I’d like to say that in the case of Don-caster, spelling ‘Fort on River Don,’ I don’t think that the first component that doubles as the river’s name (Don) derives on the ancient Irish goddess Danu, it doesn’t quite add up.
On the contrary, I feel that it is actually Scythian in origin where ‘don’ means ‘river’ and most likely came along with the cavalry of about 5500 Sarmatians that were stationed in central and north nowadays England, many of whom in the area of modern Yorkshire, by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 175 AD.
These Sarmatians apparently stayed there for whole generations while there is also the more known River Don, among the longest in Europe, that lay in the eastern reaches of their homeland (Sarmatia) in what is nowadays Russia.
“Remember, remember, the 5th of November” goes the traditional rhyme recalled by V (Hugo Weaving) as he evokes his inspiration of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot (1605 AD) behind his own meticulous plan to pick up where the latter left off and take down government and system, culminating in blowing up the Palace of Westminster, on the very same date (November 5) in the well-known film “V for Vendetta.”
Whilst the film is absolutely fabulous and conveys some strong messages across, Fawkes himself didn’t quite actually intend to blow up the parliament for the sake of the people or to shake the system as such but as part of a wider plot by English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, to facilitate a takeover of power in place of ruling Protestants and target King James I.
Of course, there has got to be said that Catholics had suffered much under an intolerant regime for decades since the reign of Henry VIII and in the eyes of Fawkes, with a strong background of recusant Catholics, it may have felt as though fighting tyranny indeed in this cause.
He actually went overseas a decade earlier and fought on the side of (Catholic) Spain under William Stanley against the Protestant Dutch reformers and the newly established Dutch Republic in the Low Countries, nowadays Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, halfway through the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) where he acquitted himself well and was recommended for captaincy.
He was also among delegates sent to Spain to engage the support of King Phillip III by way of a Spanish invasion backed by English Catholics on the ground that eventually didn’t bear fruit in 1603.
The plan to blow up the House of Lords during a delayed State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605 was actually Catesby’s aiming to assassinate King James I followed up with a revolt in the Midlands as well as installing the latter’s daughter Elizabeth, just nine years of age at the time, in his place as a Catholic head of state.
After apparently starting digging a tunnel from a nearby house through to the Parliament, the plotters eventually gained the lease to a deserted undercroft underneath the building that they started to fill in with barrels of gunpowder.
And they might have succeeded in their plan but for some among them that came increasingly concerned about Catholics that would be present during the opening session in a potential explosion so sent an anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle in late October warning him to stay away.
That backfired, however, as Monteagle eventually showed the letter to King James, who in turn dispatched Thomas Knyvet to probe the cellars beneath the parliament in the early hours of November 5 where they found Fawkes and discovered the barrels of gunpowder buried under firewood and coal as a camouflage.
Fawkes and seven of his co-plotters were trialled in late January 1606 sentenced to death by hanging and being quartered but himself, last to be executed among four on the day, apparently opted to jump from the hanging scaffold and broke his neck upon impact, unlike what the film shows, on January 31.
Breaking through History 