The Gunpowder Plot

Name: The Gunpowder Plot
Rating: 4.5 (229 reviews)

by Antonia Fraser

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4.4(229)

The Gunpowder Plot reconstructs the Catholic conspiracy of 1605 and the political and religious conditions that produced it. Fraser follows Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators as they moved from grievance and secrecy to a plan to destroy Parliament and kill James VI and I. The book treats the plot as a Jacobean crisis of faith, persecution, surveillance and state response rather than only as a failed act of spectacular violence.

The failed explosion was only one stage of the crisis. The discovery triggered arrests, interrogations, trials and new political uses of anti-Catholic fear, while the government publicised its survival as evidence of providential protection. The book therefore follows both the conspirators’ intentions and the state’s construction of the plot as a lasting part of Jacobean political culture.