THE HISTORY OF MY OWN TIMES. BOOK VII. CONTINUED. (From the middle of the year 1710 to the conclusion of the peace of Utrecht.) The history to the I HAVE now completed my first design in writ- 1710. ing, which was to give a history of our affairs for fifty years, from the 29th of May 1660: so if I con- continued fined myself to that, I should here give over: but peace. the war seeming now to be near an end, and the peace, in which it must end, being that which will probably give a new settlement to all Europe, as well as to our affairs, I resolve to carry on this 549 work to the conclusion of the war. And therefore I begin with the progress of the negotiations. for peace, which seemed now to be prosecuted. with warmth. tions for a All the former winter, an intercourse of letters Negotiawas kept up between Pettecum and Torcy, to try peace. if an expedient could be found to soften that article for the reduction of Spain to the obedience of king Charles; which was the thirty-seventh article of the preliminaries: it still was kept in agitation, upon the foot of offering three towns to be put into the |