Act of Union (1707)

See also: Act of Union

the acts of Union ( The Acts off Union ), are Parliamentary legal instruments English and Scot respectively passed in 1706 and 1707 (date of effect on May 1st 1707), bearing on the association of the kingdoms of Scotland and England which becomes together the Royaume of Great Britain. That is thus balanced by the dissolution of the respective Parlement S of England and Scotland to the profit of the creation of a common Parliament, the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Their nap is included in the Traité (or Act) of Union in 1707, and constitutes a concrete realization of the union between two countries already brought closer in 1603, when the king Jacques VI of Scotland became also Jacques I of England and Ireland.

This treaty (or act) of Union of 1707 was conceived to avoid a separation of the two kingdoms to the death of the Queen Anne (occurred in 1714). At the time of the Revolution of 1688, English had driven out their catholic king, Jacques II of England, it to replace by his/her son-in-law, William of Orange and his daughter the queen Marie II of England. With the death of William of Orange, in 1702, it is the queen Anne Ire of Great Britain, second girl of Jacques II who goes up on the throne. It does not have children and normally, it is its half brother, the applicant Jacques François Stuart, wire of the second marriage of Jacques II, who should succeed to him. But as this applicant wishes to remain catholic, it is excluded from the succession to the throne of England. It is then a distance cousin, the voter of Hanover, which is designated as heir (and who will become Georges 1 {{er}}).

This heir is downward Tudor S, the dynasty which reigned on England between 1485 and 1603. He thus does not have bonds with the Stuarts, which have reigned on Scotland for several centuries. The rights of Georges of Hanover on Scotland are thus very contestable. The act of union of 1707 is intended to prevent a scission of Scotland which could proclaim king the applicant jacobite.

The Act of Union was obtained afterwards from the negociations and the tightened negotiations, in particular financial. Scotland was to keep its own institutions - the right, teaching, the religion. But the deputies and the Lords Scot will sit from now on at the Palais of Westminster, seat of the English Parliament.

Scotland of the time counts, like England, two political parties: they are the Tories and the Whigs, in other words the conservatives, who want a monarchy powerful, and the liberals, more favorable to the Parliament.

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