Ireland joined England and Scotland in political union on January 1st, 1801, but its device--the harp--was placed on the standard centuries before by right of conquest. The first known suggestion for a real union on equal terms was made in the year 1642 in a pamphlet entitled "The Generall Junto, or the Councell of Union; chosen equally out of England, Scotland, and Ireland for the better compacting of these nations into one monarchy. By H. P." This H. P. was one Henry Parker. Fifty copies only of this tract were issued, and those entirely for private circulation. "To persuade to union and commend the benefit of it"--says the author--"will be unnecessary. _Divide et impera_ (divide and rule) is a fit saying for one who aims at the dissipation and perdition of his country. Honest counsellors have ever given contrary advice. England and Ireland are inseparably knit; no severance is possible {33} but such as shall be violent and injurious. Ireland is an integral member of the Kingdom of England: both kingdoms are coinvested and connexed, not more undivided than Wales or Cornwall." The conquest of Ireland was entered upon in the year 1172, in the reign of Henry II., but was scarcely completed until the surrender of Limerick in 1691. Until 1542 it was styled not the Kingdom but the Lordship of Ireland. An early standard of Ireland has three golden crowns on a blue field, and arranged over each other as we see the English lions placed; and a commission appointed in the reign of Edward IV., to enquire what really were the arms of Ireland, reported in favour of the three crowns. The early Irish coinage bears these three crowns upon it, as on the coins of Henry V. and his successors. Henry VIII. substituted the harp on the coins, but neither crowns nor harps nor any other device for Ireland appear in the Royal Standard until the year 1603, after which date the harp has remained in continuous use till the present day. In the Harleian MS., No. 304 in the British Museum, we find the statement that "the armes of Irland is Gules iij old harpes gold, stringed argent" (as in Fig. 87), and on the silver coinage for Ireland of Queen Elizabeth the shield bears these three harps. At her funeral Ireland was represented by a blue flag having a crowned harp of gold upon it, and James I. adopted this, but without the crown, as a quartering in his standard: its first appearance on the Royal Standard of England.