Volume 44, Number 8 · May 15, 1997
Refuseniks
By Fiona MacCarthy
Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot
by Antonia Fraser
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 347 pp., $27.95
Around midnight on Monday, November 4, 1604, or possibly in the small hours of the next morning, a man in a cloak and dark hat was discovered in a cellar underneath the English House of Parliament in Westminster. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were stored there. The man, a Roman Catholic later described in official records as a 'very tall and desperate fellow,' was booted and spurred, ready to take flight after the powder was ignited. His aim had been to blow up the Parliament building, killing the English peers assembled for the opening of the new parliamentary session, as well as murdering King James I of England (also James VI of Scotland), who succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. Although with the arrest of the man, Guy Fawkes, the plot was foiled, it had lasting repercussions as religious persecution of Catholics in England was once again stepped up.
Review, 4055 words
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