h of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot..." It is a very English tradition to celebrate fireworks night on the 5th November and to burn a Guy in the middle of a bonfire. But does this Guy Fawkes really deserve such remembrance or was he just another mindless martyr?Infact it was not Fawkes' idea to blow up the Houses of Parliament, that was Robert Catesby, Fawkes was an ex-soldier who was trained in explosives and he was a Catholic. I think Guy Fawkes fits in with the other outlaws and bandits mentioned in the lecture because he wasn't harming everyone, he was making a stand against the discrimination of Catholics. Other Catholics probably would have seen Fawkes and the other plotters as good people defending their faith. Their plan, as we all know, didn't go ahead and after a tip-off letter was sent to one of the MPs, Guy Fawkes was found along with the 1800 pounds of gunpowder. He and the others were charged with treason and were hung, drawn and quartered on 30th-31st January 1606.
And yet 400 years later we still celebrate Guy Fawkes. The day was probably originally set up as a warning to other Catholics and a day for English people to remember that their King fought off such a threat and that the British throne is still intact.
But who knows what King was on the throne at the time? I didn't know until I researched, it was King James I by the way. It is the criminal's name that we remember and know about. In hindsight King James probably should have ignored the day and not done anything else about it. So in Guy Fawkes' case it was not really his actions as an outlaw which kept him in the history books it was how other people reacted to him, an extreme case of this is with Deadly Daring Deadwood Dick who never even existed!
I think Guy Fawkes and other such people who have committed crimes survive history because they evoke people's feelings and most people have an opinion on them. There is a Facebook page which calls Fawkes a hero! However if the same thing happened today then Guy Fawkes would probably be called a terrorist and wouldn't be remembered, just like the names of the London Bombers more than likely will not be remembered.
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