This book examines the proposals that were made to strengthen the union of England and Scotland between the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. Drawing on a large body of pamphlet literature, state papers, and parliamentary records, the author explores numerous seventeenth and early eighteenth-century schemes to unite not only the political institutions of the two countries but also their laws, churches, economies, and people. He discusses the controversies that these proposals engendered and the efforts that were made to implement them. Dealing successively with the political, legal, religious, economic, and social aspects of the union question, this study explains why the British state acquired many of the features it still possesses today, and why it differed significantly from both the English and the Scottish states out of which it was formed.