Almost all children in the UK know this rhyme. It commemorates the plot by Guy Fawkes and other plotters to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

In 1605 Fawkes and the others planted barrels of gunpowder in the cellars beneath Parliament. The aim was to assassinate the king, James I, who was due to visit the building for the State Opening, as well as the aristocracy.

Fawkes and the other plotters were Catholic and this was a period when Roman Catholicism was being suppressed in favour of Protestantism. They hoped the assassination would provoke a Catholic uprising.

Unfortunately for them, the authorities were tipped off about the plan and, on the 5th November, the day of the State Opening, a search revealed Guy Fawkes in the cellars with 20 barrels of gunpowder and the means to detonate them. He was arrested along with other plotters. Fawkes was tortured in the Tower of London then put on trial. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered – this meant he would have been hanged but cut down before he died, then his body would be cut open and his internal organs taken out and burned in front of him, then he would be cut into quarters. He was lucky, though, before he could be partly hanged, he jumped from the platform of the gallows and broke his neck and died. Some of the other plotters weren’t so lucky and the full sentence was carried out.

Now we celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot each year on the 5th November by lighting bonfires and letting off fireworks. When I was a child, we used to make a ‘Guy’, an effigy of Guy Fawkes, then sit in the street with our guy in an old pushchair or homemade go-kart. As people went by we’d say “Penny for the guy” and passersby would give us money. Of course, in these less innocent times, that custom has died out. Even so, an effigy is still burnt on the bonfire.