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The Killer Marketing Campaign Behind Guy Fawkes · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Okay, so check this out. In the course of our
0:25
Speaker 1: research for today's episode, I discovered one of the longest
0:30
Speaker 1: sentences I have read in a cartoonishly long amount of time.
0:35
Speaker 1: Do we have time for this? We do? We do?
0:37
Speaker 1: I just want you to I just want to check
0:39
Speaker 1: out how long the sentences. Keep in mind it is
0:42
Speaker 1: all one sentence, my Lord. Out of the love I
0:47
Speaker 1: bear to some of your friends, I have a care
0:49
Speaker 1: for your preservation. Therefore, I would advise you, as you
0:52
Speaker 1: tend to your life, to devise some excuse to shift
0:55
Speaker 1: your attendance at this parliament. For God and Man have
0:58
Speaker 1: concurred to punish the wickedness of this time. And think
1:01
Speaker 1: not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself into your country,
1:06
Speaker 1: where you may expect the event in safety. For although
1:09
Speaker 1: there may be no appearance of any stir yet I
1:12
Speaker 1: say they shall receive a terrible blow this parliament, and
1:15
Speaker 1: yet they shall not see who hurts them. This council
1:19
Speaker 1: is not to be condemned, because it may do you
1:21
Speaker 1: good and can do you no harm. For the danger
1:24
Speaker 1: is past as soon as you have burnt the letter,
1:27
Speaker 1: and I hope God will give you the grace to
1:29
Speaker 1: make good use of it, to whose holy protection, I
1:33
Speaker 1: commend you holy smokes. My name is Ben, my name
1:36
Speaker 1: is Nolan. That is the way my mom sends text messages.
1:39
Speaker 1: There are twelve commas in this paragraph masquerading as a sentence. Okay,
1:44
Speaker 1: my mom doesn't even bother using commas, did I say?
1:46
Speaker 1: I'm no, I'm distracted by by the length of that
1:49
Speaker 1: sentence enough, I'm mulling it over. What does it mean? Man?
1:51
Speaker 1: What does it mean? This is a letter that was
1:55
Speaker 1: sent to the Lord Monteagle to warn him of a
2:00
Speaker 1: terrorist plot. A terrorist plot, you say, yes, yes, one
2:05
Speaker 1: involving gunpowder. I think you mean the infamous gunpowder plot
2:10
Speaker 1: of November of six oh five. Remember remember the fifth
2:14
Speaker 1: of November with gunpowdered treason and plot. I see no
2:19
Speaker 1: reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Yes, yes,
2:25
Speaker 1: the very same knoll uh. And that is why you
2:28
Speaker 1: and I, along with our super producer Casey Pegram, are
2:34
Speaker 1: delving into some British history, something that has encountered a
2:39
Speaker 1: resurrection in terms of popularity in the United States ever
2:43
Speaker 1: since the two thousand and six release of the film
2:47
Speaker 1: V for Vendetta, an adaptation of an earlier graphic novel
2:50
Speaker 1: right by Alan Moore um And. It tells the story
2:55
Speaker 1: of an anarchist who plots to overthrow sort of a
2:59
Speaker 1: dystope in future government. Um And uses this mask of
3:04
Speaker 1: the face of Guy Fox as kind of a symbol
3:09
Speaker 1: of rising up against the oppressors. Right And for many
3:14
Speaker 1: people who learned the broad strokes of this event in school,
3:19
Speaker 1: Guy Fox is often portrayed as the primary character, the
3:24
Speaker 1: protagonist or antagonist, depending upon your perspective, it is true,
3:27
Speaker 1: but as it turns out, he was really more of,
3:30
Speaker 1: I don't know, not a patsy. He knew what he
3:32
Speaker 1: was getting into, but he certainly wasn't the brains behind
3:35
Speaker 1: the operation. He was just the poor sap what got caught. Yes, yes, yes,
3:40
Speaker 1: And let's set the stage here for what exactly happened.
3:44
Speaker 1: Let's start with the facts right before we get into
3:47
Speaker 1: some of the ridiculous nous. Let's do it. So Henry eight,
3:52
Speaker 1: this guy ruled England, he had six wives and at
3:55
Speaker 1: the time the country was Catholic. I mean that rotund
3:59
Speaker 1: fellow with the chicken leg at the Renaissance Fair, very same.
4:04
Speaker 1: I think that might be an actor. I'm pretty sure
4:07
Speaker 1: our nemesis. The quister Jonathan Strickland um knows Henry the Eighth,
4:12
Speaker 1: or at least the actor that portrays him at the
4:14
Speaker 1: Renaissance Fair Peak behind the Curtain. Strickland spends many of
4:18
Speaker 1: his hours when he's not podcasting and tormenting us as
4:21
Speaker 1: a Renaissance Fair actor. Yes. Yes, and he's been doing
4:26
Speaker 1: it for quite a while. I bet you're correct. I
4:28
Speaker 1: bet he's plugged into the Renaissance Festival scene. Well, if
4:32
Speaker 1: he pops up at some point, we'll have to ask
4:34
Speaker 1: him about that. Yes, perhaps we can also ask him
4:37
Speaker 1: to single snatch of the famous oldie I'm Henry the Eighth. Yes,
4:41
Speaker 1: And speaking of Henry the Eighth, I am Henry the Eighth.
4:44
Speaker 1: I am Uh what role did he play and kind
4:48
Speaker 1: of setting the stage for this treasonous plot? Yes, excellent question.
4:54
Speaker 1: You see, at the time that he ruled England, the
4:57
Speaker 1: country was Catholic, at least at first, because his wife
5:02
Speaker 1: at the time, Catherine of Arragon, could not bear him
5:06
Speaker 1: a male heir. And because of this, Henry the Eighth said, well,
5:11
Speaker 1: why are we even married? What's the point of this matrimony?
5:15
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. I mean, if you're trying to
5:16
Speaker 1: preserve your legacy as the patriarch of an entire nation.
5:20
Speaker 1: You need yourself A boy, a prince, a princess just
5:23
Speaker 1: won't do the trick. These were very misogynistic times, and
5:28
Speaker 1: if he felt this marriage was fruitless and not bearing
5:31
Speaker 1: him the desired um offspring, then he was gonna have
5:34
Speaker 1: to do something about it. But unfortunately, under the laws
5:38
Speaker 1: of Catholicism and the pope, uh, divorce just was not
5:42
Speaker 1: a thing. You couldn't You couldn't do it. Even the
5:44
Speaker 1: king couldn't do it, even the king and so so
5:48
Speaker 1: Henry said, you know what, I'm done with the church,
5:51
Speaker 1: and he finally got the divorce he wanted. But this
5:54
Speaker 1: created intense inter religious confusion because his three children retained
6:01
Speaker 1: Catholic religious beliefs, but they became politically opposed to the
6:07
Speaker 1: Church's doctrine, and this led to persecution of Catholics in
6:11
Speaker 1: England absolutely, and a lot of historians conjecture that Henry himself,
6:16
Speaker 1: behind closed doors, pretty much remained Catholic. He was a
6:20
Speaker 1: Protestant in name only, a pineo a pine Oh. Yes,
6:25
Speaker 1: So Henry died as people tend to do. I think
6:29
Speaker 1: of gout of of rich living right, he had a
6:33
Speaker 1: very fatty liver, and his son Edward took the throne.
6:38
Speaker 1: Edward was followed by Mary, and Mary led a Catholic reign.
6:43
Speaker 1: But when Elizabeth took the throne in fifteen fifty eight,
6:48
Speaker 1: England switched from a Catholic to a Protestant nation. Isn't
6:51
Speaker 1: it interesting how he finally got that air and Edward
6:54
Speaker 1: and I think he was kind of a weedy, little
6:55
Speaker 1: sickly fellow hemophilia and and just did not fit the bill.
7:00
Speaker 1: And then of course we have a legacy, despite Henry's
7:03
Speaker 1: best efforts and throwing his country into religious turmoil, a
7:08
Speaker 1: succession of very powerful, badass women. Yes, yes, oh what
7:13
Speaker 1: Webb's history weaves. You never quite know the ending of
7:16
Speaker 1: a tale, right, And Catholics had discriminatory policies placed against them.
7:23
Speaker 1: They couldn't hold mass, for instance, that's right, many Catholic
7:27
Speaker 1: priests were imprisoned and even put to death, and um
7:32
Speaker 1: Catholics who refused to attend Protestant services would be fined,
7:38
Speaker 1: and those fines increased um exponentially over the years as
7:42
Speaker 1: the throne switch hands. Absolutely, and this is why Catholics
7:47
Speaker 1: who lived in England under this discriminatory system, had high
7:51
Speaker 1: hopes when James of Scotland became the king, because you know,
7:56
Speaker 1: his mother Mary was Catholic, wouldn't he be a little
8:00
Speaker 1: less uncool at least? And initially he actually waived those fines,
8:05
Speaker 1: which really got people's hopes up on Catholics, specifically thinking, okay,
8:09
Speaker 1: we've got a friend in James, you know, but he
8:13
Speaker 1: pulled the bait and switch of the century and ended
8:15
Speaker 1: up being even harsher to Catholics than his predecessor had been.
8:20
Speaker 1: And that's when people had just had enough and some
8:24
Speaker 1: of these Catholics, various groups got together and hatched several
8:30
Speaker 1: well known plots to assassinate James in the hopes of
8:34
Speaker 1: switching the tide of history and the religious leanings of
8:39
Speaker 1: the country. Right, Yeah, And we think of this period
8:44
Speaker 1: of time usually in terms of the Gunpowder plot, but Noel,
8:48
Speaker 1: you raise an excellent point. It was one of several plots.
8:51
Speaker 1: There was the by plot spelled like bye bye uh
8:55
Speaker 1: in sixteen o three, and their aim was to kidnap James.
9:01
Speaker 1: And then there was the main plot of which the
9:04
Speaker 1: by plot was a part, which involved replacing James with
9:10
Speaker 1: his cousin Arabella Stewart or are Bella Stewart. And the
9:14
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting about these is like you have to
9:16
Speaker 1: wonder what were they thinking because it was largely a
9:20
Speaker 1: Protestant country at this point. I think way more people
9:23
Speaker 1: were practicing Protestantism than Catholicism. So if they did succeed
9:28
Speaker 1: short of recruiting you know, some other country, it will
9:31
Speaker 1: get into this with the gunpowder plot, there were attempts
9:34
Speaker 1: to attract Spain to aid in the Catholic cause um
9:39
Speaker 1: in England, But what do they expect to happen that
9:42
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like all of these Protestants that
9:44
Speaker 1: were the majority, we're just gonna like decide to be
9:48
Speaker 1: on board and not see them as uttered zealots and
9:50
Speaker 1: uh and terrorists. Right, yeah, because what we have seen
9:54
Speaker 1: typically is that across the span of history, extremism does
9:59
Speaker 1: not make for a welcoming argument, especially to your opponents. Right, So,
10:05
Speaker 1: if if these plots had succeeded, right, and the ruling
10:11
Speaker 1: powers of the day became Catholic, it's pretty unlikely that
10:17
Speaker 1: all of the Protestant population would just shrug and say
10:22
Speaker 1: good game, that that that probably wasn't going to happen.
10:26
Speaker 1: But that was not a consideration in the minds of
10:32
Speaker 1: these conspirators, and these were actual conspiracies, and all of
10:35
Speaker 1: this because of the whims of a fat man. Well,
10:41
Speaker 1: you know, no king is perfect. The plot, the gun
10:46
Speaker 1: yess the plot does think in the Gunpowder plot especially.
10:50
Speaker 1: There's a great article on how Stuff Works by our
10:55
Speaker 1: friend Candice Gibson that looks at the German nation, the
11:00
Speaker 1: Gunpowder Plot, and one way that she describes it, which
11:03
Speaker 1: I love, is she says, if you can imagine the
11:07
Speaker 1: cast of the Ocean's Eleven trilogy and breaches and broad callers,
11:11
Speaker 1: you've got an inkling of the crew assembled to take
11:14
Speaker 1: down James and leaders of Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot.
11:18
Speaker 1: And that crew was led sort of The brad Pitt
11:20
Speaker 1: character in this story was a man by the name
11:23
Speaker 1: of Robert Catsby, and he was a nobleman who had
11:27
Speaker 1: participated in a previous rebellion known as essex Is Rebellion,
11:30
Speaker 1: which was another unsuccessful rebellion where the second Earl of
11:36
Speaker 1: Essex led a charge to um depose Elizabeth the First
11:41
Speaker 1: of England, or at least kind of splinter her inner
11:45
Speaker 1: circle and influence policy and that didn't work. So this
11:48
Speaker 1: guy is already coming into this with an axe to
11:51
Speaker 1: grind and that rebellious kind of attitude of not accepting
11:54
Speaker 1: the status quo. And you know, come hell or high water,
11:57
Speaker 1: he's gonna he's gonna get his way. Yeah, he is,
12:00
Speaker 1: in the parlance of our time, a veteran terrorists. The
12:03
Speaker 1: plan was killed. The king killed James, and then when
12:06
Speaker 1: his daughter ascends to the throne, marry her off to
12:10
Speaker 1: a Catholic, thereby redefining England's religious identity. You can already
12:16
Speaker 1: see here that this this master plan is assuming that
12:22
Speaker 1: the daughter will be a puppet royal right and has
12:25
Speaker 1: no agency of her own. And I like your comparison
12:29
Speaker 1: of Catsby as the Brad Pitt. Uh, here's the crew
12:33
Speaker 1: he recruited. He got a guy named John Right, a
12:36
Speaker 1: fellow named Thomas Winter, another Thomas, this one Thomas Percy,
12:40
Speaker 1: and of course Guy Fox. And I think a lot
12:43
Speaker 1: of people perhaps erroneously assumed that Guy Fox was playing
12:49
Speaker 1: the role that was actually played by Robert Catsby. Guy
12:53
Speaker 1: Fox came in the mix. He was not the Brad Pitt. No,
12:56
Speaker 1: he was really kind of a heavy. He had a
12:58
Speaker 1: lot of experience in imbat fighting Protestant rebels in the
13:03
Speaker 1: Spanish Netherlands, and he had kind of gotten at least
13:08
Speaker 1: maybe not buddy buddy, but close enough to the King
13:11
Speaker 1: of Spain that he actually asked him for help in
13:14
Speaker 1: starting an English uprising against James, who was just the
13:19
Speaker 1: enemy of Catholics far and wide. And he even changed
13:22
Speaker 1: his name or started referring to himself as Guido instead
13:26
Speaker 1: of Guy in sixteen o five because it gave him
13:30
Speaker 1: more of a connection to the papacy in Rome and
13:33
Speaker 1: sort of more of a cosmopolitan identity that was tied
13:37
Speaker 1: more to Catholicism than to being an Englishman. And we
13:41
Speaker 1: can anticipate the question here did he refer to himself
13:45
Speaker 1: in third person? We can only hope that he was
13:48
Speaker 1: one of those people. But what we do know for
13:50
Speaker 1: sure is that due to his military experience, he was
13:55
Speaker 1: acquainted with using and more importantly, gaining access to gunpowder.
14:02
Speaker 1: They spent more than a year, more than seventeen months
14:07
Speaker 1: or so organizing this plot, and ultimately they got thirty
14:12
Speaker 1: six barrels of gunpowder, and they rented a building close
14:16
Speaker 1: to Parliament with the aim of tunneling underground two place
14:22
Speaker 1: the barrels of gunpowder in the sellers of the Parliament building.
14:27
Speaker 1: So just to just to clarify for me, then I
14:28
Speaker 1: kind of got a little little turned around here when
14:30
Speaker 1: I was reading this. Their their goal was to tunnel
14:33
Speaker 1: into Parliament from this rented basement because it was directly
14:37
Speaker 1: under the House of Lords. But the idea was that
14:39
Speaker 1: they would dig tunnels from that basement into the House
14:43
Speaker 1: of Lords. But I think their plan was foiled by
14:46
Speaker 1: the flooding of the Thames, which predictably totally jack things
14:50
Speaker 1: up right, yeah, and thwarted their efforts. So they said,
14:55
Speaker 1: not to be discouraged. Let's go to our backup plan.
14:59
Speaker 1: Plan be for backup. And while they were working on
15:02
Speaker 1: this plan, Thomas Winter's boss, a fellow named Lord Monteagle
15:08
Speaker 1: I who we mentioned earlier in the episode, he tipped off,
15:13
Speaker 1: according to the story, a fellow named Robert Cecil, who
15:17
Speaker 1: was the Earl of Salisbury at the time. Salisbury, Yes,
15:20
Speaker 1: like the state, like the steak. I love how both
15:23
Speaker 1: of us immediately went to that association. Well that's how
15:26
Speaker 1: you know. That was the good lunch day in school
15:28
Speaker 1: for me was Salisbury State Day. You were rectangle pizza guy.
15:31
Speaker 1: I did like rectangle pizza too. I felt like rectangle
15:34
Speaker 1: pizza was solid. A slight interjection here, Ben, This guy
15:37
Speaker 1: Cecil was also a hugely important figure in Elizabeth the
15:42
Speaker 1: First Court and one of the targets of that revolt
15:45
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier Essex's Revolt that our boy Catsby helped orchestrate.
15:50
Speaker 1: So they had beef previous to this, and they knew
15:54
Speaker 1: of each other. And that's going to come into play
15:56
Speaker 1: in a really cool, interesting way. And now we enter
16:05
Speaker 1: into the realm of full on conspiracy. We can go
16:11
Speaker 1: a couple of different directions with this. Let's go all
16:13
Speaker 1: of the directions. Let's go all of the directions at once,
16:16
Speaker 1: like a like a Wonkavader, right exactly, So, someone in
16:20
Speaker 1: the know, someone with advanced knowledge of the gunpowder plot,
16:23
Speaker 1: sent the letter with that cartoonishly long sentence we read
16:27
Speaker 1: at the top of the show to Lord Monteagle, advising him,
16:32
Speaker 1: as you could hear, to avoid the ceremony in the
16:35
Speaker 1: House of the Lords that day. And that's because he
16:37
Speaker 1: was a Catholic. And then and it was somebody involved
16:39
Speaker 1: in the plot that wanted to protect him from being
16:42
Speaker 1: blown to hell. And and there are historical perspective that say,
16:46
Speaker 1: several of the conspirators sent letters to various other Catholics
16:52
Speaker 1: that would have been present potentially um to warn them
16:55
Speaker 1: not to go right. And there's an excellent article on
16:59
Speaker 1: bb see there there's actually a lot of research into
17:02
Speaker 1: this idea, but there's an excellent article in BBC by
17:05
Speaker 1: Adam Donald called was Guy Fox a late fortnal fall? Guy? Huh? Alright,
17:12
Speaker 1: well I liked it. I don't think I get it
17:15
Speaker 1: Guy Fox of fall? Guy, I got it. I got
17:18
Speaker 1: it more like a fall Guido. There we go, Yes,
17:21
Speaker 1: there we go. So the official course of events is
17:25
Speaker 1: that Monteagle sends the letter to Cecil the Earl of Salisbury,
17:30
Speaker 1: and Salisbury is the one who makes the call to
17:33
Speaker 1: search the Palace of Westminster, wherein Guy Fox is discovered
17:37
Speaker 1: alone in the cellars, surrounded by barrels of gunpowder, talked
17:41
Speaker 1: about being caught red handed, and not only that, he
17:44
Speaker 1: had a slow, slow burning fuse on him. You know,
17:47
Speaker 1: picture any traditional fuse that you would attach to dynamite
17:51
Speaker 1: that you can light and so it burns slow enough
17:52
Speaker 1: for you to get the hell out of there. Yeah,
17:54
Speaker 1: one of those on him. He also had a clock
17:56
Speaker 1: on him a pocket watch that Catsbury had given him
17:58
Speaker 1: so that they could synchronize the top timeline of it all,
18:01
Speaker 1: so that he could set the fuse ablaze at just
18:04
Speaker 1: the right moment, right, because just like the joker in
18:08
Speaker 1: the Christopher Nolan Batman thing, it's about sending a message, right.
18:13
Speaker 1: And so Fox is caught, he is tortured, and he
18:19
Speaker 1: stands up pretty well under this horrific torture, and torture
18:23
Speaker 1: was actually illegal in uh the United Kingdom at the time,
18:26
Speaker 1: but James made a special concession as to me, you
18:30
Speaker 1: know that sort of calls into question the idea of
18:32
Speaker 1: legality if you can just like make an exception for
18:34
Speaker 1: this one. You know, this one guy that really really
18:37
Speaker 1: has it coming. So he signs a confession ultimately um
18:41
Speaker 1: after giving up his co conspirators. And you can find
18:44
Speaker 1: this confession online and it's like you can tell that
18:46
Speaker 1: whoever signed it did not have full use of their hand,
18:50
Speaker 1: so he probably neither had fingers removed or smashed with
18:53
Speaker 1: you know, who knows what horrible things they would have done. Yeah,
18:56
Speaker 1: and may indeed have been so traumatized that he didn't
18:59
Speaker 1: understand and the full text of what he was signing,
19:02
Speaker 1: but he did sign in Guido, but he did sign
19:05
Speaker 1: at Guido. Uh. The other conspirators fled or perished in
19:11
Speaker 1: a skirmish with the crown. Uh. Those that were remaining,
19:15
Speaker 1: and most famously Guy or Guido Fox were sentenced to
19:20
Speaker 1: be hanged, drawn and quartered. But here is where the
19:25
Speaker 1: historical narrative begins to come into some conflict points, because
19:32
Speaker 1: you see friends and neighbors that there's storians will tell
19:36
Speaker 1: you that the official narrative was a little more sanitized
19:41
Speaker 1: than the actual events. And there are some that will
19:44
Speaker 1: go so far as to say that Cecil was planning
19:49
Speaker 1: a false flag attack. Yeah, that he actually blackmailed Catsby
19:55
Speaker 1: to set this whole operation in motion, all the while
19:59
Speaker 1: monitoring everything sing he even you know, uh supposedly, according
20:03
Speaker 1: to some versions of the story, set kind of a
20:06
Speaker 1: honey trap in the space that they were able to
20:08
Speaker 1: lease that just happened to be right underneath the House
20:11
Speaker 1: of Lords. That he was responsible for that, and that
20:14
Speaker 1: it was all in the name of this like false
20:17
Speaker 1: flag campaign to further demonize Catholics and make them out
20:21
Speaker 1: to be these utter uh looney tune zealot extremists. Yeah, exactly.
20:27
Speaker 1: The idea being that he was his day and ages
20:31
Speaker 1: version of a marketing genius, because it would have more impact.
20:36
Speaker 1: The argument goes on the Protestant public and on the
20:40
Speaker 1: government if the Catholic extremists were not, you know, just
20:45
Speaker 1: caught talking in a tavern about doing this, but if
20:49
Speaker 1: they were caught red handed at virtually the moment before
20:54
Speaker 1: disasters struck. So the idea here is that we the
20:58
Speaker 1: espionage apparatus that Cecil is constructed, the idea being that
21:02
Speaker 1: we would wait and let things play out and let
21:07
Speaker 1: the conspirators believe that they're working in secrecy, allowing them
21:12
Speaker 1: to plot until the last minute, so that the people
21:16
Speaker 1: of England would understand just how very very very very
21:19
Speaker 1: close they came to losing the king. Except that probably
21:24
Speaker 1: isn't true either. Cecil's biographer, a woman named Pauline Croft,
21:29
Speaker 1: had this to say about the likelihood of that particular
21:32
Speaker 1: version of events. In the inflamed atmosphere after November six
21:35
Speaker 1: o five, with wild accusations and counter accusations being traded
21:39
Speaker 1: by religious polemicists, there were allegations that Cecil himself had
21:42
Speaker 1: devised the gunpowder plot to elevate his own importance in
21:45
Speaker 1: the eyes of the king and to facilitate a further
21:47
Speaker 1: attack on the Jesuits. Numerous subsequent efforts to substantiate these
21:52
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories have all failed abysmally. But there is no
21:56
Speaker 1: doubt that Cecil again, he'd been in this since Elizabeth
22:00
Speaker 1: the first. He had been a very close member of
22:02
Speaker 1: her court and continued to wield significant power. I mean,
22:05
Speaker 1: he's the one who, after all, called for the Parliament
22:08
Speaker 1: to be searched. You know, whether that was just a
22:11
Speaker 1: clever subterfuge or but you know, he definitely wielded control.
22:14
Speaker 1: He had goons that he could deploy, right. Um, but
22:19
Speaker 1: what ended up happening with guy Fox He was sentenced
22:23
Speaker 1: to being drawn and quartered. But yeah, which means having
22:26
Speaker 1: your guts pulled out in front of you after being
22:29
Speaker 1: hanged almost to death. They take you down, they pull
22:32
Speaker 1: out your guts and they cut off your testicles. It's
22:35
Speaker 1: pretty grizzly stuff. And they dragged you. They don't walk
22:38
Speaker 1: you to the gallows. They drag you to the gallows
22:41
Speaker 1: via horse. And then they split your carcass into four
22:44
Speaker 1: pieces and send them to the four corners of the
22:46
Speaker 1: Kingdom as a as a warning to all those who would, dare,
22:50
Speaker 1: you know, defy the order of the crown. And guy
22:52
Speaker 1: Fox knew this was a possibility. He knew and so
22:57
Speaker 1: he went out on his own. Term is what do
23:00
Speaker 1: you do know? He took a dive, man, He took
23:02
Speaker 1: a swan dive from the gallows and broke his own neck.
23:06
Speaker 1: He broke his own neck. Rather than uh submitting to
23:10
Speaker 1: the lengthy degradations of being drawn and quartered, he went
23:14
Speaker 1: for a quicker death, arguably a cleaner one, I would say.
23:18
Speaker 1: And I like the point about Cecil's biographer, because even
23:23
Speaker 1: today you will see historians disagreeing about this or arguing
23:27
Speaker 1: different perspectives. For instance, in the book The Gunpowder Plot,
23:30
Speaker 1: Terror and Faith in sixteen o five, author Antonio Frazier
23:35
Speaker 1: argues that there's not just evidence that the whole thing
23:40
Speaker 1: was some kind of deeper conspiracy than the history books say,
23:45
Speaker 1: But she also argues that the letter itself, the famous
23:49
Speaker 1: warning letter, was fake, and that both Monteagle and Cecil
23:53
Speaker 1: knew it was fake. She also says that mont Eagle
23:57
Speaker 1: may have even written the letter him self. In her opinion,
24:01
Speaker 1: this is a quote. Nothing else makes sense of Salisbury's
24:04
Speaker 1: extraordinary urbanity. One might even call it complacency. In the
24:08
Speaker 1: days following, there was certainly no sense of the impending
24:11
Speaker 1: danger in his conduct, such as might have been expected
24:14
Speaker 1: if the letter had presented him with a genuine mystery.
24:19
Speaker 1: So this, this is strange. But as a counterpoint to this, again,
24:24
Speaker 1: this was not the Earl's first rodeo, absolutely not. And
24:28
Speaker 1: just a quick aside, Lord Monteagle was the friend and
24:32
Speaker 1: brother in law of conspirator Francis Tresham, and he was
24:36
Speaker 1: worried that, you know, his pal and uh, you know
24:39
Speaker 1: brother in law would be blown up in this this attempt,
24:43
Speaker 1: and so he supposedly sent him that letter. But I
24:46
Speaker 1: see what you're saying then, I mean there's a lot
24:48
Speaker 1: of a lot of loose ends in this story to
24:51
Speaker 1: this day. And you know, the strange thing is when
24:55
Speaker 1: the rubber hits the road. The bottom line, whatever the
24:59
Speaker 1: a of the gunpowder plot, as it would be perceived
25:03
Speaker 1: by the public, it did end up making things worse
25:08
Speaker 1: for Catholics in England. Absolutely. I mean Guy Fox became
25:12
Speaker 1: this symbol of um treason and they declared a national holiday,
25:20
Speaker 1: I guess Guy Fox Day or or Guy Fox Night
25:23
Speaker 1: or Bonfire Night where children would sell these little effigies
25:28
Speaker 1: of guy Fox that'd say a penny, what is it?
25:31
Speaker 1: A penny for the guy, penny for the guy. That's it.
25:34
Speaker 1: They'd have these little wheelbarrows and go around and then
25:36
Speaker 1: people would set them on fire. So this guy bore
25:39
Speaker 1: the brunts historically for this whole thing. It turns out
25:43
Speaker 1: he was a bit more of a side guy. Um
25:46
Speaker 1: just happened to be the one caught with with with
25:48
Speaker 1: his pants down his match out. There are other lines
25:51
Speaker 1: of thought you will hear from people arguing both for
25:54
Speaker 1: this conspiracy and for this conspiracy theory rather and against it.
25:59
Speaker 1: Or One of the common arguments for the involvement of
26:02
Speaker 1: the crown was that only the state possessed gunpowder, but
26:07
Speaker 1: according to scholars, that is a myth and nonsense, with
26:11
Speaker 1: the argument the rebuttal being that almost every gentleman in
26:15
Speaker 1: the early seventeenth century in that part of the world
26:18
Speaker 1: would have had a stock of gunpowder. We probably should
26:21
Speaker 1: have talked about this upfront, and we mentioned guys backstory,
26:24
Speaker 1: but he actually was a Protestant by birth and didn't
26:27
Speaker 1: convert to Catholicism until he was a team And I
26:31
Speaker 1: think it's so interesting how you know, you think of
26:34
Speaker 1: Catholicism as like sort of the first form of Christianity
26:37
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, but how it over time
26:39
Speaker 1: because of the decisions and the sort of whims of
26:42
Speaker 1: you know, Henry the Eighth, it created this huge divide
26:45
Speaker 1: and had you know, people at each other's throats simply
26:48
Speaker 1: because of the religion that they practiced. And obviously his
26:50
Speaker 1: tale as old as time and right we think of Catholicism,
26:53
Speaker 1: uh in Europe at the time, if not in England,
26:56
Speaker 1: it's functioning as a state power, you know, it an
27:00
Speaker 1: arguable authority in many parts of the region. Fox was
27:06
Speaker 1: not just anti Protestantism, uh. There there's also a component
27:12
Speaker 1: of anti Scottish sentiment, because, as it turned out, he
27:17
Speaker 1: was fiercely anti Scottish. He believed that there was a
27:22
Speaker 1: natural hostility between the English and the Scots that would
27:25
Speaker 1: make it impossible to reconcile the two nations for any
27:29
Speaker 1: sustainable length of time. That comes from the Gunpowder plot
27:33
Speaker 1: in History Today by an author named Pauline croft Man.
27:36
Speaker 1: It turns out that Fox was kind of a tough
27:38
Speaker 1: bastard too. I mean he went two days I think,
27:41
Speaker 1: being the only person in custody tied to this plot
27:44
Speaker 1: and you know, went through the tortures of the damned
27:47
Speaker 1: to quote clockwork orange, and he said the reason he
27:51
Speaker 1: participated in this plan and the whole purpose was to
27:53
Speaker 1: quote blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.
27:57
Speaker 1: So it's definitely some anti Scottish sentim it there. But
28:01
Speaker 1: King James the First reportedly kind of like the cut
28:04
Speaker 1: of his jib in a way because he, you know,
28:07
Speaker 1: he said he had a quote Roman resolution. And so
28:12
Speaker 1: despite you know, sendencing him to the most horrible hellish
28:16
Speaker 1: and you could possibly imagine, are you respected the guy
28:19
Speaker 1: a little bit? Yeah, grudgingly, and that that Roman resolution
28:23
Speaker 1: was was quite possibly a Catholic name dropper reference. So
28:30
Speaker 1: now we are in a situation where you can still
28:33
Speaker 1: hear historians, biographers and other scholars argue about the nature
28:39
Speaker 1: of essentially a deep state, right or the existence rather
28:44
Speaker 1: of a deep state in England at the time. Regardless
28:49
Speaker 1: of where you fall in this conversation, one thing is
28:53
Speaker 1: for sure for actual facts. Sure, a phrase we stole
28:58
Speaker 1: from our fellow podcaster were in vocal bamb and that
29:01
Speaker 1: fact is this guy Fox was not the leader. Guy
29:05
Speaker 1: Fox was the fellow who got caught with the gunpowder.
29:09
Speaker 1: He was the man who endured torture for two days
29:12
Speaker 1: without rolling over on his co conspirators. But he was
29:17
Speaker 1: not the mastermind h that he is so often portrayed
29:21
Speaker 1: as being in modern recounts of the story. Yeah, but
29:25
Speaker 1: he does have a place in history as this symbol
29:29
Speaker 1: of revolution. And that is the role that that mask
29:33
Speaker 1: in v for vendetta plays. That is the role that
29:36
Speaker 1: mask plays in the occupy movement and UH anonymous and
29:40
Speaker 1: any use of that image is very much tied to
29:43
Speaker 1: some form of fighting back against something perceived as being
29:48
Speaker 1: fascist or a regime that does not value individual liberties
29:52
Speaker 1: and that is trying to crush you under their you know,
29:54
Speaker 1: giant thumb or boot right. This uh symbolic legacy or
29:58
Speaker 1: dynasty continues on today, and this might be interesting to
30:02
Speaker 1: you as well, Guy Fox. The name guy enters the
30:08
Speaker 1: English lexicon as the noun guy, like I saw a
30:13
Speaker 1: guy or this guy, or you know you're in uh,
30:16
Speaker 1: you're in a seven eleven somewhere and you say, ah
30:19
Speaker 1: my guy, let me get a slushy. I think that's
30:22
Speaker 1: cool because I love calling people guy. That's a guy
30:31
Speaker 1: And after all this went down and Guy Fox Day
30:34
Speaker 1: or Guy Fox Night er Bonfire Night became a thing
30:37
Speaker 1: in England. It was sort of a celebration of the
30:41
Speaker 1: physical demise of this human and the foiling of that
30:45
Speaker 1: gunpowder plot and like you said, further anti Catholic sentiment.
30:50
Speaker 1: But today it's still a thing, but it's almost more
30:53
Speaker 1: like kind of a mini Halloween where the kids go
30:56
Speaker 1: around doing the penny for a guy and it's almost
30:59
Speaker 1: like a form of trick or eating, and instead of
31:01
Speaker 1: burning effigies of Guy Fox, they'll burn effigies of like
31:05
Speaker 1: celebrities or politicians. So it's almost taken a spin where
31:10
Speaker 1: it was originally kind of the celebration of the state,
31:14
Speaker 1: now he's sort of become this icon of standing up
31:19
Speaker 1: to the state. Absolutely, there's been some transformation over the
31:22
Speaker 1: centuries since, and there's some sympathy nowadays for Guy Fox
31:28
Speaker 1: in Britain. Uh there's a fantastic quote we found from
31:31
Speaker 1: uh Lady Antonia. She's repeating this joke about the British
31:38
Speaker 1: attitude towards Guy Fox. Guy Fox, they say, is the
31:41
Speaker 1: only man who got into Parliament with the right intentions,
31:46
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty harsh. I get it. I
31:48
Speaker 1: like it. It's chuckle worthy. That's good. So this is
31:52
Speaker 1: our look at the strange transformation of the gunpowder plot
31:57
Speaker 1: and it's associated uh symbolic meaning across history, as well
32:03
Speaker 1: as our examination of the controversy that rages like a
32:09
Speaker 1: conflagration or a bonfire even today. We hope you enjoyed
32:13
Speaker 1: this epo. Man, we got so close. Well, at least
32:21
Speaker 1: we have a chance to reduce themselves. It's time, gentlemen.
32:26
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland the quister. That's right, that's right. You've broken
32:31
Speaker 1: You've broken my spirit. I you know, I feel good
32:35
Speaker 1: about that because the last time you kind of broke me,
32:38
Speaker 1: and I think only it's turned about fair play. I
32:40
Speaker 1: think that's true. And you know what, I hope, I
32:42
Speaker 1: hope we can turn about this whole thing where we
32:45
Speaker 1: can finally get back on top of your brutal games. Yes. Well,
32:49
Speaker 1: of course, for those who do not know, let us
32:51
Speaker 1: explain why I'm here. Yes, as the only emotionally unbroken
32:57
Speaker 1: person on the show right now, it falls to me
33:00
Speaker 1: to explain. Tough as nails man, we are. This is
33:05
Speaker 1: the part your evil therapy flu I don't think we
33:07
Speaker 1: forgot Oh, come on, This is as we're saying the part.
33:13
Speaker 1: This is as we were saying the part where uh
33:16
Speaker 1: you the quister come to Noll and I and present
33:21
Speaker 1: to us a scenario which we must deem either true
33:26
Speaker 1: or false, all the while employing your supervillain powers of
33:29
Speaker 1: low grade irritation. Yes, yes, it's it's it's not exactly
33:34
Speaker 1: world shuttering, but it certainly can ruin your day, and
33:38
Speaker 1: we have we will, upon hearing this scenario, have three
33:44
Speaker 1: minutes on this gigantic Grandfather clock, which moved from one
33:48
Speaker 1: studio into the studio a lot less cramped now and
33:51
Speaker 1: uh you also go into Neal's earlier point about low
33:55
Speaker 1: grade powers of annoyance. Uh impose an arbitrary rule on
34:00
Speaker 1: both of us for the duration of the quiz. This
34:04
Speaker 1: is true. Alright, I think we've I think we've all
34:06
Speaker 1: caught up now, if I'm not mistaken, you were previously
34:10
Speaker 1: talking about an attempted regicide with a Mr. Guy Fox. Correct, correct, Well,
34:16
Speaker 1: today's scenario will take on a different attempted regicide. In fact,
34:24
Speaker 1: it was one that happened on May hundred, and we'll
34:28
Speaker 1: have the clock start after I I give you the
34:30
Speaker 1: full scenario. It's a long one again. That's that's what
34:32
Speaker 1: I do, all right. A would be assassin named James
34:37
Speaker 1: Hadfield on May eight hundred took aim and fired a
34:41
Speaker 1: pistol at King George the Third as he attended a
34:46
Speaker 1: theatrical presentation of She Would and She Would Not. This
34:50
Speaker 1: happened before the play was to begin, and the orchestra
34:53
Speaker 1: was fittingly playing God Save the King. Had Fields shot
34:59
Speaker 1: entirely missed. He was seized, He was charged with treason.
35:03
Speaker 1: He pled not guilty by reason of insanity. His lawyer
35:07
Speaker 1: was so good that the judge stopped the trial because
35:13
Speaker 1: he was worried he'd out to actually a quit had Field,
35:16
Speaker 1: and the English government hastily wrote new laws regarding how
35:19
Speaker 1: the criminally insane were to be handled. Oh and by
35:22
Speaker 1: the way, this was actually the second failed assassination attempt
35:28
Speaker 1: on King George the third on that very day, someone
35:32
Speaker 1: at earlier taking a shot at him as he was
35:33
Speaker 1: reviewing soldiers in Hyde Park. Now, before you begin the clock,
35:39
Speaker 1: if you wish to ask a question me, you must
35:41
Speaker 1: first stop by saying, quister, God saved the King. Begin
35:48
Speaker 1: Now I know God saved the Queen. Is there also
35:51
Speaker 1: a God saved the King? Are they interchangeable, Quister, God
35:53
Speaker 1: save the King? Yes? What's your question? Are they God
35:58
Speaker 1: saved the Queen and God saved the King in or
35:59
Speaker 1: are they two different pieces of music? No, it's the
36:02
Speaker 1: same music. And that's what I said. They're not interchangeable.
36:04
Speaker 1: It's depended upon whether it's a king or queen on
36:07
Speaker 1: the throne, But they are the same piece of music, Quister,
36:10
Speaker 1: God saved the King? Could you give us a much
36:16
Speaker 1: briefer summary of the scenario? We do this every time hundred.
36:21
Speaker 1: King George the Third, recently surviving a failed assassination attempt,
36:25
Speaker 1: as in within hours in Hyde Park, goes to attend
36:28
Speaker 1: to play, where a person named James Hadfield fires a
36:32
Speaker 1: shot from a pistol. It misses. The King. Hadfield is seized.
36:35
Speaker 1: He has put on trial for treason, and because his
36:38
Speaker 1: lawyer is so darn good, he almost is acquitted for
36:42
Speaker 1: reasons of insanity, except the judge stops the trial early
36:46
Speaker 1: so that they can figure out how the heck can
36:48
Speaker 1: we not allow someone who just tried to kill the
36:51
Speaker 1: king go? I flying blind, flying blind, and my psyche
36:57
Speaker 1: is so broken from these repeated know humiliations that I
37:01
Speaker 1: just don't know which way is up anymore? I'm starting
37:04
Speaker 1: to like The only thing I can do is think,
37:06
Speaker 1: would he really give us another false one after the
37:11
Speaker 1: Hedgehog one? You know that, but he studied methodology of
37:16
Speaker 1: tests giving he means nothing if not clever. You wonder
37:19
Speaker 1: if the iokane powder is in my cup or your cup?
37:23
Speaker 1: Or did I put them in both cups? All right?
37:24
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz uh? So, so I would say that some
37:31
Speaker 1: of the circumstances, the fact that uh or the perceived
37:36
Speaker 1: fact that two assassinations occurred on the same day, is
37:41
Speaker 1: meant to be If it is false, it is meant
37:44
Speaker 1: to be a thing that sounds so unreasonable it must
37:48
Speaker 1: be true, right right, But if it is indeed a
37:53
Speaker 1: true thing, then it's easy to call it false. One
37:56
Speaker 1: thing that's getting me nual is the idea of a quitting,
38:00
Speaker 1: tempted regicide. I don't think that would happen. I mean,
38:03
Speaker 1: you know they drew and quartered our boy guy Fox
38:07
Speaker 1: quiz I'm sorry, God save the King? What year did
38:10
Speaker 1: this happen? Again? I think this is false. I am
38:14
Speaker 1: tempted to go with false to let's let's let's agree
38:19
Speaker 1: to soldier on though. If we get this wrong, we're
38:21
Speaker 1: down to twenty second. You want to lock it in.
38:23
Speaker 1: I think we gotta lock it in a false All right,
38:25
Speaker 1: we're locking it in false pour, Poor fools, I went
38:32
Speaker 1: against We're cutting this segment. This is absolutely true. I
38:37
Speaker 1: could tell by the way you were smirking. So how
38:40
Speaker 1: is so good? So? How insane did Hadfield have to be?
38:43
Speaker 1: This is an excellent question. Would you like to have
38:45
Speaker 1: some more details about this? Because it really is fascinating.
38:48
Speaker 1: It is fascinating. So in a few years prior to this,
38:51
Speaker 1: in in the seventeen nineties, Hadfield served in the British
38:55
Speaker 1: Army and he went to war against France. Not not
38:58
Speaker 1: just Hadfield a lot of guys with him, but while
39:01
Speaker 1: he was in a battle, he was struck in the
39:03
Speaker 1: head repeatedly by a saber at least eight times. People
39:08
Speaker 1: suggest that this is perhaps what caused him to go
39:10
Speaker 1: a little as the experts say, cuckoo for Coco puffs.
39:14
Speaker 1: I know you were going to say, how did I
39:15
Speaker 1: know you was going to say that? He returned to
39:17
Speaker 1: England and met another fellow named, and this is a
39:21
Speaker 1: real name, banister Truelock, who was also absolutely bonkers and
39:28
Speaker 1: believed that the second Coming of Christ would come through
39:32
Speaker 1: Banister Truelock through his mouth. Actually, he would spring forth
39:36
Speaker 1: from his mouth like a Greek god. So the lawyer
39:38
Speaker 1: was able to blame his insanity on his service in
39:41
Speaker 1: the first place, and less so it gets even more complicated.
39:46
Speaker 1: Truelock convinced Hadfield that killing King George the Third would
39:50
Speaker 1: bring about peace on earth and the second coming of Christ.
39:52
Speaker 1: Had he agrees to do this, he received as his
39:56
Speaker 1: barrister a fellow named Thomas Erskine, who was the most
40:00
Speaker 1: famous and decorated lawyer in all of England at that time,
40:06
Speaker 1: the Darrow of his day exactly, and he was able
40:09
Speaker 1: to argue very persuasively that Hadfield was in fact insane,
40:13
Speaker 1: and that the definitions that the British court had been
40:16
Speaker 1: using to define insanity up to that point were not adequate,
40:20
Speaker 1: and the judge, fearing that this argument was so sound,
40:25
Speaker 1: stop the trial. Early Parliament passed the Criminal Lunatics Act
40:30
Speaker 1: in response, because what had happened was was that they
40:36
Speaker 1: realized if they released him, he would be released into
40:39
Speaker 1: the general popular into his family. His family would take
40:42
Speaker 1: care of him, which means that he could go and
40:44
Speaker 1: do whatever else. And so instead the Criminal Lunatics Act
40:47
Speaker 1: of eighteen hundred said that the government could hold the
40:51
Speaker 1: criminally insane indefinitely, they could commit them indefinitely to an institution.
40:55
Speaker 1: He went to Bedlam. He did escape, briefly, made it
40:59
Speaker 1: all the way to over in an attempt to escape
41:01
Speaker 1: back to France, where he was caught and returned to Bedlam.
41:04
Speaker 1: He died in eighteen forty one of tuberculosis. And in fact,
41:07
Speaker 1: King George the Third had survived a previous failed assassination
41:13
Speaker 1: attempt where someone shot at him they hit a person
41:15
Speaker 1: standing next to him. He decided to go ahead and
41:18
Speaker 1: go to the theater anyway, and even better, demanded that
41:22
Speaker 1: the play continue after the failed assassination attempts. See what
41:26
Speaker 1: screwed me up? Was like the most famous assassination attempt
41:30
Speaker 1: in the theater, to my mind, is Lincoln. So I
41:33
Speaker 1: thought you were capitalizing on that that maybe we would think.
41:37
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know, Quister, God saved the king.
41:40
Speaker 1: It's over, man. You don't have to say anything. I'm
41:41
Speaker 1: I'm digging it. Actually, that's the first one I've been
41:44
Speaker 1: actually digging. Um two questions. First, have the laws not
41:50
Speaker 1: changed since then? Uh? And if so, my second question,
41:55
Speaker 1: how have you evaded capture for so long? Excellent question,
41:59
Speaker 1: both cow the laws have somewhat changed since we would hope. Secondly,
42:04
Speaker 1: I'm not a citizen of the UK, nor do I
42:06
Speaker 1: reside there so they can chase me all they like.
42:09
Speaker 1: Was it a saber that led to your madness? Or
42:11
Speaker 1: was it maybe a hammer? Was it a Phineas Gage situation?
42:14
Speaker 1: A lightsaber? It was? It was not a Disney thing.
42:18
Speaker 1: And there's a small child with a red kylo Ren saber.
42:23
Speaker 1: It was vicious al right, Well you know what. I
42:26
Speaker 1: see him in my nightmares. Well played, Quister once again?
42:30
Speaker 1: Well played once again. Noel and Casey and I are
42:34
Speaker 1: off to contact Interpool about you, just to see what's
42:38
Speaker 1: what is that like a like a organization that allows
42:42
Speaker 1: you to go from one pool to another pool? Interpool,
42:45
Speaker 1: you know what? Keep it up and here's hoping you
42:47
Speaker 1: find out well partly in my place. Well, friends and neighbors,
42:53
Speaker 1: thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. We
42:58
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy he did, and I gotta say, no, uh,
43:02
Speaker 1: I actually really enjoyed learning about that. Uh that that
43:06
Speaker 1: Quister segment at the end, it sort of took the
43:08
Speaker 1: staying out of the humiliating defeat, so thank you for that,
43:11
Speaker 1: Florida too. All right, yeah, we know the score, buddy. Well, hey, listen,
43:16
Speaker 1: you guys can write us your fan and or hate
43:20
Speaker 1: mail regarding the Quister segment to Ridiculous at how stuff
43:23
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can also send us a note
43:24
Speaker 1: on Facebook or we are Ridiculous History, or on Instagram
43:28
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History and Twitter. Um, and please join us next
43:31
Speaker 1: time where we're going to talk about a subject that
43:34
Speaker 1: I'm hoping to employ with our pal, the Quister here,
43:37
Speaker 1: which is arsenic, the dream poison of assassins, the inheritance powder, yes,
43:43
Speaker 1: my my favorite nickname for it so far. And of course,
43:46
Speaker 1: where would we be without our super producer, Casey Pegram,
43:50
Speaker 1: who True Story Folks has to this day not being
43:53
Speaker 1: convicted of regicide. We'd also like to thank Candice Gibson
43:58
Speaker 1: who wrote the excellent article of Alliable on how stuff
44:01
Speaker 1: Works dot com regarding Guy Fox and the gunpowder plot.
44:05
Speaker 1: And most importantly, we'd like to thank you for hanging
44:07
Speaker 1: out with us and we hope you'll join us next
44:09
Speaker 1: time where we can talk about poisoning our loved ones.
44:12
Speaker 1: See you then