Bonfire Night
Assembly
Introduction
What do we actually celebrate on the 5th of November? Traditionally it marks the defeat of a terrorist plot to blow up the King and the Houses of Parliament, but the most obvious reminders of the story are gradually disappearing from today’s celebrations. Fewer children learn the rhymes, and fewer bonfires have a “Guy” sat on their summit to be burned.
Perhaps the story behind the Gunpowder Plot feels a little too close to home to be a fit cause for celebration: radical members of a religious minority plan a terrorist act to overthrow the government, and only succeed in making life unbearable for the honest, peaceful members of their religion.
This assembly looks at the story of the Gunpowder Plot and asks why the conspirators felt it was necessary to go to such terrible lengths.
Preparation
In preparation you will need to find two or three students with good reading voices who are willing to help. Make sure they have time to practise. If you are going to use microphones, then give your volunteers a run-through with them or they could be surprised or unnerved by the sound of their own amplified voices. Alternate your readers regularly to help maintain the attention of your audience.
Instructions
Have some suitable music playing as the audience enters, but don’t play it too loudly or they’ll just raise their voices to talk over it. You could try Firestarter by The Prodigy or Burn Baby Burn by the Trammps (the double-M is correct! But there’s also a cover of this by the cast of Glee if you must...).
Begin with a game of Huddles:
Huddles
You will need to invite a group of eight to ten students up to the front for the game.
Explain that you are going to call out a number and the students must get themselves into huddles of that number. Anyone who is left out of a huddle must go and sit down. Be kind to begin with so that everyone can get into a huddle, so if you have ten volunteers begin with “Five!” or “Two!”. Then move on to “Three!” and watch the slight panic cross their faces as they do the maths and realise that one of them will be left out.
Continue until you have a huddle of two, and award them both with a small prize and a round of applause as they go to sit down.
Make the point that human beings are, by nature, tribal. We like to be in groups. We like to be with other people who like the same things as us - the football team we support, the music we listen to or the style of clothes we wear. Every school has its own tribes, but they don’t disappear when you grow up – people continue to be divided by the kind of job they do, the political party they vote for, the religion they follow, the area they live in... and so on. And that’s fine. It’s only a problem when people are left out or treated differently because they don’t belong to a particular huddle – and this can lead to bigger problems when a minority takes it upon themselves to do something about it, because they often have to do something pretty extreme to be heard.
Light a sparkler (carefully) and ask your audience if anyone knows what Bonfire Night and fireworks have to do with people being treated fairly. Take a few answers – but don’t worry if nobody knows: this assembly will (hopefully) make it clear to everyone!
IMPORTANT: Make sure you have a bucket of water handy into which you can drop the spent sparkler. This is the safest way of disposing of sparklers and sets a good example for your audience.
Now hand over to your volunteers to read the Assembly Script. Make sure you are ready to show the film at the appropriate point!
Film Digest
Topic: Society
Sub-Topic: Justice & Equality
It's the 5th November 1605 and the Olde News Network breaks into your normal programming with reports of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
Resources
· Digital projector (connected to the internet or you will need to download the films beforehand).
· Microphones (if needed, or available).
· Two or three volunteers to read the Assembly Script.
· Enough copies of the Assembly Script for you and for each of your volunteers.
· Music to play as the students enter – try Firestarter by The Prodigy or Burn Baby Burn by the Trammps.
· Prizes for the winning pair of Huddles – chocolate goes down well.
· Sparklers, matches (or a lighter is easier if you don’t have someone to help you), and a bucket of water into which you can drop the spent sparkler.
Assembly Script
“Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason,
Should ever be forgot.”
On November the fifth, bonfires will be lit all around the country and people will get together for firework displays and baked potatoes. In some cases a “Guy” - a dummy person - will be burned on the fire.
But who was this Guy and why is he burned every year? And is it really something we should be celebrating?
Show the film Gunpowder, Treason & Plot
Guy Fawkes was a key player in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, but to tell his story we need to start before he was even born, and go back to the 1530s when Henry VIII was having domestic difficulties.
King Henry had a wife called Queen Catherine, and a daughter called Princess Mary, but what he didn’t have was a son. And he really wanted a son. Only a son could become king after he was dead. It was a man’s world in those days and no-one would want to be ruled by a girl - or so Henry believed. Unfortunately, Queen Catherine was getting on a bit, and it didn’t look like she would ever have another child. This was not a problem for Henry. All he had to do was divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn, a girl he’d had his eye on for some time. But England was a Christian country and in those days, being a Christian meant being a Roman Catholic, and the Roman Catholic Church was controlled by its chief priest - known as the Pope - from Rome in Italy. Even a king had to do what the Pope said when it came to religious matters like marriage, so Henry asked him for a divorce. But the Pope said no. Roman Catholics did not (and still don’t) believe in divorce. This was not a problem for Henry. He’d heard about a new bunch of Christians who called themselves Protestants, so-called because they were protesting against the Pope and building their own churches so they could worship in their own way. All Henry had to do was turn the whole of England Protestant, ensure that he was made head of the Church and then give himself a divorce. And so the Church of England was born.
There was a bit of a wobble during Queen Mary’s reign - 1553-1558 - when she returned England to Roman Catholicism for five years, but by the time
James I came to the throne in 1603, England, Wales and Scotland had all been resolutely Protestant for as long as most people could remember.
There were still some Roman Catholics about, but they were given a hard time because most people believed they were traitors. It was thought that if they were loyal to the Pope in Rome, they couldn’t be loyal to the King in England. The fact that the Catholic Queen Mary had burned hundreds of Protestants alive didn’t help either.
Strict laws were passed to limit the activities of Roman Catholics: they couldn’t vote; they weren’t allowed to hold their own religious services; their priests were exiled from the country; and they were fined or even imprisoned if they failed to turn up to the local Protestant Church on a Sunday.
Most Catholics continued to worship in secret and the richer ones even hid Catholic Priests in their homes, but it wasn’t enough. They wanted equal rights with the Protestants, or – even better – for the United Kingdom to become a Roman Catholic country again. And that would mean rebellion.
Robert Catesby was up for it. He was a Roman Catholic who had been forced to leave university before getting his degree because all graduates had to take the Oath of Supremacy, in which they would swear allegiance to the King as the Head of the Church of England. Even worse, his father had been imprisoned for hiding a Catholic Priest. Catesby picked a group of twelve men to form a terrorist cell and planned the downfall of the Church of England. The first step was to assassinate King James. Then they would lead an uprising in the Midlands where there was more support for Catholics, and where the King’s daughter - the Princess Elizabeth - happened to live. She would be kidnapped from her home near Coventry and proclaimed Queen, but she would be a front for the Catholics who would really be in control. Finally, the plotters would get support for the new government from Catholic rulers abroad.
It was an ambitious plan, so the men that Catesby recruited included veterans of other attempted revolutions: skilled with a sword and brave in battle. Among them was a man called Guy Fawkes. Guy, or “Guido”, as he liked to be known, had fought for the Spanish army and he knew how to handle explosives.
The King was due to attend the state opening of Parliament, and the plotters decided that this would be their best opportunity to kill him. They rented a house in Westminster right next door to the Houses of Parliament and a ground-floor storeroom that ran beneath the House of Lords, which was on the first floor. In those days, a storeroom like this was a common feature of big buildings and was usually used for firewood or food, but the plotters had a very different purpose in mind. Guy Fawkes went to live in the house, using the alias “John Johnson”, and gradually began to move barrels of gunpowder into the storeroom beneath the House of Lords, hiding them under piles of wood. Eventually he amassed thirty-six barrels, enough to completely destroy the building, killing everyone inside and anyone else within a radius of 100 metres. It would be one hell of an explosion.
Parliament was due to open on the 5th November 1605. Guy Fawkes would put the barrels where they would do the most damage, light the fuse and make his escape on a getaway horse. The King would be killed, and the Catholics would take over. Nothing could go wrong.
Unfortunately for the plotters, they hadn’t counted on one of their number – probably Thomas Tresham – doing something very, very stupid. Thomas’s brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, was due to be in the House of Lords at the same time as the King, but a week beforehand he received an anonymous letter saying, “I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this parliament”. Lord Monteagle raised the alarm and on the 4th November, the day before Parliament was due to open, King James ordered that a search should be made of all the buildings. In one of the lower storerooms under the House of Lords, they found a man - a servant they thought - loitering around a large pile of firewood, but no one was suspicious because that’s exactly what you would expect to find in a storeroom. The search party reported to the King, but he wasn’t satisfied and sent them off to do another sweep of the area. Just after midnight, the men found the same servant in the same storeroom, but this time, he was armed with a sword and wearing spurs. Not a servant, but Guy Fawkes, waiting patiently for morning. The men grabbed him and searched his pockets, finding fuses, matches and a pocket watch. A further investigation of the storeroom found the barrels of gunpowder hidden under the pile of firewood. Guy Fawkes was arrested and the Gunpowder Plot was foiled.
Guy was dragged away to the Tower of London where he was tortured for information, but he held out against his captors for several days, refusing even to give his real name. News of the so-called “John Johnson’s” arrest spread fast and the remaining London-based plotters fled north to warn their friends in the Midlands.
The whole gang went on the run. Some of them found a house in Staffordshire to hole up in. Getting ready to defend the house against attack they discovered that their gunpowder was wet, so they spread it on the floor in front of the fire to dry, but a stray spark set it alight. They were engulfed in a sheet of flame, and one man - John Grant - was blinded. They were still nursing their injuries when the house was surrounded by soldiers, and four of the plotters were killed in the ensuing battle, including their leader Robert Catesby. Three of them were arrested that day, leaving five men still at large, but one by one they were hunted down and taken to the Tower of London.
Thomas Tresham died in prison, but the eight surviving plotters were put on trial and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which was the penalty for High Treason. If you’ve just eaten, you might like to put your fingers in your ears at this point, because when people were hanged, drawn and quartered they were dragged behind a horse to the place of execution; then hanged by the neck until they were nearly - but not quite - dead; then their guts would be cut out and burned in front of them so that the last thing they were aware of was the smell of themselves cooking. Finally, just to make sure they were really, definitely and without any doubt, absolutely dead, their heads were cut off and their bodies chopped up into pieces.
Only Guy Fawkes escaped this most gruesome of punishments. He leapt from the scaffold - the platform used for hanging people - and broke his neck in the fall.
Instead of bringing an end to the sufferings of Roman Catholics, the plotters actually made things much worse, and many more innocent people died in the persecution of Catholics that followed. Anti-Catholic feeling continued in Britain for centuries and it wasn’t until 1829 that Catholics were finally allowed to vote.