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Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath[2] is a British order of chivalry founded by King George I on 18 May 1725.[3] Recipients of the Order are usually senior military officers or senior civil servants, and the monarch awards it on the advice of His Majesty's Government.[4][5] The name derives from an elaborate medieval ceremony for preparing a candidate to receive his knighthood, of which ritual bathing (as a symbol of purification) was an element. While not all knights went through such an elaborate ceremony, knights so created were known as "knights of the Bath".[6]

Most Honourable Order of the Bath

18 May 1725 (1725-05-18)

Tria juncta in uno ('Three joined in one') (Civil Division)
Ich dien (Military Division)

Service to the Crown

Currently constituted

Knight/Dame Grand Cross (GCB)
Knight/Dame Commander (KCB/DCB)
Companion (CB)

Knight Companion (KB)

George I constituted the Knights of the Bath as a regular military order.[7] He did not revive the order,[8] which did not previously exist, in the sense of a body of knights governed by a set of statutes and whose numbers were replenished when vacancies occurred.[9][10]


The Order consists of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom (currently King Charles III), the Great Master (currently William, Prince of Wales), and three Classes of members:[11]


Members belong to either the Civil Division or the Military Division.[12] Knight Companion (KB), the order's only class prior to 1815, is no longer an option.[13] Commonwealth citizens who are not subjects of the British monarch and foreign nationals may be made honorary members.[14]


The Order of the Bath is the most senior of the British orders of chivalry, after the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle, and the (dormant) Order of St Patrick.[15]

Members of the : 14

House of Commons

The or sinecures: 11

Royal Household

Diplomats: 4

The Walpole family, including the Prime Minister: 3

Naval and Army officers: 3

Irish peers: 2

Country gentlemen with Court appointments: 2

Composition[edit]

Sovereign[edit]

The British Sovereign is the Sovereign of the Order of the Bath. As with all honours, except those in the Sovereign's personal gift,[59] the Sovereign makes all appointments to the Order on the advice of the Government.

Revocation[edit]

It is possible for membership in the Order to be revoked. Under the 1725 statutes, the grounds for this were heresy, high treason, or fleeing from battle out of cowardice. Knights Companion could in such cases be degraded at the next Chapter meeting. It was then the duty of the Gentleman Usher to 'pluck down the escocheon [i.e. stallplate] of such knight and spurn it out of the chapel' with 'all the usual marks of infamy'.[116]


Only two people were ever degraded: Lord Cochrane in 1813, and General Sir Eyre Coote in 1816, both for political reasons, rather than any of the grounds given in the statute. Lord Cochrane was subsequently reinstated, but Coote died a few years after his degradation.[117]


Under Queen Victoria's 1847 statutes, a member 'convicted of treason, cowardice, felony, or any infamous crime derogatory to his honour as a knight or gentleman, or accused and does not submit to trial in a reasonable time, shall be degraded from the Order by a special ordinance signed by the sovereign.' The Sovereign was to be the sole judge, and also had the power to restore such members.[118]


The situation today is that membership may be cancelled or annulled, and the entry in the register erased, by an ordinance signed by the Sovereign and sealed with the seal of the Order, on the recommendation of the appropriate Minister. Such cancellations may be subsequently reversed.[119]


In 1923, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was made an honorary Knight Grand Cross, by King George V. Mussolini was stripped of his GCB in 1940, after he had declared war on the UK.[120]


George Pottinger, a senior civil servant, lost both his status of CB and Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1975 when he was jailed for corruptly receiving gifts from the architect John Poulson.[121]


Romanian president Nicolae Ceauşescu was stripped of his honorary GCB status by Queen Elizabeth II on 24 December 1989, the day before his execution. Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, was stripped of his honorary GCB status by the Queen, on the advice of the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, on 25 June 2008, 'as a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe over which President Mugabe has presided.'[122]


Vicky Pryce, former wife of Chris Huhne, was stripped of her CB by Queen Elizabeth II on 30 July 2013, following her conviction for perverting the course of justice.[123]

Sovereign:

King Charles III

Great Master: , KG, KT, GCB, PC, ADC (2024)

William, Prince of Wales

Category: Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath

Category: Dames Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath

Category: Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath

Category: Dames Commander of the Order of the Bath

Category: Knights Companion of the Order of the Bath

List of knights and dames grand cross of the Order of the Bath

List of knights companion of the Order of the Bath

Category: Knights of the Bath

Category: Companions of the Order of the Bath

List of honorary British knights and dames

List of people who have declined a British honour

List of revocations of appointments to orders and awarded decorations and medals of the United Kingdom

For people who have been appointed to the Order of the Bath, see the following categories:

Galloway, Peter (2006). The Order of the Bath. Phillimore.  1-86077-399-0.

ISBN

Hanham, Andrew (2016). "The Politics of Chivalry: Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke of Montagu and the Order of the Bath". Parliamentary History. 35 (3): 262–297. :10.1111/1750-0206.12236.

doi

Marks, Richard; Payne, Ann (1978). British Heraldry from Its Origins to C. 1800. London: British Museum Publications Ltd.  978-0-71410-086-9.

ISBN

Nicolas, Nicholas H. (1842). History of the orders of knighthood of the British empire, Vol iii. London.

Perkins, Jocelyn (1920). (2nd ed.). London: Faith Press.

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath : a descriptive and historical account

Risk, James C. (1972). The History of the Order of the Bath and its Insignia. London: Spink & Son.  978-0-90069-649-7.

ISBN

Statutes of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. London. 1725.

Statutes of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. London. 1812.

Statutes of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. London. 1847.

. TheGazette.co.uk. London Gazette. 1850. Retrieved 16 June 2020.

"Special statute of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath"

Statutes of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. London. 1925.{{}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

cite book

. Royal.gov.uk. Official website of the British monarchy. May 2006. Archived from the original on 29 September 2006. Retrieved 9 September 2006.

"Royal Insight > Focus: The Order of the Bath"

. Royal.gov.uk. Official website of the British monarchy. Archived from the original on 2 January 2012. Retrieved 9 December 2011.

"Order of the Bath"

Search recommendations for the Order of the Bath on the UK's National Archives' website

Brennan, I. G. (2004). "The Most Honourable Order of the Bath".

. (2002, 2020). "The Most Honourable Order of the Bath".

Cambridge University Heraldic and Genealogical Society

Velde, F. R. (2003). "Order of Precedence in England and Wales".

Media related to Order of the Bath at Wikimedia Commons