A history of the Order of the Bath: Part 2 (1726-1825)

The Order of the Bath celebrates its 300th anniversary in 2025. The second instalment in a four-part series, honours expert Russell Malloch looks at The Gazette’s reporting of events during the first century of the Order.

The Order of the Bath celebrates its three hundredth anniversary in 2025. The order was instituted in 1725 and now provides the highest honour that can be conferred by the United Kingdom government; an honour that is routinely granted to the most senior members of the armed forces and civil service, and to foreign heads of state. This series of four articles deals with the creation of the order during the reign of the Hanoverian king George I, and its evolution over the next 300 years.

This article examines The Gazette’s reporting of events during the first century in the life of the Order of the Bath. The most important development after 1725, the year in which the order was instituted, took place during the Regency, and addressed the need to have a supply of honours to reward services in the war against France, with the result that the membership was split into three classes, and increased from around 60 to more than 700 during the course of 1815.

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Knights of the Bath

For almost five decades the Bath maintained the maximum number of 37 knights as set out in the original statutes, and with no excess being tolerated before the 1770s.

The first vacancies arose out of a minor provision in the statutes, which said that a “special regard” should be had in appointing KBs to be members of the Order of the Garter. In May 1726 two of the Bath’s founder knights, the Duke of Richmond and Sir Robert Walpole, joined the Garter, but no new KBs were named. The first death of a founder member arose in 1730 with the loss of the Earl of Deloraine, and two more knights died in the following year. This led to the second batch of members being named, invested and installed in 1732, including Sir George Downing, MP, the grandson of the baronet after whom Downing Street in Whitehall is named.

The Bath often operated with several vacancies, and the membership fell to as low as 25 by 1760. The majority of the vacancies were caused by the death of members, as transfers to the Garter were rare, and only four KBs became KGs between the departure of Walpole and the Regency reforms.

The order retained its original political character until the 1740s, when the king’s presence at the battle of Dettingen led to the Red Riband being used to reward services in action, and to The Gazette recording the investiture of General Philip Honywood and Lieutenant-Generals Campbell, Cope and Ligonier (Gazette issue 8248). During the next 70 years the order welcomed officers from the armed forces and several diplomats, but no political figures of any consequence.

A naval dimension was introduced in 1747 with the appointment of Rear Admiral Peter Warren, who was noticed after an action at Cape Finisterre (Gazette issue 8644). The army’s first ribands after Dettingen were conferred on Charles Howard, Charles Powlett and John Mordaunt who joined the order in 1749, although their names were not gazetted, as was the case with some of the other 18^th century knights.

Honours were later allocated for the military operations in the American colonies, with grants to senior officers such as Jeffrey Amherst, Guy Carleton and William Howe, and for actions in support of British interests in India, such as the KBs after the battle of Seringapatam for William Medows and Robert Abercromby.

The most famous recipients of the Red Riband are probably Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. The Gazette reported Horatio Nelson’s appointment and investiture in 1797 (Gazette issue 14012), followed by his installation by proxy in 1803, and the offering up of his Bath banner in Westminster Abbey in 1812.

Wellington’s Bath career had two parts, as he joined the order in 1804 for services in India (Gazette issue 15732), and during the campaign against Napoleon he presented the insignia to several officers under his command, including John Sherbrooke who he invested at Badajoz in Spain. Wellington became a knight of the Garter in 1813, and was required to resign his Red Riband, but he rejoined the Bath as part of the Regency reforms and regularly attended the order’s events until his death in 1852.

The civil use of the Bath shifted away from the House of Commons, and came to be dominated by diplomats, including Wellington’s brother, Henry Wellesley, who was the envoy to Spain. One of the less conventional nominees was Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, who joined the Bath two decades after he accompanied Captain Cook’s first scientific expedition to the Pacific (Gazette issue 13792).

Regency reforms

The Bath’s constitution remained unaltered until 1815, when the structure of the membership was revised to address limitations in the honours system that the British government had devised to reward services in the conflicts with France and its allies.

The pre-1815 system had started in 1794 when the Admiralty awarded gold chains and medals to Lord Howe and the officers under his command after they defeated a French fleet (Gazette issue 13680). The naval scheme evolved into a two tier system, with a larger gold medal being granted to flag officers, such as Nelson, who was honoured after the battles of St Vincent, the Nile, and Trafalgar. Nelson’s three medals, along with his Bath star, are represented today in his statue that dominates Trafalgar Square in central London.

Similar awards for the army were introduced in 1808, when The Gazette announced the issue of medals for officers who fought at the battle of Maida (Gazette issue 16121). There were then medals for actions in Portugal, Spain and elsewhere, with The Gazette of 1810 listing more than 100 recipients (Gazette issue 16405). A revised approach was unveiled for the army in 1813, which limited each officer to one decoration, and with more than 800 awards being gazetted through to September 1814 (Gazette issue 16934).

It was decided that the existing arrangements were cumbersome and costly, and so the Bath was used to address the problem. By this time, the order had experienced an increase in its membership because of the military situation, and in 1812 a regulation had allowed for extra knights to be nominated during “times of war”, leading to a maximum of 63 KBs by September 1813.

The current Bath policy, together with the Admiralty and War Office schemes, were discontinued in 1814, after the nation (prematurely) celebrated the abdication of Napoleon. The only exception to the rule was a naval gold medal for an action on 15 January 1815, when Captain Henry Hope captured the American frigate USS President as it tried to leave New York harbour (Gazette issue 16985).

The Bath’s “times of war” provision was overtaken by a notice that was gazetted on 4 January 1815 (Gazette issue 16972), by which point there were 45 naval and military, and 12 civil KBs. The membership was now divided into three classes, known as knight grand cross (GCB), knight commander (KCB) and companion (CB).

All of the existing knights became members of the grand cross class, including the senior civil KB, Robert Gunning, who was invested by Catherine the Great of Russia at St Petersburg in 1773 (Gazette issue 11376); the senior naval KB, John Jervis, who received his Red Riband in 1782 after destroying a French warship; and the senior military KB, Robert Abercromby, who joined after the battle of Seringapatam in 1792.

The number of GCBs was limited to 72, exclusive of princes, while the KCBs had an initial limit of 180, with scope for additional awards “in the event of actions of signal distinction”, and the CBs were not limited. An allocation of 15 KCBs was added for officers of the East India Company’s Service (Gazette issue 16974), who remained as a distinctive entity within the order until the company forfeited the government of India in the 1850s.

The Regency reforms made a specific link between the CB (and only the CB) and services rendered, as no officer could be nominated unless he had received “a medal, or other badge of honour, or shall have been specially mentioned by name in dispatches published in the London Gazette, as having distinguished himself by his valour and conduct in action against His Majesty’s enemies, since the commencement of the war in 1803, or shall hereafter be named in dispatches published in the London Gazette, as having distinguished himself.”

Awards could also be made for “eminent services rendered to the state […] in civil and diplomatic employments”, but it was intended that the civil group should be an insignificant part of the order, as it was restricted to 12 members in the GCB class (and only that class).

The Bath welcomed its initial members under the new regime during 1815, and over the next decade members were nominated as the need arose, mainly in connection with naval and military operations. The names of recipients were published in The Gazette, but there was no equivalent of the modern bi-annual honours lists.

The first GCBs were announced in January 1815, as were the KCBs, the majority of whom had gained awards under the earlier schemes, as with Maida medallists such as General Sir James Kempt, who later became the governor of Canada. The founder KCBs also included Edward Pellew, who was knighted in 1793 (Gazette issue 13539) after capturing a French frigate (in the earliest action for which the naval general service medal was issued in the 1840s), and Hudson Lowe, who served as Napoleon’s jailer on the island of St Helena.

Some of the KCBs had earlier connections with the order, as Edmund Nagle, Sidney Beckwith and Christopher Cole had acted as proxies for KBs at their installation, while Captain Edward Rotheram, who served under Nelson at Trafalgar, carried the admiral’s Bath banner during his funeral ritual in St Paul’s Cathedral in 1806 (Gazette issue 15881).

The Gazette named one KCB who had died before the January notice was published, as Robert Gillespie was killed in October 1814 leading an assault on a fortress in Nepal, and two members who held the Regency honour for just a few days, as Edward Pakenham, GCB, and Samuel Gibbs, KCB, died after attacking an American force at New Orleans on 8 January 1815 (Gazette issue 16991).

The founder KCBs included several distinguished commanders, among whom was Henry Hardinge, who became the governor-general of India, and Lord FitzRoy Somerset, later Lord Raglan, who commanded the forces in the Crimean War. Raglan was one of the 1815 intake who reached the highest rank in the army, as a field-marshal’s baton was also given to men such as Edward Blakeney, William Gomm and Hew Ross.

Promotions

The promotion of members within the order started in April 1815, when The Gazette announced that Lieutenant-General Sir John Abercromby (the son of a KB) had been made a GCB after the death of Sir John Stuart, Count of Maida, and that Abercromby’s place as a KCB had been filled by Lieutenant-General Moore Disney, who earned a gold medal at the battle of Corunna. Recent events in America also influenced the position, as awards were made to fill the gaps created by the loss of generals Pakenham and Gibbs at New Orleans (Gazette issue 17001).

The names of the first CBs were not gazetted until September 1815 (Gazette issue 17061), three months after Napoleon’s defeat. The notice explained that some of the 450 CBs were recommended by Wellington for services at Waterloo and Quatre Bras, and identified the Waterloo officers on whom “the Bath has been conferred for former services”. The first CB was Captain Willoughby Lake of the Royal Navy, while the army’s first CB was Colonel Lord Frederick Bentinck of the 1^st Foot Guards. More than 200 of the founder companions had received an earlier gold medal or cross, although the majority of recipients of the pre-1815 honours did not go on to join the Bath. The medallists who did gain a CB at the outset included Captain Hope, whose capture of the USS President was mentioned earlier.

The Gazette notice had not indicated that the Bath could be granted on an honorary basis, except at the KCB level for foreign officers holding British commissions. In practice, however, the order was soon put to overseas use, and in September 1815 the first honorary GCBs were gazetted in consideration of “the great signal services rendered in the common cause of Europe by […] commanders of the allied forces during the memorable campaigns of 1813, 1814, and of the present year”. The first recipient was the Austrian field-marshal Prince Schwartzenberg who, along with the Prussian Prince Blucher, the Russian Count Barclay de Tolly and two other officers were invested by Wellington at Paris (Gazette issue 17059).

After 1815

The earliest awards to be gazetted after the end of 1815 related to the naval battle of Algiers on 27 August 1816 and demonstrated the speed with which the process of allocating honours worked before the era of modern communications. The “Gazette rule” applied, and so the despatch from Edward Pellew, KCB (later the first Viscount Exmouth, GCB), which described the work of an Anglo-Dutch fleet in “destroying for ever the insufferable and horrid system of Christian slavery”, was gazetted on 15 September (Gazette issue 17173), and named six officers who received the CB a few days later (Gazette issue 17175). As often happened, The Gazette notice did not identify the services for which the awards were conferred, either individually or collectively.

During this period the Bath was employed for military operations in India, including actions in Nepal and against the Mahrattas. The first promotion from CB to KCB was gazetted in 1819, when Major-General Thomas Munro of the East India Company’s Service was noticed (Gazette issue 17540). The first officer to hold all three classes of the order was another veteran of the Indian campaigns, General John Doveton, who received his CB in 1818, followed by promotion to KCB in 1819, and then the GCB in retirement in 1837.

Although most of the post-1815 nominations related to operational service, the order was occasionally used for other purposes. There was even a reference back to the pre-1725 knighthood of the Bath, when awards were gazetted in 1820 for senior and retired officers to mark the coronation of George IV, and the KCBs included Henry Trollope, who was knighted after defeating a Dutch fleet at the battle of Camperdown, and Henry Darby who served under Nelson at the Nile (Gazette issue 17617).

Bath numbers

The number of appointments during the Bath’s first century reflected the order’s small membership before the Regency reforms, as the single-class order welcomed only 195 knights. To put this figure into context, 157 members joined the Garter and the Thistle in the same period. The impact of the Regency expansion was evident from the fact that more than 800 members joined the Bath between 1815 and the end of 1825, with about 70% from the army and 30% from the navy.

The Bath operated in an expanding honours system, as three new orders were instituted during its first century. The Order of St Patrick was created for Irish peers in 1783, and so its role did not overlap with that of the Bath. The Guelphic Order started in 1815, and was a competitor of the Bath, as it had three classes and civil and military insignia, and was conferred on several members of the older order. The third of the new honours, the Order of St Michael and St George, was created in 1818, and its relationship with the Bath is examined in Part 3.

Administration

The majority of appointments to and promotions in the order were gazetted, although the number and nature of the notices varied, and there are no accounts of the investiture of several knights. One member whose initial appointment and investiture went unreported was John Mordaunt, a KB of 1749, who was court-martialled after the failure of an assault on the port of Rochfort. Mordaunt’s Red Riband provided a link with the Tudor knighthood of the Bath which some of his ancestors received, including an award when Queen Anne Boleyn was crowned. The Gazette did, however, notice General Mordaunt’s installation, and the offering up of his banner in 1788 (Gazette issue 12992).

The Regency notice did not reform the office of great master, which had been vacant since the death of the Duke of Montagu in 1749, after which the duties were delegated to a senior member of the order, as in 1761 when the installation was conducted by Sir Charles Stanhope, one of the founder knights (Gazette issue 10108).

There was also no mention of the position of prince of the blood royal, which was filled at the outset by William, later Duke of Cumberland, who died in 1765, and was succeeded by George III’s son Frederick, later Duke of York, who was named as the “principal companion” at the age of four years (Gazette issue 10794). The Duke of York was referred to in Gazette reports as the “first and principal knight grand cross,” and from 1779 he officiated as great master at the installation of knights such as William Medows, Joseph Banks and Horatio Nelson, and at the 1820 investiture of Admirals Trollope and Darby.

Two officers were added to serve the order in 1815, as the KCBs and CBs were assigned their own officer of arms and secretary. As for titles, the KCBs received the honour of knighthood, if they had not already done so, after which they were able to use the prefix “Sir”. No such privilege was granted to the CBs, even after the companions of the Order of St Michael and St George were given that right in 1818.

The heraldic privileges of the GCB were the same as for the old knights, while the Regency regulations allowed the KCBs to circle their shield with a representation of the red riband and badge, but did not permit them to be granted supporters to their arms.

Insignia

The members’ insignia remained the same until 1815, when the original badge and star was appropriated for the civil GCBs, and different insignia was introduced for the armed forces. The Gazette notice said that military services should be distinguished by adding to the existing star and badge “a wreath of laurel encircling the motto, and issuing from an escroll inscribed “Ich Dien”.”

In practice, a more important change was made to the existing insignia, as the central section of the new military badge, showing the triple crowns and “tria juncta in uno” motto (and now with the laurel surround and Ich Dien motto), was set on a white Maltese cross, in a form that is still used today. A different shape of star was introduced for the KCB grade, while the collar remained the same as before, and the red GCB mantle showed a star that was appropriate to the individual’s civil or military status.

The only new insignia for the officers came in 1815, when the officer of arms and the secretary attached to the KCBs and CB were assigned distinctive badges.

Ceremonial

Four principal ceremonies were organised during the Bath’s first century, consisting of the investiture and installation of new members, the offering up of their banners, and the return of insignia.

For some knights, four Gazette notices charted their career in the order. The sequence opened with a report of their nomination, then investiture and installation, and finally the offering up of the banner. The extent of the gazetting process was variable before 1812, and after that date the only notices for most members related to their nomination and/or investiture, but with no installation or banner ceremonies.

One of the “four notice” knights was Hector Munro, who earned his Red Riband by capturing Pondicherry from the French. His notices began by explaining that the king “had been pleased to confer the honour of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath” upon the major-general (Gazette issue 11964). Unusually, Munro was installed before being invested, and The Gazette described the ceremony in Westminster Abbey in 1779, at which he was represented by a proxy (Gazette issue 11980). The Gazette then recorded the occasion in India a few months later, when the Nawab of Arcot presented Sir Hector with a star set with diamonds (Gazette issue 12080). Munro died in 1805, and his banner was offered up at the next installation (Gazette issue 16609), while, as was customary, The Gazette did not report the return of the general’s insignia to the crown by his personal representative.

Munro’s was one of a few overseas investitures, and The Gazette reported the Bath’s insignia being delivered by sovereigns such as Catherine the Great of Russia, Ferdinand VI of Spain and Gustav III of Sweden, and at ceremonies in Vienna, Florence and Naples. There was even the report of insignia being sent to India for Colonel Eyre Coote to be invested by a local prince, but the package arrived after he had already left for England, where the king performed the ceremony in 1771 (Gazette issue 11174).

Most of the KB investitures were performed by the sovereign and recorded in The Gazette, and several of the GCB and KCB ceremonies were also gazetted, while the CB badge was usually sent to the recipient. Where it was not practical to invest a member in England, a warrant was issued granting a dispensation that allowed the person to assume the rights associated with his dignity. This happened with some of the initial East India Company officers, as with Major-General George Wood, who received a warrant from the governor-general of India, which permitted him to wear his KCB badge and star without being formally invested.

The installation of knights was organised in King Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey at irregular intervals, and conducted by the acting great master, but never by the sovereign. The first service after the installation of the founder knights was held in 1732, and there were then eight more ceremonies before the final service of the Hanoverian period in 1812. The proceedings were all gazetted, apart for the installations of 1744 and 1753.

The ritual gave rise to the appointment of proxies to represent those knights who were unable to attend, as with Captain William Bolton who stood in for Lord Nelson in 1803. The proxies were often knighted before the day of the installation, as happened with Captain Bolton (Gazette issue 15586). No proxies were appointed after 1812, and no heraldic or other plates were erected for them in Westminster Abbey.

Esquires were nominated for the installations, and The Gazette listed the names of the three esquires who accompanied each knight. No esquires were nominated after 1812 when the ceremony lapsed, and the role was not revived when the first of the 20^th century installations was held in 1913. Plates bearing details of many of the Hanoverian esquires are still housed in Westminster Abbey.

The offering of the banner of a deceased knight was first gazetted in connection with the 1732 installation, when the heraldic emblems of the departed knights were placed on the altar in the order’s chapel. Similar offerings took place at each of the later installations, including Nelson’s banner, which formed part of the 1812 service.

The Bath’s insignia had to be returned on the promotion or death of a member, and it was often the son of a deceased knight grand cross who delivered the badge and star to the sovereign. The Gazette did not usually report the GCB audiences, although the Court Circular did so at times, as happened when Edward Pellew’s son, the second Viscount Exmouth, delivered his father’s insignia to King William IV at St James’s Palace in 1833.

The founding statutes stipulated that an annual convention, attended by the knights in their full dress, should be held on 21 October each year, to celebrate the anniversary of George I’s coronation, but no service is known to have taken place (on a date that would later be more famous for Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar).

Legacy

The London Gazette played an important role in the distribution of the CB, because of the Regency provision about candidates having to possess a qualifying mention in despatches. The requirement that the despatch was published in The Gazette was dropped in 1859, although the practice of The Gazette reporting a mention in advance of the award of a CB continued in many instances, until the “mention” rule was abolished in 1958.

Several of the Regency intake were able to wear their insignia with a campaign medal, starting with the battle of Waterloo, for which a medal was sanctioned in 1816 (Gazette issue 17130). The Gazette of 1847 announced an extensive scheme of naval and military general service medals, which were issued with clasps for events ranging from Howe’s victory over the French fleet in 1794 to Captain Hope’s capture of the USS President in 1815. Another medal was instituted in 1851, for the Indian operations of 1803-26, when the recipients included the Duke of Wellington.

There are stall plates in Westminster Abbey for many of the KBs who were installed, but not for any of the knights who joined the order after 1812, and so there are no heraldic memorials for the last of the old style of knights, or for most of the uninstalled GCBs who were nominated during the 19^th century. The abbey contains few memorials to any members from the order’s first century, while a monument to generals Pakenham and Gibbs who perished at New Orleans was erected in St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Regency style of military insignia is used today by many hundreds of members of the order and is often seen in public in the neck badge of the great master, which was worn by William, Prince of Wales, at the memorial service that was held in Westminster Abbey on 8 May 2025 to celebrate the 80^th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. The insignia also features in the badges of rank that are worn by certain officers of the army and police forces, which show the Bath crowns and motto, within the laurel surround that recalls the great reform of 1815.

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III

Succession to the Crown is essential reading for anyone with a keen interest in the British royal family and provides an excellent and trusted source of information for historians, researchers and academics alike. The book takes you on a journey exploring the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy, from the demise of King Charles II in 1685, through to the accession of King Charles III, as recorded in The London Gazette.

Historian Russell Malloch tells the story of the Crown through trusted, factual information found in the UK's official public record. Learn about the traditions and ceremony engrained in successions right up to the demise of Queen Elizabeth II and the resulting proclamation and accession of King Charles III.

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About the author

Russell Malloch is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and an authority on British honours. He authored Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III, which explores the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy.

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Publication date

21 May 2025

Any opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and the author alone, and does not necessarily represent that of The Gazette.