GUY FAWKES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 691, 17 November 1933, Page 7

GUY FAWKES

GALLANT FIGURE TORTURED BUT REFUSED TO BETRAY HIS COMRADES. CROMWELL WAS LUCKIiER. i i "It is the duty of every honest Englishman to endeavour by means less wholesale than those of Guy Fawkes to ameliorate without extinguishing Parliaments," wrote Charles Lamh, of Guy Fawkes, whose memory we celehrated on November 5. But Lamh would "apply the match to the rotten part of the system only" and wrap himself up, "no't in the muffling mantle of conspiracy, hut in the warm, honest cloak of integrity and patriotic iiitention." True, the Guy Fawkes Day was instituted as one of pious thanksgiving that Guy was caught before he had a chanee (in 1605) to touch off the barrels of gunpowder and send Parliament sky-high. He was thus represented as a monster of traitorous villainy from whose diabolical machinations the nation had been saved. But England, while it sat Guy's effi'gy on a bonfire and let off rejoiceful fireworks, never quite swallowed this estimate of him. "Gallant Gentleman." G. C. Heseltine, author of Great Yorkshii'emen, ranked him with Captain Cook, Wilherforce, Wycliffe, Andrew Marvell and Cardinal Fisher. Says Heseltine: — "The falne of Guy Fawkes depends not so much on what he did as wh'at he failed to do. The daring, spectacular thing he failed to do appealed irresistably to the popular imagination.

"We lilce a man who makes a noise in the world. It would seem that we like even more a man who fails to make a noise in the world. We may not exactly like Guy Fawkes, but he was , despite his failure, a very gallant gentleman. Cromwell Didn't Fail. 'There is not a single thing recorded to the discredit of this Yorkshireman except the debatable offence of joining a conspiracy to remove from the earthly scene as swiftly and as painlessly as possible a ppwer that was to him and his fellows, tymnnous, unjust, and appressive beyond endurance. . . . "Guy Fawkes was rightly executed as a menace to the maintenance of authority and order in the State. Yet although he and his fri'ends adopted unsuceessful methods, they were attempting just what Cromwell had been honoured for achieving." • Against Tyranny. He had turned Catholic and those of his faith were being hounded by the edicts of the Parliament of King James and Guy's people had suffered under this oppression. So he entered the plot to blast the lfegislative caitiffs, the tyrants, the oppressors off this earth, and lent a hand with pick and shovel at digging tunnels under Parliament House and rolling in barrels of gunpowder. Wouldn't Tell. Guy Fawkes was tortured for the names of his fellow conspirators. He was stretched on the rack, he was susp snded by his thumbs, and some say the cruel thumhscrew was used on him. Some historians say he broke his vow ofsecrecy. Heseltine vigorously denies this. Guy, he says, did give the names — when they were of no further use, and only after five days of torture. He knew then that several of the conspirators had already been killed while resisting capture, and that the others were in custody. Weak from Tortur.e. His fingers were so crushed from the tortures that he could not properly sign his name to the confession. The other conspirators pleaded for mercy. Guy Fawkes did not. The contemporary accounts of his execution read: — "Last of all come the great devil of all, Fawkes, ali'as Johnson, who should have put fire to the powder. His hody being weak wtih torture and sickness, he was scarce able to go up the ladder, but yet, with much ado, by the help of the hangman, went high enough to break his neck with the fall." To-day all who called him "foul and traitorous" are forgotten. His memory survives.