Colonel Best-Dunkley's question on this subject can best be answered by quoting in full the first paragraph of Chapter XVI of David Hume's History of England, Vol. I:
"The prudent conduct and great success of Edward in his foreign wars had excited a strong emulation and a military genius among the English nobility; and these turbulent barons, overawed by the crown, gave now a more useful direction to their ambition, and attached themselves to a prince who led them to the acquisition of riches and glory. That he might further promote the spirit of emulation and obedience, the king instituted the order of the garter, in imitation of some orders of a like nature, religious as well as military, which had been established in different parts of Europe. The number received into this order consisted of twenty-five persons, besides the sovereign; and as it has never been enlarged, this badge of distinction continues as honourable as at its first institution, and is still a valuable, though a cheap present, which the prince can confer on his greatest subjects. A vulgar story prevails, but is not supported by any ancient authority, that at a court ball, Edward's mistress, commonly supposed to have been the Countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter; and the king, taking it up, observed some of the courtiers to smile, as if they thought that he had not obtained this favour merely by accident: upon which he called out, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' Evil to him that evil thinks; and as every incident of gallantry among those ancient warriors was magnified into a matter of great importance, he instituted the order of the garter in memorial of this event, and gave these words as the motto of the order. This origin, though frivolous, is not unsuitable to the manners of the times; and it is indeed difficult by any other means to account, either for the seemingly unmeaning terms of the motto, or for the peculiar badge of the garter, which seems to have no reference to any purpose either of military use or ornament."
APPENDIX V
GOLDFISH CHÂTEAU
The following note about Goldfish Château, contained in the Manchester Guardian of September 8, 1919, is relevant to the text:
All the men who had any part in the tragic epic of Ypres will be interested in the news that the Church Army has taken over "Goldfish Château" as a hostel for pilgrims to the illimitable graveyards in the dreadful salient.
For some reason (writes a correspondent who was in it) we christened the place "Goldfish Château." It was a somewhat pretentious mansion, in Continental flamboyant style, standing just off the Vlamertinghe road about half a mile our side of Ypres. Its grounds are ploughed up by shells and bombs, but most of the fountains and wretched garden statuary remains with the fishponds which perhaps gave the villa its army name, and rustic bridges most egregiously incongruous with the surrounding death and desolation.
All through the Ypres fighting it was a conspicuous landmark well known to every soldier, and used, as things got hotter and hotter, as staff headquarters, first for corps, then for division, and finally for brigade and battalion.
Strangely enough, the château never received a direct hit, though all the country round was ploughed up and every other building practically flattened out. The camp tales accounted for this immunity in all sorts of sinister ways. One story was that some big German personage had occupied the place. Probably these were romantic fictions. But the fact remained that "Goldfish Château" bore a charmed life in spite of the fact that the German sausage balloons almost looked down the chimneys and so many staffs lived there. Hundreds of thousands of men in this country who could not name half the county towns in England would be able to describe every room in this Belgian villa outside Ypres. Lancashire soldiers are well acquainted with it.