AKA: NO TO INTEGRALISM DAY:

As an icon, Fawkes is now cute and whimsical. But of course, he and his conspirators were terrorists and attempted assassins. Their success would have been disastrous for Britain and the wider cause of liberty in the world.  Britain, nearly unique in the world, had a robust and fairly independent parliament that could challenge arbitrary royal power. Within a few decades, the parliament would even launch a war against and behead the king.  Relative liberty in Britain contrasted with more autocratic Spain, for whom Fawkes fought in its war against the Protestant Netherlands.

Fawkes failed to get direct Spanish aid for insurrection in Britain, but he helped organize seditionists on his own. The explosion was intended to kill the "heretic" King James I, after which his nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth would become a Catholic queen who would return the natural order to Britain.  Fawkes was discovered with 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the House of Lords. Under torture he confessed his plans and the names of his co-conspirators.  He died by hanging before he could be drawn and quartered while still alive. In death, his body parts were scattered throughout Britain as an example.  King and parliament decreed that November 5 should be celebrated annually as a day of thanksgiving with bonfires and church services.  A special liturgy was added to the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer.  Later, fireworks on the holiday became prominent, if also dangerous.

King James II, who was Catholic, unsuccessfully tried to suppress the commemoration.  Auspiciously, William of Orange landed in England on November 5 to overthrow and replace James, and he gladly oversaw the full revival of the holiday. Guy Fawkes Day became enshrined as Britain's chief national day of celebration.  Britain has no equivalent of July 4 or Bastille Day.  Today, Guy Fawkes Day has no legal standing but is the British equivalent of Halloween as a quirky folk holiday.

Guy Fawkes Day has across centuries often included anti-Catholic themes and effigies of the pope. But in recent times those themes have mostly if not entirely faded.  Anti-Catholicism today is likelier to come from secularists than from Protestants.  But the day has been central to Britain's unfolding self-identity as  independent, self-governing, defiant, free from domestic and external tyranny. 

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