Remember, remember, the 5th of November: gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.
You don’t have to write something seditious to incite rebellion. Every time you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) you’re refusing to accept mediocrity. You’re making a statement, declaring that you have a voice and it deserves to be heard.
And as it’s the 5th of November, it seems like an apt time to celebrate that famous rebel, Guy Fawkes. In my trilogy of novels, Guy Fawkes: Demon Hunter I alter history. I bring in demons and demonology. It fits, because it was a time in which believe in witchcraft and demons was common. There is, of course, an awful aspect to the truth. The attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament would have resulted in a lot of death. I had to find a way to deal with this in the novel and keep my reader very much on the side of Guy Fawkes. I think I found a way to do that.
It’s interesting, the way the history is told these days. There are significant gaps. Important bits of context are buried away. And the latest attempt to spread misinformation found itself to me recently.
That’s right, the government want to teach us about Guy Fawkes.
I had to investigate further, and oh my is it bad. The lack of competence in this government is laughable. They are beyond farce.
‘Most’ is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. It was a massively divisive time. This is only 36 years after Henry VIII effectively divorced himself from the Catholic church. You know people and religion. They don’t let go of beliefs easily. And this doesn’t take into account that Mary I had reinstated Catholicism during her reign, ending in 1558.
Therefore, this is at best misinformed, at worst deliberately misleading.
I don’t even know where to start with this. Part of it is simply wrong. in 1594, King James VI reigned only in Scotland. He didn’t become King James I of England until 1603. ‘They were unhappy’ again, doesn’t tell half of the story. This was serious religious persecution. Prior to his reign, people he had believed he would treat Catholics fairly. This was very much not the case. He treated Catholics with cruelty, imposing impossible fines and seizing property. Catholic priests were told to leave the country. Those that didn’t faced the death penalty.
He gave up no names. Oh, and he suffered hideous torture. But don’t tell the kiddies that.
Well, some were. Some died while imprisoned. Some were shot while making a stand to avoid capture. And let’s talk about that punishment. Hung, drawn, and quartered. But there’s more to it than that which we won’t get into. Anyway, they messed up with Guy Fawkes. He slipped while climbing the ladder (he was in a pretty rough state after all the torture) and broke his neck, so he didn’t have to suffer the same horrendous fate as the rest.
I get this is targeted at Primary School kids, so it has to be simplified, but this really isn’t good enough. The reason we learn history, is so that we can do better next time. To paint Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators as simple terrorists dooms us to repeat the mistakes of the past. There is a lesson to be learned here about tolerance, about accepting others with beliefs that differ to our own. All this does is echoes the same old ideas about outsiders and punishment.
Real history, and indeed real life is way too depressing. I prefer my version with the demons.