SPECIAL BADGE.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18725, 23 June 1926, Page 8

SPECIAL BADGE.

FOR KNIGHTS BACHELOR | THE KING'S DECISION. {ntost otra own cobbespokdext.) LONDON, May 4. Tlio King's decision that in future Knights Bachelor may wear a special badge indicative of their rank and the design officially approved for that decoration combine (says "The Times") to revive pleasing mediaeval memories. The Roman Knight was content with a ring to denote his status, but bis medieval successor who so notably renewed the warlike associations of the rank wore belt, sword, and spurs to proclaim it, and took care that bis spurs should be golden to distinguish him from humbler mortals who had to be content with Jess illustrious metal for the purpose. The wearing of a knightly belt as such can hardly have survived the use of a fairly complete panoply of armour, as it is shown, on monumental effigies, as being usually weli below tho waist; consequently its display in ordinary warfare became inconvenient when the wearing of armour below the breast plate began to be discontinued. The golden spurs, however, lingered rather longer, and a story is told that a gallant knight in the late war habitually wore them, as he was justly entitled, to do, but, being a modest man and unwilling to bo accused of vanity or mistaken for a profiteer took the precaution of having the gold electro-plated. Bo this as it may, Be. and his brother Knights Bachelor, will now rejoice in that a grievance of long standing has been removed by the King's gracious act. For, until to-day, tho modern Knight Bachelor has. had no badge or symbol to mark him out from less exalted fellows on those occasions when decorations are worn. He took rank before tho Companions and Commanders of the Orders of Chivalry, but had nothing to show | for it, except that some careful herald- , painter may have endowed him with a helmet appropriate for a Knight in- ' stead of that of an Esquire over his , shield of arms on a book-plate. And | even that was only in virtue of a late rulinir introduced years after helmets ' of the kind depicted had ceased to be | worn by men of any rank in war. [ So marked indeed was the association 1 of a decoration to bo worn on the per- ' son with membership of an Ordei of fc Chivalry that in common speech the ■ word "Order" is wrongly used to 3 describe the jewel of gold and enamel 5 itself; "He was wearing his Orders" is' often heard, and the Knisht Bachelor who did not belong to any Order, or association of knightly and other members, had in consequence no jewel to wear. All ho could do was to take a secret pride in the fact that no man other than a Knight Bachelor can be admitted into the Order of the Garter, even if the King has to dub him knight immediately before his investiture with all the panoply and ornaments of that illustrious confraternity. Collar Proposed. When the matter of asking for the grant of some distinguishing badge for the Knights Bachelor was first put forward suggestions were made that the wearing of a golden collar of S S would be appropriate. There is, however, some reason to believe that that collar : was not, at the time of its institution, considered to he indicative of the wearer's knightly status. Indeed the theory is gaining ground that it was worn as a .livery decoration by gentlemen of the household of John of Gaiirit, the famous Duke of Lancaster. "Strong evidence of this connexion between. the collar of S S and the House of Lancaster may be found in the wording of the Act 24, Henry VIII., cap. 13, which has been relied upon by some as indicating that monarch's, intention to constitute the collar as a mark of knighthood from the fact that the colours of the ribbon upon which the S S were to be displayed were ordered to be blue and white, the livery colours of John of Gaunt, and 'not the green and white of the Tudors. It has, moreover, been argued that the Act did not mean that knights only should wear the collar in question, but that only men of the rank of knicht and above were to b9 allowed to wear it in gold. If this be so, the sumptuary regulations of an age which expected a man to dress in accordance with his rank, and resented any tendency to rise above or sink below it, and would have been horrified to hear of Dukes content to be the shabbiest members of their clubs, would have limited the wearing of the collar of S S in gold to knights and peers, but would have allowed esquires. and other gentlemen to wear it in silver. Tho New Badge. There was, therefore, according to this argument, notlnng dennitely, knightly about the Collar, and it iinds no place in the. design on the new ba'dge. This shows the three unquestionably knightly symbols, the sword, the belt, and spurs. appropriately grouped upon an oval of vermilion enamel, which is to bo worn on the breast on the analogy that as it is the star worn upon the breast in addition to the badge round his neck which distinguishes classes of an Order of Chivalry from other members of lower degree, so it. is upon the breast that the decoration of a knight who is not the member of any specifio confraternity should be displayed. It is curious that the rank of Knight Bachelor which has now for some centuries only been awarded in recognition of merit should so long have had! no distinguishing mark for display in public, seeing that the golden spurs were still in vogue until comparatively few years before the Degree ceased to be intimately connected with the tenure of a prescribed amount of land, the holder of which could be, and often was, compelled willy nilly by the King to _ "take up his knighthood" and pay suitable fees to the Royal Exchequer. In other words, when knighthood could legally be thrust upon an unwilling esquire he still had something to show,for.it besides the half of an Exchequer, tally, but when he was only able to achieve knighthood, and the rank became the reward of merit and.was no longer an incident of land-tenure, the poor man could don no special ornament indicative thereof, and had to be content with the rescue of his Christian name from oblivion, a privilege _ shared in common with the least distinguished among the hereditary baronets..