The world has outlived them, and suffers nothing by their loss. It was the successor of Richmond, namely Henry VIII. who granted to these knights what may be termed a sumptuary privilege, that of being permitted to wear woollen cloth made out of the realm. None but a knight, save the peers, dared don a coat or mantle made of foreign cloth. In love of splendor, Henry was equal to his predecessor, and perhaps never was a more brilliant spectacle seen than on the 27th of May, 1519, when the King and a glittering cortège rode from Richmond to Windsor, and changed steeds and drank a cup at the “Catherine’s Wheel,” in Colnbrook, by the way. The Queen and a galaxy of ladies met them in Eton, and the usual solemnities were followed by a gorgeous banquet, at which there were such meat and music as had scarcely ever been so highly enjoyed at a festival before. The middle of the hall was crowded with spectators, but at the close of the repast, these were turned out, when “the King was served of his void, the knights also, standing all along”--which must have been a remarkably edifying exhibition. Henry re-modelled the order, and framed the statutes by which it is now chiefly governed. Among them was the one directing that no person of mean birth should be elected, and this the King himself very speedily broke, by electing Thomas Cromwell. The latter returned thanks for the honor in the very humblest strain, and while he seemed conscious that he was entirely unworthy of the distinction, he appeared desirous to assure the sneering knights’ companions who had been compelled to give him their suffrages, that ignoble as he was, he would imitate nobility as closely as possible. But there were men, from the period of the institution of the order downward to Henry’s time, who, if of higher birth than Cromwell, were not of higher worth. Very many had forfeited their dignity as knights by treasonable practices; and Henry decreed that wherever these names occurred in the records, the words “Vœ Proditor!”--Out upon the traitor--should be written against them in the margin. The text had thus a truly Tudor comment. Under the succeeding sovereign, Edward VI., a great portion of the splendor of the religious ceremonies at the installation was abolished. It was in this reign that Northumberland procured the ejection of Lord Paget from the order, on the ground that the meanness of his birth had always disqualified him, or as Edward VI. says in his journal, “for divers his offences, and _chiefly_ because he was no gentleman of blood, neither of father-side nor mother-side.” Lord Paget, however, was restored under Mary, and the record of his degradation was removed from the register.