List of Founder Knights
At the time of its foundation, the Order consisted of King Edward III, together with 25 Founder Knights, listed in ascending order of stall number in St George's Chapel:[7]
King Edward III (1312–77)
Edward, the Black Prince, Prince of Wales (1330–76)
Henry of Grosmont, Earl of Lancaster (c. 1310–61)
Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick (d. 1369)
Jean III de Grailly, Captal de Buch (d. 1377)
Ralph de Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford (1301–72)
William de Montacute, 2nd Earl of Salisbury (1328–97)
Roger Mortimer, 2nd Earl of March (1328–60)
John de Lisle, 2nd Baron Lisle (1318–56)
Bartholomew de Burghersh, 2nd Baron Burghersh (d. 1369)
John de Beauchamp, 1st Baron Beauchamp (d. 1360)
John de Mohun, 2nd Baron Mohun (c. 1320–76)
Sir Hugh de Courtenay (d. 1349)
Thomas Holland, 1st Earl of Kent (1314–1360)
John de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Rotherfield (c. 1300–59)
Sir Richard Fitz-Simon (b. 1295)
Sir Miles Stapleton (d. 1364)
Sir Thomas Wale (d. 1352)
Sir Hugh Wrottesley (d. 1381)
Sir Nele Loring (d. 1386)
Sir John Chandos (d. 1369)
Sir James Audley (d. 1369)
Sir Otho Holand (d. 1359)
Sir Henry Eam (d. before 1360)
Sir Sanchet D'Abrichecourt (d. 1345)[3]
Sir Walter Paveley (d. 1375)
They are all depicted in individual portraits in the Bruges Garter Book made c. 1431, and now in the British Library.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges_Garter_Book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peerage_of_England
Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick, KG (c. 14 February 1313 – 13 November 1369) was an English nobleman and military commander during the Hundred Years' War. In 1348 he became one of the founders and the third Knight of the Order of the Garter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_de_Beauchamp,_11th_Earl_of_Warwick
Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, KG (16 March 1338 – 8 April 1401) was an English medieval nobleman of French descent, and one of the primary opponents of Richard II.
After Bolingbroke deposed Richard and became king as Henry IV, Beauchamp was restored to his titles and estates. He was one of those who urged the new King to murder Richard, and accompanied King Henry against the rebellion of 1400.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_de_Beauchamp,_12th_Earl_of_Warwick
English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages
By the second half of the fourteenth century the English peerage, those sixty to seventy lords each of whom was entitled to an individual summons to parliament, had emerged as a distinct and privileged group at the top of English lay society. Their social and political pre-eminence stemmed firstly from their role as the chief military commanders and advisers of the king, and secondly from the lordship of land and men which they exercised in their localities*—or, as they sometimes described them, their ‘countries’. In a sense, *England was a federation of lordly spheres of influence. It was largely for their local authority that the king valued his peers. It was for the same local authority that the gentry, without whose consent and co-operation it could hardly be exercised, valued them.
A picture of England as a jigsaw of lordly spheres of influence is, however, prone to oversimplification, and it is advisable to begin with some caveats. What the peers enjoyed in their ‘countries’ was leadership and influence, it was not ‘control’. Dependent as it was on the consent of both the king and the local gentry, it could never be that. Nor were their spheres of influence clearly demarcated. Sometimes peers were entrusted with specific rights within quite clearly defined areas (a county, for example), but for the most part lordship was not so much a consolidated territorial power-block as a bundle of rights and a series of connections, overlapping and intermingling with a number of other sources of authority. Moreover, there was nothing immutable about them. They were continually expanding and contracting, and frequently changing hands. Local leadership was a question of degree, of individual ability, often of luck.
https://www.questia.com/library/103476203/the-english-nobility-in-the-late-middle-ages-the .
The Stowe Armorial coat of arms is the centrepiece of the Gothic Library at Stowe. ... The armorial is a 1.4m diameter heraldic painting of the 719 quarterings of the Temple, Nugent, Brydges, Chandos and Grenville families, including ten variations of the English Royal arms, the arms of Spencer, De Clare, Valence, Mowbray, Mortimer and De Grey.
