 Stories from Parliament, The Gunpowder Plot, Part 2 November the 4th, 1605 After my nightmare, I lay awake knowing that the next day the King and the whole of Parliament would be blown to pieces. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I could see it all in my imagination. But I didn't know about the letter. Somebody had sent a letter to Lord Mont Eagle, telling him not to go to Parliament the next day, warning him that something terrible was going to happen. Tomorrow this Parliament shall receive a terrible blow, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. The letter was not signed. Mont Eagle took it to the King, and from that moment the gunpowder plot was doomed. The captain of the guard ordered his men. Find it. Search every attic and cellar. Open every door in Parliament. Throw open everything from the greatest hall to the smallest cupboard. Shine your torches into every nook and cranny. Go, now! Yes, Captain? There is a threat to the King hidden in Parliament. Find it, sir! Find it tonight. Find it now! Come on! In a cellar under the House of Lords, directly under the hall where the King would have sat the next day, they found Guy Fawkes. There! Seize that man! Find his arms! And hidden under a pile of firewood, they found the 34 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes had a watch, touch wood and matches in his pocket. They took him to the Tower of London, where the machines of torture and Sir Edward Cook were waiting. He didn't stand a chance. Who were the other traitors, Fawkes? Give us their names, and we will not hurt you. There were no others. I was working alone. Three days. They say he told them nothing for three days. Their names, Fawkes? I was alone. Till on the third day, he broke. Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, John Wright, Robert Catesby. So now they had my master's name. Robert Catesby put up a fight when the King's men tracked him down, that he was outnumbered. And they shot him, dead. I wept for my master, but at least I knew he had a quick death. The others were not so lucky. I was there at the trial in Westminster Hall. I saw them brought in. Heard them condemned for high treason. Heard to their confessions and the terrible sentences that were passed upon them. A bitter fate awaits any man who is guilty of high treason. These plotters, these conspirators, these vile traitors, shall be dragged through the streets to Old Palace Yard in Westminster. And there they will be hanged! I was there to see Guy Fawkes and three others die in the Old Palace Yard. Right next to the Parliament building they'd wanted to blow up. Traitors are made to suffer before they die. They are hanged, drawn and quartered. Their bodies are cut open while they are still alive. I will not tell you of the terrible things I saw that day, but I still shudder when I remember how those men died. I knew what they were planning, you see. If they were all traitors, and so was I. And if they truly deserved that terrible death, then perhaps I did too. And now weak ethics will not be trusted for a hundred years. They will stop us from practicing law or becoming officers in the army. Soon they will stop us from voting. For the next hundred years weak ethics will be blamed for every fire and plague in England. And the plotters, their names are already forgotten. Except one, for the people will remember Guy Fawkes. The King ordered bonfires to be lit to remember the night his Majesty was saved from certain death. And now, on November the 5th every year, people light their fires and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes. The man who witted in the dark with matches and touchwood in his pocket. The man who came within a whisker of changing England, forever.