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INTRODUCTION.

the 29th September 18 Edw. III. 1344 to the 31st August 19Edw. III. 1345, 8 which, as well as other Accounts for the year1345, are of exactly the same character as those of 1348 and1349, wherein the earliest notice of Garters and the Mottooccurs.

In none of these Accounts from 1340 to 1345 is there theslightest allusion whatever to the Order, to the Motto, or toGarters; and if the Fraternity then existed, or if its Symbolor Motto had been then used as a device or decoration on habits,as they were in 1347 and 1348, they would undoubtedly havebeen mentioned in the Accounts for those years, in the sameway as they are mentioned in precisely similar Accounts of thesame person , for 1347 and 1348.

Though the Accounts of the King’s taylor, from Michaelmas1344 to August 1345 are imperfect, the part still preservedcontains a description of the Robes made for the King “forthe Feast of the Round Table held at Windsor ” in 1344; andstates that tunics and hoods were given to the King’s minstrels“ against the said Feast of the Round Table” and that variousgowns, robes, &c. were issued for the Feasts of Pentecost andEaster, apparently in 1345. 9 The King’s Robe for the Feast ofthe Round Table is described as having been “ of red velvet,furred and purfledbut neither as an appendage to thatRobe, nor to any gown or tunic mentioned in those Ac-counts, is there the most distant allusion to a Garter, or tothe Motto; so that it is quite certain that the Habit of the

8 See a list of those Accounts with references to, and some description of, the originals,in the Appendix, under Wardrobe Accounts, pp. xvi. xvii.

9 Easter Day in 1344 fell on the 4th of April, and in 1345 on the 27th of March.