Parliament in the early seventeenth century didn't have anything to do with democracy. It had the same purpose it had originally had, which was to check the power of the monarch by giving power to some other people as well. But those other people were not democratically elected. Parliament was, if anything, a sort of oligarchy or aristocracy, tempering what would otherwise have been an absolute monarchy. Merely not being autocratic doesn't make a system democratic, even to a small degree.
In fact, Parliament in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, if anything, deliberately anti-democratic in at least some ways. There was strict secrecy surrounding what went on in it; the reporting of parliamentary debates was a crime. Why? Because it was absolutely no business of anyone outside Parliament to know what went on in it. The power of Parliament was wielded by parliamentarians, not by the populace at large. Only in the eighteenth century did parliamentary debates start to be reported in the press.
If you're going to call any insitution "democratic" which prevents a purely autocratic system from operating, then in that sense Parliament was democratic. But that is not the usual meaning of the word "democratic". The notion that Parliament even should be democratic in the usual meaning of the word did not exist until, I think, the nineteenth century; and it did not become democratic until the twentieth. The "trend" of growing representation, of which you speak, began only in the nineteenth century with the various reform acts.
Certainly to have destroyed Parliament would have been to destroy what would, at some future time, become the organ of democracy. But Fawkes didn't know that and neither did anyone else at the time. Parliament existed for quite different purposes. Later, its purpose changed when ideologies changed, and it was made democratic. If Parliament had not existed at that time, no doubt a body would have been established to reflect the growing concern that government be democratic (to some degree), just as happened in other countries. In other words, had Guy Fawkes succeeded, it certainly doesn't follow that democracy would not have come to Britain later, just as it actually did.
In fact, Parliament in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, if anything, deliberately anti-democratic in at least some ways. There was strict secrecy surrounding what went on in it; the reporting of parliamentary debates was a crime. Why? Because it was absolutely no business of anyone outside Parliament to know what went on in it. The power of Parliament was wielded by parliamentarians, not by the populace at large. Only in the eighteenth century did parliamentary debates start to be reported in the press.
If you're going to call any insitution "democratic" which prevents a purely autocratic system from operating, then in that sense Parliament was democratic. But that is not the usual meaning of the word "democratic". The notion that Parliament even should be democratic in the usual meaning of the word did not exist until, I think, the nineteenth century; and it did not become democratic until the twentieth. The "trend" of growing representation, of which you speak, began only in the nineteenth century with the various reform acts.
Certainly to have destroyed Parliament would have been to destroy what would, at some future time, become the organ of democracy. But Fawkes didn't know that and neither did anyone else at the time. Parliament existed for quite different purposes. Later, its purpose changed when ideologies changed, and it was made democratic. If Parliament had not existed at that time, no doubt a body would have been established to reflect the growing concern that government be democratic (to some degree), just as happened in other countries. In other words, had Guy Fawkes succeeded, it certainly doesn't follow that democracy would not have come to Britain later, just as it actually did.
