Encouraged by the nation’s outcry at the Whig trial of a High-Churchman, dismayed at the losses at Malplaquet, and weary of a war with no end in sight, Anne resolved to free herself from the Junto Whigs. She was now secretly conferring with Robert Harley, while Lord Treasurer Godolphin was steadily losing influence.

The stalemate of Malplaquet gave Louis hope he could now obtain more favourable peace terms than in the previous year. Fresh negotiations with the Dutch opened at Gertruydenberg in February 1710 but still made little progress due to Allied insistence on ‘No Peace without Spain’. The Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough, her former favourite, were now so estranged, their last in-person and acrimonious interview was on 6 April 1710. The first sign of what Jonathan Swift called ‘that great change at court’ and the rise of Harley and the overthrow of the Whigs was on 14 April 1710, with Anne’s surprise appointment of the moderate Whig the Duke of Shrewsbury as Lord Chamberlain in place of the Earl of Kent.

The dismissal of the Earl of Sunderland, the Marlboroughs’ son-in-law, whom Anne despised and resented for being forced on her by the Junto, followed on 13/14 June 1710. Stocks fell at the news, but Anne was disingenuous when she assured the Bank of England that she planned no further removals, as was widely feared. The changes in the Ministry led France to break off peace negotiations on 1/12 July in hopes of achieving better terms.

Anxious that the cabinet changes portended diminishing support for the war or Hanoverian Succession, at the instigation of Marlborough and the Whigs, envoys from the Allies, including the Austrian ambassador Johann Wenzel, Count von Gallas (see below), urged the Queen to make no further ministerial changes. In July 1710 Harley made secret approaches to France, conducted by the Jacobite Earl of Jersey with the Abbé François Gaultier, to negotiate a separate peace with France and restore the Pretender.

A more ominous sign of coming change was Anne’s reluctant dismissal on 8 August of Lord Treasurer Godolphin, now aged and worn out after thirty years of high office (and eight of them serving Anne).