Eight commissioners, among whom were young Sir Harry Vane, Lambert, and Monk, were appointed to arrange an Union. They found everything in confusion. The last meeting of the Scottish Parliament had taken place on the 6th of June. The Court of Session had not sat since February 1650. Many towns were without magistrates. The Church was torn by internal dissensions. When proclamation was made, at the market-cross of Edinburgh, that Scotland was to be united, in one Commonwealth, with England, the announcement was received in gloomy silence. But there was an under-current of feeling in favour of the Union, of which the commissioners were doubtless aware. Delegates from the counties and burghs were summoned to meet at Dalkeith, to consider the Tender of Union which the commissioners were empowered to offer on behalf of the Parliament of England; and the result was that, of thirty-one counties, twenty-eight, and of fifty-eight burghs, forty-four assented to the Union.[70] Their assent must in some degree be ascribed to motives of prudence; for it was known that those counties and burghs which failed to send delegates favourable to union would be disfranchised; but it was from Glasgow alone, which, more than any other place in Scotland, was ultimately to benefit from the Union with England, that any formal and serious objection came. By some a scheme was suggested, which Fletcher of Saltoun would have warmly supported in 1707, for declining an incorporating Union and making Scotland a republic in friendly alliance with England. But the proposers of this scheme, one of whom was the noted Covenanter, Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, ultimately agreed to the Union.