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calendar   Saturday - November 08, 2014

What The Fawkes?

In which a Yank shows off his dangerously thin understanding of English History, and asks a seemingly obvious, yet perhaps amazingly stupid question ...

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Ok, so they’ve just had Guy Fawkes Day in England. Every November 5th, they have big bonfires and fireworks to recall the failure of The Gunpowder Plot, one of the first acts of terrorism.

In 1605, for reasons of religious intolerance, Guy Fawkes and his conspirators tried to take over the country by blowing up King James I and his Parliament. A huge amount of black powder was hidden below Parliament. 100 barrels - firkins and hogsheads - amounting to a couple tons worth of boom dust. But too many plotters spoil the plot, and somebody ratted them out. Caught at the very last second, Fawkes held up under torture for two days before giving away his fellow conspirators, all of whom had fled. But they were tracked down, and died in a big shootout. Something like that. Only Fawkes was tried, and for his traitorous act was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He cheated the hangman, but not Death, by leaping off the gallows once the noose was on him, snapping his own neck and dying. But they chopped him into bits anyway.

Right. So the Crown has a big investigation afterwards, rather like our 9/11 Commission, and it turns out that, gosh whaddya know, the gunpowder never would have gone off, because “it was decayed”.

Decayed? Black powder is not a chemical compound. It’s just a mixture. Potassium Nitrate (aka Saltpeter), Charcoal, and Sulfur. All ground fine and mixed. But each ingredient has different specific gravity, so over time the powder will un-mix, with the heaviest part, the saltpeter, filtering out to the bottom.

PROBLEM. This un-mixing stuff had been known about since forever. The Plot was in 1605 - the early 17th century. Gunpowder had been in use since the middle 14th century, the 1300s. The separation problem had long been solved by the additional step in manufacturing called “corning”. The smallest spark or bit of static electricity can light off dry gunpowder, and mixing it around and around and around in a big vat could probably build up some static. Not safe. So the survivors - the smart powder makers - added a bit of water or some horse urine to the mix, which dampened things enough, and then mixed up a nice batter. Into loaves called mill cakes. Which were then squeezed through a sieve, just like a Play-Doh Factory, with nippers on the output end cutting the “spaghetti” into uniformly sized little bits, which were then laid out to dry. And the result gives you uniform grains, which all burn at the same rate. And once corned, the powder never un-mixes. And that was how gunpowder was made, made everywhere, always, since 100 years or more before Columbus set sail.

So how did Fawkes’ gunpowder decay? It couldn’t have. It was corned. And stored in firkins, of the barrel maker’s art. So it was dry too. Sure, a minor technical detail. But a detail that shows how the king and his MPs were never really in any danger to begin with. Furthermore, gunpowder manufacture was nearly a government monopoly, or under strict government control,from the very beginning.

Or was the “it was decayed” line a story, just like our FBI and how they immediately declare everything to be workplace violence, not terrorism, and certainly not affiliated with Al Qaeda in any way shape or form?


PS - I think we ought to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day here in the USA as well. Because if he had succeeded, there would have been a huge backlash against Catholics in England. A total pogrom. And in that pogrom, radical Protestant groups would be more tolerated, possibly even become mainstream. Edge groups, belligerent outcasts like the Puritans. Who, suddenly finding themselves accepted and popular, may have had no reason to run off to Holland and then to America. And while that would have kept several women safe from being burned as witches, any America that later formed would have been without our natural cussed attitude of “my faith is my business, screw you” we have ensconced in the First Amendment. Because those Pilgrims really were some intolerant bastiges. It was their way or the highway. Which is why colonial expansion in New England happened in the first place. Rhode Island, Connecticut, down east Long Island, etc. All settled because different flavors of the same faith couldn’t get along. 

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 11/08/2014 at 01:45 PM   
Filed Under: • HistoryUK •  
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