Queen Elizabeth I of England (and of Ireland) died without issue on 24 March 1603,

dissolving the Tudor dynasty. The throne fell immediately and uncontroversially to her
double first cousin twice removed, King James VI of Scotland, a member of House of
Stuart and son of Mary, Queen of Scots. He assumed the throne of the Kingdom of
England and the Kingdom of Ireland as King James I in the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
This personal union somewhat assuaged constant English fears of Scottish cooperation
with France, especially in a hypothetical French invasion of Britain.
After that personal union, people widely discussed the idea of uniting the Kingdom of
Scotland and the Kingdom of England. Nevertheless, Acts of Parliament attempting to
unite the two countries failed in 1606, in 1667, and in 1689.
The Company of Scotland received an investment equal to one-quarter of all money
circulating in the Kingdom of Scotland and sponsored the Darien scheme, an ill-fated,
administratively incompetent attempt to establish a Scottish trading colony in theIsthmus
of Panama. The colonisation began in 1698 and ended in a military confrontation with the
Spanish in 1700; however, most colonists died of tropical diseases. English entrepreneurs
foresaw the political problems and refused to provide financial support; the Scottish
entrepreneurs funded the venture alone. This economic disaster for the investing Scottish
elites diminished the resistance of the Scottish political establishment (i.e. the nobility) to
the idea of political union with England.
The Scottish nobility ultimately supported the union despite some popular opposition and
anti-union riots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere.[5][6][7]

Treaty negotiations[edit]
Deeper political integration had been a key policy of Queen Anne ever since she acceded
to the throne in 1702. Under the aegis of the Queen and her ministers in both kingdoms,
the parliaments of England and Scotland agreed to participate in fresh negotiations for a
union treaty in 1705.
Each country appointed 31 commissioners to conduct the negotiations. The Scottish
Parliament had originally begun to organise an election of the commissioners they would
have nominated to negotiate on behalf of Scotland. However, in September 1705, the
leader of the opposition Country Party, the Duke of Hamilton, after having attempted to
obstruct the negotiation of a treaty, proposed that the Scottish commissioners be
nominated by the Queen. The commissioners were nominated on the advice of the Duke of
Queensberry and the Duke of Argyll.
Of the 31 Scottish commissioners who were appointed, 29 were members of the
government Court Party and one was a member of the Squadron Volante. At the head of
the list was Queensberry, and the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, theEarl of Seafield.
[8] George Lockhart of Carnwath, a member of the opposition Cavalier Party, was the only
commissioner opposed to union. The 31 English commissioners, including government
ministers and officers of state, such as the Lord High Treasurer, the Earl of Godolphin,
the Lord Keeper, Baron Cowper, and a large number of Whigs who supported union. Tories
were not in favour of union and only one was represented among the commissioners.
Negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners began on 16 April 1706 at

the Cockpit in London. The sessions opened with speeches from William Cowper, the
English Lord Keeper, and Lord Seafield, the Scottish Lord Chancellor, each describing the
significance of the task. The commissioners did not carry out their negotiations face to
face, but in separate rooms. They communicated their proposals and counter-proposals to
each other in writing and there was a blackout on news from the negotiations. Each side
had its own particular concerns. Within a few days, England gained a guarantee that
the Hanoverian dynasty would succeed Queen Anne to the Scottish crown, and Scotland
received a guarantee of access to colonial markets, in the hope that they would be placed
on an equal footing in terms of trade.[9]