FAWKES, GUY (157o-16o6), English "gunpowder plot" conspirator, son of Edward Fawkes of York, a member of a good Yorkshire family and advocate of the archbishop of York's con sistory court, was baptized at St. Michael le Belf rey at York on April 16, 1570. His parents being Protestants, he was educated at the free school at York. Soon after his father's death his mother re-married. Fawkes's stepfather was connected with many Roman Catholic families, and was probably a Roman Catholic himself, and Fawkes himself became a zealous adherent of the old faith. In 1593 he went to Flanders and enlisted in the Spanish army, assisting at the capture of Calais by the Spanish in 1S96 and gaining some military reputation.
In 1604 Thomas Winter, at the in stance of Catesby, in whose mind the gunpowder plot had now taken definite shape, introduced himself to Fawkes in Flanders, and as "a confident gentleman," "best able for this business," brought him on to England as assistant in the conspiracy. Shortly afterwards he was initiated into the plot, after taking an oath of secrecy, meeting Catesby, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy and John Wright at a house behind St. Clement's (see GUNPOWDER PLOT and CATESBY, ROBERT). Owing to his being unknown in London, to his exceptional courage and coolness, and probably to his military experience, Fawkes was entrusted with the actual accomplishment of the design and when the house adjoining the parliament house was hired in Percy's name, he took charge of it as Percy's servant, under the name of Johnson. He acted as sentinel while the others worked at the mine in Dec. 1604, and on the discovery of the adjoining cellar, situated immediately be neath the House of Lords, he arranged in it the barrels of gun powder, which he covered with firewood and coals and with iron bars to increase the force of the explosion. When all was ready in May 1605 Fawkes was despatched to Flanders to acquaint Sir William Stanley, the betrayer of Deventer, and the intriguer Owen with the plot. He returned in August and brought fresh gunpowder into the cellars to replace any which might be spoilt by damp. A slow match was prepared which would give him a quarter of an hour in which to escape from the explosion. For the discovery of the scheme see GUNPOWDER PLOT.
Fawkes behaved with the utmost fortitude when arrested. He refused stubbornly to give information concerning his accom plices; on Nov. 8 he gave a narrative of the plot, but it was not till the 9th, when the fugitive conspirators had been taken at Holbeche, that torture wrung from him their names. His signa ture to his confession of this date, consisting only of his Christian name and written in a faint and trembling hand, is probably a ghastly testimony to the severity of the torture ("per gradus ad ima") which James had ordered to be applied if he would not otherwise confess. He was tried, together with the two Winters, John Grant, Ambrose Rokewood, Robert Keyes and Thomas Bates, before a special commission in Westminster Hall on Jan. 27, 1606. He suffered death in company with Thomas Winter, Rokewood and Keyes on the 31st, being drawn on a hurdle from the Tower to the Parliament House, opposite which he was executed. He made a short speech on the scaffold, expressing his repentance, and mounted the ladder last and with assistance, being weak from torture and illness.
The lantern said to be Guy Fawkes's is in the Bodleian library at Oxford.
d, by S. R. Gardiner, vol. i.; and the same author's What Gunpowder Plot was (1897) ; The Fawkeses of York in the 16th Century, by R. Davies (185o) ; Dict. of Nat. Biog. and authorities cited there. The official account (un trustworthy in details) is the True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the late most Barbarous Traitors (16o6), reprinted by Bishop Barlow of Lincoln as The Gunpowder Treason (1679).
