In the spring of 1727 Swift obtained leave for six months from his post in Dublin and travelled once more to England, on what proved to be his last visit. He arrived at Twickenham around 21 April. After spending a week there, he went up to London for a short stay with Gay at his lodgings in Whitehall, leaving Pope to care for his sick mother. He soon returned to the villa along with Arbuthnot. In May the second edition of Gulliver appeared, with some amusing verses by his friends added. The associates were already busy with the third volume of Miscellanies, intended chiefly as a collection of poetry, with Swift, Pope and Gay all well represented. Their correspondence that summer included amiable letters between themselves and their allies, including Bolingbroke, Oxford, Mrs Howard and even Voltaire, who finally met Swift in May and offered to help him with a planned visit to France.

Suddenly this scheme was put on ice. George I had set out for his beloved Hanover on 3 June. A week later he was travelling by coach towards Osnabrück when he suffered a stroke. A surgeon in the party ordered immediate bleeding, the best recourse that the basic medicine of the time could offer. But all efforts proved in vain, and the King died on 10 June. On the afternoon of the 14th the news reached London, when Walpole dashed out to Richmond to summon the Prince and Princess of Wales back to the capital for their proclamation at Leicester House. Everything in the political world had entered a state of total flux. Immediately Bolingbroke advised Swift to defer his Continental jaunt, as there might now be better prospects for him in England. Along with everyone else, Pope and his friends waited to see what developed at this critical moment. Some, like Gay, had particularly high hopes.