Today being the Fifth of November I thought I might consider how poorly society tends to remember important and costly lessons. The anniversary honored by the British on this day it the occasion in sixteen hundred and five when Catholic plotters attempted to massacre the King and the combined houses of the Lords and Commoners, in effect the while Protestant government. The plot failed quite by happenstance; the large cache of explosives being discovered by chance beneath Westminster palace on the evening prior. The perpetrators were captured, tortured, convicted, and executed for their terrible attempted deed, much to the delight of the majority of the population. The Pope was particularly unpopular in those precious isles at the time.
The exemplar arises in that less than a century and a half later the nation was obliged to execute a King for treachery, he being inclined quite unscrupulously to make a pact with the Pope against all citizens’ rights.
Proving the moral to never trust a renaissance Pope, particularly a Borgia.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 