The Most Noble Order of the Garter is the senior order of chivalry in Britain and among the oldest in the world, founded by Edward III around 1348. Membership is limited to the monarch, the Prince of Wales and 24 companions, plus a small number of royal and foreign members.
The monarch chooses personally
Unlike most British honours, the Garter is in the sovereign’s personal gift. It is not awarded on the advice of the prime minister, and there is no nomination process.
This was not always so — for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was distributed as political patronage — but George VI restored personal appointment in 1946, and it has remained the monarch’s own decision since.
A place falls vacant only on a companion’s death, so appointments are rare and closely noted.
The garter and the motto
The founding story, told for centuries and impossible to verify: at a court dance, a lady — usually said to be the Countess of Salisbury — lost her garter. The courtiers laughed. Edward III picked it up, tied it around his own leg, and said “Honi soit qui mal y pense” — shame on him who thinks ill of it.
That phrase is the order’s motto, and it appears on the Royal Coat of Arms, encircling the shield, which is why a piece of medieval Norman French sits on every British passport and courtroom wall.
Historians generally think the order was founded with rather more calculated purpose — binding a small group of the most powerful men in the realm to the king during the Hundred Years’ War — and that the garter story is a later gloss.
Garter Day
Held each June at Windsor Castle. Companions process on foot from the castle to St George’s Chapel in blue velvet robes, plumed hats and the garter itself worn below the left knee — and the whole thing looks, deliberately, exactly as it would have done several centuries ago.
The procession is watched by ticketed spectators inside the castle grounds and is one of the more genuinely medieval sights in Britain.
The chapel
Each companion is allotted a stall in the quire of St George’s Chapel, above which hangs their banner, helm, crest and sword. A small enamel stall plate bearing their arms is fixed to the back of the stall.
When a companion dies the banner is taken down and the stall reassigned, but the plate stays. There are now around 800 of them accumulated since the 1390s, covering the stalls — a continuous heraldic record of every Garter knight for six hundred years, and one of the most remarkable objects in any English church.
Degradation
Companions can be removed. The order’s statutes provide for degradation for treason, cowardice or fleeing from battle, and it has happened — the banner is taken down and the arms are scraped off the stall plate, leaving a blank.
The Emperor of Japan and the Emperor of Germany were both struck off during the world wars, and the Duke of Ormonde was degraded for Jacobite treason in 1716. The blanks remain visible in the chapel.