The Royal Victorian Order. THE Royal Victorian Order was instituted by Queen Victoria by letters patent dated Westminster, 1896, Apr. 21. On the 20th Dec., 1898, by further letters patent dated from Westminster, certain alterations were made in the precedency of the several classes of the Order. The statutes of the Order are dated Windsor, 1899, Dec. 30, and are 23 in number. By Statute II. the Order is to consist of the sovereign and five several classes, viz., Knights Grand Cross, Knights Commanders, Commanders, members of the fourth class and members of the fifth class. By Statute IV. the members are to be "such persons, being subjects of our Crown, as may have rendered or shall hereafter render extraordinary or important or personal services to Us, our heirs and successors, who have merited or may hereafter merit our royal favour, or any persons who may hereafter be appointed officers of this Royal Order." By Statute V. the honorary members of the several classes are to consist of such foreign princes and persons as should have the honour of an Order conferred upon them. The mode of appointment is by warrant under the royal sign manual sealed with the seal of the Order. The precedency of the various classes is, in accordance with Statute VII., as follows: G.C.V.O. next to and immediately after G.C.I.E. K.C.V.O. next to and immediately after K.C.I.E. C.V.O. next to and immediately after Knights Bachelors of England. Knights Bachelors of England. Statute XIV. regulates the method of investiture, and prescribes that the sovereign will, prior to the investiture, confer the honour of knighthood upon the person nominated to be a G.C.V.O. or K.C.V.O. if that person "have not previously received the said honour" of knighthood. Further, the ceremony of investiture may by warrant under the sign manual be dispensed with, with the proviso that in the case of G.C.V.O. and K.C.V.O. this dispensing with investiture shall not entitle the person in question to the style of a knight bachelor of England "without having been duly authorised," i.e., without [presumably] the said person having been knighted either by dubbing or by letters patent (Statute XVII.). The anniversary of the Order is fixed for the 20th of June, the day of the accession of Queen Victoria to the Throne. Since the decease of Queen Victoria the already wide scope of the Order has been further enlarged. It is frequently conferred when the king is abroad on purely ceremonial occasions, and without any necessary regard to the central idea of personal service rendered to the sovereign. This is entirely in keeping, however, with the fundamental principle of the Order, viz., that it is the sovereign's private order. As to the Royal Victorian Chain, see infra, p. 415. Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order. THE Order of the Guelphs was instituted by the Prince Regent on the 12th of August, 1815. The preamble to the statutes of the Order, as issued on that date explain that King George III. had long entertained an intention of instituting an Order for Hanover, and that this intention was now carried out by the prince Regent to mark the occasion of the erection of Hanover into a kingdom, and at the same time to signalise the bravery of the Hanoverian troops in the battle of Waterloo. By the statutes which, though issued from Carlton House, were only published in German, the Grand-Mastership of the Order was to be for ever annexed to the crown of Hanover. The members were to consist of three classes, Knights Grand Cross (G.C.H.), Knights Commanders (K.C.H.), and Knights (K.H.), none below the rank of Lieutenant General being eligible for the first class, and none below that of Major General for the second. The arms and names of the knights of all three classes were to be affixed in the church of the Palace at Hanover and in the ancient Hall of Knights in the said palace. But this portion of the statutes was not carried into effect. The Order was destined for the civil as well as the military service, the qualification being the performance of some achievement worthy of the Order. The fact that there was no restriction of number, and that it was for civil as well as military merit, at a time when the Order of the Bath had neither of these characteristics, led to an extensive use of it under king William IV. That monarch, regardless of the object for which the Order had been established, bestowed it with profusion on his British subjects, although it had presumably been created as a means of rewarding Hanoverian and not British subjects. On the death of King William IV. on the 20th June, 1837, the Crown of Hanover devolved on his brother and heir male the duke of Cumberland, and so became separate from the British Crown. From this moment the Order became a purely Hanoverian one, and therefore in strictest parlance a foreign one. E The question as to whether membership of this Order entitled the holder thereof to the title of "Sir" and to the rank of a knight bachelor of Great Britain is concisely stated by Nicolas in his general remarks on the Order. Neither George IV. nor William IV. supposed that such title or precedence would attach to the members. Regarding the Order as strictly a foreign one, both those kings always knighted those members of the Order whom they meant to make knights bachelors of Great Britain. Further than this, William IV. expressly intimated his opinion to that effect after having taken the advice of the lord chancellor on the subject. A paper having been laid before the king in Oct. 1831, containing reasons for the contention that all the knights of the Order of the Guelphs became ipso facto knights bachelors, the king saw so much objection to the principle (that the acceptance of any foreign Order should confer on the individual the honour of knighthood without his being knighted by the Sovereign) that he asked it to be referred to the lord chancellor. The lord chancellor's opinion was understood to be decidedly against any such right, and the king afterwards appointed several hundred British subjects to the Order, being assured that they would not thereby become knights bachelors of England. Knights Bachelors of England. ANCIENT authors have derived the antiquity of knighthood from St. Michael the Archangel, whom they term their premier Chevalier, Whilst not agreeing with this, other writers assert that it is as ancient as valour itself, and derived its original from Troy, which bred many in the heroic paths of virtue and arms, who were deservedly esteemed knights such as Hector, etc. Such ancient conceits apart, it may be at once asserted that the mediæval institution of knighthood, of which the modern institution is a derivative, is of Frankish origin. There are two streams or lines of derivation which can be, if not traced, at least conjectured. 1. The direct or immediate derivation from the ceremonial or ritual of knighthood in use in the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne. 2. The indirect or immediate derivation from that form of military organisation which, in its fullest growth, we call the feudal system. As to the first of these it is probable that the highly ceremonial form of knighthood which was used by Charlemagne was derived by him from the Eastern Empire, and that in its origin it represents a strange admixture of the ideas or institutions of ancient Rome and of the invading Barbarians. Ancient Rome furnished the idea of a knightly Order, as a separate class; the invading barbarians changed the idea of the institution; made it wholly military in purpose, and adorned it with their own forms of ceremonial. Not that the institution of the Equestrian Order of ancient Rome was the parent of the mediæval institution of knighthood. The distinguishing feature of the Ordo Equestris of Rome was the census equestris and the censor's choice or allowance of the individual census. Both these characteristics are absent from the medieval conception of knighthood. But the Roman institution furnished the idea of a separate Order or status, Between this idea and the barbarian idea of distinction arising only by valour in arms there is a possible connecting link, viz., the institution or custom of adoption per arma, which becomes a marked feature of the Roman Empire at the time of the invasions of the barbarians. It was such an adoption that Justinian used with the king of the |