Gradually, however, when the Whig ministry displayed no interest either in the welfare of the Irish church or in Swift's own ecclesiastical preferment, he veered toward the Tories. His literary friends now included Alexander Pope, John Gay, William Congreve, Matthew Prior, and John Arbuthnot, many of whom later joined with him in the famous Scriblerus Club dedicated to eternal warfare against the dunces.
In 1710 Swift assumed the editorship of the Examiner, thus becoming party spokesman for the new Tory ministry of Robert Harley and Lord Bolingbroke. He shortly resigned this post to work on The Conduct of the Allies (1711), a pamphlet designed so to sway public opinion as to bring about the end of the "Whiggish" War of the Spanish Succession, an event that occurred in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht. Swift was unable, however, to reconcile the ever increasing animosities between Harley (now Lord Oxford) and Bolingbroke, each of whom was surreptitiously treating with both Jacobite and Hanoverian claimants to the British crown. The death of Queen Anne in 1714 and the accession of George I (of Hanover) led to the downfall and disgrace of the Tory Party. Swift, having been installed the previous year as dean of St.
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