The acclaimed author of The New House brings to life the 1605 plot to blow up the House of Lords and assassinate King James I in a vividly imagined novel. “Please to remember, The Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.” —Traditional English Rhyme The legend of Guy Fawkes and the infamous Gunpowder Plot is a deeply rooted part of English identity. The fateful events of November 5, 1605 are still celebrated across the country with bonfires, sparklers, and the now-ubiquitous Guy Fawkes mask. But few revelers know the real story behind one of the most infamous conspiracies ever attempted. How did a small band of Catholic conspirators organize such an audacious plot? Were they noble freedom fighters or merely seventeenth century terrorists? In this meticulously researched historical novel, Lettice Cooper conjures the desperation and danger behind one of the most significant events in modern history.

"This book takes a fresh look at the most famous treason case in English history, a complex tale of treachery, suspicion, rebellion and retribution. [The author] shows how, starting with the most slender of leads, the Jacobean government built up a full picture of the conspiracy and tracked down the guilty men and brought them to justice. The story does not end with the bloody executions of Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators in 1606. For the first time in a book on the Gunpowder treason, [the author] investigates in depth the role in the plot played by the ninth earl of Northumberland, seen by many as the plotters' logical choice for a protector of the realm after blast, who was imprisoned in the Tower for sixteen years on suspicion of complicity. By examining the earl's political career in the years around 1605, the author shows how the government investigations, though shedding much light on the plot, never revealed the whole truth. [The author] cuts through the distortions of centuries of political and religious propaganda to explain the real motives of the Gunpowder plotters. [The author] disposes of the 'conspiracy theory, ' which holds that the king's chief minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, framed the conspirators for his own political purposes, and ... sheds considerable light on the workings of early Jacobean government, particularly the privy council. [This book] should appeal to anyone interested in English history, as well as historians and students of seventeenth-century England"--

There was a real plot we shall have to judge for ourselves as the tense story unfolds; but it is not to be wondered at that Englishmen felt a shock of horror and of relief from catastrophe on November 5, 1605, or that we still celebrate the deliverance. Men, who were themselves good, in the sense that they were filled with religious zeal, had certainly planned one of the most evil deeds in history. They had planned murder on a mass scale; murder of King and Lords. The aim of this book is to take a familiar event in history and examine the cause and effect so that it no longer stands isolated from its background.