Arrest of Guy Fawkes, 1605 (litho)

Arrest of Guy Fawkes, 1605. Guy Fawkes, the son of an advocate of York, served with the Spanish Army in Flanders where he gained some military reputation. There he met Winter, who brought him to England as likely assistant in the Gunpowder Plot which was in preparation, and to him was entrusted the actual accomplishment of the design of blowing up the parliament house. An anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle gave the government warning of the plot, and Fawkes, "a very tall and desperate fellow," was arrested in the vault beneath the parliament house, and the gunpowder discovered. Fawkes, Winter and other conspirators were executed opposite parliament house in 1606. Illustration for one a set of cards on Historical London, issued by Hignett's Cigarettes in 1926.