The Harley ministry was a period of British political history that lasted from 1710 to 1714, after the Godolphin-Marlborough ministry and before the Townshend ministry, during which time the Tory Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer served as Prime Minister.
The Whig government's arrest of the Anglican clergyman Henry Sacheverell for criticizing the government's toleration for Protestant Dissenters and attacking the personal conduct of ministers led to cries of "Church in Danger" and the Sacheverell riots in London, while the heavy death and economic toll of the War of the Spanish Succession led the Tories and Queen Anne to call for an end to the conflict. The moderate Tory Sidney Godolphin resigned as Prime Minister after publicly berating the Queen, and Harley came to lead a ministry of moderates opposed both by the pro-war Whigs and High Tory backbenchers who demanded greater representation in government. The 1710 election saw the Tories win 329 seats and the Whigs 168, while the Tories won a surprising 17 seats in Scotland. The High Tory majority in Parliament organized as the "October Club," pressuring the moderate ministry into adopting their principles. The Harleyites and Whigs allied to prevent the High Tory denaturalization of Protestant refugees, but the Tories passed land qualifications for MPs in February 1711.
In 1711, Harley was stabbed twice in the chest by a French spy, increasing his popularity. Harley also obtained parliamentary approval for a scheme to establish the South Sea Company to clear £9 million of unfunded debt, making the company a Tory rival to the Whiggish Bank of England and British East India Company. The Queen rewarded Harley by making him Earl of Oxford and lord treasurer. That September, Britain agreed to peace preliminaries with France. After Whigs and discontented Tories attempted to block Harley's attempt to make peace while leaving a Bourbon on the Spanish throne, Harley created a bloc of twelve new peers in the House of Lords to guarantee a ministerial majority there. In 1712, the Tories prosecuted leading Whigs John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and Robert Walpole, the latter of whom was expelled from the Commons. They were also able to repeal the Whig naturalization act. In June 1712, Parliament decisively endorsed Oxford's policy of a separate peace with France. The Treaty of Utrecht delayed the opening of Parliament until April 1713, and Oxford soon came under attack by anti-union Scots MPs, by Tory extremists, and by Hanoverian Tories who suspected Oxford of being a Jacobite. In June 1713, Hanoverian Tories defeated the ministry's Anglo-French commercial treaty.
In August-October 1713, new elections were held, during which the Whigs attacked the inadequacies of the peace with France and the French commercial treaty. However, the Tories benefited from the public's support for peace and won 354 seats to the Whigs' 148. The Queen's illness during the winter of 1713-1714 raised fresh factional disputes between Hanoverian and Jacobite Tories, and the pro-Hanoverian Thomas Hanmer, 4th Baronet was elected Speaker with Whig support. As Oxford began to lose the Queen's goodwill, Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke positioned himself as a potential successor. While Oxford was dismissed on 27 July 1714, Bolingbroke failed to seize the premiership for himself, and Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury was chosen to serve as the new lord treasurer. King George I of Great Britain would take the throne with Whig and Hanoverian Tory support, and a mainly Whig administration took office to support the new ruler.