Acts of Union 1707

The Acts of Union were a pair of Parliamentary Acts passed in 1706 and 1707 by, respectively, the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, to make effective the Treaty of Union which had been negotiated between the two countries. The Acts joined the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland which had been separate states before, with separate legislatures but with the same monarch into a single Kingdom of Great Britain.

The two countries had shared a monarch for about 100 years (since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I). The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707.

References

• Defoe, Daniel. A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724–27
• Defoe, Daniel. The Letters of Daniel Defoe, GH Healey editor. Oxford: 1955.
• Fletcher, Andrew (Saltoun). An Account of a Conversation
• Herman, Arthur. How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Three Rivers Press, 2001. ISBN 0-609-80999-7

Other pages

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Acts of Union 1707

• Parliament of the United Kingdom

Other websites

• Act of Union 1707, the UK Parliament
• The Treaty of Union, the Scottish Parliament
• Articles of Union 1707 at the Parliamentary Archives
• Image of the Treaty of Union courtesy of the National archives of Scotland, published by the Scottish Council on Archives
• Union with England Act and Union with Scotland Act - Full original text
• Treaty of Union and the Darien Experiment, University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Library and Archives Canada