End of the old Scottish Parliament
By agreeing to the Union the Scottish Parliament had also voted for its own extinction.
A few remaining matters still had to be finalised. After the Articles had been ratified, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation on how Scotland would be represented in the Parliament at Westminster.
This Act was also made part of the Treaty and it was decided, to begin with, to elect members of the Great Britain's Parliament from the membership of the Scottish Parliament. Since Scotland's small electorate would probably have expressed strong dislike of the Union it was decided to avoid a direct election.
Not surprisingly, this produced much heated debate.
Redrawing the electoral map
The electoral map of Scotland was substantially redrawn. In future 30 MPs would represent the Scottish counties, and 15 the new burgh districts. Unlike the old system each burgh no longer had its own representative.
For elections to the Westminster parliament the 66 burghs were grouped into districts, each containing four or five burghs. There was one MP per district. This was felt to be unfair, given that the English county of Cornwall alone had no fewer than 44 MPs representing the county and its 21 boroughs.
The 16 Scottish peers were to be voted for by the entire body of 154 Scottish peers. The Court party simply agreed on a list of its chief supporters which was canvassed among the rest.
Paying expenses
One of the last acts of the Scottish Parliament was to pay the expenses of the commissioners who had negotiated the Articles of Union.
It also decided to pay those who had participated in the abortive negotiations of 1702-3. Each peer was to receive £1,000 (sterling), and others £500. The payments were to be made from the 'Equivalent' funds - money granted to Scotland in compensation for its liability to the English national debt after union.