Law establishing Bonfire Night commemorations moves to National Archives

The law that established annual commemorations of the failed Gunpowder Plot is among 4 million parliamentary records now transferred to the National Archives in Kew, south-west London. Completed after five years, the move brings documents associated with Bonfire Night into a collection that the public can consult free of charge.

Written in elaborate calligraphy on a flat sheet of vellum, the 1605 Thanksgiving Act followed Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt to assassinate James I, the Lords and the Commons at parliament’s opening that year. Passed by James I, it required church services every 5 November to mark the plot’s failure. Its opening celebrated the Protestant church’s survival while condemning the Catholic conspirators. Dr Graham Moore, an early modern parliament specialist at the National Archives, said acts often began with ornate explanations before setting out their legal provisions.

Other records capture both the discovery of the plot and its consequences. A House of Commons journal, a predecessor to Hansard, contains a marginal note written by the Commons clerk on 5 November 1605. It records a search of the Westminster cellars that uncovered Fawkes and 36 barrels of gunpowder. A separate act declared Fawkes and his fellow conspirators guilty of treason and ordered their execution by hanging, drawing and quartering. Moore said additions sewn onto the vellum showed how bills were amended during parliamentary debate.

The collection previously occupied Victoria Tower at the Palace of Westminster. Moving it to Kew added 16.5 linear kilometres of material to the 174.5 kilometres already held there. The transferred records have been fully catalogued and assigned individual registration barcodes. Members of the public can now order them for viewing in a location offering greater accessibility and conditions better suited to long-term preservation.

Among the objects is a suffragette banner secretly brought into the Commons Ladies’ Gallery on 28 October 1908. One protester dropped it into the chamber while two others chained themselves to the gallery’s iron grille. The grille eventually had to be taken away with both women still attached. A gravestone fragment, a sword and a uniform are also among the items transferred.

The largest document is the 1821 Land Tax Commissioners Act, which named 65,000 commissioners to collect revenue calculated from land valuations. Written across 757 vellum membranes, it stretches 348 metres, longer than three football fields. It is the longest act in parliament’s archives.

The collection also includes the Great Reform Act of 1832. Dr Joe Cozens, a specialist in 19th-century parliamentary records, described its extension of voting rights to middle-class men in borough towns as an important constitutional development on the path towards modern democracy.

The National Archives now has responsibility for 20 million records, a third of which are kept in deep storage in Cheshire. Chief executive Saul Nassé said Westminster had housed parliament’s archives for decades but was not designed for modern preservation requirements. With judicial and government records already in its care, the institution now brings together records from all three arms of the British state. Nassé said wider public access was central to the purpose of preserving them.