Tea at Trianon: Order of the Garter Service 2023

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Order of the Garter Service 2023

Held at Windsor at St. George's Chapel as in the days of Charles I. From The Royal Watcher:

The British Royal Family joined the King and Queen to attend the Service for the Most Noble Order of the Garter at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on June 19th, following Trooping the Colour and the Coronation. The oldest and most senior Order of Chivalry in Britain, the Most Noble Order of the Garter was founded by King Edward III in 1348, and is limited to the Sovereign, the Prince of Wales and 24 members as well as members of the Royal Family, known as Royal Knights and Ladies, and Foreign Sovereigns, known as Stranger (or Extra) Knights and Ladies. (Read more.)