Every 5 November, we light bonfires and retell the story of Guy Fawkes, who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Guy Fawkes and his twelve co-conspirators hoped to kill the Protestant King James I of England and VI of Scotland, along with the royal family, lords, and government of England. They came dangerously close to succeeding.
Since Henry VIII split the Church, the argument surrounding the Catholic mass and the doctrine of transubstantiation – the idea that the bread and wine of the Eucharist became the flesh and blood of Christ – had changed many times.
In Henry VIII’s reign, despite England’s split with Rome, the doctrine of transubstantiation remained, but under his son Edward VI, a staunch Protestant, the Catholic mass was outlawed.
Edward’s sister Mary, who succeeded him as Mary I, burned so many Protestants in a bid to restore England to Catholicism that she earned the name Bloody Mary. Her sister Elizabeth I tolerated Catholics worshipping the mass in private. But under King James, Catholics saw their houses raided and their priests executed.
The Popish Recusants Act 1605 outlawed Catholicism. Catholics couldn’t have their babies baptised and they could not be married by a Catholic priest. If they didn’t attend the Church of England on Sundays, they were made to pay fines, known as recusance.
The King was due to open the new session of Parliament on 5 November 1605. His wife, Queen Anne and their son Prince Henry were attending, along with the leading churchmen of the Church of England. The Privy Council, the 12 senior judges of England and the majority of the legal system would have been present. The administration of the country was carried out from the Palace of Westminster, which was also home to the Exchequer. Had the plot succeeded, they would have all been wiped out. Only a small garrison of soldiers in the Tower of London would have remained, but there would have been no chain of command, and they would have been overpowered by the Catholic uprising that was planned. But would the plotters have succeeded in changing the direction of the country?
Blood would certainly have been spilled as the country fell into civil war. It’s likely the Great Fire of London would have happened 61 years earlier as the explosion would have caused a raging fire throughout the city. But with no government to take control of the situation, people would have turned on one another. The question of identity would have become ever more prominent. With the threat of invasion from Catholic France or Spain, would the English people have put their nation above their faith? English Catholics were certainly proud to have seen off the Spanish Armada 17 years earlier. That would all have been for nothing had the plotters succeeded. It could be argued the success of the plot would have seen England become more staunchly Protestant than ever, as anti-Catholic feeling would have been so high.
The union of the crowns would likely have collapsed without a King to hold it together, with Scotland becoming even more fiercely Protestant. It is possible that the English would have resented the Scottish King’s pursuit of Catholics, and even blamed him for their troubles.
The conspirators had captured King James’s daughter princess Elizabeth. They planned to install her as their puppet Queen. She is reported to have said, when the plot was discovered, that she would rather have died with her father than agree to the crown under such terms.
And what would have happened to the crown if she had? King James was not the heir to the throne under English Law as per the terms of Henry VIII’s will, which ruled the Scottish line out of the succession and named the Grey sisters, his great nieces, and their heirs as his successors. It is possible that the English Protestants would have rallied around Katherine Grey’s son, Edward Seymour Viscount Beauchamp. It’s impossible to speculate on what might have happened. Any one of a dozen powerful nobles might have seized the crown for themselves, and there would certainly have been a period of chaos if not outright civil war.
Civil war, of course, was coming. Even though the plot failed, religious tensions embroiled the country in a bloody civil war just 17 years later. This led to the execution of James’s son, Charles I, and Britain became a republic for three years. After this, the monarchy was restored, and Charles’s son was crowned Charles II. On his death, his brother James became King James II, the last Roman Catholic King, until he was deposed in the ‘Glorious Revolution’. It seems therefore, that regardless of what might have happened had the plotters succeeded, Britain had become Protestant and was determined to remain so.