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The Screw Plot.
The story is that before Queen Anne went to St. Paul’s in 1708 to offer thanksgiving for the victory of Oudenarde, conspirators removed certain screw-bolts from the roof beams of the cathedral that the fabric might fall on the queen and her suite and kill them. In fact it appears that certain iron fastenings were omitted by one of the workmen as he thought the timbers were already sufficiently secured.
Uit ‘The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase & Fable’ editie 1994.