University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
THE KNIGHTS OF THE HORSE-SHOE.

We do not know why it is (and always has been) that winter is described
in gloomy colors. It may be that the hoar frosts, and the glittering icicles,
and the snow clad fields and the leafless trees and plants, convey such impressions
to a majority of mankind, but it is not so with all. There is something
bracing and invigorating in a snow storm to some, (we speak not of the
bleak and extreme north,) one of those old fashioned steady falls of large flat
flakes, which sometimes herald in the Christmas Holidays. Such a day was
the twenty-fifth of December, seventeen hundred and fourteen. There was
little wind, the cold was not intense, and the merry lads let loose from school,
and the negroes freed from labor were making merry with the snow balls in
the ancient city. But beside the usual gaiety and freedom from care of the
festive season, there were indications abroad that this day had been set apart
for some extraordinary ceremony other than those incident to the season.

Martial music was heard in various directions, and soldiers almost blinded
by the snow—the same troops who but a few weeks ago presented such a tatterdemalion
appearance—were threading their way towards the capital. The
bells, too, were pouring a merry peal over the town, and carriages and horses
lined the way from the church in Gloucester street to the aforementioned edifice.
Many of the ladies, occupying the vehicles, had just come from attending
the usual church service on that day, but now the altars and the church
hung with mistletoe, were deserted even by the Rev. Prelate[13] who statedly
officiated there. He was still robed in his canonicals, and occupied a seat in
one of the carriages. When the Hall of the House of Burgesses was thrown
open, the Governor was presented to the people, occupying the elevated seat
usually filled by the speaker. On his right hand sat the chaplain to the General
Assembly, the Rev. Hugh Jones, in his sacred robes, and round them in a
semi-circle sat the members of “the Tramontane order.” After the usual
solemn opening of the meeting by the chaplain, the Governor stepped down
the small flight of steps which led to a platform still elevated above the people.
He was dressed in full court costume, wig—crimson velvet coat—ruffles at
the throat and wrist. Before him was placed a table on which were spread
out various ornaments of jewelry, many of them studded with gems and precious
stones, but all of them wrought into the shape of horse shoes. He
took one of them in his hand and read the inscription on one side, “The Tramontane
Order,” and turning it over, read also the motto on the other, “Sic
juvat transcendere montes.” Here a great clapping of hands and waving
of ladies' handkerchiefs in the gallery arrested its progress for a moment, during
which time a happy and benignant smile played over the noble old man's
features. He was evidently well pleased, but struggling with his emotions,
for his eye glistened unwentedly. Whether he was thinking at the moment
of other important ceremonies which were soon to be performed and in which
those near and dear to him were deeply interested—or whether he was thinking
of the separation which was about to take place between him and his
young associates in arms, and some of them perhaps, forever, we know not.
His address was brief, and something like the following: “Friends and mem

bers of the order. I hold in my hand a simple and unostentatious ornament,
designed for the purpose of perpetuating the remembrance of one of the most
glorious achievements of our lives. I am sure it is of mine (which has been
longer and more eventful than that of any of my late associates in arms) and
I would fain hope it is so considered by them. [Appleuse.] I knew that you
would dearly cherish the remembrance of our mountain expedition, and it is
my wish that you may continue to do so through whatever may be your future
adventures. From a military experience now somewhat extended, I am
proud to say, that I never yet was in command of a nobler little army. Your
conduct, gentlemen, one and all, during the trying scenes through which we
have passed, met with my most hearty approbation. Such a commencement
of your martial career is a sure guarantee, that should our Sovereign again
require the aid of your arms, no second call will be necessary to bring you
forth again from your peaceful and happy homes. Some of you I learn are
about to embark for the shores of our father-land in pursuit of a wider and
more extended field of observation—and in furtherance of a laudable ambition
to improve your understanding by examining the institutions of the old
world. These insignia which I am about to present to you, will be new to
the chivalry of that time-honored country, but I trust not unrecognized. I
am sure when you bear these to the presence of Majesty itself, and when you
inform our gracious Sovereign what a new and glorious empire you have
added to his dominions, he will recognize you as a part of the chivalry of the
empire—of that glorious band of Knights and gentlemen who surround his
throne like a bulwark. [Applause.]

I have only now to say farther, that I have been authorized by his Majesty's
council to invest each of the following named young gentlemen with one of
these badges.

Francis Lee, Ralph Wormley, Mann Page, John Randolph, Dudley Diggs,
John Peyton, Thomas Bray, Theodoric Bland, Wm. Beverley, Benjamin Harrison,
Oliver Yelverton, Peyton Skipwith, Peter Berkly, William Byrd,
Charles Ludweli, John Fitzhugh, Thomas Fairfax, Bernard Moore, Nathaniel
Dandridge, Kit Carter, Francis Brooke, John Washington, Hugh Taylor,
Alexander Nott, Charles Mercer, Edward Saunders, William Moseley, Edmund
Pendleton, George Hay, George Wythe, John Munroe.

May you wear them gentlemen through long and happy lives, and when
you descend honored and lamented to your graves, may they descend as heirlooms
to your children. When the wilderness which you have discovered
and conquered shall blossom as the rose,—as most assuredly it will—these
badges may be sought after by the antiquarians of a future age, as honored
mementos of the first pioniers of their happy and favored country. Let them
be religiously preserved then, I charge you. The simple words which form
the inscription, may some day reveal the history of a portion of our country
and its honored founders, when the revolutions of empires and the passing
away of generations, may have submerged every other record.

Your own names, gentlemen, honored and distinguished as they now are,
by illustrious ancestry, may by the mutations and instability of human greatness,
be yet rescued from oblivion by these simple memorials.

The members of the order then kneeled down and were invested in due
form with the insignia of the “Knights of the Horse Shoe.'[14]

After which the assembly dispersed, the Knights to dine with the master
and founder of their order, and the people to join in the festivities of the season.