An original rule of the order was that as each knight died, a casting of his
arms should be placed in his stall in St George's Chapel, Windsor. Regrettably
this did not happen reliably. And of the arms that were put up, quite a few
were purloined over the centuries since then. Remarkably a large number have
in fact survived.
Our garter ancestors all lived before 1539 and there were 66 of these. Of these 66, stall-plates survive for 27 and so 39 ancestral plates are missing. Further there were little or no records of what the missing arms had been. Fortunately various scholars have been working on these matters for at least the last hundred years and in the last year we have been privileged to have credible lists published of the arms of all garter knights since the foundation of the order in c. 1348. The publications I have used are:
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