The first knight invested by Charles I. was an alien chevalier, of only noble degree. This was the Duke de Chevreuse, who was Charles’s proxy at his nuptials with Henrietta Maria, and who thus easily won the honors of chivalry among the Companions of St. George. It seems, however, that the honor in question was generally won by foreigners, because of their being engaged in furthering royal marriages. Thus, when the King’s agent in Switzerland, Mr. Fleming, in the year 1633, suggested to the government that the Duke of Rohan should be elected a knight of the Garter, Mr. Secretary Coke made reply that “The proposition hath this inconvenience, that the rites of that ancient order comport not with innovation, and no precedent can be found of any foreign subject ever admitted into it, if he were not employed in an inter-marriage with this crown, as the Duke of Chevreuse lately was.” There certainly was not a word of truth in what the Secretary Coke thus deliberately stated. Not only had the Garter frequently been conferred on foreign subjects who had had nothing to do as matrimonial agents between sovereign lovers, but only twelve years after Coke thus wrote, Charles conferred the order upon the Duke d’Espernon, who had no claim to it founded upon such service as is noticed by the learned secretary. At the death of Charles I. there was not, strictly speaking, a single foreign sovereign prince belonging to the order. The three foreign princes, Rupert, William of Orange, and the Elector Palatine, can not justly be called so. The other foreign knights were the Dukes of Chevreuse and Espernon. The foreign knights of the order created by Charles II. were Prince Edward, son of “Elizabeth of Bohemia;” Prince Maurice, his elder brother; Henry, eldest son of the Duke de Thouas, William of Nassau, then three years of age, and subsequently our William III.; Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg; Gaspar, Count de Morchin; Christian, Prince Royal of Denmark; Charles XI., King of Sweden; George, Elector of Saxony; and Prince George of Denmark, husband of the Princess Anne. It will be seen that those who could be strictly called “sovereign princes,” claiming allegiance and owing none, do not outnumber alien knights who were expected to render obedience, and could not sovereignly exert it. Denmark and Sweden, it may be observed, quarrelled about precedency of stalls with as much bitterness as if they had been burghers of the “Krähwinkel” of Kotzebue. The short reign of James II. presents us with only one alien Knight of the Garter, namely, Louis de Duras, created also Earl of Feversham. “Il était le second de son nom,” says the Biographie Universelle, “qui eut été honoré de cette decoration, remarque particulière dans la noblesse Française.”