The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of England's Parliament on 5th November 1605. The plot was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter and during a search, Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder—enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble—and arrested. He was sentenced along with seven other conspiritors to be hanged, drawn and quartered....
* Welsh spymaster Hugh Owen ( 1538 - 1618 ) who had dedicated his life to overthrowing the Protestant Order and to restore the Church of Rome to England and Wales is regarded by many as being the mastermind behind the Gunpowder Plot. He also helped plan the Spanish Armada and was involved in plots on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, after which he had fled, firstly to Oswestry, then via Spain to Brussels, where he advised the Netherlands government on English affairs, frequently using Welsh in his secret correspondence. He made several journeys to Italy, Spain and France and maintained a succession of secret agents in England, and used Welshmen in the English regiments in Flanders for information and keeping in touch with Welsh affairs .
It is thought that it was Owen who originally introduced Guy Fawkes to the other conspirators, when Fawkes acted as a servant to him during his time in Brussels and if the plot had been successful, it was Owen who would have organised continental reaction. Owen was also named in Fawkes' trial as the man ‘whose finger hath been in every treason which hath been of late years detected’. Owen himself escaped retribution, operating from the comparatively safe haven of Catholic Europe. Despite many assassination attempts mounted against him by Elizabeth’s agents, including Sir Francis Drake and regular demands from the English government for his extradition, which were consistently repulsed, Owen died peacefully of old age in Rome,
* Father Robert Jones who resided at the Jesuits' South Wales Mission "Cwm" in Llanrothal, Herefordshire, was implicated in an attempt to save two of the Gunpowder Plot perpetrators.See more
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