[GARTER.]

Very rare and attractive manuscript statutes of England’s highest chivalric order, the Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III in 1348, in a contemporary binding with the arms of Elizabeth I. The statutes set out the rules and conduct of the Order and include Henry VIII’s revisions, as well as a significant Elizabethan recession regarding the admission of knights who have been pardoned for high treason.

The statutes of the Garter were continuously reformed by successive monarchs, and Henry VIII was not responsible for any wholesale reformation of the order or its practices, though the text of the Statutes established during his reign remained the standard for several successive reigns. This text closely follows the Henrician statutes, most of which in fact originated in 1415 under Henry V. There are several dating from 1541 (see The Statutes of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (London: 1814), pp. 1-44), followed by ordinances for several changes to the Garter insignia made during 1543, which are the reason for frequent references in the literature to the ‘1543 statutes’ of Henry’s reign. This manuscript includes further amendments made during the reign of Elizabeth I: a marginal note to f. 19v states that one statute was altered in the 7th year of Elizabeth’s reign, i.e. 1565, referring to the installation of new knights to the lowest stalls in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, unless they are foreign royals (‘Statutes’, p. 50); this was designed to prevent a knight of lower rank occupying the seat of a knight of higher rank when replacing him in the Order, which was the previous, more democratic tradition. There is also a single Elizabethan recension contained in the manuscript, which is the last item, ‘It was also ordered the same day by her Majestie (etc.)’, stating that those previously convicted of high treason but since pardoned will be allowed to (re)join the Order, instituted 12 Jan 1559 (‘Statutes, p. 49). The inclusion of this single Elizabethan recension in this manuscript may be significant for the identity of the dedicatee (see below). None of the statutes of Elizabeth’s later reign appear here, so 1565 is the likely ‘terminus ante quem’.

The Order of the Garter was a hugely significant element of Elizabeth’s reign. It was restricted to men until the admission of ‘Lady Companions’ in 1987 by Elizabeth II. However, the participation of women was encouraged from the Order’s inception: Queen Philippa, wife of Edward VIII, was granted £500 for robes to be worn during its ceremonies, a practice that continued during the reigns of several monarchs, notably Richard II and Henry VII. The participation of women was naturally a feature of Elizabeth’s reign, as it had been for her sister Mary, though it was Elizabeth who used the Order most successfully to establish authority over her predominantly male court. Unlike the masculine court of her father, Elizabeth’s Privy Chamber positions were occupied by women, who were granted privileged access to the monarch’s ‘natural body’. However, these same women could not hold political roles, which fell to Elizabeth’s most powerful male nobles. ‘With a power vacuum created by the obvious incapacity of the Privy Chamber, the need arose for another institutional elite within the court, an inner circle of nobility that could be graced by intimacy with the sovereign, yet not intimacy of a kind that might violate the decorum of fealty to a noble lady, bringing discredit to a female monarch. Just such an institution was available in the Order of the Garter’ (Richard B. Waddington, ‘Elizabeth I and the Order of the Garter’ in The Sixteenth Century Journal, 24.1 (1993), p. 100). 

Elizabeth may have commissioned the manuscript and its binding for presentation, since these manuscripts were often produced for a Knight upon admission to the Order, and frequently contained an illumination of the recipient’s arms; alternatively, it may have been prepared for such a purpose and never presented, though this is less likely. What is especially interesting about this manuscript is the apparently targeted addition of the Elizabethan statute concerning (re)admission to the Order for knights who have been pardoned for high treason. Several knights were degraded from the Order during Elizabeth’s reign, including Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1536-72) and Thomas Percy, 7th Early of Northumberland (1528-72), both executed for high treason. Two knights, however, who had been accused of treason in Mary I’s reign were (re)elected in the first year of Elizabeth’s: William Parr, Marquess of Northampton (1513-71), installed during Henry VIII’s reign but degraded by Mary for supporting Lady Jane Grey, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-88), who had been attainted; Parr was restored, and Dudley elected for the first time to the Garter on April 23, St. George’s Day, 1559, and it would appear that the Elizabethan statute of January that same year was entered with Parr and Dudley specifically in mind (see Elias Ashmole, The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble order of the Garter (London: 1672), p. 287). It is possible, therefore, that either one of these great men was the intended recipient of the manuscript, or that one of them commissioned it to mark their peculiar circumstances, as well as demonstrate their loyalty to the Queen who had specifically enabled their place in the Order.

Other examples of manuscripts containing the Statutes of the Garter include one in the Royal Collections made for Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk (1517-54), accepted into the Order in 1547, several months after Henry VIII’s death, having acted as chief mourner at his funeral. We have traced another example at the University of Victoria, dating from Edward VI’s reign, and another offered for sale by Les Enluminaires and presumably now in private hands, dating from c.1580. All contain illuminated ll. bearing the dedicatee’s arms, absent here, although the script of our copy is particularly fine.