Why Do We Celebrate The 5th Of November As Bonfire Or Guy Fawkes Night?

The Blunt Blogger ^ | November - 3 - 2010 | Blunt Blogger

[Alex Murphy]

Guy Fawkes night has been celebrated and commemorated in England since the 5th November 1605, where an effigy of Guy Fawkes is burned on a bonfire and accompanied by a fireworks display.

Guy Fawkes was born in York on the 13th of April 1570. His father died when he was eight years old and his mother went on to marry a Catholic to which Guy Fawkes himself converted to Catholism and left England to fight for the Spanish Catholics against the Dutch Protestants. He was very much a military man and by 1603 had been recommended for Captaincy, describing James 1 of England in his notes to be a “Heretic” whose intention was “To have all of the Papal sect driven out of England.” Guy Fawkes travelled to Spain in 1603 to find help towards a Catholic revolt in England but after an unsuccessful mission he returned to England with Thomas Wintour who introduced him to Robert Catesby.

Robert Catesby was the leader of a group of Provincial English Catholics and is the man who planned The Gunpowder plot. His family were Prominent Recusant Catholics, these were Catholics who refused to attend services of The Church of England. The Recusancy Acts in 1593 began during the reign of Elizabeth I which imposed punishments on those who did not participate in Anglican religious activities. The punishments included fines, the confiscation of property and imprisonment and despite their repeal many restrictions against Catholics were still in place until the 19th century.

It was Catesby who planned to restore a Catholic Monarch back on to the Throne by assassinating King James I. Together they plotted and leased an underground storage room beneath the House Of Lords, where Guy Fawkes was put in charge of the gunpowder they had stocked there.

However, an anonymous letter was sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle who then alerted the authorities to search Westminster Palace in the early hours of November the 5th and found none other than Guy Fawkes guarding the gunpowder. He was arrested. When Guy Fawkes was first asked what he was doing in possession of so much gunpowder he replied, “To blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.” He also admitted his intention to blow up The Houses Of Lords and expressed his regret in failing to do so. He was subsequently tortured into revealing the information regarding his fellow conspirators.

There were a total of eight conspirators who were found guilty of high-treason for their parts in The Gunpowder Plot and the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke told the court that each of the condemned plotters would be drawn backwards to his death by a horse, his head near the ground. They were to be put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both. Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. Then they would be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become prey for the fowls in the air.

Guy Fawkes was the last of the plotters to take his stand on the scaffold opposite the Houses of Parliament. He asked for forgiveness from the King and state and with the guidance from the hangman began to climb the ladder to his noose and even though he was in a weakened state from the torture inflicted upon him, he found the strength to jump from the gallows breaking his neck which prevented him from the agony that the rest of his death would have brought. His body was still drawn and quartered, as was the custom of ‘treason’, and his body parts distributed to the four corners of the United Kingdom as a warning to any other traitors.

To celebrate the Kings escape from assassination, all Londoners were encouraged to celebrate by the lighting of bonfires on the 5th of November, and Parliament passed an Act designating that each 5th of November would become a day of thanksgiving and it remained in force until 1859.

Even though there were several other conspirators Guy Fawkes appears to be the most associated with the Gunpowder Plot. Bonfires accompanied with fireworks began around the 1650's where it also became customary to burn an effigy, which at that time was the Pope, Guy Fawkes and the Devil. Only when James, Duke of York (1685 became the King of England and Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII. Last Catholic Monarch to rule over England, Scotland and Ireland) made his conversion to Catholicism public in 1673, that other effigies were seen to burn, many were prominent and notable figures who had angered the public, but Guy Fawkes has remained the most popular effigy of them all.

[Alex Murphy]

It was [Robert Catesby, Recusant Catholic and leader of a group of Provincial English Catholics] who planned to restore a Catholic Monarch back on to the Throne by assassinating King James I. Together they plotted and leased an underground storage room beneath the House Of Lords, where Guy Fawkes was put in charge of the gunpowder they had stocked there....

....an anonymous letter was sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle who then alerted the authorities to search Westminster Palace in the early hours of November the 5th and found none other than Guy Fawkes guarding the gunpowder. He was arrested. When Guy Fawkes was first asked what he was doing in possession of so much gunpowder he replied, “To blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.” He also admitted his intention to blow up The Houses Of Lords and expressed his regret in failing to do so. He was subsequently tortured into revealing the information regarding his fellow conspirators.

There were a total of eight conspirators who were found guilty of high-treason for their parts in The Gunpowder Plot and the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke told the court that each of the condemned plotters would be drawn backwards to his death by a horse, his head near the ground. They were to be put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both. Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. Then they would be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become prey for the fowls in the air.

Related threads:
Guy Fawkes in the U.S.
Book bound in skin of executed Jesuit to be auctioned in England
Jumping off the scaffold [Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot]
‘Master Illusionist’ (Tower of London Is Hallowed for the Blood St. Nicholas Owen Spilled There)
Guy Fawkes’ Day: The significance of November 5th
Royal succession law change bid fails
The Act of Settlement is just fine [as a Catholic, this writer is happy with it]
Happy Guy Fawkes Day
How Brits Fail To Remember, Remember The 5th of November [Guy Fawkes Day]
St Peter’s School tribute to Guy Fawkes

[Vanders9]

The tradition is dying out. I hear less and less about Guy Fawkes night every year.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

First it says they were going to be dragged to their deaths then it mentions hanging. So which was it? It also mentioned mutilation before their eyes. Their live eyes or dead eyes? Did guy Fawkes break his neck in a fall or from the jerking effect of the hangman’s noose? All in all very poorly written.

[Mmogamer]

As with all traditions, both in Britain and here, it’s being forgotten more and more. It’s a pity that the people forget their history and traditions.

[xkaydet65]

A vestige of Guy Fawkes night in the US lasted into the 1930s. My dad always talked about the election night bonfires in NYC when he was a kid. They would dismantle newsstands and use the wood. While coming on Election Night, thee were vestiges of the Puritan anti Pope nights that were celebrated on Nov 5th during colonial times.The funny thing is that in later times most participants were Catholic urban workers and teens.

[Mmogamer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered

here is an article about it.

[Tennessee Nana]

Bonfire Night

YEEEEEEEEEEEAAA

Groups of kids would build a bonfore...

Usually a street of kids or a neighborhood..

Broom bushes, old tires, a Guy of straw old clothes put together with 4 inch nails to keep the clothes together, an old sugar sack peice for the head...

We used to build the biggest bonfire in town...

Starting weeks before...

We would go around measuring other bonfires to make sure ours was the biggest

Cant tell you our secret construction method...

It was a beaut..

Fireworks, Sparlers, Roman candles, sky rockets, Mt Vesuvius etc from Jimmy On Lee’s greengrocer shop...the only Chinaman in town..

What a great time we had..

:)

[Pyro7480]

What George Washington thought of Guy Fawkes Day

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Thanks, that clears things up. The phrase dragged to his death in the original article is what messed me up. It should have been more along the lines of being dragged or transported to the place of execution.

[miss marmelstein]

My father remembered the bonfires in NYC. He also talked about the Halloween tradition of “slamming gates” and hitting people with socks filled with flour, lol! (This was Brooklyn where the tree grows.)