This is variously related by historians. The common and not improbable account is, that the Countess of Salisbury, happening at a ball to drop her garter, the King took it up, and presented it to her in these words, "Honi soit qui mal y pense;" i. e. Evil to him that evil thinks. This accident gave rise to the order and the motto; it being the spirit of the times to mix love and war together. In the original statutes, however, there is not the least hint of allusion to such a circumstance, farther than is conveyed in the motto. - Camden, Fern, etc. take the order to have been instituted on occasion of the victory obtained by Edward over the French, at the battle of Cressy. That prince, says some historians, ordered his garter to be. displayed as a signal of battle; in commemoration whereof, he made a garter the principal ornament of the order erected in memory of this signal victory, and the symbol of this indissoluble union of the knights. And they account for the motto, that king Ed ward having laid claim to the kingdom of France, denounced shame and defiance upon him that should dare to think amiss of the just enterprise he had undertaken for recovering his lawful rights to that crown; and that the bravery of those knights whom he had elected into this order was such as would enable him to maintain the quarrel against those that thought ill of it. This interpretation, however, appears to be rather forced. - A still more ancient origin of this order is given in Rostel's Chronicle, lib. vi. quoted by Granger, in the Supplement to his Biographical History; viz. that it was devised by Richard I. at the siege of Acre, when he caused twenty-six knights, who firmly stood by him, to wear thongs of blue leather about their legs; and that it was revived and perfected in the nineteenth year of Edward III.