James had directed the Scottish ministers to make the Union the only subject of deliberation, and had also promised that the expenses incurred by the commissioners from Scotland would be defrayed out of his own purse. The Estates, however, had no sympathy with the policy of the king. The nobles grumbled among themselves, and would fain have resisted. But the royal orders were peremptory; and thirty-two commissioners were appointed to “confer, treat, and consulte upon a perfyte Unioun of the realmes of Scotland and England.”[50] The first name on the Commission was that of John, Earl of Montrose, Lord Chancellor of Scotland; and among his colleagues were a number of distinguished men. Alexander Seton, then known as Lord Fyvie, was afterwards the first Earl of Dunfermline. James Elphinstone, Secretary of State, had recently been raised to the peerage as Lord Balmerino, a title associated, in Scottish history, with a long series of family misfortunes, which culminated in the execution of his descendant, the last lord, after the Rebellion of 1745. Sir Thomas Hamilton, whom James nicknamed “Tam o’ the Cowgate,” was then Lord Advocate, and, after holding almost every great office of State in Scotland, became Earl of Haddington in the reign of Charles the First. Another place in the Commission was occupied by Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton, author of the _Jus Feudale_, whose Latin history of the Union, which has never been published, is preserved in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates. Some of the terms which occur in the Act appointing these commissioners are such as to suggest the idea that James himself had been the draughtsman. The Estates, in language not usually to be found in the statute-book, declare that the Act is passed in order that “as the present age is ravished in admiration with an so fortunate beginning, so that the posterity may rejoice in the fruition of such an effectual Union of two so famous and ancient Kingdoms, miraculously accomplished in the blood and person of so rare a monarch.” But the Estates, while ready to lavish praise on the king, were determined that the Union was not to interfere with the independence of Scotland. It was noticed that while the English Act for the Union contained a clause declaring that his Majesty had no intention of altering the fundamental laws and customs of England, nothing had been said as to preserving the laws and customs of Scotland. This was regarded as suspicious; and there was inserted in the Scottish Act a provision that the commissioners were to take care that nothing was done which was inconsistent with the ancient rights and liberties of Scotland.[51] There was also passed, at the same time, a statute which provided that the Commissioners on Union should have no power to treat “in any manner of way that may be hurtful or prejudicial to the religion presently professed in Scotland.”[52]