Lewes Bonfire
 Lewes Bonfire Night 2007 - burning town and hillside watchers by Dominic Alves
Between 1533 and 1540, Protestants took control of the English throne, sparking religious tension between Catholics and Protestants. When the Elizabethan Religious Settlement forced every religious leader to recognize the monarch as the head of both church and state, Catholic officials refused, practicing their faith in secret. Many attempts were made to put a Catholic back in power. The most famous of these was the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes was caught with 36 barrels of gunpowder trying to blow up the House of Lords and kill King James I.
Since then, annual celebrations have taken place commemorating the failure of the plot against the king’s life, in which effigies of Guy Fawkes are burned. One of the most raucous of these was put on in Lewes, where burning barrels and festive games made for a memorable evening. Today, Lewes Bonfire is the largest and most extravagant Guy Fawkes Night celebration in the United Kingdom, attended by more than 80,000 people in a town of only 16,000 residents. |
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