It's 1603, and Sir Thomas Percy can't stay away from the Globe playhouse and the history plays London is mad for. Inspired by the warrior Hotspur in Shakespeare's Henry IV, he joins a group of disaffected Catholics that includes the mysterious traveler Guido Fawkes and the rebel aristocrat Robin Catesby. Together they and the women who love them embark on a quest to destroy a Protestant king and return the nation to a mythic medieval past.