GUY FAWKE’S NIGHT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6442, 5 November 1947, Page 6

GUY FAWKE’S NIGHT

GALA FUNCTION IN ALBERT PARK REVIEW OF PLOT A reminder is given of the Guy Fawkes Gala Night to be held in Albert Park this evening under the auspices of the Te Awamutu Fire Brigade. In addition to a host of other attractions there will be a Pipe Band as well as the Municipal Band in attendance. Guy Fawkes, who was bom in 1570, the son of a good Yorkshire family, was converted to the Catholic faith when his mother remarried a man prominently connected with many Roman Catholic families. In December, 1604, Thomas Winter, Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy John Wright and Guy Fawkes rented a house adjoining Parliament House and dug a mine into the cellar directly under the House of Lords. Guy Fawkes arranged in it barrels of gunpowder, which he covered with firewood and coals with iron bars to increase the force of the explosion. All was ready in May, 1605, when Fawkes went to France. He returned in August and brought in more gunpowder to replace any that might have been damaged by damp. A slow match was prepared to enable Fawkes a quarter of an hour to escape. Fawkes saw everything in readiness on the night of October 26 and on the night of November 4 when he was waiting for word that the House was sitting he was discovered and the gunpowder uncovered. Brought before the King, Fawkes refused to divulge his companions. When asked by the King why he would kill him, Fawkes said the Pope had excommunicated him (King Janies) and that “dangerous diseases require a desperate remedy,” adding fiercely to the Scottish courtiers who surrounded him that “one of his objectives was to blow back to Scotland the Scots.” He was tried on January 26, 1606, found guilty, and on January 31 was dragged on a hurdle from the Tower of London to Parliament House, opposite which he was executed.