Guy Fawkes day is an ultra English institution, though nowadays Popish Plots are only talked about in Northern Ireland. Guido Fawkes (to give him his proper name) was only one of the various English Catholic plotters against James I, but he was the boldest and the most active, with service as a soldier of fortune behind him to steel his nerve. English Catholics had endured a grim half century since Mary Tudor's death, with the legal screws tightening on them all the time; they were heavily fined, forbidden to travel about or go abroad, the education of their children was taken more and more out of their hands, freedom of worship which they had once been promised - was denied to them. Catholic priests, particularly Jesuits, were liable to die bloodily and agonisingly by hanging, drawing and quartering. With the death in 1603 of Elizabeth I, who gave way in her last year of life to melancholy and depression, hopes for a time were high that her successor, James I (who was also James VI of Scotland), would ease their lot. The devious, garrulous Scot did initially give that impression, not only to his subjects but to Catholic sovereigns on the Continent from whom he hoped for grace and favours. Soon James, however, was bidding for all Protestant support - there were some pressing reasons for doing so, particularly the existence of Catholic candidates for his throne. The Plot itself was rather a hare brained affair, encouraged neither by the high Catholic nobility nor by the priests, but the threat to blow up King and Parliament with massed gunpowder barrels provided a valid excuse for a wave of executions, reprisals and repression. Inevitably, innocent people suffered with the guilty though Northumberland, the leading Catholic peer, got off with a heavy fine and a long prison term.
Undoubtedly, the Plot helped to fuel Puritan fanaticism and xenophobia for generations, making Cromwell's raging hatred of "Papery" easier to understand. An excellent read, though hardly for the squeamish.