Screw Plot (The).

1708, when Queen Anne went to St. Paul’s to offer thanks-givings for the victory of Oudenarde. The tale is that the plotters took out certain screw-bolts from the beams of the cathedral, that the roof might fall on the queen and her suite and kill them.

“Some of your Machiavelian crew

From heavy roof of Paul

Most traitorously stole every screw,

To make that fabric fall;

And so to catch Her Majesty,

And all her friends beguile.”

Plot upon Plot (about 1713).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.