Early Modern Terrorism? The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 & its Aftermath (workshop)

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For more past programming from the Folger Institute, please see the article Folger Institute scholarly programs archive.

This was a fall 2005 weekend workshop organized by Chris R. Kyle (Syracuse University). Speakers included Ian Archer (Oxford), A.R. Braunmuller (UCLA), David Cressy (Ohio State), Fran Dolan (UC Davis), Paul E. J. Hammer (University of St. Andrews), Jonathan Gil Harris (George Washington University), Jason Peacey (History of Parliament Trust), Charles Tilly (Columbia), and Jenny Wormald (Oxford).

This workshop marked the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, one of the most dramatic assassination attempts in history. On 5 November 1605, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were foiled in their plan to detonate barrels of gunpowder at the opening of the English Parliament. Had they succeeded, the overwhelming majority of the political, judicial, religious, and administrative elites of England would simply have disappeared. The resulting power vacuum would have left England open to foreign invasion, re-conversion to Roman Catholicism, and a brutal struggle for the very survival of the nation as an independent entity. The workshop undertook fresh examinations of the documentary record as well as the social, political, religious, and architectural landscapes of early modern London and Westminster. With invited speakers as catalysts to discussion, participants explored such issues as the forms of protest in early modern England, the literary and political aftermath of the event, and the plot’s subsequent memorializations. The workshop considered the historical resonances of the event from multiple perspectives, examining the identities and status of the conspirators, the motivations and consequences of violent interventions in public affairs, the question of early modern terrorism, the political subterfuge of official responses, and the role of print culture in memory. The group also examined literary and dramatic responses to the conspiracy from the production of pamphlets to the performance of Macbeth and the sudden interest of playwrights, theater owners, and audiences in “staged” explosions. To preserve the interactive nature of the workshop, participation was limited to fifty. Applicants described the ways their current research engaged the issues and prepared them to participate actively throughout the sessions.

Select Bibliography Relating to the Gunpowder Plot

Buchanan, Brenda et al. Gunpowder Plots: A Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Nights. Allen Lane, 2005.

Carrafiello, Michael L. “Robert Parsons’ Climate of Resistance and the Gunpowder Plot.” Seventeenth Century [Great Britain] 3.2 (1988): 115-134.

Cressy, David. Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Eagleton, Terry. Holy Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Edwards, Francis, S.J. “Still investigating Gunpowder Plot.” Recusant History 21.3 (1993): 305-346.

Hale, John K. “Milton and the Gunpowder Plot: In Quintum Novembris reconsidered.” Humanistica Lovaniensia 50 (2001): 351-366.

Hardin, Richard F. “The early poetry of the gunpowder plot: myth in the making.” English Literary Renaissance 22.1 (1992): 62-79.

Shami, Jeanne, ed. John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon: A Parallel-Text Edition. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1996.

Shami, Jeanne. John Donne and Conformity in the Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit. D.S. Brewer, 2003.

Nicholls, Mark. Investigating the Gunpowder plot. Manchester [England]; Manchester University Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

Peck, Linda Levy. Northampton, Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I. London; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1982.

Ponting, Clive. Gunpowder: The Story. Chatto and Windus, 2005.

Sharpe, James. Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Tilly, Charles. “Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists.” Sociological Theory 22.1 (March 2004).

Travers, James. Gunpowder: The Players Behind the Plot. National Archives, 2005.

Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. New York: New York Public Library: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Wormald, Jenny. “Gunpowder, Treason, and Scots.” Journal of British Studies 24.2 (1985): 141-168.