Ferdinand von Mueller

Eligibility for appointment to the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, previously open to those with service in the Mediterranean, was extended by a statute of the Order made on 4 December 1868 to ‘such Natural-born Subjects of the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as may have held or should thereafter hold High and Confidential Offices within any of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, or such other Natural-born Subjects of the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as may have held or should thereafter hold High and Confidential Offices, or may render Extraordinary and Important Services to Her Majesty, as Sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in relation to any of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, or who may become eminently distinguished therein by their Talents, Merits, Virtues, Loyalty, or Services’. An amendment of 3 April 1869 ordained ‘that Persons, of whatever Nation or Country, who may have been duly naturalized in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or in any of Her Majesty's Colonies or Dependencies, shall be competent to be admitted into the said Order, in like manner as if they had been Natural born Subjects of the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ (Supplement to London Gazette, 1 July 1869, pp 1749–50). It was under this amendment that M was formally appointed to the order, the previous approval notified in the Despatch, Duke of Buckingham and Chandos to H. Manners-Sutton, 8 December 1868 (The National Archives, London, CO 447/9), paraphrased here by Manners-Sutton, having been ultra vires.