The Bandbox Plot of 4 November 1712, was an attempt on the life of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the British Lord Treasurer, which was foiled by the perspicacity of Jonathan Swift (author of “Gulliver’s Travels”), who happened to be visiting the Earl of Oxford. The event was widely written about in the broadsheets of the time; Swift himself wrote about the occurrence in his A Journal to Stella.