ABSTRACT

The closing decades of the eighteenth century witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the historic past of Britain, from its aboriginal inhabitants to the Saxon settlement and into the Middle Ages.1 As part of this re-evaluation of Britain's historic legacy, the reign of Edward III was often held up as one of the most glorious eras in British national history. In the 1780s, Benjamin West had produced a picture cycle for George Ill's Audience Chamber in Windsor Castle, illustrating the reign of Edward III, his military victories and more particularly the creation of the Order of the Garter (fig. 6). In choosing to celebrate Edward's reign, the king and his painter had emphatically demonstrated that the Middle Ages were not a barbaric episode in the national history. It has been argued that George III was wrapping himself in British history and traditions as a means of responding to the shocks of the American and French Revolutions and the concomitant agitation for democratic changes in Britain itself. If so, this impulse was continued into the new century with more munificent royal patronage of mediaevalizing architecture.2 The reaffirmation of the Order of the Garter, with twenty-five new Knights installed at Windsor in a sumptuous ceremony in 1805, can be seen as part of the same endeavour to buttress contemporary authority with mediaeval prestige.3