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Fraser has recreated the drama of the Gunpowder Plot in a
narrative which reads like a gripping detective story.
Compassionate and unprejudiced, she unravels the puzzling
alliance between religion and politics in the early 17th
century. Above all she brings the distinct events surrounding
that fateful night of November 5,1605, to sensational life in
ways which have an awesome resemblance to our own times when the
relationship of terrorism to idealism is still under argument.
Should Guy Fawkes,
Robert Catesby and others be wholly condemned? The Burning of
current hate figures (in effigy) continues to this day. Effigies
of Margaret Thatcher, John Major on a dinosaur adapted from the
film "Jurassic Park" and the Home Secretary Michael
Howard as well as Guy Fawkes himself were burnt in 1994. These
light-hearted festivities fade before the seriousness of the Gun
Powder Plot of 1605 aimed at the downfall of the government
responsible for Catholic persecution.
November 5 was the
opening day of Parliament, the day when the entire establishment
of England assembled there. Innocent people and many Catholic
peers would also be there. All would die. But as Robert Catsby,
the chief plotter, argued the act had to be carried out because
"the nature of the disease required so sharp a
remedy". The Catholics in England were suffering more than
the Jews in Europe. To be a Catholic priest or to educate
children in Catholic schools or to move more than five miles
from one's residence was to invite the wrath of the state.
Any refusal to
attend the Anglican church meant ban on entry into public
service. The Scottish Presbyterian James I ascended the throne
in 1603 and all were disappointed by his proclamations against
the Catholics. The plotters were infuriated by the passivity of
their forefathers who had tolerated the persecutions. It was
time to act.
Unfortunately for
them, it was Guy Fawkes who was first apprehended carrying
matches and oil in the cellar under the Parliament House. But it
was not he who had been responsible for the failure of the plot.
It was Lord Mounteagle, one of the relations of the plotters and
Lord Cecil, the anti-Catholic chief minister of the King, who
had composed the famous letter which finally fell into the hands
of the King.
The plotters
ironically had succeeded not in putting a favourable King on the
throne of England but through the discovery of their plot
ensured a long history of 200 years of legal persecution for
their brethren instead. Retribution against them and their
families was swift and severe.
Not many have
spoken of the courage of the plotters although some have paid
tributes to them. A notable example of this is historian S. R
Gardener who writes, "Atrocious as the undertaking was,
great as must have been the moral obliquity of their minds
before they could have conceived such a project, there was at
least nothing mean or selfish about them. They had boldly risked
their lives for what they honestly believed to be the cause of
God and their country." This was deeply felt by many
Catholics of that period though the destruction of the innocents
was fully condemned.
How could such
politically conscious citizens allow their brethren to suffer at
the hands of such an intolerable and oppressive regime. It was
more honourable to die than live within such tyrannical times.
As Fraser argues,
"It is not a
position that the world can expect to see abandoned so long as
the persecution of minorities survives. Terrorism after all does
not exist in a vacuum."
Nelson Mandela has
been of the opinion that "fifty-years of violence
had brought (my)
people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer
rights". He goes on to add in his autobiography "The
Long Road to Freedom",
"I do not
deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of
recklessness or because I have love of violence. I planned it as
a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political
situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny,
exploitation and oppression of my people."
These could have
very well been the words of either Catsby or Fawkes.
It cannot be
denied that the plotters were terrorists and that they deserved
to die. Certainly the tragedy belongs to the suffering priests
and the most of the catholic women under the rule of James I.
But taking an opposite view, one can represent the plotters as
"brave, bad men: but perhaps brave, misguided men is a
kinder verdict which may be allowed at this distance of time.
The study of history can at least bring respect for those whose
motives, if not their actions, were noble and idealistic. It was
indeed a heavy and doleful tragedy that men of such caliber were
driven by continued religious persecution to gun powder, treason
and plot."
Fraser would go
with Auden when he writes that history "may say, alas, but
cannot help or pardon..." and thus make a case for pity and
understanding of such crimes. Were the conspirators terrorists
or martyrs? Was this act a treason or anger expressed by the
persecuted minority? The answers to these questions are
controversial; the last 400 years have not brought a finality to
this debate. But Fraser's view is balanced and concludes that
both alternatives could be justified.
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