Guy Fawkes's lantern on display in Oxford museum

Image source, Ashmolean

Gunpowder plotter Guy Fawkes lantern on display in Oxford

Katharine Da Costa

BBC News, Oxford

A lantern believed to have been carried by Guy Fawkes, the night he was arrested on the 5 November 1605 is on display at a museum.

More than four hundred years later, the lantern can be seen at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Gunpowder plotter Guy Fawkes was famously captured in the cellars underneath the Houses of Parliament in London as he planned to blow up the king.

Director of the Ashmolean Museum Xa Sturgis, said: "that's a lantern designed for such a conspiracy."

Guy Fawkes's lantern on display in Oxford

Mr Sturgis explained that this is the lantern "that held the candle, that was going to light the fuse, that was going to blow up Parliament."

He said: "There are lots of museums with items like this that claim to be Mary Antoinette slipper or Queen Elizabeth's handkerchief.

"But this is almost certainly that lantern, we know because it came to Oxford such a long time ago.

"It arrived in the collection at Oxford in 1641, it was given by the brother of the man who arrested Guy Fawkes under Parliament and so that's as good a provenance as you can get."

He said: "To have the lantern here, it's really exciting.

"It's a very particular lantern because it has a mechanism within it, that allows you to shut off the light.

"He could have been hiding down there with the flame of the candle concealed in the dark and so that's a lantern designed for such a conspiracy."

"We remember him by putting him on top of a fire and burning him, so we are celebrating the salvation of British democracy and the King," he added.

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