Guy Fawkes Night

Festivities in Windsor Castle by Paul Sandby, 1776c. 1776

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in the United Kingdom. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605 O.S., when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London; and months later, the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure.

Within a few decades Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was known, became the predominant English state commemoration, but as it carried strong Protestant religious overtones it also became a focus for anti-Catholic sentiment. Puritans delivered sermons regarding the perceived dangers of popery, while during increasingly raucous celebrations common folk burnt effigies of popular hate-figures, such as the pope. Towards the end of the 18th century reports appear of children begging for money with effigies of Guy Fawkes and 5 November gradually became known as Guy Fawkes Day. Towns such as Lewes and Guildford were in the 19th century scenes of increasingly violent class-based confrontations, fostering traditions those towns celebrate still, albeit peaceably. In the 1850s changing attitudes resulted in the toning down of much of the day's anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in 1859. Eventually the violence was dealt with, and by the 20th century Guy Fawkes Day had become an enjoyable social commemoration, although lacking much of its original focus. The present-day Guy Fawkes Night is usually celebrated at large organised events, centred on a bonfire and extravagant firework displays.

Settlers exported Guy Fawkes Night to overseas colonies, including some in North America, where it was known as Pope Day. Those festivities died out with the onset of the American Revolution. Claims that Guy Fawkes Night was a Protestant replacement for older customs like Samhain are disputed, although another old celebration, Halloween, has lately increased in popularity in England, and according to some writers, may threaten the continued observance of 5 November.

Origins and history in England

An effigy of Fawkes, burnt on 5 November 2010 at Billericay

Guy Fawkes Night originates from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed conspiracy by a group of provincial English Catholics to assassinate the Protestant King James I of England and replace him with a Catholic head of state. In the immediate aftermath of the 5 November arrest of Guy Fawkes, caught guarding a cache of explosives placed beneath the House of Lords, James's Council allowed the public to celebrate the king's survival with bonfires, so long as they were "without any danger or disorder." This made 1605 the first year the plot's failure was celebrated. The following January, days before the surviving conspirators were executed, Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act, commonly known as the "Thanksgiving Act". It was proposed by a Puritan Member of Parliament, Edward Montagu, who suggested that the king's apparent deliverance by divine intervention deserved some measure of official recognition, and kept 5 November free as a day of thanksgiving while in theory making attendance at Church mandatory.

Little is known about the earliest celebrations. In settlements such as Carlisle, Norwich, and Nottingham, corporations (town governments) provided music and artillery salutes. Canterbury celebrated 5 November 1607 with 106 pounds (48 kg) of gunpowder and 14 pounds (6.4 kg) of match, and three years later food and drink was provided for local dignitaries, as well as music, explosions, and a parade by the local militia. Even less is known of how the occasion was first commemorated by the general public, although records indicate that in the Protestant stronghold of Dorchester a sermon was read, the church bells rung, and bonfires and fireworks lit.

Early significance

According to historian and author Antonia Fraser, a study of the earliest sermons preached demonstrates an anti-Catholic concentration "mystical in its fervor." Delivering one of five 5th of November sermons printed in A Mappe of Rome in 1612, Thomas Taylor spoke of the "generality of his [a papist's] cruelty," which had been "almost without bounds." Such messages were also spread in printed works like Francis Herring's Pietas Pontifica (republished in 1610 as Popish Piety), and John Rhode's A Brief Summe of the Treason intended against the King & State, which in 1606 sought to educate "the simple and ignorant ... that they be not seduced any longer by papists." By the 1620s the Fifth was honored in market towns and villages across the country, though it was some years before it was commemorated throughout England. Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was then known, became the predominant English state commemoration. Some parishes made the day a festive occasion, with public drinking and solemn processions. Concerned though about James's pro-Spanish foreign policy, the decline of international Protestantism, and Catholicism in general, Protestant clergymen who recognized the day's significance called for more dignified and profound thanksgivings each 5th of November.

What unity English Protestants had shared in the plot's immediate aftermath began to fade when in 1625 James's son, the future Charles I, married the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France. Puritans reacted to the marriage by issuing a new prayer to warn against rebellion and Catholicism, and on 5 November that year, effigies of the pope and the devil were burnt. During Charles's reign Gunpowder Treason Day became increasingly partisan. Between 1629 and 1640 he ruled without Parliament, and he seemed to support Arminianism, regarded by Puritans like Henry Burton as a step toward Catholicism. By 1636, under the leadership of the Arminian Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, the English church was trying to use 5 November to denounce all seditious practices, and not just popery. Puritans went on the defensive, some pressing for further reformation of the Church.

Bonfire Night, as it was occasionally known, assumed a new fervor during the events leading up to the English Interregnum. Although Royalists disputed their interpretations, Parliamentarians began to uncover or fear new Catholic plots. Preaching before the House of Commons on 5 November 1644, Charles Herle claimed that Papists were tunnelling "from Oxford, Rome, Hell, to Westminster, and there to blow up, if possible, the better foundations of your houses, their liberties and privileges." A display in 1647 at Lincoln's Inn Fields commemorated "God's great mercy in delivering this kingdom from the hellish plots of papists", and included fireballs burning in the water (symbolizing a Catholic association with "infernal spirits") and fireboxes, their many rockets suggestive of "popish spirits coming from below" to enact plots against the king. Effigies of Fawkes and the pope were present, the latter represented by Pluto, Roman god of the underworld.

Following Charles I's execution in 1649, the country's new republican regime remained undecided on how to treat 5 November. Unlike the old system of religious feasts and State anniversaries, it survived, but as a celebration of parliamentary government and Protestantism, and not of monarchy. Commonly the day was still marked by bonfires and miniature explosives, but formal celebrations resumed only with the Restoration, when Charles II became king. Courtiers, High Anglicans and Tories followed the official line, that the event marked God's preservation of the English throne, but generally the celebrations became more diverse. By 1670 London apprentices had turned 5 November into a fire festival, attacking not only popery but also "sobriety and good order," demanding money from coach occupants for alcohol and bonfires. The burning of effigies continued in 1673 when Charles's brother, the Duke of York, converted to Catholicism. In response, accompanied by a procession of about 1,000 people, the apprentices fired an effigy of the Whore of Babylon, bedecked with a range of papal symbols. Similar scenes occurred over the following few years. On 17 November 1677, anti-Catholic fervor saw the Accession Day marked by the burning of a large effigy of the pope—his belly filled with live cats "who squalled most hideously as soon as they felt the fire"—and two effigies of devils "whispering in his ear". Two years later, as the exclusion crisis reached its zenith, an observer noted that "the 5th at night, being gunpowder treason, there were many bonfires and burning of popes as has ever been seen". Violent scenes in 1682 forced London's militia into action, and to prevent any repetition the following year a proclamation was issued, banning bonfires and fireworks.

Fireworks were also banned under James II, who became king in 1685. Attempts by the government to tone down Gunpowder Treason Day celebrations were, however, largely unsuccessful, and some reacted to a ban on bonfires in London (born from a fear of more burnings of the pope's effigy) by placing candles in their windows, "as a witness against Catholicism". When James was deposed in 1688 by William of Orange—who, importantly, landed in England on 5 November—the day's events turned also to the celebration of freedom and religion, with elements of anti-Jacobitism. While the earlier ban on bonfires was politically motivated, a ban on fireworks was maintained for safety reasons, "much mischief having been done by squibs".

Guy Fawkes Day

The restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850 provoked a strong reaction. This sketch is from an issue of Punch, printed in November that year.

William III's birthday fell on 4 November according to the Julian calendar, and for orthodox Whigs the two days therefore became an important double anniversary. William ordered that the thanksgiving service for 5 November be amended to include thanks for his "happy arrival" and "the Deliverance of our Church and Nation." In the 1690s he re-established Protestant rule in Ireland, and the Fifth, occasionally marked by the ringing of church bells and civic dinners, was consequently eclipsed by his birthday commemorations. From the 19th century, 5 November celebrations there became sectarian in nature. Its celebration in Northern Ireland remains controversial, unlike in Scotland where bonfires continue to be lit in various cities. In England though, as one of 49 official holidays, for the ruling class 5 November became overshadowed by events such as the birthdays of Admiral Edward Vernon, or John Wilkes, and under George II and George III, with the exception of the Jacobite Rising of 1745, it was largely "a polite entertainment rather than an occasion for vitriolic thanksgiving." For the lower classes, however, the anniversary was a chance to pit disorder against order, a pretext for violence and uncontrolled revelry. At some point, for reasons that are unclear, it became customary to burn Guy Fawkes in effigy, rather than the pope. Gradually, Gunpowder Treason Day became Guy Fawkes Day. In 1790 The Times reported instances of children "... begging for money for Guy Faux," and a report of 4 November 1804 described how "a set of idle fellows ... with some horrid figure dressed up as a Guy Faux" were convicted of begging and receiving money, and committed to prison as "idle and disorderly persons." The Fifth became "a polysemous occasion, replete with polyvalent cross-referencing, meaning all things to all men." Lower class rioting continued, with reports in Lewes of annual rioting, intimidation of "respectable householders" and the rolling through the streets of lit tar barrels. In Guildford, gangs of revellers who called themselves "guys" terrorised the local population; proceedings were concerned more with the settling of old arguments and general mayhem, than any historical reminiscences. Similar problems arose in Exeter, originally the scene of more traditional celebrations. In 1831 an effigy was burnt of the new Bishop of Exeter Henry Phillpotts, a High Church Anglican and High Tory who opposed Parliamentary reform, and who was also suspected of being involved in "creeping popery". A local ban on fireworks in 1843 was largely ignored, and attempts by the authorities to suppress the celebrations resulted in violent protests and several injured constables.

A group of children in Caernarfon, November 1962, stand with their Guy Fawkes effigy. The sign reads "Penny for the Guy" in Welsh.

On several occasions during the 19th century The Times reported that the tradition was in decline, being "of late years almost forgotten", but in the opinion of historian David Cressy, such reports reflected "other Victorian trends", including a lessening of Protestant religious zeal—not general observance of the Fifth. Civil unrest brought about by the union of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 resulted in Parliament passing the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which afforded Catholics greater civil rights, continuing the process of Catholic Emancipation in the two kingdoms. The traditional denunciations of Catholicism had been in decline since the early 18th century, and were thought by many, including Queen Victoria, to be outdated, but the pope's restoration in 1850 of the English Catholic hierarchy gave renewed significance to 5 November, as demonstrated by the burnings of effigies of the new Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Nicholas Wiseman, and the pope. At Farringdon Market 14 effigies were processed from the Strand and over Westminster Bridge to Southwark, while extensive demonstrations were held throughout the suburbs of London. Effigies of the 12 new English Catholic bishops were paraded through Exeter, already the scene of severe public disorder on each anniversary of the Fifth. Gradually, however, such scenes became less popular. With little resistance in Parliament, the thanksgiving prayer of 5 November contained in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer was abolished, and in March 1859 the Anniversary Days Observance Act repealed the Observance of 5th November Act. As the authorities dealt with the worst excesses, public decorum was gradually restored. The sale of fireworks was restricted, and the Guildford "guys" were neutralized in 1865, although this was too late for one constable, who died of his wounds. Violence continued in Exeter for some years, peaking in 1867 when, incensed by rising food prices and banned from firing their customary bonfire, a mob was twice in one night driven from Cathedral Close by armed infantry. Further riots occurred in 1879, but there were no more bonfires in Cathedral Close after 1894. Elsewhere, sporadic instances of public disorder persisted late into the 20th century, accompanied by large numbers of firework-related accidents, but a national Firework Code and improved public safety has in most cases brought an end to such things.

Modern traditions

Guy Fawkes night at Chirk in Wales, November 5, 1954

One notable aspect of the Victorians' commemoration of Guy Fawkes Night was its move away from the centers of communities, to their margins. Gathering wood for the bonfire increasingly became the province of working-class children, who solicited combustible materials, money, food and drink from wealthier neighbors, often with the aid of songs. Most opened with the familiar "Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot."

Lewes Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes effigy. Part of the Bonfire Night celebrations on the 5th November, 2005 in Lewes, Sussex

Organized entertainments also became popular in the late 19th century, and 20th-century pyrotechnic manufacturers renamed Guy Fawkes Day as Firework Night. Sales of fireworks dwindled somewhat during the First World War, but resumed in the following peace. At the start of the Second World War celebrations were again suspended, resuming in November 1945. For many families, Guy Fawkes Night became a domestic celebration, and children often congregated on street corners, accompanied by their own effigy of Guy Fawkes. This was sometimes ornately dressed and sometimes a barely recognizable bundle of rags stuffed with whatever filling was suitable. A survey found that in 1981 about 23 per cent of Sheffield schoolchildren made Guys, sometimes weeks before the event. Collecting money was a popular reason for their creation, the children taking their effigy from door to door, or displaying it on street corners. But mainly, they were built to go on the bonfire, itself sometimes comprising wood stolen from other pyres; "an acceptable convention" that helped bolster another November tradition, Mischief Night. Rival gangs competed to see who could build the largest, sometimes even burning the wood collected by their opponents; in 1954 the Yorkshire Post reported on fires late in September, a situation that forced the authorities to remove latent piles of wood for safety reasons. Lately, however, the custom of begging for a "penny for the Guy" has almost completely disappeared.

Ottery St Mary : The Square & Flaming Tar Barrel, 2009

In contrast, some older customs still survive; in Ottery St Mary men chase each other through the streets with lit tar barrels,< and since 1679 Lewes has been the setting of some of England's most extravagant 5 November celebrations, the Lewes Bonfire.

Generally, modern 5 November celebrations are run by local charities and other organisations, with paid admission and controlled access. In 1998 an editorial in the Catholic Herald called for the end of "Bonfire Night", labelling it "an offensive act." Author Martin Kettle, writing in The Guardian in 2003, bemoaned an "occasionally nannyish" attitude to fireworks that discourages people from holding firework displays in their back gardens, and an "unduly sensitive attitude" toward the anti-Catholic sentiment once so prominent on Guy Fawkes Night. David Cressy summarized the modern celebration with these words: "The rockets go higher and burn with more colour, but they have less and less to do with memories of the Fifth of November ... it might be observed that Guy Fawkes' Day is finally declining, having lost its connection with politics and religion. But we have heard that many times before."

In other countries

1768 colonial American commemoration of 5 November 1605

Gunpowder Treason Day was exported by settlers to colonies around the world, including members of the Commonwealth of Nations such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and various Caribbean nations. The day is still marked in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and in Saint Kitts and Nevis, but a fireworks ban by Antigua and Barbuda during the 1990s reduced its popularity in that country. In Australia, Sydney (founded as a penal colony in 1788) saw at least one instance of the parading and burning of a Guy Fawkes effigy in 1805, while in 1833, four years after its founding, Perth listed Gunpowder Treason Day as a public holiday. By the 1970s, Guy Fawkes Night had become less common in Australia. Some measure of celebration remains in New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.

In North America the commemoration was at first paid scant attention, but the arrest of two boys caught lighting bonfires on 5 November 1662 in Boston suggests, in historian James Sharpe's view, that "an underground tradition of commemorating the Fifth existed." In parts of North America it was known as Pope Day, celebrated mainly in colonial New England, but also as far south as Charleston. In Boston, founded in 1630 by Puritan settlers led by John Winthrop, an early celebration was held in 1685, the same year that James II assumed the throne.

Pope Night (also called Pope's Night, Pope Day, or Pope's Day) was an anti-Catholic holiday celebrated annually on November 5 in the colonial United States. It evolved from the British Guy Fawkes Night, which commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Pope Night was most popular in the seaport towns of New England, especially in Boston, where it was an occasion for drinking, rioting, and anti-elite protest by the working class.

Gang violence became part of the tradition in the 1740s, with residents of different Boston neighborhoods battling for the honor of burning the pope's effigy. By the mid-1760s these riots had subsided, and as colonial America moved towards the American Revolution (1765-1783), the class rivalries of Pope Night gave way to anti-British sentiment. Under the leadership of Pope Night organizer Ebenezer Mackintosh, Boston's North and South End gangs united in protest against the Stamp Act of 1765.

Local authorities made several attempts to crack down on the festivities. In 1775, to avoid offending Canadian allies, George Washington issued a statement forbidding any troops under his command from participating. The last known Pope Night celebration in Boston took place in 1776, though the tradition continued in other towns well into the 19th century.

The passage in 1774 of the Quebec Act, which guaranteed French Canadians free practice of Catholicism in the Province of Quebec, provoked complaints from some Americans that the British were introducing "Popish principles and French law." Such fears were bolstered by opposition from the Church in Europe to American independence, threatening a revival of Pope Day. Commenting in 1775, George Washington was less than impressed by the thought of any such resurrections, and forbade any under his command from participating.

Generally, following Washington's complaint, American colonists stopped observing Pope Day, although according to The Bostonian Society some citizens of Boston celebrated it on one final occasion, in 1776. The tradition continued in Salem as late as 1817, and was still observed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1892.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Berlant, Lauren. The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life. University of Chicago Press, 1991. ISBN 0226043770
• Buchanan, Brenda J. et al. Gunpowder Plots: A Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Nights. Penguin, 2005.
• Davis, John Paul. Pity for The Guy: A Biography of Guy Fawkes. Peter Owen Publishers, 2010. ISBN 0720613493
• Fraser, Antonia. The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605.Orion Pub. Co., 2004. ISBN 0753814013
• Hutton, Ronald. Stations Of The Sun. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0192854488
• Nicholls, Mark. The Gunpowder Plot Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 22, 2005. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
• Porter, Roy. Myths of the English. Blackwell Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0745608442
• Pratt, Lynda (ed.). Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism. Routledge, 2006. ISBN 0754630463
• Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0195146913
• Sharpe, James. Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day. Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN 0674019350

• Fuchs, Lawrence H. (1990), The American kaleidoscope: race, ethnicity, and the civic culture, Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 978-0-8195-6250-0 

• Kaufman, Jason Andrew (2009), The origins of Canadian and American political differences, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-03136-4 

• Phillip, Arthur (1789), The Voyage of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay, John Stockdale 

• Tager, Jack (2001), Boston riots: three centuries of social violence, University Press of New England, ISBN 978-1-55553-461-5 
• Underdown, David (1987), Revel, riot, and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603–1660 (reprinted, illustrated ed.), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-285193-4 
• Young, Alfred F (1999), The shoemaker and the tea party memory and the American Revolution, Boston, ISBN 978-0-8070-7142-7 

• For information on Pope Day as it was observed in Boston, see 5th of November in Boston, The Bostonian Society 
• For information on Bonfires in Newfoundland and Labrador, see Bonfire Night, collections.mun.ca 
• To read further on England's tradition of Protestant holidays, see Cressy, David (1989), Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-06940-4 . Cressy covers the same topic in Cressy, David (1994), "National Memory in Early Modern England", in John R. Gillis, Commemorations – The Politics of National Identity, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-02925-2 
• For anecdotal evidence of the origins of Guy Fawkes Night as celebrated in the Bahamas in the 1950s, see Crowley, Daniel J. (July 1958), 158. Guy Fawkes Day at Fresh Creek, Andros Island, Bahamas, vol. 58, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, DOI:10.2307/2796328 
• A short history of Guy Fawkes celebrations: Etherington, Jim (1993), Lewes Bonfire Night, SB Publications, ISBN 978-1-85770-050-3 
• Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (2009), History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War 1603–1642 (8), BiblioBazaar, LLC, ISBN 978-1-115-26650-5 
• For comments regarding the observance of the custom in the Caribbean, see Newall, Venetia (Spring 1975), Black Britain: The Jamaicans and Their Folklore, vol. 86, Taylor & Francis, on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, DOI:10.1080/0015587X.1975.9715997 
• A study of the political and social changes that affected Guy Fawkes Night: Paz, D. G. (1990), "Bonfire Night in Mid Victorian Northamptonshire: the Politics of a Popular Revel", Historical Research 63 (152): 316–328, DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2281.1990.tb00892.x 

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Guy_Fawkes_Night  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Guy Fawkes Night"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.