Terror, Faith and the Arts

It is 400 years since Guy Fawkes and others plotted to blow up King and Parliament on 5th November 1605. This failed plot had a profound effect on political, religious and cultural life of the time. David Skinner investigates how writers, artists and composers responded to the plot, some censoring their own work or blatantly playing the royalist card to survive, and some such as the Catholic composer William Byrd defying king and country and keeping true to his Catholic faith. David explores life in recusant Catholic households of the time by visiting Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire and finding out about sung masses in secret chapels and priest holes where households hid Jesuits from the authorities. He also looks at the significant places associated with plot, including the Houses of Parliament -- standing in the actual corridor where the gunpowder was stored -- and the Tower of London, where Guy Fawkes was interrogated and tortured. David also discovers a broadside ballad giving an account of the plot, anthems in rememberance of deliverance recorded for us in Magdalen College Chapel and the Chapel of the Tower of London (and not heard for centuries) and the place of the Globe Theatre in establishing or breaking reputations of leading playrights of the time, including Shakespeare and Ben Jonson (spy reports show that he met and dined with the conspirators a few weeks before the plot). Antonia Fraser (author of a seminal book on the plot) gives her spin on the events and discovery.