186

HISTORY OF THE

[VICTORIA.

and on the 10th and 17th of May. His Majesty having been pleased partiallyto remove the anomaly that had existed since April 1815, by declaring thatsuch Knights Commanders as had not retired from the service should wear theStar assigned to them in the Ordinance of January 1815, without reference totheir professional rank, one Post-Captain and five Colonels were Invested withthe Star, on the 19th of April, and another Colonel on the 17th of May.The only appointment of a Companion in 1837, was in February, of a Post-Captain, who held the temporary rank of Commodore.

King William the Fourth died on the 20th of June 1837, and was suc-ceeded by his Royal Niece,

QUEEN VICTORIA.

Her Majesty’s first act as Sovereign of the Order of the Bath, was toappoint John George Lambton, Earl of Durham, a Civil Knight Grand Cross;and his Lordship was Invested 3 at Kensington Palace, on the 27th of June1837, his Installation being Dispensed with by a Royal Warrant on the sameday. On the 12th of July, Prince Paul Anthony Esterhazy, AmbassadorExtraordinary from the Emperor of Austria, was Invested with the Ensignsof an Honorary Knight .Grand Cross, at St. James’s Palace, but he has notyet been Installed.

On the 19th of October, George William Frederick Villiers, Esquire (whosucceeded in 1838, as fourth Earl of Clarendon), Envoy Extraordinary andMinister Plenipotentiary to Her Catholic Majesty, was nominated a CivilKnight Grand Cross; and though he was both Invested and his InstallationDispensed with, by a Royal Warrant, dated on the same day, he was Knightedby the Queen after his return to England, on the 26th of June 1839. AnotherPrince of the Blood Royal was given to the Order, on the 15th of December,by the nomination of the Sovereign’s Uncle, Sir Augustus Frederick, Dukeof Sussex, Knight of the Orders of the Garter, Thistle, and Guelph, as the

3 Neither his Lordship’s appointment nor Investiture was Gazetted.