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282 should come over to England, in order to make himself perfect master of the important subjects about to be discussed; and, as lord Raby was a Wentwortb, nearly allied in descent to the earl of Strafford, who had lost his head in making himself head of his family, and had long been soliciting for himself the renewal of that title, St. John announced to him that, on his reaching London, it was her majesty's gracious intention to confer that honour upon him. This at once threw Raby into a fever of gratitude, and he made the most ardent professions of doing all in his power to serve her majesty.



These obstacles to their entering into a disgraceful peace being removed, Gualtier was once more dispatched to Versaules, and this time accompanied by Matthew Prior, a poet of some pretension and much popularity, but much more distinguished as a diplomatist. He had lived in France, knew the French and French court well, having been secretary to the embassies of the earls of Portland and Jersey. Prior was a man of courtly and insinuating manners, and was most thoroughly devoted to Harley and the tory interests. The propositions which he brought from the queen as the basis of the peace were—That the Dutch should have a barrier in the Netherlands; the German empire another on the Rhine; that the duke of Savoy should receive back all towns or territories taken during the war; that proper protection should be obtained for the trade of England and Holland; that France should acknowledge the title of Anne and the protestant succession; that the fortifications of Dunkirk should be destroyed; that Gibraltar and Port Mahon should continue in our possession; that Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay should also be acknowledged as ours, but that the French should be allowed to trade to Hudson's Bay; that in all other respects France and England should retain their possessions in America as they did before the war; that the Assiento, or contract for supplying the Spanish colonies of South America with slaves—which had formerly been held by the Portuguese, but, since 1702, by the French—should be made over to England, with four towns on the Spanish main, anywhere betwixt the straits of Magellan and California, as depots for the slaves when