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Welcome to the History Extra podcast.
Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.
We know from history that the gunpowder plot of 1605 failed.
But what if it hadn't?
I'm Danny Bird.
And for this four-part history extra series on the gunpowder plot, I'm joined by historian Professor John Cooper from the University of York.
In this third episode we explore the frightening possibilities of an alternate course in Britain's history.
What if Parliament had been reduced to rubble, wiping out king, nobles and clergy in a single blast?
Could a compliant child queen have been placed on the throne as the conspirators had hoped?
And could England have been plunged into a religious civil war?
John, if Guy Fawkes had managed to light the fuse, what would the explosion beneath the Palace of Westminster have looked like, and what damage would it have caused to the buildings and the surrounding area?
We're talking about a lot of gunpowder underneath the House of Lords.
So it's something like 36 barrels of the stuff.
And there have been modern-day experiments trying to recreate that explosion.
If it had all ignited and there's a question about whether it would have could have ignited.
If it had all ignited, it would have created an almighty explosion, certainly sufficient to destroy most of the Palace of Westminster.
So the House of Lords would have been blown to pieces.
The House of Commons across the courtyard would also have gone.
I think Westminster Hall would also have been very badly damaged, as would, of course, a lot of houses and businesses in the immediate area.
One estimate is Also shows that the blast radius would have taken in parts of Westminster Abbey as well.
So we're talking about an almighty explosion.
But also there's a kind of a technical question about the composition of the gunpowder.
Early 17th century gunpowder.
Because of its saltpeter content.
Apparently it would have produced an enormous amount of carbon monoxide.
So even if you survived the blast, carbon monoxide gas would have been very present and would probably have killed quite a number of the survivors.
So if it had ignited, it would have been a conflagration.
The opening of Parliament was, of course, attended by the King and senior members of the royal family and leading nobles and senior bishops.
Who exactly might have been killed in the blast, and how would their deaths have reshaped England's leadership in an instant?
Yes, to understand how the blast would have worked and who would have been killed, you really need to understand sort of parliamentary ritual of the period, which which actually isn't that different from parliamentary ritual to this day, in the sense that when we have a state opening of parliament, the king still opens parliaments in the house of lords and the house of commons crowd in a kind of unruly way at the back without seats.
That is exactly how it would happen in early 17th century.
So the people seated in the house of lords would have been the peerage, the privy council, bishops and senior judges as well, in the presence of the king, probably the prince of wales, prince henry, maybe other members of the royal family, but the house of commons, all of the parliamentarians, all you know, 450 odd of the parliamentarians.
They would also have been at the back of the house of lords, crowded around the bar of the house, with a very clear view of the king giving his speech.
So if that explosion had taken place, it would have killed the king and the heir and the government, in the sense of the Privy Council and all of the judges, most of the nobility and most of the House of Commons, all at one go.
So it would have completely decapitated English society, English government in one fell swoop.
And that would have created a totally unprecedented situation.
In terms of that unprecedented situation, is it possible to imagine how this political vacuum would have played out across England and maybe further afield, in Scotland Wales, Ireland?
It's actually very difficult to imagine what would have happened if the gunpowder plot had succeeded, because everything depends on government in London.
And the entire structure of society depends upon having a monarchy, depends upon having a functioning king or queen.
Without that it's difficult to imagine what would have happened.
And even in the late elizabethan period, when the privy council is planning for what might happen and secretly planning actually for what might happen if elizabeth were assassinated, the councils assumed that they would survive.
So even if the queen is killed, then the Privy Council will be able to create a kind of temporary monarchical government until another candidate for the throne can be found.
In terms of the Gunpowder Plot, if it succeeded in not only destroying the monarchy, but most of the heirs to the throne and all of the members of the government as well, what would have been left?
Well, there was a superstructure of society in the English counties.
So there is a sheriff in every county.
There will be lords lieutenant, as there still are.
There'll be magistrates at the local level.
But the functioning of that system is all quite London-focused, really, or Westminster-focused.
And so without any organizing force, it would be like a hive of bees that's lost the queen.
Their controlling presence would have gone.
And I suppose it could have gone one of two ways either.
Those systems of the shrievelty, the sheriffs and the lord lieutenants were sufficiently robust by this point that the government would have continued at a kind of county level until some sort of a solution was found.
That's, that's one possibility.
The other possibility is that the whole system would have folded in on itself and actually a lot of those sheriffs, a lot of those lords lieutenant would have been at westminster for the opening of parliament.
So it's another aspect of this, that explosion as well as taking out central government, it might have taken out a pretty substantial amount of local government as well.
Do you think it's fair to say that the Gump had a plot with this?
Imagined possibility is therefore arguably one of the boldest acts of terrorism ever conceived.
Yes.
Whether we call it terrorism or not, we might have a conversation about.
It was a fantastically audacious operation. that actually comes quite close to succeeding as well.
If you abandon the kind of conspiracy theory reading of the gunpowder plot, that it's fabricated by the government or swept into action by the government, then actually to have that much gunpowder stored in the Palace of Westminster for months, being guarded by Guy Fawkes and being visited by the conspirators and then coming well, at least according to one account coming within hours of being ignited, it's on a scale that it's different from anything, I think, in English or British history.
Even in a subsequent period of 17th century history, even when you have the execution of King Charles I, the execution of by a parliamentary regime that kind of adopts a lot of the parliamentary protocols and a lot of the sort of monarchical structure is just within a kind of republican framework.
If you think about the early 19th century, when a prime minister has assassinated spencer percival, The structures of government around Spencer Percival survive.
So it's not as if the assassination of a prime minister is going to lead to national collapse.
There's something horribly spectacular about the level of vision or level of hubris, and just the violence that these people, the gunpowder plotters were prepared to consider.
It is really rather astonishing.
Looking a bit more to what the plotters may have imagined could follow in the wake of this preconceived chaos.
Obviously we have mentioned in the previous episode, Princess Elizabeth was intended to be a sort of puppet monarch by Robert Catesby and some of the other leading conspirators.
Now, England's Catholics often looked abroad for support from Catholic Europe.
So countries such as Spain, France and even Vatican.
And this was especially the case For the gunpowder plotters.
They were very much involved within European Catholic circles.
We've already referenced in previous episodes that Guy Fawkes fought for Catholics in the Spanish Netherlands.
If the plot had succeeded, what do you think is the likelihood that foreign powers would have become involved in England's internal affairs?
We're completely in the realm of speculation here.
I think that one of the reasons that the gunpowder plot plays out in the way that it does is because spain isn't very interested in intervening in english affairs.
So the fact that the gunpowder plot was a plot of english conspirators without the promise of foreign aid, is quite, a quite a significant factor there.
It's possible, of course, that in this kind of counterfactual world that our plotters setting up um a kind of, you know, ersatz monarchical regime, a puppet Catholic regime under the Princess Elizabeth or Queen Elizabeth II, it's possible that they would have reached out to the Catholic powers of Europe.
I think it's much more likely they would have reached out to Spain than to France.
And it is further possible that Philip III would have seen this as an opportunity to support a pro-Catholic regime in England.
But by and large, I think that what the Spanish would have wanted is a stable England or a stable Britain to maintain as an ally and a trading partner.
I think that that's one of the things that they'd be wanting.
So I think that the history of relations between England and Spain and relations around the gunpowder plotters prove that Spain is it's actually not very interested in leading a kind of Catholic revolution in mainland England.
You know, in a sense they've tried that with the Spanish Armada and it's been an utter disaster and Spain has pulled back from that world.
I mean, I think what is really interesting in carrying on that kind of counterfactual history is what it would have done to the emerging entity of Britain.
So, so far, what we've been talking about is very much an English story.
But of course, James VI of Scots has become James I of England and has also become King of Ireland.
And so there's a very interesting set of kind of speculations one might have about the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland if the gunpowder plotter succeeded.
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What do you think mattered more to the conspirators?
Their devotion to their faith or their political ambition to reshape the kingdom?
I think everything starts with their devotion to their faith, which is genuine.
These people clearly are prepared to risk their lives in, as I said, a very audacious but an extraordinarily dangerous operation.
It's a massively risky operation.
They must have gone into this thinking that there was a strong likelihood that they would die.
And they seem to have been okay about this.
I mean, they seem to have understood this.
And certainly we know that one or two of the conspirators talked in confession to the priests about what they were doing.
Precisely in what terms they talked about what they were about to try and do, but is unclear.
So priestly, knowledge of the gunpowder plot is one of those very sort of shady areas where you might take a variety of different views on it.
Think those men wanted to sort of go into this operation in a state of grace, in a state of catholic grace and having received a kind of absolution of their sins hitherto, which is not to say that the catholic church was was giving its blessing to the gunpowder plot, because i don't think it was doing that at all.
I think they wanted to be at ease in their consciences and they do see this.
The extent to which they see it as a religious crusade is an interesting question.
I do think that they think they are working for the mass of the English Catholic community.
They are working so that their generation of Catholics and future generations of Catholics will not be under the kind of the groaning tyranny that Catholics have been facing since the Reformation.
That said, there's also a really interesting strand of political radicalism, particularly around Catesby and Winter.
And Catesby, we have to remember, he'd been to university, he'd been to Oxford.
He was aware of, probably of discussions taking place in religious and intellectual circles around tyrannicide, about when, if ever, it's legitimate in the eyes of God to stand up against your ruler.
And you know there are very different opinions on that, very different interpretations of the Bible on that.
But Catesby, he's sort of carrying into operation the most sort of radical political arguments around tyrannicide that if a tyrannical ruler is commands you to do something that is contrary to the will of God, then it is your right to rise up against that unlawfully constituted authority.
Under some circumstances, it might be your duty.
It might be your obligation to rise up against that.
I think that thinking is going through Catesby's mind and Winter's mind.
We have one fantastic detail about both of those men, that they have swords made.
They have swords made in Spain that are inscribed with the passion of Christ and devotional motifs.
So if we're looking for a sort of a religious crusade, that does seem to imply that Catesby and Winter thought they were on some sort of holy mission.
Now we've essentially discussed that had the plot succeeded, it would have resulted in a political vacuum within England, that there would have been political chaos.
Could this then have sparked some kind of bloody religious civil war similar to those that had just devastated France in the previous century?
Yes, again, we're into the realm of speculative sort of counterfactual history.
I think there is a very strong chance that a religious civil war or at least some sort of sectarian strife would have followed on from the gunpowder plot.
So a lot had changed since then, the mid-16th century, when Mary I had led, in a sense, a Catholic revolution and had taken, as she saw it, rightful control of the country for five years and ruled and returned England to being a Catholic country.
That long reign of Elizabeth had really changed the religious and social fabric of England.
Protestantism was deeply embedded in the English establishment, amongst parliamentarians, amongst lawyers in the universities, but also amongst a lot of ordinary people.
I mean we focus so far very much on sort of popular Catholicism, but there was a lot of popular Protestantism that also, at its edges, connected with xenophobia and anti-Catholic sentiment of various kinds.
So Protestant England would not just have rolled over and accepted, I think, this Catholic takeover.
How those forces would have deployed against each other.
You know which was stronger, the Catholic side or the Protestant side, is very difficult to say in terms of the fabric of England.
What I do think is clear is it was a precipitated crisis within Britain.
So Scotland was... substantially Protestant with a strong Catholic minority.
There is no way that the Scottish establishment of the Presbyterian Scottish establishment would have accepted a Catholic rule over Scotland from England.
That is inconceivable.
So we might have seen a return to the sort of military conflict between Scotland and England that had been endemic right the way through the later Middle Ages and carried on into the 16th century.
I think something horrific would also have happened in Ireland earlier than it did.
So the story of 17th century Ireland is a pretty horrific story.
And you know, once we get into the Civil War of the 1640s, we see massacres.
I mean massacres on all sides in fact, but famously massacres of Protestants on the plantations in Ireland.
I think that a Catholic regime in England would have enabled that Gaelic Catholic resurgence in Ireland and the English or Anglo-Scots plantations in southern Ireland and in Ulster would have been wiped out very quickly actually.
So what we're talking about is potentially a sort of a civil war in two different ways.
We're talking about a kind of internal English civil war, but we're also talking about a conflict between the component parts of the British Isles.
And that's remarkably similar to what actually happened in the 1640s.
So the Civil War was actually the British Civil Wars.
It was a conflict between the component parts and among the component parts of the British Isles, as well as being a series of military campaigns within England.
So all of that might have happened 40 years earlier.
Well, that leads me on to my next question, which is that the 1600s are infamously a very tumultuous time within the history of Britain and Ireland.
I wanted to get a sense of what you think the Gunpowder Plot's place is within that sequence of events.
Do you think it has any sort of influence on the rest of that century, or is it something which is a bit of an outlier?
The Gunpowder Plot is an outlier in the sense of just the scale of what was attempted and how close it came to succeeding.
We don't see another incident in quite that way.
But it has an extraordinary resonance.
It has an extraordinary political legacy because of the way that it's propagandized and because of the way that it's reshaped and reimagined and remembered.
So the idea that Catholic plotters had come so close to destroying the monarchy parliament, the royal family, the entire political establishment, that becomes a powerful and poisonous and pernicious idea legacy really throughout the 17th century.
And you see echoes of this in some of the rhetoric, political rhetoric in the 1630s.
You see references to gunpowder treason around the trial and execution of King Charles I as a result of him losing the Civil War.
You also see it around the time of the Popish plot with Titus Oates at the end of the 1670s.
And you see it again around the time of the Glorious Revolution.
And this is not that surprising when you think that every English parish church, once a year, is celebrating the memory of the discovery of the gunpowder plot.
And there are bonfires and there are effigies of Guy Fawkes being burned.
And there are people setting off fireworks and engaging in all sorts of festivities and rioting in order to kind of celebrate this.
That God's delivery of Protestant England and that rhetoric God's delivery of Protestant England very sectarian rhetoric is very clear in a lot of sermons being preached as well.
You know, once you get beyond the actual events of 1605, the kind of the memory of it and the embellishment of it becomes a major factor in the politics of the rest of the 17th century.
But also subsequently, you can hear its echoes in the 18th and even in the 19th century.
John.
What do these counterfactual scenarios reveal about just how unstable and fragile James's reign was?
And what do you think the plot says about the sort of state of the monarchy at this particular juncture in history?
My sense is monarchy, the principal monarchy, is very strong.
So the Catholic plotters, they are not trying to set up some kind of a republic.
Their thinking is entirely monarchical.
They're not trying to think outside the box of monarchy.
They're trying to put a substitute Catholic puppet monarchy, but it's still a monarchy.
So I don't think the gunpowder plot reveals any sense of fragility around the system of governing by monarchy of the sort that you see in the 1640s, when the monarchy is finally established, abolished forever, as people think, in 1649.
How the structures of monarchy, or the crown, perhaps we should say more precisely would have functioned in that chaos situation of the 6th of November 1605 remains to be speculated on.
We just don't know how the counties would have responded.
What I think the gunpowder plot does show is actually it's the fragility of Britain more than England actually in this entity of Britain that James VI and I is talking about.
He's very recent.
And it's really bound together only in his person.
He is king of Scots and he's king of England.
And he happens also because of Henry VIII to be king of Ireland.
And James thinks that, because he is king of all of those places, that that creates a perfect union, that that kind of creates this united kingdom of Britain.
This is the first time that we really start seeing a modern usage of the term britain and even sometimes the concept of a kingdom united.
It's not yet the united kingdom that would happen in the in the 18th century, but that's actually very fragile and it's not just the gunpowder plot that proves that, but it's what happens in parliament following the gunpowder plot, actually when parliament votes down the idea of an actual political union between england and scotland, which remains a pretty important constitutional fact to this day.
There was a possibility in James I's reign to create kind of a genuinely annexed and united England and Scotland.
But the English parliament and the Scots parliament, both are very uneasy about that.
And it sort of voted down on both sides of the border, essentially.
So I think it shows possibly some of the strengths of England, and certainly the strength of the crown, but the fragility of Britain.
Next time we'll be looking at the gunpowder plot's legacy from Bonfire Night to Guy Fawkes' extraordinary afterlife as an anti-establishment icon.
If you enjoyed today's episode and want to know more about the gunpowder plot, head over to the History Extra app to go beyond the podcast.
I've selected several articles from the BBC History magazine and the History Extra archives that will help you to broaden your knowledge of what you've learned today, with features from historians including Lucy Worsley, Justin Pollard, Clare Jackson and more.
You can find a link to download the app and access that content in the description of this episode.
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