What If the Gunpowder Plot Had Succeeded?

Introduction

As history actually turned out, there are two very good reasons why the Gunpowder Plot had to fail. The first was that the plotters were caught in the double-bind of most early modern conspirators: in order to make a rebellion work, it had to involve a lot of people, but the more people who knew about the plot, the more it was likely to leak.

In the case of this one, the means of effecting it, by murdering most of the English political élite, was so sensational and so morally disturbing to most people, that the chances of somebody blowing the whistle on it were unusually high.

That is exactly what happened; one of the people brought into the plot in its later stages (probably the unstable Francis Tresham) told an opportunist peer, Lord Monteagle, who tipped off the government. The other reason why the plot was a guaranteed failure was simply that the powder would not have blown.

When it was moved to the Tower of London magazine after Guy Fawkes was caught, it was discovered to be `decayed'; that is, it had done what gunpowder always did when left to sit for too long, and separated into its component chemical parts, rendering it harmless. If Guy had plunged in the torch with Parliament all ready above him, all that would have happened would have been a damp splutter.

Both these fatal weaknesses were contingent, however, on one accident of history; the postponement of Parliament. It had originally been scheduled to meet on 3 October 1605, and only the lingering traces of bubonic plague in London made it seem sensible to put off the occasion for a month.

Let us suppose that this one variable had been removed, and there had been no plague in the capital that summer. Parliament would have met a month before, very probably when the gunpowder (stored in the cellar since July) was still lethally effective, and arguably before one of the less discreet plotters had lost nerve enough to talk to Monteagle.

We are thus in a real position to suppose that in October 1605, King James, Queen Anne, and both Houses of Parliament would indeed have gone sky-high together, leaving the Catholic conspirators ready to seize the kingdom. What would have happened then?

Bloody aftermath

Detail from a print showing the execution of the gunpowder conspirators  © Almost certainly, the result would have been a catastrophe for the English Roman Catholic community. The plan of the plotters was that while Guy was blowing up Parliament, most of the others would be making for the Midlands, to seize the dead king's elder daughter Elizabeth, from her residence in Warwickshire, and start an armed rebellion there which would spread out to take over the country.

The king's elder son, Henry, would have died with his parents, and the younger one, Charles, was to be taken prisoner at London before the conspirators pulled out, and then brought up to the Midlands to join his sister.

What is really significant about the results is not that the explosion did not go off, nor that the plotters could not find Charles to capture him before riding north, but that when they reached the central counties they behaved as though the whole scheme had worked, announcing to their friends there that the the king was dead.

Despite this lie, very few recruits joined them and the project of taking Elizabeth had to be called off. The small armed band that they did pull together was hunted down by Protestant vigilantes led by local officials, and were then killed or captured.

It is unlikely that things would have been very different had the explosion occurred, even had the conspirators captured the royal children. For obvious security reasons most of the small English Catholic community had not been informed of the plot, and one important member who had heard about it by accident, Henry Garnet the leader of the English Jesuits, had been horrified and ordered the plotters to desist.

As news spread of the mass-murder at Westminster and the rebellion in the Midlands, the rest of the English Catholics would have been caught by surprise, and felt appalled by the scale of the crime.

They would have been in no physical or emotional position to support the rebels, and they would have been surrounded by Protestants who were hearing of the atrocity in the capital and the uprising, aware that Catholics were responsible for both, and left under the command of their surviving local leaders.

Almost certainly these would have taken up arms in a panic, turned upon the Catholics in their respective areas, and imprisoned or slaughtered them, in an English equivalent to the wave of hate and fear that had driven the French Catholics to massacre the Protestants there on St Bartholomew's Day in 1572.

Protestant militia and vigilantes would have converged on the rebels in the Midlands and overwhelmed them. It is unlikely that the conspirators would have murdered the royal children when surrounded. Their actual conduct when brought to bay was that of a high-minded resignation to martyrdom.

The Catholic powers of Europe would have protested at the slaughter inflicted upon their co-religionists, but the murder of the king, queen and peerage would have done much to excuse it in the eyes of foreign states.

No English Civil War

The implications of this outcome for future British history would have been tremendous. Charles I would have become king at the age of four instead of twenty-four. He would never have had the difficult relationship with his parents that left him determined to abandon most of his father's policies, and never have made a friendship with his father's unpopular favourite, Buckingham, so tarnishing the opening of his own reign.

Instead he would have revered the memory of his murdered parents, and almost certainly have acquired an abiding hatred of Catholicism, and tended instead to the evangelical wing of Anglicanism. This would have made him much more popular in both England and Scotland than the Anglo-Catholic policies that he adopted instead.

His sister would almost certainly have married a Protestant German prince (as she actually did), and when he lost his lands to Catholic powers (as he also really did), our different, zealously Protestant and anti-Catholic, Charles would have entered the war wholeheartedly on their side. As a godly Protestant prince, with all the serious and devout nature of the real Charles, he would have been assured of considerable support in Britain.

It is true that the financial system was under serious strain already, and would probably have collapsed under the war effort, but the accord between our new Charles and his subjects would have provided a much better basis for an overhaul of it to strengthen the monarchy.

It is true also that the Catholic majority in Ireland, faced with such a hostile king, would have probably been moved to rebellion as they actually were against the Long Parliament in 1641, but the most likely end to that would be that the crushing of the Irish Catholics by Cromwell would have occurred much sooner, and by a secure and popular king.

Absolute monarchy

The Irish problem would have been solved by a programme of mass confiscation and mass evangelization, leaving three Protestant kingdoms under one monarch. In short, had Guy Fawkes succeeded, the British state would have turned into a Protestant absolute monarchy as Sweden, Denmark, Saxony and Prussia all did in the course of the 17th century; but much stronger than any of those. As such, it would in turn have paid the price of this achievement, as its powerful monarchy collapsed in revolution in modern times.

There is, however, another scenario. Let us suppose that the English Protestant majority were sufficiently shocked and demoralized by the destruction of their ruling élite, and sufficiently reassured by promises of religious toleration offered by the new Catholic-controlled government, to give in to the conspirators.

The royal children would have been handed over to the Jesuits for education, led by the gentle and intelligent Father Garnet. Whatever Elizabeth thought, it is possible that Charles's nature, both pious and insecure, would have responded to them, especially as Garnet would have emphasised his personal distaste for the slaughter caused by the explosion.

Charles would then have converted to Catholicism, which would well have suited his yearning for order, harmony, and beauty, and his taste in art and architecture. Many of his subjects would slowly have followed his lead, until Protestantism in England became a minority from whom toleration could be withdrawn in future generations as it was in France.

Ireland would enthusiastically have supported the new regime, making Anglo-Irish relations a model of co-operation, while Scotland would have declared independence under cousins of the Stuarts and become a refuge for English Protestants; ultimately it would probably have been conquered.

Parliament would have been compromised enough by the Catholic need to control a Protestant majority to disappear or be rendered innocuous. The road to absolute monarchy would have been taken; but this time on the model of France, Spain or Austria.

Instead we got the Anglo-Catholic Charles I, a rebellious Scotland, civil wars, revolutions, constitional monarchy; and a peaceful, and stable modern Britain. So much can hang upon the presence of a few plague bacilli in the right place.

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About the author

Professor Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol. Ronald Hutton took three degrees at Cambridge and Oxford, and was elected to an Oxford fellowship before moving to Bristol University where he is now Professor of History. His books include: The Triumph of the Moon: a history of modern pagan witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999) The Royalist War Effort (1981), Charles II (1989) and The Rise and Fall of Merry England (1994).