The Union of the Crowns (March 1603) was the accession of James VI, King of Scots, to the thrones of England and Ireland, and the consequential unification of Scotland with both realms under a single monarch. The Union of Crowns followed the death of James' unmarried and childless first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I of England—the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty.
The Union was a personal or dynastic union, with the Crown of Scotland remaining both distinct and separate—despite James's best efforts to create a new "imperial" throne of "Great Britain". However, England and Scotland would only continue to be sovereign states, sharing a monarch, until the Acts of Union in 1707 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne.
Read more about Union Of The Crowns: Early Unification, Accession of James VI, Opposition To The Union, National Animosity, Citizens and Subjects, Symbols of The Union, British, Success of The Union
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“Those graceful acts,
Those thousand decencies, that daily flow
From all her words and actions, mixed with love
And sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned
Union of mind, or in us both one soul.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
“We envy not the warmer clime, that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies,
Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,
Though o’er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine:
‘Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia’s Isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)