On the death of the Queen, the Council, which had assembled at Kensington Palace, adjourned to St. James’s.  By the Regency Bill the administration of the government (in the event of the King being absent from the realm at the time of his accession to the throne) devolved upon the holders for the time being of the Great Officers of State:  the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Thomas Tenison), the Lord Chancellor (Simon, Lord Harcourt), the Lord President (John, Duke of Buckinghamshire), the Lord High Treasurer (Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury), the Lord Privy Seal (William, Earl of Dartmouth), the First Lord of the Admiralty (Thomas, Earl of Strafford), and the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (Sir Thomas Parker, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield).  Under another clause of the Regency Act the Sovereign was entitled to nominate a number of Lords Justices.  Baron von Bothmer, the Hanovarian Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of St. James’s, opened the sealed packet containing the Commission of Regency, drawn up by George after the death of his mother.  The King’s nominees were the Archbishop of York, the Dukes of Shrewsbury,[1] Somerset, Bolton, Devonshire, Kent, Argyll, Montrose, and Roxborough; the Earls of Pembroke, Anglesea, Carlisle, Nottingham, Abingdon, Scarborough, and Oxford; Viscount Townshend; and Barons Halifax and Cowper.  Marlborough was not in the Commission, but he was appointed Captain-General of the Forces.

[Footnote 1:  The Commission was, of course, made out before the Duke of Shrewsbury was given the White Staff, the possession of which made him a Lord Justice in virtue of his office.]

From The Hague, where he arrived on September 5, 1714, George I sent authority to Charles, Viscount Townshend, to form a Cabinet, with power to nominate his colleagues.  Townshend took the office of Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and appointed James Stanhope Secretary of State for the Southern Department.  Lord Halifax became First Lord of the Treasury; Lord Cowper, Lord Chancellor; the Earl of Nottingham, Lord President; the Marquis of Wharton, Lord Privy Seal; the Earl of Oxford, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Earl of Sunderland, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Robert Walpole, Paymaster-General of the Forces.  As Captain-General Marlborough was in the Cabinet.

Lord Halifax, when making out the Commission of the Treasury, invited his cousin Montagu to be one of the Commissioners, although the latter had not secured a seat in Parliament.  “It will be surprizing to add,” says Lady Mary, “that he hesitated to accept it at a time when his father was alive and his present income very small; but he had certainly refused it if he had not been persuaded to it by a rich old uncle of mine, Lord Pierrepont, whose fondness for me gave him expectations of a large legacy.”  Lady Mary, though glad enough that her husband had been given a place, was not over and above delighted that it was one so modest.