When I say Elizabeth closely followed the example of Mary I should add as an instance wherein she departed therefrom—the election of Francis Duke of Montmorency, envoy from the French King. The Queen bestowed this honor on the Duke, “in grateful commemoration,” says Camden, “of the love which Anne, constable of France, his father, bore unto her.” At the accession of James I., however, Henri IV. of France was the only foreigner, sovereign or otherwise, who wore the order of the Garter. Those added by James were the King of Denmark, the Prince of Orange, and the Prince Palatine. Of the latter I have spoken in another place; I will only notice further here, that under James, all precedence of stalls was taken away from princes below a certain rank; that is to say, the last knights elected, even the King’s own son, must take the last stall. It was also then declared “that all princes, not absolute, should be installed, henceforth, in the puisne place.”
There was one foreign knight, however, whose installation deserves a word apart, for it was marked by unusual splendor, considering how very small a potentate was the recipient of the honor. This was Christian, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. On the last day of the year 1624, James, with his own hands, placed the riband and George round the neck of the Duke. The latter was then twenty-four years of age. “The Duke of Brunswick,” says Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, January 8, 1625, “can not complain of his entertainment, which was every way complete, very good and gracious words from the King, with the honor of the Garter, and a pension of two thousand pounds a year. The Prince lodged him in his own lodgings, and at parting, gave him three thousand pounds in gold, besides other presents.” James conferred the Garter on no less than seven of his Scottish subjects. If these may be reckoned now, what they were considered then, as mere foreigners, the alien knights will again outnumber the foreign sovereign princes, wearers of the Garter.
The first knight invested by Charles I. was an alien chevalier, of only noble degree. This was the Duke de Chevreuse, who was Charles’s proxy at his nuptials with Henrietta Maria, and who thus easily won the honors of chivalry among the Companions of St. George. It seems, however, that the honor in question was generally won by foreigners, because of their being engaged in furthering royal marriages. Thus, when the King’s agent in Switzerland, Mr. Fleming, in the year 1633, suggested to the government that the Duke of Rohan should be elected a knight of the Garter, Mr. Secretary Coke made reply that “The proposition hath this inconvenience, that the rites of that ancient order comport not with innovation, and no precedent can be found of any foreign subject ever admitted into it, if he were not employed in an inter-marriage with this crown, as the Duke of Chevreuse lately was.” There certainly was not a word of truth in what the Secretary Coke thus deliberately stated. Not only had the Garter frequently been conferred on foreign subjects who had had nothing to do as matrimonial agents between sovereign lovers, but only twelve years after Coke thus wrote, Charles conferred the order upon the Duke d’Espernon, who had no claim to it founded upon such service as is noticed by the learned secretary.
At the death of Charles I. there was not, strictly speaking, a single foreign sovereign prince belonging to the order. The three foreign princes, Rupert, William of Orange, and the Elector Palatine, can not justly be called so. The other foreign knights were the Dukes of Chevreuse and Espernon.
The foreign knights of the order created by Charles II. were Prince Edward, son of “Elizabeth of Bohemia;” Prince Maurice, his elder brother; Henry, eldest son of the Duke de Thouas, William of Nassau, then three years of age, and subsequently our William III.; Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg; Gaspar, Count de Morchin; Christian, Prince Royal of Denmark; Charles XI., King of Sweden; George, Elector of Saxony; and Prince George of Denmark, husband of the Princess Anne. It will be seen that those who could be strictly called “sovereign princes,” claiming allegiance and owing none, do not outnumber alien knights who were expected to render obedience, and could not sovereignly exert it. Denmark and Sweden, it may be observed, quarrelled about precedency of stalls with as much bitterness as if they had been burghers of the “Krähwinkel” of Kotzebue.
The short reign of James II. presents us with only one alien Knight of the Garter, namely, Louis de Duras, created also Earl of Feversham. “Il était le second de son nom,” says the Biographie Universelle, “qui eut été honoré de cette decoration, remarque particulière dans la noblesse Française.”
The great Duke of Schomberg, that admirable warrior given to England by the tyranny of Louis XIV., was the first person invested with the Garter by William III. The other foreign knights invested by him were the first King of Prussia, William Duke of Zell, the Elector of Saxony, William Bentinck (Earl of Portland), Von Keppel (Earl of Albemarle), and George of Hanover (our George I.) Here the alien knights, not of sovereign degree, again outnumbered those who were of that degree. The Elector of Saxony refused to join William against France, unless the Garter were first conferred on him.
Anne conferred the Garter on Meinhardt Schomberg, Duke of Leinster, son of the great Schomberg; and also on George Augustus of Hanover (subsequently George II. of England). Anne intimated to George Louis, the father of George Augustus, that, being a Knight of the Garter, he might very appropriately invest his own son. George Louis, however, hated that son, and would have nothing to do with conferring any dignity upon him. He left it with the commissioners, Halifax and Vanbrugh, to act as they pleased. They performed their vicarious office as they best could, and that was only with “maimed rights.” George Louis, with his ordinary spiteful meanness, ordered the ceremony to be cut short of all display. He would not even permit his son to be invested with the habit, under a canopy as was usual, and as had been done in his own case; all that he would grant was an ordinary arm-chair, whereon the electoral prince might sit in state, if he chose, or was able to do so! These were the only foreigners upon whom Anne conferred the Garter; an order which she granted willingly to very few persons indeed.
“It is remarkable,” says Nicolas, “that the order was not conferred by Queen Anne upon the Emperor, nor upon any of the other sovereigns with whom she was for many years confederated against France. Nor did her Majesty bestow it upon King Charles III. of Spain, who arrived in England in September, 1703, nor upon Prince Eugene (though, when she presented him with a sword worth five thousand pounds sterling on taking his leave in March, 1712 there were seven vacant ribands), nor any other of the great commanders of the allied armies who, under the Duke of Marlborough, gained those splendid victories that rendered her reign one of the most glorious in the annals of this country.”
George I. had more regard for his grandson than for his son; and he made Frederick (subsequently father of George III.) a Companion of the Order, when he was not more than nine years of age. He raised to the same honor his own brother, Prince Ernest Augustus, and invested both knights at a Chapter held in Hanover in 1711. With this family exception, the Order of the Garter was not conferred upon any foreign prince in the reign of George I.