A long time, however, was to pass before the subject of the Union was discussed by the Parliaments. The English Parliament had been summoned for the 5th of November 1605, when the articles were to have been debated. But the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot threw everything else into the shade; and though the Treaty of Union was presented, nothing more was done. At last, when the Parliament of England met in November 1606, it was understood that the session was to be chiefly devoted to the Scottish question. The Articles of Union were known; and there was a storm of opposition from the merchants of London. Objections were raised to the admission of Scotsmen as members of English trading companies. There was also a strong dislike to allowing free trade between England and Scotland. The Scots, it was said, would come and go as they pleased, and fulfil or break their bargains just as it suited them. The English traders, moreover, wished a heavy duty to be imposed on cloth entering Scotland, because Scotland had, for a long time, been favoured in the custom duties which she paid in France; and this, along with other privileges she enjoyed in that country, might enable her to monopolise the trade in cloth with France. It was soon found that the dislike to the Union extended to every class throughout the country. There was a general fear that every district, and every calling, would be overrun with needy Scotsmen. The Articles of Union, it was said, would open to Scotsmen not only trade, but the Church, the universities, and the highest offices of State. They would fill, it was predicted, the best stalls in every cathedral in England; Latin would be taught at Oxford and Cambridge by the countrymen of Buchanan, whose scholarship not even English jealousy could venture to deny; and the tireless energy of ambitious Scottish politicians would secure the most lucrative places in the Government. In Parliament, and especially in the House of Commons, these complaints were echoed. Sir Christopher Piggott, one of the members for Buckinghamshire, rose one day, and, speaking with his hat on, launched into a torrent of abuse against the idea of an Union with the Scots, who, he shouted, were murderers, thieves, and rogues who had not suffered more than two of their kings to die peaceably in their beds during the last two hundred years. The Commons, either from sympathy or in surprise, received this tirade in silence. But James, when he heard of it, was indignant; and Piggott was expelled from the House and committed to the Tower.[61]