Guy Fawkes was arrested (pictured) at 2 o’clock this morning in 1605. He and his Catholic friends had hoped that the new English King James I would be a Catholic. When he turned out to be Protestant, they worked through their disappointment by plotting to light 36 barrels of gunpowder under the packed Houses of Parliament. They were found out, just hours before the big bang, because they had sent letters to several MPs suggesting they find something non-parliamentary to do for the day, as ‘God and man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the times.’ The conspirators were tortured and killed, and the quaint tradition of burning Guy Fawkes in effigy is still today one of the major annual festivals of Britain.
Remember, remember,
The fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot;
For I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
English Nursery rhyme
The Vatican was bombed during World War II, just after 8pm today in 1943. Four bombs exploded in the Vatican Gardens, one of which pointlessly hit the mosaics workshop, which was already in smithereens before the bomb struck. No one was killed, and the nationality of the bomber has been debated ever since, with the Americans, the British, and the Italian Fascists coming under suspicion. A Vatican official who was an eyewitness to the bombing noted that ‘5 November is for England an anti-pope day’.
James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist who unified the study of electricity, magnetism and light, as well as proposing that the rings of Saturn were made from small particles, died today in 1879 at the age of 48. Widely regarded as the third great physicist after Newton and Einstein, he was also a committed Christian, and an elder in the Church of Scotland. On the lintel above the oak doors into the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, which he founded, he had the words of Psalm 111 carved: Magna opera Domini exquisita in omnes voluntates eius (‘Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them’).
‘Molecules continue this day as they were created – perfect in number and measure and weight; and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him who in the beginning created, not only the heavens and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.’ James Clerk Maxwell, ‘Discourse on Molecules’, 1873
The Calvinist Prince William of Orange invaded England today in 1688, landing with a Dutch army of 15,000 men in Brixham, Devon. Unusually, he had been invited to invade by a group representing Parliament, due to widespread disaffection with the absolutism and religious policies of King James II, who was a Catholic. Awkwardly for family relationships, he was also William’s father in law, as William had married his daughter Mary. The landing marked the beginning of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, which ended with Mary and William jointly taking the English throne, while James went into exile.
Today in 1745, John Wesley wrote in his Journal: ‘In the evening I came to Leeds, and found the town full of bonfires, and people shouting, firing of guns, cursing and swearing, as the English manner of keeping holidays is.’
Image: Mischeefes Mysterie London