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A 17th-century conspiracy theorist is convinced the gunpowder plot was a government scheme to justify taking people’s gunpowder away.
Simon Williams, esq, Gentleman of the parish of Kettering, has written a hard-hitting pamphlet pointing out that it would be impossible to smuggle thirty-six barrels of gunpowder into Parliament without the government being complicit in some way.
Williams went on to suggest that those in power planned the attack seeking only to gather more power, and that they “care not” for the rights of the people they control.
The pamphlet, titled ‘Rise from thy slumbers, sheepe-people!’, alleges that the government is determined to take gunpowder away from all honest, God-fearing folk, and created the plot to blow up parliament as an excuse to take away your god-given rights.
It goes on to claim that King James I was not born in merrie old England, and to demand that he release his birth certificate to prove he is the rightful sovereign, rather than some dirty foreigner.
Further on, Simon points out that with their full beards and ruffs the plotters look uncannily like criminals in other cases and suggests they are actually always the same people in the employ of spymaster Lord Cecil.
”If thou takest away legal gunpowder only criminals shalt have gunpowder,” he said in a compelling argument that is so logically sound that it is unlikely to change at all in the next four-hundred years.
“The onlie thing which mayhap foil a bad Guy Fawkes with a barrel of gunpowder is a goode Guy Fawkes with a barrel of gunpowder.”
