1066 and all that

James I slobbered at the mouth and had favourites; he was thus a Bad King. He had, however, a very logical and tidy mind, and one of the first things he did was to have Sir Walter Raleigh executed for being left over from the previous reign. He also tried to straighten out the memorable confusion about the Picts, who, as will be remembered, were originally Irish living in Scotland, and the Scots, originally Picts living in Ireland. James tried to make things tidier by putting the Scots in Ulsters and planting them in Ireland, but the plan failed because the Picts had been lost sight of during the Dark Ages and were now nowhere to be found.

GUNPOWDER PLOT

There were a great many plots and Parliaments in James I’s reign, and one of the Parliaments was called the Addled Parliament because the plots hatched in it were all such rotten ones. One plot, however, was by far the best plot in History, and the day and month of it (though not, of course, the year) are well known to be utterly and even maddeningly MEMORABLE.

The Gunpowder Plot arose in the following way: the King had recently invented a new table called Avoirduroi, which said:

James was always repeating, “No Bishop, No King,” to himself, and one day a certain loyal citizen called Sir Guyfawkes, a very active and conscientious man, overheard him, and thought it was the slogan of James’s new policy. So he decided to carry it out at once and made a very loyal plan to blow up the King and the bishops and everybody else in Parliament assembled, with gunpowder.⁠[8] Although the plan failed, attempts are made every year on St. Guyfawkes’ Day to remind the Parliament that it would have been a Good Thing.

PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

It was at this time that some very pious Englishmen, known as the Early Fathers, who were being persecuted for not learning Avoirduroi, sailed away to America in a ship called the Mayfly; this is generally referred to as the Pilgrims’ Progress and was one of the chief causes of America.