too, at these genial lines; and how must the churchmen in the pit have
stamped with delight when Time subsequently assured them that Guy
took all his Babylonian prisoners to Jerusalem, and had them probably
christened by episcopally-ordained ministers! If the house did not ring
with the cheers of the Church-and-King audience there, why they were
unworthy of the instruction filtered through legend and tragedy.
Such is the story of “Master Guy;” a story whose incidents have
doubtless meaning in them, but which were never turned to more
practical purpose than when they were employed to support a tottering
altar and a fallen throne. Reader, let us drink to the immortal memory
of MASTER GUY; and having seen what sort of man he was whom the king
delighted to honor, let us see what honors were instituted by kings for
other deserving men.
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.”