To think that Guy Fawkes was unlikely to have made it out alive?

[Schlumberger]

Any historians around this evening?

Have just been looking through DS's history book. Guy Fawkes' role in the Gunpowder Plot was to light the fuse on 36 barrels of gunpowder that contained enough explosive to blow up the Houses of Parliament 200 times over. How was he planning to survive?

Huge fuse and hope the cellars protected them - although DH think they were probably prepared to die.

I watched a programme about this the other evening funny enough and he was just a cog in a very large wheel. There were far more powerful instigators pulling his strings. It smacks of the suicide bomber stuff that's going on today.

I reckon his superiors didn't care whether he lived or died and he may not have figured out the logistics.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that, unless they had some knowledge of demolition techniques and placed charges in particular places, even if every scrap of the gunpowder ignited, it would barely have put a dent in the brickwork of those cellars. Something complicated applies, and it's all much harder than it looks apparently, you can't just make a big bang and hope, you have to do the maths and work it all out and stuff...

And I think the gunpowder had been stored down there too long and had 'gone off' pombear.

Although Fawkes probably wouldn't have known that.

A reconstruction of the expoltion here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gunpowder_Plot:_Exploding_The_Legend

Guy Fawkes would have probably used a slow match or chord fuse.

www.pyroguide.com/index.php?title=Slow_match

They weren't the brightest of pyrotechnicians, that lot. Have you read the bit (Antonia Fraser tells it in The Gunpowder Plot) where they transported their gunpowder through persisting rain to some country house which they were going to use as their headquarters? The stuff got wet so they put it in front of the fire to dry. It blew up. And conspirators were not in a position to put up much of a fight when the king's soldiers came to arrest them shortly afterwards.

My favourite bit is how they were found out. One of the plotters sent an anonymous letter to William Parker telling him not to come to parliament on that day in 1605.

They did think that Guy Fawkes would live because he was expected to smuggle himself to Europe and spread the words of what was happening.

Sorry I killed your thread :(

I'm sure I read some horrible description of what happened to him after they caught him. Without too much detail they took him up the clock tower waited for the hour when the huge hammers donged the bells and put his manly bits under the hammer.

Not...not his cordless drill and spirit level!! The emasculating bastards

He was hanged, drawn and quartered. It was the standard punishment for high treason, IIRC.

Yes, but he was tortured for several months before they killed him. I think they flatpacked his bits at some point, could be urban myth.

After he was racked.

:o bruxeur

Well whatever they did he managed to last 2 days before he cracked.

He went to my the same school as my husband.

I love the fact we celebrate Guy Fawkes for trying to commit mass murder.

And they way Annonymous supporters wear his face masks to avoid being identified and yet fail to get the irony that the government caught him in the end. :)

We don't celebrate him round my way. We stick him on top of the bonfire and torch him .

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

Thanks so much to everyone for posting.

My understanding is that Guy Fawkes threw himself from the scaffold and broke his neck before the executioner got a chance to hang, draw and quarter him.

Voidka - that's interesting that he was planning to get to Europe. Can only imagine that the fuse must have been enormously long to give him a chance to get away!