Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 2.djvu/547

 APPENDIX B 531 8. Duke of Fife, 19 June 191 i,supernumerary till hisdeath29 Jan. 1912 9. Sir Edward Grey,(*) Feb. 191 2, supernumerary (•=) In the earlier centuries of the Order many were admitted to it of no higher degree than knight, such nominations being frequent. Three commoners were made Knights of the Garter in the short reign of Edward VI and two in the shorter one of Mary, but of these five three received peerages shortly after their admission to the Order. Elizabeth conferred the Garter on six commoners (Lord R. Dudley, Sir H. Sidney, Sir C. Hatton, Sir F. Knollys, Sir T. Howard and Sir H. Lee) of whom the first and fifth were promoted to peerages. Under James I and Charles I a few Scottish peers received the Order, and George Villiers in the former reign was admitted a few weeks before being created a peer. General Monck and Admiral Montagu received the Garter at the Restora- tion (May 1 660), being raised to the peerage in the following July. Since that date the only British subjects, being neither Royal princes, nor members of the House of Lords, upon whom the Garter has been conferred, have been Charles Fitzroy (styled Ezrl of Southampton, natural son of Charles II), the 2nd Duke of Queensberry [S.], Sir R. Walpole, Frederick North, stykd Lord North, Robert Stewart, sty/ed Viscount Castlereagh [I.], Viscount Palmerston [I.], and Sir Edward Grey. Of these Castlereagh and Palmer- ston died members of the House of Commons, of which Sir E. Grey is still a member; the rest either succeeded to English or British Peerages or had such conferred upon them. Walpole was, until the recent admission of Sir E. Grey, the only commoner not possessing a courtesy title, who received the Garter after 1660. The ist Duke of Roxburghe and the 3rd Earl of Bute (George Ill's Prime Minister) had no British peerages, but sat for several years in the House of Lords as Scottish representative peers, ceasing to be members of that House when they retired from the representation. The 3rd Duke of Hamilton also, for the short period between his nomination as a Knight of the Garter and his death, was a member of the House of Lords in virtue of his election as a representative peer, his British peerage (created since the Union) being, by a resolution of the House in 171 1, declared not to have the effect of conferring a seat in it, although the Duke of Queensberry had taken his seat without demur on a similar qualification in 1708, retaining it till his death in 171 1. With regard to the particular vacancies to which the knights succeeded, it is practically impossible to assign these with any degree of certainty in the earlier years, while on the other hand the task presents little difficulty in the later ones, at least after the accession of Henry VIII. There being no extant contemporary records before 14 16, the main authorities for the early period are the Windsor Tables, giving the succession of stalls from the institution of the Order till the reign of Edward IV with some later additions up to about the middle of that of Henry VII. These were in existence in the time of Ashmole (1672), but had disappeared before Anstis (*) Then Foreign Secretary. C') See note " d " on previous page.