The plot to blow up a Scottish king
The Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605 was an attempt to assassinate King James VI of Scotland and I of England by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening. Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshire Catholic, was discovered in the cellars beneath the House of Lords guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder — enough to reduce the building and everyone in it to rubble. The target was Scotland's king, sitting on England's throne.
James had been king of Scotland since 1567 and king of England since 1603. English Catholics had hoped that James — whose mother Mary Queen of Scots had been a Catholic martyr — would ease the penal laws that persecuted their faith. When James proved as firmly Protestant as Elizabeth, a small group of Catholic conspirators led by Robert Catesby conceived the Gunpowder Plot. The plan was to kill the king, his ministers, and the entire Protestant establishment in a single devastating explosion, then install a Catholic monarch.
The plot was betrayed by an anonymous letter warning Lord Monteagle to avoid the State Opening. Fawkes was arrested in the early hours of 5 November, the cellars were searched, and the gunpowder was found. The conspirators were hunted down; Catesby was killed resisting arrest, and Fawkes and seven others were tried, convicted, and executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering in January 1606.
For James, the plot confirmed everything he feared about Catholic extremism and strengthened his commitment to Protestantism. In Scotland, the plot reinforced the Presbyterian Kirk's distrust of Catholicism. The annual celebration of 5 November — Guy Fawkes Night, with its bonfires and fireworks — commemorates the king's survival. In Scotland, the celebration has always been more muted than in England, partly because Scotland already had its own traditions of fire festivals and partly because Scottish attitudes to the Stuart kings remained more complicated than a simple celebration of survival would suggest.