the agony of being disembowelled while still alive.

The plaque to Fawkes is in Stonegate, on the site where his parents' house (long demolished) once stood. A portrait of him hangs to this day in St Peter's School, where his effigy is never burned during the school's annual November 5 celebrations.

Stephen Lewis

For the stories behind other York Civic Trust plaques, visit yorkcivictrust.co.uk/