The recent BBC drama Gunpowder has gone some way to unpicking the popular mythology that surrounds England’s most controversial early modern figure. Guy Fawkes was not the main player in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which a group of Catholic sympathisers sought to bring down King James I’s Protestant government by placing explosives under the Houses of Parliament. He was, however, the man caught in the act when the cellars of Parliament were searched after a tip-off. As such, he is often labelled, particularly by the media, as a terrorist, with inevitable comparisons made to recent attacks carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. But this is unhelpful for understanding the extraordinary political tensions of the era in which he lived.

Today’s British society is – to a large extent – religiously tolerant but during Fawkes’s time, religious minorities were persecuted. The state religion was all that the government was prepared to tolerate; and this could change, as it did in 1553 when the Catholic Queen Mary I succeeded her Protestant-influenced brother King Edward VI. Practising in private but publicly toeing the line was not an option because religion was so intertwined with the state; heresy and treason were interchangeable or synonymous to some extent. To practise the Catholic faith in 17th century England or indeed to practise any variation of Protestantism often went hand-in-hand with organised plots to bring down the regime, and the punishment for getting caught could be severe.

The roots of religious dissent
Many historians argue that Queen Elizabeth I (reign 1558-1603), having seen the damage inflicted on England by Mary I who changed the national religion back from the proto-Protestantism of her brother Edward VI to devout Catholicism, was a pragmatist and a moderate. Her religious settlement certainly did bring some compromises, accepting the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England, rather than what was seen as the problematic title of Head of the Church, and allowing for two interpretations of communion, but it was clear that the state religion would be the Church of England (technically a ‘reformed’ church rather than a Protestant one).

As part of Elizabeth’s new religious settlement, Catholics, although not persecuted in the same way Protestants were under Mary I, were forced to pay fines for refusing to attend church services. This was unacceptable to many who felt they were being punished for not complying with a state that was antithetical to their beliefs. Spurred on by the Pope who excommunicated Elizabeth in the Papal Bull Regnans in Excelsis (reigning on high) and his successor, who claimed that assassinating her would not constitute a sin, Catholics decided to take action. And the State was hot on their trail.

In reality, as Patrick Collinson points out, Elizabeth wasn’t anti-Catholic but ‘even-handedly opposed’ to Catholics, Puritans and hard-line Protestants alike; her aim was for moderation.

But her actions were perceived as anti-Catholic and so Catholics began preparing a series of plots to replace Elizabeth with her Catholic cousin Queen Mary of Scots, who had been deposed from the Scottish throne and placed under house arrest in England. Among others there was the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 involving Italian merchant Roberto di Ridolfi, plotting to help Mary escape with the Duke of Norfolk. Then there was the plot of Sir Francis Throckmorton, who, upon arrest, was found with details of other Catholic conspirators planning a potential invasion with the help of the Spanish ambassador. Finally, in 1586 came the famous Babington Plot, orchestrated by Thomas Babington, in which Mary herself was allegedly implicated and found out. The execution of an anointed monarch, which Elizabeth famously deliberated over, was a shocking event and one which encouraged not only the Spanish attempt to invade with an Armada in 1588 but which also resonated with the English Catholic community for generations to come.

Early Stuart tensions
When Mary Queen of Scots’ son James succeeded to the English throne as well as his Scottish crown in 1603, it was to face an already hostile public, suspicious of how a Scottish monarch might rule. Indeed, fears that he might be more of an autocrat and was prepared to abandon the Elizabethan compromises were realised following the Gunpowder Plot. He severely clamped down on what we would today describe as civil liberties. The brutal execution of Fawkes and his fellow plotters such as Robert Catesby – they were publicly hanged, drawn and quartered – acted as a stark warning to anyone who thought they could get away with plotting to bring down the regime. Catholics also now had to swear allegiance to the King and could have their land confiscated if they practised their faith.

The dark Jacobean revenge tragedies such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi reveal at their heart the growing tension in society between Catholics and Protestants, Puritans and Protestants, and even ‘the people’ and the government. There increasingly became a fear of an ‘other’ in society, deeply ingrained and working towards the complete dismantling of the state. This ‘other’ could take the form of foreign powers like Spain, Catholic agents or so-called ‘Papists’, or even the King’s own ministers and courtiers. They were hidden everywhere in Britain waiting for the right time to attack.

At the same time those on the religiously pious, Puritan side were also organising and became particularly dominant in the English parliament. When Charles I took the throne in 1625, rumours abounded about his French and Catholic wife Henrietta Maria, with many fearing she was whispering into his ear. These tensions played into increasing reservations about Charles’s autocratic tendencies. Furthermore, a growth in the publishing culture meant ideas spread more easily.

Civil war and the Puritan takeover
Two radical groups, the Levellers and the Diggers (originally the ‘True Levellers’), began organising. The Levellers was a loose movement that had its roots in the 1630s and its advocates like Richard Overton called for ‘natural and just liberty, agreeable to reason’, in response to Charles I, whose stubbornness and refusal to compromise on his beliefs – most notably the Divine Right of Kings – was reaching a critical point. The Levellers centred largely around the radical writings of activist John Lilburne from another modest family from Sunderland. He joined the ensuing Civil War on the side of Cromwell but soon began a lifelong legal battle with the new government over perceived injustices. The Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley, a merchant from Wigan, Lancashire whose financial situation was often precarious, believed in the radical idea of seizing common land for public ownership. There was a re-distributive, quasi-communist element to their beliefs, published in pamphlets such as The True Levellers Standard Advanced or The State of Community opened, and Pretended to the Sons of Men. The Diggers were active towards the end of the Civil War as debates about future forms of government began in earnest, but they were soon disowned by the Levellers.

Many of the Levellers’ demands would resonate with us today and some historians have certainly drawn a clear line from much of the language that was used in their tracts to the ideals of the French Revolution and the American declaration of Independence. While some historians, however, feel that we are overemphasising their role in the development of the modern liberal state and trying to draw too straight a line, it is clear that their ideas were radical and designed to completely disrupt and change society at a time of increasing technological and societal change across Europe.

But equally as ambitions in organising were the Puritans. Highly conservative in nature, they were able to secure a majority in the new Cromwellian parliament. With the House of Lords and the monarchy abolished, nothing stood in their way from their famous attempts to play scrooge and poor scorn over England’s joyous traditions. Soon celebrations of Christmas were outlawed, with clandestine celebrations in shops and public houses raided by the authorities. Even local Mayday celebrations and community events were closed down lest they ‘gave liberty to carnal and sensual delights’.

The Elizabethan compromise had now been completely abandoned and even those of moderate Protestant-leaning belief found themselves on the wrong side of the law. But not even the Puritans went far enough for some. A group of radicals known as the Fifth Monarchists began organising around 1650. They believed the four great kingdoms were foretold in the Bible but the fourth kingdom, the Roman Kingdom, had been corrupted by the papacy. It fitted therefore, in their minds, that the fifth kingdom – the return of Christ before judgement day itself – was about to begin. In preparation, they began agitating for what many might describe as a theocracy, quickly turning against the new Cromwellian government. Thomas Venner attempted a military uprising in 1657 and again in 1661 but they were crushed easily.

Print culture and 17th century fake news
What all of these groups had in common was their ability to mobilise people and circulate their ideas in a way few movements had been successful at doing in the medieval period. This was mainly down to innovations in the production and circulation of printed materials. By the time of the 17th century, early newspapers had developed but these were more akin to regular pamphlets or journals, printing specialised stories about a particular subject, with a hue to suit their readers’ taste. Although there was a licensing act in place, which was designed to afford some degree of state control over what was printed, this could easily be got around. John Lilburne, for instance, published his tracts in the Netherlands and then imported them.

The Restoration did not put an end to this culture of plots and counter plots. If anything, the return of Charles II to the throne only heightened suspicion. New secret histories were printed, a kind of conspiracy theory narrative, that offered to reveal ‘what was really going on’ behind the close doors of particularly explosive moments in history. They started with the publication in English of Procopius of Caesarea’s The Secret History of the Emperor and went on to include The Secret History of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex. These secret histories perhaps said more about the 17th century than they did about the history they purported to uncover. After decades of plotting by different groups, many people, particularly in London, grew suspicious of Charles II’s brother, James, Duke of York, the heir to the throne.

James had been forced to stand down from his role as First Admiral of the Navy after he refused to swear a public oath of allegiance to the Church of England following a change in the law; his previously clandestine Catholicism now became public knowledge.

Speculation was rife that he was caught up in plots to assassinate his brother and change the national religion back to Catholicism. Rumours were spurred on by ex-Anglican priest, fantasist and attention-seeker Titus Oates, who testified before the Privy Council and published a manuscript – arguably, his own secret history – about an elaborate conspiracy to bring down the King. More elaborate versions of the plot evolved as Oates gained the trust of the Privy Council but the essential components of the plot were as follows: Charles II’s reputation was to be undermined by Catholic ‘papists’ who were to accuse him of re-introducing absolutism, debasing the coinage and ‘setting up false titles to the succession’. There would then be an uprising in which 100,000 Protestants would be slaughtered, the King would be murdered, London would be burned and the Duke of York, who had been exposed as a Catholic following his refusal to swear allegiance to the Anglican Church, would take the throne and re-establish England as a Catholic state. It was also suggested that the Duke of York might receive outside help from the Catholic King of France, Louis XIV. When a magistrate who Oates had testified to was murdered, rumours exploded about a fifth column in society. Dozens, including some lords, were tried or impeached and executed on the basis of nothing more than gossip and scandal.

When both Houses of Parliament moved to exclude James from the line of succession, Charles had no choice but to dissolve Parliament, forgetting that without it he could not renew the Licensing Act which tempered the press. What Geoffrey Alan Cranfield describes as a ‘newspaper war’ broke out between different printers as everyone hurried to get their messages out in what most assumed would be a short gap before the Act was reintroduced.

Newspapers would print gossip about the plot and some even took the same name as their rivals to confuse readers, like Nathanial Thompson’s ‘True Domestik Intelligence’, which began as a fake version of a Whig newspaper printed by Benjamin Harris.

There was just one problem with the accusations of a plot to bring down the government: it had been completely fabricated by Oates.

A fractured society
Although Oates was eventually discovered and convicted for perjury, that his hoax plot was taken so seriously serves to show the complicated and fractured nature of 17th century society.

We often see the revolutions and civil wars that took place in the 17th century in isolation or happening sporadically and involving elites like politicians and monarchs. In fact, after a century of religious plotting and in-fighting between different groups, all with different ideas, ostensibly about doctrine but more about how society should be governed, it is clear that there is a longer undercurrent of populism that underpins the English revolutions of The Era .