5th November: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes was one of a bunch of Catholic conspirators who planned, in 1604, to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder while the Protestant King James was inside, so that a Catholic monarch could be brought to the throne. Guy Fawkes is sometimes toasted as "the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions". 10 things you may not know about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot:

1. Guy Fawkes was brought up a Protestant. His parents were Church of England, although his mother's family were Catholics and one of his cousins was a Jesuit priest. It isn't known whether it was the influence of his mother's family or Catholic teachers at his school that led him to convert.
2. He was a soldier - he sold the estate he inherited from his father so he could go abroad and fight for Spain in the Eighty Years War. He became an officer and fought at the siege of Calais in 1596.
3. The first meeting of the conspirators took place in a pub called Duck and Drake, in the Strand district of London.
4. According to the confession of one of the conspirators, the original plan was to dig a tunnel from a nearby house to Parliament, but although Fawkes himself eventually cracked under torture and allegedly admitted they had started digging, no trace of a tunnel was ever found. A tunnel did not prove necessary, because the plotters found out that there was a disused storeroom directly under the House of Lords, which they could lease and use to store all the barrels of gunpowder.
5. But for the plague, we could have been holding Bonfire Night in late summer. The opening of Parliament was delayed because of a plague threat, to the fateful date of 5 November.
6. Fawkes' role in the plot was to light the fuse and then flee across the Thames, while others would stage a revolt in the Midlands, during which the Princess Elizabeth, King James' Catholic daughter, would be captured. Fawkes intended to go to Europe and plead to the Catholic authorities that it had been his holy duty to assassinate the Protestant king.
7. The plot was discovered due to an anonymous letter sent to the Catholic Lord Monteagle on 26 October, warning him to stay away. The plotters' big mistake was to continue with the plan, because they assumed everyone would believe the letter was a hoax. The King took the threat seriously, though, and ordered Sir Thomas Knyvet to conduct a search of the cellars underneath Parliament, which he did in the early hours of 5 November. Fawkes was arrested as he tried to leave the cellar.
8. King James rather admired Guy Fawkes and his steadfast manner while being questioned. He described Fawkes as having "a Roman resolution", but that was not enough to save Fawkes from torture and execution.
9. Executions in those days were brutal. Mere hanging was not enough. The plotters were sentenced to be dragged through the streets, hung, but only until they were half dead - then their genitals would be cut off and burned in front of them, they'd be disembowelled and their hearts removed. Finally, their heads would be cut off and their body parts put on display to be eaten by birds of prey. Fawkes, however, managed to jump to his death before being hung, and although his body still had to be subjected to the same indignities, at least he was dead when it happened.
10. Until 1859, November 5 was designated by law as a day of thanksgiving for "the joyful day of deliverance", and people were encouraged to light bonfires, provided it was done carefully "without any danger or disorder".

Eternal Flame

The Freedom League's numbers have dwindled to three - but leader Unicorn knows his team isn't finished yet. The turning point comes with Russell, a boy with bright red hair and a genetic variant ability to start fires. He's the first of an influx of new members who will take the League into the future. 

Judith and Wil are child prodigies - Judith in physics and electronics, and Wil in medicine. They have another thing in common - they are both genetic variants. And another thing - they both have fiery red hair. They are drawn to one another as their destinies intertwine, but the course of true love doesn't always run smoothly!

Richard is not a variant. He's an Olympic athlete who has picked up useful knowledge from his unusual friends to add to his own natural abilities. A chance encounter with a dying alien throws him into a Freedom League mission in which his skills are put to the ultimate test, along with theirs.

The Freedom League's arch-enemy, the super-villain Obsidian, wants his family fortune all to himself. One person stands in his way - his niece, Fiona. Fiona, devastated by a family tragedy and her failure to get in to her first choice university, is miserable and has few friends. When she realises her brother's death was no accident, and his killer is also after her, she fears it may be too late to gather allies around her and learn how to use her own genetic variant powers.

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle