Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

GARTERIANA.

“Honor! Your own worth before

Hath been sufficient preparation.”— The Maid’s Revenge.

A brief sketch of the history of the foundation of the Order of the Garter will be found in another page. Confining myself here to anecdotical detail, I will commence by observing, that in former times, no Knight could be absent from two consecutive feasts of the order, without being fined in a jewel, which he was to offer at St. George’s altar. The fine was to be doubled every year, until he had made atonement. Further, every knight was bound to wear the Garter in public, wherever he might be, on pain of a mulct of half a mark. Equally obligatory was it on the knight, in whatever part of the world he was residing, or however he was engaged, to wear the sanguine mantle of the order from the eve of St. George till vesper-time on the morrow of the festival. Some of the chevaliers who were in distant lands must have caused as much surprise by their costume, as a Blue-coat boy does, wandering in his strangely-colored garb, in the streets of Paris. I need not allude to the absurd consequence which would attend the enforcing of this arrangement in our own days. Hunting is generally over before the eve of St. George’s day, and therefore a robed Knight of the Garter could never be seen taking a double fence, ditch and rail, at the tail of the “Melton Mowbray.” But even the sight of half a dozen of them riding down Parliament street at the period in question, would hardly be a stranger spectacle. A slight money offering of a penny exempted any rather loose-principled knight from attending divine service at St. George’s Chapel when he was in or near Windsor. When a knight died, all his surviving comrades were put to the expense of causing a certain number of masses to be said for his soul. The sovereign-lord of the order had one thousand masses chanted in furtherance of his rescue from purgatory. There was a graduated scale through the various ranks till the knight-bachelor was come to. For him, only one hundred masses were put up. This proves either that the knight’s soul was not so difficult of deliverance from what Prince Gorschakoff would call the “feu d’enfer,” or that the King’s was so heavily pressed to the lowest depths of purgatory by its crimes, that it required a decupled effort before it could be rescued.

“Companionship,” it may be observed, profited a knight in some degree if, being knave as well as knight, he fell under the usual sentence of being “drawn, hanged, and beheaded.” In such case, a Knight of the Garter only suffered decapitation, as Sir Simon Burley in 1388. The amount of favor shown to the offending knight did not admit of his being conscious of much gratitude to him at whose hands it was received. It may be mentioned, that it did not always follow that a nobleman elected to be knight willingly accepted the proffered Garter. The first who refused it, after due election, in 1424, was the Duke of Burgundy. He declined it with as much scorn as Uhland did the star of merit offered to the poet by the present King of Bavaria.

In treating of stage knights, I shall be found to have placed at their head Sir John Falstaff. The original of that character according to some namely, Sir John Fastolf, claims some notice here, as a Knight of the Garter who was no more the coward which he was said to be, than Falstaff is the bloated buffoon which some commentators take him for. Sir John Fastolf was elected Knight of the Garter in 1426. Monstrelet says he was removed from the order for running away, without striking a blow, at the battle of Patay. Shakespeare’s popular Sir John has nothing in common with this other Sir John, but we have Falstolf himself in Henry VI. act iv. sc. 1, with Talbot, alluding to his vow, that

“When I did meet thee next,

To tear the Garter from thy craven’s leg,

The which I have done, because unworthily

Thou wast installed in that high degree.”

This sort of suspension or personal deprivation was never allowed by the rules of the order, which enjoined the forms for degrading a knight who was proved to have acted cowardly. The battle of Patay was fought in 1429; and as there is abundant testimony of Sir John having been in possession of the Garter and all its honors long after that period; and, further, that his tomb in Pulham Mary, Norfolk, represented him in gilt armor, with his crest and two escutcheons, with the cross of St. George within the order, we may fairly conclude that if the charge was ever made, of which there is no trace, it assuredly never was proven.

If there were some individuals who refused to accept the honor at all, there were others who were afraid to do so without curious inquiry. Thus, in the reign of Henry VI. we hear of the embassador from Frederick III. Emperor of Germany (one Sir Hertook von Clux), stating that his master wishes to know “what it would stand him in, if he were to be admitted into the honorable order!” Cautious Austria!

There are examples both of courtesy and sarcasm among the Knights of the Garter. I may cite, for instance, the case of the Duke of York, in the reign of Henry VI. A. D. 1453. The King was too ill to preside at the Chapter; the Duke of Buckingham was his representative; and the Duke of York, so little scrupulous in most matters, excused himself from attending on this occasion, because, as he said, “the sovereign having for some time been angry with him, he durst not attend, lest he should incur his further displeasure, and thereby aggravate the illness under which the King was suffering.” When the same Duke came into power, he gave the Garter to the most useful men of the York party, beheading a few Lancastrian knights in order to make way for them. At the Chapter held for the purpose of electing the York aspirants, honest John de Foix, Earl of Kendal, declined to vote at all. He alleged that he was unable to discern whether the candidates were “without reproach” or not, and he left the decision to clearsighted people. The Earl was a Lancastrian, and he thus evaded the disagreeable act of voting for personal and political enemies.

But whatever the intensity of dislike one knight may have had against another, there were occasions on which they went, hand in hand, during the celebration of mass, to kiss that esteemable relic, the heart of St. George. This relic had been brought to England by the Emperor Sigismund. Anstis remarks, after alluding to the obstinacy of those who will not believe all that St. Ambrose says touching the facts of St. George, his slaying of the dragon, and his rescue of a royal virgin, that “whosoever is so refractory as obstinately to condemn every part of this story, is not to be bore with.” He then adds: “this true martyr and excellent and valued soldier of Christ, after many unspeakable torments inflicted on him by an impious tyrant, when he had bent his head, and was just ready to give up the ghost, earnestly entreated Almighty God, that whoever, in remembrance of him, and his name, should devoutly ask anything, might be heard, a voice instantly came from Heaven, signifying that that was granted which he had requested.... While living, by prayer he obtained that whoever should fly to him for his intercession, should not pray nor cry out in vain. He ordered the trunk of his body, which had origin from among infidels, to be sent to them, that they whom he had not been able to serve, when living, might receive benefit from him, when dead; that those infidels who by any misfortune had lost their senses, by coming to him or his chapel, might be restored to soundness of mind and judgment. His head and other members were to be carried, some one way and some another. But his heart, the emblem of lively love, was bequeathed wholly to Christians, for whom he had the most fervent affection. Not to all them in general, though Christians, but to Englishmen alone; and not to every part of England, but only to his own Windsor, which on this account must have been more pleasing to the sovereigns and all other the knights of this most illustrious order. Thus his heart, together with a large portion of his skull, is there kept with due honor and veneration. Sigismund, Emperor of Alemain, always august, being chosen in this honorable order, presented this heart to the invincible Henry V., who gave orders to have it preserved in that convenient place, where he had already instituted for himself solemn exequies for ever, that the regard he had for all others might be past dispute.” This is very far, indeed, from being logical, but the fact remains that during the reign of Henry VI., the heart seems to have been regarded with more than usual reverence by the knights of the two factions which were rending England. Each hoped to win St. George for a confederate.

The chapters were not invariably held at Windsor, nor in such solemn localities as a chapel. In 1445, Henry VI., held a chapter at the Lion Inn in Brentford. In this hostelrie the King created Sir Thomas Hastings and Sir Alonzo d’Almade, Knights of the Garter. To the latter, who was also made Earl of Avranches, in the best room of a Brentford inn, the monarch also presented a gold cup. The whole party seems to have made a night of it in the pleasant locality, and the new chevaliers were installed the next morning—after which, probably, mulled sack went round in the golden cup.

Shakespeare makes Richard III. swear by his George, his Garter, and his Crown; but the George and Collar were novelties introduced by Henry VII. The latter King held one of the most splendid chapters which ever assembled, at York, prefacing the work there by riding with all the knights, in their robes, to the morning mass of requiem, and following it up by similarly riding to even-sung. This was more decent than Henry VI.’s tavern chapter of the (Red) Lion, in Brentford. Henry VII. was fond of the solemn splendor of installations, at which he changed his costume like a versatile actor, was surrounded by ladies as well as knights, and had Skelton, the poet, near to take notes for songs and sonnets, descriptive of the occasion. A sovereign of the order, like Henry VII., so zealous to maintain its splendor and efficiency, merited the gift which was conferred upon him by the Cardinal of Rouen—of the bones of one of the legs of St. George. The saint had many legs, but it is not said where these bones were procured, and they who beheld them, at the chapter held in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1505, probably little troubled themselves as to whence the precious relics were derived. Henry, in return, left an image of St. George, of one hundred and forty ounces, adorned with masses of precious stones, to the College of Windsor, “there to remain while the world shall endure, to be set upon the high altar at all solemn feasts.” Leg bones and costly image would now be sought for in vain. The world has outlived them, and suffers nothing by their loss.

It was the successor of Richmond, namely Henry VIII. who granted to these knights what may be termed a sumptuary privilege, that of being permitted to wear woollen cloth made out of the realm. None but a knight, save the peers, dared don a coat or mantle made of foreign cloth. In love of splendor, Henry was equal to his predecessor, and perhaps never was a more brilliant spectacle seen than on the 27th of May, 1519, when the King and a glittering cortège rode from Richmond to Windsor, and changed steeds and drank a cup at the “Catherine’s Wheel,” in Colnbrook, by the way. The Queen and a galaxy of ladies met them in Eton, and the usual solemnities were followed by a gorgeous banquet, at which there were such meat and music as had scarcely ever been so highly enjoyed at a festival before. The middle of the hall was crowded with spectators, but at the close of the repast, these were turned out, when “the King was served of his void, the knights also, standing all along”—which must have been a remarkably edifying exhibition.

Henry re-modelled the order, and framed the statutes by which it is now chiefly governed. Among them was the one directing that no person of mean birth should be elected, and this the King himself very speedily broke, by electing Thomas Cromwell. The latter returned thanks for the honor in the very humblest strain, and while he seemed conscious that he was entirely unworthy of the distinction, he appeared desirous to assure the sneering knights’ companions who had been compelled to give him their suffrages, that ignoble as he was, he would imitate nobility as closely as possible. But there were men, from the period of the institution of the order downward to Henry’s time, who, if of higher birth than Cromwell, were not of higher worth. Very many had forfeited their dignity as knights by treasonable practices; and Henry decreed that wherever these names occurred in the records, the words “Vœ Proditor!”—Out upon the traitor—should be written against them in the margin. The text had thus a truly Tudor comment.

Under the succeeding sovereign, Edward VI., a great portion of the splendor of the religious ceremonies at the installation was abolished. It was in this reign that Northumberland procured the ejection of Lord Paget from the order, on the ground that the meanness of his birth had always disqualified him, or as Edward VI. says in his journal, “for divers his offences, and chiefly because he was no gentleman of blood, neither of father-side nor mother-side.” Lord Paget, however, was restored under Mary, and the record of his degradation was removed from the register.

Under Mary, if there was some court servility there was also some public spirit. When the Queen created her husband Philip a knight, an obsequious herald, out of compliment to the “joint-sovereigns,” took down the arms of England in the chapel at Windsor, and was about to set up those of Spain. This, however, was forbidden “by certain lords,” and brave men they were, for in such a display of English spirit there was peril of incurring the ill-will of Mary, who was never weary of heaping favors on the foreign King-consort, whom she would have made generalissimo of her forces if she had dared. It is a curious fact that Philip was not ejected from the order, even when he had despatched the Spanish Armada to devastate the dominions of the sovereign.

In illustration of the fact that the Garter never left the leg of a knight of the order, there are some lines by the Elizabethan poet Peele, which are very apt to the occasion. Speaking of the Earl of Bedford, Peele says—

—“Dead is Bedford! virtuous and renowned

For arms, for honor, and religious love;

And yet alive his name in Fame’s records,

That held his Garter dear, and wore it well.

Some worthy wight but blazon his deserts:

Only a tale I thought on by the way,

As I observed his honorable name.

I heard it was his chance, o’erta’en with sleep,

To take a nap near to a farmer’s lodge.

Trusted a little with himself belike,

This aged earl in his apparel plain,

Wrapt in his russet gown, lay down to rest,

His badge of honor buckled to his leg.

Bare and naked. There came a pilfering swad

And would have preyed upon this ornament

Essayed t’ unbuckle it, thinking him asleep.

The noble gentleman, feeling what he meant—

‘Hold, foolish lad,’ quoth he, ‘a better prey:

‘This Garter is not fit for ev’ry leg,

‘And I account it better than my purse.

The varlet ran away, the earl awaked.

And told his friends, and smiling said withal,

‘’A would not, had ’a understood the French

‘Writ on my Garter, dared t’ have stol’n the same.’

This tale I thought upon, told me for truth,

The rather for it praised the Posy,

Right grave and honorable, that importeth much—

‘Evil be to him,’ it saith, ‘that evil thinks.’”

Elizabeth was distinguished for loving to hold newly-chosen knights in suspense, before she ratified their election by her approval. The anniversary banquets too fell into disuse during her reign, and she introduced the most unworthy knight that had ever stood upon the record of the order. This was Charles IX. of France. On the other hand she sent the Garter to Henri Quatre. He was the last French monarch who was a companion of the order, till the reign of Louis XVIII. On the day the latter came up from Hartwell to Stanmore, on his way to France, at the period of the first restoration, the Prince Regent invested him with the brilliant insignia at Carlton House. It was on this occasion Louis XVIII. observed that he was the first King of France who had worn the garter since the period of Henri Quatre. Louis had erased his own name from the Golden Book of Nobility of Venice, when he heard that the name of Bonaparte had been inserted therein. He, perhaps, would have declined receiving the Garter, if he could have foreseen that the royal niece of the Prince Regent would, in after years, confer the order on the imperial nephew of Napoleon.

The period of James is marked by some pretty quarrels among the officials. Thus at the installation of Prince Henry, there was a feast which was well nigh turned into a fray. At the very beginning of it, the prebends and heralds fell to loggerheads on the delicate question of precedency. The alms-knights mingled in the quarrel by siding with the prebends, and claiming the next degree of precedency before the heralds. Reference was made to the Earls of Nottingham and Worcester. The referees adjudged the heralds to have right of precedency before the prebends. Thereupon the proud prebends, oblivious of Christian humility, refused to go to church at the tail of the heralds. The latter went in exultingly without them, and the prebends would not enter until a long time had elapsed, so that it could not be said they followed the gentlemen of the tabard. The delicate question was again angrily discussed, and at length referred to the whole body of knights. The noble fraternity, after grave deliberation, finally determined that on the next day of St. George, being Sunday, in the procession to the church, the alms-knights should go first, then the pursuivants of arms, then the prebends (many of whom were doctors of divinity), and finally the heralds. The latter were cunning rogues, and no inconsiderable authority in matters of precedency; and they immediately declared that the knights had decreed to them the better place, inasmuch as that in most processions the principal personages did not walk first.

Of the knights of this reign, Grave Maurice, Prince of Orange, and Frederick the (Goody) Palsgrave of the Rhine, were among the most celebrated. They were installed in 1613, the Prince by proxy, and the Palsgrave in person. A young and graceful Count Ludovic of Nassau, was chosen at the last moment, to represent the Prince, whose appointed representative, Count Henry, was detained in Holland by adverse winds. “The feast,” says an eye-witness, “was in the Great Hall, where the king dined at the upper table alone, served in state by the Lord Gerard as Sewer, the Lord Morris as Cupbearer, the Lord Compton as Carver; all that were of the order, at a long cross table across the hall. The Prince by himself alone, and the Palatine a little distance from him. But the Count Nassau was ranged over-against my Lord Admiral, and so took place of all after the Sovereign Princes, not without a little muttering of our Lords, who would have had him ranged according to seniority, if the king had not overruled it by prerogative.”

Wilson, in his history of James I., narrates a curious anecdote respecting this Grave Maurice and the ribbon of the order. “Prince Maurice took it as a great honor to be admitted into the Fraternity of that Order, and wore it constantly; till afterward, some villains at the Hague, that met the reward of their demerit (one of them, a Frenchman, being groom of the Prince’s chamber) robbed a jeweller of Amsterdam that brought jewels to the Prince. This groom, tempting him into his chamber, to see some jewels, there, with his confederates, strangled the man with one of the Prince’s Blue Ribbons; which being afterward discovered, the Prince would never suffer so fatal an instrument to come about his neck.”

James, by raising his favorite Buckingham, then only Sir George Villiers, to the degree of Knight of the Garter, was considered to have as much outraged the order as Henry VIII. had done by investing Cromwell with the insignia. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, says, “The King went away the next day after St. George’s Feast, toward Newmarket and Thetford, the Earl of Rutland and Sir George Villiers being that morning elected into the order of the Garter, which seemed at first a strange choice, in regard that the wife of the former is an open and known recusant, and he is said to have many dangerous people about him; and the latter is so lately come into the sight of the world, and withal it is doubted that he had not sufficient likelihood to maintain the dignity of the place, according to express articles of the order. But to take away that scruple, the King hath bestowed upon him the Lord Gray’s lands, and means, they say, to mend his grant with much more, not far distant, in the present possession of the Earl of Somerset, if he do cadere causâ and sink in the business now in hand.” The last passage alludes to the murder of Overbury.

The going down to Windsor was at this time a pompous spectacle. The riding thither of the Knights Elect is thus spoken of by a contemporary: “On Monday,” (St. George’s day, 1615), “our Knights of the Garter, Lord Fenton and Lord Knollys, ride to Windsor, with great preparation to re-vie one with another who shall make the best show. Though I am of opinion the latter will carry it by many degrees, by reason of the alliance with the houses of the Howards, Somerset, Salisbury, and Dorset, with many other great families that will bring him their friends, and most part of the pensioners. Yet most are persuaded the other will bear away the bell, as having the best part of the court, all the bed-chamber, all the prince’s servants and followers, with a hundred of the Guard, that have new rich coats made on purpose, besides Sir George Villiers (the favorite), and Mr. Secretary—whose presence had been better forborne, in my judgment, for many reasons—but that every man abound in his own sense.” James endeavored to suppress, in some measure, the expensive ride of the Knights Elect to Windsor, but only with partial success. His attempted reform, too, had a selfish aspect; he tried to make it profitable to himself. He prohibited the giving of livery coats, “for saving charge and avoiding emulation,” and at the same time ordered that all existing as well as future companions should present a piece of plate of the value of twenty pounds sterling at least for the use of the altar in St. George’s Chapel.

Charles I. held chapters in more places in England than any other king—now at York, now at Nottingham, now at Oxford, and in other localities. These chapters were sometimes attended by as few as four knights, and for the most part they were shorn of much of the ancient ceremony. He held some brilliant chapters at Windsor, nevertheless. At one of them, the election of the Earl of Northumberland inspired a bard, whose song I subjoin because it is illustrative of several incidents which are far from lacking interest.

“A brief description of the triumphant show made by the Right Honorable Aulgernon Percie Earl of Northumberland, at his installation and initiation into the princely fraternity of the Garter, on the 13th of May, 1635.”

To the tune of “Quell the Pride.”

“You noble buds of Britain,

That spring from honor’s tree,

Who love to hear of high designs,

Attend awhile to me.

And I’ll (in brief) discover what

Fame bids me take in hand—

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“The order of the Garter,

Ere since third Edward reigned

Unto the realm of England hath

A matchless honor gained.

The world hath no society,

Like to this princely band,

To raise

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“The honor of his pedigree

Doth claim a high regard,

And many of his ancestors

For fame thought nothing hard.

And he, through noble qualities,

Which are exactly scanned,

Doth raise

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“Against the day appointed,

His lordship did prepare;

To publish his magnificence

No charges he did spare.

The like within man’s memory

Was never twice in hand

To raise

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“Upon that day it seemed

All Brittany did strive,

And did their best to honor him

With all they could contrive.

For all our high nobility

Joined in a mutual land

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“The common eyes were dazzled

With wonder to behold

The lustre of apparel rich,

All silver, pearl, and gold,

Which on brave coursers mounted,

Did glisten through the Strand,

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“But ere that I proceed

This progress to report,

I should have mentioned the feast

Made at Salisbury Court.

Almost five hundred dishes

Did on the table stand,

To raise

The praise

Of great Northumberland.”

The Second Part, to the same tune.

“The mightiest prince or monarch

That in the world doth reign,

At such a sumptuous banquet might

Have dined without disdain,

Where sack, like conduit water,

Was free ever at command,

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“The famous Fleet-street conduit,

Renowned so long ago,

Did not neglect to express what love

She to my lord did owe.

For like an old proud woman

The painted face doth stand

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“A number of brave gallants,

Some knights and some esquires,

Attended at this triumph great,

Clad in complete attires.

The silver half-moon gloriously

Upon their sleeves doth stand,

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“All these on stately horses,

That ill endured the bit,

Were mounted in magnific cost,

As to the time was fit.

Their feathers white and red did show,

Like to a martial band,

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“The noble earls and viscounts,

And barons, rode in state:

This great and high solemnity

All did congratulate.

To honor brave Earl Percy

Each put a helping hand

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“King Charles, our royal sovereign,

And his renownéd Mary,

With Britain’s hope, their progeny,

All lovingly did tarry

At noble Viscount Wimbleton’s,

I’ the fairest part o’ th’ Strand,

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“To famous Windsor Castle,

With all his gallant train,

Earl Pearcy went that afternoon

His honor to obtain.

And there he was installed

One of St. George’s band,

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.

“Long may he live in honor,

In plenty and in peace;

For him, and all his noble friends,

To pray I’ll never cease.

This ditty (which I now will end)

Was only ta’en in hand

To blaze

The praise

Of great Northumberland.”

This illustrative ballad bears the initials “M. P.” These, probably, do not imply either a member of Parliament, or of the house of Percy. Beneath the initials we have the legend, “Printed at London, for Francis Coules, and are” (verses subaudiuntur) “to be sold at his shop in the Old Bayley.” There are three woodcuts to illustrate the text. The first represents the Earl on horseback; both peer and charger are very heavily caparisoned, and the steed looks as intelligent as the peer. In front of this stately, solid, and leisurely pacing couple, is a mounted serving-man, armed with a stick, and riding full gallop at nobody. The illustration to the second part represents the Earl returning from Windsor in a carriage, which looks very much like the Araba in the Turkish Exhibition. The new Knight wears his hat, cloak, collar and star; his figure, broad-set to the doorway, bears no distant resemblance to the knave of clubs, and his aristocratic self-possession and serenity are remarkable, considering the bumping he is getting, as implied by the wheels of his chariot being several inches off the ground. The pace of the steeds, two and twohalves of whom are visible, is not, however, very great. They are hardly out of a walk. But perhaps the bareheaded coachman and the as bareheaded groom have just pulled them up, to allow the running footmen to reach the carriage. Two of these are seen near the rear of the vehicle, running like the brace of mythological personages in Ovid, who ran the celebrated match in which the apples figured so largely. The tardy footmen have just come in sight of their lord, who does not allow his serenity to be disturbed by chiding them. The Percy wears as stupid an air as his servants, and the only sign of intelligence anywhere in the group is to be found in the off-side wheeler, whose head is turned back, with a sneering cast in the face, as if he were ridiculing the idea of the whole show, and was possessed with the conviction that he was drawing as foolish a beast as himself.

The Earl appears to have ridden eastward, in the direction pointed by his own lion’s tale, before he drove down to Windsor. The show seems to have interested all ranks between the Crown and the Conduit in Fleet street. Where Viscount Wimbledon’s house was, “in the fairest part of the Strand,” I can not conjecture, and as I can not find information on this point in Mr. Peter Cunningham’s “Hand-Book of London,” I conclude that the site is not known.

In connection with Charles I. and his Garter, I will here cite a passage from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England,” page 165. “Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was a favorite at St. Germains. He wore the Garter, a badge of honor which has very seldom been conferred on aliens who were not sovereign princes. It was believed, indeed, in the French court, that in order to distinguish him from the other knights of the most illustrious of European orders, he had been decorated with that very George which Charles I. had, on the scaffold, put into the hands of Juxon.” Lauzun, I shall have to notice under the head of foreign knights. I revert here to the George won by Charles and given to Lauzun. It was a very extraordinary jewel, curiously cut in an onyx, set about with twenty-one large table diamonds, in the fashion of a garter. On the under side of the George was the portrait of Henrietta Maria, “rarely well limned,” says Ashmole, “and set in a case of gold, the lid neatly enamelled with goldsmith’s work, and surrounded with another Garter, adorned with a like number of equal-sized diamonds, as was the foresaid.” The onyx George of Charles I. was in the possession of the late Duke of Wellington, and is the property of the present Duke.

There is something quite as curious touching the history of the Garter worn by Charles I., as what Mr. Macaulay tells concerning the George. The diamonds upon it, forming the motto, were upward of four hundred in number. On the day of the execution, this valuable ornament fell into the hands of one of Cromwell’s captains of cavalry, named Pearson. After one exchange of hands, it was sold to John Ireton, sometime Lord-Mayor of London, for two hundred and five pounds. At the Restoration, a commission was appointed to look after the scattered royal property generally; and the commissioners not only recovered some pictures belonging to Charles, from Mrs. Cromwell, who had placed them in charge of a tradesman in Thames street, but they discovered that Ireton held the Garter, and they summoned him to deliver it up accordingly. It has been said that the commissioners offered him the value of the jewel if he would surrender it. This is not the case. The report had been founded on a misapprehension of terms. Ireton did not deny that he possessed the Garter by purchase, whereupon “composition was offered him, according to the direction of the Commission, as in all other like cases where anything could not be had in kind.” That is, he was ordered to surrender the jewel, or if this had been destroyed, its value, or some compensation in lieu thereof. Ireton refused the terms altogether. The King, Charles II., thereupon sued him in the Court of King’s Bench, where the royal plaintiff obtained a verdict for two hundred and five pounds, and ten pounds costs of suit.

In February, 1652, the Parliament abolished all titles and honors conferred by Charles I. since the 4th of January, two years previously. This was done on the ground that the late King had conferred such titles and honors, in order to promote his wicked and treacherous designs against the parliament and people of England. A fine of one hundred pounds was decreed against every offender, whenever he employed the abolished title, with the exception of a knight, who was let off at the cheaper rate of forty pounds. Any one convicted of addressing a person by any of the titles thus done away with, was liable to a fine of ten shillings. The Parliament treated with silent contempt the titles and orders of knighthood conferred by Charles I. As monarchy was defunct, these adjuncts of monarchy were considered as defunct also. The Protector did not create a single Knight of the Garter, nor of the Bath. “These orders,” says Nicolas, “were never formally abolished, but they were probably considered so inseparably united to the person, name, and office of a king, as to render it impossible for any other authority to create them.” Cromwell, however, made one peer, Howard, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, ten baronets and knights, and conferred certain degrees of precedency. It was seldom that he named an unworthy person, considering the latter in the Protector’s own point of view, but the Restoration was no sooner an accomplished fact, when to ridicule one of Oliver’s knights was a matter of course with the hilarious dramatic poets. On this subject something will be found under the head of “Stage Knights.” Meanwhile, although there is nothing to record touching Knights of the Garter, under the Commonwealth, we may notice an incident showing that Garter King-at-arms was not altogether idle. This incident will be sufficiently explained by the following extract from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England.” The author is speaking of the regicide Ludlow, who, since the Restoration, had been living in exile at Geneva. “The Revolution opened a new prospect to him. The right of the people to resist oppression, a right which, during many years, no man could assert without exposing himself to ecclesiastical anathemas and to civil penalties, had been solemnly recognised by the Estates of the realm, and had been proclaimed by Garter King-at-arms, on the very spot where the memorable scaffold had been set up.”

Charles II. did not wait for the Restoration in order to make or unmake knights. He did not indeed hold chapters, but at St. Germains, in Jersey, and other localities, he unknighted knights who had forgotten their allegiance in the “late horrid rebellion,” as he emphatically calls the Parliamentary and Cromwellian periods, and authorized other individuals to wear the insignia, while he exhorted them to wait patiently and hopefully for their installations at Windsor. At St. Germains, he gave the Garter to his favorite Buckingham; and from Jersey he sent it to two far better men—Montrose, and Stanley, Earl of Derby. The worst enemies of these men could not deny their chivalrous qualities. Montrose on the scaffold, when they hung (in derision) from his neck the book in which were recorded his many brave deeds, very aptly said that he wore the record of his courage with as much pride as he ever wore the Garter. Stanley’s chivalry was never more remarkable than in the skirmish previous to Worcester, when in the hot affray, he received seven shots in his breast-plate, thirteen cuts on his beaver, five or six wounds on his arms and shoulders, and had two horses killed under him. When he was about to die, he returned the Garter, by the hands of a faithful servant, to the king, “in all humility and gratitude,” as he remarked, “spotless and free from any stain, as he received it, according to the honorable example of my ancestors.”

Charles made knights of the Garter of General Monk and Admiral Montague. The chapter for election was held in the Abbey of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury. It was the first convenient place which the king could find for such a purpose after landing. “They were the only two,” says Pepys, “for many years who had the Garter given them before they had honor of earldom, or the like, excepting only the Duke of Buckingham, who was only Sir George Villiers when he was made a knight of the Garter.” The honor was offered to Clarendon, but declined as above his deserts, and likely to create him enemies. James, Duke of York, however, angrily attributed Clarendon’s objection to being elected to the Garter to the fact that James himself had asked it for him, and that the Chancellor was foolishly unwilling to accept any honor that was to be gained by the Duke’s mediation.

Before proceeding to the next reign, let me remark that the George and Garter of Charles II. had as many adventures or misadventures as those of his father. In the fight at Worcester his collar and garter became the booty of Cromwell, who despatched a messenger with them to the Parliament, as a sign and trophy of victory. The king’s lesser George, set with diamonds, was preserved by Colonel Blague. It passed through several hands with much risk. It at length fell again into the hands of the Colonel when he was a prisoner in the Tower. Blague, “considering it had already passed so many dangers, was persuaded it could yet secure one hazardous attempt of his own.” The enthusiastic royalist looked upon it as a talisman that would rescue him from captivity. Right or wrong in his sentiment, the result was favorable. He succeeded in making his escape, and had the gratification of restoring the George to his sovereign.

The short reign of James II. offers nothing worthy of the notice of the general reader with respect to this decoration; and the same may be said of the longer reign of William III. The little interest in the history of the order under Queen Anne, is in connection with her foreign nominations, of which due notice will be found in the succeeding section. Small, too, is the interest connected with these matters in the reign of George I., saving, indeed, that under him we find the last instance of the degradation of a knight of the garter, in the person of James, Duke of Ormund, who had been attainted of high treason. His degradation took place on the 12th July, 1716. The elections were numerous during this reign. The only one that seems to demand particular notice is that of Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury. He gave up the Bath on receiving the Garter in 1726, and he was the only commoner who had received the distinction since Sir George Monk and Sir Edward Montague were created, sixty-six years previously.

The first circumstance worthy of record under George II. is, that the color of the garter and ribbon was changed from light blue to dark, or “Garter-blue,” as it is called. This was done in order to distinguish the companions made by Brunswick from those assumed to be fraudulently created by the Pretender Stuart. Another change was effected, but much less felicitously. What with religious, social, and political revolution, it was found that the knights were swearing to statutes which they could not observe. Their consciences were disturbed thereat—at least they said so; but their sovereign set them at ease by enacting that in future all knights should promise to break no statutes, except on dispensation from the sovereign! This left the matter exactly where it had been previously.

The first circumstance worthy of attention in the reign of George III., was that of the election of Earl Gower, president of the council, in 1771. The sharp eye of Junius discovered that the election was a farce, for in place of the sovereign and at least six knights being present, as the statutes required, there were only four knights present, the Dukes of Gloucester, Newcastle, Northumberland, and the Earl of Hertford. The first duke too was there against his will. He had, says Junius, “entreated, begged, and implored,” to be excused from attending that chapter—but all in vain. The new knight seems to have been illegally elected, and as illegally installed. The only disagreeable result was to the poor knights of Windsor. People interested in the subject had made remarks, and while the illegal election of the president of the council was most properly put before the King, representation was made to him that the poor knights had been wickedly contravening their statutes, for a very long period. They had for years been permitted to reside with their families wherever they chose to fix their residence. This was pronounced irregular, and George III., so lax with regard to Lord Gower, was very strict with respect to these poor knights. They were all commanded to reside in their apartments attached to Windsor Castle, and there keep up the poor dignity of their noble order, by going to church twice every day in full uniform. There were some of them at that period who would as soon have gone out twice a day to meet the dragon.

The order of the Garter was certainly ill-used by this sovereign. In order to admit all his sons, he abolished the statute of Edward (who had as many sons as George had when he made the absurd innovation, but who did not care to make knights of them because they were his sons), confining the number of companions to twenty-five. Henceforward, the sovereign’s sons were to reckon only as over and above that number. As if this was not sufficiently absurd, the king subsequently decreed eligibility of election to an indefinite number of persons, provided only that they could trace their descent from King George II.!

No Companion so well deserved the honor conferred upon him as he who was the most illustrious of the English knights created during the sway of the successor of George III., as Regent; namely, the late Duke of Wellington. Mr. Macaulay, when detailing the services and honors conferred on Schomberg, has a passage in which he brings the names of these two warriors, dukes, and knights of the Garter, together. “The House of Commons had, with general approbation, compensated the losses of Schomberg, and rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Before he set out for Ireland, he requested permission to express his gratitude for this magnificent present. A chair was set for him within the bar. He took his seat there with the mace at his right hand, rose, and in a few graceful words returned his thanks and took his leave. The Speaker replied that the Commons could never forget the obligation under which they already lay to his Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at the head of an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zeal and ability, and that at whatever distance he might be he would always be, in a peculiar manner, an object of their care. The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting still. Exactly on the same spot, on which, in July, 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set in July, 1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return thanks for a still more splendid mark of public gratitude.”

There is nothing calling for particular notice in the history of the Order since the election of the last-named knight. Not one on whose shoulders has been placed “the robe of heavenly color,” earned so hardly and so well the honor of companionship. This honor, however, costs every knight who submits to the demand, not less than one hundred and eight pounds sterling, in fees. It is, in itself, a heavy fine inflicted on those who render extraordinary service to the country, and to whom are presented the order of the Garter, and an order from the Garter King-at-arms to pay something more than a hundred guineas in return. The fine, however, is generally paid with alacrity; for, though the non-payment does not unmake a knight, it has the effect of keeping his name from the register.

I have already observed that Mr. Macaulay, in his recently-published History, has asserted that very few foreigners, except they were sovereign princes, were ever admitted into the companionship of the Garter. Let us, then, look over the roll of illustrious aliens, and see how far this assertion is correct.