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Popgun Plot

Alleged 1794 conspiracy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ18207317 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Popgun Plot was an alleged 1794 conspiracy by three members of the London Corresponding Society to assassinate King George III by means of a poison dart fired from an airgun. Three members, Paul Thomas LeMaitre, John Smith, and George Higgins, were arrested in late 1794, and Robert Thomas Crossfield in December 1795. All four were acquitted of treason in May 1796, on the grounds that the chief witness against them was dead.

References

Further reading

Paul Thomas LEMAITRE (1795). High treason! Narrative of the arrest, examinations before the Privy Council, and imprisonment of P. T. L., accused of being a Party in the Pop-Gun Plot, or a pretended Plot to kill the King, etc. P. T. Lemaitre.

Editorial summary

“Popgun Plot” enters the record as alleged 1794 conspiracy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Popgun, Plot and Alleged can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1794, 1795, 1796—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Popgun, Plot and Alleged.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Popgun Plot” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Popgun, Plot and Alleged provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18207317. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1794, 1795 and 1796.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Popgun Plot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.