Elizabeth was distinguished for loving to hold newly-chosen knights in suspense, before she ratified their election by her approval. The anniversary banquets too fell into disuse during her reign, and she introduced the most unworthy knight that had ever stood upon the record of the order. This was Charles IX. of France. On the other hand she sent the Garter to Henri Quatre. He was the last French monarch who was a companion of the order, till the reign of Louis XVIII. On the day the latter came up from Hartwell to Stanmore, on his way to France, at the period of the first restoration, the Prince Regent invested him with the brilliant insignia at Carlton House. It was on this occasion Louis XVIII. observed that he was the first King of France who had worn the garter since the period of Henri Quatre. Louis had erased his own name from the Golden Book of Nobility of Venice, when he heard that the name of Bonaparte had been inserted therein. He, perhaps, would have declined receiving the Garter, if he could have foreseen that the royal niece of the Prince Regent would, in after years, confer the order on the imperial nephew of Napoleon. The period of James is marked by some pretty quarrels among the officials. Thus at the installation of Prince Henry, there was a feast which was well nigh turned into a fray. At the very beginning of it, the prebends and heralds fell to loggerheads on the delicate question of precedency. The alms-knights mingled in the quarrel by siding with the prebends, and claiming the next degree of precedency before the heralds. Reference was made to the Earls of Nottingham and Worcester. The referees adjudged the heralds to have right of precedency before the prebends. Thereupon the proud prebends, oblivious of Christian humility, refused to go to church at the tail of the heralds. The latter went in exultingly without them, and the prebends would not enter until a long time had elapsed, so that it could not be said they followed the gentlemen of the tabard. The delicate question was again angrily discussed, and at length referred to the whole body of knights. The noble fraternity, after grave deliberation, finally determined that on the next day of St. George, being Sunday, in the procession to the church, the alms-knights should go first, then the pursuivants of arms, then the prebends (many of whom were doctors of divinity), and finally the heralds. The latter were cunning rogues, and no inconsiderable authority in matters of precedency; and they immediately declared that the knights had decreed to them the better place, inasmuch as that in most processions the principal personages did not walk first.