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On May 1, 1707, the Act of Union came into force uniting England and Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain. From the article:
"The Act of Union
by Ben Johnson
Uniting the kingdoms of Scotland and England had been proposed for a hundred years before it actually happened in 1707.
Suspicion and mistrust between the two countries had prevented the union throughout the 17th century. The Scots feared that they would simply become another region of England, being swallowed up as had happened to Wales some four hundred years earlier. For England the fear that the Scots may take sides with France and rekindle the ‘Auld Alliance‘ was decisive. England relied heavily on Scottish soldiers and to have them turn and join ranks with the French would have been disastrous.
In the late 1690s however, thousands of ordinary Scottish folk had been tempted to invest their hard earned money in a plan to link the two great oceans of the world by establishing an overland trading route between the Pacific and Atlantic. Almost every Scot who had £5 in his or her pocket, invested in the Darien Scheme, to establish a Scottish colony in Panama.
Poorly planned, the venture ended early in 1700 with significant loss of life and financial ruin for the Kingdom of Scotland.
With many influential individuals and whole families left bankrupt by the disaster, a few financial incentives appear to have convinced some dithering Scottish MPs of the potential benefits of a union with England. In the words of Robert Burns, they (the Scottish MPs) were “bought and sold for English gold”.
In a poorly attended Scottish Parliament the MPs voted to agree the Union and on 16 January 1707 the Act of Union was signed. The Act came into effect on May 1st 1707; the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster, London, the home of the English Parliament.
Scotland kept its independence with respect to its legal and religious systems, but coinage, taxation, sovereignty, trade, parliament and flag became one. The red cross of St. George combined with the blue cross of St. Andrew resulting in the ‘old’ union flag. This is popularly called the Union Jack, although strictly speaking, this only applies when it is flown on the jackstaff of a warship.
The Union flag that we recognise today did not appear until 1801, after another Act of Union, when the ‘old’ flag combined with the red cross of St. Patrick of Ireland. By 1850 approximately 40% of total world trade was conducted through and by the United Kingdom (UK), making it the most successful economic union in history. By this time Glasgow had grown from a small market town on the River Clyde into the “Second City of the British Empire”.
2007 marked the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland. A commemorative two-pound coin was issued to mark the anniversary, which occurred 2 days before the Scottish Parliament general election on 3 May 2007."
"The Act of Union
by Ben Johnson
Uniting the kingdoms of Scotland and England had been proposed for a hundred years before it actually happened in 1707.
Suspicion and mistrust between the two countries had prevented the union throughout the 17th century. The Scots feared that they would simply become another region of England, being swallowed up as had happened to Wales some four hundred years earlier. For England the fear that the Scots may take sides with France and rekindle the ‘Auld Alliance‘ was decisive. England relied heavily on Scottish soldiers and to have them turn and join ranks with the French would have been disastrous.
In the late 1690s however, thousands of ordinary Scottish folk had been tempted to invest their hard earned money in a plan to link the two great oceans of the world by establishing an overland trading route between the Pacific and Atlantic. Almost every Scot who had £5 in his or her pocket, invested in the Darien Scheme, to establish a Scottish colony in Panama.
Poorly planned, the venture ended early in 1700 with significant loss of life and financial ruin for the Kingdom of Scotland.
With many influential individuals and whole families left bankrupt by the disaster, a few financial incentives appear to have convinced some dithering Scottish MPs of the potential benefits of a union with England. In the words of Robert Burns, they (the Scottish MPs) were “bought and sold for English gold”.
In a poorly attended Scottish Parliament the MPs voted to agree the Union and on 16 January 1707 the Act of Union was signed. The Act came into effect on May 1st 1707; the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster, London, the home of the English Parliament.
Scotland kept its independence with respect to its legal and religious systems, but coinage, taxation, sovereignty, trade, parliament and flag became one. The red cross of St. George combined with the blue cross of St. Andrew resulting in the ‘old’ union flag. This is popularly called the Union Jack, although strictly speaking, this only applies when it is flown on the jackstaff of a warship.
The Union flag that we recognise today did not appear until 1801, after another Act of Union, when the ‘old’ flag combined with the red cross of St. Patrick of Ireland. By 1850 approximately 40% of total world trade was conducted through and by the United Kingdom (UK), making it the most successful economic union in history. By this time Glasgow had grown from a small market town on the River Clyde into the “Second City of the British Empire”.
2007 marked the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland. A commemorative two-pound coin was issued to mark the anniversary, which occurred 2 days before the Scottish Parliament general election on 3 May 2007."
The Act of Union between England and Scotland
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Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for posting a summarized background on the Act of Union between England and Scotland on May 1, 1707.
Ben Johnson provides a nice summary
SCOTLAND'S STORY - THE 1707 UNION WITH ENGLAND
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9uav5Je9Kg
Detailed background from {[https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/act-of-union-1707/overview/]}
The Acts of Union, passed by the English and Scottish Parliaments in 1707, led to the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 May of that year. The UK Parliament met for the first time in October 1707.
Here we look at the relationship between the two independent kingdoms of England and Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries. We explore the critical period leading up to the passing of Acts of Union by both parliaments what happened afterwards, and the development of a British identity.
Until the early 17th century England and Scotland were two entirely independent kingdoms. This changed dramatically in 1603 on the death of Elizabeth I of England. Because the Queen had died unmarried and childless, the English crown passed to the next available heir, her cousin James VI, King of Scotland. England and Scotland now shared the same monarch under what was known as a union of the crowns.
Unified state
James was not satisfied with this arrangement. He wanted a complete or perfect union that brought the two kingdoms into a single, enlarged and unified state.
In May 1603, within weeks of arriving in London, he prepared the way by issuing a proclamation for the uniting of England and Scotland.
Perfect union debated
A commission of English and Scottish MPs was set up in October 1604 to consider how a perfect union might be created. James was quick to grasp that it could not be achieved overnight, and that only modest steps should be taken at first.
But the idea of the unification of the laws, parliaments and economies of both kingdoms met with little enthusiasm at Westminster.
The commissioners' recommendations were debated long and hard at Westminster between November 1606 and July 1607. Although there was agreement on the repeal of hostile laws against the Scots, there was none on union.
James accepted defeat on the issue, but never forgave the English Parliament, describing it as "barren by preconceived opinions".
King of Great Britain
James's failure to win hearts and minds with his vision of a single British kingdom under one imperial crown meant that he had to be content with symbolic reforms and gestures.
In October 1604 he decreed that he would in future be known by the style and title of King of Great Britain and not by the divided names of England and Scotland.
Union Jack flag
In 1606 he gave orders for a British flag to be created which bore the combined crosses of St George and of St Andrew. The result was the Union Jack, Jack being a shortening of Jacobus, the Latin version of James.
In March 1625 James VI and I died and was succeeded by his son Charles I. Unlike his father, Charles was not interested in uniting his kingdoms - but he was determined to assert his authority in each of them. Early struggles with his Parliament at Westminster came to a head in 1629, and for the next eleven years he ruled by decree without summoning Parliament at all.
Civil wars
The three kingdoms that made up the British Isles were torn by civil wars between 1638 and 1653 when Charles attempted to impose changes on the English and Scottish churches.
In addition there were frequent interventions by each kingdom in the other's internal conflicts:
• in 1641 both English and Scottish troops were involved in suppressing the Irish Catholic rebellion
• in 1642 the Scots invaded Ireland
• in 1643 the Irish intervened in England, and in 1644 in Scotland
• Scottish armies marched into England in 1639, 1640, 1643, 1648 and 1651.
• during 1649-51 the English, under Cromwell, invaded Scotland and Ireland, crushing opposition in both kingdoms
King and Presbyterians
By 1648 the balance of the warring parties had changed. Charles, now in captivity in England, came to terms with the Scottish Presbyterians and their allies in the English Parliament, agreeing to impose Presbyterianism throughout Britain in exchange for their support.
This triggered the second civil war of 1648-9, in which royalists and Presbyterians combined against the New Model Army.
However, the Scots, invading England on the king's behalf, were routed by the New Model Army, under its leader, Oliver Cromwell, at Preston. The Army went on to purge Parliament itself in December 1648.The trial and execution of Charles I followed in January 1649.
Cromwell's Britain
On 19 May 1649 Cromwell declared England a Commonwealth and Free State. Scotland and Ireland were later annexed to the English Commonwealth (in a full ‘incorporative’ union) with a single parliament at Westminster.
It was the first time that the Westminster parliament had represented the whole of the British Isles, and 30 Scottish and the same number of Irish representatives sat with English MPs in the 1654 Parliament.
It was primarily a practical arrangement, designed to impose Cromwell's authority, backed up by the threat of force.
Restoration
On 14 May 1660 Charles II was formally restored to his kingdoms and proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland.
Religious discord in Scotland
In England and Scotland there were many who refused to conform to the official Protestant church and found themselves branded as dissenters or nonconformists.
Dissenters (and in Ireland, Catholics) were seen by the ruling elite as holding disloyal anti-government views which posed a threat to stability.
A Catholic king
In 1685 Charles II was succeeded by his brother - James II in England and James VII in Scotland. The new king was a devout and practising Catholic, who wanted to secure the toleration of Catholics throughout his kingdoms and the removal of laws that forbade their full participation in government and public life.
It was widely suspected that James' real objective was to make Catholicism the official church.
The Glorious Revolution
The attempt by James II and VII to establish absolutist rule in his kingdoms, and to turn them into a Catholic monarchy, led to the breakdown of his authority by November 1688.
Widespread alarm
The birth of a healthy boy to the King and Queen in June raised widespread alarm that the monarchy and its future now lay securely in Catholic, rather than Protestant hands.
Anxious to avoid the catastrophe to which they felt this would lead, the King's leading opponents invited Prince William of Orange - the husband (and cousin) of James's Protestant daughter Mary - to intervene and resolve the turmoil.
William landed a vast invasion force at Torbay in Devon early in November 1688, and a few weeks later James escaped to France.
Bill of Rights
The Crown was eventually offered to William - as William III - and Mary as joint Sovereigns and they were crowned in April 1689.
In December 1689 Parliament passed what became known as the Bill of Rights. It set out to redesign how the English monarchy should work in future.
Never again would it be possible for a monarch to govern independently without parliamentary consent, as both James II and Charles II had done.
Scottish crown
A formal offer of the Scottish crown was accepted by William and Mary on 11 May 1689. William become William II in Scotland.
Union between Scotland and England?
The idea of a union between England and Scotland was aired in February and March 1689 during the deliberations of the Convention Parliament in Edinburgh. William III wrote to the Convention of his pleasure that so many of the Scots nobility and gentry favoured the proposal, especially since both nations shared the same landmass, language and attachment to the Protestant religion.
It would also, of course, help to secure the Revolution against ex-King James and the Jacobites.
Negotiations
As a result of this encouragement, the Convention appointed commissioners to negotiate with the English but met with a wall of disinterest.
A proposal for union was made in the Lords in 1695, but that, too, received short shrift.
In Scotland, however, the case for union found much favour among the political elite during the 1690s, mainly because of the poor state of the economy.
In 1699, there were discussions between politicians in London and Edinburgh and the English side acknowledged that a union might be in both nations' interest. The Scots hoped for a union of trade with vital access to English colonial markets.
Bill proposed
By early 1700 these talks had hardened into a legislative proposal backed by the King. At Westminster a bill for negotiating a union passed the Lords, but was thrown out by the Commons.
This example of continuing English inflexibility did little to dispel the intense anti-English attitudes that were rife in Scotland.
Next in line to the throne
The Bill of Rights in 1689 had declared that William and Mary would be succeeded by Mary's sister Anne, but it made no provision for the succession if Anne died childless.
William and Mary had no children, but the birth to Anne of a son - Prince William, the Duke of Gloucester - seemed to make the succession safe. But his death, aged 11 in 1700, changed that.
Westminster decision
The English Parliament at Westminster eventually declared in the Act of Settlement 1701 that after Princess Anne - James II's younger Protestant daughter - the succession would pass in the Protestant line to Sophia of Hanover and her heirs.
The Scottish Parliament chose to do nothing and it seemed as if they might well offer the Scottish crown to the exiled Stuarts.
Negotiations for Union 1702 - 03
In February 1702 William III sent a message to both houses at Westminster urging consideration of "a firm and intire union" - a union of the two kingdoms with a single parliament.
The King did not live to see his proposal take shape. Early in March he suffered complications after breaking his collarbone when he was thrown from his horse in Richmond Park. He died on 8 March 1702 and his sister-in-law, Princess Anne, became Queen.
However, both Parliaments appointed commissioners to negotiate a union between the two countries, and talks were scheduled for later in the year. In the meantime, a war had begun between Britain and France.
Talks about union
In November 1702 the union commissioners convened at the Cockpit, one of the government buildings in Whitehall. But it turned out to be pointless.
The Whig politicians who had promoted the idea when King William was alive were now out of power, and had been replaced by Tories who showed little interest in union with Presbyterian Scotland.
Trade, taxes and religion
An incorporating parliamentary union – meaning the Scots would give up their own parliament - was agreed in principle, as was the Hanoverian succession. But the English commissioners were unwilling to give Scotland access to trade with the colonies until other matters had been resolved.
They also expected the Scots to pay the same taxes as the English, but the former claimed poverty, and didn't want England's taxation system extended to Scotland.
Religion was a further, fundamental stumbling block. Should the Scottish Episcopalians be re-established as the Scottish national church? Should they be granted toleration - which they did not have currently? Should the Episcopalians be left unprotected and therefore dependent on the goodwill of the Presbyterian Kirk – the church of Scotland?
Darien derails the talks
The talks eventually foundered on the question of whether the large numbers of Company of Scotland shareholders should be compensated by the English for losses incurred in the Darien scheme, an unsuccessful attempt by Scotland to establish a colony called - New Caledonia - in Panama in the 1690s.
The commission was adjourned on 3 February 1703 until October, but never reconvened.
Lord Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer - the Queen's chief minister - and his colleagues in England had hoped that the succession issue had been settled as part of a union agreement. But the Scots remained uncommitted on this crucial matter.
Related information
Hanoverian succession
The Act of Settlement was passed on 1701 which meant that, on the death of Queen Anne, the throne would pass to Sophia, the Dowager Electress of Hanover, and after her, her son George, the Elector of Hanover.
Toleration
The permitting of religious faiths or practices, particularly those that differ from any state religion.
The Scottish Parliament in revolt 1703
Elections were held in Scotland during 1702, and the new Scottish Parliament assembled in Edinburgh on 6 May 1703 and quickly proved a fractious and unpredictable body.
The Duke of Queensberry, as Lord High Commissioner - the Queen's personal representative to the Parliament of Scotland - led the Court (government) party, a minority administration, which struggled to steer a course between the opposition parties, the Cavalier (Episcopalian) and Country parties.
Parliament fails to co-operate
Queensberry's priority was to get Scotland to help fund the war with France. But the Scots were angry about English arrogance and obstruction during the recent union negotiations, especially over the vital issues of trade and the ill-fated Darien enterprise, and these increasingly stormy arguments dominated the proceedings.
There were repeated digressions from the all-important measures that were necessary to provide funds to fight France.
Queensberry loses control
Leading members of the opposition put forward legislation – an Act of Security – to preserve the Kirk, trade and the gains of the 1688 Revolution in Scotland.
On 16 July the Earl of Roxburghe caused uproar when he proposed adding a distinctly anti-English clause to the Act of Security.
Queen's successor
It specified that the Queen's successor in Scotland would not be the same person as that in England, unless Scotland was guaranteed the independence of its Crown, the freedom and power of its Parliament, and the liberty of its religion and trade from outside intrusion.
Scotland was expressing its deepest anger about its negligent treatment in the 1690s by King William, and by the high-handed action of the English parliament in determining the succession in 1701 in the Act of Settlement without consulting the Scots.
Queensberry had now completely lost control of the Parliament.
Another clause was later added to the Act of Security stating that there should be no joint monarch unless Scotland was granted unrestricted access to English colonial trade. The Act was passed after 19 stormy sittings on 13 August by a majority of 59.
Westminster passes the Alien Act 1705
At Westminster on 29 November 1704, Lord Godolphin, the Lord High Treasurer, explained to the House of Lords why Queen Anne had approved the Scottish Act of Security - which preserved the Kirk, trade and the gains of the 1688 Revolution in Scotland.
He said the Act contained some undesirable elements, but it was essential that any Scottish threat to England's safety should be neutralised.
Economic pressure
The Tories wanted to censure Godolphin for allowing the Act to pass, but the Whigs said that would antagonise the Scots even more by implying that their legislature was inferior to the English. It was far better, they said, to bring union upon the Scots through economic pressure.
Over the next few days Godolphin was deep in negotiations with the dominant group of Whigs - known as the Junto Whigs - in the English House of Lords, the first step towards the conclusive negotiations of 1706.
Two new Bills
When the Lords resumed their deliberations on Scotland on 6 December, two bills were proposed by Lord Somers, one of the Junto leaders, with Godolphin's support.
One offered fresh negotiations for a full incorporating union, with a single parliament and unified free trade area.
The other, an aliens bill, threatened that unless Scotland agreed to negotiate terms for union and accepted the Hanoverian succession by 25 December 1705, there would be a ban on the import of all Scottish staple products into England.
Scots would also lose the privileges of Englishmen under English law - thus endangering rights to any property they held in England.
Both bills became law early in 1705.
Negotiating the Articles of Union 1705 - 1706
The Scottish Parliament assembled in Edinburgh on 28 June 1705, but for nearly a month did nothing to consider the question. On 23 July Queen Anne impatiently urged the Duke of Argyll, the new Lord High Commissioner, to make progress. A week later, Lord High Treasurer, Godolphin, was speculating on having to take direct action to bring the Scots into line.
However, after seemingly endless manoeuvring during August, the Scottish Court party managed to obtain enough support from the Squadrone – a group of young Presbyterian Whig nobles - to secure the Scottish Parliament's agreement for Scots participation in fresh negotiations for a union treaty.
Who should choose the new commissioners?
Having agreed to negotiate a treaty, the next task was to appoint the commissioners. Should they be chosen by parliament or the Queen?
If chosen by parliament, the opposition would almost certainly be able to appoint many opponents of union who would try to sabotage negotiations.
On 1 September, one of the chief opposition figures, the Duke of Hamilton, having done his best to obstruct the introduction of a treaty act, proposed that the commissioners be nominated by the Queen.
Dismay
Stunned by Hamilton's inexplicable behaviour, most of the opposition leaders left the chamber in dismay, and the motion was passed by eight votes.
Godolphin had at last secured what he needed, a treaty, plus the power to nominate the Scottish commissioners. But there was also the beginning of a political sea-change among the Scottish political elite.
Ruthless execution
The ruthless execution in March of Captain Green, whose English ship, the Worcester, had strayed into Scottish waters, showed how delicate the relationship was between England and Scotland.
If there was armed conflict, Scotland might well come off worse. The Duke of Hamilton admitted privately that "our independency is now a jest", and that Scotland stood to gain more from a negotiated union than simple agreement on the succession, or war.
The 1706 negotiations
Negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners were held at the Cockpit, one of the government buildings at Whitehall in London.
The commissioners did not carry out their negotiations face to face, but in separate rooms. They communicated their proposals to each other in writing. There was also a news blackout.
Business commenced on 22 April 1706 when Cowper, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, presented the Scots with the proposal that:
"the two kingdoms of England and Scotland be forever united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain; that the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same parliament; and that the succession to the monarchy of Great Britain be vested in the House of Hanover."
Agreement in just three days
Within three days, both sides had secured what they most wanted: England had a guarantee that the Hanoverian royal dynasty would succeed Queen Anne to the Scottish crown; and the Scots had their long sought-after access to English colonial markets as the route to an improved economy.
Speedy agreement on these fundamental points came about because much of the groundwork had been done during the preceding months in informal meetings.
Wide range of issues
The commissioners worked amicably through a wide range of issues with little difficulty: the union flag and the standardisation of weights, measures and coinage; the preservation of private rights, and of heritable offices and jurisdictions; and the number of Scottish peers and MPs to sit in Westminster.
Taxes and laws
The Scottish commissioners' particular concern was taxation. Since the Scots could not afford to pay taxes at English levels they agreed a series of exemptions on taxable items such as paper, windows, coal, salt and malt.
It was also agreed that the fundamentals of Scottish civic society should be preserved including the legal system, and the rights and privileges of the Royal Burghs of Scotland.
The Scottish Kirk
There was, however, one highly sensitive area where the negotiators were not permitted: the Scottish Kirk or church. Any mention of it in the Articles of Union would almost certainly have meant that Tory supporters of the Church of England at Westminster would have blocked ratification of the treaty.
The Articles, constitution and trade
There were 25 Articles of Union which formed the basis of the two separate Acts of Union passed by the parliaments at Westminster and in Edinburgh.
Those relating to the constitution were:
Article 1: From 1 May 1707 the kingdoms of Scotland and England were to be "united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain". The flags of St George and St Andrew were to be combined.
Article 2: The succession to the monarchy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain was to pass to the Princess Sophia, the Dowager Electress of Hanover, and her heirs. All Catholics, and people marrying Catholics, would be excluded from the succession.
Article 3: The people of Great Britain were to be represented by one parliament, known as the Parliament of Great Britain.
Article 22: Scottish representation at Westminster would be 16 Scottish peers in the Lords, and 45 MPs in the Commons. A separate Act of the Scottish Parliament would determine the election method of election. .
Article 23: Scottish and English peers were to have the same privileges. All peers of Scotland were to be deemed peers of Great Britain.
Article 24: The Great Seals of England and Scotland were to be replaced by a Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The Scottish crown jewels, parliamentary and other official records were to stay in Scotland.
Fixing the date for union
The commissioners' final session took place on 11 July when they fixed 1 May 1707 as the date for the union.
The written Articles of Union with the commissioners' personal seals, were presented to Queen Anne at St James's Palace on 23 July 1706. The ceremony was witnessed by courtiers and foreign ambassadors.
The English copy of the Articles was presented by William Cowper, the Lord Keeper, and the Scottish copy by the Earl of Seafield, the Lord Chancellor of Scotland.
Speeches
Cowper made a speech from memory which, was reported, as "miserably mangled", before resorting to notes, while Seafield by all reports spoke fluently and without notes.
The Queen expressed her hope that the Articles would "meet with approbation in the parliaments of both kingdoms", and urged the Scots to ratify them quickly.
Ratification, October 1706 - March 1707
In contrast to the abortive negotiations for union of 1702-3, the English this time had gone out of their way to accommodate Scottish demands, particularly over access to English trade.
Next the Scottish Parliament had to agree to the Articles of Union. This turned out to be arduous and was accomplished against a background of protest, often violent, in many parts of Scotland.
Support and opposition
The new session of the Scottish Parliament began on 3 October 1706. Its main business was to agree the Articles of Union.
Queensberry was appointed the Queen's High Commissioner for the session and was responsible for a successful outcome. Honours, appointments, pensions and even arrears of pay and other expenses were distributed to clinch support from Scottish peers and MPs.
About 100 of the 227 members of the single-chamber Scottish Parliament were court supporters - on the side of the Queen and her government - and thus in favour of union.
Extra votes
For extra votes the court was able to rely on the 25 or so members of the Squadrone Volante led by the Marquess of Montrose and the Duke of Roxburghe.
Opponents of the court, generally known as the Country party, were a loose grouping of factions and individuals. They included leading anti-unionists, such as the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Belhaven and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who spoke forcefully and passionately against the union.
However, as Country party members were not ordered to attend and vote as was the case with the Court party, the latter was able to maintain a steady majority over its opponents.
Approval and royal assent
The 25th and last Article was approved on 14 January 1707. The next day the draft of an act for ratifying the Articles as "enlarged, explained and amended" was introduced.
On 16 January it was ordered that the Act for guaranteeing the Presbyterian Kirk be made part of the Act of Ratification.
The Act of Ratification was then put to a vote. In effect this was a final vote on the Articles of Union. The Court-Squadrone Volante majority achieved a comfortable 110 to the Country party's 67 votes.
The Act was then touched with the royal sceptre by Queensberry, the usual manner of signifying the sovereign's approval of acts of the Scottish Parliament.
Westminster debates the Articles
On 28 January 1707, 12 days after Edinburgh ratified the Articles of Union, the Queen formally presented them for ratification to Parliament at Westminster.
Two sittings in the Commons
The House of Commons debated the Articles from 1 – 11th February 1707. Only two sittings of the committee of the whole house were needed to go through all 25 articles.
Concern that the Queen’s ministers were hurrying the proceedings for proper consideration provoked sarcastic shouts of "post-haste, post-haste!" from MPs.
Tories stand firm in the Lords
Proceedings in the Lords began on 15 February, and the Tories, though no match for the combined forces of the Court and the Junto, were determined to dig in.
Although they generally favoured union, they found fault with many of the provisions, and voiced fears about the safety of the constitution and of the Church of England.
There were objections to almost every Article and votes were held on several but the opposition vote was never higher than 23. The Lords finished scrutinising the Articles on 27 February.
Ratification
In the meantime, the Commons approved a bill to ratify the Articles. It was debated in the Lords on 1 March, which provided a further opportunity for Tory peers to debate the wisdom of confirming the Scottish Kirk Act as part of the Union.
A last-minute attempt to have the Act removed from the Treaty was unsuccessful, and on 6 March 1707 the Queen attended the House of Lords to give her assent to the English bill ratifying the Union.
The English Act of Union was now law. Technically it was dated the Act of Union 1706, as England still used the Julian calendar, who's New Year's Day was 25 March.
Mob unrest and disorder for Scotland
Before 1706 reports of unrest and public protest against union were rare. However, as negotiations progressed, the public mood became increasingly volatile, and during 1706 there was frequent civil unrest and disorder in Scottish towns.
Union was gaining acceptance among the Scottish governing, commercial and professional classes but, through the influence of Jacobites and others, the lower social ranks started to worry about the burden of taxation they would have to bear.
Kirk discontent
Ministers of the Kirk spread more discontent as they began campaigning against union, which gathered momentum in the spring of 1706, just as the negotiations began in London.
Protests over the Articles
In October 1706 the Scottish Parliament met to consider and ratify the Articles of Union. Publication of the Articles triggered widespread unrest. Violent demonstrations took place outside Parliament House, and inside there were fears that the building would be invaded by protesters.
Troops sent in
Troops were brought into the city with orders to shoot if necessary, and several regiments were placed at Queensberry's disposal on the Scottish border and in Ireland in the event of trouble.
The situation in Edinburgh grew quieter in November. Trouble now broke out elsewhere. But despite ministerial fears of armed insurrection on a national scale, the only disturbances in the period leading up to union were local and short-lived.
Petitions
Petitions, the usual way of bringing local grievances to parliamentary attention, were an interesting feature of the anti-union campaign. During the debates they were drawn up all over Scotland and submitted to the Scottish Parliament.
A total of 96 petitions were presented against the union, most in November and December 1706, during the debates on the Articles. They were designed to show to undecided MPs the widespread unpopularity of the proposed terms.
It is possible that the petitions and their messages had some influence in the changes made to the Articles. But the Duke of Argyll, one of the leaders of the Scottish Court party, said that petitions were little more than "paper kites" - a revealing insight into how governments of the day regarded public opinion.
End of the old Scottish Parliament
By agreeing to the Union the Scottish Parliament had also voted for its own extinction.
A few remaining matters still had to be finalised. After the Articles had been ratified, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation on how Scotland would be represented in the Parliament at Westminster.
This Act was also made part of the Treaty and it was decided, to begin with, to elect members of the Great Britain's Parliament from the membership of the Scottish Parliament. Since Scotland's small electorate would probably have expressed strong dislike of the Union it was decided to avoid a direct election.
Not surprisingly, this produced much heated debate.
Redrawing the electoral map
The electoral map of Scotland was substantially redrawn. In future 30 MPs would represent the Scottish counties, and 15 the new burgh districts. Unlike the old system each burgh no longer had its own representative.
For elections to the Westminster parliament the 66 burghs were grouped into districts, each containing four or five burghs. There was one MP per district. This was felt to be unfair, given that the English county of Cornwall alone had no fewer than 44 MPs representing the county and its 21 boroughs.
The 16 Scottish peers were to be voted for by the entire body of 154 Scottish peers. The Court party simply agreed on a list of its chief supporters which was canvassed among the rest.
Paying expenses
One of the last acts of the Scottish Parliament was to pay the expenses of the commissioners who had negotiated the Articles of Union.
It also decided to pay those who had participated in the abortive negotiations of 1702-3. Each peer was to receive £1,000 (sterling), and others £500. The payments were to be made from the 'Equivalent' funds - money granted to Scotland in compensation for its liability to the English national debt after union.
Thanksgiving and lament
On 1 May 1707, after years of discussion and debate, England and Scotland became a single state - the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Celebrations in London
In London the occasion was marked by splendour and celebration. Like the Duke of Marlborough's recent victories in Europe, the Union was seen as a further achievement in the preservation of Britain from its enemies.
Londoners turned out to witness the magnificent pageantry of the Queen's procession to St Paul's Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving.
No rejoicing in Edinburgh
In Scotland's capital the mood was very different and no celebrations were held. When it was announced in March that 1 May would be a day of public thanksgiving in England and Ireland, it was decided not to press a similar celebration on the Scots.
First Parliament of Great Britain
On 30 April 1707 peers in the House of Lords summoned MPs from the Commons, to hear a proclamation read in the Queen's name declaring that the Parliament of Great Britain had come into being.
On 5 June a further proclamation was published declaring that the first Parliament of Great Britain would meet at Westminster on 23 October 1707.
Those who were chosen to represent Scotland in the new Parliament were almost all men who had strongly supported the Union in the old Scottish Parliament.
Most of them were also supporters of the Court, and a third of the 45 MPs followers of Queensberry. The 16 representative peers were headed by Queensberry himself, and the Dukes of Montrose and Roxburghe, whose support as leaders of the squadrone, had been critical.
Short honeymoon
When the new parliamentary session began on 23 October, English parliamentarians warmly welcomed their new Scottish colleagues in the Lords and Commons.
The honeymoon was short, however. Scots MPs had to accustom themselves to a cut-and-thrust style of debate in the Commons which was very different from the slow formality to which they had been accustomed in Edinburgh.
In her speech to parliament on 6 November, the Queen made no mention of the Union, until she had given a long account of the state of the war against France. This highlighted the main reason why England had wanted Union.
United into One Kingdom
England and Scotland were now, as described in the Act, "United into One Kingdom".
Developing the Hanoverian state
The Act of Union of 1707 merged England and Scotland into a single state of Great Britain and created a single Parliament at Westminster.
But little thought had been given to how the Union would actually work in practice, or how Scotland would be governed in its new relationship with England. This had to be worked out in practice in the decades that followed.
Governing Scotland
Responsibility for Scottish government now lay with ministers in London. But it was soon clear that this small, distant bureaucracy was not equipped to manage either the collection of revenue, or the maintenance of internal order, in Scotland.
To make matters worse, in 1708 Parliament abolished the Scottish Privy Council, the executive body formerly responsible for overseeing government in Scotland.
Almost by default, therefore, the pre-existing, largely local structures of Scottish governance were left to look after themselves, with barely any supervision from London.
North Britain
Scotland, or North Britain as it was officially known in this period, did not adapt easily to this new relationship with England. Two key factors complicated its internal administration.
One was the prevalence of Jacobitism in the Highlands, and parts of Lowland Scotland, which posed a threat - at times grave - to the internal stability not just of Scotland, but of the British state as a whole.
Unpopular taxes
The other was the unpopularity of new taxes imposed in Scotland on basic commodities - to bring them into line with those levied in England - and the heavy-handed fashion in which revenue officials enforced them.
This led to widespread opposition, with frequent, violent attacks on customs and excise officials.
The 1715 rebellion
In the next few years, discontent with the Union rankled at all levels of Scottish society. Mainly because of its adverse political and economic effects on Scotland.
Although Jacobitism was never a national movement, the unpopularity of the Union meant that Jacobites across Scotland were able to present themselves as defenders of Scottish liberties, pledged to repealing the Union and restoring Scotland's parliament.
The outbreak of rebellion in 1715 saw the largest-ever massing of Scottish Jacobite forces against the government.
Earl of Mar
Queen Anne's death in August 1714 was followed by the peaceful succession of the Elector of Hanover as King George I of Great Britain.
English Jacobites, who were thought to be planning an uprising in Wales, Devon and Cornwall were promptly rounded up, but in Scotland more ambitious plans were drawn up by John Erskine, Earl of Mar.
Within weeks Mar succeeded in mobilising a military force of 16,000 men, two-thirds of whom were from some 26 Highland clans and the staunchly Episcopalian areas of north-east of Scotland.
Mar soon controlled much of the Highlands. It was a rising of almost national proportions and showed much dissatisfaction with the Union.
Sheriffmuir: the rebellion disintegrates
But though the government forces led by the Duke of Argyll were outnumbered by three to one, Mar was an incompetent commander, and wasted his advantage, when the two sides met at the battle of Sheriffmuir on 13 November.
The fighting was confused and inconclusive, but Mar withdrew his troops to his base at Perth, thinking he had won, rather than finishing off Argyll's much depleted force. Instead, Argyll gained time to regroup his forces.
Belatedly, the Old Pretender landed at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, in December, but by then the initiative was lost and further military operations achieved nothing. Early in February 1716 the Old Pretender, accompanied by Mar, fled back to France.
Securing the British state
Punishment was confined only to leaders of the rebellion, a few of whom were executed or deprived of their estates.
Legislation to subdue the Highlands peacefully was largely ineffectual. It was not until the unrest and economic hardship of the mid 1720s that the government took firmer action, fearing the possibility of a new Jacobite rising.
The 1745 rebellion
After the 1715 Rebellion most of Lowland Scotland, like England, accepted the Hanoverian dynasty.
In the Highlands Jacobitism remained strong, though support steadily declined. But Jacobite activists, both in England and Scotland, continued to conspire for a restoration of the Stuart dynasty.
After failing to persuade French ministers to sponsor another attempt at invasion, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the 24-year-old son of the Old Pretender, decided to travel to Scotland to rally the Highland clans.
Force of 3,000
The Prince, - known as the Young Pretender - landed at Eriskay in the Western Isles on 2 August 1745. Initially, the few clan chiefs he contacted showed little enthusiasm, but within a fortnight the Prince's force had increased to 3,000 men.
Charles Edward decided - against the advice of his officers - that rather than consolidate his hold on Scotland, he would march on London. He hoped to make gains through the element of surprise and was heartened by French guarantees that substantial military aid was under preparation.
Defeat of the Jacobites
Following several battles, the final encounter took place at Culloden Moor, four miles east of Inverness, on 16 April 1746.
The Jacobite army of 5,000 Highlanders faced a government force of 9,000 commanded by the King's younger son, William, Duke of Cumberland.
Lord George Murray – supporter of the Young Pretender and one of his commanders - had argued for a guerrilla campaign, but Charles Edward took command himself and chose to give battle on poor, marshy terrain.
Massacre
When the Highlanders began their charge they were met by a hail of cannon and musket fire, and within half an hour many were massacred. Some 2,000 were killed and another 1,000 taken prisoner.
Charles Edward escaped back to France, his story becoming the stuff of romantic legend and storytelling. Culloden and its aftermath marked the end of the Stuart claim to the throne in practical terms.
Dismantling the clan system
From 1746 on the British government passed laws to dismantle the clan system ending most Jacobite support in the Highlands.
Wearing of Highland dress and bearing arms were forbidden. More importantly for the long-term social structure of the Highlands, the feudal relationships and heritable jurisdictions which underpinned the power and authority of clan chiefs over their clansmen were abolished.
Britain and the wider world
By the late 18th century a British identity had been forged in the wider world.
Any remaining tensions in the relationship between England and Scotland were overshadowed by differences with other parts of the empire.
Both the American Revolutionary War, which broke out in 1775, and perennially troubled Anglo-Irish relations, underlined the relative strength of Scottish loyalty to the Union.
Many of the harsh laws imposed on the Highlands in the aftermath of Culloden were repealed in the 1770s and 1780s.
Industrial transformation
Scotland was also becoming a fast-growing part of the British economy and contributing substantially to the state's prosperity. Scotland's traditional strength in textile production thrived enormously under boom-time conditions during the Napoleonic Wars.
A shift to the factory-based production of textiles from the late 18th century had spurred Scotland's own industrial revolution, and began its transformation from a mainly agrarian and rural society to a mainly urban and industrial one.
The king returns to Scotland
At about the time the clearances (mass evictions and emigration of Highland populations) entered a new and more intense phase in the 1820s, the high point of what was known as Highlandism was reached when King George IV made a state visit to Scotland in August 1822.
This visit, the first by a British monarch since Charles II in 1650, was deliberately contrived to reaffirm the bond between the Scots and their monarch, which had been challenged so repeatedly in the past.
George IV wears tartan
The ceremonial of the visit, stage-managed by the romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott, involved a series of pageants, many with a distinct Highland or Gaelic flavour.
Despite being grossly overweight, George paraded in a Highland costume of his own design, complete with a kilt in a specially-designed Royal Stewart tartan - a spectacle that was ruthlessly caricatured in the popular press.
Glossing over reality
It could be argued that the pageantry of 1822, which at the time was called "one and twenty daft days", glossed over what really was happening in Scotland (and England) at this time - clearances, economic hardship, radical discontent.
But there is no doubt that the romanticising of Highland culture and tradition had a profound and lasting effect, not just upon Scottish national identity, but upon that of the whole United Kingdom."
FYI PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SMSgt Lawrence McCarter LTC (Join to see) LTC John Shaw SPC Randy Zimmerman SSG Franklin Briant Col Carl Whicker COL Mikel J. Burroughs COL Charles Williams LTC Greg Henning Maj Robert Thornton Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj Marty Hogan CPT Paul Whitmer SFC John Lich Sgt Jackie Julius Cynthia Croft SPC Margaret Higgins SPC Nancy Greene
Ben Johnson provides a nice summary
SCOTLAND'S STORY - THE 1707 UNION WITH ENGLAND
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9uav5Je9Kg
Detailed background from {[https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/act-of-union-1707/overview/]}
The Acts of Union, passed by the English and Scottish Parliaments in 1707, led to the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 May of that year. The UK Parliament met for the first time in October 1707.
Here we look at the relationship between the two independent kingdoms of England and Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries. We explore the critical period leading up to the passing of Acts of Union by both parliaments what happened afterwards, and the development of a British identity.
Until the early 17th century England and Scotland were two entirely independent kingdoms. This changed dramatically in 1603 on the death of Elizabeth I of England. Because the Queen had died unmarried and childless, the English crown passed to the next available heir, her cousin James VI, King of Scotland. England and Scotland now shared the same monarch under what was known as a union of the crowns.
Unified state
James was not satisfied with this arrangement. He wanted a complete or perfect union that brought the two kingdoms into a single, enlarged and unified state.
In May 1603, within weeks of arriving in London, he prepared the way by issuing a proclamation for the uniting of England and Scotland.
Perfect union debated
A commission of English and Scottish MPs was set up in October 1604 to consider how a perfect union might be created. James was quick to grasp that it could not be achieved overnight, and that only modest steps should be taken at first.
But the idea of the unification of the laws, parliaments and economies of both kingdoms met with little enthusiasm at Westminster.
The commissioners' recommendations were debated long and hard at Westminster between November 1606 and July 1607. Although there was agreement on the repeal of hostile laws against the Scots, there was none on union.
James accepted defeat on the issue, but never forgave the English Parliament, describing it as "barren by preconceived opinions".
King of Great Britain
James's failure to win hearts and minds with his vision of a single British kingdom under one imperial crown meant that he had to be content with symbolic reforms and gestures.
In October 1604 he decreed that he would in future be known by the style and title of King of Great Britain and not by the divided names of England and Scotland.
Union Jack flag
In 1606 he gave orders for a British flag to be created which bore the combined crosses of St George and of St Andrew. The result was the Union Jack, Jack being a shortening of Jacobus, the Latin version of James.
In March 1625 James VI and I died and was succeeded by his son Charles I. Unlike his father, Charles was not interested in uniting his kingdoms - but he was determined to assert his authority in each of them. Early struggles with his Parliament at Westminster came to a head in 1629, and for the next eleven years he ruled by decree without summoning Parliament at all.
Civil wars
The three kingdoms that made up the British Isles were torn by civil wars between 1638 and 1653 when Charles attempted to impose changes on the English and Scottish churches.
In addition there were frequent interventions by each kingdom in the other's internal conflicts:
• in 1641 both English and Scottish troops were involved in suppressing the Irish Catholic rebellion
• in 1642 the Scots invaded Ireland
• in 1643 the Irish intervened in England, and in 1644 in Scotland
• Scottish armies marched into England in 1639, 1640, 1643, 1648 and 1651.
• during 1649-51 the English, under Cromwell, invaded Scotland and Ireland, crushing opposition in both kingdoms
King and Presbyterians
By 1648 the balance of the warring parties had changed. Charles, now in captivity in England, came to terms with the Scottish Presbyterians and their allies in the English Parliament, agreeing to impose Presbyterianism throughout Britain in exchange for their support.
This triggered the second civil war of 1648-9, in which royalists and Presbyterians combined against the New Model Army.
However, the Scots, invading England on the king's behalf, were routed by the New Model Army, under its leader, Oliver Cromwell, at Preston. The Army went on to purge Parliament itself in December 1648.The trial and execution of Charles I followed in January 1649.
Cromwell's Britain
On 19 May 1649 Cromwell declared England a Commonwealth and Free State. Scotland and Ireland were later annexed to the English Commonwealth (in a full ‘incorporative’ union) with a single parliament at Westminster.
It was the first time that the Westminster parliament had represented the whole of the British Isles, and 30 Scottish and the same number of Irish representatives sat with English MPs in the 1654 Parliament.
It was primarily a practical arrangement, designed to impose Cromwell's authority, backed up by the threat of force.
Restoration
On 14 May 1660 Charles II was formally restored to his kingdoms and proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland.
Religious discord in Scotland
In England and Scotland there were many who refused to conform to the official Protestant church and found themselves branded as dissenters or nonconformists.
Dissenters (and in Ireland, Catholics) were seen by the ruling elite as holding disloyal anti-government views which posed a threat to stability.
A Catholic king
In 1685 Charles II was succeeded by his brother - James II in England and James VII in Scotland. The new king was a devout and practising Catholic, who wanted to secure the toleration of Catholics throughout his kingdoms and the removal of laws that forbade their full participation in government and public life.
It was widely suspected that James' real objective was to make Catholicism the official church.
The Glorious Revolution
The attempt by James II and VII to establish absolutist rule in his kingdoms, and to turn them into a Catholic monarchy, led to the breakdown of his authority by November 1688.
Widespread alarm
The birth of a healthy boy to the King and Queen in June raised widespread alarm that the monarchy and its future now lay securely in Catholic, rather than Protestant hands.
Anxious to avoid the catastrophe to which they felt this would lead, the King's leading opponents invited Prince William of Orange - the husband (and cousin) of James's Protestant daughter Mary - to intervene and resolve the turmoil.
William landed a vast invasion force at Torbay in Devon early in November 1688, and a few weeks later James escaped to France.
Bill of Rights
The Crown was eventually offered to William - as William III - and Mary as joint Sovereigns and they were crowned in April 1689.
In December 1689 Parliament passed what became known as the Bill of Rights. It set out to redesign how the English monarchy should work in future.
Never again would it be possible for a monarch to govern independently without parliamentary consent, as both James II and Charles II had done.
Scottish crown
A formal offer of the Scottish crown was accepted by William and Mary on 11 May 1689. William become William II in Scotland.
Union between Scotland and England?
The idea of a union between England and Scotland was aired in February and March 1689 during the deliberations of the Convention Parliament in Edinburgh. William III wrote to the Convention of his pleasure that so many of the Scots nobility and gentry favoured the proposal, especially since both nations shared the same landmass, language and attachment to the Protestant religion.
It would also, of course, help to secure the Revolution against ex-King James and the Jacobites.
Negotiations
As a result of this encouragement, the Convention appointed commissioners to negotiate with the English but met with a wall of disinterest.
A proposal for union was made in the Lords in 1695, but that, too, received short shrift.
In Scotland, however, the case for union found much favour among the political elite during the 1690s, mainly because of the poor state of the economy.
In 1699, there were discussions between politicians in London and Edinburgh and the English side acknowledged that a union might be in both nations' interest. The Scots hoped for a union of trade with vital access to English colonial markets.
Bill proposed
By early 1700 these talks had hardened into a legislative proposal backed by the King. At Westminster a bill for negotiating a union passed the Lords, but was thrown out by the Commons.
This example of continuing English inflexibility did little to dispel the intense anti-English attitudes that were rife in Scotland.
Next in line to the throne
The Bill of Rights in 1689 had declared that William and Mary would be succeeded by Mary's sister Anne, but it made no provision for the succession if Anne died childless.
William and Mary had no children, but the birth to Anne of a son - Prince William, the Duke of Gloucester - seemed to make the succession safe. But his death, aged 11 in 1700, changed that.
Westminster decision
The English Parliament at Westminster eventually declared in the Act of Settlement 1701 that after Princess Anne - James II's younger Protestant daughter - the succession would pass in the Protestant line to Sophia of Hanover and her heirs.
The Scottish Parliament chose to do nothing and it seemed as if they might well offer the Scottish crown to the exiled Stuarts.
Negotiations for Union 1702 - 03
In February 1702 William III sent a message to both houses at Westminster urging consideration of "a firm and intire union" - a union of the two kingdoms with a single parliament.
The King did not live to see his proposal take shape. Early in March he suffered complications after breaking his collarbone when he was thrown from his horse in Richmond Park. He died on 8 March 1702 and his sister-in-law, Princess Anne, became Queen.
However, both Parliaments appointed commissioners to negotiate a union between the two countries, and talks were scheduled for later in the year. In the meantime, a war had begun between Britain and France.
Talks about union
In November 1702 the union commissioners convened at the Cockpit, one of the government buildings in Whitehall. But it turned out to be pointless.
The Whig politicians who had promoted the idea when King William was alive were now out of power, and had been replaced by Tories who showed little interest in union with Presbyterian Scotland.
Trade, taxes and religion
An incorporating parliamentary union – meaning the Scots would give up their own parliament - was agreed in principle, as was the Hanoverian succession. But the English commissioners were unwilling to give Scotland access to trade with the colonies until other matters had been resolved.
They also expected the Scots to pay the same taxes as the English, but the former claimed poverty, and didn't want England's taxation system extended to Scotland.
Religion was a further, fundamental stumbling block. Should the Scottish Episcopalians be re-established as the Scottish national church? Should they be granted toleration - which they did not have currently? Should the Episcopalians be left unprotected and therefore dependent on the goodwill of the Presbyterian Kirk – the church of Scotland?
Darien derails the talks
The talks eventually foundered on the question of whether the large numbers of Company of Scotland shareholders should be compensated by the English for losses incurred in the Darien scheme, an unsuccessful attempt by Scotland to establish a colony called - New Caledonia - in Panama in the 1690s.
The commission was adjourned on 3 February 1703 until October, but never reconvened.
Lord Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer - the Queen's chief minister - and his colleagues in England had hoped that the succession issue had been settled as part of a union agreement. But the Scots remained uncommitted on this crucial matter.
Related information
Hanoverian succession
The Act of Settlement was passed on 1701 which meant that, on the death of Queen Anne, the throne would pass to Sophia, the Dowager Electress of Hanover, and after her, her son George, the Elector of Hanover.
Toleration
The permitting of religious faiths or practices, particularly those that differ from any state religion.
The Scottish Parliament in revolt 1703
Elections were held in Scotland during 1702, and the new Scottish Parliament assembled in Edinburgh on 6 May 1703 and quickly proved a fractious and unpredictable body.
The Duke of Queensberry, as Lord High Commissioner - the Queen's personal representative to the Parliament of Scotland - led the Court (government) party, a minority administration, which struggled to steer a course between the opposition parties, the Cavalier (Episcopalian) and Country parties.
Parliament fails to co-operate
Queensberry's priority was to get Scotland to help fund the war with France. But the Scots were angry about English arrogance and obstruction during the recent union negotiations, especially over the vital issues of trade and the ill-fated Darien enterprise, and these increasingly stormy arguments dominated the proceedings.
There were repeated digressions from the all-important measures that were necessary to provide funds to fight France.
Queensberry loses control
Leading members of the opposition put forward legislation – an Act of Security – to preserve the Kirk, trade and the gains of the 1688 Revolution in Scotland.
On 16 July the Earl of Roxburghe caused uproar when he proposed adding a distinctly anti-English clause to the Act of Security.
Queen's successor
It specified that the Queen's successor in Scotland would not be the same person as that in England, unless Scotland was guaranteed the independence of its Crown, the freedom and power of its Parliament, and the liberty of its religion and trade from outside intrusion.
Scotland was expressing its deepest anger about its negligent treatment in the 1690s by King William, and by the high-handed action of the English parliament in determining the succession in 1701 in the Act of Settlement without consulting the Scots.
Queensberry had now completely lost control of the Parliament.
Another clause was later added to the Act of Security stating that there should be no joint monarch unless Scotland was granted unrestricted access to English colonial trade. The Act was passed after 19 stormy sittings on 13 August by a majority of 59.
Westminster passes the Alien Act 1705
At Westminster on 29 November 1704, Lord Godolphin, the Lord High Treasurer, explained to the House of Lords why Queen Anne had approved the Scottish Act of Security - which preserved the Kirk, trade and the gains of the 1688 Revolution in Scotland.
He said the Act contained some undesirable elements, but it was essential that any Scottish threat to England's safety should be neutralised.
Economic pressure
The Tories wanted to censure Godolphin for allowing the Act to pass, but the Whigs said that would antagonise the Scots even more by implying that their legislature was inferior to the English. It was far better, they said, to bring union upon the Scots through economic pressure.
Over the next few days Godolphin was deep in negotiations with the dominant group of Whigs - known as the Junto Whigs - in the English House of Lords, the first step towards the conclusive negotiations of 1706.
Two new Bills
When the Lords resumed their deliberations on Scotland on 6 December, two bills were proposed by Lord Somers, one of the Junto leaders, with Godolphin's support.
One offered fresh negotiations for a full incorporating union, with a single parliament and unified free trade area.
The other, an aliens bill, threatened that unless Scotland agreed to negotiate terms for union and accepted the Hanoverian succession by 25 December 1705, there would be a ban on the import of all Scottish staple products into England.
Scots would also lose the privileges of Englishmen under English law - thus endangering rights to any property they held in England.
Both bills became law early in 1705.
Negotiating the Articles of Union 1705 - 1706
The Scottish Parliament assembled in Edinburgh on 28 June 1705, but for nearly a month did nothing to consider the question. On 23 July Queen Anne impatiently urged the Duke of Argyll, the new Lord High Commissioner, to make progress. A week later, Lord High Treasurer, Godolphin, was speculating on having to take direct action to bring the Scots into line.
However, after seemingly endless manoeuvring during August, the Scottish Court party managed to obtain enough support from the Squadrone – a group of young Presbyterian Whig nobles - to secure the Scottish Parliament's agreement for Scots participation in fresh negotiations for a union treaty.
Who should choose the new commissioners?
Having agreed to negotiate a treaty, the next task was to appoint the commissioners. Should they be chosen by parliament or the Queen?
If chosen by parliament, the opposition would almost certainly be able to appoint many opponents of union who would try to sabotage negotiations.
On 1 September, one of the chief opposition figures, the Duke of Hamilton, having done his best to obstruct the introduction of a treaty act, proposed that the commissioners be nominated by the Queen.
Dismay
Stunned by Hamilton's inexplicable behaviour, most of the opposition leaders left the chamber in dismay, and the motion was passed by eight votes.
Godolphin had at last secured what he needed, a treaty, plus the power to nominate the Scottish commissioners. But there was also the beginning of a political sea-change among the Scottish political elite.
Ruthless execution
The ruthless execution in March of Captain Green, whose English ship, the Worcester, had strayed into Scottish waters, showed how delicate the relationship was between England and Scotland.
If there was armed conflict, Scotland might well come off worse. The Duke of Hamilton admitted privately that "our independency is now a jest", and that Scotland stood to gain more from a negotiated union than simple agreement on the succession, or war.
The 1706 negotiations
Negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners were held at the Cockpit, one of the government buildings at Whitehall in London.
The commissioners did not carry out their negotiations face to face, but in separate rooms. They communicated their proposals to each other in writing. There was also a news blackout.
Business commenced on 22 April 1706 when Cowper, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, presented the Scots with the proposal that:
"the two kingdoms of England and Scotland be forever united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain; that the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same parliament; and that the succession to the monarchy of Great Britain be vested in the House of Hanover."
Agreement in just three days
Within three days, both sides had secured what they most wanted: England had a guarantee that the Hanoverian royal dynasty would succeed Queen Anne to the Scottish crown; and the Scots had their long sought-after access to English colonial markets as the route to an improved economy.
Speedy agreement on these fundamental points came about because much of the groundwork had been done during the preceding months in informal meetings.
Wide range of issues
The commissioners worked amicably through a wide range of issues with little difficulty: the union flag and the standardisation of weights, measures and coinage; the preservation of private rights, and of heritable offices and jurisdictions; and the number of Scottish peers and MPs to sit in Westminster.
Taxes and laws
The Scottish commissioners' particular concern was taxation. Since the Scots could not afford to pay taxes at English levels they agreed a series of exemptions on taxable items such as paper, windows, coal, salt and malt.
It was also agreed that the fundamentals of Scottish civic society should be preserved including the legal system, and the rights and privileges of the Royal Burghs of Scotland.
The Scottish Kirk
There was, however, one highly sensitive area where the negotiators were not permitted: the Scottish Kirk or church. Any mention of it in the Articles of Union would almost certainly have meant that Tory supporters of the Church of England at Westminster would have blocked ratification of the treaty.
The Articles, constitution and trade
There were 25 Articles of Union which formed the basis of the two separate Acts of Union passed by the parliaments at Westminster and in Edinburgh.
Those relating to the constitution were:
Article 1: From 1 May 1707 the kingdoms of Scotland and England were to be "united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain". The flags of St George and St Andrew were to be combined.
Article 2: The succession to the monarchy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain was to pass to the Princess Sophia, the Dowager Electress of Hanover, and her heirs. All Catholics, and people marrying Catholics, would be excluded from the succession.
Article 3: The people of Great Britain were to be represented by one parliament, known as the Parliament of Great Britain.
Article 22: Scottish representation at Westminster would be 16 Scottish peers in the Lords, and 45 MPs in the Commons. A separate Act of the Scottish Parliament would determine the election method of election. .
Article 23: Scottish and English peers were to have the same privileges. All peers of Scotland were to be deemed peers of Great Britain.
Article 24: The Great Seals of England and Scotland were to be replaced by a Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The Scottish crown jewels, parliamentary and other official records were to stay in Scotland.
Fixing the date for union
The commissioners' final session took place on 11 July when they fixed 1 May 1707 as the date for the union.
The written Articles of Union with the commissioners' personal seals, were presented to Queen Anne at St James's Palace on 23 July 1706. The ceremony was witnessed by courtiers and foreign ambassadors.
The English copy of the Articles was presented by William Cowper, the Lord Keeper, and the Scottish copy by the Earl of Seafield, the Lord Chancellor of Scotland.
Speeches
Cowper made a speech from memory which, was reported, as "miserably mangled", before resorting to notes, while Seafield by all reports spoke fluently and without notes.
The Queen expressed her hope that the Articles would "meet with approbation in the parliaments of both kingdoms", and urged the Scots to ratify them quickly.
Ratification, October 1706 - March 1707
In contrast to the abortive negotiations for union of 1702-3, the English this time had gone out of their way to accommodate Scottish demands, particularly over access to English trade.
Next the Scottish Parliament had to agree to the Articles of Union. This turned out to be arduous and was accomplished against a background of protest, often violent, in many parts of Scotland.
Support and opposition
The new session of the Scottish Parliament began on 3 October 1706. Its main business was to agree the Articles of Union.
Queensberry was appointed the Queen's High Commissioner for the session and was responsible for a successful outcome. Honours, appointments, pensions and even arrears of pay and other expenses were distributed to clinch support from Scottish peers and MPs.
About 100 of the 227 members of the single-chamber Scottish Parliament were court supporters - on the side of the Queen and her government - and thus in favour of union.
Extra votes
For extra votes the court was able to rely on the 25 or so members of the Squadrone Volante led by the Marquess of Montrose and the Duke of Roxburghe.
Opponents of the court, generally known as the Country party, were a loose grouping of factions and individuals. They included leading anti-unionists, such as the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Belhaven and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who spoke forcefully and passionately against the union.
However, as Country party members were not ordered to attend and vote as was the case with the Court party, the latter was able to maintain a steady majority over its opponents.
Approval and royal assent
The 25th and last Article was approved on 14 January 1707. The next day the draft of an act for ratifying the Articles as "enlarged, explained and amended" was introduced.
On 16 January it was ordered that the Act for guaranteeing the Presbyterian Kirk be made part of the Act of Ratification.
The Act of Ratification was then put to a vote. In effect this was a final vote on the Articles of Union. The Court-Squadrone Volante majority achieved a comfortable 110 to the Country party's 67 votes.
The Act was then touched with the royal sceptre by Queensberry, the usual manner of signifying the sovereign's approval of acts of the Scottish Parliament.
Westminster debates the Articles
On 28 January 1707, 12 days after Edinburgh ratified the Articles of Union, the Queen formally presented them for ratification to Parliament at Westminster.
Two sittings in the Commons
The House of Commons debated the Articles from 1 – 11th February 1707. Only two sittings of the committee of the whole house were needed to go through all 25 articles.
Concern that the Queen’s ministers were hurrying the proceedings for proper consideration provoked sarcastic shouts of "post-haste, post-haste!" from MPs.
Tories stand firm in the Lords
Proceedings in the Lords began on 15 February, and the Tories, though no match for the combined forces of the Court and the Junto, were determined to dig in.
Although they generally favoured union, they found fault with many of the provisions, and voiced fears about the safety of the constitution and of the Church of England.
There were objections to almost every Article and votes were held on several but the opposition vote was never higher than 23. The Lords finished scrutinising the Articles on 27 February.
Ratification
In the meantime, the Commons approved a bill to ratify the Articles. It was debated in the Lords on 1 March, which provided a further opportunity for Tory peers to debate the wisdom of confirming the Scottish Kirk Act as part of the Union.
A last-minute attempt to have the Act removed from the Treaty was unsuccessful, and on 6 March 1707 the Queen attended the House of Lords to give her assent to the English bill ratifying the Union.
The English Act of Union was now law. Technically it was dated the Act of Union 1706, as England still used the Julian calendar, who's New Year's Day was 25 March.
Mob unrest and disorder for Scotland
Before 1706 reports of unrest and public protest against union were rare. However, as negotiations progressed, the public mood became increasingly volatile, and during 1706 there was frequent civil unrest and disorder in Scottish towns.
Union was gaining acceptance among the Scottish governing, commercial and professional classes but, through the influence of Jacobites and others, the lower social ranks started to worry about the burden of taxation they would have to bear.
Kirk discontent
Ministers of the Kirk spread more discontent as they began campaigning against union, which gathered momentum in the spring of 1706, just as the negotiations began in London.
Protests over the Articles
In October 1706 the Scottish Parliament met to consider and ratify the Articles of Union. Publication of the Articles triggered widespread unrest. Violent demonstrations took place outside Parliament House, and inside there were fears that the building would be invaded by protesters.
Troops sent in
Troops were brought into the city with orders to shoot if necessary, and several regiments were placed at Queensberry's disposal on the Scottish border and in Ireland in the event of trouble.
The situation in Edinburgh grew quieter in November. Trouble now broke out elsewhere. But despite ministerial fears of armed insurrection on a national scale, the only disturbances in the period leading up to union were local and short-lived.
Petitions
Petitions, the usual way of bringing local grievances to parliamentary attention, were an interesting feature of the anti-union campaign. During the debates they were drawn up all over Scotland and submitted to the Scottish Parliament.
A total of 96 petitions were presented against the union, most in November and December 1706, during the debates on the Articles. They were designed to show to undecided MPs the widespread unpopularity of the proposed terms.
It is possible that the petitions and their messages had some influence in the changes made to the Articles. But the Duke of Argyll, one of the leaders of the Scottish Court party, said that petitions were little more than "paper kites" - a revealing insight into how governments of the day regarded public opinion.
End of the old Scottish Parliament
By agreeing to the Union the Scottish Parliament had also voted for its own extinction.
A few remaining matters still had to be finalised. After the Articles had been ratified, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation on how Scotland would be represented in the Parliament at Westminster.
This Act was also made part of the Treaty and it was decided, to begin with, to elect members of the Great Britain's Parliament from the membership of the Scottish Parliament. Since Scotland's small electorate would probably have expressed strong dislike of the Union it was decided to avoid a direct election.
Not surprisingly, this produced much heated debate.
Redrawing the electoral map
The electoral map of Scotland was substantially redrawn. In future 30 MPs would represent the Scottish counties, and 15 the new burgh districts. Unlike the old system each burgh no longer had its own representative.
For elections to the Westminster parliament the 66 burghs were grouped into districts, each containing four or five burghs. There was one MP per district. This was felt to be unfair, given that the English county of Cornwall alone had no fewer than 44 MPs representing the county and its 21 boroughs.
The 16 Scottish peers were to be voted for by the entire body of 154 Scottish peers. The Court party simply agreed on a list of its chief supporters which was canvassed among the rest.
Paying expenses
One of the last acts of the Scottish Parliament was to pay the expenses of the commissioners who had negotiated the Articles of Union.
It also decided to pay those who had participated in the abortive negotiations of 1702-3. Each peer was to receive £1,000 (sterling), and others £500. The payments were to be made from the 'Equivalent' funds - money granted to Scotland in compensation for its liability to the English national debt after union.
Thanksgiving and lament
On 1 May 1707, after years of discussion and debate, England and Scotland became a single state - the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Celebrations in London
In London the occasion was marked by splendour and celebration. Like the Duke of Marlborough's recent victories in Europe, the Union was seen as a further achievement in the preservation of Britain from its enemies.
Londoners turned out to witness the magnificent pageantry of the Queen's procession to St Paul's Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving.
No rejoicing in Edinburgh
In Scotland's capital the mood was very different and no celebrations were held. When it was announced in March that 1 May would be a day of public thanksgiving in England and Ireland, it was decided not to press a similar celebration on the Scots.
First Parliament of Great Britain
On 30 April 1707 peers in the House of Lords summoned MPs from the Commons, to hear a proclamation read in the Queen's name declaring that the Parliament of Great Britain had come into being.
On 5 June a further proclamation was published declaring that the first Parliament of Great Britain would meet at Westminster on 23 October 1707.
Those who were chosen to represent Scotland in the new Parliament were almost all men who had strongly supported the Union in the old Scottish Parliament.
Most of them were also supporters of the Court, and a third of the 45 MPs followers of Queensberry. The 16 representative peers were headed by Queensberry himself, and the Dukes of Montrose and Roxburghe, whose support as leaders of the squadrone, had been critical.
Short honeymoon
When the new parliamentary session began on 23 October, English parliamentarians warmly welcomed their new Scottish colleagues in the Lords and Commons.
The honeymoon was short, however. Scots MPs had to accustom themselves to a cut-and-thrust style of debate in the Commons which was very different from the slow formality to which they had been accustomed in Edinburgh.
In her speech to parliament on 6 November, the Queen made no mention of the Union, until she had given a long account of the state of the war against France. This highlighted the main reason why England had wanted Union.
United into One Kingdom
England and Scotland were now, as described in the Act, "United into One Kingdom".
Developing the Hanoverian state
The Act of Union of 1707 merged England and Scotland into a single state of Great Britain and created a single Parliament at Westminster.
But little thought had been given to how the Union would actually work in practice, or how Scotland would be governed in its new relationship with England. This had to be worked out in practice in the decades that followed.
Governing Scotland
Responsibility for Scottish government now lay with ministers in London. But it was soon clear that this small, distant bureaucracy was not equipped to manage either the collection of revenue, or the maintenance of internal order, in Scotland.
To make matters worse, in 1708 Parliament abolished the Scottish Privy Council, the executive body formerly responsible for overseeing government in Scotland.
Almost by default, therefore, the pre-existing, largely local structures of Scottish governance were left to look after themselves, with barely any supervision from London.
North Britain
Scotland, or North Britain as it was officially known in this period, did not adapt easily to this new relationship with England. Two key factors complicated its internal administration.
One was the prevalence of Jacobitism in the Highlands, and parts of Lowland Scotland, which posed a threat - at times grave - to the internal stability not just of Scotland, but of the British state as a whole.
Unpopular taxes
The other was the unpopularity of new taxes imposed in Scotland on basic commodities - to bring them into line with those levied in England - and the heavy-handed fashion in which revenue officials enforced them.
This led to widespread opposition, with frequent, violent attacks on customs and excise officials.
The 1715 rebellion
In the next few years, discontent with the Union rankled at all levels of Scottish society. Mainly because of its adverse political and economic effects on Scotland.
Although Jacobitism was never a national movement, the unpopularity of the Union meant that Jacobites across Scotland were able to present themselves as defenders of Scottish liberties, pledged to repealing the Union and restoring Scotland's parliament.
The outbreak of rebellion in 1715 saw the largest-ever massing of Scottish Jacobite forces against the government.
Earl of Mar
Queen Anne's death in August 1714 was followed by the peaceful succession of the Elector of Hanover as King George I of Great Britain.
English Jacobites, who were thought to be planning an uprising in Wales, Devon and Cornwall were promptly rounded up, but in Scotland more ambitious plans were drawn up by John Erskine, Earl of Mar.
Within weeks Mar succeeded in mobilising a military force of 16,000 men, two-thirds of whom were from some 26 Highland clans and the staunchly Episcopalian areas of north-east of Scotland.
Mar soon controlled much of the Highlands. It was a rising of almost national proportions and showed much dissatisfaction with the Union.
Sheriffmuir: the rebellion disintegrates
But though the government forces led by the Duke of Argyll were outnumbered by three to one, Mar was an incompetent commander, and wasted his advantage, when the two sides met at the battle of Sheriffmuir on 13 November.
The fighting was confused and inconclusive, but Mar withdrew his troops to his base at Perth, thinking he had won, rather than finishing off Argyll's much depleted force. Instead, Argyll gained time to regroup his forces.
Belatedly, the Old Pretender landed at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, in December, but by then the initiative was lost and further military operations achieved nothing. Early in February 1716 the Old Pretender, accompanied by Mar, fled back to France.
Securing the British state
Punishment was confined only to leaders of the rebellion, a few of whom were executed or deprived of their estates.
Legislation to subdue the Highlands peacefully was largely ineffectual. It was not until the unrest and economic hardship of the mid 1720s that the government took firmer action, fearing the possibility of a new Jacobite rising.
The 1745 rebellion
After the 1715 Rebellion most of Lowland Scotland, like England, accepted the Hanoverian dynasty.
In the Highlands Jacobitism remained strong, though support steadily declined. But Jacobite activists, both in England and Scotland, continued to conspire for a restoration of the Stuart dynasty.
After failing to persuade French ministers to sponsor another attempt at invasion, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the 24-year-old son of the Old Pretender, decided to travel to Scotland to rally the Highland clans.
Force of 3,000
The Prince, - known as the Young Pretender - landed at Eriskay in the Western Isles on 2 August 1745. Initially, the few clan chiefs he contacted showed little enthusiasm, but within a fortnight the Prince's force had increased to 3,000 men.
Charles Edward decided - against the advice of his officers - that rather than consolidate his hold on Scotland, he would march on London. He hoped to make gains through the element of surprise and was heartened by French guarantees that substantial military aid was under preparation.
Defeat of the Jacobites
Following several battles, the final encounter took place at Culloden Moor, four miles east of Inverness, on 16 April 1746.
The Jacobite army of 5,000 Highlanders faced a government force of 9,000 commanded by the King's younger son, William, Duke of Cumberland.
Lord George Murray – supporter of the Young Pretender and one of his commanders - had argued for a guerrilla campaign, but Charles Edward took command himself and chose to give battle on poor, marshy terrain.
Massacre
When the Highlanders began their charge they were met by a hail of cannon and musket fire, and within half an hour many were massacred. Some 2,000 were killed and another 1,000 taken prisoner.
Charles Edward escaped back to France, his story becoming the stuff of romantic legend and storytelling. Culloden and its aftermath marked the end of the Stuart claim to the throne in practical terms.
Dismantling the clan system
From 1746 on the British government passed laws to dismantle the clan system ending most Jacobite support in the Highlands.
Wearing of Highland dress and bearing arms were forbidden. More importantly for the long-term social structure of the Highlands, the feudal relationships and heritable jurisdictions which underpinned the power and authority of clan chiefs over their clansmen were abolished.
Britain and the wider world
By the late 18th century a British identity had been forged in the wider world.
Any remaining tensions in the relationship between England and Scotland were overshadowed by differences with other parts of the empire.
Both the American Revolutionary War, which broke out in 1775, and perennially troubled Anglo-Irish relations, underlined the relative strength of Scottish loyalty to the Union.
Many of the harsh laws imposed on the Highlands in the aftermath of Culloden were repealed in the 1770s and 1780s.
Industrial transformation
Scotland was also becoming a fast-growing part of the British economy and contributing substantially to the state's prosperity. Scotland's traditional strength in textile production thrived enormously under boom-time conditions during the Napoleonic Wars.
A shift to the factory-based production of textiles from the late 18th century had spurred Scotland's own industrial revolution, and began its transformation from a mainly agrarian and rural society to a mainly urban and industrial one.
The king returns to Scotland
At about the time the clearances (mass evictions and emigration of Highland populations) entered a new and more intense phase in the 1820s, the high point of what was known as Highlandism was reached when King George IV made a state visit to Scotland in August 1822.
This visit, the first by a British monarch since Charles II in 1650, was deliberately contrived to reaffirm the bond between the Scots and their monarch, which had been challenged so repeatedly in the past.
George IV wears tartan
The ceremonial of the visit, stage-managed by the romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott, involved a series of pageants, many with a distinct Highland or Gaelic flavour.
Despite being grossly overweight, George paraded in a Highland costume of his own design, complete with a kilt in a specially-designed Royal Stewart tartan - a spectacle that was ruthlessly caricatured in the popular press.
Glossing over reality
It could be argued that the pageantry of 1822, which at the time was called "one and twenty daft days", glossed over what really was happening in Scotland (and England) at this time - clearances, economic hardship, radical discontent.
But there is no doubt that the romanticising of Highland culture and tradition had a profound and lasting effect, not just upon Scottish national identity, but upon that of the whole United Kingdom."
FYI PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SMSgt Lawrence McCarter LTC (Join to see) LTC John Shaw SPC Randy Zimmerman SSG Franklin Briant Col Carl Whicker COL Mikel J. Burroughs COL Charles Williams LTC Greg Henning Maj Robert Thornton Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj Marty Hogan CPT Paul Whitmer SFC John Lich Sgt Jackie Julius Cynthia Croft SPC Margaret Higgins SPC Nancy Greene
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LTC Stephen F.
History of Scotland in the Union
Prof. Tom Devine explaining the history of the Union leading up to the Independence referendum.
History of Scotland in the Union
Prof. Tom Devine explaining the history of the Union leading up to the Independence referendum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGNtgxAeMm4
FYI SGT Steve McFarlandSFC David XantenSSG Michael NollCPT Daniel CoxSFC David Reid, M.S, PHR, SHRM-CP, DTMSP5 Jeannie Carle
SPC Chris Bayner-CwikTSgt David L.SSG Robert Mark OdomSPC Matthew LambCW4 G.L. Smith1SG Steven ImermanSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC Richard (Rick) HenryLCDR Clark Paton1SG John Highfill1SG Joseph DarteyLT Ed Skiba
Prof. Tom Devine explaining the history of the Union leading up to the Independence referendum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGNtgxAeMm4
FYI SGT Steve McFarlandSFC David XantenSSG Michael NollCPT Daniel CoxSFC David Reid, M.S, PHR, SHRM-CP, DTMSP5 Jeannie Carle
SPC Chris Bayner-CwikTSgt David L.SSG Robert Mark OdomSPC Matthew LambCW4 G.L. Smith1SG Steven ImermanSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC Richard (Rick) HenryLCDR Clark Paton1SG John Highfill1SG Joseph DarteyLT Ed Skiba
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