Bonfire Societies are very big in Sussex. For four consecutive Saturdays there are Night-time Torchlight Processions through the centres of Battle, Lewes, Hastings and Rye followed by a Public Bonfire and Fireworks Display. Towns take turns for the best Saturday…closest to the Fifth of November. In the 1950s a Penny for the Guy tradition still existed but this has morphed into the imported Halloween Trick or Treat…which arrived in America onboard ships bearing Irish, German and Scandinavians immigrants fleeing famine or fighting in Europe.
By the 1550s Rye was the largest port in Sussex and…with Dover…the chief port of transit for the Continent. The Royal Mail passed through Rye. In France the Huguenots were much feared by the French Catholic State…a political and military force to be reckoned with. In 1561 the 11-year old King Charles IX of France was instructed to issue an edict authorising imprisonment and confiscation of property for those attending heretical services…public or private.
This was a declaration of war on Protestants by Catholics. Behind the boy king were powerful Catholic forces including France’s Regent…his mother Catharine de Medici…the de Guise Family and The Pope. The spark that set France alight was the massacre of 1200 Protestants at Sunday worship in April 1562. 10-years later in August 1572 the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre took place in Paris. 30 000 Huguenots were slaughtered while celebrating the wedding of the Protestant Henry de Navarre to the Catholic Marguerite de Valois. Killing continued for three days.
Jo Kirkham in Huguenots in Rye tells of reports reaching Rye of 1800 killed in Lyons and 600 killed in Rouen. Refugees flooded into Rye from Dieppe and other French towns seeking asylum. Despite seven attempted Cease-Fires the religious civil war raged in France for 30-years. An estimated 100 000 innocent civilians were killed. As a proportion of the population this compares with the 650 00 killed in Iraq since the 2003 Invasion.
Intricate diplomacy by Queen Elizabeth’s Private Secretary William Cecil and constant vigilance by her Spymaster Francis Walsingham kept the religious civil wars at bay on the other side of the English Channel. But in 1603 Elizabeth I died after 44 years on the English Throne and was succeeded by the Catholic King James IV from Scotland who added the title of King James I of England to his Scottish title. Just five days after arriving in London from Scotland James met with a Huguenot Delegation at Greenwich to assure them of his good intentions.
I like the cut of King James' jib. He seems to have been shrewd. Like Canute the Great he was ever conscious of the limits of his power…and acted accordingly. He held moderate opinions himself and was tolerant of the beliefs of others. He sought consensus. And he did his level best to avoid getting embroiled in foreign wars. The two things that have reverberated down the centuries with his name on them are the King James’ Bible and The Irish Problem…on which Gladstone famously remarked: ‘No sooner do I answer The Irish Question than they change the question.’
This is the background to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Here is the case for the prosecution. ‘The accused in December made a mine under the House of Parliament purposing to place their powder there; in Lent following they hired the vault and placed therein 20 barrels of powder; on 20 July they laid in another 10 barrels of powder, laying upon them divers great bars of iron and pieces of timber and great massy stones and covered the same with faggots; on 20 September they laid in 4 more hogsheads of powder with other stores and bars of iron thereupon; and on 4 November at 11 a clock at night, Fawkes had prepared touchwood and match to give fire to the powder the next day.’
In Victorian Times the expert on King James I was S.R. Gardiner who in 1884 produced a 10-volume History of England 1603-42 and followed it up in 1893 with a 4-volume History of the Great Civil War and in 1903 with a further four volumes on the History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Does anybody read Victorian Historians nowadays? Read Gardiner and post anything interesting on the internet. Send me the URL Address. If I like your research I will link it to this blog. Let’s write our own Guy Fawkes Wikihistory Book. Why not?
