Honi Soit qui mal y pense

The Ultimate Gaslighter, King

the order of the royal garter means, Shame on you if you don't like what I do. this was the law in the 1300's. the king had absolute rule.

The Closed Vault of the Old World. King Edward III and the medieval monarchs ruled by absolute decree. Yet, even within these rigid stone courts, TRUTH could not be bound. The original Magna Carta Barons planted an ancient spark of resistance—a righteous thought that positioned the law above the crown, starting an 800-year journey of quiet stewardship. [1]

The Order of the Garter is the oldest and most prestigious chivalric order (a highly exclusive knight's club) in Britain. It was created by King Edward III in 1348.

To understand what it means in simple terms, look at its two main purposes:

A Royal "Inner Circle": The King wanted to gather his top warriors, closest friends, and most powerful nobles into a loyal team. It was a way to keep his most important subjects fiercely loyal to him.
The Code of Chivalry: It celebrated the medieval ideals of a perfect knight: bravery, loyalty, and Christian duty.

The Symbolic Meaning

The order's symbol is a literal blue garter (a strap used to hold up long socks) worn on the leg. According to legend, a noble lady accidentally dropped her garter while dancing at a royal ball. When the crowd laughed, King Edward III chivalrously picked it up, tied it to his own leg, and said:

"Honi soit qui mal y pense"
(French for: "Shame on anyone who thinks badly of this.")

This phrase became the official motto of the Order. It was a reminder that true honor is pure, and that a noble person protects the dignity of others.

In the context of history, the Order represents the ultimate peak of royal power and status—the exact type of absolute, exclusive monarchy that the Magna Carta Barons fought to limit, and that early American ancestors eventually left behind.

Part I: The Huntington Association Test of 1775 and Feudal Land Pacts

When our ancestor Epenetus Platt stepped forward on May 8, 1775, to sign the historic Huntington Articles of Association on Long Island, he wasn't just signing a protest petition. He was engaging in a profound legal act modeled directly on ancient English covenants and property pacts [1, 2] that our ancestors fought for to make in the first place 800 years ago, enabled for 500 years as barristers and magistrates and lawmakers and eventually brought those same rights to American soil and fought for those same rights again and again until they stood as law, and enshrined them in the Great Seal of America. This was a continuous brutal fight and carried many sacrifices-- and one thought echoes through 800 years: It is right and righteous to resist tyranny no matter what the cost.

1. Contractual Reciprocity (The Feudal Core)

In medieval English property law, land wasn't held unconditionally. It was governed by a mutual contract: a vassal swore an oath of fealty to a lord in exchange for protection. If the lord failed to protect the vassal or stripped away his rights, the contract was null and void, and the vassal had the legal right to resist.

The Huntington Association Test flipped this feudal mechanism directly against King George III. The document’s text explicitly stated that signers associated: [1, 2]

"For the Purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposing the Execution of the several arbitrary, and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament." [1, 2]

By framing British taxes and military occupation as "arbitrary and oppressive," the document argued that the King had broken his coronation oath to protect his subjects' property and constitutional rights. Because the King violated the contract, the colonists were legally absolved of their obedience. [1, 2]

2. The Power of "Freeholders and Freemen"

The document was explicitly addressed to and signed by the "Freemen, Freeholders, and Inhabitants" of the county. In the 18th century, a freeholder was a landowner. Because land ownership was tied directly to political rights, these men viewed their land titles as miniature charters of independence. Just like the Magna Carta barons who refused to let King John seize their castles without due process, the freeholders of Huntington signed this pact as property owners defending their physical soil from royal encroachment. [1, 2]

Part II: The Legal Arsenal: The Law Books That Built the Revolution

The elite colonial families (like the Farrars and Scudders) did not invent their legal arguments out of thin air. They possessed extensive private libraries containing the heavy weights of English jurisprudence. To build their airtight case against the Crown, colonial leaders, magistrates, and lawyers rigorously studied four primary legal texts: [1]

1. Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

The Content: Blackstone’s Commentaries were the absolute bible of English common law. It was said that more copies of Blackstone were sold to American colonists than to people living in England itself.
The Revolutionary Weapon: Blackstone explicitly outlined what he called the "Absolute Rights of Individuals." He wrote that the three primary rights of any Englishman were personal security, personal liberty, and private property. Crucially, Blackstone argued that these rights were completely hollow without "subordinate rights" to protect them—specifically, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances and the right to have courts administered according to the "law of the land." The colonists memorized these chapters to prove that Parliament was acting illegally under its own common law.

2. Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England (1628–1644)

The Content: Written a century before Blackstone, Lord Coke was a brilliant judge who spent his life defending the power of English courts and Parliament against the absolute, divine-right kings of the Stuart dynasty.
The Revolutionary Weapon: Coke's Second Institute was a line-by-line legal analysis of the 1215 Magna Carta. Coke was the jurist who famously revived the Magna Carta from an old, forgotten medieval treaty and turned it into a modern shield for individual liberties. Colonial leaders used Coke’s interpretations to argue that a citizen's home and property were sovereign, coining the legal maxim: "A man's house is his castle."

3. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689)

The Content: While technically a work of political philosophy, Locke's treatise was treated by colonial lawyers as foundational constitutional law. Locke argued that government is nothing more than a social contract designed solely to protect a citizen's natural rights to "Life, Liberty, and Estate."
The Revolutionary Weapon: Locke explicitly wrote that if a ruler attempts to take away or destroy the property of the people, or reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, that ruler puts himself into a "state of war" with his citizens. When this happens, Locke declared, the social contract is completely shattered, and the people have a legal right to resume their original liberty and establish a new government. This exact framework became the legal engine behind the Declaration of Independence. [1]

4. Baron de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws (1748)

The Content: A profound French legal study analyzing different forms of government, Montesquieu was widely read by the highly educated American gentry.
The Revolutionary Weapon: Montesquieu introduced the concept of the separation of powers. He argued that political liberty cannot exist if the executive power (the King) and the legislative power (Parliament) are concentrated in the same hands, or if the judicial power is not separated from both. When Great Britain attempted to strip the colonies of their independent assemblies and manipulate colonial judges, the legally trained elite used Montesquieu to show that the Crown was intentionally establishing an illegal despotism. [1, 2, 3]

The contrast between the Order of the Garter and the Great Seal of the United States is a direct reflection of how a divine spark of freedom transformed an exclusive privilege into a universal birthright.

When our cousins Thomas Jefferson and George Washington sat down to help design the Great Seal, they were reversing the very foundation of royal honors like the Order of the Garter. Instead of sealing power inside a closed vault for a chosen few, they were sealing a contract of freedom meant to belong to everyone.

Here is a direct comparison of how these two powerful symbols reflect completely opposing mindsets:

Many of the freedoms and comforts we enjoy today were considered radical just 250 years ago:

Rights come from our Creator, not granted by a king
The government answers to the people, not the people to the government
We can criticize our leaders without being jailed
A person can rise by merit instead of being locked into the class they were born into
Leaders are chosen, and can be removed, by the governed
People have the right to alter or abolish a government that turns tyrannical

Our Founding Fathers thought these ideas were worth risking everything for. May we never take them for granted.

🏰 The Old World Mindset: The Order of the Garter

The Core Concept: Exclusive Privilege. In the Old World, power and honor were handed downward from a King to a tiny, closed inner circle of elite nobles. It was a system designed to keep authority concentrated at the very top.
The Primary Visual Symbol: A Closed Loop (The Garter). The symbol of this mindset was a literal strap tied around a single knight's leg. This closed loop served as a physical boundary, marking the chosen few as separate and superior to ordinary people.
The Meaning of the Motto: Defending Personal Status. The official motto, "Honi soit qui mal y pense" ("Shame on anyone who thinks badly of this"), focused on protecting the private reputation and unassailable status of the ruling elite.
The Ultimate Goal: To Preserve a Throne. Every symbol, ritual, and title within the order existed for one primary purpose: to keep power securely locked inside the absolute monarchy.

🦅 The New World Mindset: The Great Seal of America

The Core Concept: Universal Birthright. In the New World, power and freedom are recognized as belonging inherently to the common man. Because freedom is an intrinsic aspect of God, authority is granted upward through a divine word of truth.
The Primary Visual Symbol: The Unfinished Pyramid & Eye. Instead of a closed loop, America chose a collective structure built by everyday hands. Watched over by the Eye of Providence (Annuit Coeptis), this open pyramid represents a society continually growing toward the light.
The Meaning of the Motto: A New Era for Humanity. The motto "Novus Ordo Seclorum" ("A New Order of the Ages") boldly declares a completely fresh start—shifting the focus of a nation away from protecting a king and toward human freedom and sacrificial service.
The Ultimate Goal: To Democratize a Blessing. The ultimate mission of the Founders was to take the ancient legal blueprints of the Magna Carta, carry them out of the private vaults of nobility, and disperse them so that all people could live as free citizens.

🕊️ The Turning Point: From a Closed Loop to an Open Pyramid

When you place these two worlds side by side, you see the true magnitude of what our ancestors accomplished through their quiet stewardship. They did not cross the Atlantic to replicate the closed loop of European kings. Instead, they used their custody of the law to help design a completely open system.

When cousins like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington shaped the Great Seal, they were reversing centuries of royal entitlement. They took an exclusive inheritance and intentionally gave it away, transforming the ancient right to liberty into a universal, divine birthright that belongs entirely to everyone.

The Scudder-Ludlow/Ludlam Royal Highway

The Long Island Scudder patriots—including Captain William Smith Scudder and Lieutenant Henry Scudder—descend directly from Thomas Scudder II and his wife, Mary Ludlam (often recorded as Ludlow) (1639–1691). [1, 2, 3]

This specific 1600s Ludlow/Ludlam branch carries a highly prestigious lineage that bypasses standard colonial lines: [1]

Mary Ludlow/Ludlam was the daughter of William Ludlow/Ludlam and Clemence Fordham.
This line traces back to Letitia West, who married into the Ludlow family.
Letitia West was a daughter of the noble West family (Lords De La Warr), descending directly from Sir Thomas West and Anne Knollys.
Anne Knollys was the daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and Catherine Carey—the daughter of Mary Boleyn (sister to Queen Anne Boleyn). [1]

Through the West (De La Warr), Knollys, and Carey lines, this branch connects directly to iconic Magna Carta Surety Barons (like John de Lacy and Saher de Quincy) as well as the Plantagenet royal family.

The Skillern Paths to Nobility

Our great-grandfather's Skillern side (tracing to Patriot #27, William Skillern II) uncovers an entirely different geographic cluster of aristocratic roots. The Skillern family historically interfaces with early frontier gentry lines that match back to the Percy, Neville, and Gascoigne families of Northern England—powerhouses of medieval nobility who boasts numerous distinct lines of descent from the original 1215 Magna Carta barons. [1, 2]

The Skillern lineages open up massive paths straight into the heart of European aristocracy and the Magna Carta barons. [1]

OUR deeper branches tell a much larger story: [1]

The Skillern Paths to Nobility

When looking at which colonial founders arrived on American soil with a powerful background, extensive wealth, and a thorough training in English law, Captain William Farrar stands out.

Through him, the Farrar family (ancestors of Judith, Thomas Jefferson, and Peter Farrar) literally brought the machinery of the English legal system to the colonies. Behind them, the aristocratic West/Ludlow branches (linked to the Scudder patriots) reinforced this heritage of legal stewardship. [1, 2, 3]

Here is how these specific lines "came in loaded" and planted the law on American soil:

1. The Ultimate Legal Powerhouse: Captain William Farrar (Arrived 1618)

Captain William Farrar did not arrive as an ordinary laborer or farmer; he was a highly educated gentleman. [1]

The Background: He was the son of John Farrar, Esquire, a wealthy London merchant and landowner. Because his family possessed immense fortune, William received a formal, elite education in law while in England. [1]
Bringing Law to American Soil: Upon arriving in Virginia in 1618, his legal training made him an immediate authority figure. He famously served as the defense attorney in North America's first breach-of-promise lawsuit (1623), representing the widow Cecily Jordan. He argued the civil complexities of the case so masterfully that the local court had to refer the unprecedented matter back to the high civil lawyers in London. (Farrar won the case and married his client). [1, 2]
Political & Judicial Leverage: In 1626, King Charles I appointed him to the Council of Virginia (the Governor's Council). This body served as both the upper house of the colonial legislature and the Supreme Court of the colony. Farrar sat as a head judge, meaning he was quite literally one of the primary architects executing and codifying law in early America. [1]

2. The Gentry Blueprint: The West & Ludlow Families (Scudder Ancestry)

While the later Scudder patriots (#3, #4, #11) operated as rugged privateers and Culper Ring spies on Long Island, their 1600s gateway ancestors—the West and Ludlow families—were the epitome of the educated, law-drafting upper class.

The Background: The West family (Lords De La Warr) were premier British nobility. Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, was so powerful he was appointed the first royal governor of Virginia.
Bringing Law to American Soil: The Wests and Ludlows were raised in England's Inns of Court, thoroughly trained in the Magna Carta principles of property rights, governance, and English common law. When these families married into the early New England and Long Island settlements, they brought extensive libraries, wealth, and immediate community leverage. They used this leverage to serve as magistrates, draft early town charters, and secure thousands of acres of land, ensuring their descendants (like the Scudders) grew up literate, prominent, and influential enough to lead regional militias.

3. Frontier Magistrates: The Skillern & Anderson Alliance

Your great-grandfather's Skillern side (#27) combined forces with the Anderson line (#22, #23) in Augusta County, Virginia. [1, 2]

The Background: While the early Skillerns arrived as part of the Scotch-Irish gentry via Ulster, they immediately aligned with the elite "Tinkling Spring" settlers and the Campbell/Preston networks.
Bringing Law to American Soil: In the 1700s, the lower classes were barred from owning extensive property, but these families secured vast land patents in the Shenandoah Valley. They were immediately appointed as justices of the peace and local magistrates. On the frontier, a justice of the peace was the law—holding court, settling land boundaries, and maintaining the legal framework of the Virginia colony. [1, 2]

The American Revolution was driven by a collision of mindsets, and those inheriting the legal and psychological blueprint of the Magna Carta barons possessed a distinct generational leverage to challenge the King.

While generations across the Atlantic may have "watered down" the titles, the fundamental pillars of power—land ownership, literacy, and legal stewardship—remained concentrated within these specific lineages. When these families arrived on American soil, they did not carry the submissive psychological conditioning of the medieval peasant class. Instead, they brought an ancient expectation of contractual rights and the institutional vocabulary required to weaponize English common law against the Crown.

1. The Baronial Mindset vs. The Peasant Mindset

For centuries under feudalism, the lower laboring classes were conditioned to accept absolute authority. Without the right to own land, obtain an education, or access courts, the psychological default of a peasant or serf was survival through compliance. They could not easily conceive of standing up to a monarch because, in their world, the monarch was the law.

In stark contrast, the families tracing back to the 1215 Runnymede assembly inherited a completely different psychological framework:

The Rule of Law: They were raised on the absolute principle that the King is subject to the law.
The Right to Rebel: The original Magna Carta explicitly included a "security clause" (Clause 61) that gave the 25 barons the legal right to seize the King’s castles if he broke his word.
Hereditary Expectations: This created a multi-generational lineage of individuals who viewed their relationship with the monarchy not as a matter of divine right, but as a binding legal contract.

2. Guarding the Land and the Law

Because land ownership was tied directly to political franchise, keeping tracts of land across generations meant keeping power. When "Gateway Ancestors" like Captain William Farrar, the Wests, and the Ludlows arrived in the 1600s, they utilized their capital to instantly secure thousands of acres.

With this land came the immediate wealth necessary to purchase law libraries, thoroughly educate their children, and dominate local colonial assemblies. They became the magistrates, judges, and vestrymen who ran the colonies. They were the thin crust of colonial society that understood exactly how to draft charters, navigate property lines, and file legal injunctions. They held the local community leverage required to organize and command regional militias when the crisis arrived.

3. Exposing the Colonial Lie

As noted in legal histories like A.E. Dick Howard's The Road from Runnymede, royal charters promised American colonists that they would retain all the "Liberties, Franchises, and Immunities" of Englishmen living at home. But as Parliament began imposing arbitrary taxes, closing ports, and quartering troops without local consent, the Crown exposed this promise as a hollow lie.

To a populace descended from laborers, this might have felt like an unavoidable reality of empire. But to the elite descendants of the barons, it was a blatant breach of contract. They recognized that America was being systematically short-shifted. Because they were highly literate in English common law, they were uniquely positioned to spot the overreach, articulate the tyranny, and tell the King's governors, "This violates the very charter your ancestors signed at Runnymede".

4. Flipping the Dynamic: From Royal Privilege to Liberty for All

Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Shame be to him who thinks evil of it"), is the ancient declaration of the Order of the Garter—the absolute apex of exclusive, royal, and aristocratic British chivalry. Originally, the Magna Carta itself was not a democratic document; it was a protection racket designed by 25 ultra-wealthy barons to shield their personal properties and privileges from a predatory King. For centuries, those rights were strictly reserved for the elite.

The true brilliance of the American experiment—orchestrated by these highly educated, legally trained colonial descendants—was the democratization of those aristocratic rights.

When the revolutionary crisis peaked, these families used their hereditary leverage, legal education, and community standing to flip the script. They took an exclusive medieval treaty meant only for top-tier barons and translated its core principles—due process, consent to taxation, and protection from arbitrary imprisonment—into a universal standard for all free citizens. They leveraged their elite inheritance to break open the limited mindset of royal privilege, planting the seeds that would ultimately transform baronial self-interest into a constitutional guarantee of liberty for an entire nation.

The evolution of these legal arguments and the local resistance mounted by these specific families demonstrates exactly how baronial heritage was weaponized to spark the American Revolution.

Part I: How the Magna Carta Drafted the Arguments of 1776

When the highly educated colonial elite looked at British policies in the 1760s and 1770s, they didn’t see a simple disagreement over taxes—they saw a direct violation of ancient constitutional law. They used their extensive law libraries to extract the exact language of the 1215 Magna Carta and hurl it back at Parliament.

The two most powerful legal weapons they duplicated were:

1. "No Taxation Without Representation" (Derived from Clause 12)

The Original 1215 Text: Clause 12 of the Magna Carta stated that “No scutage [taxation on knight's fees] or aid shall be imposed on our kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom.” This established that the King could not arbitrarily extract money without the consent of the realm's governing council.
The 1770s Transformation: Because American colonists had no elected members sitting in the British Parliament, the Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, and Tea Act explicitly violated this foundational clause. Legally trained minds recognized that if Parliament could tax them without "common counsel," the colonists were being stripped of their status as free Englishmen and reduced to political servants.

2. "Due Process" and "The Law of the Land" (Derived from Clause 39)

The Original 1215 Text: Clause 39 is the most famous sentence of the Magna Carta: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned... except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”
The 1770s Transformation: When Parliament passed the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts, they suspended local colonial courts, allowed British soldiers to be tried back in England where they would escape justice, and expanded the use of "Admiralty Courts" (which operated without a jury). The colonial elite immediately recognized this as a calculated dismantling of Clause 39. They argued that a King who revokes the right to a trial by a jury of one's equals has effectively broken the foundational contract of government.

Part II: How the Farrar and Scudder Lines Weaponized Local Courts

Because the lower laboring classes lacked the education to navigate legal filings or the capital to withstand British economic retaliation, the responsibility to physically block British policy fell on families with multi-generational leverage. The Farrars in Virginia and the Scudders in New York used their regional standing to dismantle British authority from the inside out.

1. The Farrar Family: Starving the Royal Courts in Virginia

In Virginia, the legal system was the lifeblood of royal administration. By the 1770s, the Farrar family—wielding immense influence as wealthy landowners and institutional leaders in Goochland and Mecklenburg Counties—helped orchestrate a highly sophisticated legal boycott.

The Strategy: Following the lead of the Virginia House of Burgesses, aristocratic magistrates and justices of the peace (including connections to Thomas Jefferson Farrar and Peter Farrar) systematically refused to open the local courts or enforce debt collections under the British Stamp Act.
The Impact: By closing the courts, they paralyzed the royal governor’s ability to collect revenues or enforce crown mandates. Furthermore, they used their legal mastery to organize local "Committees of Safety." These committees functioned as a shadow government, using the exact administrative frameworks they had run for the King to instead redirect civilian assets, food, and horses directly to the embryonic Continental Line.

2. The Scudder Family: Challenging Maritime Law and Property Rights

On Long Island, the Scudder family used their legal literacy to aggressively challenge British maritime overreach in the decades leading up to the war.

The Strategy: Under British common law, property rights were supposed to be sacrosanct. However, the Crown began issuing "Writs of Assistance"—general search warrants that allowed British customs officers to break into any warehouse, ship, or home on a whim to search for smuggled goods. The Scudders, who operated prominent shipping and commercial interests across the Long Island Sound, recognized this as a direct assault on the baronial principle that a man's property cannot be arbitrarily seized by the sovereign.
The Impact: When British officers attempted to enforce these sweeping maritime seizures, the Scudders didn't just submit; they used their local leverage to tie up British agents in litigation, hiding behind colonial charters and demanding strict adherence to due process. When the Crown eventually bypassed the courts entirely and resorted to military occupation, the Scudders transitioned their legal resistance into physical warfare. Lieutenant Henry Scudder used his intimate knowledge of local property lines to map British strongholds, while Captain William Smith Scudder took to the sea on a commissioned whaleboat, transforming his legal grievances into a targeted maritime campaign to dismantle British supply networks.