Introduction

William Harrison Ainsworth provides us with a detailed glimpse of how the history of the plot was utilized by the 19th century. In his nationalistic and romantic version the plot is made into dramatic theater.  This account would stoke the bonfires of celebration and keep November 5 as a shining beacon in the round of national celebrations. The book was printed in serial starting in 1841.

It is important to realize that Ainsworth has only preserved a skeleton of fact in his historical novel. Much is not accurate and many characters have been substituted for the originals. The book is more important as a document recording views of the time than a history of the plot. It is worth comparing Ainsworth's novel with the history written by his friend Charles Dickens. Click here to read it.

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Author's Preface

Poe's Review

Author's Preface
The tyrannical measures adopted against the Roman Catholics in the early part of the reign of James the First, when the severer penal enactments against recusants were revived, and with additional rigor, and, which led to the remarkable conspiracy about to be related, have been so forcibly and faithfully described by Doctor Lingard, * that the following extract from his history will form a fitting introduction to the present work.

The oppressive and sanguinary code framed in the reign of Elizabeth, was re-enacted to its full extent, and even improved with additional severities.  Every individual who had studied or resided, or should afterwards study or reside in any college or seminary beyond the sea, was rendered incapable of inheriting, or purchasing, or enjoying lands, annuities, chattels, debts, or sums of money, within the realm; and as missionaries sometimes eluded detection under the disguise of tutors, it was provided that no man should teach even the rudiments of grammar in public or in private, without the previous approbation of the diocesan.  The execution of the penal laws enabled the king, by an ingenious comment, to derive considerable profit from his past forbearance.  It was pretended that he had never forgiven the penalties of recusancy; he had merely forbidden them to be exacted fro a time, in the hope that this indulgence would lead to conformity; but his expectations had been deceived: the obstinacy of the Catholics had grown with the lenity of the sovereign; and, as they were unworthy of future favor, they should now be left to the severity of the law.  To their dismay, the legal fine of twenty pounds per lunar month was again demanded, and not only for the time to come, but for the whole period of the suspension; a demand which, by crowding thirteen payments into one, reduced many families of moderate incomes to a state of absolute beggary.  Nor was this all.  James was surrounded by numbers of his indigent countrymen.  Their habits were expensive, their wants many, and their importunities incessant.  To satisfy the more clamorous, a new expedient was devised.  The king transferred to them his claims on some of the more opulent recusants, against whom whey were at liberty to proceed by law, in his name, unless the sufferers should submit to compound, by the grant of an annuity for life, or the immediate payment of a considerable sum.  This was at a time when the jealousies between the two nations had reached a height of which, at the present day, we have but little conception.  Had the money been carried to the royal coffers, the recusants would have had sufficient reason to complain; but that Englishmen should be  placed by their king at the mercy of foreigners, that they should be stripped of their property to support the extravagance of his Scottish minions, this added indignity to injustice, exacerbated their already wounded feelings, and goaded the most moderate almost to desperation"

From this deplorable state of things, which is by no means overcoloured in the aboe description, sprang the Gunpowder Plot.  The county of Lancaster has always abounded in Catholic families, and at no period were the proceedings of the ecclesiastical commissioners more rigorous against them than at that under consideration.  Manchester "the Goshen of this Egypt," as it is termed by the fiery zealot, Warden Heyrick, being the place where all the recusants were imprisoned, the scene of the early part of his history has been laid in that town and its immediate neighborhood.  For the introduction of the munificent founder of the Blue Coat Hospital in to a tale of this description I ought, perhaps, to apologize; but if I should succeed by it in arousing my fellow-townsmen to more lively appreciation of the great benefits they have derived from him I shall not regret what I have written.

In Viviana Radclaiffe I have sought to portray the loyal and devout Catholic, such as I conceive the character to have existed at the period.  In Catesby, the unscrupulous and ambitious plotter, masking his designs under the cloak of religion.  In Garnet the subtle, and yet sincere Jesuit. And in Fawkes the gloomy and superstitious enthusiast.  One doctrine I have endeavored to enforce throughout,- Toleration.

From those who have willfully misinterpreted one of my former productions, and have attributed to it a purpose and an aim utterly foreign to my own intentions, I can scarcely expect fairer treatment for the present work.  But to that wider and more discriminating class of readers from whom I have experienced so much favor and support, I confidently commit this volume, certain of meeting with leniency and impartiality.

*Vide History of England, vol. IX. New Edition.

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Poe's Review

Here is what Edgar Alan Poe had to say of Ainsworth's work:

Edgar Allan Poe, Review of Guy Fawkes, Graham's Magazine, November 1841, pp. 248-249.] [page 248:] REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. Guy Fawkes; or The Gunpowder Treason. An Historical Romance. By WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH, Author of "The Tower of London," "Jack Sheppard," &c. Philadelphia. Lea and Blanchard. .....Of "The Tower of London" we have read only some detached passages — enough to assure us, however, that the "work," like Yankee razors, has been manufactured merely "to sell." "Guy Fawkes," the book now lying before us, and the last completed production of its author, is positively beneath criticism and beneath contempt. The design of Mr. Ainsworth has been to fill, for a certain sum of money, a stipulated number of pages. There existed a necessity of engaging the readers whom especially he now addresses — that is to say the lowest order of the lettered mob — a necessity of enticing them into the commencement of a perusal. For this end the title "Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Plot" was all sufficient, at least within the regions of Cockaigne. As for fulfilling any reasonable expectations, derived either from the ad cap-tandum title, or from his own notoriety (we dare not say reputation) as a novelist — as for exerting himself for the permanent or continuous amusement of the poor flies whom he had inveigled into his trap — all this, [column 2:] with him, has been a consideration of no moment. He had a task to perform, and not a duty. What were his readers to Mr. Ainsworth? "What Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" The result of such a state of affairs is self-evident. With his best exertions, in his earliest efforts, with all the goadings of a sickening vanity which stood him well instead of nobler ambition — with all this, he could do — he has done — but little; and without them he has now accomplished exactly nothing at all. If ever, indeed, a novel were less than nothing, then that novel is "Guy Fawkes." To say a word about it in the way of serious criticism, would be to prove ourselves as great a blockhead as its author. Macte virtute, my dear sir — proceed and flourish. In the meantime we bid you a final farewell. Your next volume, which will have some such appellation as "The Ghost of Cock-Lane," we shall take the liberty of throwing unopened out of the window. Our pigs are not all of the description called learned, but they will have more leisure for its examination than we.

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The engravings, on steel, by George Cruikshank for Ainsworth's novel illustrate the style of the modern image of the plot quite well. Select your favorite scene from the table below.

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