WE come now to treat of the most Noble and Illustrious _Order of the Garter_; which, if we consider either its Antiquity, or the Nobleness of the Personages, that have been enroll’d, it excels and outvies all other Institutions of Honour in the whole World. It owes its Original, as is confessed on all Hands, to _Edward_ III. King of _England_ and _France_; yet as to the Occasion, there are several Opinions which we shall rectifie. The vulgar and more general is, that the Garter of _Joan_, Countess of _Salisbury_, dropping casually off as she danced in a solemn Ball, King _Edward_ stooping took it up from the Ground, whereupon some of his Nobles smiling, as at an amorous Action, and he observing their sportive Humour, turned it off with a Reply in _French_, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_; but withal added, in disdain of their Laughter, _That shortly they should see that Garter advanced to so high an Honour and Renown as to account themselves happy to wear it_.
BUT upon Examination of this Tradition, let others judge what Credit it bears to establish its Belief; for Sir _John Froissart_, the only Writer of the Age that treats of this Institution, assigns no such Original, nor for 200 Years after is there any thing to the Purpose in our other Historians, till _Polydore Virgil_ took occasion to say something of it; but had it been Fact, some _French_ Historian or other, would not have neglected to register it at a convenient Time with a Scoff and Ridicule, since that Nation was so ready to deride King _Henry_ V’s Design of invading them with a Return of Tennis Balls.
IN the Original Statutes of this Order, there is not the least Conjecture to countenance the Conceit of such a Feminine Institution, no not so much as laying an Obligation on the Knights-Companions to defend the Quarrels of Ladies (as some Orders then in being enjoyned;) nor doth the Author of that Tract entitled _Institutio clarissimi Ordinis Militaris a prænobili subligaculo nuncupati_, prefaced to the Black Book of the _Garter_, let fall the manifest Passage to ground it on.
AS to what _Polydore_ says, he is not so confident to ascertain the Person whose Garter it was; but cautiously declining that, says, it was either the Queen’s, or the King’s Mistress’s; and if it were the latter, yet doth he omit her Name and Title, both which (on what Authority we find not) are supplied by modern Historians, who call her _Joan_ Countess of _Salisbury_, the same elsewhere celebrated by the Name of the _Fair Maid_ of _Kent_, (whom _Edward_ the Black Prince, afterward married) whereas no Historian ever gave the least Inuendo that King _Edward_ III. ever courted her as a Mistress. _Selden_ points at her when he calls the Lady, from whom the Garter slipp’d, Countess of _Kent_ and _Salisbury_: But about the Time when this Order was founded she in truth was dignified with neither Honour; for altho’ she was Daughter to _Tho._ of _Woodstock_, Earl of _Kent_, and had been sometime the reputed Wife of _William Mountague_, second Earl of _Salisbury_, yet then she cou’d not properly be accounted Countess of _Salisbury_. She was actually Wife to Sir _Thomas Holland_, (one of the First Founders of the Order.) Nor was she yet (tho’ afterwards) Countess of Kent, because her Brother _John_ Earl of _Kent_, at the Institution of this Order, survived, and died not till 26 _Edw._ III.