Bonfire Night quiz questions for the fifth of November

Every 5th of November, the UK marks Bonfire Night with fireworks, bonfires and burning effigies, all of it tracing back to a failed assassination attempt on the king and Parliament in 1605. Most people know the rough shape of the story from school, the rhyme about remembering the fifth of November, and not much else. These twelve questions dig into the detail behind it: the conspirators, how the plot actually unravelled, and the traditions, some still going strong and some largely forgotten, that grew up around it in the centuries since.

The questions

1While fighting for Catholic Spain against Dutch rebels in the Low Countries, Guy Fawkes started going by a different, more Italian-sounding version of his first name. What name did he adopt?

Answer:Guido(click to reveal)

He'd spent close to a decade as a soldier on the continent before returning to England and falling in with the plot. "Guido Fawkes" is still the name carved onto some of his later paperwork and correspondence. More from Historic Royal Palaces

2Guy Fawkes wasn't the plot's mastermind. Which fellow conspirator actually conceived the plan and recruited Fawkes for his gunpowder expertise?

Answer:Robert Catesby(click to reveal)

Catesby never faced trial. He was killed in a shootout with the sheriff's men at Holbeche House in Staffordshire on 8 November 1605, just three days after the plot collapsed. Wikipedia: Gunpowder Plot

3The plotters timed the attack to coincide with a specific ceremonial occasion, scheduled for 5 November 1605, when the monarch formally opens a new session of Parliament. What is this occasion called?

Answer:The State Opening of Parliament(click to reveal)

It's still held today, complete with the King's Speech and the full pageantry of crown, coach and Black Rod. In 1605, King James I and members of both Houses would all have been in the building at once.

4The gunpowder was hidden in a rented undercroft directly beneath one of the two Houses of Parliament, packed under piles of firewood and coal. How many barrels of it were stashed there?

Answer:36(click to reveal)

That's roughly enough to have levelled the building and everyone in it. The space had been leased months earlier under the name of another conspirator, Thomas Percy, giving the plotters a legitimate reason to be coming and going. Wikipedia: Gunpowder Plot

5An anonymous letter delivered on 26 October 1605 warned a nobleman to stay away from Parliament that day, without explaining why, and ended up triggering the search that unravelled the whole plot. What is this letter usually called?

Answer:The Monteagle Letter(click to reveal)

It was addressed to Lord Monteagle, who handed it straight to the king's chief minister, Robert Cecil. Nobody has ever definitively established who wrote it. Wikipedia: Gunpowder Plot

6Which justice of the peace led the search party that found Fawkes hiding among the gunpowder in the early hours of 5 November, armed with a fuse and a box of matches?

Answer:Sir Thomas Knyvet(click to reveal)

Fawkes gave a false name, "John Johnson," and it took further questioning, and reportedly torture in the Tower of London, before his real identity and the names of his fellow plotters came out.

7After their trial in January 1606, the surviving conspirators were sentenced to the standard punishment for treason at the time. What was that sentence?

Answer:Hanged, drawn and quartered(click to reveal)

Fawkes and three others were executed at Old Palace Yard in Westminster on 31 January 1606, a day after the rest of the group met the same fate at St Paul's Churchyard.

8In the plot's aftermath, an Act of Parliament made 5 November a compulsory day of public thanksgiving and church attendance, a legal requirement that lasted more than 250 years. In what year was that law finally repealed?

Answer:1859(click to reveal)

The Observance of 5th November Act had long since lost its religious and political bite by the Victorian era, and it was scrapped along with several other old anniversary laws. Wikipedia: Observance of 5th November Act 1605

9For much of the 20th century, children built a stuffed effigy from old clothes and newspaper and wheeled it around the streets in the run-up to Bonfire Night, asking passers-by for a small coin before it went on the fire. What two-word phrase did they shout while doing it?

Answer:"Penny for the guy"(click to reveal)

The coins were meant to help pay for the household's fireworks. The custom had largely died out by the end of the century, but it's where the word "guy" as a generic term for a man actually comes from. London Museum: Penny for the Guy?

10Which East Sussex town holds the biggest and most elaborate Bonfire Night celebrations in the country, with several separate societies each running their own torchlit procession, bonfire and fireworks display through the streets?

Answer:Lewes(click to reveal)

Tens of thousands of visitors pack the town every year for it, and the processions include the traditional "tar barrel" races, where teams drag flaming barrels along the high street.

11Lewes's Bonfire Night doesn't only commemorate the Gunpowder Plot. It also remembers seventeen local people executed for their religious beliefs in the town's high street during the reign of a 16th-century monarch known for persecuting Protestants. Which monarch?

Answer:Mary I(click to reveal)

The seventeen martyrs were burned at the stake during the Marian persecutions of the mid-1550s. Lewes's processions carry seventeen tall burning crosses through the town in their memory. Wikipedia: Lewes Bonfire

12Members of Lewes's bonfire societies march in matching striped jerseys, a look borrowed from a very different 18th and 19th-century trade once common along the Sussex coast. What was that trade?

Answer:Smuggling(click to reveal)

Each society has its own colour combination, from black and white to gold and black, along with white trousers and black boots. It's a nod to the area's long history of getting contraband past the excise men. Wikipedia: Lewes Bonfire

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That covers the history behind the fireworks, from the conspirators who nearly pulled it off to the Sussex town that still marks it harder than anywhere else. If you want more seasonal rounds, our Halloween quiz questions cover the last big date on the autumn calendar before Bonfire Night, and our autumn quiz questions are a good all-rounder for the season either side of it. Or build a full themed round around all of this at our quiz creator.