Martin M. Miles' photos with the keyword: Guy Fawkes

York was already an important centre in Roman times, when it was known under the name of Eboracum. The Vikings, who took over the area later from the Angels , in turn adapted the name to Norse Jórvík. After the Anglian settlement York was first capital of Deira and later Northumbria, and by the early 7th century, York was an important royal centre for the Northumbrian kings. Following the Norman Conquest York was substantially damaged in response to regional revolt. Two castles were erected in the city on either side of the River Ouse. In time York became an important urban centre as the administrative centre of the county of Yorkshire, as the seat of an archbishop, and at times in the later 13th and 14th centuries as an alternative seat of royal government. It was an important trading centre. York prospered during much of the later medieval era; the later years of the 14th and the earlier years of the 15th centuries were characterised by particular prosperity. During the English Civil War, the city was regarded as a Royalist stronghold and was besieged and eventually captured by Parliamentary forces under Lord Fairfax in 1644. After the war, York retained its pre-eminence in the North, and, by 1660, was the third-largest city in England after London and Norwich. The present church was built 1525 - 1537 and replaced a church that dated back to at least 1294. The church is the place where Guy Fawkes was baptised in 1570. Fawkes converted to Catholicism and fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. Back in England he met Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords. Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder that they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords. Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, accompanied by fireworks. .