Guy Fawkes (April 13, 1570 - January 31, 1606), AKA Guido Fawkes, interrogated, prior to his trial, by James I and his council in the king's bedchamber at Whitehall. Guido Fawkes was the name he adopted while fighting the Eighty Years' War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers. In 1605 Fawkes was introduced to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned, tortured and eventually he broke. Before his execution on January 31st, 1606, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed.