Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
On 4th November 1605 an attempted terrorist attack in England could have changed our history, but because of protestant, King James 1’s excellent intelligence service and a vigilant security guard, it thankfully never happened,
403 years later we’re still celebrating the foiling of Guy Fawkes’s dastardly plot. As one of England’s first suicide bombers, Guy Fawkes, along with a group of rebel fellow Catholic conspirators planned to blow up the House of Lords during the State opening of Parliament.
If he and his accomplices had managed to go through with this terrorist attack; Guy was discovered sitting on a barrel, with a lamp, awaiting the order to light the fuse. The result of the explosion would have made the efforts of modern suicide bombers seem like a damp mutton pie.
Sixty barrels were craftily smuggled into the cellars of Westminster Hall, packed with an estimated ten thousand pounds of gunpowder. That would have been sufficient to have blown up the King, the Parliament, Westminster Abbey and many thousands of innocent bystanders, both Catholics and Protestants.
In January, the following year, Guy Fawkes and his companions in crime were tried in the very same hall they attempted to destroy, in January 1606; found guilty of high treason and sentenced to an appalling death by being hung drawn and quartered.
The 5th November was appointed as a day of thanksgiving and to this day, throughout England we still remember with children’s’ bonfire parties and fireworks, although I cannot imagine that there are many of them who know the words of the above ditty.
