On the 27th of July, after a stormy interview with the queen, and surrounded by his most desperate enemies, Lord Oxford delivered the white rod into the hands of her Majesty. It was publicly rumored, and the Duke of Berwick affirms it in his Memoirs, that the Court of St. Germain had insisted upon the dismissal of the minister. "Come and see me," wrote Oxford to Swift, on the day following; "if I have not, at other times, wearied you, hasten to one who loves you. I believe that in the mass of souls ours were made for each other. I send you an imitation of Dryden, which occurred to me on my way to Kensington: To wear out with love, and to shed one's blood is approved of on high; but here below examples prove that to be an honest man, brings misfortune."
From the doubtful political honesty of Harley, Queen Anne passed, it was believed, to the imprudent and bold intrigues of Bolingbroke. From France there was suggested a bold and daring stroke: "The queen," said the Duke of Berwick, "should go to Westminster with her brother, and present him to the two houses as her successor." When dying, James II. had pardoned his daughter, charging Mary of Modena to say to her that he prayed God to convert her and to confirm her in the resolution to repair to his son the wrong which had been done to himself. It was upon this favor of the queen that the Jacobites counted, notwithstanding a letter of the Pretender declaring himself irrevocably attached to the Catholic faith. Bolingbroke had foreseen the value of the death of the queen. Scarcely had the power fallen into his hands when he assured the Abbé Gautier that he should hold the same sentiments regarding the prince, provided he took measures which were agreeable to the honest people of the country.
The day following the sudden death of Queen Anne, the French envoy D'Iberville, wrote to Louis XIV.: "My Lord Bolingbroke is overwhelmed with grief; he has assured me that all his precautions were so well taken, that in six weeks' time things would have been in such a state that we would have had nothing to fear from that which has just happened."
The Whigs, as well as Bolingbroke, had also taken their measures; they awaited the Duke of Marlborough, still in the Low Countries. On the 14th of July, Bolingbroke wrote to Lord Strafford: "The friends of Marlborough announce his arrival; I hold it for certain, without knowing whether it is owing to the bad figure which he makes abroad, or in the hope of making a good one among us. I have reason to believe that certain persons who would move heaven and earth sooner than renounce their power or make a good use of it, have recently made overtures to him, and are in some measure in accord with his creatures." Contrary winds detained the Duke at Ostend, but General Stanhope disembarked at the Tower of London.