It’s that time of year again when we hear booms and bangs across consecutive weekends surrounding Bonfire Night. I’ve written before about my opinions on noisy fireworks and don’t understand why the use of silent ones has not yet been enforced so we can simply enjoy the wonderful visual spectacle without terrorising people or pets seriously affected by the noise. It looks like it is on the cards for community displays next year, which will provide relief for some.
Of course what started the whole thing off was the Gunpowder Plot. In the early hours of 5th November 1605, York-born Guy Fawkes was caught in a cellar below the Palace of Westminster, match in hand, next to barrels full of gunpowder. His and his co-conspirators’ plan was to ignite a massive explosion during the State Opening of Parliament the next morning, with the aim of killing Protestant King James I, obliterating his government and sparking a revolution to restore a Catholic to the throne and end years of persecution.
Unfortunately for Guy, an anonymous tip-off led to his discovery and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Subjected to relentless torture, he eventually revealed the names of his fellow conspirators and the whole plan unravelled. Just days later on 8th November, plot leaders Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy were killed in a siege at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, while most of the other plotters were rounded up, caught and imprisoned.
On 31st January 1606, the men were subjected to the traditional punishment for treason – public hanging, then ‘drawn’ (taken down just before you are dead and disembowelled) before being ‘quartered’ (having your limbs removed). The separated body parts were then scattered throughout the kingdom, the ultimate humiliation for Catholics for whom being interred in sacred consecrated ground was the only way to enter heaven.
Having gone to school in York, I’m well aware of the oft-repeated claims that St Peter’s School, where Guy Fawkes was educated, never marks Bonfire Night.
However, I was surprised to discover that the story is simply not true. A quick visit to the school website will tell you that they are having a huge fireworks display in the school grounds on Thursday 5th November (and have done in previous years too). And yet, the myth that they do not mark it is perpetuated on almost every other site I visited during the course of my research for this column. Does anyone know where or why the myth originated?
One venue that definitely does not mark 5th November is the Guy Fawkes Inn on York’s High Petergate. It claims to be built on the site of Guy’s birth in 1570 (although York Civic Trust says he was born in Stonegate). The inn is opposite St Michael le Belfrey Church where Fawkes was baptised and a mere skip and a hop from York Minster, both well-established places of worship for the Church of England. So how did Guy end up fighting the Roman Catholic cause?
It may stem from the fact that when he was aged just eight, his father Edward died. A few years later, his mother remarried a chap called Dionis Baynbridgge (or Denis Bainbridge) who was a staunch Catholic. I’m not sure how she ended up with him in such religiously divided times, but nevertheless the family moved to his home in the village of Scotton near Knaresborough when Guy was approaching his impressionable teens. Is it in this village that Guy became radicalised, influenced by prominent local Catholic families such as the Percys, the Pulleyns and of course his stepfather’s family, the Bainbridges?
As an adult, Fawkes left the village to follow a military career in the Netherlands, fighting for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years War against Dutch Protestants. This is when he developed his military skills and honed his expertise in handling explosives. He also changed his name to the more exotic and Hispanic-sounding ‘Guido’.
Other myths abound including that the plotters used a cottage in Scotton to hatch their radical plan, but there is no evidence to support it. The pub in the village is called the Guy Fawkes, but only adopted that name in the 1970s. The main ‘hub’ of the conspiracy was likely Robert Catesby’s home in Northamptonshire, and it was Thomas Percy who leased the cellar under the Houses of Parliament where the gunpowder was stored.
The remaining question in my head is, though, who was the anonymous tipster?
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This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 6th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 4th Oct 2026
