Treaty of Utrecht

11 April 1713: four signatures at Utrecht

At Utrecht on 11 April 1713, John Robinson, bishop of Bristol, and Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, signed for Great Britain; Nicolas d'Huxelles and Nicolas Mesnager signed for France.

The treaty declared peace between Queen Anne and Louis XIV and ordered hostilities by their subjects to cease on land and water throughout the world. It bound those two crowns: Emperor Charles VI kept fighting France until Rastatt in 1714.

The document itself gives the date as 31 March/11 April 1713 — 31 March under the British Julian calendar, 11 April under the Gregorian.

What France gave up across the Atlantic

France agreed to restore Hudson Bay, to yield exclusive possession of St Christopher and of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and to recognize Newfoundland and its adjacent islands as wholly British.

French crews kept a precisely bounded seasonal right to catch and dry fish on Newfoundland's coast. France retained Cape Breton, and the zone closed to French fishing ran within 30 leagues from Sable Island toward the southwest.

Clocks, and the harbour at Dunkirk

Ratifications were to be exchanged within four weeks, Hudson Bay delivered within six months of ratification, Newfoundland within seven months of the exchange.

Louis XIV was to demolish Dunkirk's defences and obstruct its harbour within five months — paying to fill in the harbour and level the sluices that kept it clear, and never rebuild them.

The settlement incorporated reciprocal Bourbon renunciations intended to prevent the French and Spanish crowns from ever being united in one person. Britain and France also concluded a separate 39-article treaty of commerce, navigation and marine that same day.