In the summer of 1714—when Her Majesty's effective government consisted of Abigail, Lady Masham, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, and Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke—the duke of Buckingham, on his dismissal from office, penned this summary of English history in the preceding half-century:

The frankness of these words well illustrates the freedom permitted to dukes and denied to pedants. Looking back from the standpoint of the year 1714, the last of Stuart rule, the observer must have been impressed by the variety of race, religion and occupation among those who, in succession, had come to possess the confidence of the Crown; surely, there can be few periods of history abounding in such mutations of colour as these fifty-four years between the eager, joyful accession of a young, restored king and the last pathetic moments of a dying queen. Can it be wondered at that these kaleidoscopic externals have concealed the matter-of-fact but momentous changes which transformed the insular England of 1660 into the Great Britain of 1714?