Remember, Remember the 5th of November
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
November 4, 1605. The king's men are conducting a search. They're making their way through the storerooms and cellars and vaults that cluster around and beneath the Palace of Westminster. They've gotten a tip in the form of a mysterious, anonymous letter that something bad is going to happen at the House of Lords tomorrow. And shortly before midnight, they find a ton of firewood, a suspicious man, and 36 barrels of gunpowder. What brought a group of conspirators together in a plot to kill the king? And in the 400 years since, how has an annual celebration of the failed plot, and the story of one of the plotters—Guy Fawkes—come to stand for something else entirely?
Special thanks to our guests: James Sharpe, author of Remember Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day, and Mark Nicholls, author of Investigating Gunpowder Plot.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | History this week, November 4th, 1605. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:15.0 | The King's Men are conducting a search. |
| 0:19.0 | They make their way through the storerooms and sellers and vaults |
| 0:23.0 | that cluster around and beneath the Palace of Westminster. |
| 0:27.0 | That's the building where the English Parliament means. |
| 0:31.0 | They're coming back into session tomorrow after a break, |
| 0:34.0 | and it's going to be a major affair. |
| 0:37.0 | The King will be there, and his family, and his advisors, |
| 0:40.0 | and all of the country's leading politicians, |
| 0:44.0 | which is why the King's Men are so worried. |
| 0:48.0 | They've gotten a tip in the form of a mysterious anonymous letter. |
| 0:54.0 | The letter says that when all those important people gather tomorrow |
| 0:58.0 | at the House of Lords, something bad is going to happen. |
| 1:04.0 | Security at the Palace of Westminster at this time is not extremely tight. |
| 1:09.0 | The House of Lords is right up alongside taverns and wine stores |
| 1:13.0 | and baker's shops and private apartments. |
| 1:16.0 | It wouldn't be crazy to see some chickens wandering by. |
| 1:19.0 | And in the afternoon, the searchers check out a storeroom |
| 1:24.0 | that's directly underneath the House of Lords. |
| 1:27.0 | It has old stone walls with vaulted archways that into them. |
... |
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