Oxford rearranged the nation's finances, and supplied resources for carrying on the campaign, though his emissaries were in com munication with the French king, and were settling the terms of a peace independently of England's allies. After many weeks of vacillation and intrigue, the preliminary peace was signed, and in spite of the opposition of the Whig majority in the Upper House, which was met by the creation of 12 new peers, the treaty of Utrecht was concluded (March 31, 1713). While these negotia tions were under discussion the friendship between Oxford and St. John, who had become secretary of State in Sept. 171o, was fast changing into hatred. The latter had resented the rise in fortune which the stabs of Guiscard had secured for his colleague, and when he received a viscounty instead of the expected earldom his resentment knew no bounds. Mrs. Masham deserted her cousin for his more vivacious rival. The Jacobites lost faith in his repeated promises. Queen Anne transferred her confidence from Oxford to Bolingbroke ; and he surrendered his office a few days before the queen died.
On the accession of George I. the defeated minister retired to Herefordshire, but a few months later he was committed to the Tower (July 16, 1715). After an imprisonment of nearly two years he was released in July 1717, but he took little part in public affairs, and died almost unnoticed in London on May 21, 1724.
The books and the manuscripts which the first earl of Oxford and his son collected were among the glories of their age. The manuscripts became the property of the nation in and are now in the British Museum ; the books were sold to a bookseller called Thomas Osborne in 1742 and described in a printed cata logue of five volumes Dr. Johnson writing an account of the library. A selection of the rarer pamphlets and tracts, which was made by William Oldys, was printed in eight volumes 46), with a preface by Johnson. The best edition is that of Thomas Park, ten volumes (1808-13). In the recollection of the Harleian manuscripts, the Harleian library and the Harleian Mis cellany, the family name will never die.