Another legend is that contained in the preface to the Register or Black Book of the order, compiled in the reign of Henry VIII., by what authority supported is unknown, that Richard I., while his forces were employed against Cyprus and Acre, had been inspired through the instrumentality of St George with renewed courage and the means of animating his fatigued soldiers by the device of tying about the legs of a chosen number of knights a leathern thong or garter, to the end that being thereby reminded of the honour of their enterprise they might be encouraged to redoubled efforts for victory. This was supposed to have been in the mind of Edward III. when he fixed on the garter as the emblem of the order, and it was stated so to have been by Taylor, master of the rolls, in his address to Francis I. of France on his investiture in 1527.[47] According to Ashmole the true account of the matter is that "King Edward having given forth his own garter as the signal for a battle which sped fortunately (which with Du Chesne we conceive to be that of Crécy), the victory, we say, being happily gained, he thence took occasion to institute this order, and gave the garter (assumed by him for the symbol of unity and society) preeminence among the ensigns of it." But, as Sir Harris Nicolas points out--although Ashmole is not open to the correction--this hypothesis rests for its plausibility on the assumption that the order was established before the invasion of France in 1346. And he further observes that "a great variety of devices and mottoes were used by Edward III.; they were chosen from the most trivial causes and were of an amorous rather than of a military character. Nothing," he adds, "is more likely than that in a crowded assembly a lady should accidentally have dropped her garter; that the circumstance should have caused a smile in the bystanders; and that on its being taken up by Edward he should have reproved the levity of his courtiers by so happy and chivalrous an exclamation, placing the garter at the same time on his own knee, as 'Dishonoured be he who thinks ill of it.' Such a circumstance occurring at a time of general festivity, when devices, mottoes and conceits of all kinds were adopted as ornaments or badges of the habits worn at jousts and tournaments, would naturally have been commemorated as other royal expressions seem to have been by its conversion into a device and motto for the dresses at an approaching hastilude."[48] Moreover, Sir Harris Nicolas contends that the order had no loftier immediate origin than a joust or tournament. It consisted of the king and the Black Prince, and 24 knights divided into two bands of 12 like the tilters in a hastilude----at the head of the one being the first, and of the other the second; and to the companions belonging to each, when the order had superseded the Round Table and had become a permanent institution, were assigned stalls either on the sovereign's or the prince's side of St George's Chapel. That Sir Harris Nicolas is accurate in this conjecture seems probable from the selection which was made of the "founder knights." As Beltz observes, the fame of Sir Reginald Cobham, Sir Walter Manny and the earls of Northampton, Hereford and Suffolk was already established by their warlike exploits, and they would certainly have been among the original companions had the order been then regarded as the reward of military merit only. But, although these eminent warriors were subsequently elected as vacancies occurred, their admission was postponed to that of several very young and in actual warfare comparatively unknown knights, whose claims to the honour may be most rationally explained on the assumption that they had excelled in the particular feats of arms which preceded the institution of the order. The original companionship had consisted of the sovereign and 25 knights, and no change was made in this respect until 1786, when the sons of George III. and his successors were made eligible notwithstanding that the chapter might be complete. In 1805 another alteration was effected by the provision that the lineal descendants of George II. should be eligible in the same manner, except the Prince of Wales for the time being, who was declared to be "a constituent part of the original institution"; and again in 1831 it was further ordained that the privilege accorded to the lineal descendants of George II. should extend to the lineal descendants of George I. Although, as Sir Harris Nicolas observes, nothing is now known of the form of admitting ladies into the order, the description applied to them in the records during the 14th and 15th centuries leaves no doubt that they were regularly received into it.