The Irish had, in fact, been subjects of his predecessors for many centuries. In 1171, after the conquest of the island had been effected by Henry II. of England, the native princes of Ireland had declared fealty to the prince--not in his capacity as king, but in acknowledgment of his position as having become by conquest the "Lord of Ireland." The country had from very early days been governed by its own Parliaments, whose meetings are recorded as having taken place as early as 1295; but it was not until 1522 that Ireland was raised to the rank and designation of a kingdom. In this year an Act was passed by the Parliament of Ireland declaring Henry VIII., the King of England, to be also the King of Ireland, and it was by virtue of this Act that the King of England first assumed the additional title of King of Ireland. The flag of England was at this same time the single St. George Jack; yet, although the crowns were thus formally united, the cross of St. Patrick was not added to the red cross of St. George as a Union Jack in sign of fealty to the one sovereign. After this, the Kingdom of Ireland owned fealty to three more sovereigns of England in succession;[116] yet under none of them were the crosses of the two national flags joined together. It was not until a Scotch king, the great-grandson of Henry VIII., became King of England, that any of the three national crosses were combined. In 1603, James I. became King of Ireland and England, as well as of Scotland; yet notwithstanding that the three sister kingdoms were thus united in allegiance under his united crown, the three separate crosses of the national Jacks of each were not united in one flag. James I. on his accession had at once added the Irish harp to the quarterings of his Royal Standard (15), but three more years passed before he entered the red cross of St. George in the "additional" two-crossed Union Jack which he then created. All these incidents point, evidently, to the view that the union of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew in the new flag of 1606 did not arise as an emblem of the union of thrones, but was mainly devised, as the King's proclamation distinctly stated, for the special and local purpose of keeping the sailors of the two nations most interested in shipping at peace, and thus to prevent their crews from quarrelling with one another as they sailed their ships around the shores of Great Britain. [116] Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth. It required, in fact, something more than a mere union of allegiance to create a real Union Jack, and to entitle the national crosses of the kingdoms to be entered upon its folds; and what this requirement was the history of the entry of the St. Patrick cross into the Union flag enables us to see even yet more clearly.