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When Daniel Defoe published one of the three pamphlets that brought him so much grief, An Answer to a Question that No Body Thinks of, Vi?. But What if the Queen Should Die?, Queen Anne’s health was clearly failing. At this time, succession was already in everyone’s mind. The Whigs were struggling violently to succeed the Tories, and within the government, Henry St John Bolingbroke was struggling mightily to take over power from Robert Harley. The Queen died on August 1, but not before approving the choice of the Duke of Shrewsbury as Lord Treasurer and assuring the Protestant succession and the transition from the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover. But before that event, party quarrels, the battle over the nature of English trade, the continuing controversy over the Peace of Utrecht and its provisions, and renewed legislation against the Dissenters created divisions in society seldom matched in the history of England.

From a military perspective, Canadian conquest might bring fame to the least worthy of the army's senior officers, “five bottle Jack” Hill, whose success would tighten Robert Harley's political liaison with the former's sister, Abigail Masham. Masham was Queen Anne's present passion, and thus would ensure royal favor for the tory ministry. Commercially, the ministry's Canada and Newfoundland project would allow the British to recapture the trade in furs and fish. Moreover, the American expedition offered the ministry additional opportunities to weaken the duke of Marlborough's grip on the army and to undermine his offensive against France. When he proposed the Quebec expedition, Secretary of state Henry St. John was hoping that the conquest of Quebec would put the captain general's victories in the shade. On April 27, 1711, Marlborough and his army sailed for Boston, Massachusetts. On September 14, he captured the fortress town of Bouchain. On October 27, Marlborough left his undefeated army. A year later, he was forced into exile. In the Netherlands, he began to organize another army that would decide Greater Britain's imperial succession.

Daniel Defoe chose to retain his identity as a Whig while accepting the policies of what was looking more like a Tory government with each passing day. A crucial moment came with the attempted assassination of Robert Harley by Antoine de Guiscard. In pursuit of his duty, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was wounded by a French spy, and all of the concern about Louis XIV’s attempts to assassinate William III, about French perfidy, and about the safety of Queen Anne created an outpouring of sympathy for Harley that restored his power, brought him the post of Lord Treasurer, which had remained vacant after Sidney Godolphin’s resignation, and raised him to the peerage as Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Henry St John, whose behaviour during the assassination attempt was equivocal, received a setback in his pursuit of power that was to prove fatal to his career. The possibility that Guiscard had intended to poison the Queen gave a new strength to her friend Harley and to his group of court Tories and court Whigs.

Whigs such as John Dunton were intent to have Robert Harley executed for treason and all who served him punished. In defending Harley, Defoe was also protecting himself. Henry St John Bolingbroke had apparently hoped to make the Tories so dominant that the Whigs and other opposition groups would be powerless, and now the Whigs were attempting a similar move to power. Although the transition from Queen Anne to the reign of George I had gone relatively smoothly, there had been some disturbances, most notably in Bristol. There had also been a series of provocative acts throughout England during the summer of 1715, and with the rebellion begun in Scotland in September, the real battle seemed ready to take place. Staunch as he was for the Hanoverian succession, Defoe was not going to remain silent even when threatened by prosecution. The passage of the Schism Act, with its resemblance to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, seemed destined to destroy the Dissenters.

The final chapter shows how the partnership continues until Godolphin’s death. When Godolphin realizes that Harley (now Earl of Oxford) has begun a secret peace treaty separately from the Allies, he leads the opposition. Marlborough at first hopes that he will be able to remain neutral, but at Godolphin’s persuasion he joins in publicly, is dismissed, vilified in a press campaign led by Swift, and threatened with prosecution and even assassination. When Godolphin dies in 1712 Marlborough goes abroad. His ostensible aim, a coup by the Allies to overturn Oxford’s ministry, forestall the peace of Utrecht, and secure the Hanoverian succession, fails. But the queen becomes disillusioned with Oxford and Bolingbroke, regrets parting with Godolphin, and encourages Marlborough to return, although she dies before he can land in England. Marlborough is reinstated by George I, and Robert Walpole inherits Godolphin’s role, with Marlborough’s great fortune an asset for government borrowing.

The book’s final chapter surveys the career of Alexander Pope, with a particular emphasis on his religious beliefs and their complex relation to his developing identity as a poet of political opposition. An introductory section on the Essay on Man demonstrates the subtlety with which Pope negotiated questions of political and confessional allegiance in verse; similar claims are subsequently extended to his early poems An Essay on Criticism and Windsor Forest. The poet’s relationship with the opposition leader, Lord Bolingbroke, provides a vital context for reading the Horatian satires of the 1730s and, more particularly, their increasingly anti-clerical tendency. Pope’s withdrawal from such political engagements played an important part in his late friendship with William Warburton, and the critique of whig free-thinking in the four book Dunciad of 1743.