To be sure 17th  century Colonial America was not 17th century England. There were many differences. For example there were no bells to ring on the 5th of November. Other local holidays recording local events added new holidays  to the calendar.  One can even cite the different rhythm of the seasons. In tobacco country there was not one date which could be associate with the harvest as the crop was prepared and processed the year round. There was also a strong feeling that cultural life in the colonies should create a new beginning. This feeling was helped along to reality by conservative churchmen who eliminated the Celebration of central holidays such as Christmas and even went so far as to rename the months of the year. None the less the holiday of the 5th of November did arrive in the cultural baggage of the English colonists along with an awareness of the political lessons which the holiday taught. At Jamestown settlers had to take a strong oath designed to eliminate Popish plots and one of the first celebrations appears to be that which resulted in a fire at Plymouth. Eventually the holiday took a solid root in the large trade centers of Boston and New York. Little is heard of the celebration elsewhere. But, can we be sure that we have the full picture?  Perhaps the celebration is simply better recorded in the urban areas. Cressy notes that celebrations were not as well recorded in the Colonies as they were in contemporary England.

There were not many diarists in the colonies.  Those that did write did not say much about celebrations. One would have thought that as in England, the maintenance of  celebrations would have been a hot topic at court or  in diaries or in  polemic and  other correspondence. This  is  however not  the  case and references are few and far between. Perhaps the creation of a new culture of America prevailed adapting to the new seasonal round and substituting new historical celebrations for  the old.. Or, perhaps we have simply not looked hard enough at the personal correspondence that exists from the period or the peripheral references to the celebration which might exist in the form of subtle effects of the celebration upon daily life, commercial activities  and legal judgments.

Cressy notes that the maintenance of religious routine was  also  weak or non existent. Without the prayerbook as a guide some celebrations could be easily lost. Surely the tensions of the frontier and the demands of survival would be factors which would dim the quality of any celebration. Even after the restoration and the return of many celebrations Gunpowder Treason Day had to wait until the Williamsburg era for its reintroduction from England to Virginia.  It is mentioned in The Virginia Gazette, 4-11, F ebruary 1736-7  and December 1774; and the Virginia Almanack (Williamsburg, 1743,1764,1774).  In Maryland we encounter a colony which was not inclined to "cherish" any one faction of religion, however, with individual freedom to practice traditions of choice one would however, expect to see Gunpowder Treason Day in the  cultural baggage and in the practice of more than a  few  colonists. Here again  researchers  point  to an absence  of  documentation in the written record. Perhaps we should take our questions to archeologists. (eventually on these pages I shall propose an archeological model for the recognition of evidence for the celebration in the archeological record).

The new colonial seasonal round did however occasionally cause many to celebrate on the 5th of November. This occurred because official celebrations of Thanksgiving Day often fell on that date. In Connecticut the celebration of the first Wednesday as Thanksgiving often resulted in the celebration occurring on November 5. Thanksgiving would also tie in very well with the intent of the celebration of Gunpowder Treason Day.

Due to Puritan influences American almanacs did not specially mark the date  of  November 5. The custom of red letter days was unknown.   Eventually after James  II almanacs  such as  John  Tullley's  of Boston in  1687  brought back the  custom  of recording the  old holidays.  It  was not  until 1689 that Powder Plot Day was recorded in Tulleys work.  However, when puritans again cracked down and other days were eliminated from the calendar Tully made two important exceptions in 1697 for the Birthday of King William III and for the Gunpowder Plot. While this is strong evidence for the continued celebration ministers with the exception of a few such as Thomas Hooker and John Wilson still did not deliver sermons to mark the holiday in New England. Even though strict Protestants did recognize that the Gunpowder had signaled God's deliverance they regarded its celebration to be superstitious. We can not however, tar the entire colonial society with the same puritanical, revisionist brush. There was always an undercurrent of the "reprobate masses" who were unwillikng to follow the "saints" in the censorship of tradition.

Emmanuel Altham for example on a visit to Plymouth notes that carousing sailors had built a fire at the Plymouth Plantation in 1623 which ran out of control to destroy three our four houses in 1623.  William Bradford notes that "this fire was occasioned by some of the seamen that were roystering in a house where it first began, making a great fire in very cold weather, which broke out of the  chimney into the thatch".   Of course this celebration was frowned upon by the saintly classes and discouraged however, its survival is of significance.

Later in 1662 Samuel Maverick (a royalist) noted  complaining:  "divers youths (were) lately prosecuted at Boston for making bonfires on Gunpowder Treason day at night,  it being kept as a  thanksgiving for the return of the New England agents, the youths being  willing to conform to the practice that such a time affords in old england; for this  reason the parents of the  youths were  fined, but the children of the church  members  who were  guilty  as  much  as others scraped  all  scot-free".

Middlexex County court records  of 1662 show more.  Thomas Facy  and  Paul  Wilson  who had  also been caught and punished for Maying, were :"convicted of disorderly carriage on the fifth of November last, being a  day  of public thanksgiving in abetting sundry young person and others gathering themselves into companies and kindling  fires  in the evening,  and absenting themselves from their  master's houses and  lodgings  after  nine at night  to the  disquiet of the inhabitants,  sundry  men having their fences by that occasion pulled up and burnt, and one house tumbled into a cove, and sundry guns shot of whereof Paul Wilson confesses he shot one of them.".
So here was evidence of celebration escaping the cultural baggage to run in the community.

Unofficial celebrations continued throughout the rest of the 17th century in New England.  America had to wait until the 18th Century for more elaborate celebrations  in the English style to be come popular. Increase Mather on November 5 1664 was "at night much troubled to see the bonfires" . Therefore we must recognize the persistence of the celebration even though the celebrants were not of the dominant class.  Perhaps it was the influence of mariners,  who had recently witnessed the extravagant English celebrations, upon the youth which we must credit for the development of an interest in the celebration. Perhaps also the celebration by its very nature  is most successful in urban rather than in rural areas.  The celebration is infact a group and community celebration often associated with societies which could not be so  organized in less populated rural areas. But here again our information of the isolated farms and communities is  limited.  Certainly,  the time and resources for celebration would have also been greater as time passed, population grew and basic subsistence became less of a central concern.Renewed celebration may well be a result of prosperity and urban growth.

At last in 1665 Anglicans including Samuel Maverick petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts to make the laws of the colony conform with those of England.   "There ought to be inserted and ordained to be kept the fifth of November, and the nine and twentieth of May, as days of thanksgiving; the  first for the miraculous preservation of our king and country from the Gunpowder Treason; the second for his majesty's birth (and ) miraculous and happy restoration to his crowns upon the same day; as also the thirtieth of January as a day of fasting and praying, that God would please to avert his judgment from our nations for that most barbarous and execrable murder of our late sovereign, Charles the first"  This proposal was rejected. It was however a very important statement reflecting common heritage and linked traditions. The desire to break clean with England in America was not entirely successful. Infact, the later emphasis upon the celebration in Boston and New York was to demonstrate that  the tradition was not only restored but  an integral part of American political life in these urban centers.
November 5, 1667 was, however, declared  "a day of thanksgiving unto God for the continuance of our peace and liberties"  Of course this could be done because it was also to be celebrated as the traditional Thanksgiving day which just happened to fall upon the 5th.  So here  it appears that   American Thanksgiving Day Commemorations and Gunpowder Treason Day  Celebrations are in competition for the same date.   This is however, not the case as  both days were considered to be celebrations of thanksgiving and could be celebrated together without conflict.

Thomas Bailey of Massachusetts wrote a four page poem in 1669: In Quintum Novembris". In this poem he praised Jehovah: "Who sav'd us on the 5th day of Novermber/ Which may us  cause God still to remember."  Here again the importance and the shared traditions of the day emerges from  the cultural baggage as a real concern.

The people of Boston were treated to a publication of John Wilson's Song of deliverance for the lasting remembrance of God's wonderful works. This work was originally written in England in the 1620s. It was reprinted  in Boston in 1680 and is seen to be an influence across the ocean of the fear of another Catholic succession which had lead in  London to mock pope burnings. Wilson had infact re-located from England to Massachusets where he became a minister. New Englanders could reflect upon his words:

Never since world  began was thought plot more abominable
Never Deliverance was wrought more strange and admirable'

It is no doubt however, that the new generation had seen the celebration in the cultural baggage of their parents and grandparents. Perhaps in rural areas it had never been  discontinued  as a part of their own seasonal round. The puritans did, after all,  recognize the  deliverance from the treason of the Gunpowder as an important part of the pattern of providences. They preached the celebration but simply refrained from celebrating beyond the pulpit.

There was a significant demand for sermons on the topic. Perhaps this demand stems from the perpetuation of the old calendar in the more conservative countryside.
Samuel Sewal for example noted his disappointment on 5 November 1685 in his diary: "Mr. Allin preached....mentioned not a word in prayer or preaching that I took notice of which respect to Gunpowder treason." The next year he was a bit happier to note as  Mr. Morton, preaching at Charlestown, "took occasion to speak of the 5th of November very pithily".  The pattern of providences continued to link the heritage of New England to that of England. Just as this link was seen in the pulpit once the time was right for its rebirth it was also seen in the streets.  Is it possible that the later street activity was encouraged by a movement of practitioners of the celebration  from rural  (poorly recorded) settings to the urban (better recorded) settings?

In Novemvber 1682 Benjamin James and a few others were taken to Suffolk County Court because he had gathered people together to start a bonfire in Boston.  On 5 November 1685 "although it rained hard, yet there was a bonfire made on the common.  About fifty people attended it."  The next night with better weather: "about two hundred hallowed about a fire on the  common". There was no violence but merchants and magistrates worried about the disturbances. Most 17th  century celebrations of the 5th were infact not violent. There was bull-baiting at Marblehead in 1702 for the celebration.  The poor  were  given the  meat.

William III accomplished  much to  save the celebration. First he was born  on the 4th of November and then he arrived in England on the 5th to rid the country  of the  tyrant king James II. This made the period of days even more important.  This complimented   the concurrent celebration of the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Guns were fired on the king's birthday in 1697: "At night great illuminations made in the Town House governor and council and many gentlemen there.  About eight Mr. Brattle and Newman let fly their fireworks form Cotton Hill, Governor and Council went thither with a trumpet sounding" With more days to celebrate in the same week it was possible to escalate the celebration over a period of days with a climax on the 5th itself. It was also possible to avoid bad weather.  The logistics of being able to  hold a festival over a long period of time may have also aided in its success.  Eventually a fully developed carnival and fire-festival developed. It's climax was the ritual burning of an effigy of the pope. Within 50 years the celebration had returned to life in America  as a major holiday.

The Boston Almanac for November 1735 noted:
"Gunpowder-Plot
We hna'n't forgot"

The Boston Evening Post of that year retold the tale of Guy Fawkes and of the conspiracy:
"for the information of such of our readers who are not furnished with the history of this  surprising  attempt" The paper reported on 10 November 1735: "Wednesday last, being the 5th of this instant November, the guns were fired at Castle William, in token of joy for the happy deliverance of our nation from one of the most horrid and damnable conspiracies that ever was contrived by hell and Rome...In the evening there was a bonfire on Dorchester neck, and several in this town; and there were a variety of fireworks played off upon this occasion, both on the land and on the water." Some apprentices who had gone out to watch the festivities on boats drowned on their  way back. Eventually the growth of the celebration would bring competitive processions, effigies and bonfires.   Rival gangs (North Vs. South)  parading their popes caused death and destruction in Boston in 1764. Some see the celebrations as a way of blowing off social steam.  The urban furnace produced high tensions as well as noise, light license,  festivity and danger.  Anti Catholicism merged with anti-authoritian philosophies. Gunpowder Treason day was re-named Pope's day.  The Effigy of Lord North and tea  in 1774  in Boston demonstrated that the celebration had fused onto the processes which were to lead to the birth of a new nation via the American revolution. The  celebration had resisted attempts to fully Americanize the new world and it had found a place in the seasonal round arm and arm with Thanksgiving. The transference of politics from the courts of kings and churches of the clergy to rival societies of ordinary people on the street turned the celebration completely inside out the plot became emplematic of the power of the people and an occasion for the celebration of that power more in celebration of Fawkes than in the celebration of the preservation  of the elite.

While some see  the transformations of the celebration in America to be the harnessing of a celebration by an Ideological tradition I believe that it is just as important to see the continuity of a multidimensional holiday in the celebration. As is pointed out elsewhere on these pages the many dimensions of the holiday provide many handles for its use by a wide variety of groups for a wide variety of purposes.

While conservatives could celebrate the continued actions of the hand of providance and salvation others would  see in the bonfire the unexploded gunpowder left for us all by Guy Fawkes. The precedent of questioning authority from the street was just as important as its deliverance.

I would maintain that the celebration itself continued throughout the 17th century as a part of the cultural baggage of colonists-perhaps in the unrecorded or poorly recorded rural areas. I am confident that if we look carefully both in subtle textual references and in the archeological record we will find those bonfires of celebration on the new frontier and throughout the colonies where English men and Women maintained this very important celebration of the continuity of political and social development from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Perhaps the migration of practioners or of their thoughts and philosophies from rural areas to the urban centers lead to the late 17th and early 18th century revival of celebration.  The continuation of the celebration is  strong evidence for the defiance of the American climate and the agricultural seasonal round- a triumph over the wilderness . The celebration in urban centers would symbolize a triumph of the people and political partys of the streets over the institutions of government and of religion. Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes would have been quite proud.

(Source: (when not cited above) -David Cressy.,Bonfires and Bells.”National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England.,University of California Press, Berkeley,1989

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