Fawkes, Guy 1570-1606
English conspirator

Born in York of Protestant parentage, he developed his fervent Catholicism while still a schoolboy, having been taught about Henry VIII's ruthless subjugation of the Catholics 40 years earlier, and appalled by the persecution of his Catholic friends. In 1592, he fought with the Spanish in the Netherlands, and in 1603 rode to Spain in a fruitless attempt to persuade the king to raise an army against his Protestant homeland. The following year, Fawkes secretly returned to London to join the small group of conspirators, led by Robert Catesby, who devised a plan to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening. The plot was supposedly discovered with only hours to spare, and Fawkes and seven other conspirators were beheaded. There is strong evidence, however, to suggest that they were merely pawns in an elaborate hoax, engineered by the state to discredit Rome.

Bibliography: Henry Garnett, Portrait of Guy Fawkes (1962)