Only Malta managed to survive through the ages, although by the 20th century it had lost its estates everywhere except in Austria. The national orders are orders of chivalry, usually restricted to the nobility, with limited membership and only one class, which sovereigns created in order to find new ways of binding to their person the loyalty of an aristocracy whose feudal allegiance was waning. The model for these orders was that of the Knights of the Round Table around King Arthur. The most famous and one of the oldest ones is the Order of the Garter in England , created in 1348. These orders proliferated in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Private orders are less well-known.
A number of them were created for devotional or moral purposes by private citizens, who often sought the protection or approval of the Pope or of a sovereign. I placed them in a separate category although I tend to think of them as private orders. Whether Orders of Merit should be included as orders of chivalry is a complex question. I see them as distinct, because they usually have no nobiliary and religious requirements, and because they tend to reward past behavior rather than summon for future action. However, in many ways they extend the traditions of national orders of chivalry, particularly in the names of ranks, types of insignia, and in their general purpose of both rewarding meritorious subjects and binding their loyalty to the sovereign.