Acts of Union 1707
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The Acts of Union refer to two acts of Parliament, one by the Parliament of Scotland in March 1707, followed shortly thereafter by an equivalent act of the Parliament of England. They put into effect
Cromwell at Dunbar by Andrew Carrick Gow. Scotland was incorporated into the Commonwealth after defeat in the 1650–1652 Anglo-Scots War.
Queen Anne in 1702
18th-century French illustration of an opening of the Scottish Parliament
Portrait of John Smith by Godfrey Kneller, 1708. Smith was one of the commissioners who negotiated the union and was Speaker of the House of Commons in the new united parliament. He is shown by Kneller holding a copy of the Act of Union.
Kingdom of Great Britain
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Great Britain, officially the Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in Western Europe from 1707 to the end of 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts
Acts of Union 1707
…Treaty of Union agreed on 22 July 1706, which politically joined the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into a single "political state" named Great Britain, with Queen Anne as its sovereign. The English and Scottish acts of ratification took effect on 1 May 1707, creating the new kingdom, with its parliament…
Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714
Walpole, by Arthur Pond
Walpole's Houghton Hall
1740 political cartoon depicting a towering Walpole as the Colossus of Rhodes