In February, 1652, the Parliament abolished all titles and honors conferred by Charles I. since the 4th of January, two years previously. This was done on the ground that the late King had conferred such titles and honors, in order to promote his wicked and treacherous designs against the parliament and people of England. A fine of one hundred pounds was decreed against every offender, whenever he employed the abolished title, with the exception of a knight, who was let off at the cheaper rate of forty pounds. Any one convicted of addressing a person by any of the titles thus done away with, was liable to a fine of ten shillings. The Parliament treated with silent contempt the titles and orders of knighthood conferred by Charles I. As monarchy was defunct, these adjuncts of monarchy were considered as defunct also. The Protector did not create a single Knight of the Garter, nor of the Bath. “_These_ orders,” says Nicolas, “were never formally abolished, but they were probably considered so inseparably united to the person, name, and office of a king, as to render it impossible for any other authority to create them.” Cromwell, however, made one peer, Howard, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, ten baronets and knights, and conferred certain degrees of precedency. It was seldom that he named an unworthy person, considering the latter in the Protector’s own point of view, but the Restoration was no sooner an accomplished fact, when to ridicule one of Oliver’s knights was a matter of course with the hilarious dramatic poets. On this subject something will be found under the head of “Stage Knights.” Meanwhile, although there is nothing to record touching Knights of the Garter, under the Commonwealth, we may notice an incident showing that Garter King-at-arms was not altogether idle. This incident will be sufficiently explained by the following extract from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England.” The author is speaking of the regicide Ludlow, who, since the Restoration, had been living in exile at Geneva. “The Revolution opened a new prospect to him. The right of the people to resist oppression, a right which, during many years, no man could assert without exposing himself to ecclesiastical anathemas and to civil penalties, had been solemnly recognised by the Estates of the realm, and had been proclaimed by Garter King-at-arms, on the very spot where the memorable scaffold had been set up.”