Customer Reviews

Gunpowder Plot: Faith in Rebellion (History/16th/17th Century History)

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I first heard of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot in a Sherlock Holmes radio pastiche (available from Amazon.com). The pastiche sketched out the bare essentials of the plot and named Guy Fawkes as the ringleader. After reading this slim volume, I now have the following information to add to what I learned from the radio play:

Guy Fawkes was not the ringleader, but a pawn--somewhat like the Watergate burglars. The ringleader was a Robert Catesby, and the conspirators were devout Catholics suffering repression and seeking to replace King James with a Catholic ruler. Repression of Catholicism redoubled after the plot was foiled. Robert Catesby and his cohorts hired Guy Fawkes, a mercenary with a talent for exploding things, to blow up King James and Parliament in one fell swoop. Fawkes was caught red handed under Parliament with a lantern and more than enough gunpowder to do the job. He was not advised of his Miranda rights before questioning.

"The Gunpowder Plot" is a great story poorly told. The writer assumes too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, and the writing is closer to James Joyce than Ernest Hemingway without displaying the literary talent of either. Whenever I decide I am reading a poorly written book, I usually put it down without finishing it. Despite its shortcomings, I finished "The Gunpowder Plot". The story itself was so interesting that it carried me through to the end.

Wading through to the end proved rewarding. The book ends with a chapter on the influences of the Gunpowder Plot on Shakespeare's "MacBeth." The author makes a good case for the proposition that the Plot's influence on the play was profound.

I went into this book with a vague knowledge of the name 'Guy Fawkes' and that's pretty much it. I think some of the knowledge assumed by the author can be attributed to the fact that he is English, and the average English reader is probably more knowlegable of the details of the plot than the average American reader. Having read another work by Haynes, I also would say that he tends to assume a great deal of knowledge on the readers part. As a reader, I find that attractive, because if he assumes a great deal of knowlege on my part then he's more likely to give me unusual information that I wouldn't find elsewhere.

As an American reader, I did find it a bit difficult to read between the lines for the information I didn't go into the book knowing, and according to what I read in Wikipedia the book doesn't go very far into the (apparentally) widely accepted theory that the whole thing was arranged by someone in the government (Salisbury) to give them an excuse to persecute Catholics further and tighten the Protestant hold. Primarily because he dismisses it as conspiritorial nonsense.

Definitely an interesting read -- I didn't know much about the Catholic persecution and plots in Elizabethan England before and I feel more enlightened about the era in general, if not specifically the Gunpowder plot.

It is a bit dry at times, but there are little anecdotes sprinkled throughout that make it an easier read. Definitely not light reading or a general overview of the Gunpowder Plot, but excellent for those who want detailed and unusual information.

I've never read it...What is it about?

I've never read it...What is it about?