APPENDIX 6
MANY ASPECTS OF the origin of the Order of the Garter are open to debate, especially the emblem of the garter and the motto associated with it (discussed in Chapter Eleven). However, we cannot properly consider the foundation in the context of Edward’s life without coming to some conclusion as to when exactly it took place. Most discussions have removed it from the context of the plague, as if Edward was simply celebrating the merits of his war leaders.1 This is understandable, given its martial nature and long history, but it is also misleading. It is like discussing the origins of the Victoria Cross medal without reference to the Crimea War: without the latter, the honour might have come into being at some point or other, but not at the time when it did.
The insignia of the Order of the Garter include a blue robe with a silver lining and a blue garter worked in gold with the motto ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ (evil to him who thinks it evil). The Order was composed of twenty-six knights, including the king and the prince, and it was particularly associated with the chapel of St George at Windsor Castle. The first time the twenty-six knights all met in one tournament and jousted together was at Windsor Castle on St George’s Day (23 April 1349). However, as many antiquaries and scholars have discovered over the years, there are a number of garter-related entries in accounts relating to earlier tournaments. For example, twelve garters were manufactured for the Eltham tournament in the summer of 1348.2 The collegiate chapel of St George at Windsor Castle, which was to be a focal point for future celebrations, was founded on 6 August 1348.3 Most striking of all, the prince of Wales paid for a plate for a herald of arms ‘of the companionship of the Garter’ on 18 December 1348, as well as ‘twenty-four garters made for the prince for the knights of the companionship of the Garter’ about this time.4 As a result of these payments, which appear in the prince’s register, early heralds and antiquaries from the seventeenth century onwards had no doubt that the Order had been founded before December 1348, and the most influential historian of the Order (Beltz) chose the Windsor tournament at Midsummer 1348 as the event at which it was probably founded. The most detailed modern analysis by Juliet Vale, recently described as ‘widely accepted’, follows this, stating that ‘the Order was effectively instituted at the Windsor tournament of 24 June 1348 and that the first formal St George’s Day meeting of the Knights of the Garter was that held on 23 April 1349’.5
On close examination of the primary source material, some methodological problems appear. For a start, the use of a garter as a symbol does not mean that the Order had previously been constituted in any formal sense. Nor does the use of the ‘honi soit’ motto. But there is another much more subtle historical misunderstanding. The membership of the Order was exclusive, and so it cannot be said to have been established until its membership was named. This is a crucial point, as can be shown by reference to an earlier tournament, the Lichfield tournament of May 1348. This had two ‘battles’ of thirteen men – exactly like the arrangement of the eventual Garter knights in their choir stalls at St George’s Chapel – and these knights had all worn blue robes with white silk linings at Lichfield. However, although several of them did become founder knights of the Order, most did not.6 One can say the same for the tournament at Canterbury which took place later in the year, probably in mid-August.7 If the formal membership had been established by this time, then some of those who took part in these tournaments were appropriating some of the emblems of the Order – or items very similar – with impunity. This is hardly likely, given its exclusive nature. The one element of the Order which does not seem to have been established by the time of Edward’s expedition to France in October–November 1348 was a formal membership.8
So we must search for the foundation of the Order after Edward’s return from France, in November 1348. The tournament at which the two ‘battles’ took part cannot have been the games at either Christmas or Epiphany (6 January 1349) as many more people took part at both, and neither of these was described as a tournament but as ‘games’. The next tournament known is that at Windsor on 23 April 1349. The clearest reference to the foundation of the Order is the chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, writing in the 1350s, who states that Edward founded it at (not before) this tournament on St George’s Day 1349.9 The date is supported by the accounts of John of Cologne who provided the participants with armour, garter-covered robes and garters.10 The implication of le Baker’s description is that the founder members were defined by their being there that day: they took part. This explains why so many of Edward’s closest friends were not founder members of the Order. Why was the earl of Northampton not a founder member? Why not Sir Walter Manny? Why not Sir Reginald Cobham, Sir Thomas Dagworth, the earl of Huntingdon and the earl of Suffolk? The reason is simply that they were not there, and did not take part in the tournament. Manny, Northampton and Huntingdon had been sent to France the previous month to negotiate a peace treaty.11 Dagworth was still in Brittany. Cobham had been made admiral of the Western fleet the previous year, and was not replaced until 1351.12 That Edward would have wanted these men to be founder members of the Order of the Garter if they had been available is evident from their fame as warriors, from the rewards which Edward heaped upon each of them, and from the fact that all of them were admitted to the Order as soon as there was a vacancy (with the exception of Sir Thomas Dagworth, who died the following year). So eligible were they that Geoffrey le Baker presumed some of these men had been admitted. Therefore we can be confident that the founder members of the Order were chosen because they had turned up to fight at a tournament after March 1349 (when Manny, Northampton and Huntingdon went to France), and by far the most likely event is that recorded by le Baker on St George’s Day 1349, which implies that that date marks the formal establishment of the Order. This conclusion is stongly supported by the official statute of the Order, which states that it was instituted in the twenty-third year of Edward’s reign (i.e. after 25 January 1349).13 On St George’s Day 1349 Edward was certainly drawing from the model of the informal knightly companionships which existed before then, and at least one of these companionships used the emblem of the garter, possibly in reference to Lancaster’s self-professed liking for garters;14 but the existence of these chivalric ‘companionships’ – garter-wearing or otherwise – should not be confused with the Order itself.