In the middle of March, one thousand seven hundred and twelve-thirteen, a courier arrived at Utrecht from France, with the plan of a general peace, as it had been agreed between the Duke of Shrewsbury and Mons. de Torcy; wherein every particular, relating to the interests and pretensions of the several allies, was brought so near to what each of them would accept, that the British plenipotentiaries hoped the peace would be general in ten or twelve days.  The Portuguese and Dutch were already prepared, and others were daily coming in, by means of their lordships’ good offices, who found Mons. Mesnager and his colleague very stubborn to the last.  Another courier was dispatched to France, upon some disputes about inserting the titles of Her Majesty and the Most Christian King, and to bring a general plan for the interests of those allies, who should not be ready against the time prefixed.  The French renunciations were now arrived at Utrecht, and it was agreed, that those, as well as that of the King of Spain, should be inserted at length in every treaty, by which means the whole confederacy would become guaranties of them.

The courier, last sent to France, returned to Utrecht on the twenty-seventh of March, with the concessions of that court upon every necessary point; so that, all things being ready for putting a period to this great and difficult work, the lord privy seal and the Earl of Strafford gave notice to the ministers of the several allies, “That their lordships had appointed Tuesday the thirty-first instant, wherein to sign a treaty of peace, and a treaty of commerce, between the Queen of Great Britain, their mistress, and the Most Christian King; and hoped the said allies would be prepared, at the same time, to follow their example.”  Accordingly their lordships employed the three intervening days, in smoothing the few difficulties that remained between the French ministers and those of the several confederate powers.

The important day being now come, the Lord Bishop of Bristol and the Earl of Strafford, having assumed the character of ambassadors extraordinary,[33] gave a memorial in behalf of the French Protestants to the Marechal d’Uxelles and his colleague, who were to transmit it to their court; and these delivered to the British ambassadors a declaration in writing, that the Pretender was actually gone out of France.

[Footnote 33:  To avoid the parade of ceremony, they had hitherto been considered only as plenipotentiaries. [N.]]

The conditions of peace to be allowed the Emperor and the empire, as adjusted between Britain and France, were now likewise delivered to the Count Zinzendorf.  These and some other previous matters of smaller consequence being finished, the treaties of peace and commerce between Her Majesty of Britain and the Most Christian King, were signed at the lord privy seal’s house between two and three of the clock in the afternoon.  The ministers of the Duke of Savoy signed about an hour after.  Then the assembly adjourned to the Earl of Stafford’s, where they all went to dinner; and about nine at night the peace was signed by the ministers of Portugal, by those of Prussia at eleven, and when it was near midnight by the States.