The story of how Guy Fawkes was found in the cellars underneath Parliament with barrels of gunpowder, ready to blow the whole thing to smithereens, is told to every British school child.
But what if the charges of a gunpowder plot thought up by dissident Catholics in 1605 are at best trumped up, and at worst fabricated by the highest echelons of society?
That is what two historians — including a former Oxford professor — have argued in both writing and their popular podcast.
Penelope Middelboe and Jon Rosebank, hosts of the History Cafe podcast, say the evidence of a plot to blow-up Parliament and the king on November 5 that year is “vanishingly thin”.
Here The Mirror explains why the pair have called into question more than 400 years of history.
What was the “Gunpowder Plot”?
The tale often repeated over the years is that Catholics were looking to murder King James I in 1605.
They were annoyed at the continued suppression they were facing in the years after the Reformation — the 16th century event when the Church of England was set up and the country became Protestant, splitting from the Roman Catholic Church.
Guy Fawkes, a Catholic and former veteran mercenary of the Spanish army, was said to have been found with barrels of explosives in tunnels under the House of Lords.
Some historical documents suggest he was ready to ignite the Palace of Westminster during the opening of Parliament, with the King potentially due to be in attendance.
Following a tip-off, an inspection of the cellars by Parliament guards caught Fawkes — whose real first name was Guido — with gunpowder barrels, and he was sent to the Tower of London.
On orders of the King, he was tortured, eventually signing a confession and being executed in January 1606 for high treason.
Those behind the alleged plot were ordered to be publicly hung, drawn and quartered, in what amounted to a gory death.
Fawkes managed to avoid the latter part of his execution by leaping to his death as he awaited the gallows and subsequently died of a broken neck.
The foiled-plan led to annual commemorations on November 5 to mark the alleged treasonous plot, turning into what we now call Bonfire Night.
Some communities historically would burn an effigy of the Pope —a sign of the anti-Catholic sentiment of the time.
Nowadays it is more likely to be Guy Fawkes on top of the bonfire, with children calling out for “a penny for the Guy” after making their own impersonation.
Why historians think the Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot is made up
Historians have started to question how true the Gunpowder Plot was, pointing to inconsistencies in the original evidence and a reliance on confessions extracted through torture.
In an article written by historians Penelope Middelboe and Jon Rosebank — a former fellow of New College, Oxford and a BBC executive producer — they go through the case for the defence.
Firstly, Guy Fawkes would have had to roll big barrels of gunpowder into the cellars of the House of Lords not long before November 5, as gunpowder “decays quickly”.
Yet, the government at the time “could not come up with a single resident who had spotted either Fawkes or any of his associates there at this time”.
Government documents also could not make up their mind whether there were 36 barrels of explosives or 32 — another inconsistency.
But if there was no gunpowder plot, why would it be made-up?
Some say the 17th century tale was largely a fabricated story pushed by inner members of the King’s court in a bid to continue the persecution of Catholics.
While it was true there were Catholic uprisings at the time, they were a flop and failed to get off the ground.
Ms Middelboe and Mr Rosebank say anti-Catholics in the King's circle, including Lord Salisbury, might have been tempted to tack an alleged gunpowder plot on to the uprising tale in order to keep such religious practitioners suppressed.
Modern examination of 500 witness statements finds no mention of gunpowder and Fawkes’ confession cannot be taken at face value due to being tortured out of him.
Fawkes was likely placed on a torture instrument called the rack, with his limbs stretched until he admitted being part of a plot, and coughing-up names of alleged associates as well.
Writing in The Tablet, a Catholic monthly magazine, Ms Middelboe and Mr Rosebank said: “Had this evidence been produced in modern ... Iran, ....Sudan or any of the other brutally intimidatory regimes listed by Freedom from Torture, it would be dismissed out of hand, with loud outrage.
“In the case of the Gunpowder Plot, if we strip out all the evidence derived from torture (or the very present threat of it) and the government’s own contradictory accounts, there is effectively nothing left.”
The duo say that, after the executions, it was rumoured in Westminster at the time about how the whole thing had been "a fable".
Their writing, and the research of other modern historians such as Mark Nicholls, has forced a re-think on the truth behind the Bonfire Night story.
