From Wikipedia
What actually happened?
When Mary, Queen of Scots fled to England in 1567, her thirteen-month-old son James was crowned king of Scotland. With his Catholic mother in England, James was brought up as a Protestant.
When Elizabeth I died in 1603 without children, Mary’s son, was next in line to the throne. As James was a Protestant, Parliament was also in favour of him becoming king. The Roman Catholics in England were upset that there was going to be another Protestant monarch. They also became very angry when James passed a law that imposed heavy fines on people who did not attend Protestant church services.
In May 1604, Robert Catesby devised the Gunpowder Plot, a scheme to kill James and as many Members of Parliament as possible. At a meeting at the Duck and Drake Inn Catesby explained his plan to Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, John Wright and Thomas Wintour. All the men agreed under oath to join the conspiracy. Over the next few months Francis Tresham, Everard Digby, Robert Wintour, Thomas Bates and Christopher Wright also agreed to take part in the overthrow of the king.
Catesby’s plan involved blowing up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November. This date was chosen because the king was due to open Parliament on that day. At first the group tried to tunnel under Parliament. This plan changed when Thomas Percy was able to hire a cellar under the House of Lords. The plotters then filled the cellar with barrels of gunpowder. Guido Fawkes, because of his munitions experience in the Netherlands, was given the task of creating the explosion.
Francis Tresham was worried that the explosion would kill his friend and brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle. On 26th October, Tresham sent Lord Monteagle a letter warning him not to attend Parliament on 5th November.
Lord Monteagle became suspicious and passed the letter to Robert Cecil, the king’s chief minister. Cecil quickly organised a thorough search of the Houses of Parliament. While searching the cellars below the House of Lords they found the gunpowder and Guy Fawkes, one of the men involved in the plot. He was tortured and he eventually gave the names of his fellow conspirators.
There is a great number of evidence to suggest that ‘Guy’ Faulkes was set up to commit the treason by government officials, for use as a scapegoat by the Protestants to make the Catholics look bad.
