John Methuen (diplomat) the Treaty on 16 May 1703, a step of great significance in the War of the Spanish Succession. John, on his return from England, concluded a commercial treaty on 27 December 1703, opening Portugal to the English cloth trade in return for preferential rates of duty on the import of wine. How beneficial to either country the Treaty was in the long run has been debated; possibly its most important result was the development of the port wine trade, and it was later referred to humorously as "the Port-Wine Treaty". Methuen in later life increasingly suffered from gout and rheumatism;
Treaty of Vereeniging the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The country became a republic in 1961 therefore severing all connections with Great Britain. The country rejoined the Commonwealth in 1994. Although the treaty is named after the town of Vereeniging in Transvaal, where the peace negotiations took place, the document was actually signed at Melrose House in Pretoria. Treaty of Vereeniging The Treaty of Vereeniging (commonly referred to as Peace of Vereeniging) was the peace treaty, signed on 31 May 1902, that ended the Second Boer War between the South African Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State, on the one side,