Green Stone :: essays research papers

During the opening years of the seventeenth century, Europe was gripped by reclamation and Counter-Reformation, when Catholics and Protestants persecuted one another with equal fervour. England was ruled by a Protestant regime, and in 1605 a group of oppressed Catholic landowners hatched a piece to kill the king, James I, during the state opening of parliament on 5 November. The plan, conceived by the Midland Catholics Robert Catesby and Thomas Wyntour, was to blow up the Houses of Parliament with dozens of place of gunpowder. Known as the Gunpowder Plot, it was thwarted at the last moment when conspirator Guy Fawkes was discovered nervously waiting to light the fuse. When Fawkes was tortured into telling the names of the other plotters, the small band of conspirators fled to the Wyntour family home at Huddington Court in Worcestershire. Here they spent their last darkness, fleeing only a few miles the undermentioned day before being surrounded by the militia. But this was not the end of the affair. The kings chief minister, Robert Cecil, had given strict instructions that Robert Catesby should be taken alive. The argue being, that he possessed a sacred relic - a green, jade gemstone called the Meonia Stone. Tradition held that it had once been set in King Arthurs sword Excalibur. Historically, it had belonged to bloody shame Queen of Scots, the last legitimate Catholic heir to the English throne. pastime her death in 1587, a legend had developed that the Catholic who would finally reliable the English throne would need to possess the sacred stone. Fearing that the Meonia Stone would act as a rallying symbol for the English Catholics, Cecil was determined that it should be destroyed. He was furious, however, to discover that Robert Catesby had been shot dead and the knowledge of the stones whereabouts had died with him. Despite months of frantic searching and intense interrogation of the surviving conspirators, the stone was never found. Three centurie s later, in 1979, graham Phillips and fellow researcher Andrew Collins decided to go in search of the lost Meonia Stone. The Green Stone, co-authored by Martin Keatman, is the remarkable true story of this fascinating quest. Following a trail of historical clues, Graham and Andrew finally discovered the identity of the person to whom the stone was given. During their interrogation, the surviving Gunpowder Plotters had stated that Robert Catesby still had the stone with him the night before his death.