Written by community archaeologist Alexis
Once again it is that time of year when summer ends and the glum descent into winter begins. The last saving graces before the short days and cold nights really start to bite are the celebrations of Halloween on 31 October and Bonfire Night on 5 November.
When I was young Halloween really wasn’t that much of a thing. I think I may have gone trick or treating once and all I can really recall is that I was offered a marmalade sandwich – which was pretty much the rankest thing I have ever eaten. Halloween just wasn’t a big deal. There were rarely any horror films on the television, nobody came knocking at the door and other than the odd organised party with apple bobbing, Halloween was somewhat frowned upon. There certainly isn’t much to link the Palace to a rather complex festival which, since at least the 16th century, has been viewed as ‘Popish’ and certainly not in keeping with the Protestant concept of predestination.
So, when I was growing up Bonfire Night was the big one. This always involved fireworks and an inebriated group of parents trying to make sure, amongst the darkness, smoke and November mist, that the meat on the barbecue was actually cooked and that they weren’t handing out raw sausages. There might have been a water bucket for sparklers too, but burnt fingers were a life lesson and we should have been wearing gloves anyway. Of course, lobbed onto the bonfire when it was fully lit was a ‘Guy’ which we all gleefully watched burn whilst chowing down on those sausages and burgers.
I don’t think I have seen anyone asking for a ‘penny for the Guy’ in years. The last time I recall seeing a ‘Guy’ was a sorry excuse for a stuffed pillowcase outside a pretty grim pub called The Paul’s Head in Newham. The kids with the Guy were raising money for fireworks which they then proceeded to fire at the archaeologists and ground crew working on the A13 extension project. Happy days. My three years in university up north had also revealed some more regional habits around this date: ‘Mischief Night’ on 4 November was a real eye opener and parkin is a traditional Bonfire Night bake. We certainly didn’t have Mischief Night down south! Even more bizarrely I witnessed 5 November being celebrated in Picton on the South Island of New Zealand in about 2004. That still has me slightly perplexed.
But I suppose this really brings us all to what Bonfire Night is about and how it involves the Bishops of London. We are of course all familiar with Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. An attempt was made to blow up the House of Lords along with King James I during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605. The aim of the Catholic faction behind the scheme was to bring about regime change, installing James I’s 9 year old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, as Queen and raising her as a Catholic. The plot failed and after a tip off Fawkes was caught in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords on 4 November with 36 barrels of gunpowder. He was executed on 31 January 1606, although rather deftly he managed to break his neck during the hanging part and so avoided being quartered like the rest of his conspirators whilst still alive. The Bishop of London at the time was Richard Vaughan – who would have been present within the House had the plot succeeded.
But perhaps a more interesting anecdote concerns the Bishops once the celebration of 5 November was well established. Following a general election in 1830, calls were made for electoral reform. The system within the United Kingdom at the time was dreadfully skewed with MPs representing Boroughs. Whilst one borough may have held 12,000 electors, another may have held only 12. This of course meant that powerful patrons could control the selection of MPs and the qualifications required to fulfill the right to vote also varied from borough to borough. The first attempt at a Reform Bill failed in 1831 but led to the resignation of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, another General Election and the leading party switching from the Tories to the Whigs under Earl Grey. Another Reform Bill was passed in the House of Commons and went forward to the House of Lords in October of that year. Here the Bill was rejected by just 41 votes. The Lords Spiritual (the Bishops who sit in the House) had mustered, and of the 22 present, 21 had voted against the Bill. Archbishop Howley (the former Bishop of London) had voted against it, whilst the Bishop of London, Bishop Blomfield, was absent from the reading.
The country immediately descended into chaos as the Bishops were blamed for the failure of the Act. If they had voted for it, the Bill would have passed and at a protest in Regent’s Park, a placard was held aloft displaying the text:
‘Englishmen remember it was the Bishops – and the Bishops only whose votes decided the fate of the Reform Bill’
Riots subsequently broke out in Derby where the city jail was attacked, Nottingham Castle was set on fire and in Bristol the city was taken over for three days, as the Bishop of Bristol’s Palace and the Lord Mayor’s mansion were ransacked.
In a tradition that still goes on today, the 5 November celebrations of 1831 had some prime candidates for ‘Guys’ and effigies of Bishops were burned aplenty. It was rather ironic that Protestant clergymen were being symbolically burned for what had effectively been a Catholic plot.
The Reform Bill did eventually pass in April of 1832 and Bishop Blomfield voted for it along with 11 other Bishops. The nomination boroughs were reduced and 130 new seats were created whilst the franchise was extended to all men who paid a yearly rental of £10. This meant that whilst only 400,000 English subjects could vote before the Reform Act, the number had now risen to 650,000. However, this didn’t include everybody and women were, of course, still denied the vote.
Although the Reform Act was seen as a victory, Archbishop Howley was not forgiven quickly for his betrayal and his carriage was attacked in Canterbury in August 1832. Still, that was probably better than being burned alive, although it sounds like a fair few ‘Guys’ in his image were on Bonfire Night in 1831.