The Gunpowder Plot: Background
by David Herber
The
seeds of discontent at the treatment of Catholics
in England, which ultimately led to the failed
Gunpowder Plot of 1605, were first sown in the
late 1520s during the reign of Henry
VIII. Henry had been declared
Defender of the Faith by the pope and had written
tracts against Protestantism. However,
dissatisfied with the Pope's refusal to grant him
a divorce from his first wife Catherine of
Aragon, Henry broke away from the See of Rome,
extinguished all papal power in England, and
executed his investiture as the head of the
Church of England. This was followed by the
methodical Dissolution of the Monasteries, under
the supervision of Thomas Cromwell, which aided
the English war chest and was instrumental in
eroding the English power of the Catholic Church.
Henry's Church of England was initially not
Protestant, but remained closer to his
traditional belief of Catholicism.
In the turbulent years that followed Henry’s
death, England swayed back and forth on a
theological pendulum. Henry's successor, his son Edward
VI, steered the Anglican Church down
the path of Protestantism, whereas his sister
"Bloody" Mary
I attempted to violently restore
England to Catholicism through severe Protestant
persecution, until Elizabeth
I ascended the throne in 1558, when
the tide was again reversed.
Fearful of a now encroaching Catholic Europe,
Elizabeth embarked upon a systematic course of
repression and persecution of Catholics within
her own country, in an attempt to ensure that
there was no discontented populace which could
assist a foreign invasion, or which could be seen
as a beacon if a foreign invasion occurred. When
the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588,
Elizabeth had all but extinguished the hopes for
an end to persecution of those Catholics in
England who saw Spain as their great ally. The
previous year she had had her rival, the deposed
and imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, executed in
order to prevent underground Catholic cells
rallying to Mary’s cause and attempting to
depose Elizabeth. Such activities as this had
been only too evident in the Babington Plot of
1586 which uncovered Mary's coveting of the
English crown and which was subsequently a main
reason for her eventual execution. Mary's claim
to the English throne came through her
grandmother Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's eldest
sister, who had married James IV of Scotland.
When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, there was
disagreement about her right to follow Mary I.
Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn, was according to
some, not legally married, because Henry's
divorce from Catherine of Aragon was not legal as
it would not be ratified by the Pope (the reason
Henry broke away from the Catholic Church). So,
upon Anne Boleyn's execution for treason,
Elizabeth was separately declared a bastard, then
removed from the succession by an act of the
Privy Council. However, Henry placed her back in
the succession, but never legitimized her.
Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, the
Catholic strongholds in the north of England, who
had been instrumental in the Pilgrimage of Grace
in 1536/37 and the Norfolk and Northern Uprising
of 1569, began sending envoys to both Phillip II
of Spain and James
VI of Scotland (the son of Mary
Queen of Scots). It had become illegal to talk of
the succession, yet James was commonly seen as
Elizabeth's heir by both Protestants and
Catholics, by virtue of closeness of blood to
Henry VIII.
The Essex Rebellion of 1601 brought the names of
many of those who were at the forefront of the
Catholic cause to the attention of the
Government, including that of Robert
Catesby, who was later to become the
leader of the Gunpowder Plot. The Catholics,
relieved at the prospect that the son of a
Catholic monarch had seemingly been guranteed the
throne after Elizabeth's death, had acquired from
James the promise of toleration in the event that
he did succeed Elizabeth. However, their
embassies to Spain, dubbed the Spanish Treason,
had been met with a lukewarm response by the
Spanish Government, and in fact England and Spain
signed a peace treaty soon after the last of
these embassies had returned home.
When James eventually succeeded Elizabeth in 1603
as James I, there was initial celebration by the
Catholic leaders, who under Elizabeth had been
persecuted to such an extreme that any sign of
Catholic sympathy risked the severest of
penalties, including death. James, however, was
not to be their saviour. No sooner had the
Hampton Court Conference ended -- with no
compromise being given to either the Puritan
faction or the Catholics -- than James
re-introduced the harsh penalties for recusancy.
The
Plot
Reproduced by kind
permission of the Gunpowder Plot Society
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of the Gunpowder Plot Society
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