In the shadowed middle years of the fourteenth century, as England grappled with the twin forces of a glorious foreign war and the creeping dread of pestilence, King Edward III conceived an institution that would become the most prestigious and enduring symbol of the European chivalric ideal. On St. George’s Day 1348, at a Windsor Castle still echoing with the triumphs of Crécy, the Most Noble Order of the Garter was born. It was a masterstroke of royal propaganda, a military fellowship, and a political alliance rolled into one shining, enigmatic symbol. And at the heart of this new brotherhood, second only to the King and his heir, stood a man whose life embodied the very virtues the Order sought to celebrate: Henry of Grosmont, the great Earl of Lancaster and Lincoln, and soon to be the first non-royal Duke in English history. His story, deeply entwined with the fortunes of Lincolnshire, provides a powerful lens through which to understand the genesis of this supreme chivalric honour.
The Architect of Chivalry: King Edward III
To understand the Garter, one must first understand its founder. Edward III was more than a warrior king; he was a consummate political showman who understood the power of spectacle and ideology. Ascending the throne in 1327 after the disastrous reign and deposition of his father, Edward II, he dedicated his life to restoring the prestige and authority of the English monarchy. His primary vehicle for this was the audacious claim to the French throne, which precipitated the Hundred Years’ War in 1337.
Edward consciously modelled his court on the legendary court of King Arthur. Chivalry, with its elaborate codes of honour, martial prowess, and courtly love, was not mere romance to him; it was a practical tool of statecraft. It fostered a competitive, militaristic spirit among his nobility, bound them to his person through shared ideals and rewards, and projected an image of magnificent power to rival courts across Europe.
An early, ambitious attempt at institutionalising this vision occurred in 1344. Following a magnificent tournament at Windsor, Edward swore an oath to found a "Round Table" of 300 knights in imitation of Arthur. He even began construction on a vast circular building, 200 feet in diameter, to house this fellowship. However, the project stalled, likely due to its immense cost and the logistical challenges of maintaining such a large, exclusive group. The renewal of intense campaigning in France also diverted the king’s resources and attention.
The Garter was the brilliant, refined successor to this grand but failed project. Smaller, more exclusive, and nimbler, it achieved everything the Round Table had promised and more. It was to be a select band of 26 "founder knights," including the Sovereign (the King) and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales. This elite cadre represented the cream of England’s military command—men who had proven their worth and loyalty on the battlefields of France. The Order established a spiritual home at the newly rebuilt St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and a political nexus at the heart of the royal court.
The Premier Magnate: Henry of Grosmont, a Man of Lincolnshire
Among the twenty-four knights chosen to join the King and the Black Prince, none was more distinguished or powerful than Henry of Grosmont. Born around 1310, he was a prince of the blood, a great-grandson of King Henry III, and the cousin of Edward III. His father was Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, the man who had led the opposition to Edward II and helped place the young Edward III on the throne. From this lineage, Henry of Grosmont inherited not only immense wealth and lands but also a profound sense of duty and a central position in the politics of the realm.
His connection to Lincolnshire was fundamental to his power. Upon his father’s death in 1345, he became the 4th Earl of Lancaster and, crucially, also the 4th Earl of Lincoln. This title gave him immense authority within the county. He held the great Honour of Bolingbroke, the Honour of Lancaster’s lands scattered across the region, and wielded quasi-regal power from his administrative seat at Lincoln Castle. While smaller lordships like the Barony of Brattleby existed with their own tenants-in-chief and manorial courts, the lives of their inhabitants were inescapably shaped by the overarching influence of the Earl of Lincoln. He appointed the sheriff, influenced the selection of knights of the shire for Parliament, and his vast agricultural estates—focused on the lucrative wool trade—dominated the county’s economy. When the Earl’s retainers rode out from Lincoln or Bolingbroke, the entire county took notice.
But Henry was far more than a powerful landowner. He was, by all contemporary accounts, the perfect exemplar of the chivalric knight. Jean Froissart, the great chronicler of the age, repeatedly praised him as a "wise and imaginative" knight (preudomme), valiant in arms, and a sagacious counsellor.
His military career was stellar. He served with distinction in the Scottish campaigns and was a key commander from the outset of the Hundred Years’ War. He fought at the great naval victory of Sluys in 1340. In 1345, he was appointed King’s Lieutenant in Gascony and led one of the most successful campaigns of the war. His brilliant chevauchée—a lightning raid deep into French territory—devastated the region around Bergerac and Auberoche, securing English territory and netting a fortune in plunder and ransoms. He played a significant role at the pivotal Battle of Crécy in 1346 and was instrumental in the year-long Siege of Calais that followed. When the town finally fell in 1347, it was Henry of Lancaster who received the keys from the famous six burghers.
Beyond his military prowess, Henry was a renowned diplomat, frequently entrusted by Edward III with sensitive negotiations with the French, the Papacy, and the Counts of Flanders. He was also famously pious, undertaking a crusade with the Teutonic Knights in Prussia in 1352 and, towards the end of his life, authoring a deeply personal allegorical treatise, the Livre de Seyntz Medicines ("Book of Holy Medicines"), a devotional work of remarkable introspection. Soldier, diplomat, administrator, author, and crusader—if the Order of the Garter sought a model knight, it could find no better candidate than Henry of Grosmont.
"Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense": The Enigmatic Founding
The precise date for the founding of the Order is a subject of some historical debate, with scholars divided between 1348 and 1349. However, the traditional date of 23 April 1348, St. George's Day, remains the most widely accepted. The timing is profoundly significant. By mid-1348, the first tidings of the Black Death, a pandemic of unimaginable horror that was scything its way across Europe, had reached England. The foundation of the Garter, with its attendant feasts, tournaments, and magnificent ceremony, can be seen as an act of defiant splendour—a reaffirmation of divine favour, aristocratic order, and martial confidence in the face of encroaching chaos and mortality.
The Order’s famous motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Shame on him who thinks evil of it"), is shrouded in a legend first recorded by the Tudor historian Polydore Vergil nearly a century and a half later. The story tells that during a court ball, the garter of Joan of Kent, Countess of Salisbury (or another lady), slipped to the floor. As courtiers sniggered at her embarrassment, King Edward gallantly retrieved the item, strapped it to his own leg, and uttered the famous phrase, promising to make the garter an object of the highest honour.
It is a charming tale, but almost certainly a romantic fabrication. Historians point out that a garter was a common piece of both male and female attire. More compelling interpretations of the motto suggest a political meaning. It may have been a direct challenge to anyone, particularly the French King Philip VI, who questioned Edward’s claim to the French throne. In this reading, "it" refers not to the garter itself, but to the king's ambitious project. The motto becomes a defiant warning: "Shame on anyone who thinks ill of my great enterprise." The Order, therefore, was the sworn fellowship that would see this enterprise through.
The symbolism was potent. The patron was St. George, a warrior saint whose popularity Edward deliberately promoted over the more passive St. Edward the Confessor, cementing a new, martial English identity. The Garter itself, a simple blue buckled strap, was embroidered with the gold motto. The choice of blue was itself a political statement; it was the primary colour of the French royal coat of arms, a sartorial usurpation of the Valois dynasty’s own symbol.
The Founder Knights: An Unrivalled Fellowship
The twenty-six founder knights were the martial and political elite of Edward III's England. They were a band of brothers forged in the fires of the French war. Beside the King and Edward the Black Prince—already a hero at sixteen for his role at Crécy—the stalls at St. George’s Chapel were filled by men like Sir John Chandos, the master strategist and close companion of the Prince; Sir Walter Manny, a Hainaulter whose daring exploits were legendary; the Gascon hero Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch; and the Earls of Warwick, Salisbury, and March.
Henry of Grosmont’s paramount status among these titans was clear from the outset. He was granted the stall on the Sovereign’s left in the chapel, the position of highest honour (the Prince of Wales occupied the stall to the right). This was a public acknowledgement of his rank, his immense wealth, and his indispensable service to the crown. His inclusion was not merely an honour bestowed; it was a political necessity. For the Garter to have credibility, it had to include the most powerful magnate in the kingdom. By binding Henry so closely to the throne, Edward III co-opted his power and ensured his loyalty, transforming a potential rival into the foremost pillar of his regime.
The Garter was more than a medal. It created a tangible brotherhood. The knights were expected to attend the annual St. George’s Day feast at Windsor, to wear their robes and insignia on prescribed occasions, and to hear mass for the souls of deceased members. Each knight was assigned a stall in the chapel, above which his helm, crest, and sword were hung, and an enamelled stall plate bearing his arms was affixed—a tradition that continues to this day. This created a permanent, visible record of their glory and a powerful incentive for future generations to aspire to the same honour.
The Lincolnshire Connection: Power, Patronage, and War
For the people of Lincolnshire, from the fenland graziers to the merchants of Lincoln and Boston, the elevation of their Earl to this pre-eminent position had real-world consequences. Henry’s status as a founder knight of the Garter solidified his role as the unassailable power in the county. His authority, already vast, was now burnished with the ultimate royal endorsement.
His role in the Hundred Years’ War, which the Garter celebrated, had a direct impact on the county. Commissions of array were issued in Henry’s name to raise archers and men-at-arms from the Lincolnshire countryside for the campaigns in France. The great port of Boston was a key embarkation point for men, supplies, and, most importantly, wool. The wool trade was the engine of the English economy, and Henry’s vast estates in Lincolnshire, along with those of other magnates, were major producers. The taxes on this wool funded the war, and its flow was a major diplomatic lever, one which Henry the diplomat often wielded on the king’s behalf.
The administration of the Duchy of Lancaster's lands from Lincoln and Bolingbroke brought a level of quasi-royal authority into the shire. Henry's officials ran courts, collected rents, and managed resources with an efficiency that mirrored the king's own government. His presence—and that of his large, liveried retinue—would have been a common sight at the county court in Lincoln Castle. His patronage determined the careers of many local gentry, who sought service in his household or on his estates as a route to advancement. While a tenant on the Brattleby manor might owe direct service to his immediate lord, the political and economic weather was made by the great Earl in the castle on the hill.
Legacy: The Duke, His Daughter, and a Dynasty
In 1351, in recognition of his unparalleled service, Edward III bestowed a new and unprecedented title upon Henry. He was created Duke of Lancaster, the first man outside the immediate royal family to hold a dukedom. This cemented his position as the premier nobleman of England. He continued to serve the king faithfully in war and diplomacy, leading another great raid into Normandy in 1356.
But the great soldier who had survived countless battles could not survive the invisible enemy that had haunted Europe since the year of the Garter’s founding. The Black Death, having first arrived in 1348-49, returned in a second wave known as the pestis secunda. On 23 March 1361, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Lincoln, and Leicester, Steward of England, and founder knight of the Garter, died of the plague at Leicester Castle. He was buried with great ceremony in the collegiate church he had founded there.
He left no male heir. His colossal inheritance was divided between his two daughters, Maud and Blanche. When Maud died childless just a year later in 1362, the entire Lancastrian estate—a state within a state—was consolidated in the hands of the younger daughter, Blanche. In 1359, Blanche had married Edward III’s fourth son, John of Gaunt, Earl of Richmond. Upon Henry’s death, Gaunt became Duke of Lancaster in right of his wife.
This marriage, which united the vast Lancastrian inheritance with a royal prince, created a power base of unimaginable scale. John of Gaunt became the wealthiest and most powerful man in England for the next thirty years. And it was his son, Henry Bolingbroke (born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire), who would use that power to depose his cousin Richard II in 1399 and seize the throne as King Henry IV, the first king of the House of Lancaster.
Thus, in a strange twist of fate, the Order of the Garter—an institution created by Edward III to foster unity among his military elite—honoured the man whose legacy would, through his daughter, provide the very means for his own dynasty’s eventual downfall. Henry of Grosmont, the perfect Plantagenet knight, became the unwitting grandfather of the Lancastrian dynasty, setting the stage for the dynastic conflict of the Wars of the Roses a century later.
The Garter remains England’s highest chivalric honour. Its origins lie in a specific moment of royal ambition, martial confidence, and looming catastrophe. Its success was guaranteed by the calibre of its founder knights, and none embodied its ideals more completely than Henry of Grosmont. He was the great magnate of the Midlands, the lord of Lincoln, a crusader, and a commander whose life of service, piety, and valour made him the first and arguably the greatest of the Garter brotherhood.
Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated by Geoffrey Brereton. Penguin Classics, 1978. (Provides narrative accounts of Henry’s campaigns and reputation). Grosmont, Henry of. Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines: The Book of Holy Medicines. Edited by E.J. Arnould. Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1940. (Henry's own devotional work, offering insight into his piety and intellect). Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward III. H.M. Stationery Office. (Details royal appointments, commissions, and grants involving Henry). The Domesday Book (for foundational landholding patterns in Lincolnshire, showing the antecedents of the honours Henry would later hold).
Secondary Sources:
Barber, Richard. Edward III and the Triumph of England: The Battle of Crécy and the Company of the Garter. Allen Lane, 2013. Bate, Jonathan, and Eric Rasmussen, eds. William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. (Contains scholarly introductions that touch upon the historical context of Edward III's reign). Beltz, George Frederick. Memorials of the Order of the Garter. William Pickering, 1841. (A classic, detailed study of the early knights). Fowler, Kenneth Alan. The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310-1361. Elek, 1969. (The definitive modern biography of Henry of Grosmont). Goodman, Anthony. John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe. Longman, 1992. (Essential for understanding the legacy of the Lancastrian inheritance). Hill, Sir Francis. Medieval Lincoln. Cambridge University Press, 1948. (The authoritative source for the history of Lincoln, detailing the role of the Earls and the castle). McFarlane, K.B. The Nobility of Later Medieval England. Oxford University Press, 1973. (A foundational work on the English aristocracy of the period). Ormrod, W. Mark. Edward III. Yale University Press, 2011. (The most comprehensive modern biography of the king, detailing his political and cultural projects). Vale, Juliet. Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and Its Context, 1270-1350. Boydell Press, 1982. (A critical academic study of the ideology and institutions of chivalry under Edward III). Victoria County History: A History of the County of Lincoln, Volume II. Edited by William Page. Archibald Constable & Co., 1906. (Provides detailed information on the religious houses and political history of the county).