The execution of the eight surviving conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot in 1606 in London. Etching with engraving by C.J. Visscher.

The execution depicted shows the punishment of the eight surviving conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. The aim of the plot was the blowing up of the Houses of Parliament, a plan devised by Robert Catesby and several other Roman Catholics of rank. Guy Fawkes was detected preparing the explosives under the House of Lords and arrested. Catesby and three others died resisting arrest, but eight other members were executed in January 1606 and in May 1606 Father Henry Garnet died on the scaffold (see no 43487, this catalogue). An act of Parliament named the 5th November as a day for the nation to give thanks for its deliverance