all which has happened to him since, or than perpetual exile; he was affronted in the manner in which he was presented to the King.  The meanest subject would have been received with goodness, the most obnoxious with an air of indifference; but he was received with the most distinguishing contempt.  This treatment he had in the face of the nation.  The King began his reign, in this instance, with punishing the ingratitude, the perfidy, the insolence, which had been shown to his predecessor.  Oxford fled from Court covered with shame, the object of the derision of the Whigs and of the indignation of the Tories.

The Queen might, if she had pleased, have saved herself from all those mortifications she met with during the last months of her reign, and her servants and the Tory party from those misfortunes which they endured during the same time; perhaps from those which they have fallen into since her death.  When she found that the peace, from the conclusion of which she expected ease and quiet, brought still greater trouble upon her; when she saw the weakness of her Government, and the confusion of her affairs increase every day; when she saw her First Minister bewildered and unable to extricate himself or her; in fine, when the negligence of his public conduct, and the sauciness of his private behaviour had rendered him insupportable to her, and she took the resolution of laying him aside, there was a strength still remaining sufficient to have supported her Government, to have fulfilled in great part the expectations of the Tories, and to have constituted both them and the Ministers in such a situation as would have left them little to apprehend.  Some designs were, indeed, on foot which might have produced very great disorders:  Oxford’s conduct had given much occasion to them, and with the terror of them he endeavoured to intimidate the Queen.  But expedients were not hard to be found by which those designs might have been nipped in the bud, or else by which the persons who promoted them might have been induced to lay them aside.  But that fatal irresolution inherent to the Stuart race hung upon her.  She felt too much inward resentment to be able to conceal his disgrace from him; yet, after he had made this discovery, she continued to trust all her power in his hands.

No people ever were in such a condition as ours continued to be from the autumn of 1713 to the summer following.  The Queen’s health sank every day.  The attack which she had in the winter at Windsor served as a warning both to those who wished, and to those who feared her death, to expect it.  The party which opposed the court had been continually gaining strength by the weakness of our administration:  and at this time their numbers were vastly increased, and their spirit was raised by the near prospect of the succession taking place.  We were not at liberty to exert the strength we had.  We saw our danger, and many of us saw the true means of avoiding