Harley and Marlborough; but, in believing the former favourable to the protestant succession, which he had so eminently contributed to establish, we accede to the judgment of those contemporaries who were best able to form one, and especially of the very jacobites with whom he tampered. And this is so powerfully confirmed by most of his public measures, his averseness to the high tories, and their consequent hatred of him, his irreconcilable disagreement with those of his colleagues who looked most to St. Germains, his frequent attempts to renew a connection with the whigs, his contempt of the jacobite creed of government, and the little prospect he could have had of retaining power on such a revolution, that, so far at least as may be presumed from what has hitherto become public, there seems no reason for counting the Earl of Oxford among those from whom the house of Hanover had any enmity to apprehend.[325] The pretender, meanwhile, had friends in the tory government more sincere probably and zealous than Oxford. In the year 1712 Lord Bolingbroke, the Duke of Buckingham, president of the council, and the Duke of Ormond, were engaged in this connection.[326] The last of these, being in the command of the army, little glory as that brought him, might become an important auxiliary. Harcourt, the chancellor, though the proofs are not, I believe, so direct, has always been reckoned in the same interest. Several of the leading Scots peers, with little disguise, avowed their adherence to it; especially the Duke of Hamilton, who, luckily perhaps for the kingdom, lost his life in a duel, at the moment when he was setting out on an embassy to France. The rage expressed by that faction at his death betrays the hopes they had entertained from him. A strong phalanx of tory members, called the October Club, though by no means entirely jacobite, were chiefly influenced by those who were such. In the new parliament of 1713, the queen's precarious health excited the Stuart partisans to press forward with more zeal. The masque was more than half drawn aside; and, vainly urging the ministry to fulfil their promises while yet in time, they cursed the insidious cunning of Harley and the selfish cowardice of the queen. Upon her they had for some years relied. Lady Masham, the bosom favourite, was entirely theirs; and every word, every look of the sovereign, had been anxiously observed, in the hope of some indication that she would take the road which affection and conscience, as they fondly argued, must dictate. But, whatever may have been the sentiments of Anne, her secret was never divulged, nor is there, as I apprehend, however positively the contrary is sometimes asserted, any decisive evidence whence we may infer that she even intended her brother's restoration.[327] The weakest of mankind have generally an instinct of self-preservation which leads them right, and perhaps more than stronger minds possess;