Charles reacted with understandable concern and in the weeks that followed as investigations were launched and arrests made to identify the imaginary conspirators, anti-Catholic hysteria built across England.
The defining features of the conspiracy theory are: the conspirator, the conspiratorial plan — the sinister plan that they're trying to bring about — and the means of mass manipulation by which the conspirator is keeping the plan secret.
Whilst the plotters in London, particularly Guy Fawkes, blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill the King, at the same time, a revolt is going to ignite in the Midlands under cover of a hunting party.
And now you've got this emerging situation where there are really three people who are supreme in all this, the sort of the three victors, if you like, that come out of the civil war against the conspirators.