to the second and fourth, although the third, fifth, sixth, seventh,
and eighth appear to be as contentedly as they are unquestionably
recent.
It is, however, certain that the “most noble” Order of the
Garter at least was instituted in the middle of the 14th century,
when English chivalry was outwardly brightest and
the court most magnificent. But in what particular
year this event occurred is and has been the subject
Order of
the Garter.of much difference of opinion. All the original records of the
order until after 1416 have perished, and consequently the question
depends for its settlement not on direct testimony but on
inference from circumstances. The dates which have been
selected vary from 1344 (given by Froissart, but almost certainly
mistaken) to 1351. The evidence may be examined at
length in Nicolas and Beltz; it is indisputable that in the
wardrobe account from September 1347 to January 1349,
the 21st and 23rd Edward III., the issue of certain habits
with garters and the motto embroidered on them is marked
for St George’s Day; that the letters patent relating to
the preparation of the royal chapel of Windsor are dated in
August 1348; and that in the treasury accounts of the prince
of Wales there is an entry in November 1348 of the gift by
him of “twenty-four garters to the knights of the Society
of the Garter.”[1] But that the order, although from this manifestly
already fully constituted in the autumn of 1348, was
not in existence before the summer of 1346 Sir Harris Nicolas
proves pretty conclusively by pointing out that nobody who was
not a knight could under its statutes have been admitted to it,
and that neither the prince of Wales nor several others of the
original companions were knighted until the middle of that
year.
Regarding the occasion there has been almost as much controversy as regarding the date of its foundation. The “vulgar and more general story,” as Ashmole calls it, is that of the countess of Salisbury’s garter. But commentators are not at one as to which countess of Salisbury was the heroine of the adventure, whether she was Katherine Montacute or Joan the Fair Maid of Kent, while Heylyn rejects the legend as “a vain and idle romance derogatory both to the founder and the order, first published by Polydor Vergil, a stranger to the affairs of England, and by him taken upon no better ground than fama vulgi, the tradition of the common people, too trifling a foundation for so great a building.”[2]
Another legend is that contained in the preface to the Register or Black Book of the order, compiled in the reign of Henry VIII., by what authority supported is unknown, that Richard I., while his forces were employed against Cyprus and Acre, had been inspired through the instrumentality of St George with renewed courage and the means of animating his fatigued soldiers by the device of tying about the legs of a chosen number of knights a leathern thong or garter, to the end that being thereby reminded of the honour of their enterprise they might be encouraged to redoubled efforts for victory. This was supposed to have been in the mind of Edward III. when he fixed on the garter as the emblem of the order, and it was stated so to have been by Taylor, master of the rolls, in his address to Francis I. of France on his investiture in 1527.[3] According to Ashmole the true account of the matter is that “King Edward having given forth his own garter as the signal for a battle which sped fortunately (which with Du Chesne we conceive to be that of Crécy), the victory, we say, being happily gained, he thence took occasion to institute this order, and gave the garter (assumed by him for the symbol of unity and society) preeminence among the ensigns of it.” But, as Sir Harris Nicolas points out—although Ashmole is not open to the correction—this hypothesis rests for its plausibility on the assumption that the order was established before the invasion of France in 1346. And he further observes that “a great variety of devices and mottoes were used by Edward III.; they were chosen from the most trivial causes and were of an amorous rather than of a military character. Nothing,” he adds, “is more likely than that in a crowded assembly a lady should accidentally have dropped her garter; that the circumstance should have caused a smile in the bystanders; and that on its being taken up by Edward he should have reproved the levity of his courtiers by so happy and chivalrous an exclamation, placing the garter at the same time on his own knee, as ‘Dishonoured be he who thinks ill of it.’ Such a circumstance occurring at a time of general festivity, when devices, mottoes and conceits of all kinds were adopted as ornaments or badges of the habits worn at jousts and tournaments, would naturally have been commemorated as other royal expressions seem to have been by its conversion into a device and motto for the dresses at an approaching hastilude.”[4] Moreover, Sir Harris Nicolas contends that the order had no loftier immediate origin than a joust or tournament. It consisted of the king and the Black Prince, and 24 knights divided into two bands of 12 like the tilters in a hastilude—at the head of the one being the first, and of the other the second; and to the companions belonging to each, when the order had superseded the Round Table and had become a permanent institution, were assigned stalls either on the sovereign’s or the prince’s side of St George’s Chapel. That Sir Harris Nicolas is accurate in this conjecture seems probable from the selection which was made of the “founder knights.” As Beltz observes, the fame of Sir Reginald Cobham, Sir Walter Manny and the earls of Northampton, Hereford and Suffolk was already established by their warlike exploits, and they would certainly have been among the original companions had the order been then regarded as the reward of military merit only. But, although these eminent warriors were subsequently elected as vacancies occurred, their admission was postponed to that of several very young and in actual warfare comparatively unknown knights, whose claims to the honour may be most rationally explained on the assumption that they had excelled in the particular feats of arms which preceded the institution of the order. The original companionship had consisted of the sovereign and 25 knights, and no change was made in this respect until 1786, when the sons of George III. and his successors were made eligible notwithstanding that the chapter might be complete. In 1805 another alteration was effected by the provision that the lineal descendants of George II. should be eligible in the same manner, except the Prince of Wales for the time being, who was declared to be “a constituent part of the original institution”; and again in 1831 it was further ordained that the privilege accorded to the lineal descendants of George II. should extend to the lineal descendants of George I. Although, as Sir Harris Nicolas observes, nothing is now known of the form of admitting ladies into the order, the description applied to them in the records during the 14th and 15th centuries leaves no doubt that they were regularly received into it. The queen consort, the wives and daughters of knights, and some other women of exalted position, were designated “Dames de la Fraternité de St George,” and entries of the delivery of robes and garters to them are found at intervals in the Wardrobe Accounts from the 50th Edward III. (1376) to the 10th of Henry VII. (1495), the first being Isabel, countess of Bedford, the daughter of the one king, and the last being Margaret and Elizabeth, the daughters of the other king. The effigies of Margaret Byron, wife of Sir Robert Harcourt, K.G., at Stanton Harcourt, and of Alice Chaucer, wife of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, K.G., at Ewelme, which date from the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., have garters on their left arms. (See further under “Orders of Knighthood” below.)
It has been the general opinion, as expressed by Sainte Palaye and Mills, that formerly all knights were qualified to confer knighthood.[5] But it may be questioned whether the privilege
- ↑ G. F. Beltz, Memorials of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (1841), p. 385.
- ↑ Heylyn, Cosmographie and History of the Whole World, bk. i. p. 286.
- ↑ Beltz, Memorials, p. xlvi.
- ↑ Orders of Knighthood, vol. i. p. lxxxiii.
- ↑ Mémoires, i. 67, i. 22; History of Chivalry; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vii. 200.
