The Union of the Crowns (; ) was the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of the Kingdom of England as James I and the practical unification of some functions (such as overseas diplomacy) of the two separate realms under a single individual on 24 March 1603. Whilst a misnomer, therefore, what is popularly known as "The Union of the Crowns" followed the death of James's cousin, Elizabeth I of England, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The union was personal or dynastic, with the Crown of England and the Crown of Scotland remaining both distinct and separate despite James's best efforts to create a new imperial throne. England and Scotland continued as two separate states sharing a monarch, who directed their domestic and foreign policy, along with Ireland, until the Acts of Union of 1707 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Anne. However, there was a republican interregnum in the 1650s, during which the Tender of Union of Oliver Cromwell created the Commonwealth of England and Scotland which ended with the Stuart Restoration. Early unification In August 1503, James IV of Scotland married Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII of England, and the spirit of the new age was celebrated by the poet William Dunbar in The Thrissil and the Rois. The marriage was the outcome of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, concluded the previous year, which, in theory, ended centuries of Anglo-Scottish war. The marriage brought Scotland's Stuarts into England's Tudor line of succession, despite the improbability of a Scottish prince acceding the English throne at the time. However, many on the English side were concerned by the dynastic implications of matrimony, including some Privy Councillors. In countering these fears Henry VII is reputed to have said: The peace did not last in "perpetuity"; it was disturbed in 1513 when Henry VIII of England, who had succeeded his father four years before, declared war on France in the War of the League of Cambrai. In response France invoked the terms of the Auld Alliance, her ancient bond with Scotland. James duly invaded Northern England leading to the Battle of Flodden. In the decades that followed, England repeatedly invaded Scotland, including burning its capital. By the middle of Henry's reign, the problems of the royal succession, which seemed so unimportant in 1503, acquired ever larger dimensions, when the question of Tudor fertility or