>>Narrator: Stories From Parliament: The Gunpowder Plot, Part 2
>> Danby: November 4th 1605. After my nightmare I lay awake knowing that the next day the
king and the whole of Parliament would be blown to pieces.
I knew exactly what was going to happen. I could see it all in my imagination... but
I didn’t know about the letter. Somebody had sent a letter to Lord Monteagle
telling him not to go to Parliament the next day, warning him that something terrible was
going to happen...
>> Voice: Tomorrow this Parliament shall receive a terrible blow and yet they shall not see
who hurts them.
>> Danby: The letter was not signed. Monteagle took it to the King and from that moment the
gunpowder plot was doomed. The Captain of the Guard ordered his men...
>> Captain: Find it! Search every attic and cellar. Open every door in Parliament...throw
open everything from the greatest hall to the smallest cupboard. Shine your torches
into every nook and cranny. Go...now!
>> Guard: Yes Captain!
>> Captain: There is a threat to the King hidden in Parliament. Find it!
>> Guard: Sir!
>> Captain: Find it tonight, find it now!
>> Guard: Come on!
>> Danby: In a cellar under the House of Lords... directly under the hall where the King would
have sat the next day... they found Guy Fawkes.
>> Captain: There! Seize that man!
[Shouts. A scuffle.]
>> Captain: Bind his arms!
>> Danby: And hidden under a pile of firewood they found the thirty-four barrels of gunpowder.
Fawkes had a watch, touchwood and matches in his pocket.
They took him to the Tower of London where the machines of torture and Sir Edward Coke
were waiting. He didn’t stand a chance.
>> Sir Edward Coke: Who were the other traitors Fawkes? Give us their names and we will not
hurt you.
>> Fawkes: There were no others. I was working alone.
[The creaking of the rack. Cries of pain.]
>> Danby: Three days. They say he told them nothing for three days.
>> Coke: Their names Fawkes.
>> Fawkes: I was alone.
[More rack, more screaming.]
>> Danby: Till on the third day he broke.
>> Fawkes: (weakly) Thomas Percy... Thomas Wintour... John Wright ... Robert Catesby.
>> Danby: So now they had my master’s name. Robert Catesby put up a fight when the king’s
men tracked him down but he was out-numbered...
[Shouting, a skirmish, clashing of swords, musket shots, silence.]
>> Danby: ...and they shot him dead. I wept for my master but at least I knew he’d had
a quick death. The others were not so lucky. I was there at the trial at Westminster Hall.
I saw them brought in...
[Footsteps mounting steps onto a wooden platform. The clanking of chains.]
>> Danby: ...heard them condemned for high treason... heard too their confessions and
the terrible sentences that were passed upon them.
>> Coke: A bitter fate awaits any man who is guilty of high treason.
[A crowd roars in approval.]
>> Coke: These plotters, these conspirators, these vile traitors shall be dragged through
the streets to Old Palace Yard in Westminster and there they will be hanged, drawn and quartered.
[Coke’s voice is lost amongst the cheering of a vengeful crowd]
>> Danby: I was there to see Guy Fawkes and three others die in the Old Palace Yard. Right
next to the Parliament building they had wanted to blow up.
[Drum Roll. Music.]
>> Danby: Traitors are made to suffer before they die. They are hanged, drawn and quartered.
Their bodies are cut open while they are still alive.
I will not tell you of the terrible things I saw that day but I still shudder when I
remember how those men died. I knew what they were planning, you see.
If they were all traitors then so was I. And if they truly deserved that terrible death
then perhaps I did too.
[Music]
>> Danby: And now we Catholics will not be trusted for a hundred years. They will stop
us from practising law or becoming officers in the army. Soon they will stop us from voting.
For the next hundred years we Catholics will be blamed for every fire and plague in England;
and the plotters? Their names are already forgotten…except one, for the people will
remember Guy Fawkes. The king ordered bonfires to be lit to remember
the night his majesty was saved from certain death. And now on November 5th every year
the people light their fires and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes.
The man who waited in the dark with matches and touchwood in his pocket. The man who came
within a whisker of changing England forever.
[Drumbeats]