The Duck and Drake Inn
The Strand, London
On 20 May 1604 five men met at the Duck and Drake inn off the Strand: Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes. They swore an oath of secrecy on a prayer book.
Read the full story, see it on the map, get directions and find what else is nearby in the free Hidden Britain Atlas map.
- When
- 20 May 1604
- Where
- 51.5115, -0.1185
- Group
- Plots
Visiting
Nothing survives. The site lies somewhere off the Strand, near today's Somerset House.
Guy Fawkes: Traitor or Faithful?
That spring, at an inn in London known as the Duck and Drake, he met Catesby and the others, and swore an oath of secrecy to the plan. To seal it, they heard Mass together in a neighbouring room, said by a Jesuit priest who knew nothing about what they had just sworn.
This book asks one question and keeps asking it: was Guy Fawkes faithful, or a traitor? Most people think they already know. The answer has been handed down for four hundred years, with a bonfire and a rhyme, and it is rarely examined. From the boy from Stonegate in York to the cellar, the Tower and Westminster Hall, every chapter ends with a ledger of what it adds in his favour and what it adds against him. By the last page you may find that the answer you arrived with is not the one you leave with.
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