[GARTER.]

£55,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

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 lowe

• Binding: Hardcover

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