Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: The Killer Marketing Campaign Behind Guy Fawkes

Transcript

CLASSIC: The Killer Marketing Campaign Behind Guy Fawkes · Ridiculous History

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