After the British defeat at Saratoga in October 1777, and fearful of French recognition of American independence, the Prime Minister, Lord North, had Parliament repeal such offensive measures as the Tea Act and the Massachusetts Government Act, and sent a commission to seek a negotiated settlement with the Continental Congress. The commission was empowered to offer a type of self-rule that Thomas Pownall had first proposed a decade earlier (and which later formed the foundation of British Commonwealth status). The fact that the commission was authorised to negotiate with the Continental Congress as a body also represented a change in official British government policy, which had before then been to treat only with the individual states.