I just got done reading Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot (Lady Antonia Fraser, 1996, Doubleday), about the conspiracy to blow up James I and the Houses of Parliament in November 1605.
A conspiracy that was thwarted at the last minute, by a wavering member of the conspiracy, who forged a letter so as to appear innocent of any wrong-doing if the plot failed.
Or it might not have worked anyway; despite that there were enormous quantities of gunpowder stored underneath Westminister (where the king and parliament were to meet), the gunpowder had possibly deteriorated, and would not have gone off.
The "Guy Fawkes" fiasco.
This is an excellent book, but it is not a book suggested for anyone with less than some thorough knowledge of English history; that is, not your general reader, but those who know more about English history than the general public.
I found it to be the best-balanced description of the plot I've read; most descriptions (the standard academic textbook ones) tend to laud the Protestants and damn the Roman Catholics, or (the standard Roman Catholic booklets) tend to canonize the plotters and demonize James I and Parliament.
By 1605, Roman Catholics in England had undergone 70+ years of vigorous suppression, persecutions which varied from bloody executions to (more usually) merely "taxes" for being Roman Catholic.
England circa 1535-1605 was much different than it is today, or even just a hundred years later (say, the 18th century). The North of England was sparsely populated, generally wild, and communication and commerce nearly non-existent.
And so thus after the Dissolution (called the Reformation in all other parts of Europe) of the early 1530s, there had always remained Roman Catholics in England, usually (but not always) in the North (Lincoln, York, and north of there).
Other than sporadic outbursts of violent persecution, Roman Catholics in the North were generally left alone (there after all weren't very many people up there); at times, they were compelled to pay bribes and extra taxes, but that was it. Those of the nobility retained their titles and properties, but couldn't serve in the court or government.
With the impending death of Elizabeth I in 1602-1603, and the probable accession of the king of Scotland (who became James I), "feelers" were sent from both Puritans and Roman Catholics to Edinburgh, to gauge the intentions of the incoming king, about religious toleration. The Roman Catholics had higher hopes than the Puritans; James after all was NOT an Anglican, and his wife a devout Roman Catholic.
The king of Scotland spoke out of both sides of his mouth.
But when James I finally came to the throne in early 1603, he made it clear that, under the best of circumstances, only the status quo would do; there would be no official toleration of Roman Catholicism, and England itself would certainly not go back into the hands of the Mother Church, left 70 years before.
To backtrack for a moment, the situation had been complicated in 1570, when the then-Pope excommunicated Elizabeth I. Excommunication of course meant that English Roman Catholics were not "bound" to acknowledge, and support, Elizabeth I as queen.
Divided loyalties, a bloody mess.
And with James I, there occurred a rupture among the English Roman Catholics, the greater part (including the Jesuits, who were then secretly in the country, tending to the spiritual needs of their flock) submitting to the status quo, with the usual hope that as time went on, things would get better.
But there was a younger element, too, people in their 20s, a few in their 30s, who refused to submit, and thus the Gunpowder Plot.
The whole entire book is an interesting discussion (alas, to no conclusion) of exactly what it was Christ meant, when He said "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's."
