A knight's chain of office, also termed a livery collar, collar of esses, or in mediaeval Latin torques honoris, is a heavy linked metal collar worn around the shoulders by holders of certain orders of chivalry, civic offices and ecclesiastical dignities to signify rank and allegiance. The form survives most visibly in the United Kingdom in the chains of the Lord Mayor of London, the Lord Mayor of York, and the various Knights of the Garter and Knights of the Thistle, as well as in continental analogues including the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece collar and the various national chivalric orders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden. The mediaeval prototype is the Lancastrian collar of esses worn by knights and esquires loyal to the House of Lancaster from the late fourteenth century.

Origin and mediaeval function

The collar of esses originated in the household of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in the 1370s, where it appears to have been issued as a livery item to retainers in his service. After the accession of his son Henry IV in 1399, the collar passed into the regalia of the Lancastrian crown and became a marker of allegiance to the dynasty. The Yorkist collar of suns and roses, introduced under Edward IV, served a parallel function for the rival house. By the Tudor period the collar had ceased to mark partisan allegiance and had been assimilated into the regalia of state office, a status it has retained through the four centuries since.

Materials and construction

The mediaeval collar of esses was made of silver-gilt or, for the highest ranks, gold, with the individual S-shaped links forged or cast and chased. Surviving examples in the Royal Collection and the V&A Museum show fineness running between approximately silver-gilt to 22-carat gold, with link counts varying from twenty to over fifty depending on the rank of the wearer. Later collars added enamel work, set gemstones and pendant badges. The Garter collar, in its modern form fixed by the statutes of 1672, alternates gold knots with enamel red roses surrounded by blue garters, terminating in the pendant George with the figure of Saint George and the dragon. The Lord Mayor of London's collar is the work of John Mawby, completed in 1545, and incorporates Tudor roses, knots and the so-called esses links inherited from the Lancastrian original.

Civic and ecclesiastical chains

Beyond the chivalric orders, civic chains of office became standard regalia for English mayors and Scottish provosts in the sixteenth century and have been adopted by many Commonwealth jurisdictions. In Toronto the mayoral chain is a twentieth-century commission, executed in 18-carat gold with engraved links representing the wards of the city. Ecclesiastical chains, properly termed pectoral chains, are worn by Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops to support the pectoral cross and are typically of plainer design, in 18-carat or 22-carat gold or silver-gilt.

Wear and survival

Chains of office are normally property of the office rather than the office-holder and are passed from incumbent to successor at installation. They are kept under inventory and are insured separately from the wearer's private property. The major risks to surviving chains are deformation under their own weight in storage, loss of enamel through impact, and theft; several civic chains have been stolen and recovered or replaced over the past century. From a gemmological standpoint the chains are of interest principally as case studies in goldsmithing of successive periods, since most major examples have been augmented and repaired across many generations and now contain metalwork from several distinct dates.