A fellowship of knights
The Order of the Garter is a fellowship of knights founded by King Edward III of England in the middle of the fourteenth century. It is the senior order of knighthood in England and one of the oldest chivalric orders that still exists. The traditional founding date is 1348, though historians have long noted that the evidence is thin and some place the creation a year or so later, since the early records are incomplete. A date of “around 1348” is the safest way to put it.
The order was not an invention from nothing. Edward III had already shown interest in knightly fellowship earlier in his reign. In 1344 he held a festival at Windsor in which he spoke of reviving an Arthurian-style Round Table, a plan that appears not to have been completed in that form. The Garter is generally seen as the lasting result of the same impulse, redirected to a smaller and more selective group.
Why it was founded
Several motives probably overlapped. Edward was at war with France in the early stages of what is now called the Hundred Years War, and he needed the loyalty of his leading commanders. A prestigious order tied the most important knights directly to the crown and gave them a shared identity, which fits what the king was doing with royal power more widely. It also borrowed the glamour of chivalric literature, offering a version of the Round Table’s ideal in real life. Rival rulers were creating their own orders around the same time, and honor and rivalry between kings played a part.
Edward’s reign also saw victories such as the Battle of Crecy in 1346, and many early members had fought there. The order thus celebrated a victorious war generation as well as the abstract virtues of knighthood. The French response was the Order of the Star, founded a few years later by John II.
Membership and structure
The traditional membership was the sovereign plus twenty-five knights, making twenty-six in all. The early accounts describe the members as arranged in two teams, one led by the king and one by his eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, each with twelve other knights. That detail is well known, though it rests on later records and should be treated as the traditional picture.
The first knights included leading noblemen and experienced soldiers, some of them foreign-born, and members were expected to be of proven knightly reputation. Later, kings of other countries were admitted as honorary companions, and the order gradually opened to women, first as ladies attached to the order in the late Middle Ages and, in modern times, as full members. The order’s formal structure included a chapel, a body of clergy attached to it, and a number of poor knights supported by its endowments. These were centered on Windsor Castle, and St George’s Chapel there became the order’s home. St George, a saint associated with soldiers and with England, was the order’s patron.
Garter insignia included a blue garter worn on the left leg, a mantle, and later a collar and a star. Each knight had a stall in the chapel, where his banner, sword and helm were displayed, and decorated plates with their coats of arms were later added, which links the order to the history of medieval heraldry. In its early years the order also held an annual feast on St George’s Day, and members were expected to attend.
The garter and the motto
The order’s motto is “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” in Anglo-Norman French, meaning roughly “shame on him who thinks evil of it.” It appears around the garter and has been used since the earliest times, though the oldest evidence for it is not complete.
The famous story is that a lady, often identified as the Countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter at a ball. The king picked it up, saw people smirking, and tied it round his own leg, saying the words of the motto. He then declared that the garter would become so honored that those smirking would be glad to wear it. This is almost certainly legend. It is not found in sources from Edward III’s own time and appears in writing only much later, in the sixteenth century, long after the order was founded. Historians offer other ideas, including that the garter was simply a strap or a symbol of binding the members together, or that it was linked to military strapping or to an earlier emblem. None of these has been proved.
Chivalry and honor
The order embodied the ideals set out in the medieval chivalric code: loyalty to a lord, courage, honor in battle, and service to the church. In practice the Garter was as political as it was moral. Membership signaled royal favor, and the honor could be withdrawn. Knights who were disgraced or who became enemies of the crown could be removed, with their stall plates taken down.
Garter knights also joined tournaments and jousts, which were part of the same courtly world and brought the nobility together at royal festivals. The tournament and the order were different institutions but belonged to the same culture of display and honor.
After the Middle Ages
The Garter survived dynastic upheaval, the Reformation and the changes of the modern state. Elected by the sovereign, its members are still installed in a ceremony in the chapel at Windsor each year. Its survival has given it a continuity that most medieval orders lack, but modern ceremonies add many elements of later date. What medieval Europeans would have recognized is the core idea: a small, exclusive group of the king’s chosen knights, united by an oath, a patron saint and a shared sense of honor, which has remained recognizable for nearly seven centuries.