The Bandbox Plot of November 4, 1712 was an attempt on the life of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the then British Lord Treasurer, which was foiled by the perspicacity of Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

(author of “Gulliver’s Travels”), who happened to be visiting the Earl of Oxford.

A bandbox was a lightweight hat-box; this particular one had been configured to fire a number of loaded and cocked pistols on opening, much as a modern day parcel bomb might be arranged to detonate on opening. In this case, the triggers were attached to a thread; Swift, perceiving the thread, seized the package and cut the thread thus disarming the device. The attack was laid at the door of the Whig

British Whig Party

The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 party and threw enormous popular sympathy behind Harley.

The event was widely written about in the broadsheets of the time; Swift himself wrote about the occurrence in his Letters to Stellahttp://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/swift/jonathan/s97s/letter55.html.