[517] The Prince Consort was strongly in favour of legalising these marriages, and King Edward (then Prince of Wales) always voted in favour of the Bills introduced for the purpose of amending the law.
[518] This custom has now unfortunately fallen into disuse.
[519] No one has a prescriptive or ex officio right to wear the “Windsor uniform.” It is an honour conferred personally by the Sovereign. Of recent Prime Ministers, this privilege has been enjoyed by Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Balfour.
[520] Sunderland’s Ministry in 1718 introduced a measure to limit the creation of peers, the object being to prevent the Prince of Wales (when King) from swamping the Lords with his partisans. Walpole spoke and wrote vigorously against the Bill, and organised the opposition to it in anticipation of the time when it should reach the Commons. He succeeded in altering the public attitude to the Bill, and it was rejected by a large majority.
[521] After this date, that is to say, the early part of the Queen’s reign, the Order of the Bath began to be somewhat neglected. It was partly owing to the creation of new Orders, such as the Star of India and the St. Michael and George. It has, however, recently been ordained by King George V. that the annual service for the Order of the Bath in Westminster Abbey shall be revived, and the banners and shields of the Knights Grand Cross be affixed to their stalls in Henry VIIth.’s chapel.
[522] See ante, p. 205.
[523] Sir Peter King, who became Lord Chancellor, was created Lord King of Ockham in 1725. The present baron (eighth holder of the title) had married in 1835, Ada, the only child of Lord Byron. Lord King now became Earl of Lovelace.
[524] Eldest son of the Duke of Leeds, who died in the following month.
[525] In 1847, when the offer was repeated, Lord Melbourne wrote to the Queen that “for a long time he had found himself much straitened in his circumstances” and that “he knows that the expense of accepting the ribbon amounts to £1,000, and there has been of late years no period at which it would not have been seriously inconvenient to him to pay down such a sum.”
[526] With the exception of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Palmerston, no Prime Minister, as such, has accepted the Garter in recent times.