No Gunpowder Plot? It’s like saying the Americans never went to the moon. Yet if we strip out all the evidence derived from torture and the government’s own contradictory accounts, there is effectively nothing left. Two historians look at the broader context

According to government accounts, at about 11.45 p.m. on 4 November 1605 a “small party of men” discovered “a tall and desperate fellow” in the cellars of the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder, three matches and a tinderbox. He had set a train of gunpowder that would give him about 30 minutes to make his getaway. Guy Fawkes was set to blow king, Lords and Commons to kingdom come when they met the next day for the opening of Parliament.

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