Livery collar

Various forms of livery were used in the Middle Ages to denote attachment to a great person by friends, servants, and political supporters.

From the collar hung a badge or device indicating the person the livery related to; the most important part of the ensemble for contemporaries.

[1] The collar of Esses is first recorded earlier than this, as being given by John of Gaunt, and remained in use by the House of Lancaster throughout the Wars of the Roses.

During the sitting of the Parliament of England in 1394 the complaints of Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel against Richard II are recorded, one of his grievances being that the king had been wearing the livery collar of his uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and that people of the king's following wore the same livery.

[citation needed] This famous livery collar, which has never passed out of use, takes many forms, its Esses being sometimes linked together chainwise, and sometimes, in early examples, as the ornamental bosses of a garter-shaped strap-collar.

Swynford was a follower of John of Gaunt, and the date of his death easily disposes of the theory that the Esses were devised by Henry IV to stand for his motto or "word" of Soverayne.

In one of Henry VI's own collars the S was joined to the broomcod of the French device, symbolizing the king's claim to the two kingdoms.

In modern times the Collar of Esses is worn, on state occasions only, by the Kings and Heralds of Arms, by the Lord Chief Justice and by Serjeants-at-Arms.

A monumental brass at Mildenhall shows a knight whose badge of a dog or wolf circled by a crown hangs from a collar with edges suggesting a pruned bough or the ragged staff.

The Elizabethan artist Nicholas Hilliard was both a goldsmith and miniaturist, and so produced the whole of pieces like the Armada Jewel, given by Elizabeth I of England to a courtier.

Following this new fashion, Louis XI of France, when instituting his order of St. Michael in 1469, gave the knights collars of scallop shells linked on a chain.

At the end of the 18th century, most of the European orders had only one rank—that of knight—and although they usually had collars the cross or badge was now worn on a ribbon around the neck or over the right shoulder.

But the Tudor king must needs match[clarify] in all things with continental sovereigns, and the present collar of the Garter knights, with its golden knots and its buckled garters enclosing white roses set on red roses, has its origin in the Tudor age.

In France, Emperor Napoleon I introduced the "Grand aigle" collar as the highest rank in his Légion d'honneur.

In other countries such as Brazil the collar is a rank above that of a Grand Cross and it is reserved for the president and foreign heads of state.