What Would Have Happened if the Gunpowder Plot had Succeeded?

History is always written by the winners.  Thus it is that we call the Gunpowder Conspirators terrorists now.  Had they succeeded, they would have been freedom fighters.

But was it ever possible that they could have succeeded?

Robert Catesby (pictured) was the mastermind and the leader of the group. It was his plot with others brought in as required.

Thomas Percy was there because of his high connections at court.  The Wintour brothers because of their connections in Catholic courts abroad.  The Wright brothers because one of them was Catesby's oldest and closest friend. He knew he could trust them. Then, most famously of all, Guido Faukes, because he was really good with gunpowder.

Others joined later, but only when the preparations were already underway and the plan had been expanded.  It was now a blueprint for actual revolution, rather than a single act of violence to stir up the political scene.

The Gunpowder Plot had three distinct stages:

Part one, originally the whole of it, was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament.  That occasion is the only time when the three governing bodies (Monarchy, House of Lords and House of Commons) are in the same room at the same time. This would have killed the king, his heir, and every standing representative of the ruling elite; plus others, who were of lesser significance to the conspirators and regarded as collateral damage.

Part two was to raise the devoutly Catholic families of England in open revolt.  They would use the chaos of the moment to seize power in London.

Part three was to abduct nine year old Princess Elizabeth, install her as monarch and ensure that she was raised in the Catholic faith.

Let us assume that Guy Fawkes wasn't stopped.  Stage one went according to plan.  What then?

The probable outcome is that the Protestant majority in England would turn against the Catholic minority.  Hundreds would be dead, and the capital city in ruins, all to advance the cause of the Papal faith.

All of this in a climate which was already strongly anti-Papist.  England had been at war with Spain for decades for reasons largely to do with religion.  An uncertain truce had only been called two years ago, when King James VI of Scotland was crowned monarch of England too.

To many ordinary British people, Catholicism was the world's great evil.  Too many soldiers had died in the wars. The English economy was in tatters through funding military action.  It was all Spain's fault and that nation's rationale was religious. 

Now this.  The great hope of a revitalized England lost in the violence of gunpowder in Westminster.  It would not take long for angry lynch mobs to form around the homes of known recusants. They would want retribution.

At best, the inhabitants could expect to be turned out in only the clothes that they stood in. In likelihood, they would have been savagely beaten and/or killed in vigilante attacks. Any priests found hidden could certainly anticipate no quarter.

We can be sure of this, because it's an escalation of what actually happened. In the days and weeks following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, sheriffs all over the country were kept busy with denunciations of Catholic families in their counties. 

The poet Ben Jonson, himself a Catholic, told Lord Salisbury that he personally knew of '500 gentlemen... of the religion' who had gone into hiding.  Not because they had done anything, but through fear of being 'enweaved'.

A purge of Catholics in the theater was undertaken by Lord Salisbury.  It was the Jacobean equivalent of Senator McCarthy's 'Reds Under the Bed' attack on Hollywood in the 1950s.

If Parliament House had been blown up in the name of Catholic freedom of religion, then such purges would have been total and absolute.  No-one of the faith would have been able to hold public office.  They would not have been seen on the stage; and books would have been burned.

Against all common sense and probability, enough English Catholics joined Robert Catesby's riders that the Uprising has begun. We can suspend any speculation about a higher ranking Papist nobleman taking the lead, as most of them would be dead in the ruins of the House of Lords.

On course with Catesby's plan then, the armed religious rebels would have headed straight towards Coombe Abbey, in Warwickshire.  It's difficult to imagine such a large body of known Catholics crossing the Midlands, en masse and with weaponry, without attracting the attention of the local sheriffs.

There would have been skirmishes, if not full blown battles along the way. 

If, by some miracle, Catesby's troops did cross back into Warwickshire intact, then they would have been intercepted by Sir John Harrington and his men.  The baron had received an early tip off, as reports of horses stolen from Warwick Castle had reached him. 

Now, as in reality, he would have posted look outs all over the county.  They would have fed back intelligence about the approach of the insurgents.  Sir John Harrington would have gone to meet them long before they reached the environs of Coombe Abbey.

Numbers, skill, luck and all of the other usual variables in battle would have decided that one. But let's keep working in the favor of the Gunpowder Plot and let the baron and his men be defeated.  Or, at least, enough of Catesby's men to get by in order to storm the home of Princess Elizabeth.

They would thunder up the driveway and into Coombe Abbey to discover that she's not there.

When Sir John Harrington learned of the horse theft, every alarm bell in his instinct rang. This actually did happen, so no speculation is required here.

He did three things initially - he deployed his look outs across Warwickshire, in order to gain more intelligence about the situation; he escorted Elizabeth to the safety of the city of Coventry; then he rode out in search of the thieves.  Good instincts, eh?

Back to our exploration of alternative history.  The Recusant Army has to find Princess Elizabeth before they can abduct her.  Is she in the woods?  Or taken to the hills?  Unlikely, it's November and freezing out there.  Is she in another stately home?  Or safely in Warwick Castle, with the drawbridge up?

Are the Catholic rebels going to go en masse to conduct this house-to-house search?  They are in a country where the majority of the population is openly antagonist towards them, and chomping at the bit to attack.  Bit foolhardy then. 

But right now, we're forcing history along a route favorable to the Uprising, so let's send them to Coventry.  Catesby received intelligence from an onlooker (Warwickshire did have a lot of recusant families, and it was Catesby's home county too); or they simply worked it out.

The Catholic Uprising relocates to Coventry and now it's seriously in trouble. The whole point of having Princess Elizabeth sent to that area was that the city was loyal. 

Records show that its entire civic armory was emptied, so that the militia could form an effective guard around the young princess.  It wasn't just a few noblemen with swords.  Every single pike owned by the city was in the hands of a willing and able bodied volunteer.

In order to get to the closed city gates of Coventry, this parallel line of history has had to imbue the Gunpowder Plotters with a preternatural amount of luck.  I've had to rewrite reality twice AND consistently choose the least likely of outcomes at every obstacle.

• The House of Lords was destroyed.
• The Catholic households of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire all joined in; and followed Catesby's plan.
• The populations of every city, town and village on their route across the Midlands had to either not notice the armed Papists passing through; or they had to have all been defeated, in a chain of skirmishes, without any news spreading, which might bring Protestant militia from further afield.
• Fresh from these fights, the plotters then had to take on and beat Sir John Harrington and his men.
• Then they had to guess correctly where Princess Elizabeth was hiding; and ride there.

All of this has to be completed quite fast by the way.  Delay for an hour and news will rush like wildfire, bringing in Protestant reinforcements from all sides.  Even Catesby knew this.  Written into the Gunpowder Plot was the pretense of the fledgling insurgent group being a hunting party.  They only had a chance of getting away with that while they numbered a mere handful.  

In reality, they didn't.  The utterly suspicious behavior of riding with spare horses to each of the major Catholic residences in turn, had the sheriffs of three counties in pursuit.

In 1642, the people of Coventry would defend their city against a Royalist army of 6,000 soldiers, including the monarch and the highly trained, experienced guards around him.  They never breached the city gates.

Using this as a yardstick to what Coventry can withstand, the plotters would need a lot of troops for their Uprising.  The most that could possibly be there is 5,560 souls.  That was the number fined for recusancy in 1605.

However, that would be putting a rebel sword or pike into the hands of infants, children, women and the elderly, not to mention the infirm of body or mind.  It would also assume that every Catholic in England had magically been in the Midlands that day, and willing to join in.

At the very generous most, Catesby could have had no more than maybe a hundred people with him; and that was at the start, when history was rewritten to have people saying 'yes' to his plan. Some of those must have been killed or injured in the dozens of battles on the way.

In order to force the Gunpowder Plot to still play out, I would have to throw in a miracle of Biblical proportions, like trumpeters to fell the walls like at Jerrico.  There are three barrels of gunpowder, but no Guy Fawkes to know how to use it.  If his part in the plot was successful, he'd be halfway to Flanders on a ship by now.

Even if there was some way of gaining access, like magicking in a backdoor or a secret tunnel, then they would still have to fight their way through the streets.  They would still have to locate the princess inside the city.  They would still have to get through her considerable body of guards.

It's over.  The realms of realism have been stretched to breaking point.  The Gunpowder Plot could never have worked in its original form.

If James I and VI had been killed, and the House of Lords destroyed, then the average Briton would have been expecting Spain to swoop like a shark to complete the slaughter.

That simply would never have happened.

Philip III of Spain would have kept his distance for the same reason as Henry IV of France and Navarre and every other European crowned head. They could not openly support the murder of an anointed monarch by his own subjects, especially not commoners.

That would be setting a dangerous precedent, that would not have gone unnoticed by the Spanish, French and Navarre people.  Better to preserve the mystique of monarchy than claim another country for Rome.

We know this because both Philip and Henry refused involvement in many earlier plots by disgruntled English Catholics.  Philip, at least, had also been approached by two members of the Gunpowder Plot, before it had been put into operation. He once again declined support.

In the upper echelons of Parliament and court, there was a pervasive suspicion that Catesby, Fawkes et al., had been working on the express orders of the Vatican or Spain. 

It was never proved and probably wasn't true in either case.  Guy Fawkes was questioned about the involvement of the latter, while under torture.  He eventually spoke about the entire Gunpowder Plot and named names.  He also confessed to details which had been cooked up in Lord Salisbury's imagination.

Yet Fawkes always denied the involvement of Spain. He had no reason to hold back at that point, so it's probably correct.

There would be plenty of precepts upon which the Catholic monarchs in Europe could invade, not least the inevitable lynching or arrest of their own ambassadors or papal agents.  But the cons would always outweigh the pros, while the divine office of kingship was at stake.

But moreover, what would be the point?  Jacobean England frankly wasn't that important to start with.  Now it was a politically crippled, practically bankrupt nation, with a highly hostile population, that would be difficult to defend and hold, when the Protestant countries in the north rushed in to take it back.

So what's in it for Philip then?

Why not just fight the Dutch in Flanders, as normal, without the hassle of an occupation complicating matters?  The Protestant armies would be one nation down, as England would have too many troubles at home to participate right now or at any time in the foreseeable future.

For continental Europe, there were simply bigger fish to fry, as the Thirty Years' War would soon demonstrate.

But there's one last, huge consideration. Catholic Ireland would be unlikely to be so docile.  Shock and sympathy immediately after the explosion would soon give way, if anti-Papist feeling erupted so violently across mainland Britain. It would turn to antagonism and fury instead.

If there was ever a possibility of a Catholic Uprising, as a direct consequence of the Gunpowder Plot, it would have been Gaelic. Supported by the Scottish Highlands, Spain, France and maybe the Papacy, the Irish might even have won.