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] 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', and likely from the upper classes to begin with.[4] George I constituted the Knights of the Bath as a regular 'Military Order'.[5] He did not revive the Order,[6] 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.[7][8]
Most Honourable Order of the Bath
18 May 1725
Tria juncta in uno ('Three joined in one') (Civil Division)
Ich dien (Military Division)
Service to the Crown
Currently constituted
Vacant
Knight/Dame Grand Cross (GCB)
Knight/Dame Commander (KCB/DCB)
Companion (CB)
Knight Companion (KB)
The Order consists of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom (currently King Charles III), the Great Master (vacant since 2023), and three Classes of members:[9]
Members belong to either the Civil Division or the Military Division.[10] Knight Companion (KB), the order's only class prior to 1815, is no longer an option.[11] Recipients of the Order are now usually senior military officers or senior civil servants.[12][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 fourth-most senior of the British orders of chivalry, after the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, and the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick (dormant).[15]
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'.[111]
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.[112]
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.[113]
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.[114]
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.[115]
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.[116]
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.'[117]
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.[118]
For people who have been appointed to the Order of the Bath, see the following categories:
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