The story of the very last days of the Tory ministry is well known. The unfortunate Queen, seriously unwell and continually harassed by Abigail Masham (now very much Harley's enemy) as well as by Bolingbroke, at last gave in and announced, at the Privy Council in Kensington on 27 July 1714, that she was dismissing Oxford and putting the Treasury in commission. There ensued a tempestuous altercation within the Council, the usually impassive Oxford furiously denouncing Bolingbroke for financial chicanery and later engaging in a shouting-match with Harcourt in the Long Gallery, audible enough to disturb the Queen in her private apartments. In the evening he went to surrender the White Staff to the Queen. She had for some time been complaining of his rude and inconsiderate, and sometimes drunken, behaviour; but it still disturbed her to part from him, the more so that she did not trust Bolingbroke, and she granted him a long farewell audience.

The stress of the day's events was really too much for her, and it soon became plain that she was dying. The news left the Bolingbroke–Harcourt–Atterbury cabal bewildered and unprepared. Over the last four years Bolingbroke had made great efforts to purge the armed forces and the magistracy of Whigs, no doubt with some ultimate intention of bringing in the Pretender. But the risk of precipitating a civil war, even with French help – but very likely with Marlborough and his veterans as opponents – seemed too great.