London: R. Barker, [1606?]
[B.L.] 1606 [Prayers]
When James VI of Scotland became King of England in 1603, Catholics hoped for toleration. In fact he ordered all Catholic priests to leave England, reimposed fines for recusancy, and refused Catholics the right to receive rent or make wills. The resulting Gunpowder Plot was a Catholic attempt to blow him and Parliament up with gunpowder smuggled into the cellars of the House of Lords. Popular print and sermons alike attributed the plot’s failure to divine delivery, with God protecting Protestant England against Roman Catholicism. Denominational enmity flared, and for many years the bonfires which still commemorate the event were topped with an effigy of the Pope. The official prayers issued after the plot, shown, were recited annually at least until the Civil War. They include some pointed invective, such as: ‘wee yeeld unto thee … all possible praise and thankes for the woonderfull and mightie deliverance of our gracious Sovereigne King James … [and others], assembled together at this present in Parliament, by Popish treacherie appointed as sheepe to the slaughter, and that in most Barbarous and Savage maner, no age yeelding example of the like cruelty intended towards the Lords Anointed and his people.’