Gunpowder, treason and plot;
\nWe see no reason why gunpowder treason
\nShould ever be forgot.<\/i><\/p>\n
So runs an old, old jingle (one variant, anyway) about the Gunpowder Plot<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n When Parliament met in January 1606 for the first time after the plot they passed an Act of Parliament<\/a> called the “Thanksgiving Act” which made services and sermons commemorating the Plot a regular annual feature on 5 November.[22]<\/a> The act remained in force until 1859.[5]<\/a> 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]<\/a> In Britain the fifth of November is variously called Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night or Guy Fawkes Night<\/a>.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n It remains the custom in Britain, on or around 5 November, to let off fireworks<\/a>. Traditionally, in the weeks running up to the 5th, children made “guys”\u2014effigies supposedly of Fawkes\u2014usually 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]<\/a> The word guy<\/a><\/i> 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]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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\u2014had 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6R3Ax-fS","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1687,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1687","url_meta":{"origin":984,"position":0},"title":"Jeremiah half-Wright and the bitter irony of Obama’s win","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"6 November 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Barack Obama's long-time pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., is correct that there is a white-launched, white-sponsored plot afoot to eradicate the American black population. It's quite a successful plot, too, having already reduced the size of the black community in this country by a significant percentage; if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Barack Obama"","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1175,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1175","url_meta":{"origin":984,"position":1},"title":"When we say God works in mysterious ways . . .","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"13 August 2009","format":false,"excerpt":". . . this is the kind of thing we mean. I tend to think that there are folks out there through whom God decides to work in absolutely atypical ways, both because of who he's made them to be and so that their lives would serve as reminders to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion and theology"","block_context":{"text":"Religion and theology","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=65"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1938,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1938","url_meta":{"origin":984,"position":2},"title":"The Pelosi Administration is gearing up","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"1 August 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"When I lived in Canada, I used to describe the Canadian government as an elected dictatorship. This is because Canada is a parliamentary democracy in which the standing rules of Parliament gave the Prime Minister an extraordinary amount of power to coerce and punish MPs (Members of Parliament) who don\u2019t\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=63"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1219","url_meta":{"origin":984,"position":3},"title":"Those who do not understand the past . . .","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"11 July 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A charismatic young leader, supported by a coalition of intellectual elitists on the one hand and a dependent underclass on the other, has gained control of the country. With each month that passes, the leader and his court reveal themselves to be more hostile to the interests of the middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Barack Obama"","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1313,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1313","url_meta":{"origin":984,"position":4},"title":"Getting Trek right from the beginning","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"23 May 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Sara and I finally got the chance to go see the new\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0last night, thanks to a couple in the church who took our kids for the evening (and a wonderful time was had by all, too; we have some great folks in this congregation), and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fantasy\/science fiction"","block_context":{"text":"Fantasy\/science fiction","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=110"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1560,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1560","url_meta":{"origin":984,"position":5},"title":"The Democratic Congress as an elected dictatorship","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"15 January 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Last August, I wrote this:When I lived in Canada, I used to describe the Canadian government as an elected dictatorship. This is because Canada is a parliamentary democracy in which the standing rules of Parliament gave the Prime Minister an extraordinary amount of power to coerce and punish MPs (Members\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=63"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4873,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions\/4873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}