When the British began to seize ships bound for French ports, Washington sent John Jay, a prominent Federalist and chief justice of the Supreme Court, to London to negotiate a treaty. Jay was a weak negotiator and unwilling to provoke the British.ay returned to the United States with a treaty that removed some British outposts from the Northwest (posts that the British had promised to abandon in the Treaty of 1783 that ended the Revolution), but did relatively nothing to confirm the neutral rights of American ships.