5. GUY FAWKES

Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, was a nobleman, adventurer, and politician and belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

 Fawkes was born and educated in York. His father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes later converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years' War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England but was unsuccessful. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England)