ment for the publick accompts continued our
applications to the matters remitted to us till the Parliament met in
September 1705. John, Duke of Argyle, a youth of about 23 years of age,
was appointed her Majesty's High Commissioner, and in this station
behaved himself in a manner far above what cou'd be expected from one of
his years.... A ... great benefit I received by my intimacy with the
Duke and his brother was to be recommended to the Queen for one of the
Commissioners to be appointed by Her Majesty for the Treaty of Union
between England and Scotland.... This choise, however honourable to me,
was very far from giving me the least pleasure or satisfaction, for I
had observed a great backwardness in the Parliament of Scotland for an
Union with England of any kind whatsoever, and therefore doubted not
but, after a great deal of expense in attending a Treaty in England, I
should be oblidged to return with the uneasy reflexion of having either
done nothing, or nothing to the purpose, as had been the case of former
Commissioners appointed for this end. I was, in short, upon the point of
refusing the Honour conferred upon me, and the rather that my Father,
whom I always considered as an Oracle seldom mistaken, seemed not to
approve of it. However, as at last he grew passive, and that the Duke of
Queensberry threatened to withdraw all friendship for me, I suffered my
self to be prevailed upon, and to take journey for London with other
Commissioners, and arrived there on the 13 of Aprile 1706.

... The Commissioners of both nations met in different apartments in the
Royal palace of Westminster, which commonly goes under the name of the
Cockpit. There was one great Room where they all met when they were
called upon to attend the Queen, or were to exchange papers, but they
never met to hold conferences together except once, when the number of
the Scotch Representatives for the two Houses of the British Parliament
came to be debated, all their transactions were reduced in writings
concerted in seperat apartments. When proposals or Conditions of the
Union were to be made by the English Commissioners, the Scots were
desired to meet them in the great Room, and their proposals were given
in by the L^d Chancellor, or the Keeper of the great seal, who was at
that time the Lord Cooper, and when the Commissioners for Scotland had
any thing to propose, or had answers to be made to the Commissioners of
England, these were presented by