27. Britain’s Most Notorious Traitor
Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes (1570 – 1606), earned a terrible reputation as Britain’s most infamous traitor. He is the best-known member of a group of Catholic militants who sought to assassinate King James I, along with the entirety of England’s House of Commons and House of Lords. In what came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot, Fawkes and his accomplices planned to do that by blowing up Parliament during its opening session in 1605, as a prelude to a Catholic uprising.
Fawkes was born into a prominent rural family, and converted to Catholicism in his youth. Between an adventurous spirit and the excessive zeal of the newly converted, he left Protestant England in 1593 to fight for Catholic Spain in the Netherlands. There, Fawkes earned a reputation for cool courage. In 1604, he was recruited by English Catholic plotters, who needed a military expert to help them strike at their Protestant government. Fawkes, whose decade living outside England meant he was neither well known nor easily recognizable in the country, could move about freely without arousing suspicions.