Did a woman's brutal death influence Guy Fawkes?

The "brutal" execution of a Catholic martyr in York may have helped shape the religious fervour of Guy Fawkes, a historian has claimed.

Margaret Clitherow was crushed to death in 1586 after refusing to enter a plea to charges she had harboured Catholic priests, a serious offence in Elizabethan England.

Almost two decades later, Fawkes and his co-conspirators would be caught attempting to blow up Parliament and destroy England's political elite including King James VI and I.

Dr Hannah Thomas, from York's Bar Convent museum, said a young Fawkes and fellow conspirators may have witnessed Clitherow's death.

She was crushed beneath heavy weights, with a sharp stone placed under her back.

"Even by the standards of that time, this is said to have been a really brutal execution," she said.

"This is a time where people go to executions for sport. They go to watch public hangings like we would go to a football match."

Clitherow's impact on Fawkes is explored in Gunpowder and Treason: The Real Guy Fawkes, available on BBC Sounds.

Under Queen Elizabeth I, Catholics faced penalties for refusing to attend Church of England services, while priests who continued to practice Catholicism risked arrest, torture and death.

Religious differences were seen as a threat to the Crown and Dr Thomas said the government feared Catholics' loyalties were divided between the Queen and the Pope.

"They're thinking 'does that mean they've got loyalty to an overseas crown'," she said.

Fellow historian Gillian Waters, from Leeds, believes 1586 would have been a critical year for Fawkes, who was about 16 when Clitherow died.

He was born and raised in York, educated at St Peter's School in the city, and inherited an estate in the Clifton area from his father.

"Well certainly Guy Fawkes would have been aware of Margaret Clitherow because she is executed on Good Friday," she said.

Another Catholic, Jesuit priest Francis Ingleby, was also hanged at York's Knavesmire in that year.

He had been a great-uncle of Christopher Wright, a schoolfriend of Fawkes along with his brother John.

They had a further connection to persecution as their mother had been imprisoned at times for her Catholic faith.

Both brothers would participate in the Gunpowder Plot and like Fawkes, paid for it with their lives.

Dr Thomas said Clitherow's death, among other forms of persecution, could have affected many young people who saw people being punished for protecting their religious communities.

"They would have had a lot of empathy and sympathy and perhaps thinking that could have been our mother," she said.

Clitherow's own decision not to enter a plea was largely to ensure her children and friends did not have to testify against her or face torture.

Jeremy Walker, headteacher at Fawkes's former school, St Peter's, said the city would have helped shape "his personality, his outlook on life and his beliefs".

The Gunpowder Plot involved the conspirators putting 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar underneath Parliament.

But they were betrayed by one of the plotters sending a letter to a member of Parliament.

The King's men searched the cellars and found and arrested Fawkes, who would face torture and execution himself.

His childhood friends, the Wright brothers, would flee but were eventually killed in a shoot-out with the King's men.

As to Margaret Clitherow, after her death, her body was thrown onto a rubbish heap because she was considered a traitor.

Dr Thomas said Catholic friends later recovered and buried her body secretly, keeping her hand as a relic, which remains preserved in a glass case at the Bar Convent.

More than four centuries later, it remains a physical reminder of the religious persecution that marked Fawkes's youth.

The convent, founded in secret in the 18th Century, is the oldest in England, and is a testament to the persecution of those who adhered to Catholicism in Protestant England.

Clitherow would be regarded as a martyr to the Catholic faith and was ultimately canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.