https://youtube.com/watch?v=l_GswdE9bbw

Today saw yet another of the royal public events that were too big to cancel – the procession of the Knights of the Garter to St George’s Chapel, Windsor. As with other big public events, I primarily experienced it in the form of the passive livestream on YouTube.

The cameras followed the knights, heralds and other officers as they marched on foot from the castle to the chapel, then went back again by carriage. They also filmed a large procession of what I assumed to be security cars following along the same stretch of road, which took something away from the splendour of the occasion. The cameras did not go inside the chapel, instead just showing the crowds and guards waiting outside for the duration, but the microphones (wherever the may have been positioned) were able to pick up a reasonable audio feed of the speeches, sermons and hymns.

The new members being installed today were royal lady the Duchess of Gloucester and knights companions the Lords Peach, Kakkar and Lloyd-Webber.

Stall plates and banners as photographed in The Dragon. Artist unknown.

Earlier this year, at the prompting of Baz Manning, I subscribed to The Dragon, the community newsletter of St George’s Chapel. Although this mainly covers religious events, it is also often where knights’ armorial bearings are leaked for the first time. The edition of 9th June included photographs of the newly-delivered stall plates for Lady Ashton of Upholland and Lord Patten of Barnes, while that of 16th June showed the banners of Lords Peach and Kakkar. Apparently Peach’s must have been granted fairly recently, for the article claims that the sword is a reference to him carrying Curtana at the coronation last year. That means Lloyd-Webber is the only current member who remains at present armorially anonymous.

UPDATE (20th June)

The video I originally linked at the top of the article has been removed from Associated Press’s YouTube channel. All the other channels that also uploaded the same video seem to have removed it as well. For now I have replaced it with an amateur video by David Dumbrăveanu. The Daily Mail curiously still seems to have the full video up, and most other channels have at least small snippets.