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;
Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation from that date became subject to the jurisdiction of Japanese courts. Other countries soon followed suit and the system of separate laws, which governed all the foreigners who were obliged to reside in the treaty ports, was thus abolished. A copy of the treaty can be found in the Foreign Office treaty database. The treaty was signed in London by John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley for Britain and Aoki Shūzō for Japan. It was a necessary pre-condition to the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, as an alliance cannot be formed between unequal contracting parties. One of the important contributors to