A history of the Order of the Bath: Part 3 (1826-1925)

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

The Gazette recorded many of the more important events that occurred during the Order of the Bath’s second century between 1826 and 1925, when it welcomed over 6,000 new members. The events included:

the extension of civil awards to all three classes
the admission of large numbers of members for services connected with war, and in particular the operations against the German Empire that began in 1914
the altered relationship between the Bath and other state honours

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

Constitution

A significant structural change was made by letters patent on 14 April 1847, when the order’s modern format was established (Gazette issue 20737). The membership was allocated into two sub-divisions, known as civil and military, with three classes in each, and using the same designations that were adopted for the Regency reforms of 1815, namely knight grand cross (GCB), knight commander (KCB) and companion (CB).

Military division appointments were restricted to officers of a minimum rank (major-general/rear admiral for GCB, colonel/captain for KCB, and major/commander for companion). The Gazette continued to play a role in the award process, as no person could be nominated as a CB “unless his services have been marked by the especial mention of his name in despatches published in the London Gazette, as having distinguished himself by his valour and conduct in action against the enemy, in the command of a ship of war, or of our troops, or at the head of a military department, or as having, by some active service under his immediate conduct and direction, contributed to the success of any such action.”

The civil division was open to those who had merited favour by “their personal services to our crown, or by the performance of public duties.” No civil service grades were set as a minimum requirement for admission to each class, and no Gazette qualification was ever imposed for civil awards.

The 1847 statutes limited the membership to just over 950, comprising 50 military and 25 civil grand crosses, 102 military and 50 civil KCBs, and 525 military and 200 civil companions, plus an unlimited number of honorary members. The qualifications for admission were revised from time to time, and the limits were increased to stand at just over 1,400 by 1925, although the actual number far exceeded that figure because of additional war-time appointments.

The first civil CBs and KCBs were gazetted in 1848 (Gazette issue 20850), and included members of home departments such as the Admiralty and Poor Law Board, along with an equally important overseas contingent, among whom were the envoys to Russia and Spain; the governors of Bombay and New Zealand, and the chief justices of Ceylon and Jamaica.

The overseas flavour quickly disappeared from the order, and by the end of the 19^th century most of the civil appointments were for home services, as new orders influenced the distribution of honours, with the Bath being replaced by the Orders of the Star of India and the Indian Empire for civil purposes in British India, while the Order of St Michael and St George came to be used for foreign and colonial affairs, and for naval and military services.

The most important parallel honour was the Order of the British Empire, which began in 1917, and was soon used for civil and military purposes, but for services that involved a lower threshold of responsibility than was set for admission to the same class of the Bath.

Appointment

Military Division: Army

Around 70% of the 8,900 or so awards (appointments and promotions) that were gazetted in the Bath’s second century (1826-1925) related to the military division, and consisted of two main groups:

those for active operations, which were announced as required
those that featured in what became the routine twice yearly honours list

There was no requirement that officers had to be promoted within the classes of the order, but almost 85% of the 1,300 KCBs were advanced from CB, and more than 95% of the 400 or so military grand crosses progressed from KCB.

Army listings were dominated by the First World War (1914-18), followed in numerical terms by the South African War (1899-1902) and the Crimean War (1854-55). The Bath was also awarded for larger operations in places such as Abyssinia and China, while a few smaller engagements earned the CB, as with actions in the Cape of Good Hope, the Gold Coast and New Zealand. Many Bath nominations were gazetted along with despatches relating to the campaign, which continued to be the case even after the CB qualification about names being published in The London Gazette was discontinued in 1859.

Many of the despatches, and the linked recommendations for awards of the Bath, were the work of senior commanders, such as Field-Marshals Roberts and Kitchener, whose progress through the order illustrate the range of the services for which the Bath was conferred. Roberts gained his CB in 1872 during the Lushai expedition to rescue British prisoners, and was promoted to KCB in 1879 and to grand cross just one year later for his work in Afghanistan. Kitchener received his CB in 1889 after the battle of Toski, and was advanced to KCB in 1896 and to GCB two years later for services as sirdar of the Egyptian Army.

The relationship between the two principal “fighting orders” can be illustrated by Kitchener’s career, as he combined the Bath’s insignia with the CMG he earned in 1886 for work in Zanzibar, a KCMG in 1894 for services in Egypt, and finally the GCMG in 1901 for commanding the forces in the war against the Boer Republics.

The despatches and the related Bath appointments that were gazetted for services in France and Flanders during the First World War were largely the work of John French, who gained the KCB and KCMG fighting in South Africa, and Douglas Haig who received the GCB in 1915 as the war began to centre on the Western Front (Gazette issue 29202). The Gazette also reported Bath nominations for officers who took part in the ill-fated operations in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, and who commanded the armies that fought in theatres such as Italy, Salonika and German South West Africa.

The military division welcomed several members who became public figures, including:

General Charles Gordon, who earned an honorary CB while employed in the service of the Emperor of China (Gazette issue 22919), and was slain at Khartoum in 1885 (Gazette issue 25503).
Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the scouting movement, who received the CB after the siege of Mafeking.
Lawrence of Arabia, who gained the CB in 1917 for his work in the Middle East (Gazette issue 30222).

The Gazette listed a few men who would have been recommended for the Bath had they survived, as happened with a number of officers who perished during the Crimean war. The unusual concept of a posthumous award was also approved during the First World War, as when Brigadier-General John Gough was gazetted as a KCB for distinguished service in the field, even although he had died from wounds received in action (Gazette issue 29136).

The post-war operations of 1919-25 saw the Bath being allocated to conflicts in Afghanistan, Russia, Somaliland and Waziristan, along with the awards that were gazetted in the bi-annual lists. The Bath continued to function in combination with other honours, as happened during the late war, when more than 350 of the CBs that were gazetted in 1918-19 already held the CMG. The honours policy changed after the war, and the Order of St Michael and St George was no longer used for military purposes, and instead the military division of the Order of the British Empire assumed the junior role.

Military Division: Navy

The naval awards from the second century included recognition for operations against Ottoman forces at the battle of Navarino in 1827, and the bombardment of Acre in 1840, when one of the CBs was Captain Charles Austen, the brother of the well-known novelist. There were then awards for Abyssinia and Japan in the 1860s, the Ashanti war in the 1870s, and Egypt in 1882, as well as minor operations in west Africa, and Edwardian services in China and South Africa.

The navy’s access to the Bath reflected its more limited involvement in active operations by comparison with the army, and an absence of related mentions in despatches. This was addressed in 1912, when a statute allowed for up to ten civil CBs to be appointed each year to mark the meritorious services of officers of the navy and marines. The first gazetting of awards under the new CB rule included officers such as Alexander Duff and Arthur Leveson, who later earned the grand cross (Gazette issue 28648).

One feature of the honours system at this period was the delay that often arose in advancing within the classes of the Bath. Examples of such slow progress included Jane Austen’s brother Francis who became a companion in 1815, but was not promoted to grand cross until 1860, long after he retired from active duty. The policy of promotion based on seniority rather than service lasted into the 20^th century, as with General Richard Farren who received a Crimean War CB in 1855, but did not achieve his GCB until 1905. The old system was later abandoned, and the majority of promotions took place within a decade, and sometimes much more quickly, as with David Beatty who moved from companion in 1911 to grand cross after the battle of Jutland in 1916.

The naval events that were noticed with the Bath include the action at Heligoland, when Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt earned the first CB of the 1914-18 war (Gazette issue 28948); the attack on the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at the Falkland Islands; and the raids on the submarine installations at Zeebrugge and Ostend, which brought promotion to KCB for Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes (Gazette issue 30655). The largest series of awards related to the battle of Jutland, including Beatty’s GCB, and a posthumous KCB for Robert Arbuthnot and Horace Hood (Gazette issue 29751).

The majority of Bath notices were gazetted without a citation to explain the reasons behind each award, although some appointments were supported by a despatch that was published about the same time, as with the Jutland report from the commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe (Gazette issue 29654). One exception to the ‘no citation’ rule related to an inter-war act of gallantry by Surgeon Commander William Hingston, who received the CB for “the gallant conduct displayed and the valuable services rendered on the occasion […] of the destruction by earthquake and fire of the R.N. Sick Quarters, Yokohama, when by his gallantry and presence of mind he was the direct means of saving the lives of the large number of refugees who sought escape from the fire in the hospital grounds.” (Gazette issue 32884)

The Bath was conferred on officers of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps on the recommendation of the first lord of the Admiralty and the secretary of state for war, while the secretary of state for air became responsible for the use of the Bath after the Royal Air Force was formed. One notable RAF recipient was Hugh Trenchard, who joined the order a few months before the start of the war when he was with the Central Flying School, and gained promotion to GCB in 1924, by which time he was an air chief marshal.

Civil Division

The political dimension remained as a small but important feature of the civil Bath during its second century, with the grand cross being granted to statesmen such as Richard Cross, the home secretary, and Stafford Northcote, the chancellor of the Exchequer, at the end of Disraeli’s premiership in 1880, and to the future prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman who was gazetted as a GCB in 1895 as part of Lord Rosebery’s resignation list.

The order’s civil division was largely non-political, with the Bath being used to reward work by senior members of the civil service, and often in large departments of state such as the Foreign, Home and War Offices, while some smaller organisations featured in The Gazette’s notices, such as the British Museum and Ordnance Survey, and the departments that operated in Ireland before partition in the 1920s.

The Bath’s role as part of a sequence of honours could also be found in a civil context, as with Francis Bertie who received the KCB in 1902 as an assistant under secretary at the Foreign Office, the GCMG in 1904 as ambassador to Italy, and promotion to GCB in 1908 as ambassador to France, where he worked during most of the war.

The slow promotions that were a feature of the military division, were not present in the civil division, where advancement to the grand cross class was normally approved during or towards the end of an officer’s career, rather than several decades after he retired from the public service.

A few dozen members were able to wear the insignia of both divisions, including some of the officers who were the first naval civil CBs to be gazetted under the 1912 statute, among them Captains Duff and Leveson. Two interesting progressions through the divisions of the Bath involved Eric Geddes and Dighton Probyn. Geddes had a remarkable career, managing the supply of munitions and railway transport on the Western Front, before becoming the first lord of the Admiralty. He was named as a military KCB and a founder grand cross of the British Empire in 1917, and was promoted to civil GCB after the end of hostilities.

Probyn’s close connection with the royal family saw him move from being a military CB in 1858, to a civil knight commander in 1887 (when comptroller to the Prince of Wales), followed by a civil GCB in 1902 (as keeper of the privy purse) and promotions in the military division, to KCB in 1909 and finally to grand cross one year later.

Honorary awards

Honorary appointments to the Bath were relatively rare, with the nominees including both foreign citizens and British officers employed in the service of foreign sovereigns, as in the case of General Gordon’s Chinese CB. Unfortunately, the majority of honorary awards were not gazetted after the start of King George V’s reign.

Two large admissions were approved for foreign officers during this period, with awards for French and Russian naval personnel who took part in the battle of Navarino, while more than 150 officers from France, Sardinia and Turkey received the Bath for their services in the Crimean War, including GCBs for Prince Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and General MacMahon, who later became the president of France.

Many of the honorary awards were connected with the British royal family, as with the GCB for Queen Alexandra’s father, King Christian of Denmark, while the Edwardian recipients included the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria (Gazette issue 27286), whose murder contributed to the start of war in 1914, Emperor Menelek of Ethiopia, and Prime Minister Katsura Taro of Japan. A republican recipient was a rare choice before the First World War, but the awards included the GCB in 1906 for President Diaz of Mexico (Gazette issue 27926), and later grand crosses for the presidents of Brazil and Portugal, together with the Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini, who received the GCB during King George V’s state visit to Rome in 1923.

The names of honorary members from enemy states were removed from the order during the war, and involved recipients from Austria-Hungary and Germany, and GCBs such as the German Emperor William II, and his brother Prince Henry of Prussia.

Privileges

The 1847 statutes allowed members of all classes of the Bath to request that a plate with their details should be placed in Westminster Abbey, but that right was withdrawn in 1859 and has never been restored. The heraldic plates in King Henry VII’s Chapel are now limited to some of the knights grand cross and officers of the order.

In 1917 the companions were permitted to wear their badge suspended from a red riband around the neck (Gazette issue 30105), in the same way as the KCBs had always done, and The Gazette reported that they were granted “the privilege of surrounding their armorial bearings with the circle and motto of [the order] and to suspend therefrom a representation of their riband and badge.” (Gazette issue 31054)

Administration

The order’s seal was altered in 1847, when the Hanoverian version which combined the sovereign on horseback with the triple crowns and royal arms, was replaced by a single sided seal, which displayed the three imperial crowns impaling the royal arms, and with the same circumscription as before. This seal was used to validate the statutes and warrants granting dignities in the order and is still used today.

The seal continued to be entrusted to the great master, an office that had a mixed fortune during the order’s second century. Augustus, Duke of Sussex, continued to act as the great master until his death in 1843, when Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, was given that role, which was made substantive as part of the 1847 reforms. The position then lay vacant for more than three decades from Albert’s death until the Prince of Wales was appointed in 1897. Four years later, after succeeding to the crown, King Edward VII granted the position to his brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught (Gazette issue 27289), who retained the role until 1942, and so was responsible for countersigning all of the war-time warrants.

The number of offices was reduced in 1847, when the two posts relating to the KCBs and CBs were abolished. The offices of secretary and registrar were formally combined in 1859, when the genealogist and messenger were discontinued, as their roles had become largely redundant. The office of genealogist was, however, revived in 1913 to coincide with the renewal of the ceremony of installation.

The business affairs of the order were managed by various officials until 1904, when the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood was created (Gazette issue 27663), and became responsible for the issue of insignia and the registration of warrants. The secretary of the Central Chancery was given the newly created office of deputy secretary of the Bath in 1925, under an arrangement that continues today.

Ceremonial

Investitures were usually organised at one of the principal royal residences in England, and followed the customary pattern of presenting the insignia, and conferring the honour of knighthood, if required. The more elaborate chapters, which were attended by GCBs in their mantles, were held until the death of Prince Albert in 1861, but were never revived.

No installation service was held from 1812 until 1913, when King Henry VII’s Chapel was re-inaugurated, and more than 40 of the current GCBs were installed, including the senior civil member, Viscount Cross, and the senior military member, Field-Marshal Lord Roberts. Because of a lack of space, the ritual was restricted to a selection of those GCBs who accepted the offer of a place in the chapel. No provision was made for the CBs or KCBs, and no esquires or proxies were appointed after the re-inauguration, in contrast to what had happened under the Hanoverians.

After the war, a service was held in 1920, when the GCBs who were installed included Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, the former viceroy of India; Reginald Wingate, the governor-general of the Sudan; and the Earl of Reading, the former lord chief justice. At the second of the post-war installations in 1924 the grand crosses who took part included war-time commanders David Beatty, John French and Douglas Haig, and the King’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham.

The Gazette published the ceremonial for the 1913 event, but not for any of the later installations. There were no Gazette records of the routine Bath investitures after the 1830s, while the Court Circular often reported members receiving their insignia, when the sovereign was usually accompanied by one or more officers of the order, as in the Bath’s bicentennial year, when King George V was joined by the Duke of Connaught as great master and the usher of the scarlet rod at Buckingham Palace in July 1925. Here the insignia included a civil KCB for Bishop John Taylor-Smith, the chaplain general to the forces, and a military GCB for Admiral Sir William Pakenham, who earned his KCB at Jutland and later served as Bath king of arms, and was a near relative of General Pakenham who fell at New Orleans a few days after he was gazetted as a GCB in 1815.

The Gazette recorded a number of other events involving members of the Bath, including:

The dinners that were organised for the GCBs at St James’s Palace and Windsor Castle in the 1830s, but did not survive the death of King William IV (Gazette issue 19490).
The funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852 (Gazette issue 21388), when representatives of each class of the order walked in the procession in St Paul’s Cathedral, including the future prime minister Lord Palmerston, GCB.
The coronation of 1902, when the order was represented by the usher of the scarlet rod in a section of the procession that was dedicated to the orders of knighthood (Gazette issue 27489).

Insignia

The main change to the insignia came in 1917, when the CB badge could now be worn around the neck rather than on the left breast, and The Gazette explained that members could receive up to 12s 6d for the cost of alteration from the Central Chancery (Gazette issue 30224).

The need for members to give a written undertaking to return the insignia on their decease was revised in 1859, when the statutes continued to require insignia to be returned on promotion, but after that date the badges and stars of deceased members could be retained by their personal representatives. This was followed by a cost saving exercise in the 1880s, which led to the badges being manufactured in silver-gilt rather than gold.

Provision was made to allow a person to retain the insignia of a lower class on the rare occasion of a promotion across the divisions, as with Sir Eric Geddes’s transfer from military KCB to civil GCB that was mentioned earlier.

The only new insignia from the Bath’s second century were the badge and star of the civil CBs and KCBs in the 1840s, and the badge of the deputy secretary, which was introduced in 1925, and displayed a book surmounted by a pen, which he wore with the standard white mantle that was assigned to all of the officers apart from the dean, who continued to wear the same mantle as a civil GCB.

Legacy

The principal legacy of the Bath’s second century was the creation of the two divisions in 1847, which was evident from the insignia that was worn by the civil members of the second and third classes at the anniversary service in Westminster Abbey on 16 May 2025.

The changes to the ‘return of insignia’ rule resulted in Bath badges and stars joining public collections in London and elsewhere, while the revival of installations is recalled in the heraldic plates of the grand crosses who took part in the 1913, 1920 and 1924 services, including the memorial for the Earl of Athlone, who died in 1957 and was the last surviving GCB from one of those Westminster Abbey rituals.

The history of the order was charted during this period, starting with the work of Harris Nicolas, which reported developments from the old knighthood of the Bath through to the early 1840s. There were a few general references to the order in peerages and similar publications, sometimes with lists of the current members, while Wiliam Shaw provided a list of all of the holders of the KB, GCB and KCB in The Knights of England, which was published by the Central Chancery in 1906.

What was referred to as a descriptive and historical account of the Bath was written by Jocelyn Perkins, a clergyman from the Westminster Abbey community, and published to coincide with the reinauguration of the chapel in 1913. Perkins illustrated the 1725, 1749 and 1812 installations, and the costumes that were created for the KCBs and GCBs for the coronation of King George IV. The period was also mentioned in later histories of the Bath, including James Risk’s work from 1972, and the more substantial and interesting account by Peter Galloway, which was published in 2006.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

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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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Russell Malloch

The Gazette

Publication date

3 June 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.