never looked much into the history of this before... it's fascinating and I'd like to spend more time researching it, but I need to work on the thesis... =/ from the little I did look at (and pieced together from various sources)... Catholics were attempting to overthrow the oppressive Protestant state... Guy Fawkes had disguised his true identity in order to gain access to a cellar beneath the House of Lords where he stockpiled 36 barrels of gunpowder which was set to erupt on Nov 5, 1605, during a session of Parliament where all the major heads of state would have been present. Fawkes was one of the 13 conspirators involved in the plot... the mastermind was actually Robert Castesby. Fawkes was the one who had extensive military experience, so he was put in charge of the gunpowder and was the first to be arrested by the State, just before the plot was about to be carried through, after Lord Monteagle received an anonymous letter (known as the Monteagle letter) that revealed the intentions of the plot.
one thing i find particularly fascinating is that the King James bible would have been destroyed had this plot succeeded... King James I was working on a translation of the bible during this time (apparently he was a writer... so perhaps he actually wrote the bible himself?) which was published in 1611.