ABSTRACT
On 12 July 1711, Britain breached the terms of its Grand Alliance with Austria and the Dutch. Ignoring treaty promises not to negotiate any separate peace with France, Prime Minister Robert Harley dispatched the diplomat Matthew Prior to Louis XIV’s court to explore terms for a cessation of hostility with France. The agreements reached over the next few months were to become the basis for the Treaty of Utrecht. Yet the deal was resented by the Dutch and Austrians. These other powers felt the British had reneged on their commitments, that they had fatally weakened the anti-French confederacy just as it was on the verge of total victory and that they had treacherously grasped commercial advantage by going behind their allies’ backs.
