After the death of Queen Anne, the Whigs returned to power under George I, and life changed dramatically for the coterie of writers and publishers on Oxford's propaganda team. Oxford himself, of course, had gone into a decline even before Anne's death. He had lost the Queen's trust in favour of Bolingbroke and Anne dismissed him as Lord Treasurer in late July 1711, only a few days before she died. Despite Oxford's efforts on behalf of the Hanoverian succession, the new administration did not show him any gratitude, but stripped him of the rest of his offices and began impeachment proceedings against him in 1715.

Meanwhile, at the instigation of some Scottish members of the House of Lords, John Barber had been apprehended on a charge of libel for printing Swift's pamphlet The Public Spirit of the Whigs, which had appeared on 23 February 1714. Barber, however, ‘insisting not to answer any Questions the Answer to which might tend to accuse himself or to corroborate the Accusation against him’, never dropped any hint that Swift was the author of the pamphlet. Swift was therefore not prosecuted for libel, and Barber, although charged with printing a libel (and so probably fined), was not yet removed as the printer of the governmental Gazette. Swift, however, became increasingly frustrated in his inability to reconcile Bolingbroke and Oxford and, after he was overlooked for the vacant office of historiographer royal in the summer of 1714, returned to Ireland. After Harley's fall and Swift's departure, Barber would no longer be at the centre of governmental propaganda production, but he would remain a successful printer and publisher, retaining the profitable position of printer to the South Sea Company, which he had held since the company's inception in 1711, and which may have facilitated his subsequent success as an investor.

We do not know exactly how Manley occupied her time after she ceased writing political periodicals and pamphlets and before the production of her most successful dramatic work, Lucius, the First Christian King of Britain, in 1717.