Monument commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot Frontpiece of Monument

This monument in the Council Chamber of the King’s House at the Tower of London is a unique reminder of one of the most notorious events in British history; the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Erected in 1608 for the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Waad (1546-1623), it commemorates the failure of a small group of Catholic rebels, including the infamous plotter Guy Fawkes, to blow up the House of Lords, and with it King James VI and I (1566-1625), during the State Opening of Parliament on the 5th November 1605.

Waad had played a central role in the unravelling of the Plot. After Guy Fawkes was apprehended with his barrels of gunpowder in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords he was brought to the Tower as a prisoner. There in the hall of the King’s House – then known as the Lieutenant’s Lodging – he was interrogated by Lieutenant Waad and by members of the Privy Council. Only after torture did Fawkes reveal the names of his fellow conspirators and expose the extent of the Plot.

In 1607 Waad had the hall of the King’s House remodelled. The formally double height space was divided in two by the insertion of a floor, creating a dining room downstairs and the Council Chamber above. The following year he commissioned this monument for the wall of the Council Chamber.

Made of pink and black marbles and alabaster, this monument appears, at first glance, to be a fireplace overmantel or a funerary monument. It is, of course, neither but the unnamed stonemason who made it had no other precedent to follow for designing such a unique monument. In the oval panels Latin texts praise the King and his family, extoll the virtues of the Privy Councillors who foiled the Plot, and condemn the wickedness of the plotters, whose names are listed.

A passage in Hebrew in the lower left oval quotes the Old Testament; 'He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death' (Job xii.22). The choice to use Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, for this particularly apt text is a reflection of Protestant opposition to the Latin translations used in the Roman Catholic church.

Along the top are the coats of arms of the members of the Privy Council, but it is Waad’s own arms that are most conspicuously displayed at the bottom. The prominence of Waad’s arms indicates that this is a monument to his own posterity, recording for all time his role in the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.

However, the monument also had another, more sinister, purpose. The Council Chamber was designed as a room in which to interrogate prisoners and the monument acted as a warning that uncooperative prisoners could suffer the same grisly fate as the Gunpowder Plotters.

Alongside it, and probably carved at the same time, is a portrait bust of James VI and I providing the interrogations with royal authority and, according to later descriptions, the room may also once have been decorated with wall paintings depicting men being tortured. This fine monument, therefore, was part of a cleverly designed scheme intended to aid the process of interrogation and is unlike anything else in Britain.