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Author Topic: Gunpowder, Treason and Plot...
Hephaestion
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posted 04 November 2005 12:08 PM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Just to "jump the gun" a bit (as it were), Happy Guy Fawkes Day Eve...

quote:
Fawkes plot still burning bright

Not many events from 1605 are still remembered by a huge number of people.

Yet the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November - and the foiling of it - is still celebrated every year.

In York, birthplace of Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the collaborators, a major programme of events has been lined up to mark the 400th anniversary.

While in Sussex, each autumn brings an annual season of spectacular bonfire events as the county celebrates the fact the plot did not succeed.

The Gunpowder Plot saw Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters attempt to blow up MPs, peers and King James I at the state opening of parliament.


Hmmmm.... there's been a few times I've been tempted to play a little Guy Fawkes myself, usually not long after watching "the children" during Question Period...

[ 04 November 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]


From: goodbye... :-( | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Briguy
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posted 04 November 2005 12:39 PM      Profile for Briguy     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fawkes is the only person ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions. (my favourite sentiment on this day)
From: No one is arguing that we should run the space program based on Physics 101. | Registered: Nov 2001  |  IP: Logged
rockerbiff
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posted 04 November 2005 01:09 PM      Profile for rockerbiff   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I miss Guy Fawkes night.

I celebrated it in 1983 and my neighbours thought I was nutz, so I gave up the tradition.


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lagatta
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posted 04 November 2005 01:19 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here is an opinion piece by a professor of early modern history, about the darker side of the origins of Guy Fawkes Day, as a celebration of torture and the persecution of Catholics:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,1627543,00.html


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Southlander
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posted 04 November 2005 01:36 PM      Profile for Southlander     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh no I thought, another time I find out the dear old English innocent celebrations are not so innocent after all! I loved Irish jokes as a child - I did ask why they were about the Irish, but no-one was saying.
Same now applies to Guy Fawkes! I read the article with sadness, but no - it's OK in NZ because we don't burn crosses - that makes it OK... doesn't it?

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skdadl
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posted 04 November 2005 01:55 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
An interesting reflection. It's true that these are celebrations of victor's justice (well, they are when anybody bothers to remember what is being commemorated). The Catholics and the Protestants had spent much of the previous century persecuting one another, and the Protestants finally won, which indeed meant that Catholic communities throughout the islands would remain historical victims for a long time to come, although religion is almost never enough on its own to explain the divisions among communities in Britain. Ireland was a much bigger problem than that, and the Scottish Jacobites by the end of the C17 were another problem again.

Over a century after the Gunpowder Plot, though, Alexander Pope moved to Twickenham (then outside London) because, as a Catholic, he was still technically forbidden to live within a certain distance from Parliament. That law had mostly fallen into disuse by Pope's day, but as a thorn in the government's side, he knew it could be used against him at any time -- as it was, he was occasionally set upon and beaten by government thugs.

One feels a slight chill on hearing that people have been observed burning Guys with backpacks or "stereotypical" beards.


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Hephaestion
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posted 04 November 2005 02:47 PM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
[drift]

I can't recall now who wrote it, but I once came across a quote about Pope by someone famous which made me laugh out loud... "There are two chief ways to hate poetry; you can hate it on principle, or you can read Pope."

[/drift]

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skdadl
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posted 04 November 2005 02:59 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
He was probably a cuckold; Pope anticipated that kind of impotent envy:

quote:

Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope
And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.

From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
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posted 04 November 2005 03:21 PM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
He was probably a cuckold; Pope anticipated that kind of impotent envy:


[silly]
a)Why DO cuckolds have horns, anyway?

B) If you're nice to him, can you warm a cuckold's cockles?
[/silly]


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 04 November 2005 03:25 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hee. I don't know where that image came from, but you run into it in Shakespeare as well, and I don't know how much further back.

The cuckolded husband became a constant theme, a running joke, in Restoration and early C18 drama, though, and then in poetry. Something must have been going on, eh? Something like a lot of arranged marriages among the rising bourgeoisie, actually, I suspect.


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skdadl
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posted 04 November 2005 03:28 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The greatest moment of cuckold-paranoia:

quote:
Gone already!
Inch-thick, knee-deep, o'er head and
ears a fork'd one!
Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know't;
It will let in and out the enemy
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's
Have the disease, and feel't not. How now, boy!

The Winter's Tale, I.ii



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Slumberjack
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posted 04 November 2005 07:47 PM      Profile for Slumberjack     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Newfoundland still celebrates Guy Fawkes with a bonfire in most communities on November 5th. The observance has diminished somewhat over the past 30 years. At one time every neighborhood in most towns had their own bonfire. Now the bonfires are a municipally sponsored event, with normally just one bonfire per community. It was often the case that children would begin collecting combustable materials for the local November 5th bonfires, starting in September, after school.
From: An Intensive De-Indoctrination, But I'm Fine Now | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged
Contrarian
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posted 05 November 2005 03:10 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Guardian has an interactive guide. The last picture shows how much of London would have been destroyed if he had succeeded.

Independent: York says Fawkes had his good points.

[ 05 November 2005: Message edited by: Contrarian ]


From: pretty far west | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
Hawkins
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posted 05 November 2005 04:50 PM      Profile for Hawkins     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
my "war is murder" button was made by "The Friends of Guy Fawkes 2003".
From: Burlington Ont | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 06 November 2005 12:26 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Penny for the Guy ?.

[ 06 November 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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Contrarian
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posted 06 November 2005 12:34 AM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
More about Gunpowder Treason Day with links and stuff.
quote:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

And, for the foodies, one of his links leads here to Wiki:

quote:
...In Britain there are several other traditions that accompany Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night; The eating of bonfire toffee; a dark type of toffee made with black treacle, Parkin, a cake made with the same black treacle, toffee apples, the traditional 'apple lollipop', which consists of an apple coated in toffee on top of a stick, and baked potatoes which are traditionally wrapped in foil and cooked in the bonfire...

From: pretty far west | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
Hephaestion
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posted 06 November 2005 06:45 AM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Gawd, English food really *is* the height of haute cuisine no?
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aRoused
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posted 06 November 2005 09:00 AM      Profile for aRoused     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
reedit: Sorry skdadl, after the Best. Fireworks. Ever, my night went seriously downhill. I'll try and recapture the early evening.

I've seen fireworks. Canada Day, La Saint-Jean, even a vague childhood memory of a July 4th in Boston. These blew my jaded little 31-year-old mind. Remember that on Bonfire night *everyone* is letting off fireworks in their backyards. Passing through Gateshead *last* weekend looked like an air raid played in reverse, with rockets streaming upwards as people just couldn't wait for the actual bonfire night to let a few bangers off.

There were 'works that exploded into flower shapes, with a cup of green stars 'holding' a red, blue or yellow center, there were 'works that exploded and then the stars would go off in secondary explosions (seen that before), but there were others where the secondary explosion just launched the star in a radically different direction, producing an effect like a swarm of bees or fireflies. There were 'works exploding into identical bursts, but with each subsequent one just that little bit bigger and little bit louder, passing the point where you think 'they can't do anything bigger than *that* (BOOM) Oh, they can! Amazing. The launch location was kept secret, possibly to keep people from swarming it. We heard from a source that the location was St.Peter's school in York, one of those bastions of upper-class privilege, so we set ourselves up on the opposite bank of the Ouse, where we could see the illuminated Minster in the distance.

I'd forgotten about the burning of effigies. We didn't attend an actual bonfire, just went out for dinner and the pub afterwards. One of our number did make an ironic joke about the real origin of the festivities after the fireworks show--put some generally left-leaning archaeologists, historians and medievalists in a room and that's what you'll get I suppose..

[ 06 November 2005: Message edited by: aRoused ]


From: The King's Royal Burgh of Eoforwich | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 06 November 2005 09:40 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh, aRoused, I am sorry. You, after all, are there. You could have described how things went yesterday. No?

There was a column in the G&M yesterday that raised the possibility that the whole plot had been vastly exaggerated by Lord Cecil, clever old fox that he was, in order to move decisively against the Catholics. Apparently there is some doubt about how much gunpowder really was there and how much damage really could have been done.


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Contrarian
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posted 06 November 2005 12:01 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Wow - Gandalf lives!
From: pretty far west | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
Hawkins
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posted 06 November 2005 12:02 PM      Profile for Hawkins     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A prisoner for Gitmo bay no doubt.
From: Burlington Ont | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged

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