Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born in York in 1570 and educated there. His father died when he was eight years old, and his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes was drawn strongly to his stepfather’s religion, and although he knew of the dangers, he converted to Catholicism. At the age of 21, he set off to Europe to fight for Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Eight Years War.

Fawkes was arrested on the night of November 4-5, 1605, after he and his co-conspirators were caught trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. He was tortured and eventually revealed the names of his accomplices. Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, but at his execution on January 31, 1606, he died when his neck was broken as he was hanged, with some sources claiming that he deliberately jumped to make this happen; he thus avoided the agony of his sentence.