<P> According to the biographer Esther Forbes, the Guy Fawkes Day celebration in the pre-revolutionary American colonies was a very popular holiday . In Boston, the revelry on "Pope Night" took on anti-authoritarian overtones, and often became so dangerous that many would not venture out of their homes . </P> <P> In the 2005 ITV programme The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend, a full - size replica of the House of Lords was built and destroyed with barrels of gunpowder . The experiment was conducted on the Advantica Spadeadam test site, and demonstrated that the explosion, if the gunpowder was in good order, would have killed all those in the building . The power of the explosion was such that the 7 - foot (2.1 m) deep concrete walls (replicating how archives suggest the walls of the old House of Lords were constructed) were reduced to rubble . Measuring devices placed in the chamber to calculate the force of the blast were themselves destroyed by the explosion; the skull of the dummy representing King James, which had been placed on a throne inside the chamber surrounded by courtiers, peers and bishops, was found a considerable distance from the site . According to the findings of the programme, no one within 330 feet (100 m) of the blast could have survived, and all of the stained glass windows in Westminster Abbey would have been shattered, as would all of the windows in the vicinity of the Palace . The explosion would have been seen from miles away, and heard from further away still . Even if only half of the gunpowder had gone off, everyone in the House of Lords and its environs would have been killed instantly . </P> <P> The programme also disproved claims that some deterioration in the quality of the gunpowder would have prevented the explosion . A portion of deliberately deteriorated gunpowder, of such low quality as to make it unusable in firearms, when placed in a heap and ignited, still managed to create a large explosion . The impact of even deteriorated gunpowder would have been magnified by its containment in wooden barrels, compensating for the quality of the contents . The compression would have created a cannon effect, with the powder first blowing up from the top of the barrel before, a millisecond later, blowing out . Calculations showed that Fawkes, who was skilled in the use of gunpowder, had deployed double the amount needed . </P> <P> Some of the gunpowder guarded by Fawkes may have survived . In March 2002 workers cataloguing archives of diarist John Evelyn at the British Library found a box containing a number of gunpowder samples, including a compressed bar with a note in Evelyn's handwriting stating that it had belonged to Guy Fawkes . A further note, written in the 19th century, confirmed this provenance, although in 1952 the document acquired a new comment: "but there was none left!" </P>

Who tried to blow up what in 1605