Order of the Garter the Prime Minister Clement Attlee and the Leader of the Opposition Winston Churchill, membership of the United Kingdom's highest ranking orders of chivalry (the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle and the dormant Order of St. Patrick) became a personal gift of the Sovereign once again. Thus, the Sovereign personally selects Knights and Ladies Companion of the Garter, and need not act on or solicit the advice of His or Her Government. In addition, the Order includes supernumerary members, who do not count towards the limit of 24 companions. Several supernumerary members, known as "Royal Knights and
Order of chivalry in the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Late Medieval Europe" (1987), the Canadian heraldist D'Arcy Boulton classifies chivalric orders as follows: Based on Boulton, this article distinguishes: Another occurrent chronological categorisation is into: Confraternal orders are orders of chivalry with the presidency attached to a nobleman: Fraternal orders are orders of chivalry that were formed off a vow & for a certain enterprise: Votive orders are orders of chivalry, temporarily formed on the basis of a vow. These were courtly chivalric games rather than actual pledges as in the case of the fraternal orders. Three are known from