Before the meaning and significance of Guy Fawkes Night are lost forever in the forgetfulness of time – subsumed to the inexorable progression of Hallowe’en; fused irrevocably with Diwali and other festivals of lights with altogether foreign affirmations and commemorations – it is worth reflecting on the value of the remembrance.
Gratitude to God for deliverance is no longer part of the national psyche: there has been no full-frontal invasion attempt by a foreign power for 70 years, and so our security and liberty are taken for granted by generations who have never experienced the threat of oppression.
The exercise of democracy has become a quaint tradition which many are content to see compromised and diminished, and in which millions no longer bother to participate at all.
The Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries knew what it was to contend for liberty from the oppression of Rome: and so they also knew how to celebrate and commemorate that deliverance with the sort of flame by God's grace in England which they trusted might never be put out.
Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder plot failed in its objective to assassinate the Protestant King James, blow Parliament to kingdom come and restore the old religion. And that failure meant the preservation of our monarchy, of liberty and of our independence from foreign princes and potentates.
And the King and Parliament decreed that henceforth the 5th November would be remembered throughout history with fireworks, bonfires and feasts of celebration; with gratitude to God, an abundance of joy and thanksgiving, patriotic revelry and not a little drunkenness.
And here we are, four centuries later, with a Monarch who has been rendered a citizen of a foreign power and subjected to foreign courts; a Parliament which has surrendered its sovereignty and abdicated the Royal Prerogative such that it cannot even assert the primacy of its own statutes; and a Church which has forgotten what it is to be Protestant in a relativist sea of ecumenicity.
We were not bombed into submission: no bullets were fired, no hostages taken, no ransom exacted.
Our Parliament has freely conspired and our Monarch has given wilful assent to the present occupation of this Kingdom by a foreign imperium which is antithetical to our traditions, ignorant of our liberties and dismissive of our democracy.
What Guy Fawkes failed to achieve for the Pope of Rome with gunpowder, our Parliament surrendered to the Treaty of Rome with their own votes.
The Monarchy which Guy Fawkes sought to overthrow has willingly prostrated and assented to its own abdication.
The Union Flag is but a meaningless rag beneath the Corona Stellarum Duodecim of the European Union.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is subject to the rulings of the Supremest Court in Strasbourg.
Some might call all this 'Treason'.
If it be ‘an eternal truth’ that ‘what a sovereign parliament can do, a sovereign parliament can also undo’, then we look to our deliverer.
In the meantime, in commemoration of the miraculous deliverance of 1605, here are the verses of the celebratory pamphlet featured above:
True Protestants I pray you do draw near
Unto this ditty lend attentive ear,
The lines are new although the subject's old
Likewise it is as true as e'er was told.
When James the First in England reigned King,
Under his Royal gracious Princely wing
Religion flourish'd both in court and town
Which wretched Romans strove to trample down.
To their old plotting trade they straight did go,
To prove this Kingdom's final overthrow
A plot contriv'd by Catholics alone
The like before or since was never known.
Rome's Council did together often meet
For to contrive which way they might complete
This bloody treason which they took in hand
Against the King, and Heads of all the land.
At length these wretched Romans all agreed
Which way to make the King and Nation bleed
By powder, all agreed with joint consent.
To blow up both the King and Parliament.
For to keep secret this, their villany
By solemn oaths they one another tie
Nay farther, being void of grace and shame,
Each took the Sacrament upon the same.
Their Treason wrapp'd in this black mantle, then,
Secure and safe from all the eyes of men,
They did not fear/ but by one fatal blow,
To prove the Church and Kingdom's overthrow.
Catesby with all the other Roman crew,
This powder plot did eagerly pursue
Yet after all their mighty cost and care
Their own seat soon was taken in the snare.
Under the House of the great Parliament,
This Romish Den, and Devils by consent,
The Hellish powder plot they formed there,
In hopes to send all flying in the air.
barrels of powder privately convey'd,
billets and bars of iron too, were laid.
to tear up all before them as they flew,
a black invention by this dismal crew.
and with the fatal blow all must have flown,
the gracious king upon his royal throne,
His Gracious Queen likewise their Princely heir
All must have died and perish'd that was there.
The House of Noble Lords of high degree,
By this unheard of bloody tragedy,
Their limbs in sunder, straight would have been tore
And fill'd the air with noble bloody gore.
The worthy learned Judges grave and sagey
The Commons too, all must have felt Rome's rage,
Had not the Lord of Love crept in between
Oh! what a dismal slaughter there had been.
The King, the Queen and Barons of the land.
The Judges, Gentry did together stand,
On ruin's brink, while Rome the blow would give,
They'd but the burning of a match to live.
But that great God that sits in Heaven high.
He did behold their bloody treachery,
He made their own handwriting soon betray
The work which they had plotted many a day.
The Lord in Mercy did his Wisdom send,
Unto the King, his people to defend,
Which did reveal the hidden powder plot,
A gracious mercy, ne'er to be forgot
And brought Rome's faction unto punishment,
Which did the powder treason first invent,
And all that ever plots, I hope God will,
That the true Christian church may flourish still.
