guy_fawkes : Who was Guy Fawkes

In his preliminary interrogation at the end of 1605, Guy Fawkes claimed to have converted to Catholicism at the age of 16. It is thought he left England for Flanders in 1593 or 1594, where he enlisted in the Spanish army as a gunpowder packer working with explosives. He left the Spanish armed forces on February 16th, 1603, to make a trip to Spain to muster Spanish support for an invasion of England on Queen Elizabeth's death, which never transpired.

King James I (a Protestant and the first sovereign to reign England, Ireland and Scotland simultaneously) took over the throne of religiously intolerant England on March 24 1603, and it was soon felt he was not at all sympathetic to bettering the Catholic's status in England – there were severe penal laws against the practice of the Catholic religion in England at the time. Disappointment with his new King is one of the possible reasons Guy Fawkes felt the need to take action against him. Sources disagree as to whether the plot was to actually destroy the Houses of Parliament and influence a Catholic uprising, or to kill King James (who had not kept his promise to stop the persecution of Catholics) and in the ensuing chaos place a more Catholic friendly royal on the throne.

For Easter 1604 Guy Fawkes was back in England, when he met up with Thomas Wintour, whom Guy Fawkes would eventually confess to having conceived of the Gunpowder Plot. However, it is felt that Robert Catesby was more likely the leader of the gunpowder plot due to his Catholic connections. Initially there were only five conspirators, all from the nobility but for Guy Fawkes: Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, John (aka Jack) Wright, Thomas Wintour and Guy Fawkes. They met at an inn called the duck (quaaaaack) and Drake on the Strand in London in May 1604 where they made an oath together in regards to the gunpowder plot, which was sanctified with a mass and administration of the sacraments by a Priest. It was at that point that Guy Fawkes assumed the identity of John Johnson and said he was a servant of Thomas Percy.

One of the problems with the explosion was that like it would potentially kill Catholics in the Houses of Parliament at the time, so on October 18th, 1605, Guy Fawkes met with Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintour and Francis Tresham to discuss how certain Catholic peers could be warned and thus removed from the explosion. A warning letter was delivered to Lord Monteagle, a former Catholic supporter, on October 26th that stated he should not attend the opening of Parliament, currently set for November 5th, 1605. (It is thought that Francis Tresham sent this letter.) Lord Monteagle passed the letter on to the king's chief advisor, Robert Cecil, and although the conspirators found out about the letter, they did not cancel their plans, convinced that the government knew nothing. (Some believe the Gunpowder Plot was the efforts of Robert Cecil to persuade the more Catholic-tolerant King James that the Catholics could not be trusted and that he should not repeal any laws against them.)

It seems that Guy Fawkes was completely ignorant of the existence of the Monteagle letter. On Wednesday October 30th he inspected the cellar again to ensure that the gunpowder was still hidden and ready for the explosion. As late as November 3rd, 1605, the conspirators met and were sure the authorities were not cognizant of their plans. All, but for Guy Fawkes, made plans to leave London. It was Guy Fawkes’s task to watch the cellar and fire the gunpowder the moment Parliament opened. He was to leave for Flanders the instance he had done this.

The Privy Council met in King James’s bedchamber early on the morning of November 5th, where Guy Fawkes was also brought in. The only information he gave was that (or this, or whatever) his name was John Johnson and he was a servant of Thomas Percy. In a letter dated November 6th, 1605, King James ordered gentle torture of Guy Fawkes… proceeding to the worst. Guy Fawkes succumbed to the torture (most likely the manacles and the rack) on November 7th, giving his real name and that the plotters were merely five men. On November 8th he gave the details of the plot and on November 9th he named his fellow conspirators upon hearing that some had already been arrested.

The conspirators' trial began on Monday January 27th, 1606. Essentially it was a trial in name only, where the plotters plead not guilty, although a guilty verdict had already been handed down. Execution of the conspirators began on January 30th, 1606, with Sir Everard Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant and Thomas Bates, who were all executed at the west end of St. Paul's Church. On Friday January 31st, 1606, the hanging, drawing and quartering of Guy Fawkes, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes took place in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster "in the very place which they had planned to demolish in order to hammer home the message of their wickedness." Thomas Wintour was first, then Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes, and finally Guy Fawkes.

The ultimate result of the Gunpowder Plot was to provoke hostility against all English Catholics, leading to even harsher laws against them (a semblance of religious equality did not come until 200 years later). To this day it is law in Britain that a Roman Catholic cannot hold the office of monarch, and the Queen is still Supreme Head of the Church of England. Also to this day, the Yeoman of the Guard searches the cellars beneath the Houses of Parliament before the session begins each November. However the actual cellar Guy Fawkes used for gunpowder storage was damaged by fire in 1834, then totally destroyed during the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster in the 1800s.

The night the Gunpowder Plot was foiled it is believed that bonfires were lit across London in celebration. There are no accurate records of when "guys" (lifesize dolls made from found materials) first became a bonfire feature but is believed to be while James I was on the English throne (from March 24th, 1603 to his death on March 27, 1625). Then after the reign of Charles II (1685) children began making human effigies from straw and wood called "guys" and took them through the streets chanting "Penny for the guy" to get money with which to buy fireworks. It is thought the "guy" wasn't thrown into the fire until sometime in the 1700s and was not only representative of Guy Fawkes, but also of the Pope and the Devil. The "guy" usually has an evil looking face, sometimes wearing a brightly colored mask.

The second was based around the double keyboard and involved using two or four fingers while still looking at the keys. A double keyboard has twice the amount of keys, with the capitals above and lowercase below. Both claimed to be the fastest way to type. This dispute was finally resolved when a Mr. McGurrin (an advocater of touch-typing) and a Mr. Tubb, had a competition using the two methods.

The challenge took place in Cincinnati in July 1888 and attracted worldwide attention. The winner was Mr. Gurin who beat Mr. Tubb with ease and at the same time introduced the method that would be used by typists in various forms from then on.

Though this argument had been settled it did not stop the competitions. Many typewriter manufacturers saw the potential of selling their products by creating typing challenges and the craze continued. However, one person and one type of machine prevailed. Charles. E. Smith continually won the speed-typing competition on an Underwood machine until the public lost interest and the contests stopped.

It has been argued that Sholes' intention in creating such a keyboard was not to produce a more efficient machine but to slow down the typist deliberately so that the flaws in his typewriter were never seen! Either way the QWERTY keyboard is still with us today. Attempts have been made to alter the design but none has been successful at winning over public opinion. Other designs have included one by Dr. August Dvorak, who attempted to simplify the keyboardand increase speed typing by 35%. However, like others before him, his ideas were not well received. He claimed changing the keyboard format was like proposing to "reverse the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, discard every moral principle, and ridicule motherhood"!

Those machines which adopted the accepted design, such as the Underwood,proved successful; those who tried to break with tradition, such as the Hammond typewriter, generally failed.

It was in America that the idea of employing women to type was first formed. In 1881 the Young Women’s Christian Association bought six typewriters and began a typing class for eight women. Within five years 60,000 were working throughout the United States.

As typing (you know that typing is an important requirement in todays world) classes began to develop, some typewriting manufacturers' including Remington, began to set up their own schools. It was within these schools that the skill of shorthand began to be taught alongside the all-finger touch-typing technique. In some cases companies would train up women and then offer their skills when selling their machines to an office.

The evolution of women in the office has had impact on the development of women's rights in all areas of professional life. Before the advent of the typist most women were working in shops, factories or domestic service. Only if they had received a high level of education could women improve their prospects by pursuing nursing or teaching. With the development of the typist and typing-pools, women could take up a 'respectable’ job which did not demand such high levels of education.

The increasing number of women in the workplace cannot just be explained by the development of the typewriter. What the machine did do was establish a role that allowed further opportunities to grow. However, there was also a drawback to the rise of the typist. Many women began to be sterotyped as only able to carry out this level of work and had to struggle to improve their position.

1. One of the first times a typewriter was mentioned in a fictional book was in the Sherlock Holmes detective story 'A case of Identity' written in 1892. Holmes solved the mystery by identifying the impostor's typewriter.

2. Mark Twain, the American novelist, was the first known author to submit a typed manuscript. He was supposed to have typed his most famous story, 'Tom Sawyer', but it is more likely to have been 'Life on the Mississippi'. Twain’s typewriter was a Remington No.1, invented by Christopher Sholes and Carlos Glidden.

3. During World War One, secret writing machines were developed which wrote unintelligible text. This information could then be deciphered on the same type of machine. Many attempts were made to break the codes written by the secret writing machines.

4. During World War Two, the Japanese thought that they had created the perfect secret writing machines, thinking their codes were unbreakable. However, the Americans did manage to break them, and Japanese war secrets were discovered.

5. The Science Museum's collection includes a Japanese typewriter ca. 1930, which has to accommodate thousands of characters. These characters are called ideograms, which are used instead of letters. One example within the collection includes several trays of ideograms, with each tray containing 2,380 separate ones. Each ideogram is placed within the typewriter and a print is made onto the paper.

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