Meantime the meeting of Parliament was close at hand, and it was necessary that the views of the Scottish Government should be laid before the Ministers in London, so that the Queen’s letter to the Estates might be prepared in time. On the night of the 30th of May Argyll consulted his colleagues. At this meeting (a ‘Cabinet Council’) Annandale insisted that the Succession should be earnestly pressed. Argyll pointed out that the support of Queensberry’s friends could not be counted on. In the last session they had supported Hamilton’s resolution postponing the settlement of the Crown until a commercial treaty with England had been adjusted. They would not, he feared, ‘make so short a turn.’ But if a Treaty of Union was proposed, they would probably support it, and also vote the supplies. Another proposal was that the Succession should be tried first, and if it failed, then they could fall back upon the Union. Cockburn was strongly in favour of a Succession Act. ‘In my opinion,’ he said, ‘the treaty is but a handle to throw off the Succession, for I don’t find ten men of the Parliament will go in for an entire and complete Union; so there is no prospect of a treaty taking effect.’ Of eight members of the Government who gave their opinions, six were in favour of a Treaty of Union, and two, Cockburn and Annandale, were for a Succession Act. But, in the end, two draughts of a royal letter were sent up to London. In one of these the Union was put foremost, and in the other the Succession. The responsibility of advising the Queen which she should sign was left to Godolphin and his colleagues. In due course the royal letter arrived, along with the Queen’s instructions to Argyll, and it was found that the preference had been given to the draught in which the Succession Act was put foremost. The instructions were to the effect that the Commissioner was to do his best to secure the passing of a Succession Act for Scotland, in terms similar to that by which the Crown of England had been settled on the house of Hanover. If the Estates would not agree to this, then an Act for the Union of England and Scotland was, if possible, to be carried, and it was to contain a clause leaving the appointment of Commissioners in the hands of the Queen. He was also expressly forbidden to allow the question of the Scots Plot to be opened up again.[10]