The Treaty of Union is the name usually now given to the treaty which led to the creation of the new state of Great Britain, providing that the Kingdom of England (which already included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland were to be "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". At the time it was more often referred to as the Articles of Union. The details of the Treaty were agreed on 22 July 1706, and separate Acts of Union were then passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland to put the agreed Articles into effect. The political union took effect on 1 May 1707. Status The status of the Treaty or Articles of Union as an international treaty is challenged by T. B. Smith. He argued that the Treaty is better described as a 'record of negotiations' between commissioners and that the Acts of Union 1707 constitute the actual treaty. The Scottish parliamentary debate subsequently amended the document when producing their Act of Union, which can itself be described as an offer of treaty terms. Smith argues further that this debate is redundant because the obligants under the treaty 'disappeared in 1707' and replaced by a new state, which was not party to a treaty, or combined into a successor state to the Kingdom of England. A treaty requires at least two parties, so it ceased to exist with the Kingdom of Scotland. This position is rejected by David Walker, who argues that its treaty status is 'amply evidenced' by previous legislation, that the Articles and other legislation refer to it as a "treaty". Background Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, died without issue on 24 March 1603, and the throne fell at once (and uncontroversially) to her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, a member of the House of Stuart and the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots. By the Union of the Crowns in 1603 he assumed the throne of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland as King James I. This personal union lessened the constant English fears of Scottish cooperation with France in a feared French invasion of England. After this personal union, the new monarch, James I and VI, sought to unite the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England into a state which he referred to