How to build a radical: what the Gunpowder Plot can teach us about extremism today

It’s evident that a secretary recorded Fawkes’s words, and that the conspirator was asked to sign his name to verify that the record was accurate. On one page, his signature is clear and confident: Guido Fawkes. Two days later, though, his name is no more than the faintest of scrawls. Historians generally agree that this difference is because, in the time between scribbling the two signatures, he’d been tortured and had lost the use of his hands.

A few weeks later, he would also lose his life.

Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot conspirators

It’s quite extraordinary to think that, 400 years later, this tale of violence has morphed into an annual occasion for family-friendly fun. The reason for lighting bonfires and fireworks on the fifth of November is now largely forgotten. Technically, we’re celebrating the foiling of a plot against King James VI & I, planned by Catholic extremists whom many would call terrorists.

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If you step off a London Underground train at Charing Cross, you can admire an enormous tiled image of the gunpowder plotters that takes up the whole height of the platform wall. Seen by thousands of commuters, tourists and schoolkids on a London day out, the image of the conspirators – with their tall hats, flowing locks and furtive body language – makes them look like a rather stylish rock band.

But with violence and religious extremism wreaking havoc round the globe today, it seems timely to revisit what might be mistaken for a cosy old story of plots and plotters. Because when we compare our knowledge of radicalisation in the modern world with what happened to Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, many similarities become clear.

The reason for lighting bonfires and fireworks on the fifth of November is now largely forgotten. Technically, we’re celebrating the foiling of a plot against King James VI & I, planned by Catholic extremists whom many would call terrorists

Perhaps because the name of Guy Fawkes is so well known today, many people don’t realise that he wasn’t the most significant of the conspirators. The plot’s mastermind was actually a Warwickshire gentleman called Robert Catesby, whose role has been rather overshadowed by the dramatic circumstances of Fawkes’s capture and subsequent torture.

What the Charing Cross tube picture does do accurately is give the sense that the group felt a strong social connection – like a band of brothers, which some of them were, literally: among the conspirators were two sets of siblings, including Christopher and John Wright.

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They were among Fawkes’s fellow plotters who had known each other during their childhoods in the city of York. There, the Catholic faith was alive and well – and subject to intense persecution – in the later years of the reign of the Protestant queen Elizabeth I.

Guy was himself baptised a Protestant in 1570 but in his teens, it seems, he embraced Catholicism with all the fervour of a convert. His journey towards radicalisation could have begun as early as 1586, when he may have witnessed the appalling public execution of a York woman, Margaret Clitherow. Having been caught sheltering priests of the outlawed Catholic faith, she was crushed to death with heavy weights.

In the eyes of her fellow Catholics, her death turned Margaret into a martyr. A brown and shrivelled hand, purportedly one of Margaret’s, is venerated today in the Bar Convent in York as a holy relic. It seems likely, then, that Fawkes and the Wrights would have realised early on that life would not be easy for them unless they gave up on Catholicism – or on the government.

Guy Fawkes: an extremist abroad

In his early twenties, Fawkes made a big life change. He sold his possessions near York and travelled to mainland Europe to fight as a paid soldier for the Catholic cause.

Many modern-day extremists make similar life choices. Learning the trade of warfare abroad, surrounded by young men with the same beliefs and removed from the calming influence of family and community at home, the world view of a soldier fighting in the name of faith often narrows to black and white.

Jason Burke, The Guardian’s international security correspondent, knows all about this process. An extremist fighter, he explains, is ‘best’ trained over several weeks in a special camp. It’s vital to prevent the wannabe soldier from going home each evening to see mum.

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In Europe, Fawkes was soon on the payroll of Catholic Spain, learning skills that would, in time, make him attractive to the plotters. In particularly, he became familiar with gunpowder and explosions. Meanwhile, another young man was also being radicalised – Robert Catesby, whose idea it later was to blow up the House of Lords in order to kill the king, some of his family, his members of parliament and the whole seat of power.

Catesby had long been dissatisfied with the way England was governed. Under Elizabeth, his family had paid the fines exacted for refusing to attend Protestant church services.

More dangerously, he got himself caught up in the Essex Rebellion of 1601. This wasn’t specifically a Catholic plot but, rather, involved a grouping of disaffected people of various stripes who aimed to change the power constellations at court. That uprising was unsuccessful, and Catesby was forced to pay a huge fine for his part in it.

Then, in 1603, Elizabeth died and James VI of Scotland inherited her crown. It seems that Catesby had high hopes of the new regime.

England under James VI & I

The new king knew that his succession as James I of England might well be challenged – so, being a clever politician, he tried to appeal to a wide base of potential supporters in England, hinting strongly that he’d be more sympathetic than Elizabeth to those of his future subjects who were Catholics. After all, he had a Catholic wife, Anne of Denmark.

When James came to the English throne, though, those who knew him best perhaps weren’t surprised to find that the hinted-at new policy of tolerance never materialised – quite the opposite, in fact. Catesby and other Catholics were chagrined to find the new king proclaiming in parliament that he was never going to tolerate their religion. Another staging post on the journey towards direct action was passed.

Catesby did not know Guy Fawkes at this stage, but they had one key thing in common: Fawkes’s new friends, the Spanish.

When James came to the English throne, those who knew him best perhaps weren’t surprised to find that the hinted-at new policy of tolerance never materialised – quite the opposite, in fact

Spanish archives contain correspondence from Fawkes, reporting from the European mainland on what he understood about the situation in England. The new king’s regime was not stable, Fawkes claimed, arguing that it was justifiable to use violence to promote the ‘right’ kind of religion. Fawkes was clearly ripe for recruitment as a Catholic conspirator.

And so we come to vital documents for the history of the gunpowder plot: the records of the confessions made by the surviving conspirators after it was all over. I looked at one set, held at Hatfield House Archives, which take us right into the room during some of the plotters’ meetings, allowing us to overhear those dangerous conversations.

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One of the conspirators, Thomas Wintour (sometimes spelled Winter), described the moment when Catesby told him that he’d thought of a way of restoring Catholicism to England. His idea was to blow up parliament on the day of its opening session, killing the king and all of the MPs who had passed unjust laws against Catholics. Chillingly, Catesby believed that those actions were reason enough for them to die.

Catesby had a task for Wintour. He was to travel to Europe to find some “confident” gentleman – meaning one in whom they could have confidence – to act as the plot’s technician. He’d heard that a certain Guy Fawkes might be a suitable candidate – and one who also offered another important advantage.

Having lived abroad for so many years, few people in England would remember Fawkes’s face. Catesby was already on the authorities’ radar, but Fawkes might walk down the street in Westminster without being recognised. To further obscure his identity, Fawkes also did something common in modern-day extremism: he adopted a war-name. He would now go by the moniker John Johnson.

The failure of the Gunpowder Plot

The plot was taking shape. After the planned explosion in Westminster, Catesby intended to take advantage of the chaos. With James’s regime in disarray, a great uprising would be launched in Catesby’s native Midlands, and Catesby would snatch James’s daughter, Elizabeth, to place her on the throne as a puppet queen.

But time ticked on. There was a delay when the opening of parliament was postponed, and soon there were just too many people in on the secret. Then there was a leak. One plotter, anxious that Catholics present in parliament on the key day would also lose their lives, wrote an anonymous warning: the Catholic Lord Monteagle received a letter telling him not to attend.

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This missive, known as the Monteagle Letter, made its way into the hands of the authorities, where it caused much concern. Was the threat real? Many questions remain about how much the authorities already knew at that point, but certainly an extra patrol was laid on in Westminster.

As every schoolkid now knows, Fawkes was found hiding in a cellar with his dark lantern, his barrels of gunpowder and the fuse to ignite an explosion that would very likely have transformed Britain’s religion.

Interrogation and torture of Guy Fawkes

Captured and taken to the Tower, Fawkes next experienced something else still common worldwide: interrogation. I asked psychologist Laura Farrugia, assistant professor at Northumberland University, who helps to train police in carrying out ethical and effective interviews, to assess the techniques used on Fawkes.

She noted that the initial questions posed by authorities at the Tower, who were accustomed to interrogating suspects, were concise, targeted, comprehensible. Whenever Fawkes knew or guessed that the authorities already knew the answers, he gave them freely.

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However, Fawkes didn’t name his fellow conspirators. So the king himself stepped in, drawing up a list of less-successful, more ‘clever’, complicated questions that would have been difficult and confusing for any suspect to answer. Unsurprisingly, this approach failed. Nevertheless, Fawkes did say something that provides perhaps the first and the last piece in the jigsaw of his radicalisation: he would not betray his friends.

Extremists were, and are, social creatures. They rely on friendship and camaraderie. This, as well as their political and religious beliefs, keeps them going.

On one page, his signature is clear and confident: Guido Fawkes. Two days later, though, his name is no more than the faintest of scrawls. Historians generally agree that this difference is because, in the time between scribbling the two signatures, he’d been tortured and had lost the use of his hands

The king ordered torture, and Fawkes did eventually crack. Ironically, though, the authorities didn’t need his information. They had followed other leads, tracking Catholics who had left London suddenly just before the attack, and eventually caught up with the key plotters in a safe house in the Midlands.

Thomas Wintour’s confession recounts a scene, just before the authorities stormed in, that would have been romantic – if it were not acted out by men who’d been willing to take hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. They agreed to die together. And when the local sheriff entered, guns blazing, Catesby did just that, taking a bullet that killed him. Fawkes and a few other surviving conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered in London.

The plotters would perhaps have been mortified to know that their plot not only failed in its aims but even helped to secure James’s regime. It turned him into a survivor – someone with God on his side. He insisted that his personal achievement in defeating this plot be commemorated on its anniversary every year. Four centuries later, many Britons are still obeying him – even though most have forgotten exactly why.

This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine