Whilst these intrigues were still in action, one, at least, of the Jacobite agents was clear-sighted enough to detect the secret of the Treasurer’s scheme. [Sidenote: Original in Nairne MSS., vol. 4. (Macpherson, _Original Pagers_, vol. ii, p. 269.)] A confidential agent of the Earl of MIDDLETON, Secretary to the Pretender, wrote in February, 1712—‘[The Earl of OXFORD] is entirely a friend to [the Elector of HANOVER], notwithstanding the disobliging measures that spark has taken.... [OXFORD’S] head is set on shewing that he is above resentment, and that he [the Elector] has been put into a wrong way.’ In matters of Church policy at home the Earl followed like indirect courses, and with the like result—a momentary success which prepared the way for final defeat. [Sidenote: HARLEY’S CONDUCT ON THE CONFORMITY BILL.] No measure could possibly be more repugnant to OXFORD’S declared convictions than the famous ‘Bill against Occasional Conformity,’ brought into the House of Lords by the Earl of NOTTINGHAM, at the close of the year 1711. It was part of a policy to which his very nature was antagonistic. But he was in vain entreated, by men who had been his life-long adherents, to oppose it. The passage of that Bill was the price, and, as it seems, the only price for which NOTTINGHAM and his band of followers would give their support to the foreign policy of the Government. The growth of the internal dissensions in the administration kept pace with the growth of its external perils. Personal objects of the pettiest kind were made occasions of quarrel. In the summer of 1712, ST. JOHN, who had set his heart on the restoration in himself of that family Earldom of BOLINGBROKE which in the previous year had become extinct on the death of a distant relative, was made a Viscount. On the announcement of his creation he burst into open menaces of vengeance against the Treasurer, and renewed them with greater violence towards the close of the year, when he found himself excluded from another coveted dignity. An election of Knights of the Garter made, to use Lord OXFORD’S own words about it, ‘a new disturbance which is too well remembered.’ Just as the breach with BOLINGBROKE had become plainly irreconcilable, the Treasurer found a new and equally bitter enemy in another old friend. He defeated a rapacious attempt made by Lady MASHAM on the Treasury. The first offence in that kind would never have been forgiven. But ere long it was repeated. In both Houses of Parliament, OXFORD’S veiled and vacillating policy was fast alienating men who had long supported him, and who to the last retained more confidence in him than in his brilliant rival. The crisis, however, was brought about, not by the increased strength of Parliamentary opposition, but by bed-chamber intrigues, such as those which he had himself stooped to employ six years before against GODOLPHIN and MARLBOROUGH.