Gunpowder, treason and plot;
We see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
So runs an old, old jingle (one variant, anyway) about the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy on the part of a number of English Catholics to blow up the King in Parliament on November 5, 1605. When the plot was foiled, Parliament declared the day a national religious (Protestant) holiday.
When Parliament met in January 1606 for the first time after the plot they passed an Act of Parliament called the “Thanksgiving Act” which made services and sermons commemorating the Plot a regular annual feature on 5 November.[22] The act remained in force until 1859.[5] On 5 November 1605, it is said that the populace of London celebrated the defeat of the plot with fires and street festivities. The tradition of marking the day with the ringing of church bells and bonfires started soon after the Plot and fireworks were also included in some of the earliest celebrations.[22] In Britain the fifth of November is variously called Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night or Guy Fawkes Night.[5]
It remains the custom in Britain, on or around 5 November, to let off fireworks. Traditionally, in the weeks running up to the 5th, children made “guys”—effigies supposedly of Fawkes—usually formed from old clothes stuffed with newspaper, and equipped with a grotesque mask, to be burnt on the 5 November bonfire. These effigies would be exhibited in the street, to collect money for fireworks, although this practice is becoming less common.[23] The word guy came thus in the 19th century to mean an oddly dressed person, and hence in the 20th and 21st centuries to mean any male person.[5]
It’s interesting that the day came to be associated primarily with Guy Fawkes, since he wasn’t the leader of the plot; he was just the “wet work” man, the chap responsible for setting the explosives and carrying out the bombing. Of course, unlike the nobles for whom he was working, Fawkes actually knew what he was doing—had the plot gone off, it would have blown a most remarkable hole in Westminster; insofar as the commemoration is any sort of honor, he probably deserves it more than any of them do.