 English Catholics had hoped that the persecution of their faith would end when the apparently more tolerant King James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth I , but Robert Catesby , a Catholic zealot from Ashby St Ledgers , remained unimpressed by the new royal dynasty . He therefore planned to kill James by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder , following which he would help incite a popular revolt to install James 's daughter , Princess Elizabeth , as titular Queen . His role being to guard the gunpowder and other items stored at Catesby 's house in Lambeth , Keyes joined the conspiracy in October 1604 . 
