hand promoted and advised the Queen to make this change at this time, had most certainly determined to be passive in it and submit to it, if the then House of Commons (being composed of a very great majority of the moderate Whigs, and who, under the influence of Lord Carlton, Mr. Smith, then Chancellour of the Exchequer, and myself, had carried on the publick business with the greatest success, in opposition to the wild embroilments attempted by the Junto, and the open opposition given by the Jacobite faction,) had not absolutely refused to have anything to do with such men. And after I had told my Lord Marlborough the same, in the presence of my Lady Duchess, my Lord Godolphin, and my Lord Sunderland, I was privately desired by Lord Godolphin to go immediately to Kensington, and to lay the same reasons before the Queen against her intended alterations of her Ministry as I had before them; wch I did accordingly. And from that moment Lord Marlborough came to the trimming resolution to cut Harley singly, by wch he thought entirely to justifie himself to my Lord Godolphin (who, as he had cause sufficient, thought himself abandon'd and given up by him), and to keep in St. John, Harcourt, and Hansel, his great friends and confidents, in order to support him against the Junto Lords, and to keep his interest with the Queen, by not acting directly contrary to the advice he most certainly had formerly given her in relation to these men and their destructive projects. But they were too closely linked wth Harley and Hasham to be separated from them; and knowing the Queen's resolutions in relation to the Peace and Succession to be unalterably fixed, her inveteracy against my Lady Marlborough, and likewise against my Lord Sunderland and Lord Godolphin, for being influenced by her, and the assurances wch the Queen most certainly gave to Harley at parting of a speedy restoration; but above all, depending upon Mrs. Masham's unbounded influence over her unhappy mistress's will in all things whatever, but especially in keeping her steady to the aforesaid engagements; upon Harley's dismission, St. John, Harcourt, and Mansel, notwithstanding all my Lord Marlbro' could say to persuade them to the contrary, likewise flung up their employments with him.
And these your Majesty may depend upon to be the true reasons how our design'd destruction came to be at that time postponed. And it was no better. For the middle part my Lord Marlborough acted in this whole affair had these fatal consequences to his own and the publick's prejudice:—
1st. It made such a breach in the confidence that had ever been between Lord Godolphin and his Grace, that, to my knowledge, who was at this time entrusted by them both, could never be again restored 'till one of the best administrations
