Phil Factor (12/1/2015)

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@Paul.

You are quite right. I should have checked my facts. He was pronounced guilty of high treason. He initially said that his motives were to 'to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains' but his real plot was to put a catholic monarch on the throne. He was actually in league with the Spanish who just couldn't give up their quest to stamp out the protestant faith by force. From the protestant perspective he was a heretic, but that wasn't what sent him to the gallows.

Hero? There is certainly quite a lot of ambivalence in the celebration. We tend to let off the firework explosions just to remind the powers that be not to get too complacent. One town actually burns many of the more hated celebrities of the day in effigy, after parading the effigies through the town.