Matilda threw as many obstacles as she could in the way of the completion of the nuptial ceremony. At last this solemn matter was definitively settled to come off at Rouen, on the 26th of August, 1127. Geoffrey must have been a knight before his marriage with Matilda. However this may be, he is said to have been created an English knight in honor of the occasion. To show how he esteemed the double dignity of knight and husband, he prepared himself for both, by first taking a bath, and afterward putting on a clean linen shirt. Chroniclers assure us that this is the first instance, since the Normans came into England, in which bathing is mentioned in connection with knighthood. Over his linen shirt Geoffrey wore a gold-embroidered garment, and above all a purple mantle. We are told too that he wore silk stockings, an article which is supposed to have been unknown in England until a much later period. His feet were thrust into a gay pair of slippers, on the outside of each of which was worked a golden lion. In this guise he was wedded to Matilda, and never had household lord a greater virago for a lady. From this circumstance the Knights of the Bath are said to have had their origin. For a considerable period, this order of chivalry ranked as the highest military order in Europe. All the members were companions. There was but one chief, and no knight ranked higher, nor lower, than any other brother of the society. The order, nevertheless, gradually became obsolete. Vacancies had not been filled up; that Garter had superseded the Bath, and it was not till the reign of George II. that the almost extinct fraternity was renewed. Its revival took place for political reasons, and these are well detailed by Horace Walpole, in his “Reminiscences of the Courts of George the First and Second.” “It was the measure,” he says, “of Sir Robert Walpole, and was an artful bunch of thirty-six ribands, to supply a fund of favors, in lieu of places. He meant, too, to stave off the demand for garters, and intended that the red should have been a stage to the blue; and accordingly took one of the former himself. He offered the new order to old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for her grandson the Duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her granddaughters. She haughtily replied, that they should take nothing but the Garter. ‘Madam,’ said Sir Robert, coolly, ‘they who take the Bath will the sooner have the Garter.’ The next year he took the latter himself, with the Duke of Richmond, both having been previously installed knights of the revived institution.” Sir Robert respected the forms and laws of the old institution, and these continued to be observed down to the period following the battle of Waterloo. Instead of their creating a new order for the purpose of rewarding the claimants for distinction, it was resolved to enlarge that of the Bath, which was, therefore, divided into three classes.