d consequently, unpopular war with France. The quarrel
between Queen Anne and her confidante, the Duchess of Marlborough,
smouldered until, on 6 April 1710, the breach between them became
final. The Queen's confidence in the Duke of Marlborough began to erode
as early as May 1709 when he sought to be appointed "Captain-General
for Life." Godolphin's decision to impeach the popular Rev. Dr. Henry
Sacheverell for preaching "a sermon which reasserted the doctrine of
non-resistance to the will of the monarch" was ill-advised, for not
only did it give the High-Church Tories a martyr, it also gave the
Administration the appearance of being against the Church. In securing
the impeachment of Sacheverell on 20 March 1710, the Whigs discovered
that they had lost the support and the confidence of both the
Parliament and the country.

Dissention within and intrigue from without further hastened the fall
of the Administration. Godolphin, a moderate, had, after the General
Election of 1708, found himself allied with the "Junto" of five
powerful Whig Lords--Wharton, Sommers, Halifax, Orford, and
Sunderland--but it was, at best, an uneasy alliance. Throughout 1709
and into the early months of 1710, personal jealousies drove the
Godolphin-Marlborough interest farther and farther away from the Junto.
Robert Harley and the Dukes of Somerset and Shrewsbury, in their
determination to overthrow the Administration, exploited every chance
to widen the rifts between Anne and her Ministers and between the two
ministerial factions. Abigail Hill Masham, who soon became an agent of
Harley, replaced the Duchess of Marlborough as Anne's confidante.

When the Ministry fell, it fell like a house of cards. On 14 April 1710
Shrewsbury was made Lord Chamberlain over the unavailing protests of
Godolphin. Two months later, at the instigation of Somerset, the Queen
replaced Sunderland with the Tory Lord Dartmouth as Secretary of State.
Finally, on 8 August, Godolphin was ordered to break the White Staff of
his office and Harley was appointed Treasurer. One by one the remaining
Junto Ministers were replaced by Tories. By September the work was
complete. The Duke of Marlborough alone remained, in command of the
army, but this was only to be until the new Ministry could negotiate a
peace and his services would no longer be required.

It had been Harley's intention to govern by means of a "moderate"
Administration, a "Queen's Ministery above party," but he had