<P> They are all depicted in individual portraits in the Bruges Garter Book made c. 1431, and now in the British Library . </P> <P> Various legends account for the origin of the Order . The most popular involves the "Countess of Salisbury", whose garter is said to have slipped from her leg while she was dancing at a court ball at Calais . When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and returned it to her, exclaiming, "Honi soit qui mal y pense!" ("Shame on him who thinks ill of it!"), the phrase that has become the motto of the Order . </P> <P> According to another legend, King Richard I was inspired in the 12th century by St George the Martyr while fighting in the Crusades to tie garters around the legs of his knights, who subsequently won the battle . King Edward supposedly recalled the event in the 14th century when he founded the Order . This story is recounted in a letter to the Annual Register in 1774: </P> <P> In Rastel's Chronicle, I. vi . under the life of Edward III is the following curious passage: "About the 19 yere (sic) of this kinge, he made a solempne feest at Wyndesore, and a greate justes and turnament, where he devysed, and perfyted substanegally, the order of the knyghtes of the garter; howe be it some afferme that this order began fyrst by kynge Rycharde, Cure de Lyon, at the sege of the citye of Acres; where, in his great necessyte, there were but 26 knyghtes that fyrmely and surely abode by the kynge; where he caused all them to were thonges of blew leyther about theyr legges . And afterwarde they were called the knyghtes of the blew thonge ." I am obliged for this passage to John Fenn, Esq; a curious and ingenious gentleman of East - Dereham, in Norfolk, who is in possession of the most rare book whence it is taken . Hence some affirm, that the origin of the garter is to be dated from Richard I * and that it owes its pomp and splendor to Edward III . </P>

What is the order of the garter awarded for