TRANSCRIPCIÓN 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:04.830
It is just after midnight, on the 5th of November, 1605,
2
00:00:04.830 --> 00:00:07.509
in the cellars beneath the Houses of Parliament in London.
3
00:00:08.380 --> 00:00:10.720
A man in a cloak is standing beside a pile
4
00:00:10.759 --> 00:00:14.619
of firewood, a lantern in one hand, a slow match
5
00:00:14.679 --> 00:00:18.739
in the other. Behind the firewood, hidden under coal, are
6
00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:23.129
thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, enough to reduce the entire building
7
00:00:23.170 --> 00:00:26.789
to rubble. Above him, in a few hours, the King
8
00:00:26.829 --> 00:00:30.160
of England will take his seat, with his queens, his
9
00:00:30.260 --> 00:00:33.340
eldest son, and every lord and bishop in the kingdom.
10
00:00:34.159 --> 00:00:37.340
One spark, and they would all be gone. But the
11
00:00:37.399 --> 00:00:41.450
cellar door opens, soldiers step in, and the man with
12
00:00:41.490 --> 00:00:45.450
the lantern gives a false name. John Johnson, he says.
13
00:00:46.250 --> 00:00:49.270
It is the most famous lie in English history, and
14
00:00:49.310 --> 00:00:52.450
it is told by the most famous traitor in English history,
15
00:00:53.280 --> 00:00:55.259
Guy Fawkes.
16
00:00:55.259 --> 00:00:58.399
36 Barrels Under Parliament and the Letter That Stopped Them
17
00:00:59.159 --> 00:01:02.219
That is our story today. A plot to blow up
18
00:01:02.259 --> 00:01:05.579
a king, his parliament, and his government in a single
19
00:01:05.620 --> 00:01:10.120
blast and replace them with a nine-year-old girl. Who planned it?
20
00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:13.730
How did it come so close to success? And why
21
00:01:13.769 --> 00:01:16.730
do the English still burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes
22
00:01:17.170 --> 00:01:18.849
more than 400 years later?
23
00:01:19.109 --> 00:01:22.069
To understand the plot, we have to understand the England
24
00:01:22.129 --> 00:01:26.599
of 1605. Two years earlier, Elizabeth I had died and
25
00:01:27.500 --> 00:01:31.670
and James VI of Scotland had become James I of England.
26
00:01:32.510 --> 00:01:36.209
English Catholics, who had been persecuted for decades under Elizabeth,
27
00:01:36.689 --> 00:01:40.230
had hoped the new king would bring tolerance. He did not.
28
00:01:40.870 --> 00:01:43.890
James kept the fines and the laws against them, and
29
00:01:43.950 --> 00:01:48.260
many Catholics felt betrayed. Among them was a charismatic gentleman
30
00:01:48.319 --> 00:01:52.939
from Warwickshire named Robert Catesby. Catesby was the true leader
31
00:01:52.980 --> 00:01:57.620
of the plot, not folks. He was well-connected, devout, and
32
00:01:57.659 --> 00:02:01.629
convinced that peaceful change was impossible. If the king would
33
00:02:01.689 --> 00:02:05.549
not give Catholics their freedom, Catesby reasoned, then the king,
34
00:02:05.950 --> 00:02:09.069
and the government that enforced the laws against them, would
35
00:02:09.129 --> 00:02:11.129
have to be removed, all at once.
36
00:02:11.889 --> 00:02:16.750
In the spring of 1604, Catesby gathered his first conspirators,
37
00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:22.840
Thomas Wintour, his cousin, John Wright, an old friend, Thomas Percy,
38
00:02:23.180 --> 00:02:26.520
a gentleman with a post at court, and Guy Fawkes,
39
00:02:27.090 --> 00:02:30.310
a Yorkshireman who had spent ten years fighting for Spain
40
00:02:30.430 --> 00:02:33.389
in the Low Countries, in the war against the Dutch.
41
00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:37.800
Fox was the explosives expert, the soldier of the group.
42
00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:41.900
Over the next year, the circle grew to 13 men,
43
00:02:42.539 --> 00:02:47.370
all from gentry families, all devout Catholics, all sworn to
44
00:02:47.439 --> 00:02:52.509
secrecy on oath. Their plan was simple and terrifying. They
45
00:02:52.530 --> 00:02:54.990
would blow up the House of Lords during the state
46
00:02:55.110 --> 00:02:59.300
opening of Parliament. when the king, the queen, Prince Henry,
47
00:02:59.639 --> 00:03:02.780
and the whole government would be in one room. Then,
48
00:03:03.039 --> 00:03:06.199
while London reeled, they would raise a revolt in the
49
00:03:06.259 --> 00:03:11.129
Midlands and install the king's nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, as
50
00:03:11.169 --> 00:03:12.210
a Catholic queen.
51
00:03:12.689 --> 00:03:16.370
The key to the plan was a room. Through Thomas Percy,
52
00:03:16.810 --> 00:03:20.030
who had a position at court, the plotters leased a cellar,
53
00:03:20.539 --> 00:03:24.539
an undercroft, directly beneath the House of Lords chamber in
54
00:03:24.620 --> 00:03:29.210
March of 1605. Under cover of night, they carried in
55
00:03:29.250 --> 00:03:33.189
the gunpowder, barrel by barrel, and hid it under piles
56
00:03:33.229 --> 00:03:38.969
of coal and firewood. Thirty-six barrels in all. Enough, experts
57
00:03:39.030 --> 00:03:42.870
later said, to destroy not only the chamber above, but
58
00:03:42.969 --> 00:03:46.490
much of the Palace of Westminster around it. The opening
59
00:03:46.530 --> 00:03:50.310
of Parliament had been delayed several times because of outbreaks
60
00:03:50.349 --> 00:03:53.629
of plague in London, and the date was finally fixed
61
00:03:53.710 --> 00:03:59.530
for Tuesday the 5th of November, 1605. Fawkes, posing as
62
00:03:59.590 --> 00:04:03.650
Percy's servant, a man called John Johnson, would stay in
63
00:04:03.689 --> 00:04:07.189
the cellar, light the fuse, and slip away across the
64
00:04:07.229 --> 00:04:10.569
Thames in a boat. The explosion would do the rest.
65
00:04:11.129 --> 00:04:13.330
But the plot was undone by a letter. On the
66
00:04:13.509 --> 00:04:17.610
26th of October, 1605, ten days before the opening, a
67
00:04:17.649 --> 00:04:22.240
Catholic nobleman named William Parker, Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous
68
00:04:22.300 --> 00:04:25.329
letter at his house in Hoxton. It warned him, out
69
Load full transcript
00:04:25.370 --> 00:04:27.709
of love for some of his friends, to stay away
70
00:04:27.750 --> 00:04:31.110
from Parliament, because those attending would suffer a terrible blow.
71
00:04:31.790 --> 00:04:34.550
Monteagle took the letter straight to the King's chief minister,
72
00:04:34.750 --> 00:04:38.350
Robert Cecil. Nobody knows for certain who wrote it. The
73
00:04:38.389 --> 00:04:42.509
prime suspect has always been Francis Tresham, Monteagle's brother-in-law and
74
00:04:42.550 --> 00:04:45.050
a fellow plotter, who may have wanted to save his
75
00:04:45.110 --> 00:04:48.089
friend or to save himself. The letter was shown to
76
00:04:48.129 --> 00:04:50.870
the King on the 1st of November. James read it
77
00:04:50.990 --> 00:04:54.100
and understood it at once. Someone meant to blow up Parliament.
78
00:04:54.370 --> 00:04:58.050
But the government waited. The king ordered a search, but
79
00:04:58.110 --> 00:05:01.350
not until the last possible moment. On the evening of
80
00:05:01.389 --> 00:05:05.529
the 4th of November, the Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Howard, Earl
81
00:05:05.550 --> 00:05:09.470
of Suffolk, went down into the cellars. He found Fawkes,
82
00:05:10.050 --> 00:05:14.029
dressed as a servant, standing beside an unusually large pile
83
00:05:14.069 --> 00:05:18.610
of firewood. Suffolk asked who owned the wood. Fawkes said
84
00:05:18.649 --> 00:05:22.769
it belonged to Thomas Percy, a known Catholic. That was
85
00:05:22.829 --> 00:05:26.970
enough to raise suspicion. Later that night, a second search,
86
00:05:27.430 --> 00:05:31.449
led by Sir Thomas Nivet, went back down. They moved
87
00:05:31.490 --> 00:05:34.410
the firewood and the coal, and there beneath it all
88
00:05:34.889 --> 00:05:38.689
were the thirty-six barrels. Fawkes was arrested on the spot,
89
00:05:39.230 --> 00:05:42.379
with his lantern and his matches, in the early hours
90
00:05:42.439 --> 00:05:45.319
of the 5th of November. Taken to the Tower of
91
00:05:45.399 --> 00:05:48.980
London and tortured on the King's own orders, he gave
92
00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:51.560
up the names of his fellow plotters within days.
93
00:05:52.199 --> 00:05:55.470
The others did not wait to be caught. Catesby, Percy,
94
00:05:55.550 --> 00:05:58.350
and the rest fled London for the Midlands, hoping to
95
00:05:58.410 --> 00:06:01.490
raise the revolt anyway. But without the explosion, there was
96
00:06:01.529 --> 00:06:04.720
no revolt. The country did not rise. On the 8th
97
00:06:04.740 --> 00:06:08.860
of November, government forces surrounded them at Holbeach House in Staffordshire.
98
00:06:09.439 --> 00:06:12.959
In a brief and violent gunfight, Catesby and Percy were killed,
99
00:06:13.420 --> 00:06:16.300
shot through the same bullet, it was said. The survivors
100
00:06:16.339 --> 00:06:20.930
were brought to London, tried on the 27th of January, 1606,
101
00:06:20.930 --> 00:06:25.290
and sentenced to the terrible death reserved for traitors. hanged, drawn,
102
00:06:25.550 --> 00:06:30.069
and quartered. Fox himself, weakened by torture, climbed the scaffold
103
00:06:30.129 --> 00:06:33.170
at Westminster and jumped from the ladder, breaking his neck
104
00:06:33.230 --> 00:06:35.470
before the worst of the sentence could be carried out.
105
00:06:35.750 --> 00:06:40.250
The plot had failed completely, but its consequences lasted for centuries.
106
00:06:41.009 --> 00:06:44.610
Parliament declared the 5th of November a National Day of Thanksgiving,
107
00:06:45.069 --> 00:06:50.470
with prayers, bonfires, and church services. Over time, the prayers faded,
108
00:06:51.029 --> 00:06:55.610
but the bonfires stayed, and the effigies... Every year, on
109
00:06:55.629 --> 00:07:00.170
the 5th of November, the English light bonfires, set off fireworks,
110
00:07:00.610 --> 00:07:03.589
and burn a figure of Guy Fawkes, the man caught
111
00:07:03.629 --> 00:07:08.170
in the cellar. Remember, remember, the 5th of November, the
112
00:07:08.209 --> 00:07:12.689
rhyme goes, gunpowder, treason, and plot. It is the only
113
00:07:12.750 --> 00:07:15.810
date in English history that is still celebrated with fire,
114
00:07:15.810 --> 00:07:21.240
400 years later. And it raises a strange question. Why
115
00:07:21.300 --> 00:07:25.350
is it Guy Fawkes night, and not Catesby night? Catesby
116
00:07:25.389 --> 00:07:28.439
planned it. Fawkes was only the man with the lantern.
117
00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:32.220
But Fawkes was the one caught red-handed, in the dark,
118
00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:36.319
beside the barrels. History remembers the man in the cellar.
119
00:07:36.920 --> 00:07:41.040
So how close did they come? Thirty-six barrels, one fuse,
120
00:07:41.279 --> 00:07:43.819
and a king who would have been dead before breakfast.
121
00:07:44.500 --> 00:07:47.779
The plot failed because of one anonymous letter, written by
122
00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:51.399
someone we still cannot name, warning a friend to stay away.
123
00:07:52.170 --> 00:07:55.850
One letter, and a kingdom survived. Without it, the 5th
124
00:07:55.889 --> 00:07:59.709
of November, 1605, might have been the day England lost
125
00:07:59.769 --> 00:08:03.569
its king, its parliament, and its government in a single blast,
126
00:08:04.069 --> 00:08:05.629
under a clear November sky.
127
00:08:05.970 --> 00:08:08.879
Next time on Turning Points, a king walks to the
128
00:08:08.920 --> 00:08:11.899
scaffold in front of his own palace, and a nation
129
00:08:11.959 --> 00:08:15.139
watches its monarch lose his head. Join us then.