Kingdom of England the Glorious Revolution of 1688. From this time the kingdom of England, as well as its successor state the United Kingdom, functioned in effect as a constitutional monarchy. On 1 May 1707, under the terms of the Acts of Union 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Anglo-Saxons referred to themselves as the "Engle" or the "Angelcynn", originally names of the Angles. They called their land "Engla land", meaning "land of the English", by Æthelweard Latinized "Anglia", from an original "Anglia vetus", the purported homeland of the Angles (called "Angulus" by
Acts of Union 1707 were unhappy about the prospect, however. English overseas possessions made England very wealthy in comparison to Scotland, a poor country with few roads, very little industry and almost no Navy. This made some view unification as a markedly unequal relationship. In Scotland, some claimed that union would enable Scotland to recover from the financial disaster wrought by the Darien scheme through English assistance and the lifting of measures put in place through the Alien Act to force the Scottish Parliament into compliance with the Act of Settlement. The combined votes of the Court party with a majority of the Squadrone