This week Westminster Abbey was the scene for the important 'Service for Knights of the Order of the Bath'. If the Queen, as the Sovereign had presided over the proceedings, dressed in an elaborate, cumbersome robe with a full train, worn over an evening dress and with the heavy Queen Mary tiara on her head, she would have been required to walk up and down a short, but steep, flight of steps in the Lady Chapel of Henry VII. However, following a dress rehearsal on Thursday night, her aides reluctantly admitted that negotiating the steps in full regalia would be too much for the 88 year old and although she did attend the service, she sat and watched from the relative comfort of her stall as her 65 year old son and heir, Prince Charles, stood in for her.
The badge of the Order depicts three crowns with the motto, 'Tria juncta in uno' , 'Three joined in one', as well as “Ich dien”, “I serve,” the motto of the Prince of Wales and the emblems of England, Scotland and Ireland, rose, thistle and shamrock respectively.First mentioned in an official document in 1128, like many traditional ceremonies it had disappeared by the end of the fifteenth century and was revived by the unpleasant and far from chivalric King George I in 1725, when then Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, driven by far from chivalric motives, needed an additional source of reward to buy political support.
At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Prince Regent, who would go on to become the debauched and even more unchivalric King George IV, expanded the order and formally abolished the bathing rites, as well as vigils and fasting.
The Order was revived again in 1913, this time by the Queen's Grandfather, the traditional and hard-working George V, in the modified form that continues today with Knights installed as a group. However, each knight has their own 'stall' in the Abbey, with plates, banners and crests hanging above the stall until their death when they are returned to his family. Old would-be knights may have to wait many years before a stall becomes vacant and Lord Mountbatten could not take up his place for 17 years.Concessions were made to the fact that Britain had joined the 20th century when women were admitted to the Order in 1971 and it now consists of the Sovereign, 'The Great Master', The Prince of Wales and three classes of members with 120 top rank, 'Knights and 'Dames Grand Cross', 295 middle ranking 'Knights and Dames Commander' with 1,455 'Companions' in the vanguard.
Here, on the right, the 87 year old Sir Derek Oulton, a top civil servant in the 1980s, waited in the Abbey cloisters for the dozen new knights who included 76 year olds : Admiral Sir Jock Slater, former Chief of Naval Staff and First Sea Lord and Field Marshal, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank (left), former Commander-in-Chief the British Army.This important 'Order of the Bath Service' is held every four years and always attended by Prince Charles who is joined every eighth year by the Queen, who was last present in May 2006.
While in the country at large, poor old men languish without community support for their loneliness, eating, dressing and washing, they can at least sit back in their armchairs knowing that taxpayers money, no longer spent of them because of Government expenditure cuts, is continuing to support the initiation of old men far more worthy than them into the Order of the Knights of Bath.
http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/britain-is-no-country-for-more-and-more.html
P.S.
It's good to see the tradition of not allowing the cameras to film the initiation of the old men continues with the Queen only seen arriving and leaving :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVqCsgdKMeU
'Tis now and 'twas so in 1960 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXfz4N5Osc
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