Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder PlotNo one brings English history to life like Antonia Fraser. In bestselling books likeMary Queen of ScotsandThe Six Wives of Henry VIII, she has shown why she is the finest of comtemporary popular historians, one who by meticulous research portrays the dramas of the past in all their richness and revealing detail. Now, inFaith and Treason,she re-creates the seventeenth-century terrorist conspiracy known as the Gunpowder Plot. In England, November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day, when fireworks displays commemorate the shocking moment in 1605 when government authorities uncovered a secret plan to blow up the House of Parliament--and King James I along with it. A group of English Catholics, seeking to unseat the king and reintroduce Catholicism as the state religion, daringly placed in position thiry-six barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the Palace of Wesminster. Their aim was to ignite the gunpowder at the opening of the parliamentary session. Though the charismatic Catholic Robert Catesby was the group's leader, it was the devout Guy Fawkes who emerged as its most famous member, as he was the one who was captured and who revealed under torture the names of his fellow plotters. In the aftermath of their arrests, conditions grew worse for English Catholics, as legal penalties against them were stiffened and public sentiment became rabidly intolerant. In a narrative that reads like a gripping detective story, Antonia Fraser has untangled the web of religion, politics, and personalities that surrounded that fateful night of November 5. And in examining the lengths to which individuals will go for their faith, she finds in this long-ago event a reflection of the religion-inspired terrorism that has produced gunpowder plots of our own time. |
Contents
PART TWO The Horse of St George | 55 |
PART THREE That Furious and Fiery Course | 95 |
PART FOUR Discovery By God or the Devil | 159 |
Copyright | |
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Ambrose Rookwood Anne Vaux Anstruther Arbella Stuart Bates Bonfire brother C.S.P. Domestic Caraman Carey Catesby's Catholic Catholicism celebrated Church Coke confession conspiracy conspirators Coughton Coughton Court Council course Court death Earl Eliza Vaux Elizabethan England English Catholics equivocation Essex Everard Digby fact Father Garnet Father Gerard Father Tesimond Francis Tresham Gardiner Gerard's Narrative Guido Gunpowder Plot Guy Fawkes H.M.C. Salisbury Habington Harrowden Henry Garnet hiding-places Hindlip House of Lords Huddington Isabella Jacobean Jesuits Keyes King James King's Lady Little John Loomie married Montague Morris never Nicholls Northumberland November Oldcorne Owen Papists Parliament Philip Plotters Pope Powder Treason Prince Princess prison Protestant Queen Elizabeth recusant reign religion Robert Catesby Robert Cecil Robert Wintour royal Salisbury's Scotland Scottish secret servant Sir William Waad sister Spain Tassis Thomas Habington Thomas Percy throne told Toleration torture Tower of London trial Waad Westminster wife William Wright XVII