The time had come at length for Harley and St. John to reap the fruits of their triumph; and, though Marlborough[167] had more than once warded off the blow--not only for the sake of the friendship and the family ties[168] which had so long subsisted between him and the Minister, but for the sake of Queen and country--that blow fell at last. But the result was terrible also to the financial credit of England. The Treasury was put into commission; and vast was the commotion in Change Alley. Bank shares at once fell from 140 to 110, and soon to 106; whilst the Bank refused a loan of £400,000 to the new Government. 'That Godolphin should retire,' wrote Marlborough to his Duchess on 1st October, 1706, 'is impossible, unless it be resolved that everything must go ill abroad, as well as at home; for, without flattery, his reputation is as great in all Courts as well as at home; that such a step would go a great way with Holland, in particular, to make their peace with France, which at this time must be fatal to the liberties of Europe.' Then came the Report of the Commissioners of Public Accounts (17th March, 1711-12), in which they stated, but did not dare to _print_ their statement, that there were certain irregularities in the dealings of the English with the Scotch Treasury; and Godolphin's oath was confronted by another to the contrary from the Earl of Glasgow. Burnet describes this affair as an effusion of 'Tory malice,' and adds that 'the Earl of Godolphin's unblemished integrity was such that no imputation of any sort could be fastened upon him.' To what could all this misery tend but to the breaking up of a constitution never one of the strongest,--and to the 'last scene of all, that ends this strange, eventful history'? Sidney Godolphin died, after a long and excruciating illness, at the Duke of Marlborough's house near St. Albans, on the 15th September, 1712, in the sixty-eighth year of his age; and his death so deeply affected Marlborough, that he left his native country, which had been as ungrateful to him as to his dearest friend, to live 'beyond sea.'