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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Trigg, Stephanie.
Shame and honor : a vulgar history of the Order of the Garter / Stephanie Trigg. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4391-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Order of the GarterHistory. 2. Orders of knighthood and chivalryGreat BritainHistory. I. Title.
CR4827.T75 2012
929.710941dc23
2011044323
For Paul James and Joel Trigg
Introduction
Its a nice piece of pageantry which I think a lot of people enjoy.... Rationally its lunatic but in practice everyone enjoys it I think.
HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in The Queens Castle
They wear trailing mantles of blue velvet lined with white silk, a red velvet hood pinned to the right shoulder with a red sash draped across the body, and a black velvet hat piled high with white ostrich feathers. On the left shoulder, their mantles are adorned with a large embroidered scutcheon featuring a red cross surrounded by a motto in gold letters. A white silk ribbon is tied in a bow on each shoulder, and a heavy enamel and gold chain is draped around the neck, weighted further with an enamel model of a knight slaying a dragon. A long golden cord with large tassels is tied and looped so that one end sits lower than the other, as it has done since the fourteenth century. Underneath this elaborate costume, they wear a gray suit, or a long white dress. This is the modern medievalism of the Most Noble Order of the Garter in the twenty-first century (figure 1).
As the members of the Order of the Garter move slowly down the hill from the keep at Windsor Castle to St. Georges Chapel they are accompanied by the cheers and applause of the crowd on either side, the music of military bands, and the click of cameras. The procession is led by the military knights of Windsor and the officers of arms; it moves slowly, in deference to both the crowds and the age of some of its members. Several, indeed, have already been driven down the hill. When the Garter Companions appear, the newest members come first, and the last to pass by is the Queen, the train of her mantle held by two young pages. The long parade winds into the south side of the chapel, and the crowd settles down on the grass to listen to a broadcast of the service, following along with the help of the printed glossy guide. The sound quality is terrible. After an hour or so, there is more movement. The procession leaves the chapel down the broad steps on the west side, and the members climb into cars or open carriages for the trip up the hill. Women in elaborate hats and dresses and men in morning suits emerge from the chapel, enjoying their turn to be the object of the gaze of tourists, royalists, and photographers. An academic observer (and amateur photographer) is also there to observe the procession. The crowds on the lawns are all dressed rather more practically, wearing comfortable shoes and standing amid the clutter of folding chairs and picnic lunches (figure 2).
Figure 1. Prince Andrew and Prince Edward in the Garter procession, 2009. Photographer Chris Jackson. Getty Images.
The annual procession of the Order of the Garter is one of the principal events in the ritual year of the English monarchy. Like many examples of proud display and ritual practice in the royal calendar, the procession represents a symbolic inheritance from the Middle Ages. The Order was founded in the 1340s, and has a more or less continuous history of activity, though the Garter procession in its current form at Windsor Castle dates from a postwar revival in 1947. The robes and regalia worn by the Companions represent an accretion of styles from different centuries. Carrying the weight of medieval tradition, the procession provides an excellent opportunity for loyal subjects to feast on the visible accessibility of the royal family and the other members of this elite chivalric order. It offers a perfect blend of royal tourism, heritage culture, celebrity culture, and the magnificent costumes of medievalist dress-ups, yet Garter Day is a less familiar spectacle than the daily Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. In contrast to that daily fixture of Londons international tourist calendar, the annual procession at Windsor attracts a higher proportion of English visitors and dedicated royalists who demonstrate their affinity with the royal family and their comprehension of the days significance by ordering tickets in advance and making the hour-long train journey from Waterloo Station in London to Windsor. Lining the route, the crowds are players in the ritual performance, for a procession needs an audience in the way the changing of the guard does not. As they clap and cheer the familiar faces of the royal family and past prime ministers, and acknowledge the less familiar members of the Order, these visitors are also taking part in an act of medievalism, celebrating the modern ritual of the medieval Garter.
Apart from its ornate costume, one of the most striking things people remember about the Order of the Garter is its putative foundation myth. According to this story, the Order was founded by Edward III to honor an embarrassing occasion. The king is said to have been dancing with a lady, perhaps the Countess of Salisbury, when the garter holding up her stocking fell to the floor. As the courtiers laughed at her distress, the chivalrous or enamored king is said to have retrieved the garter and tied it around his own leg, declaring Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shamed be he who thinks evil of this or more proverbially, Evil be to him who evil thinks) and promising to found an order of knighthood in honor of the garter that would become so famous that all those now laughing would want to join it.
Figure 2. Guests at Garter service. Photo by the author.
This story of a medieval royal scandal about sex and underclothes has often been dismissed as a fantastic or romantic invention, but it has nevertheless given rise to a long and beloved tradition. Again and again, the venerable history of the Garter returns to this mythical moment of ritual disruption. There have been many attempts to displace this scandalous narrative with a series of more palatable explanations of the Orders origins, but such attempts have been largely unsuccessful: there is something pleasant, even gratifying to the popular imagination and to the national mythology about finding a desiring royal body and an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction at the heart of one of the monarchys proudest rituals. Even when the Orders official and apologetic historians dismiss this story as a romantic fiction, attempting to control the irreverent mythologies of popular medievalism, they are condemned to a similar logic as they repeat the story in order to transcend it. Like the king in the Garter myth, they seek to transform this trace of medieval frivolity into something nonmedieval, something that will endure without embarrassment into a future, modern temporality.
