But the conduct of the Tory majority had tended still further to incline the ministry towards the Whigs. Rooke was superseded as commander-in-chief of the fleet, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, a Whig, put in his place, and as the three years of the Parliament were now run out, the Government influence was exercised at the elections against all those who had voted for tacking the Occasional Conformity Bill. Even stronger signs were visible of the intention of the Government to form a junction with the Whigs; the ministers began an intrigue with the Junto, promising before long to give the Great Seal to William Cowper (a promise which was shortly after fulfilled), and admitted the Duke of Newcastle to the ministry as Privy Seal in the place of the Tory Duke of Buckingham. Nor was it the Government only which was changing its views. The nation at large, thoroughly interested in the war and disgusted at the conduct of the Tories, returned at the new elections a large majority of Whigs. The growing influence of the Whigs was supplemented by a family tie which connected Marlborough with that party; as Godolphin, whose son had married one of his daughters, formed a link with the Tories, so Sunderland, who had married another, connected him with the Whigs. It seemed as though a bargain advantageous to both sides might be struck between the Duke and the Whig party. The accession of Sunderland to the ministry would on the one side strengthen Marlborough's personal position, and render it more possible for him to carry on his plan of government without parties; while, on the other, it would secure to the Whigs a means of at once influencing the character of the administration. It was determined therefore that Sunderland should enter the ministry, and as there was then no vacant office, he was employed at once as extraordinary ambassador to Vienna, and in the course of the following year (1706) was raised to the office of Secretary of State. His appointment, and the gradual inclination of the Government to the Whigs, was followed, at the beginning of the year 1707, by the creation of several Whig Peers, and by a final breach with the High Tories, when the names of Buckingham, Nottingham, and Rochester were struck from the list of the Privy Council. Marlborough seemed now to have gained his object. The administration was a thoroughly composite one. On the one side were a number of Whigs led by Lord Sunderland, on the other a section of more moderate Tories headed by Harley and St. John. [Sidenote: Harley, seeing its weakness,] [Sidenote: intrigues against Marlborough.]