Who was the leader of the 'Gunpowder Plot', whose conspirators included Guy Fawkes?
Gunpowder Plot in popular culture Gunpowder Plot in popular culture The Gunpowder Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The conspirators' aim was to blow up the House of Lords at the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, while the king and many other important members of the aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirator who became most closely associated with the plot in the popular imagination was Guy Fawkes, who had been assigned the task of lighting the fuse to the explosives.
Guy Fawkes William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 historical romance "Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason" portrays Fawkes in a generally sympathetic light, and his novel transformed Fawkes in the public perception into an "acceptable fictional character". Fawkes subsequently appeared as "essentially an action hero" in children's books and penny dreadfuls such as "The Boyhood Days of Guy Fawkes; or, The Conspirators of Old London", published around 1905. According to historian Lewis Call, Fawkes is now "a major icon in modern political culture" whose face has become "a potentially powerful instrument for the articulation of postmodern anarchism" in the late 20th century. Footnotes Citations