512. The Peace of Utrecht, 1713.
Not long after this change a messenger was privately dispatched to Louis XIV to ask if he wished for peace. "It was," says the French minister, "like asking a dying man whether he would wish to be cured."[3] Later, terms were secretly agreed upon between the Tories (S479) and the French, and in 1713, in the quaint Dutch city of Utrecht, the allies, together with France and Spain, signed the treaty bearing that name.
[2] Morris's "The Age of Anne."
By it Louis XIV bound himself: (1) To acknowledge the right of England to limit the succession to the crown to Protestant sovereigns (S497). (2) To compel Prince James Edward, the so-called "Pretender" (SS490, 491) to quit France. (3) To renounce the union of the crowns of France and Spain; but Philip was to retain the Spanish throne (S508). (4) To cede to England all claims to Newfoundland, Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and that vast region known as the Hudson Bay Company's Possessions.
Next, Spain was to give up: (1) The Spanish Netherlands to Austria, an ally of Holland, and grant to the Dutch a line of forts to defend their frontier against France. (2) England was to have the exclusive right for thirty-three years of supplying the Spanish-American colonists with negro slaves.[1]
[1] This right (called the "Assiento," or Contract) had formerly belonged to France. By its transfer England got the privilege of furnishing 4800 "sound, merchantable negroes "annually," "two thirds to be males" between ten and forty years of age.
This trade had long been coveted by the English, and had been carried on to some extent by them ever since Sir John Hawkins entered upon it in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Sir John grew very rich through his traffic in human flesh, and he set up a coat of arms emblazoned with a slave in fetters, so that all might see how he had won wealth and distinction.
513. Union of England and Scotland, 1707.
Since the accession of James I (1603), England and Scotland had been ruled by one sovereign, but each country retained its own Parliament and its own forms of worship. In 1707 the two countries were finally united under the name of Great Britain.
The Established (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and the Scottish laws were to be preserved. The independent Parliament of Scotland was given up, and the Scotch were henceforth represented in the English Parliament by sixteen peers chosen by members of the Scottish peerage at the summoning of every Parliament; and by forty-five (now seventy- two) members returned by Scotland to the House of Commons.