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