Guy Fawkes was born in York in 1570, a Protestant. His mother remarried
a Recusant and moved to Knaresborough. He was surrounded by many
Catholics during his school days, including the Wright brothers, who
were later to be involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Having converted to
Catholicism at some point unknown, he first worked in the house of the
viscount Montague, enlisted as an adult in the Spanish army, which was
occupying the Netherlands (then in Spanish hands), allowing him freedom
to practise his religion openly. He adopted the name Guido Fawkes in the
Spanish tradition.
Fawkes had been in correspondence with the Spanish Court, (7) but his
assessment, along with that of several would-be conspirators, Tom Wintour
and his colleague Dutton, notably, was that given the opportunity,
Catholics in England would rise up and depose the new King. This was
quite false and out of step with the feeling of people at home in England.
They were enthusiastically welcoming him in fact. His view indeed was
directly contradicted by Don Juan de Tassis, an envoy from the Spanish
King, who sounded out feeling in England, and found the spirit for combat
entirely lacking.