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Gunpowder Plot - Guy Fawkes & the Plan to Blow up Parliament
The 1605 Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt by pro-Catholic conspirators to blow up the English Parliament on 5 November and kill King James I of England (r. 1603-1625) and the entire nobility along with him. The plot was discovered when...
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The 1944 Plot to Assassinate Hitler
A group of German generals attempted to assassinate the leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) using a bomb on 20 July 1944 but failed. The conspirators were against Hitler's conduct of the Second World War (1939-45) and Nazism in...
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Discovery of Guy Fawkes & the Gunpowder Plot
An illustration from 1906 showing the discovery of Guy Fawkes beneath Westminster Palace and the 1605 Gunpowder Plot when he and his Catholic co-conspirators intended to blow up the English Parliament and James I of England (r. 1603-1625...
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The Gunpowder Plot Conspirators
A contemporary engraving of the conspirators involved in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a failed attempt to blow up the English Parliament.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
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The Two Murderers Plot to Kill Clarence - Richard III, Act I Scene IV
Act I Scene IV of William Shakespeare's history play The Tragedy of Richard III (c.1594) wherein two murderers are sent by Richard to kill his brother, the Duke of Clarence, watercolor by J. Cophlan, circa 1830.
Folger Shakespeare Library.
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4 Lesser-Known Elizabethan Playwrights and Poets
The Elizabethan era is often regarded as a golden age for English culture, language, and literature. Though William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Edmund Spenser are amongst the best remembered writers of this era, many...
Definition
Cadoudal Affair
The Cadoudal Affair, or the Pichegru Conspiracy, was a failed royalist attempt to kill or kidnap Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), then the First Consul of the French Republic, and restore the House of Bourbon to the French throne. The conspiracy's...
Definition
James I of England
James I of England (r. 1603-1625), who was also James VI of Scotland (r. 1567-1625), was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and he unified the thrones of Scotland and England following the death of Queen Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603...
Definition
Christopher Marlowe - Poet, Playwright, Spy
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), or Kit Marlowe, was a poet and playwright of the English Renaissance who wrote during the Elizabethan Era (1558-1603). His mastery of the blank verse – unrhymed iambic pentameter – transformed the way plays...
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The Violent and Mysterious Death of Christopher Marlowe
On the evening of 30 May 1593, the sounds of a heated argument could be heard emanating from a boarding house in Deptford, a district of London on the south bank of the River Thames. Two of the boarders were quarreling over which of them...