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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Caroline Davies

‘Terrible blowe’: gunpowder plot tipoff letter to go on display

Guy Fawkes and conspirators planning the gunpowder plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
Guy Fawkes and conspirators planning the gunpowder plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

More than six centuries after Edward III first enshrined the crime of treason in English law, the letter that thwarted one of the most infamous acts in the nation’s history is to go on public display.

The anonymous “Monteagle letter”, of 26 October 1605, warned the peer Lord Monteagle not to attend the opening of parliament on 5 November, “for they shall recyeve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them”.

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