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Gunpowder

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The plotters get lucky... Time ticked on and the plotters kept digging... until in March 1605 they had a stroke of luck. A cellar underneath the House of Lords came up for rent.

Before long the plotters abandoned their tunnel and packed the cellar with 36 barrels of gunpowder. They covered the huge heap of barrels with bundles of firewood, just in case anyone looked inside.

So - the most deadly and dangerous part of the Gunpowder Plot was in place. What next?

Shows a colour cutaway drawing of a building with a pitched roof, a throne room and a cellar beneath.
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Cross-section of the House of Lords, by Sir John Soane, 1794. Parliamentary Archives

The diagram above of the House of Lords clearly shows the cellar, or storeroom, used by the gunpowder plotters. The cellar is the dark room right under the throne.

The image to the right shows the King at Parliament. Which one do you think he is?

Shows an engraving of Parliament in the seventeenth century. The King sits on a throne in the House of Lords before the Lords. In the centre is a man with a journal and judges with two figures on chairs either side of the king. The bottom of the print depicts the House of Commons with men either side of the speaker, who sits in a large chair on a central platform.

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Parliamentary Archives

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