United Kingdom's birthday

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On the above picture you can see the only image we have today of the Scottish Parliament in a working session. On October the 23rd 1707 the first Parliament of modern UK meets for the first time. Before that there were the Scottisth and English Parliaments which were independent from each other. But when both Parliaments signed  the Act of the Union The modern British parliament was born and the UK too.


"Articles of Union 1707" by Parliament of England
The story of how this Act was signed, is like a thriller, and in that thriller, the today well-known writer Daniel Defoe  had a main role to play, because he worked as a spy for the English Crown in Edimburgh.
Defoe had had a troublesome life, sentenced to pillory :

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and jailed, he finally agreed to spy for England and so he was released from prison. Defoe main job as a secret agent was to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence in the Treaty.
"A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind", he reported after a violent demonstration against the Treaty.