‘Remember, remember, the 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot’. Thanks to this nursery rhyme, we have no trouble bringing to mind the date when, in 1605, Guy Fawkes was discovered beneath the Palace of Westminster, where 36 barrels of gunpowder had been placed in a rented cellar, ready to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament.

Details of the plot were a later, and in some ways peculiar, addition to the book commonly referred to as ‘Foxe’s book of martyrs’, of which we hold the 1641 edition here in the Devon and Exeter Institution.

Frontispiece to volume 3 of the 1641 edition of Foxe’s Book of martyrs. The original 1563 woodcut blocks were worn out by the time this edition was printed, so new ones were commissioned. John N. King called these ‘cruder and more simplified than the original woodcuts.’

John Foxe (1516/1517-1587) was a protestant clergyman and historian, whose book of martyrs was first published in 1563. Horrified by the persecution of fellow Protestants under the rule of the Catholic Mary I, Foxe compiled his historic account of the sufferings of those of the Protestant faith. The work, together with its striking woodcut illustrations, would go on to be used as a powerful piece of anti-Catholic propaganda.

‘The burning of M. John Hooper, at Glocester. Anno 1555. February 9.’ The former Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester was executed as part of Protestant persecutions under Queen Mary I.

‘The burning of WILLIAM HUNTER, Martyr’. After refusing to recant his Protestant beliefs and practices, silk-weaver’s apprentice William Hunter was burned at the stake in Brentwood, Essex in March 1555.

The ‘Book of martyrs’ went through a number of editions during Foxe’s lifetime, and continued to grow after he passed away, with newly persecuted individuals added to the list. The title page of the 1641 edition, published in three volumes, tells the reader that, in addition to martyrs ‘recognized and enlarged by the Author John Foxe’, were ‘annexed certaine additions, unto the time of our Soveraigne Lord King CHARLES now reigning’.

This included ‘Guido Fawkes’ as he is referred to, alongside his co-conspirators, who had been included since the 1610 edition of Foxe’s book.

‘I must redeeme my Countrey from as great a danger as I have hazarded the bringing her into’

The account consists of the confession of Thomas Winter, who had been involved in the plot early on, through his cousin Robert Catesby. On discovery of the conspiracy, Winter attempted to flee, but was captured by the authorities. He confessed his involvement while prisoner in the Tower of London, and together with Guy Fawkes and other plotters found guilty of High Treason, was executed on 31 January 1606. They were not burnt on a bonfire, as Fawkes’ likenesses are today, but instead they were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

‘After this Master Fawkes laid into the cellar (which he had newly taken) a thousand of billets, and five hundred of fagots, and with that covered the pouder’

Foxe is very unlikely to have considered these men to be martyrs. They were not persecuted Protestants, instead they were followers of the Catholic faith, attempting to assassinate the Protestant King James I. Why then were they included in later editions?

In his work Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern English Print Culture, Professor John N. King wrote that ‘following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, the Book of Martyrs contributed to the infusion of antipapal sentiment into the nationalistic celebration of the 5th of November’. Although the execution of Guy Fawkes and the other plotters is not exactly a story of Protestant persecution, the anti-Catholic sentiments of the subsequent celebrations were certainly in alignment with Foxe’s outlook, and perhaps this was enough to justify the inclusion of ‘that hellish gun-pouder treason’ alongside the book’s ‘martyrs’.