The Gunpowder Plot

Picture London, England, the year 1600.

What comes to mind?

Kings, castles, Shakespeare, all very noble and elegant, and totally boring.

But there's another side to the 17th century, and it's brutal.

This was the era when witches were burned at the stake, entire villages were sacked in battle, and the plague killed tens of thousands.

Public hangings were mass entertainment, and and it wasn't unusual to see a decapitated head mounted on a spike on the palace walls.

This isn't just some chapter in a dusty history book.

These long-ago struggles shaped the world we live in.

Everything from our geography to our religion, and even

the way we speak today.

On today's episode, the Gunpowder Plot.

This is a twist of history.

It's July 2nd, the year 1600.

A 30-year-old Englishman named Guy Fox trudges up the sand dunes outside the small Dutch town of Newport.

But he's not there as an expat or a tourist.

He's a soldier.

And all around him, muskets explode with gunfire.

Swords clash in battle.

His boots sink down in sand that's stained red with blood.

Guy is at war.

He clasps his sword tightly as a wounded man calls out to him, Guido!

Guy's fellow soldiers are Spanish, and this nickname marks Guy as one of their own.

So why are an Englishman and a Spaniard fighting for their lives on a Dutch beach?

It's not the setup to a riddle.

The answer is simple.

Religion.

Guy may be English, but he is, above all, a Catholic.

He has pledged his life to fight for the glory of the Catholic Spanish Empire, which has controlled the Netherlands for the past 30 years.

But the Dutch are largely Protestant, and they're willing to fight to the death for their own freedom of religion.

Guy may hate their cause, but he can understand their fervor.

This is a fight that Guy hopes to bring back to England, where being Catholic is a crime.

Guy longs to practice the religion he loves in the country of his birth, and he's willing to die for it.

Guy Fox was born in 1570 in the town of York in northern England.

His father was a lawyer for the Church of England.

This was the Protestant church established by King Henry VIII almost 40 years prior in 1534, when the Catholic Church wouldn't grant the king a divorce.

The Fox family were proud Protestants, and Guy was expected to follow in his father's footsteps.

In Guy's youth, practicing Catholicism was illegal, but many families still hung on to their old faith, especially in places like York that were far from the prying eyes of London.

However, Catholics had to remain in the shadows.

If they were too open, they risked fines, imprisonment, and even death.

In 1586, when Guy was 16, the wife of the local butcher, Margaret Clitheroe, was arrested for holding a secret Catholic Mass in her home.

All of York, including Guy, watched as she was put on trial and convicted.

Because Margaret refused to renounce her faith, she was given the harshest possible punishment, to be slowly crushed to death by 800 pounds of stones on Ouse Bridge for everyone in town to see.

Guy knew Margaret and was horrified by her execution, but he also admired how she held tight to her faith until the very end.

At that moment, Guy decided he would become a Catholic.

But what did that mean for his future?

Should he be loyal to his countrymen, even if they wanted to destroy his religion?

Or did he owe loyalty to strangers overseas who practiced the same faith?

Guy chose religion.

He left England in 1593 at 23 years old to fight alongside Catholics on the continent, and he didn't know if he would ever return.

Back on the Dutch battlefield, Guy carefully positions a line of explosives deep in the sand.

He has distinguished himself as an explosives expert, a targeted and deadly addition to the Spanish fighting force.

When the final charge is in place, Guy lights the slow burning wick.

Then he runs to safety, his feet sinking in the sand.

He finally reaches the Spanish line as...

Boom!

The explosives detonate, blowing sand and soldiers sky-high.

But it's not enough to stop the Dutch.

Their men press on.

Hidden snipers fire crossbows toward the Spaniards.

Mounted cavalrymen charge on horseback, cutting down the Spanish horses from their perches in the saddle.

Guy watches as his commander is run through with a sword.

Officers are falling left and right.

The rank and file panic.

They have no leader, no plan, and the Dutch are closing in.

Guy pulls his sword from its sheath and calls out his men.

He will lead them.

But there's no winning this fight.

The only hope is to get out alive.

Guy leads the retreat, striking down opponents who stand between his men and safety.

It's an awful, bloody struggle.

Over 500 Spanish soldiers are captured.

The sand dunes are littered with their surrendered weapons.

The Catholics may have lost, but the Protestants paid a hefty price.

They've lost 2,000 of their own men.

And Guy Fawkes lives to fight another day.

Three years later, in the summer of 1603, Guy is in Spain.

He walks into the royal palace of Vallo de Lid.

to meet with the Spanish king, Felipe III.

Guy's boots click across the cobblestone courtyard as he approaches the closed door of the king's reception chamber.

The guards open the door and Guy walks into the grand room.

He approaches the king, hat in hand, and introduces himself as Guido Fox, soldier in the Spanish army.

He's here to deliver a message from his homeland of England.

For the past 70 years, England has had six monarchs, two official religions, and literally thousands of bloody public executions.

Catholics have mostly been on the losing side of this battle, but now they have a chance to turn the tables, and they need Spain's help.

English history of the 1500s is a whiplash-inducing list of names, betrayals, and murders.

It all started when King Henry VIII died in 1547, setting off an epic power struggle.

The next king was Henry's nine-year-old son, a Protestant.

His reign was short-lived, and he died in 1553 at the age of 15.

The official cause was tuberculosis, but rumors soon spread that he had been poisoned, so Henry's eldest daughter, Mary Tudor, a Catholic, could take the throne.

But before his death, the young king had picked his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his successor.

This infuriated Mary and her supporters.

She quickly gathered an army, captured Lady Jane, threw her in the Tower of London, and had her beheaded.

Queen Mary took the throne and reinstated Catholicism as the official state religion.

But she was no bastion of religious tolerance.

She ordered nearly 300 Protestants to be burned at the stake in the five years of her reign, giving her the nickname Bloody Mary.

She died in 1558 with no children, so the crown was passed to Henry's only remaining child, Elizabeth.

Queen Elizabeth I once again made Protestantism the law of the land, but this time, She used the full force of the crown to impose her law.

She ordered the destruction of Catholic churches, made attending Mass illegal, and imposed fines of £20 a month, over $7,000 in today's money for not attending Church of England services.

Queen Elizabeth died in March of 1603.

Her successor was King James of Scotland, the son of Queen Mary and another Catholic.

But not all English Catholics trusted that the new king would have the same anti-Protestant fervor as his mother.

including Guy Fawkes.

Guy and the other English Catholics don't want King James on the throne, and lucky for them, King James is new to the London court and far weaker than Queen Mary.

For the first time in decades, the throne is vulnerable.

If Guy can convince Spain, which is Catholic, to help him in fast, they could overthrow the new king and claim England for the Catholics.

Given that Spain and England have been intermittently at war for the past two decades, Guy suspects King Felipe will seize this chance to win the conflict decisively.

Back in the royal Spanish chamber, Guy reads King Felipe a petition from English Catholics.

They need money and soldiers to defend their faith.

Spain has both.

Guy watches as Felipe digests this information.

The king looks unconvinced.

Guy worries that this golden opportunity to defend Catholicism in his home country is going to slip through his fingers.

Felipe whispers an instruction to a courtier who scurries out of the room.

Guy wonders where the boy is headed.

Will he return with a general or maybe sacks of gold?

But he returns with armed guards.

Before Guy can object, the guards grab him roughly and march him through the palace at gunpoint.

Guy shouts his objections.

He has risked his life for Spain.

He is a true defender of the Catholic faith.

The king can trust him.

The guards open the door to an opulent bedchamber.

They push Guy inside and close the door behind him.

The lock clicks into place.

Guy is a prisoner in the palace of the Spanish king, and he doesn't know if he'll ever be free.

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It's almost a year later, May 20th, 1604, and Guy walks along the River Thames in London, finally a free man.

He looks out upon the bustling, vibrant city of over 200,000 people, the third largest in Europe.

Across the river, Guy can see the distant outline of the Globe Theater, where a young playwright named William Shakespeare is rehearsing his latest great tragedy, Othello.

It feels good for Guy to stretch his legs after spending nine months trapped in a palace.

As it turned out, King Felipe III of Spain had been in secret peace talks with England ever since King James took the throne.

Guy had worried that his plea on behalf of English Catholics was unconvincing, but in fact, it was the opposite.

He was so impassioned that Felipe was convinced that Guy would make an attempt on King James's life with or without his help.

Felipe feared that any civil unrest would ruin the delicate negotiations, so he kept Guy imprisoned until the final details were agreed on.

This agreement, known as the Treaty of London, marked the end of the religiously charged conflict and ensured that England would remain a Protestant nation with King James on the throne.

Felipe's fears were well-founded.

When Guy was finally released, he had remained in Europe to search for new allies who could help him oust King James.

His search had led him to Thomas Winter, an educated, strong-willed Englishman who was part of a burgeoning plot to retake the throne.

Winter was looking for someone who knew about gunpowder.

Guy was his man.

The specifics of the plot were top secret, but Guy was willing to take a leap of faith, so he had gotten on a boat and returned to his homeland for the first time in 11 years.

Guy turns away from the Thames and continues on his journey until he reaches the Strand, a busy thoroughfare of stately homes and fashionable shops.

His destination is the Duck and Drake Pub.

As Guy enters, he scans the room full of strange faces.

Even when he lived in England, the capital city was a mystery to him.

Guy had been well known amongst European Catholics, but here, he's a nobody.

Guy finally spots Thomas Winter and joins him in the back of the room.

He's pleasantly surprised to recognize some of the men in the group.

They're Guy's old schoolmates from York, and most importantly, Catholics.

This puts Guy at ease.

There was always a chance that Winter was a Protestant spy setting a trap, but the presence of Guy's boyhood friends has removed all doubt.

These men are serious and committed to the cause.

One man clears his throat and the group falls silent.

He introduces himself as Robert Catesby, the architect of the plot.

He's six feet tall, charismatic, and handsome.

He comes from a respected family with land and is also fresh out of prison after his minor role in a failed uprising against Elizabeth's royal court.

But Catesby has a new plan.

He leads the men into a private back room.

Guy expects to find maps, supply lists, anything that might reveal the details of this mysterious plot.

But the tables are empty and the walls bare.

Catesby assures the men that all will be revealed in due time.

First, they have business to attend to.

The men gather in a circle and Catesby leads them in an oath.

They pledge their life and promise to keep secret anything that happens within these walls.

None of them know what they're promising to uphold, but Guy recites the words just the same.

Then, a secret door creaks open, and a Catholic priest enters.

He holds a mass for the small group and gives each man communion.

Now that the men are bound to each other and to God, Catesby is finally ready to reveal his plan.

Guy can guess that the ultimate aim is to remove King James and install a Catholic ruler, but he's expecting the usual attempts, kidnapping, stabbings, poison.

But Catesby doesn't just want the throne.

He wants to take over the entire government.

The plot, he says, is to blow up Parliament.

Four days later, it's May 24th, 1604, and Guy walks down the streets of London, past the Gothic towers of the Palace of Westminster, home to Parliament.

It's still standing, for now.

Guy is on his way to meet Thomas Percy.

Percy is 45.

a good decade older than the other conspirators and a well-respected distant family member of minor nobility.

Together, the two men have been tasked with renting a house near the palace.

Catesby's team will dig an underground tunnel from the basement of the house all the way to the palace, directly underneath the chamber where the House of Lords meets.

Guy will be in charge of rigging the gunpowder to create a massive explosion.

After all, he has plenty of experience from his days in the Spanish Army.

Then they just have to wait for opening day of the new session of Parliament, February 7th, 1605.

It's the one day they're certain the king will be in attendance.

As King James calls calls the chamber to order, Guy will set off the explosives.

The king and the entire Protestant ruling class will be dead, and the Catholics can handpick the next ruler of England.

But first, they need a base of operations.

Guy enters the house to find Percy already chatting with the landlord.

It sounds like the two men are reaching a deal, but there's one thing that Guy needs to see.

Guy approaches the landlord and asks to see the bottom floor of the house.

The landlord eyes him suspiciously.

Thomas Percy is a known and respected gentleman of London.

It makes sense why he would need a home near Westminster.

But Guy is a nobody.

Guy quickly creates a cover story.

He introduces himself as John Johnson, Mr.

Percy's servant.

He needs to inspect the bottom floor for coal storage, a perfectly reasonable request.

They head downstairs and Guy examines the dirt walls, mentally calculating what it will take to dig the kind of tunnel they need.

He nods to Percy, giving his official seal of approval.

Percy shakes hands with the landlord to finalize their contract.

The plan is in motion.

It's Christmas Eve 1604, exactly seven months after the house was rented, and Guy is back in the basement.

But this time, there's a giant tunnel through one of the walls.

Catesby's men have been digging tirelessly under Guy's watchful eye.

They work only at night to avoid arousing suspicion.

During the day, they sneak out the dirt they've excavated and dump it in the Thames.

Guy scratches calculations on a scrap of paper.

Feet of tunnel remaining, buckets of dirt per hour.

His men are right on schedule, which is good because the clock is ticking on their plot.

There are only six weeks until Parliament opens in February and no time to waste.

A conspirator crawls out of the tunnel, his face smeared with dirt.

He drags a bucket out behind him, but It's empty.

There's no dirt inside.

The conspirator explains, they've hit a stone wall, some kind of deep foundation.

They can't dig any further.

Guy refigures his calculations.

There's no way they've reached Parliament yet.

And if they can't tunnel directly underneath the chamber, then this was all for nothing.

Guy puts down his quill.

He'll need to examine this for himself.

He hoists himself into the tunnel and crawls into the darkness.

It's cool and damp down here, almost peaceful.

But eventually, he reaches stone.

He brushes some dirt away, but it expands in every direction.

He presses his hand to the surface.

There's absolutely no give.

It's thick, very thick.

Guy estimates about 10 feet.

There's no way they can break through in time.

Guy crawls slowly back out of the tunnel.

His fellow conspirators can read the bad news on his face.

They've failed before they ever really tried.

Just then, A door creaks open upstairs.

The men tense.

They're not expecting anyone else to join them tonight.

Has their plot plot been discovered.

But it's only more of Catesby's men.

They're here to deliver their own bad news.

Because of the plague that's ravaging London, the opening of Parliament has been postponed.

To October 3rd, 1605.

But this is not bad news to Guy and his men.

They rejoice.

It's a Christmas miracle.

They have eight more months.

More than enough time to finish the tunnel.

Three months later, Guy is deep in the tunnel supervising construction.

It's March of 1605, and his men have penetrated deep into the stone wall and are now underneath Westminster, inching closer and closer to the chamber of the House of Lords at the southern end of the palace.

Just a few more yards and they'll be perfectly positioned for their explosion.

Guy adjusts a wooden brace as the men tunnel deeper.

At this point, the steady scrape of their shovels is like soothing white noise.

Except today, Guy hears something else.

He waves to his men to halt their work.

Right over their heads, there's a slow, steady dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across the floor.

Guy's mind races with the possibilities.

Carefully, quietly, Guy and his men crawl back out of the tunnel into the basement of the rented house.

But nobody wants to continue until they find the source of the mysterious sound.

Guy volunteers to investigate.

After all, no one in London knows who he he is.

He can walk the streets without arousing suspicion.

Guy exits the rented house and crosses the street to the Palace of Westminster.

He looks up at the windows of the House of Lords chambers on the second floor of the building.

He knows they were close to their target, perhaps almost directly underneath.

But there's no way the mysterious sound was coming from the Parliament chamber.

It must be one of the kitchens or storage rooms that line the ground floor.

Luckily for Guy, this is the perfect place for a fake servant to sneak around.

It's hard to hear the sound over the noise of the London streets, but eventually, Guy picks it out.

He follows the slow dragging sound and spots men removing bags of coal from a ground floor cellar.

Guy breathes a sigh of relief.

Nothing about the scene is out of the ordinary.

These are typical workers clearing out old bags of coal and heavy wooden barrels.

Just the kind of material that might really accelerate an explosion.

The seed of an idea is sprouting in Guy's head.

He enters the space and finds the owner, an old widow who is supervising the workers.

Guy introduces himself as John Johnson, servant of Thomas Percy, who is looking to rent space at the palace.

This cellar looks perfect.

Perhaps they could come to an arrangement.

The widow doesn't need much convincing.

There's not a lot of demand for a dusty old room full of coal and wood.

Especially not one that used to be an old kitchen for the House of Lords.

Guy's ears perk up.

He asks again to make sure he heard Herbrite.

The widow confirms the House of Lords is directly above this dusty cellar.

They're standing right underneath Parliament as they speak.

Guy asks the widow to stop her workers.

He needs to fetch his boss and promises to make it worth her while.

A few days later, on March 25th, 1605, Percy signs the deed to rent the cellar.

Now, Guy and his conspirators have a perfectly positioned storage facility with all the space they need for their massive stockpile of gunpowder.

The only thing left to do is wait for the perfect moment to light the fuse.

It's early in the morning of November 4th, 1605, and Guy enters the cellar at the Palace of Westminster for the final time.

After yet another postponement, Parliament is finally due to open the following morning, November 5th.

Just one more day.

Until then, Guy's job is to sit and wait.

Guy lights a candle, and the dim glow illuminates stacks of firewood and barrels of coal.

An innocent observer would think this was nothing more than a storage room, but hidden in all that wood are 36 barrels of gunpowder.

Guy's thoughts turn to his co-conspirators.

At this very minute, Robert Catesby is leading a group of men north on horseback to carry out the second part of the plan, kidnapping King James's daughter, Elizabeth.

After James is killed in the Parliament explosion, the Catholics will put her forward as England's new ruler.

Since she's only nine years old, they can use her as a figurehead and control her from behind the scenes.

Guy tucks the watch back in his trousers and listens for any noise.

Blessedly, there's only silence.

Everything is falling into place.

Guy pulls out his rosary beads, prepared to ask God to watch over him and his holy mission.

Just as he starts to pray, he hears an ominous creak.

The door to the cellar opens and two men walk in.

For a moment, Guy wonders if they're his compatriots.

But as they step into the candlelight, Guy sees that one of them is the owner of the nearby house that Percy rented.

Guy doesn't recognize the other man, but he quickly introduces himself as a member of parliament, Baron Monteagle.

That's when Guy's heart stops, because he recognizes the name.

A few nights before, the conspirators held one final meeting.

Catesby had bad news to share.

Their plot may have been compromised.

He had it on good authority that a letter had been sent to a Catholic member of parliament warning him to stay away from the opening session on November 5th.

That member of parliament was Baron Monteagle.

Catesby didn't know if the Baron had shared the letter with anyone or if he even believed it, but the conspirators needed to know that they might be at risk.

Catesby told the men that the choice was theirs, go through with the plot, or walk away and preserve their safety.

But the men agreed.

They'd come too far to turn back now.

They'd stick to the plan, no matter the risk.

Now, Guy stands face to face with the man who could ruin everything.

His only hope is to spin a convincing lie.

He once again pretends to be John Johnson, the innocent servant hired to watch over the firewood and supplies in this storeroom.

Guy braces for the worst, but the men don't press him.

They don't search the room or accuse him of a crime or arrest him.

The landlord and the baron wish him a pleasant good afternoon and leave as quickly as they arrived.

Guy breathes a sigh of relief.

He's safe, and more importantly, so is the plot.

Late at night on November 4th, Guy checks the time on his pocket watch and watches the time tick towards midnight.

He's never had a watch before.

They're a luxury reserved only for the rich, but Percy lent Guy this watch specifically for the cause.

Correct timing is essential.

Hours pass.

He checks the watch again as it inches towards morning, and Guy dutifully remains on guard in the cellar.

Suddenly, he hears a shuffling sound from the interior hallway.

Guy tries to keep his head.

Maybe it's a rat scurrying by.

or a passing servant running a late-night errand.

It could even be one of his fellow conspirators, there to bring Guy an important message.

Whatever it is, Guy isn't going to be caught on the back foot.

He needs to find them before they find Guy.

He creeps to the door and presses his ear to the wood.

The shuffling has stopped.

Perhaps the coast is clear, but Guy won't feel safe until he checks it out.

He pushes the door open slowly, carefully, but the person on the other side swings the door wide.

He shoves a lantern in Guy's face.

Guy is pulled into the hallway, knocked to the ground, restrained, and searched.

He fights and tries to break free, but Guy is outnumbered.

He guesses these men must be guards, which only means one thing.

Guy's lie didn't fool Baron Montego.

Their plot has been found out.

The armed guards restrain Guy and search his pockets for evidence.

They find crucifixes, rosary beads, and even the hair shirt Guy is wearing as a symbol of Christ's suffering.

The guards are certain this man is a Catholic, but they have no clue what he's planning.

Then, they discover the clue that gives Guy away.

A tinderbox with all the ingredients for lighting a fire.

The guards search the cellar and quickly find the hidden barrels of gunpowder.

It's enough to not only destroy the House of Lords, but everything in a 500-meter radius, including Westminster Abbey, the most important church in all of England.

The guards drag Guy to his feet and shove him against the wall.

They demand to know his name and who he's working with.

Guy looks his captors in the eye and answers, he is John Johnson, just a lowly servant.

The guards take no pity on him.

As they drag him down the hallway, Guy yells out in a rage, You were lucky to find me outside the cellar.

Otherwise, none of you would be talking about it, because you would all have been blown sky high.

It's the next day, November 6th, and Guy is in the infamous prison, the Tower of London, chained to the wall.

His arms are extended above his head, wrists restrained as he balances on a wicker stool.

Inside the tower, Guy is being tortured.

But outside, the citizens of London are celebrating.

Word about the foiled plot to murder the king spread like, well, wildfire.

The people have taken to the streets, lighting bonfires and dancing in celebration.

They've even coined a catchy name for Guy's failed plan, the gunpowder plot.

Unbeknownst to Guy, the cellar full of explosives was quickly linked to Thomas Percy, who rented the property under his own name.

The second Percy caught wind of Guy's capture, he fled north to warn Catesby, who was still intending to kidnap King James' daughter.

Percy expected Catesby to give up and disappear into hiding, maybe even leave the country.

But Catesby was committed to the cause.

If he could somehow kidnap Lady Elizabeth, maybe he could use her life as leverage to convince James to give up the throne.

And so, Catesby rode on.

But the king's men quickly connected the dots from Percy to Catesby and the other conspirators, all known Catholic rabble-rousers.

King James ordered their immediate arrest, and his guards are hot on Catesby's heels through the countryside.

But in the tower, Guy knows none of this.

A guard arrives, offering the prisoner one final chance to talk.

If he gives up his name, maybe the king will go easy on him.

Guy thinks back to the oath he took all those months ago.

in the back of the Duke and Drake pub.

He promised to keep this secret, and Guy Fox will not go back on his his word.

The guard enters Guy's cell and unties his wrists, but Guy isn't free.

Instead, the guard shackles Guy's thumbs to the wall.

Then he kicks the wicker stool out from under Guy's feet.

Guy grunts as the full weight of his body pulls down on his thumbs.

The guard leaves Guy there for hours.

The next day, The guards open Guy's cell door and unlock his shackles.

Guy falls to the ground, collapsing with relief.

But Guy still won't talk, and his torture is far from over.

The guards drag him to his feet and march him down the hall to a new cell, a famous one called the Little Ease.

But there's nothing easy about it.

It's four feet high, two feet long, and 16 inches across.

Guy can't stand.

He can't lie down.

He can't even sit.

He just crouches in pain, but he still won't talk.

After hours of agony, a new guard arrives and greets his prisoner by an unusual name, Guido, his old Spanish nickname.

The guards found an old letter hidden with Guy's personal possessions that identifies him at last as the English Catholic and explosives expert who fought for Spain on the continent.

In his agonized days, Guy knows he has been found out.

There's nothing left to fight for.

It's time to confess.

Guy Fox was put on trial alongside Thomas Winter and seven other surviving conspirators.

Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy were shot to death in Staffordshire before they ever got close to kidnapping Lady Elizabeth.

Their heads were cut off and mounted outside Parliament as a warning.

Not on trial was conspirator Francis Tresham, Robert Catesby's cousin and the likely author of the Montego letter that exposed the plot.

Francis denied any involvement.

but Catesby, Guy, and many historians point the finger in his direction.

Guy was more than happy to offer up his name, and Francis died in the Tower of London in December of 1605.

Guy and the others pleaded not guilty, but were quickly convicted in a one-day trial.

Seats in the courthouse were sold for 10 shillings apiece.

That's about $180

today.

On January 31, 1606, Guy Fawkes was executed in the palace yard at Westminster, the very building he tried to blow up.

He crossed himself before a noose was placed around his neck and he was dropped from the gallows.

Guy's body was then quartered and the pieces put on display so that everyone would remember.

And remember they did.

Parliament declared the 5th of November a national holiday to commemorate the thwarted gunpowder plot.

Communities all across England lit bonfires and burned effigies of Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators.

Children would fundraise for supplies by begging for pennies for the guy.

They would then parade their strawmen through the street chanting, Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot.

We see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

Over time, the term guy evolved from a nickname for strawmen to a shorthand used to describe real people.

often criminals or other immoral men.

And then slowly, a guy became any kind of working man, then any human male.

And now, of course, you guys is used for anyone, regardless of gender.

Any group of people from kindergartners to senior citizens can be greeted with a friendly, hey guys.

So the next time you're calling out to a group of friends, remember, remember the 5th of November, and one guy who wanted to change the world.

It turns out he did.

Just not the way he planned.

From Ballin Studios, this is A Twist of History.

A quick note about our stories.

They're all heavily researched, but some details and scenes are dramatized.

A Twist of History is hosted by me, Joel Blackwell.

Executive produced by Mr.

Ballin and Zach Levin.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Perry Kroll.

This episode was written by Margaret LeBron.

Story editing by Luke Baratz and Aaron Land.

Sound design and audio mixing by Colin Lester Fleming.

Post-production supervision by Jeremy Bohm and Cole LaCasio.

Research and fact-checking by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, Alex Paul, Patricia Nicole Florentino, Calvin Riley-Holgate, Matt Gilligan.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner and Robin Vane.

Thank you for listening to A Twist of History.