Military career from
Guy Fawkes - WikipediaIn October 1591 Fawkes sold the estate in Clifton in York that he had inherited from his father.[e] He travelled to the continent to fight in the Eighty Years' War for Catholic Spain against the new Dutch Republic and, from 1595 until the Peace of Vervins in 1598, France. Although England was not by then engaged in land operations against Spain, the two countries were still at war, and the attempted invasion of England, led by the Spanish Armada in 1588, was only five years in the past. He joined Sir William Stanley, an English Catholic and veteran commander in his mid-forties who had raised an army in Ireland to fight in Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands. Stanley had been held in high regard by Elizabeth I, but following his surrender of Deventer to the Spanish in 1587 he, and most of his troops, had switched sides to serve Spain. Fawkes became an alférez or junior officer, fought well at the siege of Calais in 1596, and by 1603 had been recommended for a captaincy.[3] That year, he travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England. He used the occasion to adopt the Italian version of his name, Guido, and in his memorandum described James I (who became king of England that year) as "a heretic", who intended "to have all of the Papist sect driven out of England". He denounced Scotland, and the king's favourites among the Scottish nobles, writing "it will not be possible to reconcile these two nations, as they are, for very long".[13] Although he was received politely, the court of Philip III was unwilling to offer him any support.[14]
