In the foreign policy of the reigns of William (1689-1702) and Mary, and of Anne (1702-1714), Whiggish policies generally predominated. The merchants and shippers who formed an important wing of the Whig party were highly gratified by the Wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession, [Footnote: See above, pp. 248 ff., and below, pp. 306 ff.] in which England fought at once against France, her commercial and colonial rival, and against Louis XIV, the friend of the Catholic Stuart pretenders to the English throne. [Footnote: Louis XIV openly supported the pretensions of James (III), the "Old Pretender."] The Methuen Treaty (1703) was also advantageous: it allowed English merchants to sell their manufactures in Portugal without hindrance; in return for this concession England lowered the duties on Portuguese wines, and "Port" supplanted "Burgundy" on the tables of English gentlemen. The Act of Union of 1707 was not unfavorable either, for it established common trade regulations, customs, and excise in England and in Scotland. To the merely personal union between the crowns of England and Scotland which had been inaugurated (1603) by the first of the Stuart monarchs of England now succeeded under the last of the Stuart sovereigns a corporate union of the two monarchies under the title of the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707). [Sidenote: Accession of the Hanoverians (1714); Continued Decline of Royal Power] Upon the death of Anne (1714), the crown passed [Footnote: In accordance with the Act of Settlement (1701).] to her cousin, the son of Sophia of Hanover, George I (1714-1727). The new king, unable even to speak the English language, much less to understand the complicated traditions of parliamentary government, was neither able nor anxious to rule, but was content merely to reign. The business of administration, therefore, was handed over to a group of ministers who strove not only to please their royal master but to retain the good-will of the predominant party in Parliament. [Sidenote: Rise of the Cabinet] Since this practice, with the many customs which have grown up about it, has become a most essential part of the government of the United Kingdom today, and has been copied in recent times by many other countries, it is important to understand its early history. Even before the accession of the Tudors, the Great Council of nobles and prelates which had advised and assisted early kings in matters of administration had surrendered most of its actual functions to a score or so of "Privy Councilors." The Privy Council in turn became unwieldy, and allowed an inner circle or "cabal" of its most energetic members to direct the conduct of affairs. This inner circle was called a cabinet or cabinet council, because it conferred with the king in a small private room (cabinet), and under the restored Stuarts it was extremely unpopular.