The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue

1460–1565

This page intentionally left blank

The KnightsHospitaller of theEnglish Langue1460–1565

GREGORY O’MALLEY

1

3Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,

and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala LumpurMadrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France GreeceGuatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal SingaporeSouth Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Pressin the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United Statesby Oxford University Press Inc., New York

� Gregory O’Malley 2005

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate

reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproductionoutside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,

Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or coverand you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Data available

Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, IndiaPrinted in Great Britainon acid-free paper by

Biddles Ltd.King’s Lynn, Nofolk

ISBN 0-19-925379-x

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

In memory of my Parents, John and Monica:

Requiescant in pace

This page intentionally left blank

Preface

This book is a study of the activities of those members of the militaryand Hospitaller order of St John of Jerusalem born in Britain and Irelandand active in the period 1460–1565, when the order was based successivelyin Rhodes, Italy, and Malta. It originated in a Cambridge Ph.D. thesiscompleted in 1999. This dealt largely with the English Hospitallersduring the same period and only touched on the order’s activities inIreland and Scotland when they impinged on its English priory and brethren.I was able to justify this approach to my own satisfaction at the timefor three reasons: first the order’s Irish and Scottish brethren rarely visitedits Mediterranean convent and sent only limited funds there; secondlythe order’s Scottish history had been adequately dealt with in recent schol-arship; and thirdly its priory in Ireland was run by Englishmen after1497. Since then, research into the order’s Irish affairs has broadenedmy awareness both of the significance of the Hospitaller priors of Irelandin the governance and development of the late medieval lordship ofIreland and of the possibility that the struggle waged by the English-and Irish-born brethren for control of the priory might be used to castsome light on still vexed questions of communal identity in late medievalIreland. Furthermore the order’s Scottish history, although well understoodin itself, has not been fully integrated with that of the priories of England andIreland.

The title has been chosen with care: the ‘old’ British history is now viewedwith suspicion in some quarters as a centralising vehicle for imposing anoutmoded and anachronistic Anglocentric unity on the richly diverse polit-ical, social, and economic development of the north-west European islandgroup on one of whose units (not to be advantaged in any particular overothers such as Eigg or the Calf of Man) this work was written. Yet, given theinsular location of the Hospital’s central convent, terming the work ‘theKnights Hospitaller of the Isles’, might have caused confusion, while entit-ling it ‘the Hospitallers of the Atlantic Archipelago’ might have suggestedlocation in the Azores to those unaware of the stimulating work of RichardTompson.1 Given these difficulties it seems appropriate to fall back on theorder’s internal divisions in describing its members. Beginning in the latethirteenth century, the Hospital of St John began to be divided into langues,quasi-national associations into which all its members were allocatedaccording to where they had been born. All those Hospitallers born in

1 N. Davis, The Isles: A History (London, 1999); R. S. Tompson, The Atlantic Archipelago:A Political History of the British Isles (Lewiston, 1986).

Britain and Ireland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, entered theEnglish langue.

A number of points of presentation should be clarified here. As far aspossible, I have sought to refer to persons mentioned in the text by themodern equivalents of the names they are given in the documents. Whenthe modern equivalent is uncertain, or where there is a clear scholarlyconvention to do otherwise, as in the use of ‘Wydeville’ rather than ‘Wood-ville’, I have followed the original spelling instead. This goes, too, for Irishnames, where I have adhered to the practices laid down in the New Historyof Ireland. When dealing with some of the order’s continental brethren,I have generally given modern equivalents of names such as Jehan, deferringto the more modern secondary authorities in cases of uncertainty. I haveadhered to the conventions used by the late K. M. Setton when dealing withIslamic names. References to documents are generally to what has appearedto be the most modern and/or comprehensive foliation. When providingreferences to material in the National Library of Malta, I have preferred themodern pencil foliation referred to in the recently published Catalogues ofthe archives to the several older systems in use. Consequently references maydiffer somewhat from those provided by other authorities.

I have incurred many debts in the writing and preparation of this book.First and foremost, I would like to thank my Ph.D. supervisor, ProfessorJonathan Riley-Smith, for his lasting friendship, inspirational enthusiasm,and many kindnesses over the years. Thanks are also due to Dr RosemaryHorrox for her support, helpful comments, and advice on further readingand to Professor Reinhold Mueller, Dr Helen Nicholson, Dr Simon Thurley,Mr Jim Bolton, Dr Gerwyn Griffiths, Dr Joseph Gribbin, andMr Stephen deGiorgio for providing invaluable texts, assistance, information, and/or ref-erences. The examiners of my thesis—Professor Barrie Dobson andDr Anthony Luttrell—have provided me with a great deal of helpfuladvice and encouragement. Dr Luttrell has also generously made availablereferences, photocopies, and his incomparable knowledge of the Maltesearchives.

I would like to thank the staff of the National Library of Malta, theCambridge University Library, the Institute of Historical Research, theBritish Library, the Public Record Office, and the Bodleian Library. Especialthanks are due to Miss Pamela Willis and the staff of the Museum andLibrary of the Venerable Order of St John for their unwearying assistanceand many helpful suggestions.

I am also grateful to those institutions and bodies which have provided mewith financial support during the course of my research: the British Acad-emy, the Richard III Society, and Yorkist History Trust, who provided mewith a one-year Fellowship in 1997–8, and the Master and Fellows ofChrist’s College, Cambridge. Further assistance towards the cost of researchwas afforded by the British Academy, the managers of the Prince Consort

viii Preface

and Thirlwall Fund, and the managers of various funds administered byChrist’s College. My research fellowship at Emmanuel College has proved ofinestimable value in completing this project, and I am grateful to successivemasters and fellows of the college for their friendship and encouragement.

I would also like to thank Sir John Gorman and the Irish Association ofthe Sovereign Military Order of Malta, who invited me to give a talk inDownpatrick in October 2001, and in particular to John and Fiona Belling-ham and the Honourable Bill and Daphne Montgomery, who treated mewith great kindness during my stays with them in Ireland. John Bellinghamwas kind enough to sacrifice two days to driving me round Ireland looking atHospitaller sites, and proved enthusiastic and unerring in the pursuit ofsome of the more obscure and unpromising. Above all, thanks are due tomy family—to my brother Philip for running me backwards and forwardsbetween Cambridge and Manchester with bags, furniture, and outsizedfridges; to my wife Magda and daughter Mary, whose love and companion-ship have served as a reminder that man cannot live by books alone, and tomy parents, who did not live to see the publication of this book, but towhose love, encouragement, and help it owes so much.

Preface ix

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

List of Maps xiii

Abbreviations xiv

1 Introduction 1

2 The Hospital in England and Wales, c.1460–1540:The Prior, his Brethren, and Conventual Life 25

3 The Administration and Finances of the Priory of England 60

4 The Hospital and Society in England and Wales 87

5 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 112

6 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–1540 161

7 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland, 1460–1564 226

8 The English Langue in Rhodes, Italy, andMalta, c.1460–1540 267

9 Brethren and Conformists, 1540–1565 320

10 Conclusion 333

Appendices

I (Grand) Mastersa of the Order of St John, 1461–1568 338

II Priors of England, 1417–1540 339

III Turcopoliers, 1449–1551 340

IV Priors of Ireland, 1420–1540 341

V Bailiffs of Eagle, 1442–1540 342

VI Receivers of the Common Treasury in England, 1457–1540 343

VII Members of the Langue, c.1460–1565 344

VIII Hospitaller Pensioners after 1540 360

IX Organization and Value of the Order’s English andWelsh Estates, 1535–1540 362

Bibliography 367

Index 390

xii Contents

List of Maps

I Hospitaller houses in Britain and Ireland. � Courtesy of theMuseum of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem 365

II Hospitaller possessions in the south-east Aegean (after Torr,Rhodes in modern times) 366

Abbreviations

Ancient Deeds A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds inthe Public Record Office, 6 vols. (London,1890–1915)

AOM Archives of Malta (National Library ofMalta, Archives of the Knights)

APC Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed.J. Dasent, 2nd ser., vols. i–vii, AD I542–1570 (London, 1890–3)

AOSM Annales de l’Ordre souverain de MalteBDVTE Book of Deliberations of the Venerable

Tongue of England 1523–67, ed. H. P. Sci-cluna (Valletta, 1949)

Bekynton Correspondence T. Bekynton, Official Correspondence, ed.G. Williams, 2 vols. RS (London, 1872)

BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Re-search

BL British LibraryCCR Calendar of Close RollsCDI Calendar of Documents, Relating to Ireland,

Preserved in Her Majesty’s Public RecordOffice, London, ed. H. S. Sweetman and G.F. Handcock, 5 vols. (London, 1875–86)

CFR Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1272–1509, 22 vols.(London, 1911–62)

CHR Catholic Historical ReviewCICRE Calendar of Inquisitions formerly in the Of-

fice of the Chief Remembrancer of the Ex-chequer Prepared from the MSS of the IrishRecord Commission, ed. M. C. Griffith(Dublin, 1991)

Claudius E.vi British Library MS Cotton Claudius E.viCPCRCIr Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of

Chancery in Ireland, of the Reigns ofHenry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Eliza-beth, 2 vols., ed. J. Morrin (Dublin, 1861)

CPL Calendar of Papal Registers: Papal LettersCPR Calendar of Patent RollsCS Camden Society

CSPV Calendar of State Papers and ManuscriptsRelating to English Affairs Existing in Ven-ice and Northern Italy

CYS Canterbury and York SocietyDNB Dictionary of National BiographyEETS Early English Text SocietyEHR English Historical ReviewExcavations B. Sloane and G.Malcolm, Excavations at the

Priory of the Order of the Hospital of StJohn of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, London(London, 2004)

Extents Extents of Irish Monastic Possessions, 1540–1, from Manuscripts in the Public RecordOffice, London, ed. N. B. White (Dublin,1943)

Foedera Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujuscun-que generis, acta publica inter reges angliae,et alios quosvis imperators, reges, pontifi-ces, principes, vel communitates, ab ineuntesaeculo duodecimo, viz. ab anno 1101ad nostra usque tempora, ed. T. Rymer,3rd edn., 10 vols. (London, 1739–45; repr.Farnborough, 1967)

HBC Handbook of British Chronology, ed. E. B.Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, andI. Roy, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, 1986)

Hist. Crusades K. M. Setton (gen. ed.), A History of the Cru-sades, 5 vols. (Madison, Wis., 1969–89)

Hospitallers in Cyprus A. T. Luttrell, The Hospitallers in Cyprus,Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291–1440:Collected Studies (London, 1978)

HSP Harleian Society PublicationsJCKAS Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological

SocietyJEH Journal of Ecclesiastical HistoryLansdowne 200 British Library MS Lansdowne 200Latin Greece A.T.Luttrell,LatinGreece, theHospitallers and

the Crusades 1291–1440 (London, 1982)LPFD Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of

the Reign of Henry VIII, 22 vols. in 37parts (London, 1864–1929)

LPRH Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reignsof Richard III and Henry VII, ed.J. Gairdner, 2 vols., RS (London, 1861)

Abbreviations xv

Mediterranean World A. T. Luttrell, The Hospitallers of Rhodes andtheir Mediterranean World (Aldershot,1992)

MH Melita HistoricaMMR J. Sarnowsky (ed.), Mendicants, Military Or-

ders and Regionalism in Later MedievalEurope (Aldershot, 1999)

MO, i M. Barber (ed.), TheMilitary Orders, i: Fight-ing for the Faith and Caring for the Sick(Aldershot, 1994)

MO, ii H. Nicholson (ed.), The Military Orders, ii:Welfare and Warfare (Aldershot, 1998)

NLM National Library of MaltaOSJHP Library Committee, Order of St. John Histor-

ical PamphletsOtho C.ix British Library MS Cotton Otho C.ixPPC Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy

Council of England, ed. N. H. Nicholas,7 vols. (London, 1834–7)

PRIA Proceedings of the Royal Irish AcademyPrima Camera The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John of

Jerusalem in England. Prima Camera,Essex, ed. M. Gervers (Oxford, 1996)

PRO Public Record OfficeReport The Knights Hospitallers in England: Being

the Report of Philip de Thame to the GrandMaster Elyan de Villanova, ed. L. B. Lark-ing, with a historical introduction by J. M.Kemble, Camden Society, Original Series65 (London, 1857)

RK Registrum de Kilmainham: Register of Chap-ter Acts of the Hospital of St John of Jeru-salem in Ireland, 1326–1339 . . . , ed.C. McNeill (Dublin, 1932)

Rot. Parl. Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et petitiones, etplacita in Parliamento, ed. J. Strachey etal., 6 vols. (London, 1767–77)

RPCCH Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellar-iae Hiberniae calendarium, ed. E. Tresham,vol. i, pt. 1, Hen. II–Hen. VII (Dublin,1828)

RS Rolls Series

xvi Abbreviations

Scotland I. B. Cowan, P. H. R. Mackay, and A. Mac-quarrie, The Knights of St John of Jerusa-lem in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983)

Secunda Camera The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John ofJerusalem in England. Secunda Camera.Essex, ed. M. Gervers (London, 1982)

SJG Museum and Library of the Venerable Orderof St John, St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell

SJHSP St John Historical Society ProceedingsSP State Papers, King Henry the Eighth, 11 vols.

(London, 1830–52)SRPI Statute Rolls of the Parliament of Ireland,

John to Edward IV, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1907–39)

Stabilimenta Caoursin, Stabilimenta rhodiorum militum,in id., Opera

Statutes Statutes of the Realm, vols. i–iv (London,1810–19)

TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical SocietyValor Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII auctor-

itate regia institutis, ed. J. Caley, with in-dexes by R. Lemon and introduction byJ. Hunter, 6 vols. (London, 1810–34)

VCH Victoria County HistoryYASRS Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record

Series

Abbreviations xvii

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

1.1 A Short History of the Order of St John to 1565

Religious orders, like any other corporations, require study both in the lightof their own imperatives and in the social and historical context in whichthey operated. In theMiddle Ages, religious houses were both numerous andhighly significant in the functioning of society, acting as powerhouses ofprayer, schools for preachers, theologians, and biblical exegetes, retirementhomes for the pious well-to-do, and dispensers of charity and hospitality tothe poor, needy, and peripatetic. The military-religious orders whichappeared in the twelfth century had in most places little educative or theo-logical role, but were significant providers of prayer, hospitality, and paro-chial services to an often eager laity. A number were linked to the care of thesick, such as St Lazarus, which began its existence as a leper hospital, andcontinued its Hospitaller functions long after its military had fallen by thewayside. Yet whatever their other roles the participation of these orders inthe defence of the Holy Land against the Muslim states in the near east haslong been held to be their most characteristic and significant feature. Never-theless, after 1291, when the last crusader strongholds on the Syrian coastfell to the Mamluks, all but the three largest military orders operating inthe Holy Land—the Temple, the Hospital of St John, and the TeutonicOrder—gradually reverted to medical and charitable functions. The Templewas dissolved in 1312 and the Teutonic Order moved to the Baltic, butthe Hospital remained in the eastern Mediterranean until 1523, and con-tinued to devote itself to an aggressive defence of the Catholic positionthere. After 1530, it continued its military activities from its base onMalta. Its operations were financed and its brethren derived from its estatesin western Europe, which were organized into preceptories subject to priorsprovincial. It is with the order’s organization and character in the BritishIsles in the period from 1460 to 1564, and with the simultaneous activities ofthose of its brethren born in Britain and Ireland in the Mediterranean, thatthis book will be concerned. Before beginning examination of these, how-ever, it seems appropriate to provide a brief overview of the Hospital’shistory from its foundation to the siege of Malta in 1565, an event that insome ways provides a postscript to ‘British’ involvement in the order’saffairs.

The Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, ofRhodes, and ofMalta is now a nobiliary religious order devoted to charitablework, and specializing in the care of the sick.1 It has its origins in a hospicefounded in eleventh-century Jerusalem and devoted to the care of pilgrimsand later the sick, but for more than 600 years, between 1187 and 1798, itwas more prominent as a military order dedicated to the defence of Christiansettlements and travellers from the Islamic powers ruling the near east,Anatolia, and north Africa. In c.1070 merchants from Amalfi founded ahospice for Latin pilgrims in Jerusalem. This was initially dependent on theBenedictine monastery of Santa Maria Latina, but after the crusader captureof Jerusalem in 1099 it became attached to the Holy Sepulchre and the scaleof its operations expanded dramatically. Although donors in western Europeat first patronized the Holy Sepulchre and the Hospital together, in 1113Paschal II granted the Hospital its independence, confirming it in its posses-sions both actual and potential and granting its members, who were nowconsidered to be religious, the right to elect their own master.2 As an exten-sion of its care for pilgrims, the nascent order may have become involved inmilitary operations by the 1120s but it is not until the 1160s that one can becertain that any of its brethren had taken on a military role.3 By 1206 theyhad been divided into three classes—priests, knights, and sergeants.4 Ser-geants were further divided between sergeants-at-arms and sergeants-at-office, the latter including a mixture of administrators, hospital staff, andmenial servants. Notwithstanding the order’s military responsibilities itshospital remained the primary focus of its operations until the fall of Jerusa-lem in 1187, and an object of astonishment and wonder to visiting pilgrims.5

While the order had a large hospital in Acre, its headquarters from 1191,its military functions gradually came to predominate. In the 1230s theorder’s knights achieved precedence over the priest-brethren and by the1270s the magistracy of the order and most of its important conventual(headquarters) offices were reserved to knight-brethren.6 The order’s mili-tary functions varied with the location of its headquarters. In the twelfth and

1 For overviews of the order’s post-1798 history see H. J. A. Sire, The Knights of Malta(London, 1994), 243–79; H. Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, 2001), 138–46.

2 J. Riley-Smith, The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus c.1050–1310 (London,1967; repr. Basingstoke, 2002), 32–43; A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Earliest Hospitallers’, in B. Z. Kedar,J. Riley-Smith, and R. Hiestand (eds.), Montjoie (Aldershot, 1997), 37–54; A. Beltjens, Auxorigines de l’Ordre de Malta: de la fondation de l’hopital de Jerusalem a sa transformation enordre militaire (Brussels, 1995).

3 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 52–4; Luttrell, ‘Earliest Hospitallers’, 37; A. Forey, ‘TheMilitarisation of the Hospital of St John’, in id., Military Orders and Crusades (Aldershot,1994), art. ix, 75–89.

4 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 123.5 Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099–1185, ed. J. Wilkinson, J. Hill, andW. F. Ryan (London, 1988),

esp. 217, 266–7, 287–8; B. Z. Kedar, ‘A Twelfth-Century Description of the Jerusalem Hos-pital’, MO, ii. 3–26.

6 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 123.

2 Introduction

thirteenth centuries, it had charge of important fortresses and wide territor-ies in the Latin East, which were gradually whittled away by the Mamlukrulers of Egypt between the 1260s and 1291. After the loss of Acre in 1291,the Hospital was based successively in Cyprus, Rhodes, and Malta. Al-though the duties of divine service, hospitality, and caring for the sickcontinued to be taken very seriously, its naval and fortress-building oper-ations gradually became the order’s most distinctive and striking features.

Following its enforced withdrawal from Palestine, the order re-establishedits central convent,7 hospital, and administrative structures at Limassol,where it remained for a turbulent period which saw conflict with itsLusignan hosts, confusion about its role, criticism of the part of the MilitaryOrders in the fall of Acre, and the subsequent destruction of the Templars.8

While the Temple was eliminated and the Teutonic order migrated north-wards, the Hospitallers remained in the Levant, seizing the island of Rhodesfrom the supposedly schismatic Greeks between 1306 and 1310.9 Thisacquisition was extremely timely, possibly saving the Hospital from sharingthe fate of the Temple, and also giving it a strong case for arguing that thelatter’s property should be transferred to it to enable the continuation of thestruggle in the east. This was ordered in 1312, although it was many yearsbefore the transfer was anything like complete.10 On Rhodes, too, the ordertook care to stress its continued concern for all three of its chief functions.These were, in descending order of rhetorical positioning, but ascendingorder of cost, the maintenance of divine service, care for the sick, and thedefence of Christendom.11 Despite the knightly takeover of the Hospital thisranking of priorities was maintained in many internal documents issued inthe later Middle Ages, although appeals to western rulers for aid concen-trated rather on the military aspects of the order’s operations.

7 The term ‘convent’ will be reserved for the order’s Mediterranean headquarters.8 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 198–226; M. Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cam-

bridge, 1978), passim.9 Riley-Smith, 215–16, 225; A. T. Luttrell, ‘Notes on Foulques de Villaret, Master of the

Hospital, 1305–1319’, Mediterranean World, art. iv, 73–90.10 A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Military Orders, 1312–1798’, in J. Riley-Smith (ed.), The Oxford

Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995), 326–64, at 327. For the financial difficultiesof the order after 1312, and the exploitation of and delays in handing over the Templar estatesby their occupiers see J. Delaville le Roulx, Les Hospitaliers a Rhodes jusqu’a la mort dePhilibert de Naillac: 1310–1421 (Paris, 1913), 53–6, 63–5, 68–70; C. L. Tipton, ‘The 1330Chapter General of the Knights Hospitallers at Montpellier’, Traditio, 24 (1968), 293–308, esp.298–9; Report, lvii–lix, 212–13, 215–20; C. Perkins, ‘The Knights Hospitallers in England afterthe fall of the Order of the Temple’, EHR 45 (1930), 285–9; id., ‘The Wealth of the KnightsTemplars in England and the Disposition of it after their Dissolution’, American HistoricalReview, 15 (1910), 252–63; E. Gooder, Temple Balsall: The Warwickshire Preceptory of theTemplars and their Fate (Chichester, 1995), 137–9.

11 This is true at least of the mission statements issued by the order at the beginnings ofchapters-general, whose contents were, however, often determined by the papal letters licensingit to hold such meetings. See e.g. AOM282, fos. 6r–v, 7v–9v. The latter text is transcribed inJ. Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft im Johanniterorden des 15. Jahrhunderts: Verfassung undVerwaltung der Johanniter auf Rhodos (1421–1522) (Munster, 2001), 617–19.

Introduction 3

The conquest of Rhodes and the expenditure necessary to gain control ofthe Templar properties impoverished the Hospital for years to come, but bythe 1330s it was relatively solvent and playing a significant part in Latinmilitary actions against the Turkish emirates in the Aegean. Its contributionto this struggle was primarily at sea—the order had begun to build up a fleetduring its sojourn on Cyprus and in Rhodes it had acquired an ideal base forattacks on Muslim shipping.12 By 1320 the Hospitaller fleet, alone or inconjunction with the Genoese, had already inflicted a series of defeats on theTurks,13 and the order continued to maintain an active war fleet until itsexpulsion fromMalta. Its regular navy was supplemented by vessels engagedin the corso, a limited holy war in which a variety of Hospitaller, Latin, andGreek captains operating from Rhodes were authorized to attack Muslimshipping, a calling which they performed zealously across the whole easternMediterranean basin.14 In conjunction with its auxiliaries, the order contrib-uted galleys to the anti-Turkish crusading leagues of the 1330s and 1340s, tothe campaigns of Peter ofCyprus against the Turks andMamluks in the 1360sand to those of western crusaders such as Marshal Boucicaut, while in morenormal times its fleet kept the Dodecanese relatively free of Turkish pirates.15

On land the Hospital provided limited support for Cilician Armeniabefore its fall in 1375, followed by more substantial involvement in Epirus,the Morea, and the Isthmus of Corinth between the 1370s and 1404.16 Italso contributed significant contingents to the Smyrna crusade of 1344, theAlexandria expedition of 1365, and the Nicopolis campaign of 1396,17 andwas solely responsible for the defence of the fortress of Smyrna from 1374until its fall to Timur in 1402.18 Having lost Smyrna and withdrawn from

12 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 200.13 Delaville, Rhodes, 78–9; A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers of Rhodes Confront the Turks:

1306–1421’, Mediterranean World, art. ii, 80–116, at 86–7; id., ‘The Hospitallers at Rhodes,1306–1421’, Hospitallers in Cyprus, art. i, 278–313, at 287.

14 A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Earliest Documents on the Hospitaller Corso at Rhodes: 1413 and1416’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 177–88; L. Butler, ‘The Port of Rhodesunder the Knights of St John (1309–1522)’, Les Grandes Escales: Receuils de la societe JeanBodin, 32 (Brussels, 1974), 339–45, at 343–4; N. Vatin, L’Ordre de Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem,l’empire ottoman et la Mediterranee orientale entre les deux sieges de Rhodes (1480–1522)(Paris, 1994), 88–129, 137–43, 294–7.

15 Delaville, Rhodes, 152–5, 271, 297–9; Luttrell, ‘Hospitallers at Rhodes, 1306–1421’,293–5, 298–9, 306–7, 309.

16 Delaville, Rhodes, 79, 189, 202–4, 209, 277–81, 301–2; Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers’Interventions in Cilician Armenia: 1291–1375’, Latin Greece, art. v, 116–44; id., ‘Hospitallersat Rhodes, 1306–1421’, 302–3, 307–9. Material relating to the order’s involvement in Greececan be found in Monumenta peloponnesiaca: Documents for the History of the Peloponnese inthe 14th and 15th centuries, ed. J. Chrysostomides (Camberley, 1995), nos. 204, 206, 210, 213,223–4, 232–5, 242–59, 265, 269–72, 274–9, 283, 289–90.

17 Delaville,Rhodes, 152–4, 235–7, 265; C. L. Tipton, ‘The English at Nicopolis’, Speculum,37 (1962), 528–40, esp. 538–40.

18 Delaville, Rhodes, 185, 285–6. For the order’s government of Smyrna see J. Sarnowsky,‘Die Johanniter und Smyrna (1344–1402)’, Romische Quartalsschrift, 86 (1991), 215–51; 87(1992), 47–98.

4 Introduction

Greece, the order’s attention shifted to its possessions in the Dodecanese inthe fifteenth century. Although it built an imposing and expensive fortress,the castle of St Peter (now Bodrum), near Halikarnassos on the Turkishmainland as a demonstration of its continued determination to oppose theinfidel by land, this was largely a propaganda and fund-raising exercise, asthe castle’s location was without any great strategic value.19 More signifi-cant were the attention and money lavished on the fortifications on Rhodesand its subject islands after 1400 and on the construction of a new Hospitalfrom 1440 onwards. During the fifteenth century the number of brethren atthe convent greatly increased, and the masters of the order, often absent inthe west before 1421, made Rhodes their usual residence.20 These develop-ments demonstrate that the Hospitallers, who had thought of moving theirheadquarters to mainland Greece or Achaea in the previous century,21 hadfinally come to regard the Dodecanese as their home.

While the order continued to participate in the activities of westerncrusading fleets in the fifteenth century, contributing its galleys and harbourto Aragonese flotillas in 1450–3, to papal fleets in 1456–7 and 1472,22 andto the defence of Venice’s eastern possessions in the wars of 1463–79 and1499–1503,23 its masters and council increasingly sought peace with thegreat Muslim powers of the Levant, restricting piracy in the Aegean andnegotiating treaties at both local and regional levels with the Ottoman andMamluk sultans and their subordinates.24 This more defensive approachwas necessitated by the growing power of the Turkish and Egyptian sultan-ates, which deprived the order of both easy prey and worthwhile allies in theLevant. With Cyprus weakened by strife with the Genoese and Mamlukinvasion, and the Byzantine empire fighting a desperate rearguard actionagainst the Ottomans the Hospital became, with the exception of Venice, theonly Christian power in the region capable of significant independent mili-tary action, although its forces were still too weak to engage the Muslimpowers on land unaided. In the 1440s Rhodes itself came under seriousattack for the first time since its conquest. A Mamluk fleet assailed the

19 Delaville, Rhodes, 287–90; A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Later History of the Maussolleion and itsUtilization in the Hospitaller Castle at Bodrum’, Jutland Archaeological Society Publications,15/2 (Copenhagen, 1986), 114–214, esp. 145.

20 A. Gabriel, La Cite de Rhodes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1921–3), ii, Architecture civile et religieuse,Appendix, documents ii–xii; S. Spiteri, Fortresses of the Knights (Malta, 2001); F. Karassava-Tsilingiri, ‘The Fifteenth-Century Hospital of Rhodes: Tradition and Innovation’,MO, i. 89–96.

21 This was first proposed by Innocent VI in 1354–6. Delaville, Rhodes, 125–6, 131–2.22 K. M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant: 1204–1571, 4 vols. (Philadelphia, 1976–84), ii.

99n., 187–9, 317–18; Z. N. Tsirpanlis, Rhodes and the South-East Aegean Islands under theKnights of St John (14th to 16th Centuries) [in Greek] (Rhodes, 1991), art. iv, summarized inEnglish at 416–17.

23 Setton, Papacy, ii. 251, 293, 317–18; Vatin, L’Ordre, 255–77, esp. 262–4.24 Vatin, L’Ordre, passim; Setton, Papacy, ii. 245. I have not consulted Z. N. Tsirpanlis,

‘Friendly Relations of the Knights of Rhodes with the Turks in the Fifteenth Century’ [in Greek],Byzantinische Forschungen, 3 (1968), 191–209.

Introduction 5

order’s islands of Castellorrizzo and Cos in 1440 and an Egyptian army laidsiege to Rhodes in the late summer of 1444, doing considerable damagebefore it was repulsed.25 Peace with Egypt was soon restored, but after theaccession of the aggressive Mehmed II to the Ottoman throne in 1451 theorder was faced with the more formidable threat of Turkish assault and,with the partial exception of an interlude of relatively good Hospitaller–Ottoman relations between 1481 and 1499,26 the last seventy years onRhodes were spent in constant fear of attack. Precautionary measures weretaken whenever a fleet issued from Istanbul or Gallipoli, appeals weredispatched to the west for aid against attacks that rarely materialized,27

the number of brethren at the convent was increased, and summons of thosein the western priories became more frequent.28 If sometimes exaggerated,the threat was very real. Mehmed II demanded tribute from the order soonafter his conquest of Constantinople and when this was refused his shipsattacked Cos, Syme, and Nisyros and sacked the village of Archangeloson Rhodes.29 The sultan renewed his demands in the 1460s, and the Hos-pital’s intermittent refusal to pay30 and active support for his enemies ledinexorably to the siege of 1480, which was only resisted with the greatestdifficulty.31

Military assault was followed by earthquakes which weakened the is-land’s defences still further, but a respite was provided by the death of thesultan in 1481, and still more by the flight ofMehmed’s son Jem to Rhodes in1482 following the customary fraternal struggle among the Ottoman princesover the succession.32 While there was genuine interest in France, Hungary,and Naples in using Jem to spearhead a crusade against the Porte,33 the

25 E. Rossi, ‘The Hospitallers at Rhodes: 1421–1523’,Hist. Crusades, iii. 314–39, at 319–20;Codice diplomatico del Sacro Militare Ordine Gerosolimitano, ed. S. Pauli, 2 vols. (Lucca,1737), ii. 121–3; Setton, Papacy, ii. 87–8; T. S. R. Boase, ‘The Arts in Frankish Greece andRhodes’, Hist. Crusades, iv. 229–50, at 234.

26 See Vatin, L’Ordre, 156–87.27 Ibid. 290–3, 181–2, 242, 320, 324–5; Setton, Papacy, ii. 239; See below, esp. Ch. 6.28 Vatin, L’Ordre, 150. See below, esp. Ch. 6.29 Rossi, ‘Hospitallers at Rhodes’, 321; Tsirpanlis, Rhodes, arts. v & vi, with English

summary at 417–18.30 In the early 1460s, the order had been induced to give the sultan a ‘present’ of 3,000 ducats

per annum, but still refused formally to acknowledge any subjection to him. Setton, Papacy, ii.245.

31 The best modern account of the siege in English is Setton, Papacy, ii. 346–60. A nearcontemporary history by the order’s vice-chancellor, Guillaume Caoursin of Douai, was trans-lated into English by the poet laureate JohnKaye and published by Caxton in 1482. G. Caoursin,Obsidionis rhodie urbis descriptio in id., Opera (Ulm, 1496); id., The Siege of Rhodes, trans.J. Kaye (London, 1482, repr. New York, 1975).

32 C. Torr, Rhodes in Modern Times (London, 1887), 35–6; Setton, Papacy, ii. 363–4, 382–3;Vatin, L’Ordre, 151–4, 161–3.

33 Initial responses from Hungary and Naples to a magistral plea for their help in a crusadesoon after Jem’s flight to Rhodes were negative. By 1483, however, Matthias Corvinus wasdisplaying a keen interest in making use of the fugitive. This was soon emulated by the king ofNaples, the Mamluks, and Innocent VIII. Vatin, L’Ordre, 163; Setton, Papacy, ii. 378–9, 386–7.

6 Introduction

order contented itself with extorting a pension and a favourable peace fromBayazid II in return for the fugitive’s safe keeping.34 The latter was sent toEurope, and despite tension caused by Bayazid’s suspicions that the orderwould sell their captive, the treaty remained valid and pension payments tothe grand master continued even after Jem was transferred into papal handsin 1489.35 Order and sultan remained on friendly terms after Jem’s death in1495, the truce of 1482 being reproclaimed in 1497.36 During the years ofpeace there was considerable commercial intercourse between Rhodes andthe mainland and the order cooperated with local Ottoman governors tosuppress piracy within the ‘limits’ laid down in the treaty of 1482, whilepermitting attacks elsewhere in the Levant. In 1501, however, the Hospitalwas dragged against its will into involvement in the Turkish–Venetian warwhen its master, Pierre d’Aubusson, was named as papal legate in charge ofthe Christian fleet in the Orient, a privilege which, as head of a military orderdirectly subject to the pope, he could hardly refuse.37 Despite its misgivings,the order threw itself into the struggle with vigour and fought on alone afterVenice had made a separate peace in August 1503.38 Although peace wasrenewed with the Turks on the same terms as before, the trust built up in the1480s and 1490s had dissipated, with breaches of the truce multiplying andan increasing failure to control piracy by either side. To a considerabledegree this was the Hospitallers’ own fault. While the ‘limits’ were stillrespected, piracy sponsored from Rhodes increased in other areas underOttoman suzerainty, such as the western Aegean, with the result that criti-cism of the miscreants of the Dodecanese multiplied in Istanbul as the corsoseized shipping, carried off high-profile Muslims and Mecca pilgrims intocaptivity, and interrupted grain shipments.39 Fear of Ottoman militarypreparations, considerable even while Jem was alive, dominated the con-vent’s policy in the first two decades of the new century.40 The threat ofTurkish raids led to increasingly drastic security measures, large sums werespent on the fortifications, the number of conventual brethren was increasedby a third, and supposedly suspect persons such as Jews were expelled fromRhodes.41 In 1513, 1515–17, and 1520 there were genuine invasion scaresand it was said that the new sultan, Selim the Grim, was determined to erase

34 Vatin, L’Ordre, 163–72, 173–8.35 The pension had been set in 1483 at 40,000 ducats per annum, of which 30,000 were

understood to be reserved to the upkeep of Jem and the payment of his guards, the remaining10,000 being compensation for the damage suffered by the order and its property during therecent siege. After 1489, the greater sum was paid directly to the pope, and the lesser to theknights. Until October 1494, however, Jem remained under the control of guards appointed bythe order. Vatin, L’Ordre, 178, 226–7, 233; Setton, Papacy, ii. 383–4, 387, 458.

36 Vatin, L’Ordre, 237.37 Ibid. 255–7.38 Ibid. 259–71; Setton, Papacy, iii. 2.39 Vatin, L’Ordre, 294–307, 329–42.40 Ibid. 181–2, 290–3.41 See below, 279 Torr, Rhodes, 54–5; Sarnawsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 365.

Introduction 7

the shame suffered by his grandfather Mehmed in failing to take Rhodes.42

The order’s anxieties were finally justified by the Turkish siege of 1522.Cautious although its policy was, the Hospital was still overwhelmingly

dependent on its western revenues, whose continued collection relied on thewhim of rulers who expected its resistance to the infidel to be real as well assymbolic. In this respect the sieges of 1444 and 1480 proved of positivebenefit, prompting the grant of lucrative papal indulgences and gifts fromwestern rulers such as Philip of Burgundy,43 and creating an image ofRhodes as a ‘key of Christendom’.44 The order did its best to ensure max-imum publicity for its achievements and was an early and enthusiasticproducer of printed propaganda.45 Yet if success in 1480 almost exemptedit from criticism for a generation, developments in the west during thisperiod did not augur well for the Hospital’s continued presence in theAegean. The extinction of Valois Burgundy in 1477 removed its mosttraditionally enthusiastic supporter in western Europe, the death of Mat-thias Corvinus in 1490 diminished Hungary’s status as a viable opponent ofOttoman hegemony in the Balkans, and after 1494 the Italian wars muzzledthe European response to the Turkish advance, pitting the order’s mostpotentially valuable supporter, France, against its traditional allies, Naplesand Aragon. The victory of 1480 and the relative quiescence of the Turksunder Bayazid II also lulled the west into a false sense of security, even ofcynicism, as demonstrated by Henry VIII’s manipulation of newsletters fromRhodes to support his claims that the Turks constituted less of a threat toChristendom than the French.46 As appeals to the west multiplied and noattack materialized, moreover, they had less and less effect, one account ofthe siege of 1522 lamenting that ‘it was holden for a mocke & a by worde inmany places that the turke wold go assyege Rodes’.47 Western awareness ofthe strength of the order’s fortifications probably also dulled the response tothe siege of 1522, and may have helped give currency to persistent reportsthat the Turks had been driven off.48

42 LPFD, i, no. 1604; ii, nos. 1319, 3814; iii, nos. 614, 784, 791, 856–8; The Begynnyngeand Foundacyon of the Holy Hospytall & of the Ordre of the Knyghtes Hospytallers of SayntJohan Baptyst of Jerusalem (London, 1524), 7, stresses Selim’s instructions to his son to takeRhodes. For Selim’s awareness of the dishonour caused by the island’s successful resistance in1480 see Vatin, L’Ordre, 337.

43 Setton, Papacy, ii. 263n.; Gabriel, La Cite de Rhodes, i. 144–5.44 LPFD, iii, no. 2771; Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 6. For the use of this image, and of the

related imagery of the antemurale or propugnaculum Christianitatis by other societies on thefrontiers of Christendom, see N. Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 (Oxford,2002), 15–17, 182–3, and passim.

45 A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Rhodian Background of the Order of St John onMalta’,MediterraneanWorld, art. xviii, 3–14, at 8–9.

46 See below, Ch. 6.47 Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 8.48 M. Balard, ‘The Urban Landscape of Rhodes as Perceived by Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-

Century Travellers’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 24–34, at 25–7; LPFD, iii,nos. 2559, 2576, 2611, 2670, 2708, 2772.

8 Introduction

The fall of Rhodes left the order, as in 1291, bereft of a home and a role.Although it was generally accepted that the defence of the island had been aheroic one, its conduct still left some room for criticism. The ‘treason anddiscord’ among the order’s officers during the fighting, the failure of themaster, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, to procure sufficient gunpowder andprovisions to prolong the siege and his departure from the island with ‘greatriches’ after its surrender provoked comment in contemporary reports andsubsequent criticism.49 Soon after L’Isle Adam’s arrival there, an observer inRome reported that he was considered to be of ‘small policy and less weight’,and that Adrian VI had declared him unfit to rule such an order andthreatened to appoint co-adjutors of another nation to govern it withhim.50 The emperor Charles V, who was deeply suspicious of L’Isle Adam’sdependence on the French, had similar views.51 There was criticism of themaster from within the order, too. The bailiff of Casp was imprisoned forspeaking irreverently to him in 1524, and an English brother knightbewailed the undue influence over him of his seneschal, Thomas Sheffield.52

Although some rulers stressed their continued support, others took advan-tage of the order’s difficulties: at various times between 1522 and 1530,some or all of its goods and estates were confiscated or arrested in Naples,Portugal, Savoy, England, Spain, and of course the Protestant lands ofnorthern Europe.53 Even its fleet had to be hidden for fear of confiscationby French or imperial forces.54 During this time the convent was itinerant,moving in turn from Rhodes to Crete, Rome, Viterbo, Corneto, VilleFranche, Nice, Syracuse, and Malta,55 and harried by shipwreck, plague,poverty, and war.56Mortality, at least among the English brethren, was high,and discipline, too, may have suffered.57 Nonetheless, the Hospital managedto keep most of the archives, treasure, and relics brought from Rhodes,58

49 LPFD, iii, nos. 2841, 2891, 2919.50 Ibid., no. 3025.51 CSPV, iii, no. 797.52 AOM84, fos. 39v–40v; LPFD, iii, no. 3026.53 See below, Ch. 6, esp. 176–86.54 LPFD, iv, nos. 2810, 4666.55 The order’s governing body, its council, met in Crete in January andMarch 1523, Messina

in the following May and June, Puzzuoli near Naples in July, Civita Vecchia in August, andRome from September 1523 to January 1524. Further meetings are recorded in Viterbo betweenFebruary 1524 and June 1527, Corneto between 26 June and 12 August, Ville Franche between25 September and 5November 1527, Nice between 13November 1527 and 14 June 1529, andMalta in September 1529, but in Syracuse between 11 October 1529 and 22 August 1530. Theorder took possession ofMalta on 26October 1530. AOM84, fos. 14r, 22v–23r, 23v–26r, 26v–27r,27v, 28r, 33r; 85, fos. 28v, 31v, 32v–33r, 57v, 61v, 75r; G. Bosio,Dell’Istoria della sacra religione etill.ma militia di San Giovanni Gierosolimitano, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (Rome, 1622–9, 1602), iii. 89;A. T. Luttrell, ‘Hospitaller Birgu: 1530–1536’, Crusades 2 (2003), 121–151, at 126–7.

56 LPFD, iii, no. 3037; AOM84, fos. 21r–v, 23v, 25r, 33v, 34v, 42r, 56v, 86v–87r; 85, fos. 28v,31v; 286, fo. 20v.

57 See below, Ch. 8.2.58 Luttrell, ‘Rhodian Background’, 6–14; M. Buhagiar, ‘The Treasure of the Knights Hospi-

tallers in 1530: Reflections and Art Historical Considerations’, Peregrinationes, 1 (2000).

Introduction 9

and most importantly, to preserve its administrative structure and depart-ments and ethos intact.59

The cession of Malta, Gozo, and Tripoli to the order had been mooted asearly as 1523,60 and commissioners had been sent out to view the islandsand fortress in the following year.61 Their report was distinctly unfavour-able, stressing the barrenness of the islands, their need to import almostevery necessity and their lack of adequate fortifications or suitable dwellingplaces.62 Hearing this, the knights temporized in the hope of a better offerfrom Charles V, while at the same time plotting a return to Rhodes inconjunction with Greek clergy and disaffected janissaries.63 Support forthis scheme was sought from rulers like Charles, Francis I, John III ofPortugal, and Henry VIII, but its failure, the unsettled conditions in Italy,the confiscation of the order’s English property, and the insistence of theSpanish and German Hospitallers that the emperor’s proposal be answeredinduced the order’s legislative body, or chapter-general, to accept Charles’soffer in 1527, although final agreement on the terms was not achieved until1530.64 Even then, the order professed reluctance to enter its new home,threatening to abandon it if Rhodes should be regained, and proposing tomove to Sicily instead in 1532, while in the following year the pope andemperor suggested it transfer instead to Coron, which had recently beenacquired by an imperial fleet.65 By this time, however, the convent hadfinally departed for Malta, where it centred operations on the Castellodel’Mare, its associated settlement, Birgu, and the magnificent Grand Har-bour. There a conventual enclosure, or collachium, was theoretically delin-eated66 and the order’s other distinctive structures—magistral palace,

Measures were taken for the conservation of the order’s treasures and relics on 13 June 1527,shortly after the sack of Rome by imperialist troops. AOM85, fo. 28v.

59 A. T. Luttrell, ‘Malta and Rhodes: Hospitallers and Islanders’, in V. Mallia-Malines (ed.),Hospitaller Malta 1530–1798 (Msida, Malta, 1993), 255–84, at 259–61.

60 The order appears to have first suggested the grant itself. In April 1523 Marino Sanutoreported that L’Isle Adam had offered to purchase either Brindisi orMalta fromCharles V, whilein December the master informed Henry VIII that the pope had sent a nuncio to the emperor toask for Malta. By 19 January 1524 the Venetian ambassador to Charles V reported that he waswilling to cede the islands and fortress. V. Mallia-Malines, ‘The Birgu Phase of HospitallerHistory’, in L. Bugeja, M. Buhagiar, and S. Fiorini (eds.), Birgu—A Maltese Maritime City,2 vols. (Msida, 1993), i. 73–96, at 75; LPFD, iii, no. 3610; CSPV, iii, no. 797.

61 AOM411, fos. 202v–203v.62 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 30–1; H. Vella, ‘The Report of the Knights of St John’s 1524

Commission to Malta and Quintinus’ Insulae Melitae Descriptio’, MH 8/4 (1983), 319–24;Mallia-Malines, ‘Birgu Phase’, 75–6, 81–2; AOM84, fo. 41v. The English Hospitaller ClementWest complained in 1534 that ‘here is nothing but we must have it from other lands’. LPFD, vii,no. 326.

63 LPFD, iv, nos. 2270–1, 5196; iv, Appendix nos. 101, 214; Vatin, L’Ordre, 368–71.64 AOM286, fos. 5r–v, 23v–24; see below, Ch. 6.65 AOM286, fo. 25v; LPFD, v, no. 888; CSPV, iv, nos. 742, 749, 904, 943.66 The construction of a wall dividing the collachium from the town had been proposed in

1533, but nothing appears to have been done until boundary stones were set up in 1562. Mallia-Malines, ‘Birgu Phase’, 79–80.

10 Introduction

conventual church, infirmary, and auberges—actually appeared; and therethe British-born brethren settled.67 There, too, the order resumed its navaloperations in earnest, playing a significant part in the great Ottoman–Habsburg struggle for dominance of the western Mediterranean betweenthe 1530s and 1570s.68 Yet the settlement on Malta had in some ways arather impermanent character until the late 1560s.69 There was seriousconsideration of plans to transfer the convent to Tripoli, which were onlyquashed when it was lost in 1551, and repeated invasion scares led toproposals that Malta be abandoned or its population evacuated.70 Althougha new fort, St Elmo, was built at the tip of the Grand Harbour and fortifi-cations elsewhere either rebuilt or newly constructed the new walls wererather makeshift, the order’s conventual church and some of its aubergesremained in rented accommodation, and observers prognosticated gloomilyon the likely fate of the island in the event of a full-scale siege.71 The dry runof 1551, when Tripoli had fallen to and Gozo been sacked by a substantialfleet of corsairs, had not given much cause for optimism, although it didconcentrate the order’s attention on the restoration and defence of whatremained.72 In 1565 an Ottoman armada finally descended on Malta andwas repulsed thanks to misjudgements by the Turkish commander, theheroism of the defenders, and the eventual dispatch of an imperial reliefforce from Sicily.73 Its successful defence prompted the order to regard theisland more fondly, and plans to build a new capital onMount Sciberras, thesite of the much-battered St Elmo, were realized in the construction ofValletta, which was initiated in 1566.74

67 Luttrell, ‘Rhodian Background’, 5. Most of these structures were rented, but the construc-tion of a new hospital was begun in 1532. Mallia-Malines, ‘Birgu Phase’, 76–9; P. Cassar,‘Medical Life in Birgu in the Past’, in Bugeja et al. (eds.), Birgu, i. 327–90, at 329.

68 M. Fontenay ‘Les Missions des galeres de Malte: 1530–1798’, in M.Verge-Franceschi(ed.), Guerre et commerce en Mediterranee: IXe–XXe siecles (Paris, 1991), 103–19; S. Bono,‘Naval Exploits and Privateering’, in Mallia-Malines (ed.), Hospitaller Malta, 351–95, at351–8, 377–9.

69 This interpretation is disputed by Professor Mallia-Malines, who sees increasing signs thatthe order was becoming reconciled to its new home from the last months of 1532. Mallia-Malines, ‘Birgu Phase’, 78.

70 A. P. Vella, ‘The Order of Malta and the Defence of Tripoli’,MH 6/4 (1975), 362–81, esp.373–80; A. Hoppen, The Fortification of Malta by the Order of St John 1530–1798, 2nd edn.(Msida, 1999), 33, 36–7. Many non-combatants were evacuated to Sicily in the 1550s and1560s. S. Fiorini, ‘Demographical Aspects of Birgu up to 1800’, in Bugeja et al. (eds.), Birgu,i. 219–54, at 236.

71 Hoppen, Fortification, 33–43.72 Ibid. 36–8.73 There is a vast literature on the siege of 1565. The debate is summarized and an account

provided in Setton, Papacy, iv. 849–78. Ernie Bradford’s The Great Siege: Malta 1565 (Har-mondsworth, 1961) provides information on English involvement in the hostilities.

74 Hoppen, Fortification, 33, 41–5, 49–71.

Introduction 11

1.2 The British and Irish Context

In order to support its military and charitable activities, the Hospital reliedheavily on brethren and subventions sent out from its houses in Europe.A large majority of the brethren at headquarters were drawn from westernEurope, especially from France, Aragon, and Italy, with smaller contingentsfrom Castile and Portugal, mainland Britain, and Germany. Eastern Europe,Scandinavia, and Ireland sent few brethren to headquarters. Conventualservice in the east was expected of all military brethren in theory, andperformed by a large proportion in practice, as the grant of livings in thewest was made increasingly dependent on service at headquarters. Brethrenwishing to receive preferment were supposed to serve in the east for at leastthree years before they were eligible for promotion, and were often called toconvent in the later stages of their careers as well.75 In times of crisis allmilitary brethren were summoned, and a large number usually responded.‘British’ Hospitallers, although never very numerous in the east, played asignificant part in conventual life.76 The English, Irish, and Scottish knight-brethren at headquarters together made up the sixth of the seven langues,quasi-national associations whose existence was formalized at the chapter-general held at Montpellier in 1330, their number being increased to eight in1462.77 This gave them considerable weight on the order’s governing bodies,the council and chapter-general, which were partly composed of represen-tatives of the langues. The turcopolier, the head or pilier of the Englishlangue, was responsible for the coastguard on Rhodes and later Malta.78

The ‘English’ knights were also appointed to other offices in the gift of themaster and convent, several serving as captains of Bodrum or of the order’sgalleys, as castellans (chief judges) of Rhodes, as proctors of the commontreasury or as ambassadors on the order’s behalf.79 The military activities of

75 Delaville, Rhodes, 318, citing a statute of 1410.76 For the number of British and Irish brethren in the east see below, Tables 8.1 and 8.2.77 H. Chew, ‘The Priory of St John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell’, VCH, Middlesex, vol. i

(Oxford, 1969), 193–200, at 194; Tipton, ‘Montpellier’, 296–7. For the development of thelangues see J. Sarnowsky, ‘Der Konvent auf Rhodos und die Zungen (lingue) im Johanniter-orden: 1421–1476’, in Z. H. Nowak (ed.), Ritterorden und Region—Politische, sozialeund wirtschaftliche Verbindungen im Mittelalter (Torun, 1995), 43–65; id., Macht undHerrschaft, 147–69.

78 For the office of turcopolier, see A.Mifsud,Knights Hospitaller of the Venerable Tongue ofEngland in Malta (Valletta, 1914), 87–94; L. Vizzari de Sannazaro, ‘The Venerable Langue ofEngland: A History of the English Branch of the Order of St John of Jerusalem with a Roll ofEnglishmen connected with the Order, and an Appendix of Unpublished Documents’, unpub-lished typescript, London, SJG, 12–15 and documents 306–13; Sarnowsky, Macht undHerrschaft, 255, 286–8, 632–3.

79 AOM282, fos. 73r–v; 78, fo. 83r; 393, fos. 155v–156; 82, fos. 114v, 137v; 73, fo. 99r; 75,fos. 18v–19r, 168v, 176v; 78, fo. 28v; 79, fo. 17r–v; 80, fo. 98r; 84, fo. 19r; 86, fo. 54r; 74, fo. 42r;82, fo. 51r; 73, fo. 139v; 283, fos. 5v, 155v; 76, fos. 145r, 153r; 81, fo. 46v; 406, fos. 220v–221r;412, fo. 206r–v; 286, fo. 6r; 86, fo. 128v.

12 Introduction

the order in the eastern Mediterranean were publicized in letters to mon-archs and ministers, in proclamations made in parish churches in the westand in papal letters issued in its favour.

Western monies were as indispensable to the convent as western brethren.According to a ‘budget’ drawn up in c.1478, western revenues amounted to85,450 florins out of a conventual income of 97,000.80 Quite separatelyfrom the convent, the master enjoyed further, substantial, incomes derivedfrom his possession of Rhodes. The order’s European revenues were assessedby the central convent at periodic intervals and responsions [responsiones],originally fixed at a third of the profits from produce, were levied on itshouses in accordance with the estimates so obtained. The convent raisedadditional sums from imposts levied on the brethren themselves.81 After1358 the monies raised in each priory were administered by a salariedreceiver of the common treasury, who was responsible for their collectionand dispatch to Rhodes.82 Most priories sent their responsions on to theorder’s receiver-general in the west in Avignon, but because of the Englishcrown’s intermittent disagreements with the French, from the late fourteenthcentury the priories of England and Ireland more commonly dispatchedtheirs to headquarters via Venice.83

In the period covered by this study, the order’s day-to-day affairs were runby its master and a council composed of those of its leading officers,its conventual and capitular bailiffs, who were present at headquarters.84

Each conventual bailiff was, at least theoretically, responsible for one areaof conventual business, and each also served as the caput or pilier of one ofthe langues.85 The English langue allocated benefices in Britain and Irelandon the bases of conventual service, seniority, efficiency of administration inthe west, and, in the case of competition, proximity of birthplace to thehouse in question.86 The master acted as a supplementary fount of honourfor all brethren, as he controlled most appointments on the order’s conven-tual islands and had the right to appoint to one house in each western prioryevery five years. He also possessed one estate, or camera, in each prioryhimself, usually leasing it out to a favoured brother of the relevant langue.Furthermore both receptions of military brethren into the order and move-ments to and from convent required magistral licence. The master’s author-ity and influence were thus very considerable but were balanced not just bythe council but also by chapters-general, which met fairly regularly to draw

80 Luttrell, ‘Malta and Rhodes’, 272.81 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 45, 50, 344–6; Report, pp. xxx, 178; A. T. Luttrell, ‘The

Hospitallers’ Western Accounts, 1373/4 and 1374/5’, in Camden Miscellany XXX, CS, 4th ser.,39 (London, 1990), 1–22.

82 Delaville le Roulx, Rhodes, 136; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 330–2.83 See below, Ch. 3.2.84 Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, esp. 47–88.85 Ibid. 276–300.86 See below, Ch. 2.2.

Introduction 13

up legislation and settle important disputes. Capitular bailiffs, who includedwestern provincial priors, other senior western brethren, and importantofficers like the grand preceptor of Cyprus sat on both chapters and on thecouncil and when absent were represented in chapter by proctors. Thuswhen the master and council drew up policy for the western priories theycould draw on the experience of western officials resident in convent, or theproctors there of those still in Europe, to inform their decisions.

The order’s possessions in western Europe were administered from housesknown as commanderies or preceptories.87 These were grouped into pro-vincial priories, castellanies, and bailiwicks on approximately national lines.The order probably received its first lands in England and Wales in the1120s, and there was a prior of the English Hospitallers by 1144.88 Hisheadquarters and chief residence were at Clerkenwell, just to the north ofLondon. The order’s two houses in Wales and the Scottish preceptoryof Torphichen were also under the jurisdiction of the prior of England,although the latter sometimes threatened to escape from prioral control.89

By the thirteenth century Ireland had its own priory, based at Kilmainhamnear Dublin, but the prior was often, and exclusively after 1497, anEnglishman.90

Besides the contribution its houses made to the convent, the order had adistinctive role to play in western society. The Hospital’s considerablewealth was concentrated in the hands of relatively few brethren, most ofthem being, by the fifteenth century, laymen from lesser noble or gentlebackgrounds. This wealth, and the connections and affinities of brethrenenabled the order to play a significant part in political and social structures.Its provincial heads were usually resident in or near the national or regionalcapital and were often significant figures at court. Priors of England andpreceptors of Torphichen, for example, were habitual members of royalcouncils, often undertook diplomatic or judicial business on behalf of theirrespective monarchs, and at times held important offices of state such asthose of treasurer, admiral, or keeper of the privy seal.91 The prior of Irelandwas still more important in Irish political affairs. Kilmainham was therichest religious house in the country according to the extents taken in1540–1, and nearly every prior between the 1270s and 1420s served asdeputy lieutenant, treasurer, or chancellor, many leading armies in defence

87 Brethren in charge of a house are usually termed preceptor rather than commander indocuments written in Latin.

88 The prior may, however, have been subject to the prior of S. Gilles until c.1185–90. Chew,‘Priory of St John’, 196.

89 Scotland, pp. xxx, xxxvii, xl–xli; C. L. Tipton, ‘The English and Scottish Hospitallersduring the Great Schism’, CHR 52 (1966–7), 240–5; W. Rees, A History of the Order of St.John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border (Cardiff, 1947), passim.

90 C. L. Falkiner, ‘The Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland’, PRIA 26 (1907), C, 275–317; C. L. Tipton, ‘The Irish Hospitallers during the Great Schism’, PRIA 69 (1970), C, 36–43.

91 See below, Chs. 5–7.

14 Introduction

of the lordship.92 The Hospital’s wealth, political importance, and crusadingactivities sometimes prompted direct royal interference in its affairs. Usuallykings of England contented themselves with approving the appointments ofpriors, restricting their movements outside the realm, and exacting loans andtaxation, but at times their interventions were more novel and dramatic.Edward III, Edward IV, and Henry VIII proved especially vigorous in theirdefence and extension of royal claims over the order. Edward III extractedoaths of allegiance from priors of England, bullied the order into acceptinghis candidates as brethren,93 and seized responsions when the conventthreatened the supremacy of the English prior over Torphichen. EdwardIV, as we will see, attempted to install his own candidates in the priory,beheaded a legitimately elected prior for taking the field against him atTewkesbury, and hindered another from proceeding to the relief of Rhodesafter the Ottoman siege of 1480. Still more dramatically, Henry VIII confis-cated the Hospital’s estates and proposed to divert its resources to thedefence of Calais in 1527–8, executed two of its brethren for loose talkoverseas, and finally dissolved it in 1540. The relations of kings of Scotlandand royal lieutenants in Ireland with the order might be equally turbulent.James IV of Scotland granted Torphichen to his secretary in 1512, whileJames Butler Earl of Ormond imprisoned prior Thomas FitzGerald andconfiscated his assets in 1440.

Yet, despite the temptations to interference provided by the Hospital’swealth and its international allegiances most rulers continued to allow itsexport of men and money, the latter in the form of letters of exchange, to theeastern Mediterranean. A cynic might remark that this was merely a way inwhich they could support a cause to which they paid lip-service at no cost tothemselves, but there may be more to it than that. The defence and expan-sion of Christendom might increasingly be subordinated to other concernsbut it remained a long-term goal of all catholic governments, which alter-nated between cynicism, realism, and idealism when considering crusadingissues. As kings, rulers might object to their subjects leaving the realm tocombat the Turks, but as knights they might be expected to approve of suchactivities, at least when they themselves were not at war. The Hospital alsohad significant ties with the wider political community. Some brethren werebound to magnates by ties of clientage or service, and most had a closerelationship with members of the gentry, for whom the Hospital provided aberth for surplus sons and grants of estates and offices. Family connectionswith the order often extended over two or three generations and sometimesacross centuries. Preceptors in mainland Britain might be significant figuresin local society, maintaining ties with administrative elites and dispensingoffices, lands, and liveries. Irish preceptors often played a local military rolein addition. By the fifteenth century, most Hospitaller estates were leased,

92 Extents, 81–120; see below, 228–9. 93 CCR1343–6, 107.

Introduction 15

the beneficiaries ranging from yeomen to magnates. Around London, withthe increase in the size of the Tudor court, pressure was put on the order forleases of plum estates like Hampton Court and Paris Garden. The require-ments of hospitality established further ties between the order and court, andthe Hospital’s shipment of monies and cloth overseas led it into relationshipswith Italian bankers and English merchants alike.

Equally significant was the order’s spiritual and pastoral role.94 Althoughtheir primary function was to send men and money to the east, preceptorieswere religious houses in their own right, and shared the responsibility of allsuch establishments for maintaining divine service and hospitality. The ordereverywhere followed the liturgy of Jerusalem and its chapters-general fur-ther ordained that certain feasts and patrons were to be particularly com-memorated. In addition, the order’s local houses might also erect chantriesor altars in honour of saints fashionable in the regions in which they weresituated. According to the wishes of their founders and patrons, some alsomaintained hospitals, such as those at Skirbeck in Lincolnshire and Kilteel inCounty Kildare, or choir schools. In parts of central and eastern Europe theorder was made responsible for significant numbers of collegiate churchesand concentrated its energies on these rather more than on the struggle in theeast.95 A further dimension to Hospitaller spirituality was provided by itsforty-odd houses of nuns, some of which, including its house at MinchinBuckland in Somerset, enjoyed considerable local support.96 But perhapsmost striking of all was the order’s operation of a network of jurisdictional‘peculiars’. Papal bulls had conveyed considerable spiritual and jurisdic-tional privileges and exemptions on the Hospital, including exemptionfrom tithes and procurations, from the jurisdiction of all ordinaries andecclesiastical authorities save the pope, and from excommunication andinterdict. Exploiting these to the full, the Hospitallers had their ownchurches, courts, and cemeteries and were allowed to hold services intimes of interdict, to bury felons and suicides, and to act as confessors fortheir servants and parishioners.97 Their tenants and those who made con-fraternity payments to the order had a right to share in many of theseprivileges, the extension of which to those who were neither tenants norconfratres was a recurring source of clerical complaint from the twelfthcentury onwards.98 Many of the laity, by contrast, evidently welcomed the

94 See below, Ch. 4.95 A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Spiritual Life of the Hospitallers of Rhodes’, The Hospitaller State on

Rhodes and its Western Provinces (Aldershot, 1999), art. ix, 75–96, at 79, 88–9.96 T. Hugo, The History of Mynchin Buckland, Priory and Preceptory, in the County of

Somerset (London, 1861); M. Struckmeyer, ‘The Sisters of the Hospital of St John at Buckland’,M.Phil. thesis, University of Cambridge (1999).

97 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 45–6, 376–85; CPL, viii. 513.98 R. B. Pugh, ‘The Knights Hospitallers of England as Undertakers’, Speculum, 56 (1981),

566–74; Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 45–6, 378–9, 383, 385–9; Concilia magnae brittani-cae et hibernicae, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1733–7), iii. 618–9, 625–6, 724, 726.

16 Introduction

chance to be associated with the order: some thousands of persons in theBritish Isles must have been its confratres or consorores, while considerablysmaller numbers sought burial in Hospitaller houses or left bequests to theorder in their wills.99 The order had also been granted various privileges bythe secular authorities. The English and Scottish crowns exempted it frommost taxes and ‘feudal’ services, from local tolls, from the jurisdiction of theroyal courts, and technically from military service.100 Yet some of theserights were being eroded or bypassed by the fourteenth century. In thedomains of the king of England, for example, the Hospital was subjectedto parliamentary taxation, while by the late thirteenth century regularmilitary service was expected of the order’s brethren in Ireland, similarrequirements being occasionally imposed on English and Scottish Hospital-lers in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.101

Less clear is what significance the Hospital enjoyed in a local context byreason of its international role. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries theHospital was certainly the only military-religious order whose houses in theBritish Isles still contributed to the defence of Christendom. Furthermore, insome senses it was also the last ‘British’ branch of the fully internationalorders founded in the twelfth century still to maintain full ties to its head-quarters. In the domains of the English crown those houses directly subjectto overseas mother-houses, the alien priories, had been nationalized orconfiscated while others, such as the daughter-houses of the Cistercians,had been almost severed from their parents, becoming virtually exemptfrom overseas visitation and paying only nominal sums to headquarters.102

The friars largely retained their international character but, unlike theHospital, did not send large sums of money overseas. That is not to saythat the Hospital was immune to the pressures put on other internationalorders, or that it did not have to adapt to them. Nevertheless it retained itsfunctions, organization, and priorities. It seems likely that its peculiar sur-vival owed everything to its wider role. Had it not been engaged in thedefence of Christendom there is no reason to think that the Hospital inthe domains of the English crown would have been spared separation fromits overseas mother-house, dominated as the latter was by Frenchmen untilthe mid-fifteenth century. But this begs a number of questions. There isconsiderable evidence that crusading, at least against non-Christians, wasregarded by most of the late medieval population of Britain and Irelandas thoroughly respectable, but it is equally clear that fewer and fewer

99 See below, Ch. 4.100 Chew, ‘Priory’, 194–5.101 See below, Chs. 5 to 7.102 C. W. New, A History of the Alien Priories of England to the Confiscation of Henry V

(Chicago, 1916); B. J. Thompson, ‘The Laity, the Alien Priories and the Redistribution ofEcclesiastical Property’, in N. Rogers (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century (Stamford,1994), 19–41; R. Graham, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929).

Introduction 17

persons born therein were personally involved in this struggle.103 In thiscontext, it needs to be determined whether the continued residence of acontingent of ‘British’ brethren in the order’s central convent on Rhodes wasmerely an anachronism, a relic of earlier enthusiasms, or rather an expressionof a still vital tradition. Was it a matter of oversight, of policy, or of zeal?

The activities of the ‘British’ contingent in the Mediterranean are, ofcourse, not merely of interest in the context of perceptions of the order’srole at home. Although not particularly numerous, the brethren of theEnglish langue played a significant part in the order’s government andmilitary activities. They were represented on its governing bodies, theyheld military, administrative, and judicial offices at headquarters, and theyserved in the order’s fortifications and galleys and in the household of itsmaster. Most distinctively, the head of the langue, the turcopolier, com-manded a force of locally recruited cavalry which rode around Rhodeschecking on the alertness of those deputed to keep watch for enemy vessels,and most dramatically, the brethren of the langue commanded a sector of thewalls where they fought and died in 1480 and 1522.104 Here, at least, theHospital and its British-born brethren lived up to their self-representationsin quite dramatic fashion. Yet at other times the order might be accused ofidleness or vainglory and might have to defend its record before westernprinces, including kings of England and Scotland. Thus the order’s diplo-macy, in which English Hospitallers played a significant role at times, alsorequires study as a link between its conventual and local operations.

The chapters to follow will therefore deal with the activities of the Britishbrethren both in the west and at their Mediterranean headquarters. They arebroken down into three constituent areas. First, the order’s internal organ-ization is considered. Chapter 2 looks at the Hospital’s organization and theconventual life of its brethren in England and Wales, and considers theadmission and family background of brethren, the order’s career structureand the relationship between the prior of England and his brethren. It thenmoves on to the immediate context in which brethren operated—theirconventual life, households and servants—before Chapter 3 analyses theadministration of the order’s landed estates, the extent and sources of itsincome and the dispatch of responsions to Rhodes. Secondly, I examine therelationship between the Hospital and society in Britain and Ireland. InChapter 4, I will discuss how the order has been seen in wider historiograph-ical treatments of crusading, and assess its development in the light of recentscholarship on the place of the religious orders in late medieval Britishsociety. The relations between the Hospitallers and the general populaceand clergy are also examined in the light of the order’s crusading role, itsextension of spiritual privileges to communities and individuals, and its

103 C. Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988), passim.104 See below, Ch. 8.4.

18 Introduction

dealings with its tenants. It is argued in Chapters 5 to 7 that the Hospital’srelationship with the governing authorities of the British Isles was by far themost important of these interactions. I will consider the order’s place innational polities, and the tensions arising between kings and priors. Amongthe subjects discussed in this context are the employment of priors ofEngland and Ireland as government servants, the role of the priory duringdomestic political upheavals, and the extent of government interference inprioral elections and in other appointments in the order’s gift. Thirdly, inChapter 8, I will discuss the place of the English langue in the life of theconvent, with particular attention being given to the langue as a body, to thevarieties of conventual service which British members of the order per-formed, and to the ‘British’ involvement in the two Turkish sieges of Rhodes.The role and functions of the turcopolier are also considered in detail. A brieffinal chapter looks at the careers of the remaining and former Hospitallers inMalta and England in the years after the dissolution and at the restoration ofthe priory in 1557–8, while appendices list dignitaries of the order, its Britishand Irish members active between 1460 and 1565, and its income from itsEnglish and Welsh lands in 1535 and 1540.

Despite the international and national importance of the order of St John,no detailed discussion of the full range of its activities in the British Isles overa substantial period has yet been written. A few general histories of theEnglish or British Hospitallers exist, but most have been populist worksproduced by persons connected with the order in some way. Until the yearsafter the Second World War, there was little academic interest in the order inthe English-speaking world. Partly this is because there was no good generalhistory of the Hospital covering the later Middle Ages that might haveprovided a framework in which to set the activities of its ‘British’ brethren.While Hospitaller history between 1310 and 1421 had been narrated byJoseph Delaville le Roulx in 1913, no reliable and comprehensive institu-tional history of the order in the years between 1421 and 1522 was pub-lished until 2001.105 British scholars, moreover, were discouraged fromstudy of the order’s archives by J. M. Kemble’s statement that there werebut few documents in the order’s archives on Malta which related to itsEnglish langue, its chancery registers being ‘unrewarding’ in this respect.106

By 1914 the Maltese, at least, knew better, but the researches of scholarssuch as Mifsud, Galea, Scicluna, and Vizzari de Sannazaro, naturallyenough, focused on the langue’s activities after its departure from Rhodes,and only touched incidentally on earlier developments.107 It was not until

105 Sarnowsky’s magisterial Macht und Herrschaft, remedies this lack.106 Report, p. vii; See also W. K. R. Bedford and R. Holbeche, The Order of the Hospital of

St. John of Jerusalem (London, 1902), 32: ‘At Malta scarcely anything relating to the Englishmembers of the order is preserved’.

107 Mifsud,Venerable Tongue; J. Galea ‘Henry VIII and the Order of St. John’, Journal of theArchaeological Association, 3rd ser., 12 (1949), 59–69; BDVTE; Sannazaro, ‘VenerableLangue’.

Introduction 19

the 1950s that extra-Mediterranean scholars such as Lionel Butler andCharles Tipton displayed much interest in the langue. Like some of hispredecessors as librarians at St John’s Gate, Butler collected considerablematerial without publishing very much, but Tipton was able to complete athesis and several articles covering the history of the langue between 1378and 1409 before ceasing production in 1970.108 Since then useful studies ofindividual priors based on both English and Maltese materials have beenpublished by Peter Field, Pamela Willis, and Anthony Gross, while AnthonyLuttrell has looked at the English contributions to the construction ofBodrum and Jurgen Sarnowsky has examined the relationship betweenkings and priors of England between 1450 and 1500.109 If Tipton andSarnowsky have produced competent narratives of fairly substantialperiods, their failure to make substantial use of English manuscript materialshas rendered their treatments less complete, than they might have been, andthey concentrate, in any case, on the relationship between the order and theEnglish crown to the neglect of its other activities in Britain and Ireland. Ofthese, only one—the administration of the order’s estates—has been thesubject of substantial study. A number of histories of individual Hospitallerhouses in Britain and Ireland have appeared, the best of them based onlocally produced archival materials110 and the most wide-ranging beingthe works of William Rees of Michael Gervers and latterly of Barney Sloaneand Gordon Malcolm. Rees’s study is essentially an examination of thecommanderies of Slebech, Halston, and Dinmore, based on considerableknowledge of English andWelsh sources, but demonstrating little awarenessof the order’s wider role.111 Michael Gervers’s work on the Hospitallercartulary of 1442 is much more impressive. Besides editing the sections ofthe document relating to Essex, Gervers has also analysed both the growth

108 London, SJG, Butler Papers; C. L. Tipton, ‘The English ‘‘Langue’’ of the Knights Hospi-tallers during the Great Schism’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Southern California, 1964; id.,‘English and Scottish Hospitallers’; id., ‘The English Hospitallers during the Great Schism’,Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 4 (1967), 91–124; id., ‘Irish Hospitallers’.

109 P. J. C. Field, ‘Sir RobertMalory, Prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England(1432–1439/40)’, JEH 28 (1977), 249–64; id., The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory(Cambridge, 1993), 68–82; P. Willis, ‘Sir John Langstrother, a Fifteenth Century Knight of StJohn’, SJHSP 2 (1990), 30–7; A. Gross, The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir JohnFortescue and the Crisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-Century England (Stamford, 1996), 107–9,121–3, 127–32; A. T. Luttrell, ‘English Contributions to the Hospitaller Castle at Bodrum inTurkey: 1407–1437’,MO ii. 163–72; J. Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors: The Hospitaller Priory ofEngland in the Later Fifteenth Century’, MMR 83–102.

110 See in particular Hugo, Mynchin Buckland; id., The History of Eagle, in the County ofLincolnshire, a Commandery of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem (London,1876); E. Hermitage Day, ‘The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Dinmore, WesternHereford’,OSJHP 3 (1930); E. Puddy, A Short History of the Order of the Hospital of St. Johnof Jerusalem in Norfolk (Dereham, 1961); E. Gooder, Temple Balsall: From Hospitallers to aCaring Community, 1322 to Modern Times (Chichester, 1999); S. Thurley, Hampton Court:A Social and Architectural History (London, 2003).

111 Rees, Wales.

20 Introduction

and administration of the Hospital’s landed estate, and the development ofits archival organization. His work provides a great body of material againstwhich to measure the order’s estate management in the fifteenth and six-teenth centuries. His work is both enriched and complemented by theexceptionally thorough and highly stimulating archaeological examinationof the prioral headquarters at Clerkenwell recently published by Drs Sloaneand Malcolm under the auspices of the Museum of London. This volumereveals the priory to have had the character of a palace as much as that of areligious house, and makes apparent the considerable size and sophisticationof the architectural elements which formerly populated the site.112 Yet onlyone study, the Scottish History Society’s 1982 volume on the Hospital inScotland, attempts to synthesize both local and Maltese archival material toexamine any significant proportion of the Hospitallers’ post-1409 ‘British’history in real depth. This collection of previously unprinted sources drawstogether a wide range of material, prefaced by a useful study of the order’shistory and administration in Scotland, and the activities of its brethren inEngland, Rhodes, and Malta.113 A catalogue of documents relating to theorder’s Scottish brethren in the order’s archives in Malta is appended.

The present volume attempts to take account of a similar range of mater-ials. The most important sources for the fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuryhistory of the order of St John in Britain and Ireland are those produced bythe Hospitallers themselves. The order’s archives, housed in the NationalLibrary of Malta, are divided into seventeen classes of document, of whichthree have been used extensively in preparing this study. These are the LibriConciliorum (minute books of the order’s council), Libri Bullarum (registersof magistral and conventual bulls), and proceedings of chapters-general. TheLibri Conciliorum, which survive from 1459, note the elections of the chiefdignitaries of the English langue, the squabbles of its brethren over seniorityand appointments, the punishment of their breaches of discipline, and theirtenure of conventual offices and military commands. Light is shed, too, onthe prerogatives and functions of the turcopolier and on the relationshipsbetween the Scottish and Irish-born brethren and their more numerousEnglish counterparts.114 The Libri Bullarum, which cover most of the periodafter 1399, are still more valuable, recording the resolution of the debatesnoted in the books of the council and a great many less controversialdecisions besides. Among the issues they document are the movements of

112 M. Gervers, The Hospitaller Cartulary in the British Library (Cotton MS Nero EVI)(Toronto, 1981); id. (ed.), The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England.Secunda Camera. Essex (London, 1982); id. (ed.), The Cartulary of the Knights of St. Johnin England. Prima Camera. Essex (Oxford, 1996): Excavations.

113 Scotland.114 AOM 73 et seq.; discussed in Sarnowsky,Macht und Herrschaft, 11–12. Unless otherwise

stated, I have used the modern pencil foliation rather than the original or intermediate foliationswhen referring to the documents in the Maltese archives.

Introduction 21

brethren to and from convent, the appointment of priors, commanders,visitors, and financial officials to posts in all parts of Britain and Ireland,payments of monies by ‘British’ knights in convent, assignments on theorder’s English revenues made out to Hospitallers and merchants, and theinstructions issued to ambassadors going to Westminster and Edinburgh.115

The third great class of the order’s medieval chancery documents, theproceedings of its chapters-general, record the work of most of the meetingsheld between 1454 and 1565, and besides more generally applicable legis-lation, include decisions on many of the disputes involving British brethrenreferred to chapter by the master and council.116 Other pertinent material isscattered elsewhere in the archives, particularly in section I, the miscellan-eous original documents comprising which include Henry VIII’s 1537 char-ter to the order, a collection of letters from the same monarch to grandmaster L’Isle Adam dating from 1524 to 1534, the accounts of the Englishauberge in Viterbo from 1525 to 1527, and most significantly the Ricetted’Inghilterre, the accounts presented by receivers of the common treasury inEngland to the chief financial officers in convent between 1520 and 1536.117

These not only provide a detailed account of the responsions paid andarrears owing from the whole of the British Isles, but also list the expensesincurred by receivers and their deputies in the exercise of their officers, andillustrate the exchange operations in which the English brethren were in-volved.118 The most important documents relating solely to the Englishlangue to be found elsewhere in the archives are the 1338 extent of itspossessions, income, and outgoings in England and Wales and the minutebook of the proceedings of the English langue between 1523 and 1567, bothof which have long been published.119 From the point of view of this study,the 1338 extent, like the cartulary of 1442, chiefly provides a point ofcomparison against which to set later developments, but the minute bookof the langue furnishes a great deal of evidence on the workings and com-petence of that body, on the interactions between its brethren, and on theirmilitary service.

Along with the products of the order’s conventual chancery, a number ofdocuments produced in Hospitaller houses in Britain and Ireland also sur-vive. Of these the most substantial and important for the period covered bythis study are the registers of the grants of provincial chapters held inEngland between 1492 and 1539.120 These provide evidence of the farmingout of the order’s estates, parish churches, and confraternity collections in

115 AOM316 et seq.; discussed in Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 11–13.116 AOM282–8.117 AOM36; 57, cc. 1–12 (original numeration); 53, fos. 70r–72r (49r–51r); 54.118 Further information about exchange dealings can be gleaned from the Libri Bullarum and

various materials in England and Italy.119 Report; BDVTE.120 London, BL, MS Lansdowne 200; BL MS Cotton Claudius E.vi; London, PRO, LR2/62.

22 Introduction

England and Wales,121 besides recording grants of corrodies, chaplaincies,and offices to the order’s servants and associates, manumissions of serviletenants, and short-term leases of the commanderies of those brethren resi-dent in or on their way to convent. They thus illustrate not merely theorganization of the order’s estates and the movements of its brethren butalso its connections with English and Welsh society. The evidence theyprovide can usefully be set against the 1338 extent, the 1442 cartulary,and the surviving fifteenth- and sixteenth-century estate documents andcourt rolls of Hospitaller commanderies and manors, only a selection ofwhich have been utilized in this study.122 But the lease books are notcomprehensive guides to the order’s landholdings or their administration.The closest we have to such are the crown’s great survey of the church’sholdings in England and Wales, the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, the profitand loss accounts of former Hospitaller estates produced by the ministers ofthe English crown from 1540–1, and the crown surveys of former Irishmonastic estates in Ireland of the same period.123 None of these is quitecomprehensive, but the Ministers’ Accounts and crown surveys, in particu-lar, provide a wide variety of information about the running of most of theorder’s estates, and not simply those leased out by its provincial chapters.A similar, internally produced extent of the order’s estates in Scotland wascommissioned by the preceptor of Torphichen, Walter Lindsay, in 1539.124

A miscellany of other documents produced by the Hospital also survives inrepositories in Britain and Ireland. These include copies of its privileges,grants of confraternity and indulgences drawn up by its brethren or agents,and even a brief late fourteenth-century ‘chronicle’.125

Much information concerning the order, particularly that illustrating itsrelationship with wider society in Britain and Ireland, derives from sourcesproduced by other corporations. The most significant ‘corporate’ sources arethe chancery, legal, parliamentary, and exchequer records of the English andScottish crowns, bishops’ registers, and the materials in Venice and Romecalendared by HMSO, all of which have been used herein. Of these, the chiefruns of royal grants and acts in chancery, council, and parliament have ofcourse been calendared, but legal records have, by and large, not been, andrecourse has therefore been had to the unpublished records of the English

121 For similar developments in Scotland, see Scotland, lxii–lxiv.122 BL Additional MSS 5493, 5539; BL Cotton Charter xxv, 2; BL Harleian Charter 44E.26,

28–31, 33, 39, 40, 43–5, 47; 57F.18; BL Sloane Ch. xxi, 10; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSRawlinson Essex 11.

123 Valor; PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402, 4458, 7262–4, 7268, 7272, 7274; Extents.124 Scotland, lxxxi, lxxv–lxxviii, lxxxi–lxxxvi, 1–40.125 BL Sloane Ch. xxxii, 15, 27; BL Cotton Ch. iv., 31; BL Additional Ch.14030, 20679;

E. G. Duff, Fifteenth Century English Books: A Bibliography of Books and Documents Printedin England and of Books for the English Market Printed Abroad (Oxford, 1917), nos. 204–8;BL Additional MS 17319, fos. 1–19; M. L. Colker,ADescriptive Catalogue of the Medieval andRenaissance Manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1991), ii. 922–5.

Introduction 23

courts of chancery, star chamber, and requests. If estate records, particularlygrants of leases, present a generally formal picture of the relationship betweenthe order and its tenants, surviving legal documents demonstrate what mighthappen if this should break down, and illustrate the response the orderadopted when faced with recalcitrant tenants who damaged its property orrefused to vacate their leases. As might be expected, the expansion of theadministrative activity of both ‘British’ crowns, particularly the English, inthe period covered by this study resulted in increasingly rich and informativedocumentation of all the order’s activities. Most significantly, an increasingconcern to retain correspondence and personal papers of interest to the stateresulted in a more substantial body of diplomatic and other correspondencebetween both the order and its members and the English and Scottish crownssurviving from the sixteenth than from any earlier century. These illustratesome matters, such as the internal tensions and rivalries obtaining betweenmembers of the English langue in the 1530s, very fully.126 Fifteenth-centurycorrespondence concerning the order ismuch less substantial, but all themaincollections of family papers surviving fromEngland,with the exception of theArmburgh papers, contain items relating to theHospital, as of course does thesurviving correspondence of the English and Scottish crowns. Taken togetherwith bishops’ registers, proceedings of church councils, and chronicles, pri-vate correspondence provides important information about both the order’srelationship with society and its activities in the public sphere. Where corres-pondence is largely lacking, as in Ireland, the importance of the records of thestate and of the episcopacy becomes still more crucial.

These materials make possible the study of the Hospitallers of the Englishlangue in some depth. Their individual wealth, status, and mixture of reli-gious profession and military occupation made them exceptional amongmembers of religious orders in late medieval Britain and Ireland. Theycould, moreover, be seen in various guises. Their continued commitment totheir military functions was exceptional in a ‘British’ context, and the extentof their financial and institutional attachment to their overseas mother-house was hardly less remarkable. They certainly represented themselvesas active campaigners against the infidel, but they also performed a numberof functions only tangentially related to their military operations, and whichprobably affected perceptions of them. Thus governments might see them interms of the services they could perform on royal behalf, while to the clergythey might represent an intrusion into their pastoral care for the laity, and tothe populace they were important as a reservoir of spiritual and temporalprivilege, or as landowners and employers. This work will attempt toexamine all of these roles, and to hold them, as the Hospitallers tried todo, in balance.

126 Of particular importance is BL MS Cotton Otho C.ix, a collection of correspondencerelating chiefly to the order of St John and dating from 1510 to 1540.

24 Introduction

CHAPTER TWO

The Hospital in England andWales, c.1460–1540: The Prior,

his Brethren, and Conventual Life

By the time Paschal II placed it under papal protection in 1113, the Hospitalof St John in Jerusalem was already planning to establish or acquire subsid-iary xenodochia in Italy and southern France.1 Although these establish-ments on the pilgrim routes to Jerusalem were to serve as an extension of theHospital’s charitable functions, the accordance of papal protection andrecognition to the nascent order prompted further grants of lands, rents,and properties throughout Latin Christendom, a process intensified by theorder’s increasing prominence in the defence of the Holy Land after thesecond crusade. By confirming the subjugation of the Hospital’s overseasterritories to the mother-house in Jerusalem, the bull of 1113 and theprivileges which followed it also helped pave the way for the developmentof a centralized international order whose houses in western Europe weregeared towards providing it with men, money, food, and clothing for theprovision of hospitality to sick pilgrims and the defence of the Latin East. Bythe thirteenth century a network of regional, priories and subordinate localpreceptories had been established to supply the convent in the Holy Landwith these necessities, a function it continued to fulfil for hundreds of yearsto come. Yet the order’s local houses were not merely adjuncts to its centralconvent in the east. They were also religious houses with resident brethrenand a spiritual and liturgical life of their own, with some influence on localpolitical and ecclesiastical affairs and with a close relationship with the laity,to whom they provided spiritual services such as confession, marriage, andburial outside the constraints of the parochial system. The following chapterwill examine these characteristics, concentrating first on the order’s brethrenand their recruitment, families, and career structure, before looking at theirconventual life and households.

1 The Rule, Customs and Statutes of the Hospitallers 1099–1310, ed. and trans. E. King(London, 1934), 16–19, 18. For discussion of these supposed establishments, see Luttrell,‘Earliest Hospitallers’, 44–52.

2.1 Brethren

The professed brethren of the Hospital were divided into knights, chaplains,and sergeants, whether sergeants-at-arms or sergeants-at-office.2 There werealso Hospitaller nuns, who in the priory of England had been gathered in onehouse, Minchin Buckland in Somerset, since 1180, but whose activities willnot be much considered here.3 Among the brethren, chaplains had originallyenjoyed precedence but had been ousted from this by the knights in the1230s.4 The ceremony for the reception of a brother of any class into theorder was essentially the same as it had been in the twelfth century, althoughsome refinements had been added. The candidate appeared before a chapterof the order shriven and wearing a white gown to show himself free andpresented himself before the altar, a burning candle in his hand signifying thefire of charitable love. He then heard mass, received the eucharist, and askedthe receiving brother to admit him to the company of the Hospital. Thereceiving brother underlined the privileges and hardships involved in mem-bership and stressed the impediments to reception: a prior vow to another‘religion’, a marital contract, grave debts to a third party or servile status. Ifthe candidate professed himself free from these he then swore the three‘substantial’ vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He further promisedto be a ‘slave of our lords the sick poor’ and to uphold the Catholic faith inaccordance with the order’s Hospitaller and military traditions. In return hewas promised bread, water, humble clothing, and the inclusion of his parentsand kindred in the spiritual benefits provided by the order’s masses, offices,fasting, and alms-giving.5

While the admission ceremony itself was largely unaltered, the profoundchanges which had occurred since the twelfth century in the order’s ownethos and those of the societies in which it operated were reflected in a hostof regulations surrounding the entry of brethren, especially knight-brethren.Just as secular knighthood was increasingly conferred only on candidates ofgentle family and legitimate birth, in 1262 the Hospital established that nobrother was to be knighted unless he was of knightly family, a stipulationfollowed eight years later by the requirement that knights should be born oflegitimately married parents, unless they were the sons of counts or ofgreater nobility.6 In the fifteenth century these regulations were interpreted

2 Stabilimenta ‘De receptione fratrum’, ii.3 A Cartulary of Buckland Priory in the County of Somerset, ed. F. W. Weaver, Somerset

Record Society, 25 (London, 1909), p. xviii and no. 7.4 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 234, 238.5 Cartulaire general de l’ordre des hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem, ed. J. Delaville le

Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906), no. 2213 (Usances) #121; Stabilimenta, ‘De receptionefratrum’, i, ‘consuetudo’.

6 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, iv, vii (Statutes of Hugh Revel).

26 The Prior and his Brethren

to mean that both parents of brother knights were to be ‘gentlemanly’ inname and arms.7 Chaplains and sergeants merely had to be legitimately andfreely born, although nuns were to have gentle parents.8 Not only were entryconditions tightened: from the fourteenth century the reception of brethrenwas also subjected to closer central control. Originally a candidate had beenable to present himself before any chapter meeting in any Hospitaller houseand be received. While this arrangement may have been suitable for theprovision of the large numbers of chaplains and sergeants-at-office requiredby the order’s charitable establishments in Palestine and for the rapid re-cruitment of military brethren to replace the numerous casualties suffered inthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was no longer appropriate in the yearsafter the conquest of Rhodes, when losses were less dramatic and the ordersuffered from severe financial difficulties. In such circumstances the appear-ance of large numbers of brethren from the west might be unwelcome, soit was decided that no officer or brother of the order was to receive a brotheror donat without express magistral licence, unless there was a local shortageof brother chaplains or sergeants-at-office.9 The reception of brethrenremained subject to magistral licence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,as the surviving enrolments of licences to English knights to receive brethreninto the order testify. Those granted such permissions were to note thecandidate’s name and date of reception and affix their seals lest more thanthe designated number be admitted.10

Statutes were also passed to ensure the suitability of candidates. Thosewho knowingly received a religious of another order, a murderer, or some-one whose previous life had been ‘abominable’ were to be expelled from theHospital and priors, preceptors, and conventual brethren who admitted anunworthy candidate into knighthood were to be deprived respectively of aprioral camera (estate), a preceptory, or prospects of promotion. The samepenalties were to be inflicted on those who testified inaccurately to the worthof a candidate.11 In addition, during the mastership of Antoni Fluvia, thesystem of requiring proofs of nobility from those intending to becomeknight-brethren was instituted. Such men were henceforth to come beforethe annual provincial chapter of their local priory, where information wouldbe presented concerning their origin, gentility, manners, disposition, and

7 Ibid., iv.8 Ibid., i (‘consuetudo’), v (Statute of Hugh Revel).9 Ibid., ‘De receptione fratrum’, viiii (Statute of Helion de Villeneuve, 1319–46). The

Hospital had been passing measures to limit recruitment since 1292. A. Forey, ‘Recruitmentto the Military Orders (Twelfth to Mid-Fourteenth Centuries)’, in id., Military Orders andCrusades, art. ii, 139–71, at 159.

10 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, xvi–xvii (Statute of Antoni Fluvia, 1421–37).11 Rule, ed. King, 69–70 (Statute of Hugh Revel, 1265); Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fra-

trum’, xii (Statute of Fluvia), xviii (Statute of Jacques de Milly, 1454–61. Original text:AOM282, fo. 21r–v). Similar penalties were also stipulated in other Military Orders. Forey,‘Recruitment’, 142, 152–3.

The Prior and his Brethren 27

health in mind and body.12 By the 1480s, however, these provisions wereindifferently enforced, a statute of Pierre d’Aubusson noting that examin-ation of the gentility and suitability of knights was rarely made, if ever.Accordingly it was enacted that candidates for knighthood were to provetheir sufficiency within two years of their reception by provincial chapterand were to present such proofs within the same term to the master andcouncil ordinary in convent.13 For seven years thereafter these were to besubject to challenge by such brethren as might object to their legitimacy.14

Those who failed to present sufficient proofs within two years were never torise above the grade of sergeant-at-office.15 This statute remained in forcethroughout the remaining period of the order’s existence in Britain andIreland.

A final requirement for reception was sufficient age. In 1433 it was laiddown that no brother was to be received under the age of 14 and that thosereceived at this age, although they would be clothed and fed by the order,were not to receive the stipend paid to their elders, to bear arms, or to ‘count’the seniority on which the order’s promotion system was based until theywere 18.16 In 1504 it was further ordained that brethren received in thewestern priories should be at least 18.17 Similarly, brother chaplains werenot to be received until they had served the order for a year and were subjectto the usual canonical restrictions on the age at which they could beordained.18

In 1338 there were 113 or more professed brethren subject to the priory inEngland, Wales, and Scotland and one more in France.19 They lived in fiftyhouses, of which forty-two were bajuliae subject to a preceptor, and eight

12 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, xvi (Statute of Fluvia); Sarnowsky, Macht undHerrschaft, 198. In 1452 the langue of Italy insisted that a prospective knight provide writtentestimony of his suitability from the prior of Pisa, another named brother and several, more ofthe priory’s brethren within a year. S. Fiorini and A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Italian Hospitallers atRhodes, 1437–1462’, Revue Mabillon, 68 (1996), 209–31, at 228–9.

13 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, xix, xx (Statutes of Pierre d’Aubusson, 1478–89).14 Ibid., xix (Statute of d’Aubusson).15 Ibid., xx (Statute of d’Aubusson).16 Ibid., xv (Statute of Fluvia); AOM1649, fo. 329r–v.17 AOM284, fo. 77v; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 199.18 Stabilimenta, ‘De ecclesia’, xiiii (Statute of Revel).19 Kemble’s introduction to the Report of 1338 names 116 supposed brethren found therein.

However, Robert de Norfolk, Thomas FitzNeel, and William West, who are listed as ‘in locomilitis’ and John Baruwe, who appears ‘in loco capellani’ were corrodians rather than professedbrethren, while Henry of Buckston, Alan Macy, and John de Thame, all of whom Kemble liststwice, should only appear once. It is also unclear whether Walter Launcelyn, who was describedas a chaplain, was a brother of the Hospital, as Kemble assumed. However, one sergeant,William Hustwayte, and four brethren of uncertain class whom Kemble does not list amonghis 116 names can be added to the overall total, giving a figure of 113 or 114 professed brethren,to which can be added Richard de Barnewell, who was in charge of the preceptory of Dilugein France, and the prior himself, who is not named anywhere except in the title of the report.It is worth noting however, that the Hospitallers themselves counted 119 brethren. Report,pp. lxi–lxiii, 214.

28 The Prior and his Brethren

were camerae governed by a custos.20 Most houses had between one andthree resident brethren, the exceptions being Clerkenwell, where there wereseven, Buckland, with six, and Chippenham, where four Hospitallers caredfor six or seven of their sick brethren in a small hospital.21 Fifty Hospitallernuns dwelt at the priory of Buckland in addition to the brethren at thepreceptory there.22 In 1338 chaplains and sergeants played a full part inboth conventual life and administration. Chaplains were about as numerousas brother knights, while sergeants outnumbered both.23 Seventeen ser-geants and six chaplains held bajuliae.24

By the late fifteenth century this situation had greatly altered. Professedsergeants, although still existing in small numbers in continental Europe andon Rhodes,25 had disappeared completely in the priory of England. While anEnglish brother was licensed to receive two brother sergeants in 1439, andan agreement of 1440–1 envisaged provision being made for professedsergeants or chaplains in the small, priorally held preceptories of Hogshaw,Greenham, Maltby, and Poling, no reference to a ‘British’ brother sergeantcan be found in the order’s records between 1460 and 1560.26 Professedchaplains did not fare much better. Although there were still a numberresident at Clerkenwell in the early fifteenth century and the 1460s,27 andthe conventual church there continued to be under the jurisdiction of aprofessed subprior until the Dissolution, no English, Scottish, or Welshpreceptory was granted to a brother chaplain after 1460, except perhapsClerkenwell, where in the 1440s the subprior held the title of preceptor butwas in effect a salaried officer of the prior without control of the revenues ofthe house.28 Nor are chaplains recorded at the provincial chapters for which

20 Included in this latter figure are the camerae of Stanton, which was under the rule of thepreceptor of Dinmore, who may not have resided at the smaller house, and of Upleadon, underthe custos Robert Cort. This was probably the same man as the preceptor of Eagle and TempleBrewer, and Upleadon may thus have been uninhabited. Not included is the camera of Ashley,which was in the charge of a former Templar, Roger de Dalton. Report, 200, 196, 121.

21 Ibid. 101, 19, 78, 80.22 Ibid. 19.23 Kemble in his notes to Thame’s Report, pp. lxi–lxiii, divided the brethren into thirty-four

knights, forty-eight sergeants-at-arms, and thirty-four chaplains. Dr Forey has suggested figuresof thirty-one knights and forty-seven sergeants. Forey, ‘Recruitment’, 145.

24 Report, passim.25 A statute of 1467 stipulated that twenty of the brethren expected to live in convent should

be sergeants. In later years the total number of brethren was increased but the contingent ofsergeants, none of whom was to be from the English langue, remained constant. AOM283, fos.39r–v; 144r; 285, fo. 2r.

26 AOM354, fos. 200v, 215r.27 Between 1417 and 1422 Henry V ordered the prior of England, William Hulles, to make

sure that the prioral church should be fully conventual, as it had been until the time of EdwardIII, rather than supporting secular clergy and two or three professed brethren. In 1469 thesubprior and two brother chaplains were among the brethren presenting John Langstrother tothe king. Monasticon anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale et al., 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30), vi, II,839, CCR1468–76, 101–2.

28 AOM355, fo. 168v.

The Prior and his Brethren 29

attendance lists survive between 1492 and 1529, save for an assembly of1515, at which Robert Parapart, the subprior, and John Blome, brotherchaplain, were present, probably in order to render the gathering quorate.29

References to professed chaplains are indeed so scarce that it is unlikely thatthere were ever more than about six or seven residing in England at any timeafter c.1460, the last magistral licence to admit English brother chaplainsinto the order so that they could serve in Rhodes being granted in 1473.30

The order’s appropriated churches were largely staffed by secular clergy,31 aswere its preceptory chapels,32 with the possible exception of Buckland,leases of which specified that two of five chaplains to be found by the lesseewere to be ‘de cruce’.33 Even at Clerkenwell, only one of the priests orchaplains appointed to serve and sing in the church of St John between1492 and 1526was described as ‘brother’.34 Although some of the chaplainsappointed to offices at Clerkenwell were probably later professed, priests inthe order’s service, denied promotion to preceptories, may generally haveavoided taking vows which would no longer enhance their career pro-spects.35 There were exceptions. John Mablestone was clearly marked outfor advancement from early in his career, and was already a brother when hewas ordained priest in 1510. He received the order’s wealthy benefice ofLudgershall in 1511 and was dispatched shortly afterwards to Bologna,where he took doctorates in each law later in the same decade.36 His absencefrom his cure in the meantime was permitted under a papal privilege of

29 Claudius E.vi, fo. 156v. The 1478 chapter-general had ruled that the common seal ofthe priory should only be used in chapter and in the presence of four preceptors. AOM283,fo. 183r–v.

30 AOM384, fo. 72r–v.31 Possible exceptions include brother William Corner, who held the rectory of Swarraton,

subject to the preceptory of Baddesley, until his death in 1493, and a brother Stephen Bekleywho died as rector of the order’s benefice of Knolton in 1487, but it is uncertain whether eitherof these was a Hospitaller rather than a regular of another order. The Register of John MortonArchbishop of Canterbury 1486–1500, ed. C. Harper-Bill, 3 vols, CYS, 75 (York, 1985); 78, 89(Woodbridge, 1987–2000), ii, no. 119; i, no. 370.

32 The registers of the order’s provincial chapters note numerous appointments of preceptorychaplains. John Lyndesey, appointed chaplain of Maltby in 1492, was the only professedrecipient of such a grant. BL MS Lansdowne 200, fo. 4v.

33 Lansdowne 200, fos. 84r–v; BL MS Claudius E.vi, fos. 56v–57r, 169r. In 1506 the Hospi-taller prioress of Buckland, Joan Coffyn, and a ‘Freere Thomas Coort’ witnessed the will of thefarmer of the preceptory of Buckland. Somerset Medieval Wills 1383–1550, ed. F. W. Weaver,Somerset Record Society, 3 vols. in 1 (repr. Gloucester, 1983), ii. 105.

34 Claudius E.vi, fo. 254r.35 Dr Forey has noted that even in the fourteenth century ‘the international orders seem to

have experienced long-term difficulties in finding sufficient clerics who wanted to take thehabit’. With the decline in population and decrease in admissions to religious houses after theBlack Death, recruitment difficulties probably increased. In 1531 the order was having troublerecruiting secular priests to serve at Clerkenwell. Forey, ‘Recruitment’, 158; LPFD, v, no. 111.

36 London, Guildhall Library MS 9531/9, fo. 159r/171r (consulted from Cambridge Univer-sity Library Manuscript Microfilm 8271); A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the Uni-versity of Oxford A.D.1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), 688; An Episcopal Court Book of theDiocese of Lincoln 1514–1520, ed. M. Bowker, Lincoln Record Society, 61 (Lincoln, 1967), 25.

30 The Prior and his Brethren

1448, which allowed the prior of England to retain eight chaplains in hisown service.37 Yet he does not appear as ‘brother chaplain’ or ‘brotherpriest’ in the order’s internal documents until 1524.38 He was appointedchancellor of the priory in 1526, and was subprior by the 1530s, a positionhe retained until the dissolution.39 But in 1540 only four non-knights,including Mablestone, were granted a pension, and it is not certain thatthe master of the Temple, William Armistead, and his subordinate chaplainswere also professed. A pension had also been granted to the chaplain of thenuns at Buckland, brother William Mawdesley, in 1539.40

Despite the Hospital’s general failure to attract brother chaplains, it washappy to allow members of other orders to enter its ranks, and may evenhave poached them. Two outstanding defectors were John Tynemouth, aFranciscan doctor of theology admitted to the Hospital without licence fromhis superiors in 1506,41 and Philip Underwood, who had been in charge ofthe finances of the Charterhouse for some years and was received as aconfrater in 1514.42 Tynemouth was appointed rector of Ludgershall in1506, and prebendary of Blewbury, perhaps the most important beneficein the order’s gift, in 1511.43 Yet if some gifted men were attracted to theorder’s service, others were lost. A Hospitaller who became a suffraganbishop, William Bachelor,44 was so busy on diocesan affairs that it isunlikely that he did his order, which had presumably trained and educatedhim, much service.

Although it was clearly important to the Hospital that its subprior andperhaps some of its chief benefice holders should be professed and educated,it is often difficult to distinguish its clerical brethren from the priests andchaplains who staffed its appropriated churches and commandery chapels.45

Far more information survives about the order’s knights, a majority amongits brethren from at least the 1370s.46 Recruitment of brother knights waslargely governed by the requirements of the central convent rather thanrequests for admittance in England. In accordance with the statutes most

37 Episcopal Court Book, ed. Bowker, 25; CPL x. 189.38 Claudius E.vi, fos. 238r, 254r.39 AOM412, fos. 191r–v, 197v–198r; LPFD, xi, no. 917.40 Statutes, iii. 780; LPFD, xv, no. 1032, p. 544.41 CPL, xviii, no. 37. For Tynemouth’s previous career see A. B. Emden, A Biographical

Register of the University of Cambridge to A.D.1500 (Cambridge, 1963), 602.42 Claudius E.vi, fo. 132r; AOM404, fo. 146v.43 Emden, Cambridge, 602.44 Bachelor, who held a bishopric in partibus, was involved in the administration of Chiche-

ster diocese. Another supposed Hospitaller bishop, Thomas Cornish, was associated rather withthe hospital of St John Baptist inWells.HBC 286; J. A. F. Thomson, ‘Richard Tollet and ThomasCornish: Two West Country Early Tudor Churchmen’, Southern History, 19 (1997), 61–73, at67.

45 For these see below, 54, 75, 101.46 Tipton listed only thirteen of seventy-seven or seventy-eight brethren of the priory of

England active between 1378 and 1409 as priests or chaplains, although some of the remainderwere probably priests. Tipton, ‘English Langue’, 122–8.

The Prior and his Brethren 31

knight-brethren must have received the habit during a provincial chapter,following which they were dispatched to the convent. Additionally, magis-tral licences were occasionally granted to senior brethren to admit specifiednumbers of knights or chaplains into the order. Between 1460 and 1511faculties to receive sixty-six knights and three chaplains into the priories ofEngland and Ireland were enrolled in the Libri Bullarum.47 The reasons fortheir issue are rarely specified but they probably served both as rewards forprominent knights and as a means of providing manpower quickly. InDecember 1471, for example, a licence to William Tornay to admit sixknights was issued at the request of the English brethren in convent, whowere concerned at their low numbers at a time when the order was heavilycommitted to war against the Turks. Those received were to be dispatched toRhodes with the first safe passage.48 At other times brethren might beadmitted by request. Thus in February 1467 Robert Botill was empoweredto admit five knights at the instance of the king and others of the blood royal,while in 1502 two Italian knights were instructed to investigate the suitabil-ity of Robert Stewart, the nephew of the seigneur d’Aubigny, whose admis-sion was being urged by his uncle and the duke of Nemours.49

Such commissions insisted that the receiving brother establish the suit-ability of the candidate before a provincial chapter before knighting him,conferring the habit on him and, with the licence of his superior, dispatchinghim to the convent. When the probationary knight reached headquarters hewould be admitted into the English langue on condition that his proofsfollow within two years.50 Brethren who attempted to bypass these proced-ures, such as Robert Pemberton in 1498 and Humphrey Bevercotes in 1505,were told to arrange to have their proofs examined before a provincialchapter like their fellows.51

Although challenges were issued to probationary brethren to prove theirage, and hence their eligibility for the ancienitas (seniority) necessary toseek promotion, in 1436, 1474, and 1487,52 and one prospective brother,Thomas Waring, was rejected by the langue as physically invalid and of badcharacter, objections to the suitability of prospective brethren for knight-hood usually focused on the insufficiency of the proofs rather than on the

47 AOM370, fo. 142r; 371, fo. 142r; 374, fo. 142v; 375, fo. 102r; 376, fo. 157v; 378, fos.148v, 149v–150r; 380, fo. 137v; 382, fo. 138v; 384, fos. 57r–v, 61r bis, 72r–v, 72v; 385, fo. 129v;386, fo. 131r; 388, fo. 134v; 390, fo. 131v; 392, fo. 100r; 395, fos. 142r, 148r–v, 148v; 397, fo.139v; 400, fo. 150v.

48 AOM384, fo. 61r.49 AOM393, fos. 113r–v; 394, fo. 171r (calendared in Scotland, 171–2). The Stewarts had

been lords of Aubigny in Berry since 1423. The Seigneur, the aged Beraud Stewart, was servingas governor of Calabria for Louis XII. Nemours was the commander of the French forces insouthern Italy, where Robert was to be received into the order. G. E. Cockayne (ed.), CompletePeerage, New edn., ed. V. Gibbs et al., 13 vols. (London, 1910–59), i. 327–8.

50 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, xx (Statute of d’Aubusson).51 AOM78, fos. 90v–91r; 81, fos. 16v–17r.52 Mifsud,Venerable Tongue, 160; AOM382, fo.136v;68, fo.128r; 76, fo.209r;389, fo.134r.

32 The Prior and his Brethren

failings of the candidate.53 Even when these were rejected by the langue,however, the brother in question might be given time to produce others‘formeable accordyng to the stablishment’, as Thomas Rawson was inOctober 1528.54 Waring, indeed, seems to have been the only Englishmanwhose proofs were so irregular that he was permanently denied entry,although the turcopolier Clement West claimed that his admission hadbeen blocked by another senior knight-brother, Giles Russell, whose cousinAnthony would have held the same ancienitas as Waring had he beenadmitted.55

With the possible exception of Bevercotes, who, ‘impelled by the devotionhe felt for the Jerusalemite order’, arrived in Rhodes without prior admissionin England,56 it is difficult to say whether probationary knights were motiv-ated to join the order by a genuine vocation or by the rather contradictoryenticements of military adventure and the subsequent attainment of a com-fortable living in England. What can be stated with confidence is that manywere encouraged by existing family connections with the order. Incidentalreferences in the order’s internal documents, heralds’ visitations, and familypedigrees prove a large number of family relationships between members ofthe order and hint at many more. Among at least 185 knight-brethren activein the priory of England between 1460 and 1559 no less than seventy-nineshared a surname with one or other of their fellows,57 while a fair propor-tion of others came from families that had provided the Hospital withbrethren in the relatively recent past, such as the Malorys, Multons, andWests. Additionally, several more knights appear to have been related to asister or professed chaplain of the order58 and close ties of kinship existedbetween a number of ‘Hospitaller’ families. When the order’s chief tenantsand officers are thrown into the equation sympathy for Field’s statement that‘the late medieval English Hospitallers always arouse suspicions of nepo-tism’ threatens to become overwhelming.59

The exact nature of the family relationships between members of theorder is often unclear. Being celibate and ideally leaving no offspring, pro-fessed Hospitallers seem frequently to have been omitted from the familypedigrees given to Heralds, and being required to pass on their effects to the

53 AOM86, fos. 11r, 55r. Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 28–9.54 BDVTE, 43.55 LPFD, xii, I, no.1144. West described Anthony Russell as Giles’s nephew.56 AOM81, fos. 16v–17r.57 See Appendix VII. I have included the Scots but not the Irish, as they belonged to a separate

priory, in this total. Excluded from the total of related brethren are Blase and Ralph Villers, whoI think were one and the same, and Robert and Alexander Stewart, as it is not certain that eitherof them actually entered the order. Also excluded are James Sandilands junior, who I believe isidentical with John James Sandilands; John Shelley and Thomas Waring.

58 Joan Babington, Thomasina Huntington, and Juliana Kendal all seem likely to have beenrelations of Hospitaller knights, as does the professed chaplain Thomas Green. See AppendixVII.

59 Field, ‘Robert Malory’, 258.

The Prior and his Brethren 33

order, they left no wills either. Where they occur in Heralds’ visitations, theevidence is sometimes in conflict with the order’s internal documents, inwhich nepos appears to have been used to denote any younger relative. Thuswhile Lancelot Docwra appears in later visitation records as the son ofRobert Docwra of Kirkby Kendall, Westmorland, and the third cousin ofThomas Docwra, the prior of England, in documents emanating fromRhodes and Clerkenwell he occurs as the prior’s nepos.60 The prior’s close-ness to both branches of the family may help resolve the matter, as it seemspossible that Lancelot, like other Westmoreland Docwras, was brought upin Thomas’s household.61 Similar considerations arise when one examinesthe family relationships between the four Babington knight-brethren. The1569 visitation of Nottinghamshire states that John I (d. 1533) was amember of the branch of the family seated at Dethick in Nottinghamshire,a contention borne out by family wills and other evidence.62 Although hisyounger contemporaries John (junior) and Philip are considered to be mem-bers of the Devon branch of the family in the visitation, the order’s archiveshave John junior as John senior’s nepos.63 Examination of the visitation andfamily records, however, led G. T. Clark to reject the younger knights asmembers of the Derbyshire branch and assign them to Devon along with thefourth knight, James.64

Despite such difficulties a number of kinship ties within and betweenfamilies connected with the order can be identified with confidence. Withoutimplying that such extended ‘Hospitaller’ families were typical, it may beinstructive to discuss three groupings involving some of the order’s moreprominent knights. The most significant of these was that centred on theWeston family. The Westons themselves produced four Hospitallers inthe fifteenth century—Thomas (d. 1456), John (d. 1489), William senior

60 The Visitations of Hertfordshire made by Robert Cooke, Esq., Clarencieux, in 1572, andSir Richard St. George, Kt., Clarencieux, in 1634, with Hertfordshire Pedigrees from HarleianMSS. 6147 and 1546, ed. W. C. Metcalfe, HSP, 22 (London, 1886), 139; The Visitation ofCambridgeshire made in Ao (1575), continued and enlarged wth the Vissitation of the SameCounty made by Henery St George, Richmond-Herald, Marshall and Deputy to Willm. Cam-den, Clarenceulx, in Ao 1619, wth Many Other Descents added thereto, ed. W. Clay, HSP 41(London, 1897), 44–5; Claudius E.vi, fo. 173v; AOM393, fo. 143v; 404, fo. 149r. The lastsource describes Lancelot as Thomas’s fraternal nephew.

61 For example, John Docwra, son and heir of Thomas Docwra of Kirkby Kendall, wasgranted a messuage and stable just outside the priory gatehouse in 1524 and a corrody in thesame year, and was married in the priory’s buttery in 1526. Claudius E.vi, fos. 129v, 129v–130r;Lansdowne 200, fo. 1r.

62 The Visitations of the County of Nottingham in the Years 1569 and 1614, with ManyOther Descents of the Same County, ed. G. W. Marshall, HSP, 4 (London, 1871), 152; NorthCountry Wills . . . 1383 to 1558, ed. J. W. Clay, Surtees Society, 116 (Durham, 1908), no. 35;G. T. Clark, ‘The Babingtons, Knights of St John’, Archaeological Journal, 36 (1879), 219–30,at 220–1, 224. The involvement of the Nottinghamshire Babingtons in the administration of theorder’s estates can be traced in Claudius E.vi, fos. 7r–v, 69v–70r, 158r–v, 202r, 258r–v, 280r–v, 287v;PRO SC6/Henry VIII/7272 mm.1, 5, 6d, 12d; AOM54, fo. 176r.

63 Visitations of Nottingham, ed. Marshall, 152; BDVTE, 43.64 Clark, ‘Babingtons’, 227–9.

34 The Prior and his Brethren

(d. c.1483–6), andWilliam junior (d. 1540).65 ThomasWestonwas probablythe uncle of John and William senior, who were in turn uncles of Williamjunior. All of these men were long-serving preceptors and John and Wil-liam junior became turcopoliers and priors of England. Additionally thefamily was related to at least three other Hospitaller families. The maternaluncle of John and William Weston was the turcopolier William Dawney (d.1468),66whomayhimself havebeen related to theDalisonandGreen familieswhich produced six or seven Hospitallers between them after 1450, andthrough them to the Docwras.67 Moreover, in 1475 William Weston seniorwas described by the order’s chancery as the ‘germanus’ of John Botill, thepreceptor of Quenington, and thus was also presumably a relative of RobertBotill, the prior of England between 1440 and 1468.68 Finally, the son ofWilliam Weston junior’s sister Mabel, Thomas Dingley, became a brotherknight in 1526.69

A second network was built up between five or more families between the1460s and 1540s. These were the Lincolnshire families of Sheffield,70 Sut-ton, Upton, and Coppledike, the baronial family of Sutton, Lords Dudley,and possibly the Grantham and Barnaby families. The Sheffields had pro-duced one Hospitaller knight, Bryan, by 1463. Another, Thomas, the secondson of Sir Robert Sheffield, entered the order in the 1480s or 1490s andbecame receiver of the priory of England, bailiff of Eagle, and magistralseneschal before his death in 1524.71 The Hospitaller impulse, if it can be sotermed, then passed via Thomas Sheffield’s sister Margaret, who marriedHamon Sutton of Burton-by-Lincoln, to her son John and daughter Marga-ret.72 John Sutton became a Hospitaller preceptor and receiver of the priory

65 ThomasWeston was the preceptor of Ribstone between 1422 and 1456. PRO E315/18/14;AOM366, fos. 115v–116r.

66 The Visitations of the County of Surrey made and taken in the Years 1530 by ThomasBenolte, Clarenceux King of Arms; 1572 by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms; and 1623by Samuel Thompson, Windsor Herald and Augustin Vincent, Rouge Croix Pursuivant, Mar-shals and Deputies to William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms, ed. W. Bruce Bannerman,HSP, 43 (London, 1899), 7.

67 Dawney’s niece Johanna married a William Dalison and a Gilbert Green was describedshortly after Dawney’s death as his consanguineus. However, it is not at all clear that this Greenwas related to the Hospitallers Thomas and James, or that either he or they were related toThomas Docwra’s mother, a daughter of Thomas Green of Gressingham, Lancashire. TheVisitation of Yorkshire in the Years 1563 and 1564, made by William Flower, Esquire, NorroyKing of Arms, ed. C. Best Norcliffe, HSP, 16 (London, 1881), 94; AOM377, fo. 249r;Visitationsof Hertfordshire, ed. Metcalfe, 139.

68 AOM75, fo. 86r–v.69 Visitations of Surrey, ed. Bannerman, 7; BDVTE, 42. See below, 215–19.70 The Sheffields were from South Cave, Yorkshire, but moved to Butterwick in Lincolnshire

after the marriage of Sir Robert Sheffield, the father of the Hospitaller Thomas, to the daughterof Alexander Laund.

71 AOM374, fo. 139r–v; S. T. Bindoff, (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House ofCommons 1509–1558 (London, 1982), iii. 304–5; AOM284, fo. 2r; 394, fos. 177r–178r; 409,fo. 142v; 410, fos. 176r–v; 54, fo. 132v.

72 Lincolnshire Pedigrees, ed. A. R. Maddison, 4 vols., continuously paginated, HSP, 50–2,55 (London, 1901–3, 1906), iii. 939.

The Prior and his Brethren 35

like his uncle, while Margaret married first William Coppledike of Harring-ton and later became the second wife of Nicholas Upton of Northolme-by-Wainfleet.73 Both her own son Thomas Coppledike and her stepson Nicho-las Upton became Hospitallers.74 It is also probable that links with theLincolnshire Suttons prompted George Dudley alias Sutton, the son ofJohn Lord Dudley, to join the order, as his paternal aunt had married JohnSutton’s brother Robert. John Sutton, Thomas Coppledike, and NicholasUpton were all still alive when Dudley set off for Malta in 1545, and Uptonwas there to receive him.75 Sisters of John Sutton also married into theBarnaby and Grantham families, although it is unclear whether these werethe same branches that produced knights of the order in the 1520s.76

Similarly close relations existed between the Kendal, Tonge, and probablyLangstrother families. The Tonges produced three knight-brethren in thefifteenth century, William (d. after 1446), Robert (d. 1481), and John(d. 1510), all of whom held preceptories.77 Although the relationship be-tween the Tonges themselves has not yet been determined, John Tonge wasthe nephew of John Kendal, the prior of England between 1489 and 1501.78

Kendal in turn was possibly related to the Langstrother brothers, whosuccessively held the bailiwick of Eagle for over twenty years before JohnLangstrother became prior in 1469. John Langstrother bequeathed certaingoods to Kendal on his death in 1471,79 and the two families, who bothcame from Westmorland,80 were also both related to the ‘non-Hospitaller’

73 Lincolnshire Pedigrees, ed. A. R. Maddison, 4 vols., continuously paginated, HSP, i. 268;iii. 1025–6.

74 BDVTE 41–2, 20–1. For the transmission of crusading enthusiasm by women, see J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1130 (Cambridge, 1997), 93–100.

75 See Appendices VII and VIII and below, Ch.9.76 Lincolnshire Pedigrees, ed. Maddison, iii. 938.77 By 1428, William Tonge was the preceptor of Beverley, which he had traded for Wil-

loughton by 1440, when he was granted the preceptory of Swingfield in addition. Shortly afterthis he swapped Willoughton for Slebech. In the 1440s he was the receiver of the priory ofEngland, and in 1446 was among the fourteen capitulars of the chapter-general held in Rome.Robert Tonge was a Hospitaller by 1444, and held the bailiwick of Eagle between 1471 and hisdeath ten years later. John Tonge was appointed preceptor of Ribston by magistral grace in1489, ofMount St John by cabimentum in 1494 and of Carbrooke, probably by prioral grace, in1498 or 1499. SJG, Butler Papers (citing AOM348, old foliation, fo. 172); AOM354, fos. 203r–v,205v; 356, fos. 182r–v; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 224–5; AOM379, fo. 146r–v; 76, fo. 70v; 390, fo.130r; 391, fo. 200v; Lansdowne 200, fo. 57v. For the titles by which brethren held preceptories,see below, Ch. 2.2.

78 Their relationship is mentioned in several sources. Plumpton Correspondence, ed.T. Stapleton, CS, 1st ser., 4 (London, 1839), no.92; ‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’,ed. F. Madden, Archaeologia, 27 (1838), 153–210, at 171–2, 205; AOM391, fo. 199v.

79 Kendal was apparently the only brother to whom Langstrother left property. He had alsoacted as Langstrother’s proctor in Rhodes in 1470. AOM74, fos. 89v, 46r.

80 Judging by his arms, John Kendal was a member of the Curwen family of Kendal, while theLangstrother brothers’ origin can be more certainly ascribed to Crosthwaite. A. Sutton, ‘JohnKendale: A Search for Richard III’s Secretary’, in J. Petre (ed.), Richard III: Crown and People(Gloucester, 1985), 224–38, at 227; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 160, citing AOM352, fo. 130(old foliation).

36 The Prior and his Brethren

Clippesbys of Norfolk.81 A further link, although seemingly not a bloodconnection, existed with the Plumpton clan. Sir Robert Plumpton was JohnTonge’s godfather, Edward Plumpton John Weston’s secretary, and ThomasPlumpton a Hospitaller knight and preceptor.82 Another Plumpton, Robert’sniece Elizabeth, married John Sothill of Stokerston and was the mother ofthe Hospitaller Arthur Sothill.83 At least one Plumpton was buried in thepriory church at Clerkenwell.84

Although other connections are not quite so ramified, a number of rela-tionships between other Hospitaller families can also be identified. JohnBabington of Dethick, for example, was the nephew of Richard Fitzherbert,stated to be a Hospitaller in Burke’s Landed Gentry,85 while MarmadukeLumley and Augustine Middlemore were described as brothers ‘secundumcarnem’ in 1463, and John Bothe was the nephew of an unnamed lieutenantturcopolier, probably John Boswell or Walter Fitzherbert.86 Three sixteenth-century knights—Bryan Tunstall, Ambrose Layton, and Cuthbert Layton—were nephews of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham.87 Even in the 1540s,the families of former Hospitallers continued to intermarry, with unionstaking place between the Tyrrells and Gonsons, Pooles and Caves, and Cavesand Newdigates.88 In 1557 the knights received into the re-erected priory ofEngland included the Shelley brothers, who were closely related to Edward

81 Writing to Sir John Paston between c.1492 and 1501, John Kendal referred to JohnClippesby of Oby as his ‘cousin’. According to a pedigree, the latter was the grandson ofanother John Clippesby and the daughter of a Thomas Longstrother of Cheshire. OtherLangstrothers moved to Lincolnshire or Norfolk in the train of William Langstrother, thepreceptor of Eagle and Carbrooke. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed.N. Davis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1976), ii. 480, i. 69–71; The Visitacion of Norffolk, made and takenby William Harvey, Clarencieux King of Arms, Anno 1563, enlarged with another Visitacionmade by Clarenceux Cooke, with Many Other Descents; as also the Vissitation made by JohnRaven, Richmond, Anno 1613, ed. W. Rye, HSP, 32 (London, 1891), 77.

82 Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Stapleton, no. 93; Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483,ed. C. L. Kingsford, CS, 3rd ser., 29–30 (London, 1919), no. 329; AOM388, fo. 132r. No furtherlight has been shed on Thomas Plumpton’s background in the new edition of the Plumptonletters, which omits Stapleton’s speculations on the Hospitallers. The Plumpton Letters andPapers, ed. J. Kirby, CS, 5th ser., 8 (London, 1996), nos. 117–18, and pp. 61–3, 321–2;Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Stapleton, nos. 92–3, 133–4.

83 North Country Wills, ed. Brown, nos. 44–6; Visitation of Yorkshire, ed. Best Norcliffe,290–1.

84 J. Stow, A Survey of London: Reprinted from the Text of 1603, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971),ii. 85.

85 No Richard Fitzherbert occurs in the order’s archives, but Walter Fitzherbert was aHospitaller by 1470 and the commander of Templecombe between 1478 and 1489. The twomay be identical, or Walter may have belonged to an earlier generation imperfectly recorded inthe pedigree given by Burke. J. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the LandedGentry, 4 vols. (London, 1837–8), i. 79; AOM386, fos. 128v–129r; 390, fo. 129v.

86 AOM374, fo. 139r–v; 76, fo. 209r.87 Visitation of Yorkshire, ed. Best Norcliffe, 327–8; AOM414, fo. 249v; See Appendix VII.88 P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, 2 vols. (London, 1763–8),

i. 209; Bindoff, (ed.),House of Commons, iii. 131; The Visitation of the County of Leicester inthe Year 1619, taken by William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms, ed. J. Fetherston, HSP, 2(London, 1870), 126.

The Prior and his Brethren 37

Bellingham, the former preceptor of Dinmore.89 It seems likely that if thesources were more complete a network embracing still more families wouldemerge. As candidates for knighthood were commonly presented to provin-cial chapter by an existing brother, and as licences to admit brethren into theorder very rarely stipulated who they were to be, this is hardly surprising.

Within families, the number of relationships that are absolutely clear israther limited, however. Although they were probably close kin to eachother, the Hospitaller Tonges, Daniels, Dalisons, and Newports are notdescribed as such in the order’s archives and, since they do not appear infamily pedigrees either, their relationships remain conjectural. In fact lessthan fifty brethren can yet be placed with absolute security in a familybackground. Although it is possible to make plausible suggestions as to thefamily and geographical provenance of many of the others, their non-appearance in pedigrees or wills makes generalization about the wealth,status, piety, and other characteristics of their families difficult.90

What is immediately striking about these families is their geographicalorigin. Of the forty-seven certain or near-certain English family seats listedfor knight-brethren in Appendix VII, twelve were in Yorkshire or Lincoln-shire, with a further six in Durham, Cumberland, or Westmorland. If oneconsiders the almost certainly Yorkshire origins of the Tonges and Multons,the domination of northerners and north-east midlanders in the order’shierarchy is apparent. Moreover, several of those families which appear tobe from the south such as the Rawsons and the southern branches of theDocwras and Westons had migrated from Yorkshire or Lincolnshire onlyone or two generations before they produced knights of St John. WilliamWeston junior’s father, for example, had been born in Boston, as had hisHospitaller uncles John andWilliam.With the possible exception ofWilliamTornay every prior of England and English prior of Ireland who held officebetween 1468 and 1540 can be ascribed to a northern or north midlandsfamily.

There are a number of possible reasons for this predominance. In the firstplace, the order may have preferred to draw upon the stronger militarytraditions of the northern counties as more appropriate to its activities inthe Mediterranean than the less martial background of many southerngentle families.91 It is interesting, that several of the Hospitaller knightseither had connections with the Percy family or saw service on the marchesthemselves. The Hildyards of Winestead, from whom William Hillyard was

89 Bindoff, (ed.), House of Commons, i. 414–5; iii. 308–10.90 See Appendix VII. I have excluded those families, such as the Malorys, Multons, New-

ports, and Tonges whose probable background can be guessed from their arms or other sources,but whose exact family seat and relationships are unclear.

91 On the military traditions of the northern gentry, see M. J. Bennett, Community, Class andCareerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight(Cambridge, 1983), 162–91.

38 The Prior and his Brethren

probably drawn, were traditional Percy retainers, while Roland Thornburghand Nicholas Fairfax were in the service of earls of Northumberland.92

Robert Multon, a Percy retainer, even served as deputy warden of the eastmarch in the 1470s and late 1480s, while in a later generation CuthbertLayton, a native of Cumberland, can be found defending Norham castleagainst the Scots.93

In the second place, it is at least arguable that northern England held asomewhat deeper attachment to religious houses than the south, and that theorder of St John may have benefited from this. It is noteworthy that in 1537the farmers of the order’s lands in the north were characterized as particu-larly eager to stir up the populace in defence of the monasteries,94 and manyof these were members of families connected with the Hospital. Thirdly, therelatively sluggish economy of the north in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies95 and the lack of other opportunities there may have rendered acareer in the order more attractive to younger sons96 than it might otherwisehave been. Although their families were usually of conventional piety, theprospect of an austere or contemplative life may have been too much forthese men.97 Advancement in the Hospital, however, offered the possibilityof considerable wealth and prominence for those who were successful,besides the control of estates which might be leased to family members.A final contributing factor may have been the order’s system for collating tobenefices. In certain cases a vacant commandery would be adjudged to thebrother who had been born nearest to its site. As seven of the order’s twentynon-prioral commanderies were in Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, and as theywere ranked respectively first, fourth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fourteenth, andfifteenth in terms of wealth,98 it was probably easier for a Yorkshire orLincolnshire man both to get a foot on the career ladder and to avoid apoor house when doing so. Of course not all these characteristics wereexclusive to northern England. Families with strong military traditions,ties to local religious houses, and surplus younger sons existed all over the

92 Information communicated by Dr Rosemary Horrox (Hillyard and Thornburgh);AOM54, fo. 95v; LPFD, Addenda no. 312 (i, iii) (Fairfax).

93 CPR1467–77, 545; Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, ed. W. Campbell,2 vols. (London, 1873–7), ii. 533, 557; Appendix VII; LPFD, xx, I, nos. 280, 340.

94 LPFD, xii, I, no.192.95 Schofield, R. S. ‘The Geographical Distribution of Wealth in England, 1334–1649’,

Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 108 (1965), 483–510.96 Of the Hospitaller offspring of the families discussed above, only Henry Pole/Poole and the

two Docwras seem to have been eldest sons. Most of the rest were second or third sons, whilesome, such as Nicholas Hussey (the eighth son of nine) and Blase Villers (the tenth of ten) camevery low down the pecking order indeed.

97 Although the families noted in Appendix VII produced at least ten nuns, and several clericsbetween them of the same or immediately preceding generations as Hospitallers, they did notgive rise to many other male religious.

98 I have based this ranking on the responsions levied on each preceptory in 1520. AOM54,fos. 3v–11v.

The Prior and his Brethren 39

country. But it is in the north where preceptories were relatively wealthy andnumerous, where the danger from the Scots was still a real concern, andwhere alternative outlets for the energies of young gentlemen may have beenlimited that a career in the Hospital proved most attractive.

It is dangerous to generalize about the wealth and status of Hospitallerfamilies simply from the evidence of those that are known, as by definitionthey are likely to be more prominent than those whose origin is unclear.Some preliminary conclusions can be advanced, however. In the first place,the English knights were from gentle rather than noble backgrounds. Ofthose active in the order between 1460 and 1540, only Richard Neville, theson of George, Lord Abergavenny, was from a family of baronial rank.99

The rest were of quite varying pedigree. Some major gentry families wererepresented. The Ayscoughs, Babingtons of Dethick, Caves, Eures, Fair-faxes, Fitzherberts, Massingberds, Plumptons, Sheffields, Tunstalls, andTyrrells of Heron were all of some importance and of knightly rank in thegenerations before they produced Hospitallers.100 Most were of consider-able antiquity too. Others such as the Worcestershire Russells and DurhamLambtons were less prominent, but still of ancient lineage and respectablelocal standing.101 Although they seem to have derived from landowningfamilies that had moved into the towns, some Hospitaller knights were theoffspring of prominent merchants. David Gonson’s father William wasHenry VIII’s chief naval administrator and a pioneer in the Levant trade,which may account for his son’s profession.102 Richard Rawson, the fatherof the Hospitaller prior of Ireland, John, was an alderman and sheriff ofLondon, and Edward Brown was the grandson of one mayor of London andnephew of another.103 The Passemers, who may have come from London orEssex, perhaps also had mercantile antecedents,104 and the Westons lived inBoston, the Pooles in Chesterfield, and the Caves in Stamford around thetime of the birth of their Hospitaller sons.105

99 The Four Visitations of Berkshire 1532, 1566, 1623, 1665–6, ed. W. H. Rylands,HSP, 56–7 (London, 1907–8), ii. 181.

100 Lincolnshire Pedigrees, ed. Maddison, 59, 654–5; Visitations of Nottingham, ed. Mar-shall, 151–2; Visitation of the County of Leicester, ed. Fetherston, 125–6; Visitation of York-shire, ed. Best Norcliffe, 111–12, 119–20, 327–8; Morant, Essex, i. 209.

101 House of Commons, ed. Bindoff, iii. 236; R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of theCounty Palatine of Durham, 4 vols. (London, 1816–41; repr. Wakefield, 1972), ii. 174.

102 D. M. Loades, The Tudor Navy: An Administrative, Political and Military History(Aldershot, 1992), 66; R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discov-eries of the English Nation, 2nd edn., 12 vols. (London, 1598–1600, repr. Glasgow, 1903–5),v. 62–4. Their relationship is confirmed by a letter written by the French ambassador, Marillac,after David Gonson’s execution. LPFD, xvi, no. 1011, p.483.

103 DNB, xlvii. 336; The Visitations of Northamptonshire made in 1564 and 1618–9, withNorthamptonshire Pedigrees from Various Harleian Manuscripts, ed. W. C. Metcalfe (London,1887), 167.

104 Visitation of the County of Leicester, ed. Fetherston, 125. In 1461 Marmaduke Lumleycalled brother Nicholas Passemer a ‘villein’. AOM371, fo. 144v.

105 DNB, lx. 377; Bindoff, (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 130; Visitation of the County ofLeicester, ed. Fetherston, 125.

40 The Prior and his Brethren

Those Hospitallers who cannot be assigned to a particular family withcertainty probably fall into three categories; offspring of major gentryfamilies who were omitted from pedigrees because they left no children,scions of lesser branches of large families, and those whose families, al-though gentle, were not recorded as such until later, or who died out. Atfirst sight, for example, knight-brethren such as John Bothe, William Corbet,and William Darrell would seem to have come from some of the mostformidable gentry families in the country, but they do not appear in extantpedigrees of these houses, and it may be that they were either poor cousins ofthe main branches or simply left out of the pedigrees. Unless they appear inchance references in wills or estate and legal records others with morecommon names like the Greens, Hills, and Newtons may never be traceable.

2.2 Service, Seniority, and Advancement

The route to advancement in the order of St John was fairly clear. Onreception into the order, a junior knight made his way to the Mediterraneanand was received into the English langue. He was then granted ancienitas(seniority), which was reckoned from the day of his arrival in convent ratherthan his reception in England and was provisional until his proofs of nobilityhad been accepted by the langue. This was a crucial incentive in gettingbrethren to serve in convent, as without ancienitas no brother could begranted a preceptory at home. Nominally a brother could seek a preceptoryin their home province after three years of conventual service106 but in fact itwas usually necessary to wait much longer for a vacancy. Preceptories werecollated to brethren under four ‘titles’: grace, cabimentum, meliormentum,and ius patronatus. When a preceptory became vacant, the master of theorder, who was allowed to grant one commandery in each priory every fiveyears, might, if he had not already utilized this faculty, grant the house to abrother of his choosing. The recipient would then hold the benefice by titleof magistral grace, and would continue to be able to seek preceptories ofcabimentum ormeliormentum. While only one preceptory ofmeliormentumor cabimentum could be held at once, in theory a knight could be grantedany number of preceptories of grace. Rather different in operation wasprioral grace, by which the priors of England and Ireland were also allowedto grant one commandery in their respective provinces every five years,although those thus provided apparently held by cabimentum ormeliormen-tum. Should the master or prior not claim the right to appoint, the unbene-ficed conventual brethren107 of greatest seniority and those preceptorswho had ‘improved’ their commanderies could compete for the house, the

106 Delaville, Rhodes, 318.107 i.e. those resident in the order’s Mediterranean headquarters.

The Prior and his Brethren 41

collation of which would be decided by a vote of the English langue. If thelangue opted to confer the house on an unbeneficed brother, he would hold itby title of cabimentum, or first promotion, and should two or more brethrenof equal seniority seek the same benefice, an investigation would be made athome into who had been born nearest to it, with the nearer granted theprize.108 This procedure might be avoided if the brethren involved hadalready made an agreement as to who should be eligible for which precep-tories when they fell vacant, as sometimes happened.109 After he was ‘che-visshed’ the new preceptor was commonly licensed to return home, as theancienitas to exchange his house for one ofmeliormentum now theoreticallyrested on his residing on his preceptory for five years and improving it.110 Inpractice, however, brethren were often retained in convent, or at Clerken-well as the receiver of the conventual common treasury, or summoned toRhodes or Malta before they had completed their residence and ‘melior-ments’. In such cases the langue and council granted them ancienitas as ifthey were resident in the west.111 Even if they had not resided on theirbenefice, however, they were expected to present notarially attested evidenceof the improvements made there for approval by the langue before theycould be promoted.112 The situation was further complicated by the factthat preceptors could exchange benefices between themselves, provided theyreceived the approval of the langue, the master, and the convent for this, andcould also sometimes exchange the titles by which they held multiplehouses.113

Ranked above preceptories were the order’s bailiwicks. These were itshighest offices, carrying with them a seat on its councils and chapters-general, and granted to brethren of at least fifteen years standing by voteof the order’s council.114 Preceptors of sufficient seniority, or their proctors,would put their names forward to the langue before the council voted.115

The four bailiwicks commonly open to members of the English langue werethe turcopoliership, the priories of England and Ireland, and the bailiwick ofEagle. As a conventual rather than a capitular bailiff, the turcopolier wasexpected to reside at headquarters116 and technically had precedence over

108 e.g. AOM81, fo. 151v; 397, fo. 139r; 400, fos. 145v–146r; BDVTE 9, 59–60; ClaudiusE.vi, fo. 70r–v.

109 AOM378, fo. 148r–v; 388, fo. 134r.110 Stabilimenta, ‘De collationibus’, xii, xv (Statutes of Fluvia, 1421–37, and Jean de Lastic,

1437–54). For a protest against Fra Ambrose Cave’s failure to reside on his preceptory forthe requisite term, see AOM86, fo. 37v.

111 e.g. AOM79, fos. 8v, 18v, 23v; 84, fos. 40r, 57r, 64r; 85, fos. 56r, 62v, 72r, 106r; 86, fos. 46r,62v; 377, fo. 142r; 382, fo. 141v; 394, fo. 176r–v; 395, fos. 139v–40r; 397, fo. 145v.

112 AOM82, fos. 157v–158r, 172r; 393, fos. 111r–v; BDVTE, 10–11, 27.113 Stabilimenta, ‘De collationibus’, x (Statute of Philibert de Naillac, 1396–1421); AOM84,

fo. 38v; 85, fo. 41r–v; 371, fo. 141r; BDVTE, 21–2, 39.114 Stabilimenta, ‘De electionibus’, v, viii (Statutes of Naillac and Lastic).115 Ibid., xix. (Statute of Giovannbattista Orsini, 1467–76).116 Ibid., ‘De bauiliuis’, xliiii (Statute of d’Aubusson).

42 The Prior and his Brethren

the priors and bailiff of Eagle, but in practice the turcopoliership acted as aspringboard for those seeking the priory of England, which was always heldby a more senior knight. Both the bailiff of Eagle and the turcopoliercommonly held at least two preceptories in order to support the dignitiesof their office, but some, notably John Langstrother, John Kendal, andThomas Newport, accumulated as many as four or five, a formidableconcentration considering how few houses there were in total.117

The effective head of the British-born brethren was the prior of England.Unlike the other bailiffs, this dignitary was elected by vote of his compatriotsin provincial chapter. The five legitimate priors between William Hulles(elected 1417) and William Tornay (elected 1471) were chosen this way,their provision being ratified afterwards in convent.118 It was only after theelection in England of the unsuitable Robert Multon in 1474 that thechapter-general ruled that henceforth elections were to be carried out bythe council in Rhodes.119 The Irish-born brethren claimed the right to electtheir prior in Ireland between 1410 and 1494, although brethren weresometimes elected prior of Ireland in Rhodes to replace rebellious incum-bents during this period.120 On election priors generally relinquished theirexisting commanderies save for magistral camerae or houses that they hadrecovered from seculars or brethren who had forfeited them.121 Sometimes,however, they would retain commanderies they already held in place of aprioral camera held by the previous prior, which they would then release tothe disposition of the langue. Their right to do so, however, was oftencontested by the langue.

Excluding those in prioral or magistral hands there were only twentypreceptories open to brethren in England and Wales for most of the periodbetween 1460 and 1540,122 and the pressure for advancement was furtherincreased by the fact that they were often in the hands of only fourteenor fifteen men.123 As there were commonly between ten and twenty

117 See Appendix VII.118 CPR1416–22, 279; AOM340, fo. 116r–v; Field, ‘Robert Malory’, 251–2, 257–8; Bekyn-

ton Correspondence, i. 78–81; ‘Annales Rerum Anglicanum’, Letters and Papers Illustrativeof the Wars of the English in France, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols. in 3, RS (London, 1864), ii. 743–93, at 791; CCR1468–76, nos. 407, 858; AOM 379, fos. 140r–141v, 146r; 74, fo. 88v.

119 AOM283, fo. 183r.120 Delaville, Rhodes, 315; Tipton, ‘Irish Hospitallers’, 42–3; AOM371, fos. 142v–143r; 76,

fo. 132v.121 AOM282, fo. 21r.122 These were (1) Ansty and Trebigh, (2) Baddesley and Maine, (3) Battisford and Dingley,

(4) Beverley, (5) Carbrooke, (6) Dalby and Rothley, (7) Dinmore, (8) Eagle, (9) Halston, (10)Mount St John, (11) Newland, Ossington, and Winkburn, (12) Quenington, (13) Ribston,(14) Shingay, (15) Slebech, (16) Swingfield, (17) Temple Brewer, (18) Templecombe, (19)Willoughton, (20) Yeaveley and Barrow. Baddesley and Maine were in separate hands in1470–1, while Slebech was in the hands of the prior between 1476 and 1483, with Melch-bourne, usually in prioral hands, held by John Kendal.

123 Before the deaths of Lancelot Docwra and William Darrell in 1519–20, for example,three preceptors held two houses and a fourth, Thomas Newport, held four.

The Prior and his Brethren 43

unbeneficed knights waiting in convent for preferment, conventual brethrenmight wait for ten or more years for a senior knight to die before they weregranted a benefice. When this happened as many as four or five houses mightbecome vacant. For example, Thomas Newport senior, who was serving inRhodes by 1478, had towait until the death of JohnWeston in 1489 before hecould be granted a preceptory, while the same event also brought preceptoriesof cabimentum for Robert Daniel, Robert Dalison, and James Ayscough, ofmeliormentum to Henry Halley, and of magistral grace to John Tonge.124

Less drastically, the survivors of five conventual knights who had been inconvent in July 1461 or earlier and of another four who were in Rhodes inJuly 1463 all had to wait until news of the deaths of William Dawney andRobert Botill had reached Rhodes in 1468–9 before they could be grantedbenefices.125 The pressure on preceptories grew with the size of the Englishestablishment in the mediteranean, which numbered about fourteen in the1470s, twenty-three by 1508, and thirty-eight in 1513, before falling back tobetween seventeen and twenty-two in the period between 1523 and the1530s.126 Although the number of preceptors among these men rose fromtwo or three to five or more, the remainder of the increase was accounted forby conventual knights competing for preferment.127 Of seven knights re-ceived in 1505–6 only Nicholas Fairfax and Edward Hills were ever grantedpreceptories, and both had to wait until the 1520s.128 In 1510 this situationoccasioned a petition by the English brethren in Rhodes that ‘bearing inmindthe multitude of religious brother knights of the langue living in Rhodes atthis time, and the paucity of preceptories of the same langue from which theaforesaid religious expect reward for their labours, so that they might berendered more fervent towards the said service’ the rights of the prior ofEngland to confer preceptories should be limited.129

124 AOM283, fo. 174v; 390, fos. 129v, 129r–130r.125 WilliamWeston I, Robert Eaglesfield, Marmaduke Lumley, and Nicholas Passemer occur

in 1461 and Robert Multon, John Malory, John Turberville, and Bryan Sheffield in 1463.Passemer and Sheffield died later in the 1460s. The remaining men were all granted preceptoriesbetween 1468 and 1470, save for Lumley, who came to an agreement to take over Templecombefrom the ailing William Dawney in 1466. This was later overturned. AOM371, fo. 144r; 374,fo. 139r–v; 376, fos. 155r–156r; 377, fos. 142v, 143r; 379, fos. 142v–143r, 144r, 145v–146r.

126 AOM75, fos. 122v–123r; Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1137, fo. 113r; AOM402, fo.103v; BDVTE, passim. See below, Tables 8.1 and 8.2.

127 Seven English preceptors fought in the siege of 1522, but their numbers in conventdeclined thereafter. See below, Ch. 8.1, 8.3.

128 These were, besides Fairfax and Hills, James Green, William Haseldon, Charles Lyster,Geoffrey Militon, and Humphrey Bevercotes. Green, Haseldon, Lyster, and Militon had cashedletters of exchange in Venice to pay their ‘passage’ dues to the convent in the winter of 1505.Fairfax, Hills, Lyster, and Militon were declared to be of the same passage with HumphreyBevercotes in March 1506. Bevercotes and Militon were still alive and in convent in 1508, aswas Lyster in 1508, 1513, and 1515, but Haseldon does not appear again. It is likely mostwere dead before the siege of 1522. R. Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panicsand the Public Debt, 1200–1500 (Baltimore, 1997), 347; AOM397, fo. 147v; Bodleian MSAshmole 1137, fo. 113r; AOM409, fo. 117r; Appendix VII.

129 AOM399, fo. 146r–v.

44 The Prior and his Brethren

This last was a crucial point. In the period covered by this study there werea series of disputes between priors and their brethren about the respectiverights of the prior and langue to confer preceptories, and in particular theright of an incumbent prior, granted by the convent in 1367, to claim avacant preceptory as a fifth prioral camera.130 Despite the antiquity of thisprovision, there was some confusion about when and in what circumstancesthe prior might acquire his fifth camera. In 1449, Robert Botill and hisbrethren in both England and Rhodes agreed that should a preceptor diewithin a year after the mortuary year of the previous prior, the prior mightretain any of the dead preceptor’s houses as a fifth camera, remitting anyothers held by the deceased to the collation of the master and convent, whowould grant it to a conventual brother. The houses of any other ‘British’brother to decease in the west within the same period were to be conferredby the prior on a conventual knight. Perhaps most importantly, the prioralchoice of fifth camera was to be irrevocable.131 Although the conventualbrethren of the langue complained that this agreement was prejudicial tothem in 1459, their objections were overruled and the distribution of bene-fices in the remainder of Botill’s priorate proceeded relatively smoothly.132

Nevertheless, partly as a result of the 1449 document’s lack of comprehen-siveness, there were major disputes between prior and langue in 1477–83and 1505–17 and continued complaints after 1527 about William Weston’sacquisition of his fifth camera.

Unfortunately, the agreement of 1449 had not provided priors-elect withscope to retain houses they had held before their promotion as camerae,insisting that they relinquish their existing benefices and wait until a vacancyto claim one. This ran contrary both to previous practice and to the under-standable desire of priors-elect to hang on to favoured residences andestates. Thus, despite the rules laid down in 1449, in 1470 John Langstrotherwas able to persuade the langue to allow him to retain both Balsall andRibston, of which he was already preceptor, rather than Melchbourne andSlebech as his fourth and fifth prioral camerae, while in the following yearWilliam Tornay was granted Melchbourne and Slebech as his fourth andfifth camerae by consent of the langue.133 On his provisional appointment tothe priory in 1476, the order’s authorities came to a similar arrangementwith John Weston, under which he was to have Balsall rather than Melch-bourne but to keep Slebech.134 At some point before gaining possession ofthe priory, however, Weston agreed to relinquish Slebech to the disposition

130 Delaville, Rhodes, 162; Stabilimenta, ‘De collationibus’, vii. Priors had been granted theright to hold four preceptories as prioral camerae in 1303. Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John,351–2.

131 AOM361, fos. 239r–v, 241r–242r.132 AOM282, fos. 64r, 66r–v, 69v.133 AOM379, fos. 140r–141v, 146r.134 AOM383, fos. 142r–143v.

The Prior and his Brethren 45

of the langue, without apparently asking for anything in return. Yet once inpost Weston insisted on retaining one of his existing preceptories, Newland,in place of Slebech and also changed his mind about Melchbourne, which hewished to retain instead of Balsall. In 1477–8 complaints were made by thenewly appointed preceptors of Melchbourne and Newland and the proctorsof the langue that Weston was refusing to hand over Newland, Melch-bourne, and Slebech.135 The langue cited both the 1449 document andWeston’s written promise to hand over Slebech in its support.136 Despitethe fact that brethren were strictly forbidden from petitioning for beneficesat the curia, Weston had also secured papal letters in favour of his deten-tions. A brief of 3 June 1476 permitted him to retain the priory in commen-dam with Quenington, which had already been granted to John Boswell inthe previous November, and to hold Balsall and Newland for a year after heentered possession of the priory.137 In the summer and autumn of 1478 bothBoswell and the newly appointed preceptor of Templecombe, Walter Fitz-herbert, protested that the prior was detaining their houses as well.138

Weston, then, appears to have occupied no less than five preceptorieswhich should have been in the possession of his brethren in 1478. He usedevery trick in the book to deny them their rights, launching appeals to thechapter-general, exploiting papal privileges, and keeping his proctors inRhodes in ignorance of his claims, so that he had to be repeatedly asked toprovide reasons for his actions, a process for which brethren were allowednine months. Although he seems to have relinquished his claims to all thedisputed preceptories except Slebech after the chapter-general of November1478 had ruled against him, he managed to delay handing this last houseover until 1483, when he reached agreement with the langue that it shouldbe granted to a conventual knight for cabimentum on condition that thelatter pay him a pension of £15 per annum until he should be provided witha fifth camera.139

This accord, which superseded that of 1449 insofar as it explicitly recog-nized the right of succeeding priors to retain one of the commanderies theyhad held before promotion as a fifth camera, nevertheless failed to put anend to discord between priors and their brethren. In 1505 Thomas Docwraand the langue each claimed the right to collate to the vacant preceptory ofHalston, the langue according to the 1449 provision that having secured afifth camera the prior should confer the next vacant house on a conventualknight by cabimentum, and the prior on the basis that he held his fifthcamera rather by vigour of the concord of 1483, and that the 1449 agree-ment had bound Botill but not his successors. The order’s council referred

135 AOM75, fo. 178r–v; 385, fo. 129r–v; 386, fo. 127r–v, 129r; 75, fo. 177v.136 AOM75, fo. 177v; 386, fo. 129v.137 CPL, xiii. 61.138 AOM386, fo. 127r.139 AOM76, fos. 148v–149v.

46 The Prior and his Brethren

this case to the esguardium fratrum,140 which ruled in the langue’s favour,ordaining that Docwra should present an appropriately qualified brotherresident in convent.141 But the langue then exploited this judgement tocollate to Halston without reference to Docwra, who protested at this andfurther alleged that the langue had bribed his proctor, Guillaume d’Aubus-son, to misrepresent him.142 In the meantime, he kept possession of Halston,not surrendering it until at least 1508.143 Despite capitular confirmation ofthe esguardium’s sentence, Docwra continued to argue that the langue hadbroken the concord of 1483 and seems also to have convinced himself thatSlebech had reverted to his collation by the langue’s disregard for his ‘pre-eminence’ in the matter of Halston. When his proctor sought conciliarclarification as to the status of the agreement of 1483 in 1510, he was toldto wait until Slebech became vacant and when it did so the prior detained itfrom the appointee of the langue and convent, Clement West, and appears tohave granted it instead to Lancelot Docwra.144 In April 1516 the dispute wasreferred to the next chapter-general, but it had still not been resolved byNovember 1517, and may have dragged on still further.145 Yet if the remain-der of Docwra’s priorate was free of similar disputes, in 1527 the issue wasraised yet again, with Clement West demanding that Thomas Docwra’sformer fifth camera, Melchbourne, be granted to him rather than be retainedby the new prior, William Weston. Despite a conciliar ruling upholdingWeston’s right to retain his predecessor’s houses, West continued to demandMelchbourne and to complain about the injustice done to him by Westonuntil well into the 1530s.146

Pettifogging though these contentions may appear to be—and the fore-going is a heavily simplified account—they at least have the virtue of illus-trating the workings and limitations of the order of St John’s elaboratemechanisms for dispute settlement, and the mentalite, in all its concern forprecedent and protocol, which animated them. More, they indicate theunderlying tensions in the twofold division of the order into conventuallangues and provincial priories, both of which brethren belonged to simul-taneously. In granting the langues, rather than provincial chapters, the rightto appoint to preceptories, the order had created mechanisms by whichconventual service might be encouraged and rewarded, but in doing so ithad compensated priors with faculties which partly overlapped, at least inEngland, those of the langue. The results, with conventual brethren being

140 This was a specialist tribunal, headed by a senior brother elected by the council, whichdealt with disputes between brethren. Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 152 and n.; AOM68.

141 AOM81, fos. 20v, 33v; 68, fos. 128r–129r.142 AOM81, fos. 47r, 49r–v, 53v–54r.143 AOM81, fos. 90r–v, 96v.144 AOM82, fos. 176r–v, 168v.145 AOM75, fos. 178r–v; 406, fo. 166v. West may not have reached the preceptory until 1519,

but his proctors presented to a benefice in its gift in April 1518. See below, 201.146 AOM85, fos. 28v–29r, 48r, 53v, 109v.

The Prior and his Brethren 47

denied the promotions their service had merited by priors who had theadvantage of running their provinces practically as corporations sole, washardly conducive either to administrative efficiency or to a sense of frater-nity.

Nevertheless, the pressure on houses was somewhat alleviated by thegrant of pensions to supplement the incomes of poor or favoured knights.Conventual knights holding the same seniority often agreed to pay eachother a pension should they gain a preceptory. So, in 1469, William Westonsenior and John Boswell concorded that should Boswell be provided with apreceptory before the other knight he should pay him half its clear valueuntil the latter should be beneficed, while if the situation were reversed andWeston was granted the houses of Quenington, Shingay, or any other heshould render Boswell 10 marks per annum until he too had been pro-vided.147 A more equal arrangement was struck between Oswald Massing-berd and John Babington junior, who each promised to pay the other 50 ecusif he should get a commandery first.148 Additionally, pensions or smallestates were set aside from preceptories of grace by the master and grantedto worthy junior knights. In 1506, for example, William Weston junior, thepreceptor of Ansty and magistral camerarius, was granted the member ofSawston, a pertinence of Shingay, which had just been collated by magistralgrace to Thomas Sheffield. Weston agreed that he would lease the estate toSheffield for 50 ecus, with the latter retaining its administration.149 Fouryears later Weston received a pension of 400 ecus from the preceptory ofTemple Brewer, which had been granted out of magistral grace to WilliamDarrell, the turcopolier, although he was to remit 150 ecus of this sum toRhodes in token of the master’s superiority. As a condition of this grant,Weston released Sawston to John Rawson senior.150 Weston’s pension fromTemple Brewer was so considerable that it is doubtful that Darrell receivedmuch profit from the preceptory, and it is noteworthy that in 1525 Westonwas only collated by the langue to Dinmore on condition that he remit26 ecus from the sum the preceptor of Temple Brewer had to pay him.151

Closer study of one particular group received into the order together mayhelp to illustrate the operation of the order’s career structure in practice.A particularly useful sample is provided by those brethren received at aprovincial chapter in 1499, they being the first large company of filiiarnaldi152 within this period whose careers can be traced with hardly anygaps. The first of this group to arrive in Rhodes was Robert Pemberton in1498, but he did so without having been received first in provincial chapterand, despite royal letters in his favour, was ordered to present his proofs inEngland like everybody else. Pemberton reappeared in convent in August

147 AOM378, fos. 148r–v. 148 BDVTE, 47.149 AOM395, fos. 146v–147r, 147r–148r. 150 AOM399, fos. 143v–144r, 144v.151 BDVTE, 33. 152 i.e. brethren of the same seniority.

48 The Prior and his Brethren

1500 relating that he had been received at a provincial chapter, presumablythe assembly held in the previous November, with eight other knights.153 Hisarithmetic seems to have been faulty, for a few months later he and five of hisfellows appeared in the order’s council complaining that the two otherbrethren received with them, Richard Passemer and John Russell, had tarriedin Venice rather than take passage to Rhodes, and asking for the ancienitasof the latecomers to be cancelled.154 Although the council refused to do this,it is not certain that Passemer ever reached Rhodes, and Russell seems tohave died soon after his arrival.155 The six knights remaining were, besidesPemberton, Clement West, Roland Baskerville, John Babington senior,Alban Pole, and Roger Boydell. The first few years of their careers werealmost certainly spent on Rhodes, as it was not until some years after theirreception that their seniors were all provided with preceptories and theybecame eligible for vacant houses. In February 1506 letters were drawn upcollating Halston to whomever of Baskerville, Babington, Boydell, and Polehad been born nearest to it and on 11March the receiver, Thomas Sheffield,was mandated to investigate the matter in England.156 The result wasevidently a foregone conclusion, for Boydell, as preceptor of Halston, waslicensed to go home and rule his preceptory on 15 June.157 At much the sametime, Pemberton was also granted leave to return to England, although beinga conventual knight he was to make his way back to convent within twoyears.158 As we have seen, Boydell was unable to get possession of Halstonbecause of the prior’s refusal to accept his collation by the langue, and hadreturned to Rhodes by 1508 to complain about this treatment.159 Thebrethren received together in 1499–1500 were thus reunited, and all, savefor the absentees of 1501, appear in a list of English knights resident in theconvent drawn up in August 1508.160 Their situation was to change dra-matically in the next few years. Pemberton and Baskerville disappeared fromthe scene in 1509–10,161 and Boydell again returned home to take posses-sion of his commandery.162 In 1509–10, Babington and Pole were providedwith Yeaveley and Mount St John respectively. West dropped any claim tothe latter before the commissioners had reported on whether he or Pole was

153 AOM78, fos. 90v–91r, 131r. 154 AOM78, fo. 147r.155 Passemer is not mentioned again, although Russell’s family later believed that he had died

at Rhodes. The Visitation of the County of Worcester made in the Year 1569 with OtherPedigrees relating to that County from Richard Mundy’s Collection, ed. W. P. W. Phillimore,HSP, 27 (London, 1888), 119.

156 AOM397, fo. 139r.157 Ibid., fo. 141r.158 Ibid., fo. 143r.159 AOM81, fo. 90r–v.160 Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1137, fo. 113r.161 Pemberton was dead by 6 September 1509, and Baskerville is not mentioned again after

Aug. 1508. AOM81, fo. 137v.162 AOM399, fo. 143r.

The Prior and his Brethren 49

‘nearer’ to it.163 The two new preceptors now joined Boydell in Englandwhile West had to wait until 1514 before he was granted the Pembrokeshirehouse of Slebech, being compensated in the meantime with the castellany ofRhodes.164 As West had anticipated, the prior opposed his collation toSlebech and refused to grant his proctors possession of it, with the resultthat he was not able to return home until 1517 or later.165 When he did so, itwas to a house oppressed by the powerful Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his sonGruffydd ap Rhys and burdened by the debts owed to the previous incum-bent, Robert Evers.166 The delay was very significant, as a preceptor wasexpected to return home and reside on his commandery for five years after itwas granted to him, during which time he should make his meliormenta.It was difficult to make improvements to properties one had never visited,and Slebech in particular needed personal attention if it was to prosper.

West’s rivals were able to benefit from his misfortune and Babington andBoydell secured acceptance of theirmeliormenta in 1515–16.167 The latter’swere approved despite West’s objections, as Boydell had accomplished therequired period of residence and presented adequate evidence of the im-provements he had carried out.168 Meanwhile, Babington served as deputyfor the receiver, Thomas Sheffield, who was in Rhodes from 1513, and asproctor of the common treasury in England and Ireland.169 He too came intoconflict with West, who accused him of refusing to accept payment of hisresponsions. West seems to have thought that Babington was attempting tohave him declared a debtor in order to block his chances of promotion, andthe issue recurred ten years later, when West appeared before the councilcomplaining that although he had paid Babington certain monies, and hada quittance to prove it, the latter had not recorded it in his books ofaccounts.170

By the time West returned home, Roger Boydell had completed his thirdterm of conventual service and Alban Pole was about to embark on hissecond,171 being the only one of the knights received in 1500 to fight duringthe 1522 siege of Rhodes. Casualties during and sickness after the siegeprompted a round of promotions in 1523–4, and Babington, Pole, andBoydell were all able to secure preceptories of meliormentum in May 1523,

163 Claudius E.vi, fo. 69v; AOM81, fo. 151v; 400, fo. 150v.164 AOM400, fo. 150v; 403, fo. 162r; 82, fo. 51r. Babington had been in England and

attended provincial chapters in 1509–10, being described in April 1510 as ‘nominated toYeaveley’. He then returned to Rhodes before being licensed to go and rule his commanderyin August 1511. Claudius E.vi, fos. 69v, 81v; AOM400, fo. 150v.

165 AOM404, fos. 145r, 145r–v; See below, 201.166 See below, 201–2.167 AOM82, fo. 157v–158r; 403, fo. 163r–v; 404, fo. 147v; 405, fo. 130r.168 AOM406, fos. 157v–158v.169 AOM403, fos. 168v–169r, 193v–194r.170 AOM405, fos. 131v–132r; 412, fo. 197r.171 AOM406, fo. 166r; 408, fo. 135r.

50 The Prior and his Brethren

while West’smeliormentawere not accepted until October 1524, and he hadto wait till August 1526 before he was granted ancienitas to seek anotherhouse.172 The brethren received with him at the turn of the century werenow ready to embark on their next stage of their careers. Alban Pole wasgranted the bailiwick of Eagle after the death of Thomas Sheffield in 1524,and John Babington became prior of Ireland in 1527, exchanging it with theturcopoliership a year later.173 In the meantime Boydell, who had not doneas well as his fellows when he ‘meliored’ himself in 1523, was granted apension of £20 from the fruits of Dinmore out of magistral grace.174 AfterPole died in August 1530, West rather than Boydell secured the turcopolier-ship, while Babington became bailiff of Eagle.175 Boydell had to wait untilWest’s disgrace and removal from his post in March 1533 before beinggranted a bailiwick, but died within a few weeks of his promotion.176

After Babington’s death in 1534, West was the sole survivor of the brethrenreceived in 1500 and, restored to his dignity in 1535, was granted expect-ancy to the priory of England.177 Although the final prize was thus in sight,West was unable to restrain his behaviour and was again deprived of theturcopoliership in 1539.178 He returned to England after the Dissolution of1540, and collected his pension from the crown for several years after.179

2.3 Conventual Life, Households, and Servants

Although they continued to provide spiritual services and to be exempt fromepiscopal visitation, interdicts, tithes, and most secular taxation, by thesixteenth century Hospitaller preceptories had lost many of the other char-acteristics they had shared with similar religious houses. Chief among thechanges was the loss of a communal religious life. Save at Clerkenwell, noEnglish or Welsh house is known to have had more than one brother inresidence after 1460, although there were still thirteen nuns at Buckland in1539.180 In such circumstances the observance of the Rule and of theinnumerable ordinances added by successive chapters-general may havebeen extremely patchy. Indeed, the mass of regulations was found to be sounwieldy, anachronistic, and ambiguous181 that Pierre d’Aubusson (master,1476–1503) obtained papal dispensation from the Rule, except the ‘three

172 AOM410, fos. 177v, 178v; 411, fo. 154v; 412, fos. 191v–192r.173 AOM84, fo. 41v; 412, fo. 199r; 413, fos. 23r–24r, 25r–v.174 AOM412, fo. 201v.175 AOM54, fo. 200v; 85, fo. 77v; BDVTE, 18–19.176 AOM54, fo. 237v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 131.177 AOM54, fo. 255v; PRO SP2/Q, no. 32, fos. 129b/152b; AOM85, fos. 148r, 153v.178 See below, 221.179 See below, Ch. 9.180 LPFD, xv, no. 1032, p. 544.181 Stabilimenta, ‘Exordium in stabilimenta’, ‘De regula’, ii.

The Prior and his Brethren 51

substantial vows’ of poverty, chastity, and obedience, soon after his electionand launched a complete recodification of the statutes in 1482, whichresulted in the printed statutes drawn up in 1489 and given papal approvalin 1492.182

While it had long been ordained that the Rule itself should be read tobrethren four times a year, awareness of the statutes may have been morelimited, and among the new regulations of 1489 was the order that thirty ofthe customs and establishments contained therein should be read out too.183

Brethen, therefore, should not have been in ignorance of what was requiredof them. Yet although the statutes governing their conduct were still numer-ous, they gave very little moral guidance save to enjoin modest behaviour inchurch,184 and establish penalties for such lapses as concubinage, embezzle-ment, maladministration, and slander.185 For knights, spiritual guidancewas limited to the requirements to receive communion three times a year,to observe a number of fasts and feast days and to pray for deceasedbrethren.186 Little more than the maintenance of hospitality and divineworship and efficient administration was expected from brethren whenthey were in Europe and visitation of the order’s houses, although stillenjoined on its priors, was firmly directed toward these considerationsrather than towards investigation of the personal conduct of individualbrethren.187 In this context it is hardly surprising that most of the evidenceillustrating conventual life in the provinces relates to the administration ofpreceptories rather than the personal characteristics of their possessors.Collectively, the Hospitallers’ religious preoccupations appear to havebeen thoroughly conventional. Both priors and other brethren foundedchantries or endowed masses to pray for their own souls and those ofother members of the order, with the order’s priest-brethren and the secularclerks ‘singing and serving’ at Clerkenwell increasingly devoted to thesetasks.188 Similar services were provided by the London Charterhouse after1430, when the Hospitallers became its confratres: one Hospitaller knight,

182 AOM283, fos. 168v–169r; Stabilimenta, ‘De regula’, i–ii, ‘Tenor bullarum apostoli-carum’; AOM76, fo. 124r; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 37–8.

183 Stabilimenta, ‘De regula’, v, vi (Statutes of Fluvian and d’Aubusson).184 Ibid., ‘De ecclesia’, xxvii–xxviii (Statutes of Naillac).185 Ibid., ‘De thesauro’, ix, xii (Statutes of Naillac), ‘De prioribus’, xviii (Statute of Fluvia);

‘De fratribus’, x (Statute of Nicolas de Lorgne).186 Ibid., ‘De ecclesia’, vi, iii–iv, vii, x, xiii, xviii–xviiii, xxiiii–xxvi, xxix, xxxxii;

AOM284, fo. 87r.187 Ibid., ‘De hospitalitate’, esp. i, iiii (consuetudo; Statute of Naillac), ‘De ecclesia’, xxiii

(Statute of Naillac), ‘De prioribus’, x–xii, xv (Statutes of Naillac), xviii (Statute of Fluvia), xxi(Statute of Lastic).

188 Excavations, 41, 69, 91; BL MS Nero E.vi, fos. 5v–6v (1434 endowment of separatemasses for priors, priors and preceptors, and all members of the order). In 1494 and 1522corrodies were granted to clerks of the choir of Clerkenwell on condition they ‘instruct andteach the choristers of the church in the manner and art of singing the praise of God’.Lansdowne 200, fo. 20r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 230r.

52 The Prior and his Brethren

John Rawson, can be found donating literature and clothing to a LondonCarthusian before 1519.189 The order might also seek the prayers of thehermits to whom it granted chapels or property.190 Yet evidence of personaldevotions is more difficult to come by. With the exception of generallyconventional expressions of pious good wishes for divine favour and theircorrespondents’ safe keeping, brethren rarely displayed overt religious sen-timents in their letters, while the requirement that all books among theireffects save breviaries, psalters, and chronicles be sent to convent after theirdeaths militated against their accumulation of libraries in the west.191 Nor,save for those who died after 1540, did Hospitallers leave wills, so that thisavenue of investigation, too, is closed. The few indications of personalreligious devotion that remain cannot be seen as more than suggestions ofwhat might have been usual. Thus the devotion of William Weston junior(prior, 1527–40) to the Virgin Mary, which can be attested from the inscrip-tions once on his tomb, is not certainly known to be replicated among theEnglish brethren in this period, although it is most unlikely to have beenunusual.192 The dedications of chantry chapels at Eagle and Clerkenwell toSt Sithe and SS Katharine, Ursula, and Margaret made by Henry Crownhalland Robert Malory show awareness of contemporary devotional fashionsbut are scarcely less conventional, as are the paintings in the chapel sup-posedly built by the English brethren in Rhodes, which depicted St George,the Archangel Michael, the Apostles Peter and Paul, and various angels.193

Some brethren left religious items to churches before their death, as was theirright.194 John Tonge, whose custody of his property was in other ways quiteunsatisfactory, left rich vestments bearing his arms to the chapel of themanor of Temple Dinsley, while Thomas Docwra gave a printed massbook to the chapel of Temple Cressing.195 The spolia of brethren also

189 E. M. Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930), 188, 327–8.190 Claudius E.vi, fos. 95r–v; Excavations, 146.191 Stabilimenta, ‘De thesauro’, ii (Statute of Hugh Revel). Ker did not record any books or

manuscripts originating in the priory in his Medieval Libraries, although he did note a possiblythirteenth-century Psalter fromMinchin Buckland among themanuscripts of the London Societyof Antiquaries. Watson’s supplement to Ker notes a late fourteenth-century Brut possibly origin-ating inClerkenwell and now in Trinity College,Dublin. Thismanuscript also contains a series ofmemoranda from 1385–6 recording both national events and those particular to the priory, suchas the wreck of the prior’s ship, the dispatch of gifts to the king at Epiphany and the visit of Leoking of Armenia to Clerkenwell; a list of distances from Bruges via Venice to Rhodes and variousshort pieces, tracts, and verses. These pages were apparently inserted into the manuscriptcontaining the Brut, it being unclear whether the latter had anything to do with the order. N.R. Ker,Medieval Libraries ofGreat Britain: AList of Surviving Books, 2nd edn. (London, 1964),14; id.,Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. A. G.Watson(London, 1987), 48; Colker,Descriptive Catalogue, ii. 922–5.

192 W. Pinks, The History of Clerkenwell, ed. E. J. Wood (London, 1881), 38–9.193 Hugo, Eagle, 19; Excavations, 91 F. de Belabre, Rhodes of the Knights (Oxford, 1908),

88–92. For the cult of St Sithe, see S. Sutcliffe, ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England: An Introduc-tion’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 37 (1993), 83–9.

194 Stabilimenta, ‘De Ecclesia’, xxi (Statute of Heredia, 1377–96).195 Claudius E.vi, fos. 147r, 151r.

The Prior and his Brethren 53

sometimes provide evidence for the accumulation of modest amountsof church plate and vestments. An eight-pointed cross was among theeffects of John Babington senior, Thomas Golyns left ‘vestimenti’, andNicholas Fairfax a chalice, pyx, and cruets of silver gilt.196 The volumeof secular plate somewhat exceeded these items, however. Althoughthese material evidences of devotion may speak of display as much aspersonal piety, as may the improvements made to the order’s churchesand chapels by wealthy brethren, in the want of more expressive evidencethey are all that is available. In the general absence of records of their booksthat might give a clearer picture of their devotional interests it is worthnoting, however, that after the dissolution both Nicholas Upton and OliverStarkey were investigated in Malta for possession of prohibited books inEnglish.197

The intellectual life of the brethren is also obscure. After the efforts ofJohn Stillingfleet in the 1430s198 no ‘British’ brother is certainly known tohave penned anything more adventurous than letters or administrativedocuments, although an account of the order’s origins in a now lost manu-script edited by Dugdale was perhaps written by a fifteenth-century Hospi-taller chaplain with a grudge against the military brethren.199 The prioryalso made copies of its privileges and indulgences and sponsored the Englishtranslation of a history of the siege of 1522.200 Priors were certainly willingto sponsor the education of priests in the order’s service such as RichardLangstrother, William Tonge, William Armistead, and John Mablestone,even sending the last two to foreign universities to study, but the theologicalor legal training these men acquired does not appear to have encouraged anygreat educational or literary leanings.201 Two notable exceptions to thistendency were John Newton, a secular priest in the order’s service whotranslated Vegetius’ De re militari into English while he was in Rhodes in1459,202 and the humanist William Lily, who travelled to Rhodes to learnGreek and was provided with a benefice in the order’s gift on his return.203

Newton’s choice of subject matter seems highly appropriate given the prob-able taste of the English knight-brethren formilitaria: reporting the events of

196 PRO SP2/Q no. 32, pp. 131/154; AOM54, fos. 94v, 95v.197 Mdina, Malta, Cathedral Archive, Archivum Inquisitionis Melitensis, Criminal Proceed-

ings, case 1, vol. 1A, fo. 13r/17r.198 Monasticon, vi, II, 831–9; Gervers, Hospitaller Cartulary, 29–30.199 Monasticon, vi, II, 787–8. I am grateful to Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith for pointing

this out.200 F. Wormald and P. M. Giles, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Additional Illuminated

Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982), ii. 432, citing MS38–1950, fos. 3b–4; BL Add. MS 17319, fos. 1r–19v; Claudius E.vi, fo. 147r; Sloane Ch.xxxii, 15, 27; Begynnynge and Foundacyon.

201 CPL, x. 24; xiv. 305; xvii, I, no. 309; Emden,Oxford 1501–40, 13, 688; Episcopal CourtBook, ed. Bowker, 25 and n.

202 Tsirpanlis, Rhodes, 354.203 See below, 289.

54 The Prior and his Brethren

the 1522 siege of Rhodes, Nicholas Roberts claimed that the Turks hadassembled there the most formidable besieging force seen ‘seins the tyme ofthe romans as far as I have red’.204 The maps of Rhodes and of the world tobe found at the priory in Clerkenwell were similarly practical.205 It is alsoworth pointing out that both John Mablestone and William Armisteadencouraged learning in others after the dissolution, Armistead refoundingthe grammar school at Skipton in Craven, and Mablestone leaving books‘convenyent to their study’ to scholars at New College, Oxford, and King’sCollege, Cambridge.206

It can also be assumed that both knights and chaplains could read andwrite, at least by the sixteenth century. The exigencies of administrationrequired them to audit accounts and make written reports of what they haddiscovered in investigations and visitations. The number of brethren whoseletters have survived from the 1520s and 1530s is considerable, and someHospitallers, such as priors John Kendal and William Weston, wrote inItalian or French as well as English.207 While their hands may have lackedthe elegance and fluency of chancery-trained scribes such as Mablestone,their letters are long enough to suggest that they did not find the process tooirksome. Where they learned to write is uncertain, but it is probable thatsome schooling was expected of candidates for admission, and that furthertraining of a practical nature was provided in convent, where all brethrenwould hold some kind of administrative post within a few years of arriving,even if this was only to keep or audit the accounts of their langue. Only twoknight-brethren received before 1540, John Lambton and George Dundas,are known to the author to have been university educated, although anothercorresponded with Henry Golde, a Fellow of St John’s, Cambridge,208 andothers were charged with ambassadorial duties which by this period mighthave necessitated the delivery of Latin orations. Nevertheless, with thepossible exception of Mablestone, no English brother appears to have hadthe breadth of education required for the kind of sophisticated analysis of hisplace in the world offered by the Italian knight Sabba da Castiglione.209 Yethad the order survived longer, it is probable that a higher degree of learningwould have been expected. The few brothers received into the restored

204 Otho C.ix, fos. 39r–41r. Text in W. Porter, A History of the Knights of Malta, 2nd edn.(London, 1883), 711–13, at 711.

205 The Inventory of King Henry VIII, ed. D. Starkey (London, 1998), 435 (no. 13804).206 VCH Yorkshire, vol. i (London, 1907), 458; Emden, Oxford 1501–40, 689.207 LPRH, ii. 323–6; LPFD, xii, II, no. 663.208 AOM361, fo. 242v; D. Calnan, ‘SomeNotes on the Order in Scotland’,AOSM 22 (1964),

59–71, at 64; LPFD, iii, no. 2840. Besides Dundas, whose learning was evidently quiteformidable, another Scottish brother, Adam Spens, had achieved an MA by 1486. Spens wasalmost certainly a brother chaplain, however. CPL, xv. 56–7.

209 S. da Castiglione,Ricordi ouero ammaestramenti di S. Castiglione, ne quali con prudenti,e christiani discorso si ragiona di tutte le materie honorate, che si ricercano a un vero gentil’-huomo (Milan, 1561).

The Prior and his Brethren 55

priory in 1557 included two very highly educated men. Richard Shelley hadstudied Greek and Latin at Venice and lived in the household of ReginaldPole at Padua and Oliver Starkey became the Latin secretary of grand masterJean de la Valette.210

It must nonetheless be remembered that the Hospitaller vocation wasprimarily a practical one and that the administrative training brethrenreceived in convent was well suited to the running of a preceptory. Theirhouses were increasingly indistinguishable from secular properties, exceptfor the more prominent chapel and cemetery. Like important manors, theywere walled and sometimes moated,211 and often provided with a prominentgatehouse and other machicolated structures.212 For a long time the moreimportant buildings, like those of aristocratic and episcopal residences, hadbeen two storeyed and built of stone.213 These were sometimes arrangedaround formal courtyards, but more often as dispersed groups, with the hallgenerally close to the chapel, and often situated on the south side of theprincipal courtyard or space.214 Unlike many monastic granges and manors,all preceptories and even quite minor camerae possessed chapels. Within theprecinct dwelt a small household like that of other secular establishments—a chaplain,215 sometimes a steward,216 often a keeper of woods or parker,217

and probably menial household servants. Other officers or servants mightlease properties within or just outside the preceptory enclosure. In 1494, forexample, a cottage within the parish of Eagle was let to George Constantine,whose rent was included in his salary in 1505, while in 1540 the gatehouseand three closes outside the precinct were let to one Henry Bolande.218

Other servants, while not residing within the preceptory precincts, wouldbe part of the preceptor’s council.219 These included the steward, auditor,

210 Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 308–10, 378–9.211 Medieval Archaeology, 36 (1992), 242–3 (Excavations at Beverley by the Humberside

Archaeological Unit); W. Woodman, ‘The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Chibburn,Northumberland’, Archaeological Journal, 17 (1860), 35–47, at 38; W. H. Shimield, ‘OnShengay and its Preceptory’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 7 (1893),136–47, site plan at 137; Excavations, 3–4; R. Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: TheOther Monasticism (London, 1995), 74.

212 Hugo, Eagle, 14–15; Excavations, 4; Gilchrist, Contemplation, 74.213 Gilchrist, Contemplation, 93, 92–3, 104–5; Excavations, 35–6, 57–8.214 Excavations, 3–4, 200; M. Spufford, A Cambridgeshire Community: Chippenham

from Settlement to Enclosure, University of Leicester Department of English Local HistoryOccasional Papers, 20 (Welwyn Garden City, 1965), 16; Woodman, ‘Chibburn’, 38; P.Ritook, ‘Templar Architecture in England’, SJHSP 4 (1992), 14–22, at 15; Gilchrist, Contem-plation, 71, 75–7, 80–1, 103.

215 Lansdowne 200, fos. 4v, 5r, 7r, 8v, 12v, 39v, 49v bis, 50r bis, 51r, 61r, 73r–v, 78r; ClaudiusE.vi, fos. 27v, 90r–v, 101v, 130v, 140r, 148r–v, 180v, 180v–181r, 228v, 231r, 232r, 285r, 285r–v,285v, 285v–286r, 286v.

216 Lansdowne 200, fos. 27v–28r.217 Ibid., fos. 24v, 27v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 182v–183r, 199r–v, 256v, 257v.218 Lansdowne 200, fo. 21r–v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 25r–26r; Hugo, Eagle, 15, 21.219 The phrase was used of Thomas Newport in 1505, although admittedly he held four

preceptories at the time and probably needed a council. Claudius E.vi, fos. 25r–26r.

56 The Prior and his Brethren

counsel in law and possibly the bailiffs, parkers, and keepers of woods ofoutlying properties.

The volume of business involved in running a preceptory is illustrated by aletter written by the turcopolier Hugh Middleton to a proctor or servant inEngland inabout1448.Middleton, then inRhodesor Italy, senta long seriesofinstructions to his agent on what was to be done to maintain and improve hisproperties, stock levels, and finances. He demanded to know whether newtenants had been put into certain properties and repairsmade according to hisinstructions, and asked for details of how his farmers and tenants were con-ducting themselves. Unless some composition could be reached with them,thosewhowere inarrearswere tobeprosecuted.Properties requiring itwere tobe repaired and new glass, stained with his arms and those of the order,installed in the clerestory windows at Temple Brewer. Further concern wasdirected towards Middleton’s stocks of malt and corn, livestock, fish, swans,andwood.220The attention todetail is impressive throughout.At Fulbeck, forinstance, Middleton instructed his agent to stock two or three hundred tenchand similar numbers of roach, perch, and bream in the dam with all possiblehaste and to see that his properties there were repaired. One Allcock was to‘make . . . andbindwell’ the gatehouseat Fulbeck, ‘bothgables tobeplastered,avising . . . that the windows of the said gate-house be honestly made’.221

There are two overriding concerns throughout Middleton’s letter, the desireto knowwhat his ‘livelihood’ wasworth, and the associated requirement thatit ‘chevyth’ and ‘increase’. Similar cares are expressed in the 1530s corres-pondence betweenmembers of the order.222When brethrenwere less diligentin their charge of property, however, calling them to account could be a slowbusiness. In 1504, for example, John Tonge was rebuked for neglecting thefabric of his third andpoorest commmandery,Carbrooke, followingwhich heset some wood aside to make repairs. Later he changed his mind, sold thetimber instead, and left the preceptory and its buildings ‘in the accustomedruin’. By 1510 the house was so dilapidated that the English brethren inconvent reported that unless remedy was made promptly no brother wouldseek it for his cabimentum.223 In response, the chapter-general instructed theprior of England to appoint visitors to see what needed to be done and giveTonge a certain term to complete the repairs without fail.224

The practical concerns of business were also paramount at Clerkenwell.Here a large complex of conventual and domestic buildings including thechurch, chapter-house, great hall, great chamber, priests’ dorter, yeomen’sdorter, counting house, and armoury was arranged around a formal ‘great

220 E. J. King, ‘A Letter from Brother Hugh Middleton, Knight of the Order of St. John andTurcopolier of Rhodes, to his agent in England, written about 1448’, OSJHP 4 (1930), 1–18.

221 Ibid. 16.222 LPFD, xiv, II, nos. 404–5; xv, no. 490; Addenda, no. 684.223 AOM284, fo. 78v; 399, fos. 145v–146r.224 He was probably dead before he had to do so. Ibid.

The Prior and his Brethren 57

court’225 and walled off from the rest of the estate, which was composedlargely of gardens and tenements, but also included the lodgings of the bailiffof Eagle and other brethren.226 Access to the inner precinct was controlled,after 1504, by the imposing gatehouse built by Thomas Docwra, which stillstands.227 In some ways this arrangement reflected that of the conventualenclosure or collachium in Rhodes, with the inner precinct corresponding tothemagistral palace, and the outer the rest of the area of town reserved for thebrethren. There are similarities, too, with the Teutonic knights’ headquartersat Marienburg, and closer to home with episcopal residences such as Lam-beth palace and York place.228 Within the walls of the inner precinct dweltthe prior, subprior, probably the priests serving in the church, the turcopolierwhen hewas in residence, and the ‘yeomen’ and other servants of the prior.229

In the outer enclosure resided the other brethren at headquarters, includingthe bailiff of Eagle, the chief officials of the priory, and lesser servants andtenants who included brewers, tilers, and industrial workers.230 Propertieswere permanently reserved for the turcopolier and bailiff of Eagle, an agree-ment between prior and brethren of 1440 having established that both theyand other brethren residing inClerkenwell should pay fixed amounts for theirboard.231 A number of corrodians held tenements in the outer part of thecomplex but were fed at the great hall within at tables gradated according torank. Corrodies were sometimes granted to relatives such as Lancelot Doc-wra’s nephew John and the similarly named son of James Docwra ofHitchin,232 but more often to servants ranging from the likes of the chiefsteward ThomasDalby233 and solicitor RichardHawkes234 to the officials oflocal Hospitaller manors, butchers, tilers, carpenters, and stable boys.235

Other officials of the priory, even if they did not rent tenements or holdcorrodies there, were provided with robes of its livery, as were the stewardsof Hospitaller manors in the provinces.236 Both servants and tenants mightalso share in the spiritual benefits and exemptions enjoyed by the order andmight choose burial in its churches.Quite a number, includingThomasCotes,John Lamberd, William Yolton, and Francis Bell, did just this.237

225 Excavations, esp. 132–6, 166–9 and figs. 99, 101.226 See Excavations, 136–45; LPFD, xxi, I, no. 970 (1).227 Excavations, 135–6, 169–72.228 Compare plans in Luttrell, ‘Military Orders’, 344–5 with Excavations, 200–2 and figs.

98–9, 142.229 AOM354, fo. 214v; Excavations, esp 92, 135–6, 167–9 and figs. 99, 101.230 Excavations, esp. 92–3, 103–7, 129, 133–45, 188–90, 203–4.231 AOM354, fo. 214v.232 Claudius E.vi, fos. 129v–130r, 60r.233 Lansdowne 200, fo. 71r.234 Claudius E.vi, fo. 229v.235 Lansdowne 200, fos. 20r–v, 45r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 182v–183r, 183r, 183r–v, 283v–284r.236 e.g. Lansdowne 200, fo. 42r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 136r–v, 241r, 253v, 280r.237 Stow, Survey, ii. 85; J. C. C. Smith, Index of Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of

Canterbury 1383–1558, 2 vols., continuously paginated (London, 1893–5), 49, 62, 143, 162,192, 237, 247, 276, 322, 325, 529; North Country Wills, ed. Clay, 271.

58 The Prior and his Brethren

Surrounded by their largely lay households and officials, brethren of theHospital in England and Wales appear not to have lived a fully regular orconventual life. Yet their failure to do so was itself a result of the order’spolicy, which required little more of brethren resident in the west thanconventional piety, the maintenance of divine service, hospitality and prop-erty, and the forwarding of responsions to headquarters. These were un-heroic, but not entirely unworthy goals, and it is perhaps on their diligenceand effectiveness in pursuing them, rather than on their production of saintsor scholars, that we should judge the order’s members. Crucial to doing so isto understand the order’s administrative system and how far and in whatdegree this was geared towards the dispatch of men and monies to the east.It is to this subject that we now turn.

The Prior and his Brethren 59

CHAPTER THREE

The Administration and Financesof the Priory of England

The Hospital steadily acquired lands and rents in England and Wales be-tween the 1140s and the enactment of the Statute of Mortmain, which madegrants to religious houses subject to royal licence in 1279.1 A renewedprocess of acquisition began in 1312, when the order was granted the formerproperties of the Templars. Getting hold of these was to involve the expend-iture of much time and treasure and was still not complete in 1338, when asurvey of the properties subject to the priory of England listed Templarestates worth a supposed 1,145 marks per annum that were still in thehands of lay possessors.2 Most of these were never to be acquired and theextent of the order’s landed estate underwent only minor variations there-after, the most significant after 1460 being the exchanges of 1480–1 and1527–32.3 The order possessed properties in every county in England, butthe largest concentrations were on its eastern side, in and around London,and in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Kent, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. Betweenthem these areas accounted for about half the income from land of the prioryand its dependent preceptories. InWales, where Anglo-Norman settlers werethe main donors to the order, its estates were concentrated in the south,particularly in Pembrokeshire.

The main lines of the order’s administration in 1338 are relatively clear. Itsproperties were grouped into bajuliae, large houses administered by a pre-ceptor, and smaller camerae either administered by resident brother-cus-todes or lay bailiffs or let to farm. Those brothers who had charge ofhouses were responsible for managing their estates, maintaining divineservice in their chapels and appropriated churches, dispensing hospitality,and authorizing expenditure.4 Having collected the revenues of the bailiwickor camera, they then paid their own expenses and others such as for thewages, victuals, and robes of their administrative officials, householdservants, chaplains, and corrodians, for building and repairs and for the

1 S. Raban, Mortmain Legislation and the English Church (Cambridge, 1982), passim;Secunda Camera, p. xlvii.

2 It is likely that this figure was overestimated. Report, 212–13.3 See below, 139, 179–80, 182, 196–7.4 Report, p. xxxi and text, passim.

provision of hospitality. The remainder was then submitted to the treasury inClerkenwell. A further round of expenses, including those of the prior andhis household, were met there before the remainder was set aside for dis-patch to Rhodes. Despite the 1303 statute allowing each prior four prioralcamerae for his upkeep,5 the prior was not presented as holding any of theproperties mentioned in the Report in his own name, but instead drew apersonal allowance of 20 shillings per day, payable by the treasury when hewas at headquarters and by the bajuliae when on visitation.6 It is probablethat some estates not mentioned in the Report were set aside for the prior,however,7 and the exceptionally heavy charges incumbent on the bajulia ofClerkenwell indicate some overlap between prioral and preceptorial house-holds and expenses. The corrodies or stipends of officials such as the order’sgeneral procurator in the courts, and the expenses involved in the provisionof hospitality were met from the revenues of Clerkenwell in 1338,8 and wereprobably a charge on the prior in later days. Other corporate expenses weremet out of the funds remitted to the priory by the order’s other houses.

By the 1430s the organization of the order’s estates had been greatlyaltered. Although the camerae and lands let to farm in 1338 may wellhave been under some kind of prioral supervision, the prior appears not tohave derived any income from them himself. A papal confirmation of thelands held by Robert Malory (prior, 1432–39/40) in 1438, however, showsthat the prior now had control not only of four or five prioral camerae,9 butalso seven membra formerly classed as bajuliae or camerae, nine otherestates, and a further five parish churches.10 The papal letter, which reflectsMalory’s petition, suggests that his predecessors had held these for sometime, while his own lack of title to the lands was perhaps the result of thecombustion of some of the priory buildings in 1381.11 One of Malory’spreceptories, that of Buckland and Bothmiscombe, had been transferred tothe priory by the langue in return for the surrender of prioral visitation fees,while other estates were added to the prior’s in return for the cession ofprioral rights to the spolia of deceased brethren.12 In 1440, after Maloryhad excluded his brethren from a number of their estates, the new prior,Robert Botill, and the preceptors came to a concord under whichBotill would be granted the small preceptories of Greenham, Hogshaw,Maltby, Skirbeck, and Poling in return for his granting 300 marks to the

5 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 351–2.6 Report, 211 and passim.7 Prima Camera, pp. xxvii, xxxix.8 Report, 96–101.9 For the prioral right to hold multiple camerae, see above, Ch. 2.2.10 CPL, ix. 3; discussed in Field, ‘Robert Malory’, 255–6.11 The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson, 2nd edn. (London, 1983), 40, 158, 170,

185, 188, 200, 209, 224, 262, 389.12 Field, ‘Robert Malory’, 252 (citing AOM350, fos. 221v–222r); Mifsud,Venerable Tongue,

44, 66 n.

Administration and Finances 61

preceptors and promising to maintain non-knightly brethren in the cededhouses.13 Subsequent priors retained these grants. By the 1470s the priorwas specifically and personally in control of about 40 per cent of the order’sestates14 which, although often leased by the prior and preceptors in pro-vincial chapter, paid their profits to the prior’s receiver-general rather thanthe receiver of the common treasury. Four former bajuliae, Clerkenwell,Cressing, Sandford, and usually Balsall, were set aside for his maintenanceas prioral camerae and subject to payment of a responsion set at £70 after1501,15 while he was entitled to claim a fifth on or after his election. Thefifth camera and the five other preceptories held by the prior—Buckland,Greenham, Hogshaw, Maltby-cum-Skirbeck and Poling—were taxed by theorder at the rate paid by other preceptors.16 The other scattered propertieswhich were accounted for under the priory in 1535 and 1540 had a netincome of perhaps £1,000. On these the prior paid no responsions at all.

The bajuliae had been subjected to a similar process of amalgamation andconsolidation. Those that had not been absorbed by the priory had largelybeen united with preceptories in the same or neighbouring counties.17

Preceptors of the paired houses probably kept some kind of household atboth sites, however.18 Like the prior, rather than simply administer theirestates and send their profits on to the treasury preceptors were now taxed ata rate individually assessed on the value of their houses by the commontreasury. After paying responsions and sums towards the expenses of pro-vincial chapters and of the English auberge in Rhodes, and providing for themaintenance of hospitality, chaplains, and of such servants as were necessaryto run their estates, preceptors were free to do what they liked with theirmoney until they died, when their possessions reverted to the order.19 Theywere bound to maintain the fabric of their houses by the order’s statutes and

13 AOM354, fo. 215r.14 With the exception of two commanderies in Kent, virtually all the order’s properties in the

HomeCounties were placed under prioral control, as were important estates in Cambridgeshire,Lincolnshire, and Oxfordshire, and smaller ones elsewhere.

15 AOM393, fos. 109v–110v; 54, passim. Their real value was at least £1,050.Valor, i. 403–6.16 AOM54, passim.17 Thus, for example, the Yorkshire preceptory of Newland had absorbed the bajuliae of

Ossington and Winkburn in Nottinghamshire, and the camera of Stydd in central Lancashire;another Yorkshire house, Mount St John, had been united with the Northumberland house ofChibburn, and the former Templar preceptory of Garway in Herefordshire had been joined tothe commandery of Dinmore in the same county.

18 Except when a preceptor was in or on his way to the Mediterranean, in which case pairedhouses were quite often let separately, there are only two long-term leases before 1528 of the‘second’ house of a twin in the lease books. These grants were of Trebigh, which was united toAnsty, and of Garway. Not only did preceptors not usually lease their subsidiary commanderies,at least one, Giles Russell, is known to have resided at both his houses of Battisford and Dingleyat various times while he was preceptor. Claudius E.vi, fos. 260r–v, 276r–v; LPFD, v, no. 88; xiv,II, no. 405.

19 They were, however, not to grant pensions to secular persons, a stipulation relaxed in1527, when each brother holding a benefice in the priory was permitted to grant one pension ofup to 10 ducats. AOM286, fo. 15v.

62 Administration and Finances

were sometimes expected to perform expensive conventual service, butbrethren with long careers and multiple preceptories could accumulateconsiderable personal wealth.

The administration of wide estates by a small number of financiallyindependent brother knights was the result of gradual change. In part, thiswas a response to complex economic and social pressures, but it is also clearthat it was encouraged by the order, whose statutes made provision for theabsorption of smaller houses by greater.20 The convent placed demands onboth finances and manpower that could not be met by smaller houses unlessthey were held in plurality. As rents fell after the Black Death and the cost ofmilitary service increased, the necessity for the amalgamation of housesbecame more acute, and the smaller preceptories were gradually absorbed.21

Thus, in 1414, the conventually appointed visitors of the priory agreed, forthe utility of the common treasury and convent, and by the consent of ‘many’preceptors and brethren, to unite the Oxfordshire house of Clanfield withQuenington, while in 1454 the langue in Rhodes voted to attach Dingley toBattisford when it should next vacate.22

The new structure was made possible by a more devolved system ofadministration, with greater reliance on lay farmers as intermediaries be-tween the order and its tenants. Although a large proportion of peripheralestates had already been rented out in 1338, demesnes, although given a cashvalue in the Report, had probably been kept in hand,23 and labour serviceshad still been significant.24 By the late fifteenth century nearly all propertieswere rented, although some labour services or payments in kind were stillexacted on leased estates.25 Particularly noticeable was the practice ofgranting out lands on long lease under the conventual seal. This was espe-cially marked among the prioral estates, over 80 per cent of which wereleased by 1540.26 On preceptorial estates, the tendency was for appropriatedchurches, mills, and the confraria to be leased while smaller tenants heldtheir lands by copy or freehold. This process had been going on for sometime. Nearly 10 per cent of the Hospital’s properties had already been letunder the common seal in 1338, and the order had received papal licence torent out its churches in 1390.27 A number of earlier leases are referred to in

20 Delaville, Rhodes, 163; Stabilimenta, ‘De prioribus’, xiiii (Statute of Naillac).21 Dates of their absorption based largely on information supplied by Tipton are given in

D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn.(London, 1971), 301–8.

22 AOM339, fos. 142v–143r; 365, fo. 119v.23 Spufford, Chippenham, 30. For the presentation of payments in kind as cash sums in

accounts, see R. A. Lomas, ‘The Priory of Durham and its Demesne in the Fourteenth andFifteenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 31 (1978), 339–53, at 343–4.

24 Kemble calculated that they were worth £184 16s. 8d. in total. Report, p. xxix.25 Spufford, Chippenham, 34.26 Long leases of prioral estates were worth £2,068 9s. 0d. in 1539–40. PRO SC6/Henry VIII/

2402, passim.27 Delaville, Rhodes, 263 n. 1.

Administration and Finances 63

the act books of provincial chapters after 1492, and the movement towardsleasing is further corroborated by other sources28 and by the practice ofother religious houses, although some of these appear to have begun grant-ing substantial numbers of leases for terms of years, rather than for life, onlyin the 1530s, when their dissolution was imminent. Such grants were oftenmade after receipt of heavy entry fines, but set rents at a low level in return, apractice the Hospital was also following by the end.29

The movement towards leasing was still continuing in the sixteenth cen-tury. On several occasions between 1503 and 1526 copyhold rents wereleased out by provincial chapter or numbers of small rents were bundled uptogether and let to farm for a fixed sum.30 Leases were granted by provincialchapters or assemblies of the order under the conventual seal, and termswere relatively long. Evidence from other religious houses suggests that theyincreased in length in the fifteenth century,31 and twenty-one, twenty-nine,thirty, forty, and even sixty-year leases, as well as more traditional grants forlife or in survivorship, abound in the order’s registers even in the 1490s.Lessees were usually local men. Naturally enough, knights and gentrytended to be granted the larger manorial or ecclesiastical properties, yeomenand priests the smaller, while husbandmen were given tenements and mes-suages. In the capital and its environs, citizens, guildsmen, and brewerspredominated, with royal officials also on the lookout for grants of stra-tegically placed properties. In and around the priory precincts in Clerken-well numerous properties were leased, or granted as part-corrodies, toservants and relatives of brethren. This was mirrored by the situation inthe provinces, where family members of preceptors or their servants andassociates were often granted the leases of preceptory demesnes or outlyingestates. Probably for reasons of trust, the three-year leases of preceptoryestates granted to enable brethren to go to or maintain themselves at theconvent were almost exclusively made out to Hospitaller brethren, relatives

28 e.g. BL Additional MS 5539 nos. 30–1 (leases of Sutton-at-Hone, 1450s and 1460s,mentioned); Harleian Charter 57 F.18 (dispute over twenty-four-year lease of Great Wilbrahamdrawn up in June 1401); VCH,Wiltshire, ix. 66 (Chirton leased by 1379); Secunda Camera, pp.lxii, lxxi (Maplestead probably leased 1365–7; the Sampfords c.1389); Prima Camera, pp. xlvi,lxxv, 25–7 (twelve-year lease of rectory of Roydon, 1390), 42–4 (Sutton, Essex by c.1395); AKentish Cartulary of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, ed. C. Cotton, Kent ArchaeologicalSociety, Records Branch: Kent Records, 11 (Ashford, 1930), 132 (thirty-eight-year lease ofTemple Dartford, 1388).

29 D. M. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1971), ii. 323–4;Lomas, ‘Durham’, 339–40, 344–8, 352; R. W. Hoyle, ‘Monastic Leasing before the Dissolution:The Evidence of Bolton Priory and Fountains Abbey’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 61(1989), 111–37, esp. 114–16; J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London, 1971),50, 57–8, 60, 77, 337; J. H. Bettey, The Suppression of the Monasteries in the West Country(Gloucester, 1989), 71–2; PRO LR2/62, passim.

30 Claudius E.vi, fos. 32v–33r, 108r, 119v–120v, 196r–v.31 Lomas, ‘Durham’, 348, 352; C. Dyer, Warwickshire Farming 1349–c.1520: Preparations

for Agricultural Revolution, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 27 (Stratford-upon-Avon,1981), 5; VCH, Wiltshire, iii. 183.

64 Administration and Finances

of the preceptor concerned, and leading servants of the order.32 Occasionallyleases were made out to the brethren themselves. In 1498 John Tongereceived the Hertfordshire manor of Temple Dinsley from his uncle, JohnKendal, and the provincial chapter, while Robert Newport was granted theLeicestershire manor of Heather, which Thomas Newport had recoveredfrom the hands of seculars, in 1505.33

An examination of the leases granted in the chapter held inMay 1526mayillustrate some of these points. This meeting provides a fairly large anddiffuse sample of grants:34 it made seventy-six in all, of which eight wereof the advowson of churches in the order’s gift, one was of a pension, fourwere of offices, and thirteen were of corrodies, some with an office orchaplaincy attached. The fifty remaining grants were leases, of which sometwenty-five pertained to the prioral preceptories, camerae, and estates, andthe rest to the other preceptories. They ranged across the whole spectrum ofproperty types and values. Excluding three-year leases of the preceptories ofSwingfield, Dalby and Rothley, and Yeaveley and Barrow, and that of apertinence of Beverley of which the farmer was to pay the accustomed andunspecified farm to the auditor there, the total annual value of the propertiesgranted was £535 7s. 5d. The most important of these was the large prioralcamera of Balsall, leased to Martin Docwra at a rent of £200 per annum.35

Docwra was also given the reversion of the Berkshire manor of Greenham,and another member of the family, John, the prebendary of Blewbury, wasgranted a close in the Essex manor of Rainham-Berwick.36 Nineteen of thelessees were described as yeomen, and thirteen as gentlemen or esquires.37

There were also a citizen of London, a grocer, a smith, a waterman, and atiler. Virtually all resided in the same township or county as the propertythey were leasing and several had previous connections with the Hospital.The three preceptories leased were granted to the usual recipients.38 TheGenoese merchant Antonio Vivaldo was co-lessee of all three, the prioralchancellor JohnMablestone was co-lessee of Swingfield and Dalby, and JohnBabington, preceptor of Dalby, was co-lessee of Swingfield and Yeaveleydespite being himself on his way to Italy. Two London gentlemen, WilliamBowes and Thomas Redeman, were among the farmers of Swingfield andYeaveley respectively, and Babington’s brother Humphrey was joint farmerof Dalby. With the exception of the preceptories, the properties let ranged invalue from a noble to £33, and included grants or reversions of eight

32 See e.g. Claudius E.vi, fos. 4v–5r, 6v–7r, 16r–v, 28r–v, 28v–29r, 44r–v, 81v–82r, 83r–v, 98r,98v–99v, 243r–v.

33 Lansdowne 200, fos. 54r–v; Claudius E.vi, fo. 14v–15r.34 Claudius E.vi, fos. 264r–291r.35 Ibid., fos. 265v–266v.36 Ibid., fos. 266v–267r, 270v–271r.37 I have excluded lessees of preceptories from this figure. Seven farmers were not described.38 Claudius E.vi, fos. 264r–v, 264v–265r, 265r–v.

Administration and Finances 65

‘courses’ of confraternity payments, eight manors, six rectories, and onecombination of the two. Several of the smaller grants were of properties inLondon or within the priory precincts.39

That it leased out its property did not mean that the order was withoutconcern for its state. Leases laid down the responsibilities of farmers in somedetail. Rent was to be paid on time on pain of financial penalties usuallyamounting to about twice the annual farm. When a manor had beengranted, the farmers were usually bound to pay the salary of the manorialchaplain, and the expenses of ministers and stewards coming to survey theproperty or to hold courts. They were also typically expected to maintain thebuildings ‘in coopertura, daubatura et straminis’ and to repair hedges,ditches, mill-workings, river banks, and flood defences when necessary. In1496, for example, Thomas and Elizabeth Seyman promised to repair all thewalls and buildings then in existence at Temple Grafton40 and to maintainany new edifices they might construct. The prior and his successors wereonly to pay for the rebuilding of the chancel of the manorial chapel, anexpense incumbent upon them as its appropriators.41 Often there was adivision of responsibility according to the scale and type of maintenance tobe carried out. Leases of the Kentish camera of Sutton-at-Hone in 1493 and1499 specified that while the farmers were to maintain houses, walls,hedges, ditches, and the banks of the Thames, as well as, in 1499, stocklevels and the ornaments of the chapel, all repairs requiring the use of stone,lead, tiles, and great timber were to be at the prior’s expense.42 In the case ofthose taking on dilapidated properties, major repairs or rebuilding weresometimes stipulated. Thus in 1506, Thomas Bassett of Painswick obligedhimself to build at the Gloucestershire manor of Wishanger a chamber in thehall of the mansion, besides a storeroom, a pantry with a solar above, astable for six horses, a bakehouse, and a malthouse.43 When the propertywas granted to new farmers in 1514 they were required to construct a stonebarn roofed in slate within seven years.44 At the same time, the farmer of thecapital tenement of Suffytur, also a dependency of Quenington, promised tospend £40 on rebuilding the property, which was ‘now in great ruin’.45 Toencourage him to do so, a very low rent was set. Similarly, in 1519 JohnHuntyngdon promised to provide a new roof, floor, wattle walls, and doors

39 e.g. ibid., fos. 272r–v, 273r–v, 273v, 273v–274r.40 These were a hall of two bays with two adjacent chambers each of one bay, an ‘old kitchen’

of two bays with an appended structure of the same size, an oxhouse, a barn, a sheepcote, and adovecote.

41 Lansdowne 200, fos. 33v–34r.42 Ibid., fos. 15r–v, 62v–63r.43 Claudius E.vi, fos. 31r–v.44 Ibid., fos. 128v–129r.45 Ibid., fo. 129r. Similar obligations to construct new buildings or rebuild old in ibid.,

fos. 32r–v, 80r, 89v–90r, 107v–108r, 123v–124r, 124r–v, 129v, 199v–200r, 233v, 234v, 240v–241r,247r–v; Lansdowne 200, fos. 3v, 6v, 34r–v, 35r, 51v–52r.

66 Administration and Finances

for the order’s tithe barn at Sawston, in return for which his rent was reducedby £10 in his first two years of occupation.46 Occasionally the order prom-ised to do the building itself.47 Apart from this obvious concern for the fabricof its properties, the order also drew up inventories of the stock and utensi-liae belonging to some major properties before leasing them, copies of whichwere kept in the house or camera belonging to the common treasury atClerkenwell.48

To ensure compliance with the provisions of leases, the order’s officialsvisited its estates, and those who failed to maintain their properties or whofell heavily into arrears could be evicted.49 It was not always easy to removerecalcitrant tenants or to recover debts, however, and much of the order’stime and effort was spent on the attempt to achieve these aims in the courts.Suits were prosecuted in the prior’s name, as only the priory was incorpor-ated in the common law, although expenses seem to have been born at leastin part by the preceptor who held the property.50 In 1338, the order paid feesto a host of legal officers both at court and in the provinces, and while theburden may have lessened somewhat by the fifteenth century, the records ofchancery and Star Chamber often show the order prosecuting high-profileactions against its tenants. The most significant of these were the disputesover Balsall in 1496, 1501–4, and 1527–36, but other attempts to recoverproperties, monies, and documents from tenants occurred in relation to theorder’s estates at Slebech, Dalby, and Dinmore.51 Often suits were unsuc-cessful. The prosecution for debt of ex-farmers of the estates of Slebech after1514 had been abandoned by 1520, while the order eventually lost its longaction against Martin Docwra for the recovery of Balsall, despite a clause inhis lease by which the latter had promised to vacate the property on a year’snotice.52 Even when the courts ruled in the order’s favour it might be yearsbefore the desired goods or property could be recovered.53 Often the orderwas on the defensive, sometimes against descendants of former benefactorswho claimed that the grants made by their ancestors had been invalid. Thesedisputes could be lengthy and a cause of lasting bitterness. In the 1520sThomas de la Laund complained about the difficulty of a ‘pore Gentilman’

46 Claudius E.vi, fos. 199v–200r. Other examples of allowances made against rent for repairscan be found in ibid., fos. 116r–v, 222r–v, 247v–248r; Lansdowne 200, fo. 6v.

47 e.g. Claudius E.vi, fos. 153v–154r, 269r–v, 274r–v.48 Although inventories are often mentioned in the lease books, their details are only rarely

recorded, save for leases of a few important estates, such as Hampton Court, and of inns. e.g.Lansdowne 200, fos. 30r–v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 8v, 139v–140r, 143v, 147r–v, 149v, 151r; PROLR2/62, fos. 7r–v.

49 Claudius E.vi, fos. 191r–v, 219r–v, 227v–228r, 243r–v.50 AOM54, fos. 13v, 18r, 42r, 45r–v, 95r.51 PRO REQ 2/10/76; STAC2/33/40, 1/1/50/1–2, 1/2/109/1–5, 2/17/401/1–5, 2/26/175; C1/

588/36, 598/12, 778/30–3, 925/35; SP2/R, pp. 290–2; STAC2/22/290/1–4, C1/732/38, 932/30–1, 132/10–11.

52 AOM54, fo. 13v; See below, Ch. 6.53 See below, Ch. 6.

Administration and Finances 67

such as himself suing a corporation such as the order, ‘for that they do dryvesuch as do sew the law wyth them, for lyke theyr Ryght, to an extreme Costof Labor & that all they of theyr Religion bere theyr Charges of Sute incommon; & that they have so meny of the best lerned men retayned of theyrCouncell & Parte’.54

While the order demonstrated some aggression in maintaining its rights,the leasing of so many estates probably made their defence more difficult byweakening formerly robust links with the localities. Prioral officials visitingonce or twice a year were no substitute for the presence of a residentpreceptor who might enjoy real clout in his ‘country’. The ease with whicheven the upstart Martin Docwra was able to defy the order and its officers atBalsall revealed the dangers of the order’s land-management policies, par-ticularly in cases where important estates had been granted to relatives ofbrethren. Both at Balsall and at Dalby, where Henry Poole attempted to evictHumphrey Babington from a lease of the manorial demesne granted him byhis brother John, it proved difficult for a new incumbent to revoke a grantmanifestly not in the order’s interest. In such circumstances the service of‘best lerned men’ was always going to be necessary and it is no surprise tofind the provincial chapter of 1522 granting a corrody to the order’s ‘solici-tor of business and causes’, Richard Hawkes, who was to engross all pro-cesses and pleas pertaining to temporal actions, or that another such grantwas made two years later to Richard Bruge, ‘one of our council in the law’.55

3.1 Income

In 1338, according to its own figures, the order’s estates in England andWales brought in £6,839 9s. 9d., of which, the expenses of preceptorialhouseholds having been deducted, £3,826 4s. 6d. reached the treasury inClerkenwell.56 After the payment of expenses, pensions, and corrodies thetreasury was left with £2,303 15s. 2d. for submission as responsions toRhodes.57 As the responsion was set at a third-annate at the time, this sumcorresponded fairly neatly with a third of the sum submitted gathered in theorder’s estates. In fact the figures are not entirely convincing, and theirpresentation seems to have been influenced by a desire to show that theorder was submitting a third of the value of its estates to headquarters ratherthan by a strict desire for accuracy. Nevertheless they prove clearly that thepriory had a clear income comparable to that of the very greatest laymagnates or richest bishops in the mid-fourteenth century. Moreover,

54 BL MS Additional 4937, fos. 80r, 78v–79r, 86r.55 Claudius E.vi, fos. 229v, 253v.56 Report, 213, 202.57 Ibid. 211.

68 Administration and Finances

when it is borne in mind that in return for the acquisition of the Templarestates the Hospital had had to grant many of their holders life tenure rentfree, and to advance lands and pensions to courtiers, lawyers, and creditors,it is clear that its potential wealth was considerably underestimated by thereport. Michael Gervers has even suggested that it only records a third of theorder’s real wealth, but his conclusions may only hold true for properties inprioral hands.58

Whatever its real dimensions, it is unlikely that this wealth could ever beconcentrated and exploited with complete effectiveness. The Black Deathand the sustained fall in population which occurred thereafter eventuallyreduced the revenues of most landowners, and may have hit the orderparticularly hard, as much of its land was marginal59 and may have beenabandoned by its tenants. The fifteenth century saw continued decline in thepopulation of some of the order’s estates, so much so that one of its twoparish churches in the Norfolk village of Carbrooke was closed for lack ofparishioners in 1424, and when the buildings and tenements pertaining toanother, the Cambridgeshire bajulia of Chippenham, were destroyed by firein 1446 many of them were never rebuilt and reoccupied.60 The number ofhouseholds in Chippenham fell from 143 in 1279 to fewer than eighty in1377 and only sixty in 1544.61 Although conditions varied according to timeand place, in general the fall in population led to increased wages andperquisites for labourers, the widespread commutation of labour services,and, especially in the fifteenth century, a considerable decline in rents.62 Theorder’s resort to the farming out of many estates on long lease needs to beseen as an attempt to ensure itself a stable income in this context of fallingagricultural revenues and population decline, the latter possibly affecting therecruitment of brethren as well as numbers of tenants. A number of smallerproperties had, admittedly, been leased out by 1338,63 but the more sub-stantial estates had still been kept in hand. By the 1490s as many as half itsproperties may have been leased. Although this certainly saved on the

58 Prima Camera, p. xxxix. Some estates in Essex andMiddlesex were heavily undervalued in1338, but it is much harder to argue this with respect to properties elsewhere which, althoughcertainly valued more highly in the inquests into Templar property in 1307–9 than in 1338, donot show such massive discrepancies in valuation as in the cases he highlights, as can be seen, forinstance, from a comparison of the values Perkins gives for churches appropriated to the Templewith the revenue the hospital derived from them in 1338. Perkins, ‘Wealth’, 256; Report, 136,137, 161, 163, 172.

59 Marginal land was often given to the Hospitallers or Templars, but was made attractive bythe privileges that their tenants enjoyed. R. Studd, ‘A Templar Colony in North Staffordshire:Keele before the Sneyds’, North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, 22 (1982–5), 5–6, 9–10.

60 Puddy, Norfolk, 19; Spufford, Chippenham, 36–7, 31–2.61 Spufford, Chippenham, 5. For depopulation and rent reductions on some Hospitaller

properties in Oxfordshire, see VCH, Oxfordshire, xii. 19, 262.62 J. Hatcher, ‘England in the Aftermath of the Black Death’, Past and Present, 144 (1994),

3–35; Dyer, Warwickshire Farming, 8–9; Spufford, Chippenham, 33–4, 37.63 Report, 122–3, 125–6, 143, 152–3, 157, 160–2, 167, 170–4, 178, 193–5.

Administration and Finances 69

expense of maintaining a large number of independent households, the gainwas partially offset by the low level at which leases were set. The value ofthe order’s estates may have continued to fall until the last quarter of thefifteenth century. At Sutton-at-Hone/Dartford, for example, the annualpayment for the lease of the manor was twice reduced in the third quarterof the fifteenth century, first from £63 to £50, and secondly from £50 to £4613s. 4d. Recent farmers of the property had clearly been unable or unwillingto pay and still owed over £160 to the prior in the mid-1470s. The lessees ofthe priory’s appropriated churches in Kent were also heavily in arrears.64

By the 1490s, however, the sums the order could raise by leasing its estatesappear to have stabilized. The registers of the acts of the order’s provincialchapters contain serial leases of many of the order’s properties and appro-priated churches, and the value of these did not vary greatly between 1492and 1539. If anything there was an upward trend after about 1510: the farmof Sutton-at-Hone and Temple Dartford was increased to £48 in 1514 and£50 in 1522, and its lessees were made responsible for major repairs, and therent of the former camera of Keele was raised from £16 13s. 4d. to £18 in1519.65 Rents of estates around London were particularly likely to increase,a development that can probably be associated with the contemporary rise ingrain prices in the capital.66 Many of the increases were also associated withimprovements to the fabric of the properties in question. In London espe-cially a number of tenements were rebuilt and then let at significantly higherrents. It needs to be stressed, however, that most properties were leased forthe same sums in 1535 as they had been twenty, thirty, or forty years before.

Income, then, was probably fairly stable between the 1480s and the onsetof the anti-ecclesiastical measures of 1529–36, which severely reduced theorder’s revenues.67 Yet some of its spiritual perquisites were still in place tobe noticed in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, which provides brief sum-maries of the sources and extent of the income of its houses, and of expend-iture on servants, chaplains, and sometimes on responsions. Rather moredetailed are the Minister’s Accounts of the Hospitaller estates after theirexpropriation by the crown in 1540, which give complete lists of the tenantsof many properties. Yet both the Valor and the Accounts have deficiencies asguides to the nature and extent of the order’s income. The survey of 1535varied in thoroughness according to the peculiarities of the local commis-sioners, so that the income of some preceptories was listed manor by manorand source by source, while the entries for others are much more abbrevi-ated. The entries for Beverley, Halston, Peckham, Shingay, and Temple

64 BL Additional MS 5539 no. 31. Sutton had been let separately from Dartford until 1460.Ibid., nos. 6–27.

65 Claudius E.vi, fos. 118v–119r, 214v–215v, 13r, 191r–v.66 I. W. S. Blanchard, ‘Population Change, Enclosure, and the Early Tudor Economy’,

Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 23 (1970), 427–45, at 433 and n.67 See below, Ch. 6.

70 Administration and Finances

Brewer only provide details of the net income or annual farm of the house,although that for Temple Brewer mentions that the lessee had an annualallowance of £23 10s. to pay the stipends of servants and chaplains. Moreseriously, the entry for Dinmore is missing and that for Battisford andDingley is heavily damaged and can give no indication of the completevalue of the house. However, the Valor does provide a partial idea of theorder’s income from confraternity payments and the oblations made in itschurches, both of which are unmentioned in the Ministers’ Accounts.

The net values given in the Valor are noted in Appendix IX, although allshould be reduced because the commissioners refused to allow some ex-penses against the value of preceptories when they estimated their worth.These included £12 paid to maintain six poor boys at Carbrooke, oblationsto the poor at Willoughton, and the salaries of chaplains celebrating inchantries at Ribston and Quenington.68 Claims that responsions should beallowed against the taxable value were universally refuted. Moreover, evenwhen these charges are taken into consideration, the expenses listed in theValor do not include those of the brethren themselves. If these, especiallythose of the prior’s household, were added the clear value of the order’sestates might well be lower than that given in 1338.

The Ministers’ Accounts are also incomplete. Most of the earliest surviv-ing accounts are for the financial year 1540–1 rather than 1539–40 and,because of the rapid alienation or leasing of monastic lands after the dissol-ution, probably represent a fall on the figures that could have been expectedeven a year earlier. Moreover, the 1540–1 accounts for the preceptories ofSlebech and Ansty show that they had already been let by the crown atrelatively low rents,69 the commanderies formerly held by the attaintedThomas Dingley paid only a tenth based on their 1535 assessment to thecrown, otherwise submitting no account, and several houses were farmedout shortly before or after the dissolution for rather low considerations.Nevertheless, the sums given in the Accounts do provide a corrective to theValor because, despite the loss of spiritual revenues, those given for 1539–40are considerably higher than the figures for 1535 and are based on actualreceipts rather than assessed income.70 The overall picture provided by thesesources, both of which show a net income of well over £5,000, is illustratedin Appendix IX.

Breakdown of this income into its constituent elements is difficult, espe-cially considering that manors and churches were often let together, so that it

68 Valor, iii. 340; iv. 137; ii. 463; v. 256. At Yeaveley and Newland the commissioners didaccept that the house’s distribution of alms should be set against its valuation. Ibid. iii. 168; v.68.

69 PRO SC6/Henry VIII/7262 mm. 6, 12.70 For the suggestion that the Valor underestimated the receipts of ecclesiastical lands,

especially those deriving from casual income, see F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: A Study ofthe Social and Economic Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge, 1980), 55–8.

Administration and Finances 71

is difficult to assess the relative value of temporalities and spiritualitiesaccurately. Similarly ‘courses’ of the confraria, although often leased ontheir own, might also be farmed as a parcel of other estates. Nevertheless,it is possible to come to some conclusions about the nature of the Hospital’sincome. The most characteristic source of revenue, the confraria, had beenworth £888 4s. 3d. in 1338, apparently a considerable decline from the daysof old.71 Although total revenue from this source is impossible to calculate inthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, comparison can be made between therevenues of certain collecting areas in 1338 and in the period between 1492and 1526.

It should be stressed that the collection of confraternity payments wasgenerally farmed out by county or diocese after 1492, while in 1338 thegeographical area covered by the ‘frary clerks’ of each bajulia was rarelyspecified. Some of the identifications given in Table 3.1 are therefore con-jectural. For example, confraternity payments made to Chibburn and

71 Report, pp. xxx, 4, 7, 13, 52.

Table 3.1. Confraternity payments, 1338 and 1492–1535 (£ s. d.)

Area Value 1338 Value 1492–1526/1535

Berkshirea 10 4/6/8Cumberland save Copeland,Westmorland, South Yorks,North Lancsb 20 23/6/8Derbyshire, Staff, Cheshire,South Lancsc

20/10/0n 27/10/0 (1514–26)

21/10/0 (1535)Devon, Somersetd 82/13/4 92Gloucestershire, Oxfordshiree 40 24/8/0 or 28/2/8Lincolnshiref 53/6/8 35London, Middlesex, Surreyg 26/13/4 12/6/8Norfolkh 86/13/4 53/6/8Northamptonshire, Rutlandi 37/6/8 26Northumberland, NorthYorkshire, Durhamj 21/13/4 22/6/8Suffolkk 50 27/6/8Warwickshire, Worcestershirel 16 (Warws only?) 13/13/8Wiltshirem 30 20 (1495) 24 (1496)

total 494/16/8 Maximum: 389/6/4Minimum: 381/11/8

a Report, 4; Claudius E.vi, fos. 181r–v, 270v.b Figures are those for Newland in 1338, and for the four courses of the fraria in the counties of

Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, andWestmorland pertaining toNewland let in 1524, along

with a course pertaining to Beverley in Copeland. The Valor Ecclesiasticus gives the value of

72 Administration and Finances

Mount St John in 1338 have been compared to the sum of the farms of thosefor Richmondshire and Cleveland, County Durham, and Northumberlandgiven at various times in the lease books, as these were payable at Mount StJohn. Although it is difficult to be certain, the figures presented here seem toindicate that confraternity payments had fallen by about a fifth since 1338,with the decline being particularly pronounced in the Home Counties. Thereasons for the decline are unclear, but among others may be attributable toa weakened sensitivity to the order’s work in combating the infidel, erosionof the privileges attendant upon making payments, or the competing attrac-tions of other guilds and confraternities. The collapse of payments in

payments to Newland in Lancashire, Cumberland, and Westmorland as £17. Report, 45;

Claudius E.vi, fos. 259v, 260r; Valor, v. 68.c The 1338 figure is for the bajulia of Yeaveley. In various leases granted between 1492 and1526, confraria payments to Yeaveley were farmed for 53s. 4d. (South Lancashire), £6 16s. 8d.(Derbyshire), £8 (Staffordshire), and £10 (Cheshire). The figures for Derbyshire, Lancashire,

and Staffordshire are repeated in the Valor, although payments in Cheshire are stated there to beworth only £4. Report, 43; Claudius E.vi, fos. 127r–v, 140v, 200r–v, 278r–v; Valor, iii. 168.d In 1338 confraternity payments raised 44 marks in the collection area administered from

Bothmescomb, Devon, and 80 marks in that run from Buckland, Somerset. In 1508 and 1516

the lessee of Buckland estimated the profits of the confraria at £92. Report, 13, 17; ClaudiusE.vi, fos. 56v–57r, 168v–169v.e The figure given for 1338 is the combined value of the confraria collected by clerks operating

from Quenington, Gloucestershire, and Clanfield, Oxfordshire, which was united to Quening-

ton in 1414. The smaller figure for 1492–1526 has been arrived at by adding the farm of thepayments made in the portion of Oxfordshire in the diocese of Lincoln to those of the first and

second courses of Gloucestershire. It is possible that there was a third course in this county, as a

‘small course’ of the confraternity in Gloucestershire was let in 1526 for 5 marks. Alternatively

this may be the same as the ‘second course’ leased in 1512 for £6 8s. Report, 28, 26; ClaudiusE.vi, fos. 84v, 100r–v, 279r, 279r–v.f Collection in Lincolnshire was administered from Maltby both in 1338 and in the sixteenth

century, when it was divided into four courses.Report, 57; Claudius E.vi, fos. 106v–107r, 178r–v,274r.g Collection was administered from Clerkenwell. Report, 94; Claudius E.vi, fos. 126v–127r,

259r.h Collection was administered from Carbrooke. Report, 81; Claudius E.vi, fos. 161v–162r.i Report, 66; Lansdowne 200, fo. 89r; Claudius E.vi, fo. 63v.j In 1338 confraternity payments to the bajulia of Chibburn, Northumberland were worth 12½

marks, while those to Mount St John were valued at £13 6s. 8d. The lease books give values of£7 6s. 8d. for the bishopric of Durham, £4 for Northumberland, £11 for Yorkshire, and £11 forCleveland and Richmondshire. It is likely that the last two represent the same course differently

described. In 1535 payments for Cleveland were said to be worth £8 and Northumberland £9.

Report, 52, 47; Lansdowne 200, fo. 36r–v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 210r–v, 260v–261r; Valor, v. 94.k Report, 84; Claudius E.vi, fos. 290v–291r.l Collections in Warwickshire and Worcestershire were organized from Balsall in the sixteenth

century. The sum of these has been compared with that given under Grafton in 1338. Although

Grafton had later been absorbed by Balsall, it is not certain whether the figure given for thereceipts there included onlyWarwickshire or both counties.Report, 41; Lansdowne 200, fo. 12r;

Claudius E.vi, fos. 21v–22r, 145r.m Report, 7; Lansdowne 200, fos. 27r, 32r.

Administration and Finances 73

London clearly demonstrates that a fall in population was not wholly toblame for the decline, although the seeming rise in parts of the north may bepartly due to economic recovery after the Anglo-Scottish wars. Even adecline of 20 per cent would still have made the payments worth about£700 in the sixteenth century, however, and it should also be rememberedthat by farming out the confraria the order no longer had to pay the wages ofthe frary clerks who collected it. It is consequently hardly surprising thatthe langue’s brethren objected to the papal suspension of the order’s confra-ternity collections and indulgences during the Jubilee year of 1500.72

The most significant proportion of the Hospital’s income from spiritual-ities was that derived from the tithes and glebe lands of its appropriatedchurches, to which should be added limited revenues derived from pensionsfrom those churches where it possessed the advowson but not the appropri-ation, such as Blewbury and Ludgershall. Excluding the churches appro-priated to Minchin Buckland, these sources were probably worth at least£1,600 in 1338.73 Although the farming out of a great number of manorsand rectories together makes a similar assessment more difficult in thesixteenth century, it is likely that gross revenue from spiritualities suffereda decline in the period between Thame’s report and the dissolution. Afterallowance has been made for the farmer paying the stipend of the vicar, andfor wine, candles, oil, procurations, and synodals the drop in net revenuemay not have been very pronounced. Nevertheless, fluctuations in the valuesof appropriated churches could have a drastic effect on the revenues ofindividual commanderies. The value of the rectories at Carbrooke hadcollapsed from £40 in 1338 to £4 4s. 2d. in 1535,74 while the value ofCardington in Shropshire had fallen from £20 to £6 13s. 4d. by 1505,75 andthat of Marnham in Nottinghamshire from £20 to £11 6s. 8d. by 1526.76

With the exception of Minwear, the value of the numerous churches appro-priated to Slebech had also suffered a considerable decline.77 This tendencywas not universal, however. The rectory of Langford in Bedfordshire was

72 Hearing their protests about this in January 1499, the order’s council refused to solicit thepope and cardinals to rescind the suspension, as it was merely a temporarymeasure, and insistedthat the payment of the dues of the treasury should not be allowed to suffer as a result. They did,however, agree to write to ask Henry VII to intervene in the hope ‘that it will be easier for him toobtain such (revocation)’. Leases of Buckland granted after 1500 specified that should confra-ternity payments be so suspended, the lessee was to pay a greatly reduced farm. AOM78, fo. 95v;Claudius E.vi, fos. 56v–57r, 168v–169v.

73 Excluding churches in the hands of the sisters, and also rectories leased with attached landsor manors, the sum of the values of appropriated churches and ecclesiastical pensions listed inthe Report is £1,465 15s. 1d. The churches or chapels of Aslackby, Blakesley, Ewell, Gildis-burgh, Harefield, South Witham, Sutton (Essex), and Weston were let along with various landsand rents of unspecified value, for a total of £245 13s. 4d. It is likely that most of this sum wasaccounted for by spiritualities. Report, passim, and 117, 125, 160, 170, 172, 173.

74 Report, 81; Valor, iii. 340.75 Report, 199; Claudius E.vi, fos. 60v–61r.76 Report, 161; Claudius E.vi, fos. 277v–278r.77 Report, 34–5; Valor, iv. 388–9.

74 Administration and Finances

worth £13 6s. 8d. in the fourteenth century and leased at £16 in thesixteenth,78 and a similar improvement, from £46 13s. 4d. to £55, occurredat Ellesmere in Shropshire.79

The overall fall in spiritual revenues was partly compensated for, more-over, by the transfer of several benefices to the order in the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries, notably the moiety of Darfield in 1357, and the wholerectories of Gainsborough, Normanton, and Boston in 1399, 1413, and1480 respectively.80 Other occasional income may have been derived fromthe sale of the advowsons of the order’s appropriated churches. Although nocash sums were mentioned in grants of advowsons, the increasing number ofsuch documents in the lease books after c.1510 probably indicates somepecuniary advantage in the transaction. In 1455 the vicar of Darfield hadpetitioned for absolution from any simony he might have been involved inpaying 120 florins to ‘a certain knight’ for presentation to it.81

The revenue the order derived from the provision of extra-parochialspiritual services, oblations, and indulgences is very difficult to quantify,but could be considerable. The profits from the provision of burial, mar-riage, and sanctuary to non-Hospitallers varied between houses, but weresignificant enough to irritate the secular clergy, and to prompt the protests ofpreceptors and lessees when the value of ‘pardons’ collapsed in the 1530s.82

The overall income from oblations is also unknown, although some specificexamples can be given. Oblations at the priory church at Clerkenwell wereboosted by the grant of indulgences to those who made donations to it,83

and in 1535 were still worth £15 14s. 2d. per annum ‘in common years’,although it is likely that they had been much higher in previous gener-ations.84 The order’s church at Slebech was a relatively important pilgrimagecentre and oblations at the former Templar church in Dunwich had beenworth £4 beyond the maintenance of a chaplain in 1338.85 Yet in mostHospitaller churches, the oblations seem to have been allowed to the vicar orchaplain along with the lesser tithes as part of his ‘portion’.86 An interestingexception is provided by the church of Temple Holy Cross in Bristol, wherethe farmer and the preceptor of Templecombe were to share monies depos-ited in ‘St John’s box’.87 More occasional were grants of plenary indulgences

78 Report, 171; Claudius E.vi, fos. 21r–v, 208v–209r, 242v–243r.79 Report, 39; Valor, iv. 456.80 E. W. Crossley, ‘The Preceptory of Newland’, YASRS 61, Miscellanea, 1 (1920), 1–83, at

12; CPL, v. 199; CPR1413–6, 56–7; CPR1475–85, 182, 230, 235, 241; CCR1476–85, nos.733, 741, 778; Rot. Parl., vi. 209–15.

81 M. M. Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy 1417–1464 (Manchester, 1993), 113–14.82 LPFD, vi. 1665. See below, 210.83 CPL, x. 189; xiv. 4–5; Registrum Ricardi Mayew Episcopi Herefordensis A.D.MDIV–

MDXVI, ed. A. T. Bannister, CYS, 27 (London, 1921), 11–15.84 Valor, i. 403.85 Rees, Wales, 31; Report, 167.86 e.g. Valor, iii. 19, 21, 99, 104, 122, 128.87 Claudius E.vi, fo. 48r.

Administration and Finances 75

to the order. Those collected in 1454–5 and 1479–82 produced considerablerevenues. In November 1457, John Langstrother was acquitted of £3,562 8s.8d. he had expended or committed to the order out of ‘the part of the Jubileeowing to the Religion’, while the papal camera received nearly £3,000 forNicholas V’s ‘half’ of sums collected in England after expenses werededucted.88 The later collection was entrusted to the turcopolier, JohnKendal, who was able to make use of printed indulgences produced byCaxton’s press. Although its total proceeds are unknown, at least £150was paid to Kendal by the papal collector in England from monies received,and voluntary contributions towards the defence of Rhodes in Worcesterdiocese amounted to over £60. It is likely that total donations, while lessthan in the 1450s, amounted to a few thousand pounds.89

As court profits and the sale of woods were no longer very valuable by thesixteenth century and profits from labour services were rarely mentioned,the remainder of the order’s temporal income was chiefly comprised of farmsand rents of its landed estate. It probably amounted to over £3,000 in thesixteenth century, and was contributed by manors, mills, messuages, ortenements let at farm on long lease by provincial chapter, and free, advoluntatem and copyhold rents of smaller properties. In London collectionwas probably the responsibility of two collectors of rents, one for originallyTemplar properties and one for those that had always belonged to theHospital.90 Elsewhere, the rents from the various classes of property werecollected in bailiwicks usually covering a number of parishes, and sometimesmore than twenty. A preceptory with very scattered estates, such as New-land, might be divided into as many as sixteen bailiwicks.91

3.2 The Receiver of the Common Treasury and the Submission ofResponsions

The Hospital’s conventual common treasury derived most of its revenuefrom four ancient dues levied on its properties or brethren: responsions;mortuaries; vacancies; and spolia. The most significant and regular of thesewere responsions, payments of a specific proportion of their net value leviedon most of the order’s benefices. Although they had sometimes been fixed at

88 AOM367, fos. 152v–153r; W. R. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England1327–1534, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1939–62), ii. 581–2.

89 Ibid., ii. 591–3.90 Robert Bailly was collector of the rents of the Temple in 1499, and there are subsequent

references to collectors of rents in London in the lease books. Quittances issued by severalreceivers and collectors of rents in London and its suburbs survive in the British Library.Lansdowne 200, fo. 65r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 227v, 227v–228r, 273v, 273v–274r; BL HarleianCharters 44 E24, 26, 28–31, 33, 39, 40, 43–5, 47.

91 Crossley, ‘Newland’, 10. This figure excludes most of the order’s property in Nottingham-shire, which was also accounted for under Newland, but which was organized into manors.

76 Administration and Finances

a quarter earlier in the fifteenth century, between 1467 and 1540 they werealways set at a third or a half, and an ‘augmentation’ was often added to theresponsion proper. The level of payment was set by chapter-general for theperiod until the next such meeting, and was renewable by the councilcomplete in the event that no chapter was held.92 At irregular intervalsgeneral or local surveys of the order’s properties were conducted in orderto update the assessments according to which responsions were calculated.Registers of visitations were kept by the receiver, perhaps partly so that hecould allocate responsions between the various preceptories.93 Althoughfew of their findings survive, general visitations of the order’s Europeanproperty were ordered in 1449, 1493–5, and 1539–40, resulting in ‘new’assessments on which subsequent ‘partitions’ of responsions were made. In1495 visitors were instructed to make an average of good and bad years asthe basis for their assessment.94 A visitation of the priories of England andIreland by John Langstrother and the prior of Rome in the early 1460s mayhave resulted in the onerous assessment for the half-annate imposed by theRome chapter-general of 1466–7.95 The responsions imposed on the prioryof England from 1498 onwards were probably based on the visitationordered in 1495, although the slightly differing proportions of their incomepaid by different preceptories as ‘augmentations’ in the 1520s and 1530smay indicate a continuous process of reassessment linked to prioral visit-ations.

The other three categories of payment were all incidental, arising from thedeath of a prior or preceptor. Mortuaries seem to have been levied from theday of death of the incumbent until the following 24 June, while vacancieswere payable for the twelve months after this.96 Both were supposed tocomprise the whole net revenue of the vacant benefice(s) over the period oftheir operation, although the vacancy years of preceptories in the master’sgift were often leased for rather less than the assessed net value. Finally, withsome exceptions, the spolia or personal effects of deceased brethren were

92 Stabilimenta, ‘De thesauro’, i (‘Consuetudo’); J. Sarnowsky, ‘The ‘‘Rights of the Treasury’’:The Financial Administration of the Hospitallers on Fifteenth-Century Rhodes, 1421–1522’,MO, ii. 267–74, at 268, 271nn.

93 AOM283, fo. 171r.94 Sources Concerning the Hospitallers of St John in the Netherlands, ed. J. M. van Winter

(Brill, 1998), 392–562; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 177–8; Sarnowsky, ‘Rights of the Treasury’, 271;SJG, Butler Papers, Box III, citing AOM391. In 1478 the assessment of responsions wasspecifically based on the ‘new estimate’ arrived at in the chapter of 1466–7. The assessmentlaid down by the chapter of 1498 was also adhered to for a number of years, still being thebenchmark for the payments of many priories, including England, in 1514. AOM283, fo. 188v;284, fo. 67r; 285, fo. 10v.

95 CPR1461–7, 52.96 AOM54, passim. Dr Luttrell has suggested that mortuaries were due from the date of

death to that of the following provincial chapter, and vacancies were payable for the followingfinancial year. As provincial chapters were usually held as close to 24 June as possible, it ispossible that payments of mortuaries and vacancies had become fixed on that date in the sameway that responsions had. Luttrell, ‘Western Accounts’, 4–5.

Administration and Finances 77

also earmarked for the conventual common treasury. Their recovery wasfacilitated by the requirement that sick brethren draw up a dispropriamen-tum of their effects whenever they were seriously ill and by the threat thatanyone found to have embezzled them was to lose the habit.97

Although the records of the common treasury from the Rhodian and earlyMaltese periods are almost all lost, numerous other documents having abearing on the finances of the order in the British Isles survive among theconvent’s chancery registers. The total responsion payable by the priories ofEngland and Ireland was specified in the chapters-general held between1466–7 and 1478, and was again referred to in 1493. Furthermore, manyreferences to the responsion or vacancy payments of individual preceptoriessurvive, often in the form of orders for or agreements about the payment ofarrears issued on behalf of the officers of the common treasury. Preceptoryleases granted by provincial chapters in England often mention the respon-sion owed by the benefice, although not always accurately, as lessees weresometimes only expected to pay a third-annate when a half-annate was due.Taken together with the accounts of 1520–6 and 1531–6, these recordsenable an assessment of the overall level of responsion payable by the prioryof England for most of the period covered by this survey, as can be seen inTable 3.2.

Two things are striking about these figures. First, it is clear that despite theconsolidation of the order’s estates in the fourteenth and fifteenth century,the value of the responsions submitted to the convent had declined consid-erably, so that a third-annate, which had been worth £2,303 or £2,280 in1338, now brought in scarcely half that sum, even with an ‘augmentation’added. Second, the prior was paying a much smaller fraction of the value ofhis estates than his brethren of theirs. The overall decline in responsionsclearly owed a great deal to the exemption of many of the prior’s estatesfrom payment, but the exact changes in assessment are elusive, not leastbecause it is not entirely clear how responsions were calculated in thefourteenth century. The Report does not make it clear whether the priorywas simply expected to submit all of its net income to the convent, or a thirdof the gross value of its estates, as figures are given for both, and both aredeclared to be the sum remaining for responsions. Neither is it entirelycertain whether assessments in the 1520s and 1530s were based on grossor net values. The values given in the Valor and Ministers’ Accounts mustdiffer considerably from those calculated by the order. However, if onecompares the responsion payable by the preceptories of England andWales in 1535 with the Valor and with a third source, a list of values ofthe order’s properties in east and west of circa 1478,98 one can see that inmost cases a half-annate in 1520 or 1535 amounted to about 40 per cent of

97 Stabilimenta, ‘De Hospitalitate’, vi; ‘De Thesauro’, iv, vi.98 BL Add. MS 17319, fos. 20r–38r.

78 Administration and Finances

Table 3.2. Responsions payable by the priory of England, 1467–1535

Date Level of responsion

Total annualcontribution ofpriory of Englanda

Contribution ofprior of England

1467–72 Half-annateb £1,560 þ clothc

(8,500 ecus)Unknown

1473–82 Half-annated £1,416/12/0(7,083 ecus)f

Unknown

1483–9 Half-annatee

1490–1501 Third-annateg £944/12/0h

(4,723 ecus)Unknown

1502–4 Half-annatei

1505–16 Third-annatej (£1,109/19/6¼ less £7/6/8)?k

1517–20 Half-annate þadditional levyl

£1,521/3/9 þ£92/13/8 less £7/6/8m

£313/3/5 þ £15/18/10less £7/6/8

1521–6 Third-annate þadditional levyof 15,000 ecusn

£1,109/19/6¼ þ£350/11/7 less £7/6/8o

£242/14/10½ þ£59/1/9 less £7/6/8

1527–35 Half-annate þ15,000 ecusp

£1,613/7/10½q £329/2/3 less £7/6/8

a Including the Scottish preceptory of Torphichen, but excluding the priory of Ireland which, although

paying its responsions through the receiver of the order in England, was assessed separately. The Irish

priory was ordered to pay 320 ecus in 1467 and 1478, although its usual responsion was £26 13s. 4d.,which was payable in the 1440s, 1520s, and 1530s. AOM283, fos.31r, 144v;Ancient Deeds, iii. C3613;AOM54, fos.8v, 32v, 55v, etc.b AOM283, fos.29v–32v; ‘For rates of responsion payable in 1460–1522 see Sarnowsky, Macht undHerrschaft, 536–51.’c AOM283, fo. 30v; CPL, xii. 282–3.d Imposed successively in of 1471, 1475, and 1478. AOM283, fos.87v–91r, 148r, 149v, 188r–v.e Sarnowsky, Macht Und herrschaft, 546–7.f AOM283, fo. 88v;g AOM31, no. 13 (bull of chapter, 10 Oct. 1489, imposing third-annates for 1490–2); 391, fos.199r

(1493), 114v (1494–5; priory of Venice); 284, fo. 5r.h AOM391, fo. 199r (third-annate to be paid in June 1493). This assessment may have increased in thelater 1490s to the same as that paid after 1521, as the preceptories of Carbrooke and Swingfield were

paying the same responsion in 1501 as in 1521–6. Lansdowne 200, fos.86r–v, 87v–88r; AOM54,

fos.35v, 32v.i AOM284, fos.19v–22r, 22r–25r.j AOM284, fos.60v–61r, 66v–69r; 32, no. 1; 285, fos.1r–12r, esp. 2r.k The preceptories of Dalby, Eagle, andNewland paid virtually identical responsions in 1506 and 1513

to those levied on them from June 1521 onwards, but without the augmentation then imposed.

Claudius E.vi, fos.44r–v, 113v; AOM54, fo. 29v.l This was laid down in chapter on 20 July 1517. AOM54, fo. 2v.m AOM54, fos.1r–20r.n The chapter-general held in November 1520 laid down a responsion of a third-annate ‘unacum

subsidio’ to be paid in the financial years ending 24 June 1521 and 1522. This was progressivelyextended until 1526. AOM54, fos.27v, 77v, 105v.o AOM54, fos.27v–45v.p Imposed by the chapter of spring 1527 for 1527–9. The levy was successively extended by the councilcomplete to 1530, 1531, and 1532, and then by the chapter-general of February 1533. AOM286, fos.9r,

23r; 54, fos.173v, 207v; 85, fo. 94v; 286, fo. 37v et seq.q AOM54, fos.173r–183v; 207v–218v.

Administration and Finances 79

Table 3.3. Responsions compared with assessed income

HouseGross value1535 (£/s. d.)

Net value1535 (£/s. d.)

Assessed value1478 (£)a

Responsion 1520, 1531–5(£/s. d.)

Responsion 1521–6(£/s. d.)

Prioral camerae None 70 70Fifth camerab (210) 89/16/7 þ 5/14/0 63/13/8½ þ 12/2/4Prioral preceptoriesBuckland Prioris 120 51/4/11 þ 3/5/11½ 36/7/3Greenham 69 29/8/6 þ 1/16/0 20/16/4Hogshaw 11 17/2/1 þ 1/4/0 12/4/3¼Maltby 100 42/6/8 þ 3/0/11 30/5/03⁄4Poling 31 13/4/8 þ 0/18/0¼ 9/8/5½Other housesAnsty & Trebigh 90/1/9½ 81/8/5½ 86 (32þ54) 37/0/10 þ 2/0/4 26/6/103⁄4 þ 8/18/3Baddesley & Maine 131/14/1 118/16/7 89 (54þ35) 42/16/7½ þ 2/15/6½ 29/14/9 þ 10/2/4Battisford & Dingley Entry

incompleteEntryincomplete

112 (60þ52) 48/8/2½ þ 3/5/11½ 34/9/53⁄4 þ 11/14/9

Beverley Not given 164/9/10 158 67/9/4½ þ 4/11/6 48/0/7 þ 16/9/0Carbrooke 76/5/3½ 65/2/9½ 67 28/8/2 þ 1/17/6 20/4/5½ þ 4/18/3Dalby & Rothley 274/11/2 231/7/8 193 80/18/1 þ 5/8/0 57/10/83⁄4 þ 19/11/5Dinmore & Garway n/a n/a 154 65/10/0 þ 4/4/0 46/9/4 þ 15/6/2Eagle 137/2/0 124/2/0 101 43/0/13 þ 2/16/63⁄4 30/11/03⁄4 þ 10/9/4Halston 160/14/10 150 64/0/2½ þ4/5/5½ 45/10/5½ þ 15/9/10Mount St John 137/2/0 102/13/9 103 44/5/7 þ 2/15/6 31/7/43⁄4 þ 10/13/4Newland & Ossington 202/3/8 129/14/11½ 194 (110þ84) 83/0/0 þ5/9/6 58/19/8 þ 20/1/4Quenington 146/17/1½ 137/7/1½ None 49/16/2½ þ 3/6/0 35/8/1½ þ 12/2/4Ribston 224/9/7 207/9/7 2? (180?) 76/19/2 þ 5/2/0¼ 54/14/1½ þ 18/12/10Shingay 175/4/6 166 69/16/2 þ 4/11/6½ 49/11/9½ þ 16/17/4Slebech 206/9/10½ 184/10/11½ 181 77/12/6 þ 5/2/0 55/3/0 þ 18/15/4

Swingfield 104/0/2½ 87/3/3½ 80 38/8/8½ þ 2/8/7½ 27/4/73⁄4 þ 9/5/4Temple Brewer (207/16/8) 184/6/8 141 61/19/7½ þ 3/17/11½ 43/18/5 þ 14/18/9Templecombe 120/10/3½ 107/16/11½ 110 47/0/4 þ 3/1/6 33/7/10½ þ 11/6/9Torphichen None 33/6/8 33/6/8Willoughton 195/3/0½ 174/11/1½ 160 68/12/4 þ 4/11/6 48/15/103⁄4 þ 16/12/4Yeaveley & Barrow 107/3/8½ 93/3/4½ 149 36/14/11½ þ 2/9/5½ 26/2/11½ þ 8/18/4Magistral camera (Peckham) N/A 60 þ 3/6/8 None NoneChilcombe & Toller (Nuns) None 42/15/6 þ 2/14/0 30/6/4 þ 10/6/6total 1521/3/9 þ 92/13/8¼

a BL Add. MS 17319, fo.37r–v. Values were given in this document in ecus de soleil of the kingdom of France and aspers reckoned at 62 aspers to an ecu,

although totals were reckoned in florins of Rhodes. Ecus were worth 4 shillings sterling according to the order’s usual assessment, but might cost as much as4s. 5d. or 4s. 6d. when purchased by exchange. AOM54, fos.68r, 96r, 151r.b This was Balsall in 1478 and Melchbourne, a rather richer property, between 1501 and 1540.

the assessed value of the house given in 1478, which seems to have corre-sponded more nearly to the net values of the order’s estates given in 1535than the gross.

The officer responsible for the collection and dispatch of responsions wasthe receiver of the common treasury, who was usually a junior preceptor andwas appointed in convent and directly answerable to the treasury officialsthere.99 Receivers had been established in each of the western priories in1358 in an effort to check prioral misuse of funds, and had considerableindependence and wide powers.100 Their duties were essentially to collectand dispatch all the dues and arrears owed to the central convent in theMediterranean. In pursuance of this aim they were empowered to seekpayment from debtors; to issue quittances to those who had paid; to gobefore kings, princes, corporations, lords, and the courts to prosecute ordefend actions and to exhort and compel the prior and preceptors to proceedagainst non-payers.101 The receiver was aided in these tasks by a proctor,also a professed Hospitaller, who was to solicit brethren to pay their arrearsand debts in provincial chapter or elsewhere, to seek justice against non-payers and to collect the spolia of deceased brethren in cooperation with thereceiver.102 The receiver was further supplemented by the clerk and nuncioof the common treasury, who were salaried and were usually laymen. Theclerk, or scribe, was appointed by the prior with the consent of provincialchapter, and held office for life. He was responsible for issuing quittancesand setting down the accounts submitted to the convent. The clerkship washeld successively by Richard Passemer (1459–1500), William Yolton (1500–1516/22), Francis Bell (1516/22–1526), andMablestone (1526–40).103 BothBell and Mablestone were chancellors of the priory as well as clerk of thetreasury, and Mablestone, at least, had the responsibility of writing topreceptors informing them of what had been decreed in convent concerningpayments and urging them to pay their responsions.104 The right to appointthe clerk was jealously guarded by successive priors; a grant of the expect-ancy to it by John Weston and the provincial chapter was overturned at the

99 Although not consistently in their hands, the governance of the common treasury hadbeen granted to masters of the order since 1429, giving them the right to levy all the arrears andrevenues due to the common treasury in east and west and to appoint or dismiss its officers,including the receivers of the western priories. While the master was absent, and usually untilthe next chapter after he arrived, the order’s finances were administered by the grand preceptorand the two proctors of the common treasury. These continued to exercise their offices while themaster was in charge of the treasury, but he could then dismiss or appoint them as he saw fit.Sarnowsky, ‘Rights of the Treasury’, 270–4; AOM282, fos. 13r–15r; 283, fos. 184v–186v; 284,fos. 22r–25r, 57v–66r; 285, esp. fos. 1r–3v; 286, fos. 9v–12v, etc.

100 Delaville, Rhodes, 136; Sarnowsky, ‘Rights of the Treasury’, 270; id., Macht undHerrschaft, 331.

101 See e.g. AOM382, fos. 148v–149v.102 See e.g. AOM395, fo. 151r.103 AOM369, fo. 198v; 393, fos. 112r–v; 407, fos. 150v–151r; 412, fos. 191r–v, 197v–198r.104 LPFD, v, no. 999.

82 Administration and Finances

request of John Kendal in 1493, and Thomas Docwra importuned the orderboth for the right to grant it on Yolton’s resignation or death and for theconfirmation of this grant by chapter.105

The scribe of the treasury was in fact far more than a mere clerk. BothPassemer and Yolton held property in the outer precinct of the priory, andwere described as gentlemen.106 Passemer was controller of the Petty Cus-toms during the Readeption government of 1470–1, and was involved invarious financial dealings on the order’s behalf, while Yolton conducted thenegotiations over the procuration fees supposedly owed to the bishop ofHereford fromGarway, appearing before the archbishop’s court of Audiencein 1506–8.107 Bell spent a great deal of time shuttling forth between Englandand the convent with letters of exchange and consignments of cloth, tin, andsilver.108 Mablestone and Yolton, as we have seen, advanced money topreceptors leaving the country in return for leases of their estates.109

The most routine of the receiver’s business was the collection of respon-sions, which were supposed to be paid on the feast of St John Baptist or inprovincial chapters. Although late payment was common, as the accounts of1520–36 and admonitions to debtors in the Libri Bullarum demonstrate,before 1530 English brethren were rarely in arrears for more than a year, andthose who did fall into debt were mostly newly appointed priors or pre-ceptors struggling to complete their vacancy payments. More serious andlong-term debts arose in connection with estates in Ireland, Scotland, andWales, and in England after 1533. The priory of Ireland almost neversubmitted responsions between 1466 and the 1490s and Robert Evers, theprior appointed in 1497, paid only about half of his.110 Except for the firstfew years after John Rawson had gained definite control of the priory inabout 1520, payments from Ireland continued to be erratic until the dissol-ution.111 Considerable debts owed to Evers from Slebech also had to bewritten off after his death. In 1520 Sir John Wogan, Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys,Sir Thomas Philip, and William Jones ap Thomas owed over £112 betweenthem for farms of the commandery, or portions thereof, held between 1507and 1515. Although the vice-receiver, John Babington began proceedingsagainst them at the common law in about 1516, these had proved tobe drawn out and wasteful by 1520, and were dropped.112 With theexception of the £20 owed by ap Thomas, which had been paid by August

105 AOM391, fos. 200r–v; 405, fos. 130v–131r; 406, fos. 158v–159r.106 Lansdowne 200, fos. 14v, 15r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 51v–52r; Excavations, 133, 140, 143,

163–4.107 CPR1467–77, 168, 231;CCR1476–85, no. 546;RegistrumMayew, ed. Bannister, 20, 32.108 AOM54, fos. 77r, 98v, 124v; 404, fos. 193v–194r; LPFD, iv. 765, 923–4.109 See e.g. Claudius E.vi, fos. 4v–5r, 6v–7r, 16r–v, 28r–v, 44r–v, 81v–82r, 83r–v, 98r–99v, 238r,

264r–265v; PRO LR2/62, fos. 1v–2v.110 AOM54, fo. 13v.111 Ibid., fos. 174v–175r, 208v, 226v–227r, 244v–245r, 267v–268r, 286v–287r.112 Ibid., fos. 12v, 13v, 38v.

Administration and Finances 83

1524113 the debts were never recovered.114 The Scottish house of Torphi-chen also fell into arrears after the exclusion of the legitimate preceptor,George Dundas, from possession between 1510 and 1518. In accordancewith the order’s statutes, which required incoming preceptors to pay thedebts of their predecessors, the proctors and auditors of the common treas-ury insisted that Dundas satisfy the responsions for these years, only drop-ping their demands in 1525. Rather spitefully, they also demanded thatDundas pay the expenses of the servant sent to Scotland to negotiate thissettlement.115

The collection of the other levies due to the treasury called for rather moreactivity. The receiver was responsible for collecting the rents and leasing theestates of deceased brethren, for the payment of their servants and for thedefence of the lands and rights of the preceptory in the courts. Although thiswas sometimes delegated to the proctor, the receiver was also supposed to goto the preceptory in question and collect the deceased’s effects in companywith another brother or a notary.116 Inventories of these were to be drawn upandwitnessed by a notary. Responsions continued to be paid by the houses ofthe deceased during their mortuary and vacancy years, and were extractedfrom the total receipts and accounted for separately. The remainder of theincome, after expenses, was also reserved for the common treasury.

Out of the sums collected from these levies, the receiver was responsiblefor the payment of long-standing pensions amounting to just over £35, hisown stipend (£24) and those of the scribe and nuncio of the commontreasury.117 A further payment of 13s. 4d. was made to the priests celebrat-ing the annual mass for the souls of confratres and benefactors of the order,and a further shilling was given in oblations on the same occasion.118 Moreoccasional payments such as those for recovering Thomas Newport’s effectsafter his ill-fated voyage to relieve Rhodes in 1522/3 might also be neces-sary.119 Once these sums had been paid the receiver was bound to satisfyletters of exchange drawn on the order’s revenues in England and to send theremainder to the convent. In fact the submission of monies to headquarterswas rather irregular and the receiver was often several thousand pounds inarrears. The erratic nature of payments is illustrated in Table 3.4.

The great majority of these monies were submitted as letters of exchangerather than as cash or goods. On 18 September 1532, for example, ClementWest paid the Genoese merchant Antonio Vivaldi £2,592 5s. 10d., which thelatter was to pay to the use of the common treasury in ducats on thefollowing 1 March, as appeared ‘per chirographum et litteras excambiiquas idem Anthonius de dat’ presencium fecit’.120 This was by far the largest

113 AOM54, fos. 37v–38r, 61v–62r, 116v–117r.114 Ibid., fos. 13v, 38v, 62v, 89v, 117v, 147v, 199v. 115 Ibid., fos. 148v–149r, 151v.116 Ibid., passim; Stabilimenta, ‘De Thesauro’, ix (Statute of Naillac).117 e.g. AOM54, fo. 21v. 118 Ibid.; BL MS Nero E.vi, fos. 6r–v.119 AOM54, fos. 93v–94r. 120 Ibid., fo. 186r.

84 Administration and Finances

payment accounted for in the turcopolier’s accounts for 1531, although£201 0s. 13d. was paid to the London citizen Edward Browne for clothprovided for the use of the common treasury.121 Similar patterns occur inother years. The accounts for 1535 show Vivaldi and Francis Galliardettobeing paid over £1,900 in London in accordance with letters of exchangeunder which they were obliged to pay similar sums in Messina for the use ofthe convent.122 Unlike the situation which can be seen in many of themandates to receivers of the priory to satisfy letters of exchange recordedin the Libri Bullarum of the Rhodian period, Vivaldi and Galliardetto hadnot yet paid the convent the monies which they had promised it. They werethus acting as factors carrying monies to the convent rather than as creditorslending to it on the basis of repayment from its English revenues.

Although relatively substantial quantities of cloth and tin were shippedfrom Southampton for the use of brethren at headquarters or in satisfactionof responsions or vacancy payments,123 letters of exchange were the order’spreferred way of collecting money from England. Both exchange operations

Table 3.4. Receivers’ payments to convent, 1520–156 (£s. d.)

Year Receiptsa Payments Arrearsb

1520 1,858/10/11½ 688/14/6 2,992/14/5¼1521 1,913/4/5¼ 121/16/1 4,784/1/9½1522 1,362/9/23⁄4 6,212/19/8 Credit of 66/9/33⁄41523 1,870/1/1½ 261/4/113⁄4 1,599/16/23⁄41524 1,517/4/11¼ 2,079/17/0 1,037/4/2½1525 1,517/5/8¼ 1,408/2/8 1,146/7/23⁄41526 1,655/18/3 1,236/19/2 1,565/6/33⁄41531 976/15/2½ 2,864/14/2½ 01532 1,601/13/53⁄4 1,610/7/3½ 91/6/2¼1533 906/11/9½ 996/17/93⁄4 1/0/01534 2,550/15/5½ 2,201/17/5 348/18/1½1535 1,800/1/1½ 1,869/3/5 279/15/101536 1,137/8/1½ 1,167/6/8 249/17/33⁄4

a Receipts have been calculated by subtracting the arrears of the previous year’s account fromthe sum of receipts and arrears given in each year.b Arrears are those calculated by the officials of the common treasury in convent, which often

differed slightly from the sums suggested by the receiver as some of his payments might be

disallowed. Some of the discrepancies in the figures can be accounted for because of this.

121 Ibid.122 PRO SP2/Q no. 32, fos. 135b/158b–136b/159b.123 CCR1389–92, 126; CPR1467–77, 506; CPR1475–85, 58; The Overseas Trade of Lon-

don. Exchequer Customs Accounts 1480–1, ed. H. S. Cobb, London Record Society, 27 (Bristol,1990), 282–7, 314–15; AOM54, fos. 22v, 44v–45r, 67v, 93r, 96r; LPFD, Addenda, no. 789;A. Ruddock, ‘London Capitalists and the Decline of Southampton in the Early Tudor Period’,Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 2 (1949), 137–51, at 142.

Administration and Finances 85

and commodity shipments were usually conducted through Venice or usingVenetian shipping rather than through Avignon, where the order’s receiver-general in the west had his headquarters.124 In 1503 it was ordered that allresponsions and other dues of the common treasury should be submitted tothe receiver of Venice, Andrea Martini.125 Although the Hospital undoubt-edly lost considerable sums by its reliance on exchange operations, it was atleast able to anticipate the issues of its ‘British’ estates by this device, and asexchanges were taxed at a penny a ducat in England, the crownmade a smallprofit on the transactions too.126

Both the mechanisms by which the estates of the priory of England wereadministered and defended, and the evidence for its dispatch of substantialsums to its Mediterranean convent, indicate that its brethren took theirduties to maintain the order’s property and to support the struggle in theeast seriously. Particularly telling is the dispatch of more than £6,000 over-seas in 1522, after news that Rhodes was under siege had reached England.Yet the activities of unprofessed officials, tenants, confratres, donors, andmerchants were clearly indispensable to its success, or otherwise, in admin-istering its properties and supporting the convent. The next chapter willconsider the order’s relationship with these persons in more depth.

124 Responsions or other dues were being sent or ordered to be via Venice or on Venetianshipping in 1389, 1391, 1395, 1409, 1427, 1442–5, 1459, 1493, 1503–4, 1505–6, and 1521.Tipton, ‘English Hospitallers’, 120–1; Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, 166; SJG, Butler Papers(citing AOM347, fo. 217v); AOM356, fos. 182r–183r; 357, 198v–199r, 201v–202r; Sarnowsky,Macht und Herrschaft, 333; AOM391, fos. 199v; 394, fo. 226r; Mueller, Venetian MoneyMarket, 347; AOM54, fo. 52r. A Florentine merchant was used to send money by exchangein the 1440s, and Genoese shipping to transport cloth to Rhodes in the mid–1450s. AOM357,fos. 198v–199r; 367, fo. 152v.

125 AOM394, fos. 177r–178r.126 e.g. AOM54, fo. 222v.

86 Administration and Finances

CHAPTER FOUR

The Hospital and Society inEngland and Wales

Christ’s College, Cambridge, has the laudable custom of inviting graduatestudents, in rotation, to dinner with members of the Fellowship. At one suchgathering I attended those present included Sir John Plumb, the notableeighteenth-century historian, who came to sit next to me when the Fellowschanged places after dessert. Having asked what I was studying he followedup with one of the brisk but pertinent questions which were his trademark:‘Weren’t they all decadent by then?’

This characterization of the late medieval Hospitallers might still findsome takers. It was not, perhaps, based solely on a desire to provoke, butit was characteristic of a British view of the crusades and of the militaryorders shaped by those, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Runciman, who wrotewithin an enlightened and broadly ‘Whiggish’ tradition which saw history asan uneven progress towards a secular society freed from the mental andphysical shackles imposed by the medieval Church.1 In essence, they con-tended that the crusades were exercises in folly, barbarism, and cupiditydirected by fanatics and perpetrated by unlettered thugs considerably infer-ior to the cultured sybarites they assaulted. In a specifically English context,historians tended to play down the significance of crusading to illustrate thehabitual resistance of their homeland to the dangerous currents of fanati-cism perpetually springing anew from the continental waters where theyoriginated. Although remaining popular with an educated public highlysuspicious of religious fundamentalism, such views are now given littlecredence in academic circles. Recent works by Simon Lloyd and ChristopherTyerman have demonstrated that crusading was a thoroughly respectableand carefully planned activity sponsored and organized by the Englishcrown and Church and supported and participated in by wide sections ofEnglish society.2 Steamrollering the objections of Terry Jones, AnthonyLuttrell and Maurice Keen have convincingly extended the era of activeand convinced English participation in crusading into the late fourteenth

1 Discussed in Tyerman, England, 5–6; id., The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke,1998), 111–13, 124–5.

2 S. Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1988); Tyerman, England.

century, while Drs Tyerman and Macquarrie have pointed out that smallnumbers of English, Welsh, and Scots volunteers continued to serve in Spainand the east in the fifteenth.3 As late as 1511 a considerable force of Englishcrusaders was dispatched to assist a projected Spanish campaign in northAfrica. If this expedition showed itself more concerned to grapple with thebottle than with the infidel, later in the century gentlemen volunteers fromBritain and Ireland took part with apparent sobriety in the defences ofRhodes in 1522 and Malta in 1565, the assault on Tunis in 1535, and thePortuguese crusade in north Africa in 1578.4 Crusading resonances, alongwith an active knight errantry, can even be found in the autobiographies ofElizabethan and Jacobean adventurers like Captain John Smith, who wascaptured by the Turks in 1602 while fighting alongside Habsburg soldiers inTransylvania.5

Well into the sixteenth century, moreover, crusading rhetoric remainedimportant in diplomatic exchanges, and the public was kept aware of eventson the front lines of Christendom through preaching, the publication ofindulgences and newsletters, the money-raising tours of Greek refugees, thereports of pilgrims returned from the Holy Land, and the continued appear-ance of Moors and Turks as stock villains in romances and plays.6 If somedespaired of the Holy Land ever being recovered, prophecies, romances, andnewly printed editions and translations of histories of the early crusadesencouraged optimism in many others.7 Nevertheless, even those writers whohave located crusading firmlywithin themainstreamof the religious, cultural,and political development of the British Isles have admitted that active par-ticipation in crusading was becoming an increasingly marginal feature of laydevotional activity even in the fifteenth century.8 Such a gulf between senti-ment and action was not unique to this region, but it nevertheless requiresexplanation in a ‘British’ context. If there was such a healthy interest in thedefence of Christendomwhy did numbers of ‘British’ crusaders decline?

3 T. Jones, Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary, 2nd edn. (London,1994); M. Keen, ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade’, in his Nobles,Knights and Men-at-Arms (London, 1996), 101–20; A. T. Luttrell, ‘Chaucer’s Knight and theMediterranean’, Library of Mediterranean History, 1 (1994), 127–60; A. Macquarrie, Scotlandand the Crusades 1095–1560 (Edinburgh, 1985), 93–5, 106; Tyerman, England, 278, 307–9.See also D. Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe: The Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts withChristendom, c.1215–1545, i: Religion, Culture and Commerce (East Linton, 2000), 68–9.

4 Tyerman, England, 352–3; Bradford,Great Siege, 151; LPFD, ix, nos. 459, 490; see below,Ch. 8.3.

5 J. R. Goodman, Chivalry and Exploration, 1298–1630 (Woodbridge, 1998), 198–207.6 Tyerman, England, 350–2, 304–6, 308–19, 312–13, 287–8, 296; Lunt, Financial Relations,

ii, passim; J. Harris, Greek Emigres in the West 1400–1520 (Camberley, 1995), passim; R. N.Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995), 70.

7 Tyerman, England, 302, 281, 303–6, 347; L. A. Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs inLater Medieval England (York, 2000), passim.

8 Tyerman, England, 265–6, 288, 302, 324. Macquarrie’s chapters on Scottish involvementin crusading after 1410 are entitled ‘The Long Decline’ and ‘Castles in the Air’. Macquarrie,Scotland and the Crusades, 92–121.

88 The Hospital and Society

First it must be admitted that for most of the fifteenth century crusadingopportunities were rather limited. The main theatres of anglophone partici-pation in the previous century had been Spain, north Africa, and the Balticregion.9 The crusade in the Baltic, however, effectively ended for the English,Scots, and French with the Teutonic knights’ calamitous defeat at Tannen-berg in 1410 and the belated realization in the west that the latest Lithuanianconversion to Christianity was genuine.10 The Spanish front was dormantrather than moribund and would revive in 1482, as to some extent would theparticipation in crusading there of those born in the British Isles, but ‘British’crusading in the Peninsula had always been rather sporadic.11 A third area inwhich there had been some fourteenth-century ‘British’ involvement was theeastern Mediterranean.12 Crusading warfare here was largely waged by sea,and continued to be so in the fifteenth and later centuries, but while a fewEnglish, Welsh, and Scots crusaders and mercenaries fought in the Balkansand Asia Minor during the fifteenth century, there is little evidence of‘British’ participation in naval crusading operations save for limited involve-ment in the Burgundian expeditions of 1443–4 and 1463–4 and the serviceof some stipendiary soldiers and volunteers with the Hospitallers.13 Besidesthe difficulties posed by distance and the expense of fighting in the easternMediterranean, the reasons for this failure may include unfamiliarity withgalley warfare and Levantine waters and the fact that such expeditions werenot always well publicized in north-western Europe. It is also surely signifi-cant that the partly English mercenary companies operating in Italy that hadcontributed so many men to the campaigns of the 1360s had largelybeen replaced by native condottieri by the fifteenth century, and so wereno longer on the spot when crusading expeditions set out from the penin-sula.14 Most important of all, crusading energies were increasingly directedelsewhere, into royal service. From the thirteenth century onwards, butparticularly during the Hundred Years War and later, kings claimed anenhanced authority over their leading subjects, forcing them to advantagepatriotic over confessional military activity. Although lesser lights madetheir way to the east in small numbers well into the fifteenth century,magnates and knights were more or less compelled to organize their crusad-ing activities during lulls in the fighting such as occurred in the 1360s and

9 Ditchburn, Religion, Culture and Commerce, 69–71, 95; Macquarrie, Scotland and theCrusades, 75–9, 84–8; Tyerman, England, 267–80.

10 Tyerman, England, 265–6, 271.11 Ditchburn,Religion, Culture and Commerce, 68; Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades,

106; Tyerman, England, 308, 351–2.12 See n. 3 above.13 Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades, 95; Tyerman, England, 304, 308; AOM79,

fo. 11v; 364, fo. 175r; 366, fos. 119v, 174v; 367, fos. 118v, 201v, 215v, 382, fo. 138r–v; 387,fo. 202r; 395, fo. 196r.

14 Tyerman, England, 291–2; M. Mallett, ‘Mercenaries’ in M. Keen (ed.),Medieval Warfare:A History (Oxford, 1999), 209–29, at 219, 221.

The Hospital and Society 89

1390s.15 Even after the end of the war, strained foreign relations anddomestic dynastic conflicts continued to leave the government unenthusias-tic about crusading schemes, or the participation of its subjects in them.Only at the very end of the fifteenth century was there a sustained revival ofroyal interest.16 Nevertheless, even in mid-century, writers as diverse asGeorge Neville, Sir John Fortescue, and the alchemist George Ripley wereall keen to promote crusading as a way to heal the divisions in society andlaunch it on a common and glorious enterprise.17 Thereafter such argumentswere taken up with especial force by Caxton, whose publications includedJohn Kaye’s account of the 1480 siege of Rhodes and several older texts witha crusading or chivalric theme, and who took care to stress the relevance ofthese as a spur to contemporary action.18 Anti-clericalism was certainly nobar to crusading plans: the possibly noble author(s) of a 1529 schemearguing for the partial disendowment of the English Church proposed todevote the proceeds to war against the Turks while shortly afterwards thelawyer Christopher St Germain incorporated a call for a crusade in hisradical reformist tract, ‘Salem and Bizance’.19

One way in which both crown and society should have been able tosupport devotional violence was by assisting the order of St John, whichmaintained a small body of ‘British’ and Irish brethren in the eastern Medi-terranean. But the ability of its English langue to meet these aspirations hasnever been examined in any depth. If the long-established opinion that thecrusades were of only marginal significance in the medieval political andsocial history of the British Isles has been largely overturned, the view thatthe ‘British’ knights of St John were decadent in the fifteenth century hasremained largely unassailed. To Gibbon’s dictum that the Military Orders‘neglected to live, but were prepared to die, in the service of Christ’20 can beadded, in a specifically British context, the charge that in the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries the Hospital’s houses were ‘little more than rent-collect-ing agencies’, their estates leased out to provide a comfortable life for theirfew remaining brethren.21 There have certainly been writers who havechallenged this view, mostly by emphasizing the order’s military exploits inthe Mediterranean, but few of them have been professional historians and

15 Tyerman, England, 266, 268–9, 284, 308–9.16 Ibid. 350–3.17 J. Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud, 2002),

198–9, 202.18 Tyerman, England, 304–6, 347.19 R. W. Hoyle, ‘The Origins of the Dissolution of the Monasteries’, Historical Journal, 38

(1995), 275–305, at 285, 303–4; J. Guy, ‘ThomasMore and Christopher St German: The Battleof the Books’, in A. Fox and J. A. Guy (eds.), Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism,Politics and Reform 1500–1550 (Oxford, 1986), 95–120, at 97–8.

20 Cited in M. Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cam-bridge, 1994), 316.

21 DNB, xl. 360 (William Archbold’s biography of Thomas Newport [d.1523]).

90 The Hospital and Society

their opinions have had little influence on academic perceptions of theorder. Scholars such as David Knowles and Claire Cross have appearedmore comfortable with the monastic and mendicant orders than with themilitary, both maintaining an almost complete silence on the subject.22 Indiscussions of the dissolution of the monasteries, the order is largely ignored,some scholars appearing to be completely unaware of its existence.23 Rob-erta Gilchrist, who has examined the archaeology of the military orders inthe British Isles in some detail, has nevertheless minimized the significanceof the Hospital’s activities after 1291, suggesting that the order never recov-ered the prosperity it had enjoyed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.24

Moreover, Knowles’s depiction of late medieval monasticism was generallyunenthusiastic, and recently some scholars have gone further than he inpresenting a picture of religious houses as unfashionable institutions underassault by both the laity and secular churchmen, who attempted to refashionthem into chantries and educational or charitable facilities in line withmore utilitarian conceptions of their role and functions. Those institutionswhich could not be proved to be useful might be suppressed, particularly iftheir founders had no living descendants,25 while even larger monasterieswhich escaped such conversion were increasingly subject to lay takeover oftheir outlying estates and of monastic offices. At its boldest, such writingsuggests that all the older-established religious orders were suffering fromthe same malaise, compounded of lack of zeal, lack of relevance, andlaicization, and comes close to claiming that the laity had lost sympathywith monasticism to such an extent that those holding monastic leasesand offices were only waiting for their moment to turn possession intolegal title.26

Yet this line of argument has rarely been extended to cover those forms ofreligious community which exercised an active ministry among the laity,such as friaries. The evidence suggests that these enjoyed substantial, if

22 Knowles, Religious Orders; C. Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York,1520–1540’, TRHS, 5th ser., 38 (1988), 131–45; ead., ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries andthe Yorkshire Church in the Sixteenth Century’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.),Government, Religion andSociety in Northern England 1000–1700 (Stroud, 1997), 159–71.

23 Cross, for example, includes friaries but not Hospitaller preceptories among the religioushouses she lists as dissolved, her assertion that ‘monasticism in Yorkshire was at an end’ byJanuary 1540 suggesting indifference towards both the order and those hospitals which main-tained a regular regime thereafter. J. H. Bettey not only ignores the order’s west countrypreceptories but also transforms its nunnery at Buckland into a house of Augustinian canon-esses. Joyce Youings mentions the hospital’s inclusion in the 1534 proposals to disendow thechurch and the date of its dissolution, but does not go much beyond this. Cross, ‘Dissolution’,159, 163; Bettey, Suppression, 142; Youings, Dissolution, 34, 146, 90.

24 Gilchrist, Contemplation, 62–105, 68.25 S. D. Phillips, ‘The Recycling of Monastic Wealth in Medieval Southern England, 1300–

1530’, Southern History, 22 (2000), 45–71; B. J. Thompson, ‘Monasteries and their Patrons atFoundation and Dissolution’, TRHS, 6th ser., 4 (1994), 103–25, at 114–17; id., ‘Laity’, esp. 30,34–5, 39–41; Hoyle, ‘Origins’, 276–7, 281–3.

26 Phillips, ‘Recycling’, 68; Thompson, ‘Monasteries’, 122–3.

The Hospital and Society 91

hardly universal, lay support.27 Nor have critics of late medieval monasti-cism paid much attention to the contrary evidence of vitality provided by theBridgettines and Carthusians,28 or given credit to the continuing attractionof the larger and older houses for some of the laity, their major role incharitable and chantry provision, and their vigorous justification of theiractivities.29 Despite these caveats, however, it is clear that there were strongexternal pressures both on religious houses and their estates in the laterMiddle Ages, and that smaller and poorer houses were particularly affectedby these. Most vulnerable of all to lay takeover were those ‘alien’ prioriesowing allegiance to an overseas mother-house, especially those among themwhich were poor, not fully conventual, or whose heads were not formallyinducted.30

On the face of it, the order of St John might appear to have been vulner-able to a similar remodelling of its houses. Its fourteenth-century masterswere overwhelmingly French speakers, its receivers-general based in Avi-gnon, and its English, Welsh, and Irish houses barely conventual in 1338,and mostly reduced to maintaining a single lay preceptor a century later.Many of them also had incomes sufficiently low to be considered unviable asreligious communities according to the criteria laid down by parliament.After 1312, moreover, several of the families which had endowed the Temp-lars demanded that their endowments be restored to them rather than pass tothe Hospital, and mounted physical and legal challenges even after the latterhad gained possession. Nonetheless, once legally acquired, the order man-aged to avoid surrendering any of its estates permanently, save by exchange,and its amalgamations of houses, while resulting in occupancy by lay farm-ers, appear to have been encouraged by economic considerations and con-ventual policy rather than lay pressure.31 Partly the Hospital’s defence of itspossessions was successful because all its houses were considered to belegally incorporated under its head,32 who was thus enabled to throw thewhole weight of its resources behind their defence, just as the great cath-edral-monasteries were able to do with their dependent cells and granges.The fact that the order was under direct papal protection also probablyhelped it to escape the conversion of its houses into schools and hospitals bythe episcopate. Still more significant was the support of the crown, which

27 Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society’, esp. 132, 135–6, 140–1.28 An exception is Phillips, ‘Recycling’, 58–9.29 Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society’, passim; J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion

and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988), 48–9, 71–5; J. G. Clark,‘Selling the Holy Places: Monastic Efforts to Win back the People in Fifteenth-Century Eng-land’, in T. Thornton (ed.), Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century(Stroud, 2000), 13–32.

30 Thompson, ‘Laity’, passim.31 See above, 63.32 A point made explicit in fourteenth-century licences to priors to appoint attorneys, and

elsewhere. CPR, passim; AOM54, fo. 38v.

92 The Hospital and Society

was usually willing to confirm the order’s privileges and which protected itsestates, customary rights, and dispatch of responsions from rebels, tenants,and the commons in parliament during difficult times such as the last quarterof the fourteenth century. In any case, Hospitaller military brethren hadalways been laymen, and knight-brethren had dominated the order since themid-thirteenth century, so that the order had always been, in a sense,laicized. Nor, although its members were accused of arrogance and luxuri-ous living on occasion, does the Hospital appear to have been as vulnerableto imputations of inaction, redundancy, or evil living as many other orderswere. Was this because the order managed to meet the expectations of amilitary class whose aspirations it embodied, or was it simply because theorder and its abuses were not as visible as those of larger and better-knownestablishments?

These questions are difficult to answer for the period after 1400. As acorporation, the order of St John was virtually ignored by fifteenth- andearly sixteenth-century writers and chroniclers. Dramatic events involvingHospitallers, such as prior John Langstrother’s execution after the battle ofTewkesbury and prior Thomas FitzGerald’s proposed duel with the earl ofOrmond, were sometimes noticed, but few conclusions were drawn fromthem about either the characters of those involved or the nature of theirorder.33 The Hospital’s activities in the east, similarly, went virtually unre-marked. A parliamentary petition demanding the Genoese be treated asenemies of Christendom for assisting the Mamluks in attacking Rhodes in1442 was probably motivated by hostility to Italian merchants rather thancrusading zeal34 and even the siege of 1480 provoked notice only in asolitary chronicle, although the curmudgeonly Thomas Gascoigne, whofollowed the confessional struggle in the Balkans with some interest, wasaware of both the Hospital’s military and charitable responsibilities, andconcerned to make sure that its brethren continued to resist those ‘pagans’who wished to enter Christian territories.35 In part the general lack ofcomment can be attributed to the English priory’s inability to produce ahistory of the 1480 siege drawing attention to the deeds of its own members,a failing not repeated in the wake of the siege of 1522. Once Rhodes hadfallen, however, writers such as Thomas More showed an increased aware-ness of its former value to the ‘hole corps of Cristendome’.36

33 An exception is Robert Bale’s chronicle, which makes three allusions to the order’sunpopularity in mid-fifteenth-century London. Six Town Chronicles of England, ed. R. Flenley(Oxford, 1911), 118–19, 140–1.

34 Rot. Parl., v. 61; J. L. Bolton, ‘Alien Merchants in England in the Reign of HenryVI’, unpublished B.Litt. thesis, University of Oxford (1971), 79–81 and passim.

35 Six Town Chronicles, ed. Flenley, 86, 185; T. Gascoigne, Loci e libro veritatum, ed. J. E.Thorold-Rogers (Oxford, 1881), 2.

36 John Kaye’s English translation of Caoursin’s history was written in Italy, and members ofthe English langue do not appear to have been consulted in its preparation. T. M. Vann, ‘JohnKay, the Dread Turk and the Siege of Rhodes’, forthcoming in W. Zajac (ed.), The Military

The Hospital and Society 93

Other evidence by which one might gauge the order’s popularity orotherwise is not entirely lacking, but needs to be used with care. Willsperhaps present the most unambiguous picture, showing that the Hospital,with the partial exception of the nunnery at Buckland, was not a particularlyattractive repository for bequests,37 although a few substantial donationswere made, usually in conjunction with the provision of obits or chantries.38

By contrast, the plenary indulgences granted the order by the papacy weretaken up with enthusiasm and produced fairly substantial returns.39 Suchmaterial, however, does not provide unchallengeable evidence of the order’spopularity or that of its mission. Indulgences were generally popular in latemedieval England, plenary indulgences especially so, and although thoseconnected with the defence of the faith may have been seen as particularlyworthwhile, this cannot be proved and clerical commentators, at least, wereconcerned by the abuses which followed from the grants of indulgences tothe Hospital in 1445 and 1454.40 Echoing clerical complaints from the1360s and 1370s, the Lollard John Purvey even accused the order’s quaes-tors of ‘forbidding’ masses and preaching until they had announced theorder’s papally derived privileges and elicited alms.41

When considering the most usual manner in which the laity supported theorder, by becoming confratres and consorores, still greater discrimination isneeded. It is impossible to say whether many confratres vowed their goodsor bodies to the order and were formally received in local chapters, as hadbeen the case during the order’s early history, but it seems unlikely.42 Mostseem rather to have purchased letters of confraternity from the order’sagents, known as nuncios or ‘frary clerks’, to whom the collection of theconfraria was leased in ‘courses’, and to have then been bound, like moreformally admitted confratres, to contribute annually to the order. Some ofthose who acquired such letters are also known to have been members ofother, similar associations, which suggests that the Hospital’s confraternity,while successful, was only one among a number of competing ‘goodcauses’.43 As we have seen, confraria payments certainly contributed a

Orders, iii: History and Heritage; T. More, ‘A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation’, ed.L. L. Martz and F.Manley, The CompleteWorks of St ThomasMore (NewHaven, 1963), xii. 8.

37 I have based this conclusion mainly on printedmaterial and those wills (of associates of theorder) I have consulted on microfilm. See also Excavations, 91.

38 BL MS Cotton Nero E.vi, fos. 4r–v, 4v–5r, 5v–6v; AOM406, fo. 189v; B. G. Charles, ‘TheRecords of Slebech’,National Library ofWales Journal, 5 (1947–8), 179–89, at 183; AOM 406,fo. 189v.

39 See above, Ch. 3.1.40 Gascoigne, Loci, 125–6; Six Town Chronicles, ed. Flenley, 141. The author of the Gough

London 10 chronicle, by contrast, commented on the popularity of the 1454 indulgence,although without linking it to the order. Six Town Chronicles, ed. Flenley, 158.

41 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 559.42 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 243–4.43 e.g. R. N. Swanson, ‘Letters of Confraternity and Indulgence in Late Medieval England’,

Archives, 25 (2000), 40–57, at 47–8.

94 The Hospital and Society

large proportion of the order’s income in England, probably exceeding £700in the early sixteenth century, and as many payments were small it is likelythat some thousands of persons contributed annually.44 So what motivatedthem to do so? Like those of other military orders, the order’s representativeswere permitted to visit parish churches once a year to solicit alms,45 anactivity difficult to distinguish from the recruitment of confratres in thisperiod. When doing so they appear to have drawn attention to two areas: theHospital’s continued efforts on behalf of the faith, and the indulgencesattached to confraternity. A proclamation produced by the order in Englishin the fifteenth century stressed the readiness of brethren ‘to spende therblode and lyf ayenst turks sarazins and other Infidelis’ and claimed that theHospital’s ‘defence and augmentation of cristen faith’ at Rhodes was ‘a gretcause to moue all cristen people to help the sayd noble religion and knyghtesof throdys’ by becoming ‘bredern and sustern of the frary of Saint John’ andgiving ‘ther subsidie thereto ones in the yere as is accustumed’. In return,prayers would be offered up for them in all the order’s churches around theworld and the ‘gret Indulgence and pardon’ granted to confratres by variouspopes, and summarized in the text, would be made available to them. Priestswere especially encouraged to exhort their parishioners to become confra-tres.46 A similar document, designed to be read out by the order’s ‘proctor’ inchurch, and datable to the mid-fifteenth century, ignores the order’s militaryrole and instead lays exclusive stress on the papally derived privilegesgranted to confratres.47

As these sources imply, and as Prior Philip de Thame pointed out in 1338when justifying a fall in contributions, gifts in return for confraternity weretechnically voluntary, but other evidence suggests that the confraria alsocomprised numerous fixed annual payments owed by particular propertiesor families48 which had presumably been donated in perpetuity by previousholders or ancestors. Sometimes distraint might even be used to securepayment: a sixteenth-century account of the second ‘course’ of the confrariain Essex stipulated that if the vicar of Boreham failed to pay 40 shillings tothe frary clerk ‘for his dewtie’ the latter might go to Dunmow priory andtake the chalice, mass book, or any other ornament in recompense.49 Manycontributors, moreover, must have been motivated to become confratres asmuch to claim the privileges which association with the order might bring in

44 See above, Table 3.1 and Ch. 3.1.45 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 376–8; A. Forey, ‘The Military Order of St Thomas of

Acre’, Military Orders and Crusades, art. xii, 481–503, at 491; D. Marcombe, Leper Knights:The Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, c.1150–1544 (Woodbridge, 2003), 180.

46 BL Sloane Ch. xxxii, 15.47 Ibid., 27. For the use of similar sales techniques during the reign of Henry VIII, see Lunt,

Financial Relations, ii. 494.48 Report, 4; Rees, Wales, 22–4; Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Essex 11, fos. 9r–15r;

Cartulary of Buckland Priory, ed. Weaver, nos. 91, 94, 96–8; Secunda Camera, p. lxvi.49 Rawlinson Essex 11, fo. 9r. Cf. Rees, Wales, 24.

The Hospital and Society 95

this world as to enjoy its more enduring spiritual benefits. In return for giftsto the Hospital, and sometimes with its active encouragement, property-holders put up its cross on their dwellings and claimed to be its tenants,seeking access to some of the considerable spiritual and temporal exemp-tions to which they might thus be entitled.50 These included freedom fromall aids and tallages, pontage and pavage, army service and defensive workspertaining to castles and towns, and freedom from amercement in the royalcourts.51 In 1284 tenants of other lords affiliated to the Hospital in Wales inthis way were liable for only half the customary payments of their fellowselsewhere, while in 1381 a trader from Ludlow staying in Staunton claimedto be free of scot and lot because he paid 13d. per annum to be a Hospitallerconfrater.52 From very early days, however, the crown and other authoritieswere concerned to limit the persons and properties enjoying the rights ofconfraternity or tenure with the Hospital. These might be limited to aparticular area or a few properties in any particular city or township,53

and in any case to those who held from the order as their superior lord.Bondsmen of other lords needed the permission of their superior to becomeconfratres, and some superiors were prepared to remove its cross from thehouses of tenants they claimed as their own.54 By a statute of Edward I’sreign the crown ordered the seizure of any property on which Hospitaller orTemplar crosses had been erected illegally, and this measure was still beingenforced in the fifteenth century. A Warwickshire man who put the Hos-pital’s cross up over his dwelling at Balsall without authorization had hishouse confiscated in the reign of Henry V, while in the early 1490s a pasturewhich had been similarly adorned in Suffolk was also seized until it could beproved that the tenant held of the order.55

Hard though the Hospital tried to raise awareness of the struggle in theeast, it is also the case that many seem to have identified the order as a wholewith its ‘frary clerks’ and their activities rather than with the distant adven-tures of its few dozen military brethren. By the early fifteenth century,indeed, the order was popularly known as the ‘frary’.56 This is not entirelysurprising. The annual visit of the Hospital’s nuncios or frary clerks, clad in

50 Cartulary of Buckland Priory, no. 94; VCH, Lancashire, iii. 120; The Register of Edwardthe Black Prince Preserved in the Public Record Office, 4 vols. (London, 1930–3), iv. 179–80.Tenants of the Hospital who failed to erect a ‘double crosse’ on their properties could be fined inits courts. ‘The Testamentary Documents of Yorkshire Peculiars’, ed. E. W. Crossley, YASRS 74,Miscellanea, 2 (1929), 46–86, at 67. At least some tenants also wore crosses on their caps.VCH,Shropshire, ii. 87.

51 Rees, Wales, 11; Secunda Camera, p. lxxvii.52 Rees, Wales, 24, 23.53 CDI, ii, 1252–84, no. 120; Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert, 2

vols., RS (London, 1884), i. 269; Borough Customs, ed. M. Bateson, vol. ii (London, 1906),204; Black Prince’s Register, i. 48.

54 Rees, Wales, 24; Secunda Camera, p. lv.55 Statutes, i. 87; CFR1422–30, 46; CCR1485–1500, no. 690.56 Pugh, ‘Undertakers’, 566–74, at 569.

96 The Hospital and Society

its livery and perhaps accompanied by ‘pardon crosses’, must have been anotable feature of the liturgical year. Its provision of burial for executedfelons and the excommunicate was still more memorable, its priests, clerks,or agents waiting below the scaffolds of the condemned with a ‘frary cart’draped in a black cloth bearing the order’s eight-pointed cross.57 In com-parison Hospitaller military brethren must by the fifteenth century havebeen a relatively rare sight outside the immediate localities of their estatesand of the court. But if many were only partially aware of the order’s wideractivities, at least some of those who became confratres must have beeninspired by its achievements in the east, perhaps related to them by Hospi-taller brethren whom they knew. Among those admitted into confraternitywith the order were James Butler, earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, and severalSomerset gentlemen in 1458, the earls of Derby and Somerset in 1517, theWilloughbys of Nottinghamshire in 1522, and possibly the duke of Norfolkbefore 1481.58 Some of these persons received formal grants of confraternityon the lines of that usual in the thirteenth century, and registered by theorder’s chancery on Rhodes.59 The grants made in 1458 and 1517 appear tohave been prompted by personal ties between leading Hospitallers and therecipients. William Dawney, the preceptor of the Somerset house of Tem-plecombe and a man with ties to the Lancastrian government, encouragedButler and the other west country landowners to become confratres, whileSomerset had served on diplomatic commissions with Thomas Docwrabefore 1517. Such associations might be formed at court or in the counties,but they might also be linked to travel in the Levant. Several of thoseLancastrian notables who apparently contributed to the construction ofthe Hospitaller castle of St Peter at Bodrum had enjoyed the order’s hospi-tality in Rhodes.60 Even though the number of prominent personages trav-elling to the Holy Land via Rhodes appears to have fallen after the onset ofthe Veneto-Ottoman war of 1463–79, the kindness of the English Hospital-lers in caring for pilgrims was commented on in print in 1511 and 1517.61

Longer-lasting personal ties lay behind the decision of many of the order’sleading servants and associates to seek burial in its houses. Only privilegedor trusted associates appear to have been buried within these precincts,however.62 Others—confratres, others who had given alms to the order,and executed felons—were often interred by the order’s officers in outside

57 Stow, Survey, ii. 81; Pugh, ‘Undertakers’, passim.58 AOM367, fo. 118r; The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–71,

1481–1483, 2 vols. (Roxburghe Club, 1841–4, repr. with an introduction by A. Crawford,Stroud, 1992), ii. 22; AOM406, fos. 155r–v, 156r; Swanson, ‘Letters’, 47.

59 AOM367, fo. 118r; 406, fos. 155r–v, 156r.60 Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, passim.61 See below, 289.62 For burials in the priory church see Stow, Survey, ii. 85; Excavations, 55, 91. These may,

however, have been lower status burials outside the priory church but within the inner precinctof the priory. Excavations, 184–6.

The Hospital and Society 97

repositories such as the churchyard of Holy Innocents in Lincoln or thespecially purchased ‘pardon churchyard’ in Islington.63

Thus, just as the Hospital’s confraternity was bound up with its relation-ship with its tenants, so too it was closely tied to its administration of anetwork of peculiars extending over most areas of the British Isles. Itsappropriated churches were generally subject to episcopal oversight, butits preceptories and their dependent chapels were not, and tenants of theHospital wherever located had certain exemptions from ecclesiastical sanc-tions. At least in theory, the order’s chapels provided spiritual services chieflyto its brethren, their household servants, and the tenants of their dependentmanors, but in practice these were extended to a great many other persons,as repeated clerical complaints make clear. Besides its burial of executedfelons,64 a practice which appears to have been generally accepted by thefifteenth century, the order also, and more controversially, saw fit to extendconfession, marriage, and burial not only to confratres and tenants, but evento those with no previous connection to the order or outside the Church. Itssanction for doing so appears to have been an argument that those papalprivileges allowing it to offer spiritual services to its confratres might beextended to any who provided alms.65 Such activities both undermined theauthority of the clergy over their parishioners and hit them in the pocket,which naturally prompted complaints. Thus, in 1460, convocation objectedto the order’s usurpation of the administration of the Eucharist and matri-mony from other ordinaries and attacked its practice of burying excommu-nicates and suicides, while in 1489 the same body complained not only thatmarriages had been solemnized in the order’s chapels without banns but thatits chaplains were pretending the right to absolve persons excommunicatedby their ordinary.66 Marriages made without the consent of parish priestswere a particular bone of contention. Sometime before 1530, for instance, awedding was conducted in the Hospitaller chapel at Temple Grafton inWarwickshire without the licence of the couple’s parish priest or the publi-cation of any banns or dispensation and despite letters inhibitorial issued bythe archbishop of Canterbury. When the case went to the Rota the marriagewas nevertheless upheld, although it was later ruled invalid in England whenthe bride’s previous promise to marry someone else caught up with her.67

Sometimes the secular clergy got the better of these exchanges, as in 1519,when the chaplain of Dingley was forced to sue the bishop of Lincoln forabsolution from excommunication incurred by his marrying two coupleswithout the publication of banns.68 Yet the order’s marriage of members of

63 Pugh, ‘Undertakers’, passim.64 Ibid. 572.65 Ibid. 570–1; Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 494.66 Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 577–80; Register Morton, ed. Harper-Bill, i, no. 107.67 LPFD, iv, no. 6127.68 Episcopal Court Book, ed. Bowker, 112–13.

98 The Hospital and Society

other parishes was so common that in 1529 convocation prohibited suchceremonies save by licence of the ordinary and under pain of the excommu-nication of those who acted otherwise. Further complaints about abuses inthe order’s chapels were presented to the same assembly in March 1531.69

Extra-parochial chapels were not only attractive to the laity because of theorder’s practice of asking no questions. Often they were a convenient placeof spiritual recourse to those who lived miles from the nearest parish church.In 1439 the bishop of Exeter was in dispute with the order over its chapel atTempleton in Devon, where it had recently brought in a friar-bishop toconsecrate the church and cemetery and started offering baptisms andburials in defiance of the rights of the parish church of Witheridge. Despitehis efforts, Templeton had achieved parochial status by 1535.70

Other clerical grievances against the order concerned its occasional failureto maintain the chancels of its appropriated churches, to remunerate itsvicars adequately, or to pay procurations. The laity might also sometimesaccuse it of failing to maintain chantries in its churches and chapels. Al-though neither was unknown in England,71 the order was more frequentlyaccused of neglecting its responsibilities to buildings and vicars in Ireland,where the archbishops of Armagh sequestrated the fruits of Hospitallerbenefices in their archdiocese on several occasions in the fifteenth centuryas a result.72 Disputes over tithes and procurations, and whether they wereowed by particular churches, also cropped up from time to time both inmainland Britain and in Ireland.73 The best documented is the order’s long-running spat with successive bishops of Hereford over the former Templarchurch of Garway. At some stage during his episcopacy (1474–92), ThomasMilling had had difficulty securing these, and after his death the archbishopof Canterbury’s vicar in spiritualities had begun legal action against theorder before John Kendal had agreed to pay up.74 In c.1501, during Thomas

69 Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 724, 726.70 N. Orme, ‘Church and Chapel in Medieval England’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996), 75–102,

at 93.71 M. Bowker, The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495–1520 (Cambridge, 1968),

135, notes that the order was accused of dilapidating five churches in the diocese in earlysixteenth-century diocesan visitations.

72 ‘A Calendar of the Register of Archbishop Fleming’, ed. H. J. Lawlor, PRIA 30 (1912–13),C, 94–190, at 153; The Register of John Swayne Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland1418–1439, ed. D. A. Chart (Belfast, 1935), 118–19; Registrum Johannis Mey: The Register ofJohn Mey Archbishop of Armagh, 1443–1456, ed. W. G. H. Quigley and E. F. D. Roberts(Belfast, 1972), 254–5; Registrum Octaviani, alias Liber Niger: The Register of Octavian dePalatio Archbishop of Armagh 1478–1513, ed. M. A. Sughi, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1999), no. 551(i. 130; ii. 677–8).

73 See below, nn. 74–76. See also e.g. CPL, xiii. 284.74 Registrum Mayew, ed. Bannister, 19–34, at 28, 31–2. In 1508 Archbishop Warham

recalled that in 1492 the prior of the church of St John, Thomas Kendal, had promised to payprocurations in order to halt the incipient legal proceedings, although it seems likely either thathe meant John Kendal, or that Thomas Kendal, who is otherwise unknown, was acting on hisnamesake’s behalf. Ibid. 32.

The Hospital and Society 99

Docwra’s absence in Rhodes, the farmer of Garway had agreed to pay halfthe sum requested because he wished to avoid bishop Audley’s displeasurebut after his return the prior instructed his officers to refuse payment. Threeyears of expensive legal action followed. In 1508 Docwra’s servants, includ-ing the farmer of Garway and the scribe of the common treasury, weresummoned before the archbishop’s court of audience, where evidence waspresented that procurations had been paid regularly in the period from 1492to 1504.75 The dispute was renewed in 1521, when the prior asserted thatthe order had no responsibility to pay the bishop anything for Garway andwould donate only the sum which had been agreed in the time of bishopBooth’s predecessor for the tithes of its other Herefordshire estate at Uplea-don. If the bishop insisted on any more, said Docwra, he would pay nothingat all. Booth responded by placing Garway under interdict in 1524, and thedispute was still unresolved in 1529, when it was raised in convocation.76 Itwas no wonder that in 1511 Bishop Mayew had convocation’s protestagainst the order’s misuse of its privileges copied into his register, and thatin 1532 Bishop Ghinucci of Worcester made sure he had a look at theprivileges recently granted the order by Clement VII.77 As this case demon-strates, the Hospital maintained an active defence of its privileges, real orimagined, against the secular clergy throughout the later Middle Ages. Inorder to do so, it maintained a proctor in the court of Arches, and appointedconservators of its privileges to defend it before both church and lay courtsand indeed remove cases from them into its own jurisdiction where applic-able.78 Despite these precautions, and despite their exemption from epis-copal authority, members of the order and their personal servants might attimes be excommunicated by irate diocesans. William Knollis, preceptor ofTorphichen, was excommunicated for his failure to pay tithes in 1506, whilethe turcopolier, John Kendal, and two members of his household weresimilarly dealt with in 1484.79

Despite the animus felt by the clergy against some of the Hospital’s claimsand practices, the clerical estate was generally supportive of its fund-raisingactivities. Although the clergy were often irked by the sales techniquesemployed by Hospitaller nuncii, quaestores, or pardoners, the order wasamong a very few major institutions routinely licensed to collect alms on aprovincial rather than local basis by the episcopate, which was concerned tolimit those institutions offering pardons.80 The clergy might also be urged to

75 Registrum Mayhew, ed. Bannister, pp. iii, 33, 19–34.76 Registrum Caroli Bothe Episcopi Herefordensis A.D.MDXVI–MDXXXV, ed. A. T. Ban-

nister, CYS, 28 (London, 1921), 86–92, 92; Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 717.77 Registrum Mayhew, ed. Bannister, 50–2; Archives de l’Orient Latin, ed. P. Riant, vol. ii

(Paris, 1884), 202.78 The order had the right to judge cases involving its own tenants and servants, although it

was forbidden to remove cases from the royal courts into its jurisdiction. Statutes, i. 92–3.79 CPL, xviii, no. 625; xv, no. 48 (pp. 26–7).80 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 478–9.

100 The Hospital and Society

contribute themselves. In 1480, for example, the archbishop of Canterburyordered his suffragans to convoke their clergy and read letters from order,pope, and king outlining the danger to Rhodes and inviting contributions.81

Some individual clerics, and not just those it employed, were also close tomembers of the order. John Kendal, for instance, was associated with severalexpatriate clergymen during his residence in Rome in the late 1470s and1480s, including Cardinal Morton, who intervened on his behalf with theking in 1490.82 Possessing about a hundred appropriated churches in Eng-land and Wales, and the advowson of a number of others, the order alsoprovided a great deal of employment for members of the clerical estate. Ifsome of these livings were relatively poor and suffered from a high turnoverof incumbents,83 others were sufficiently desirable for the order to be placedunder pressure to dispose of their presentments, presumably for some con-sideration, in the early sixteenth century. The most important, however,were evidently reserved for prioral chaplains and brethren of the order.

A few thousand people would have attended divine service in the order’sappropriated churches and preceptory chapels in the British Isles, and theorder did its best to ensure that its churches reflected its particular devo-tional concerns. In common with several other orders founded in the HolyLand, the liturgy used in Hospitaller houses was based on that of the churchof the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.84 In addition, feast days and practicesobserved in Rhodes or Malta were followed in all the order’s Europeanchurches, and prayers were offered up in them for its master and brethren.85

The chief devotional cult was that of St John the Baptist. The order’scommandery chapels were commonly dedicated to its patron and depictionsof him were common therein. An image of the Baptist is mentioned in theinventories of the chapel of Hampton Court drawn up in 1495, 1505, and1515.86 Similarly, oblations ‘ad ymaginem Sancti Johannis’ are recorded atGarway, as is the bequest of a cow to maintain ‘Seynt Johnis light’ atYeaveley in 1503 and 1509 and a bell with the inscription ‘Ora pro nobisSancte Iohannes Baptista’ at Keele.87 The Weston triptych, a late fifteenth-century Flemish work probably commissioned or purchased by JohnWeston(prior of England, 1476–89), depicts the Baptist and the Presentation ofChrist on one side, and the Trinity and the Presentation of the Virgin on the

81 Ibid. ii. 593.82 See below, Ch. 5.3.83 Bowker, Secular Clergy, 79.84 C. Dondi, ‘The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem (XII–XVI Century): With

Special Reference to the Practice of the Orders of the Temple and St John of Jerusalem’, Ph.D.thesis (London, 2000), 23, 118–19.

85 Stabilimenta, ‘De ecclesia’, esp. xxiiii, xxxxii (Statutes of Naillac and d’Aubusson) andpassim.

86 Excavations, 33; Lansdowne 200, fo. 30v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 8v, 139v/40r.87 Valor, iii. 19; Claudius E.vi, fos. 7v, 70v; C. Harrison, ‘The Coming of the Sneyds’, North

Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, 22 (1982–5), 23–46, at 41.

The Hospital and Society 101

other. Other saints were honoured too.88 A triptych of the Virgin, theCrucifixion, and St John the Evangelist is mentioned in an inventory of thechapel of Temple Cressing, and images of Our Lady and St Nicholas, as wellas a depiction of Christ, at Hampton Court.89 In general the order took goodcare of its churches and chapels and many brethren seem to have madeimprovements to them. At least at Clerkenwell, these were of considerablearchitectural sophistication and of advanced design, the most notable ex-amples in this period being the erection of an exceptionally finely craftedchantry chapel in or after 1501 and the remarkable hipped bell tower rebuiltor erected after 1484,90 which John Stow remembered as ‘a most curiouspeece of workemanshippe, grauen, guilt and inameled to the great beautify-ing of the Cittie, and passing all other that I have seene’.91 A wealthypreceptor like Thomas Newport, too, could rebuild the commandery chapelat Newland in 1519 and have his arms placed in the windows of at leastthree Lincolnshire churches, including Temple Brewer.92 The arms of otherpreceptors are recorded at others of the order’s appropriated churches orpreceptory chapels.93

As has been suggested, the order’s tenants are not always easy to distin-guish from servants, confratres, and the parishioners of its appropriatedchurches, between which categories there might be considerable overlap.In addition to enjoying peculiar rights and exemptions, it is clear that manyHospitaller tenants held their properties on distinctive terms determined bya mixture of contingency and conventual policy. As Michael Gervers hasshown, the Hospital’s landed estate was built out of a very large number ofindividual donations, a great many of them of modest rents or small parcelsof land.94 While the order pursued a policy of acquisition and exchange toround out these territories, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries itsbrethren were too few to farm more than their more important estatesdirectly.95 From the very beginning, therefore, smaller holdings were rentedout, although on manorial estates, and particularly those with residentbrethren, demesnes were kept in hand until well into the fourteenth cen-tury.96 Partly because many of its properties were situated on unproductive

88 The adoption of local devotions by Hospitaller houses in the west is discussed in Dondi,‘Liturgy’, 119–29.

89 Claudius E.vi, fo. 151r; Lansdowne 200, fo. 30v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 8v, 139v/40r.90 Excavations, 132, 146–7, 151, 195–6, 198–9 and figs. 100, 103–8, 110; CPL, xiv. 7.91 Excavations, 196; Stow, Survey, ii. 84.92 ‘Dodsworth’s Yorkshire ChurchNotes’, ed. A. S. Ellis,Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 8

(1884), 1–30, 481–522, at 1; Lincolnshire Church Notes made by Gervase Holles, A.D.1634 toA.D.1642, ed. R. E. G. Cole, Lincoln Record Society, 1 (Lincoln, 1911), 237n., 242.

93 Kentish Cartulary, ed. Cotton, 60; Shimield, ‘Shengay’, 140–2; Puddy, Norfolk, 82;J. Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, 4 vols. in 8 parts (London,1795–1811), iii, I, 256; VCH, Hants, iii. 465.

94 Secunda Camera, pp. xxvii–xxxix, xliii–xliv.95 Ibid., pp. xl–xlv, lxviii–lxix, lxxv.96 Ibid., pp. lxxi, lxxiii.

102 The Hospital and Society

terrain, the Hospital offered a combination of inexcessive rents and rela-tively light labour services to prospective tenants, who were further attractedby the fiscal and jurisdictional freedoms associated with the order, prompt-ing some persons to seek transfer to its overlordship.97 In return, however,the order usually levied an obit of a third part of chattels on the death of atenant98 and by the 1390s this imposition had become resented enough toprovoke a campaign of resistance by the bondsmen of the Warwickshirepreceptory of Balsall, where the obit was a half.99 Similar grievances perhapsencouraged the sack of the order’s manors in south-eastern and easternEngland during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the burning of the magis-tral camera of West Peckham during the Cade rising of 1450.100

The Peasants’ Revolt has inspired some to suggest that the Hospital was aharsh landlord, but the truth of this is doubtful.101 The order’s relationshipwith its tenants had certainly changed since the thirteenth century, thepractices of letting many manors out to farm on long lease and of appointinglaymen as collectors of confraternity payments and stewards of the order’smanorial courts removing the tenants of many holdings from frequentcontact with their landlords. By the late fifteenth century, at least, manors,rectories, and mills pertaining to the prioral estate were almost always let onlong lease by provincial chapter, as were a great many other properties inLondon and Clerkenwell. London had its own dedicated rent collectors,who traversed the city fulfilling their functions, but otherwise those grantedprioral estates on long lease were expected to render the farm at Clerken-well. This brought more significant tenants into the Hospital’s headquarters,but also left those holding long leases as effectively the order’s intermediarieswith large numbers of its subordinates. Similar arrangements obtainedbetween preceptories and their dependent estates, which were commonlydivided into bailiwicks whose bailiffs accounted for their jurisdictions at thechief mansion of the preceptory.

The order’s increasing detachment from direct administration might havemixed results. The former Templar house of Keele in Shropshire, which hada resident brother custos in 1338, was thereafter transferred to the jurisdic-tion of the preceptors of Halston, who let it to farm from the 1370sonwards, but these changes had little effect on the actual running of theestate, which was largely managed by its tenants, a self-assured group whoinitiated major changes in the agricultural organization of the manor them-selves and took advantage of Keele’s status as a jurisdictional peculiar tofound and maintain a parish guild through which many of their affairs were

97 Studd, ‘Keele’, 5–6, 9–10, 18; Secunda Camera, pp. xli, lxxvi–lxxvii.98 Secunda Camera, pp. xli, lxxvii–lxxviii.99 Gooder, Temple Balsall, 17–19; CPR1391–6, 525; CPR1396–9, 112–13. Resistance to

heriots also occurred at Halston in the 1420s. VCH, Salops, ii. 87.100 AOM363, fo. 158v.101 Tyerman, England, 356.

The Hospital and Society 103

regulated.102 Yet, here as elsewhere, the order’s relationship with the layfarmer was sometimes problematic, a suit by the order against NicholasColeman, the lessee of Keele between 1404 and 1409, maintaining that hehad destroyed the conventual buildings on the site.103 Disputes between theorder and its farmers were especially common following the death or resig-nation of a prior or preceptor, or during the latter’s absence: in such periodstenants might fall behind in their rent, mislay estate documents, dilapidatebuildings or refuse to vacate their leases; while newly appointed priors orpreceptors might wish to evict tenants in order to bestow the holding ontheir own nominees.104 Nevertheless, the relationship between the order andits chief tenants generally appears to have been amicable, not least becausemany were persons already associated with the order by blood, marriage, orservice. This is particularly true of those who were granted short-term leasesof those houses whose preceptors were in or on their way to the convent,105

but it also applied to many others. Through the lease books of 1492–1539we can trace the careers of a number of men who combined blood relation,service, and tenancy. The association of some with the order appears to havepredated the admission of their relatives as Hospitallers. The Derbyshireknight Sir Thomas Babington of Dethick, for instance, was granted the lifestewardship of the nearby preceptory of Yeaveley in 1493, six years beforehis third son, John, entered the order. Over the next thirty years, John’sconnections and offices were exploited so that the family held the precep-tories of Willoughton, Yeaveley, and Dalby at farm for short periods,retained the stewardship of Yeaveley after Sir Thomas’s death, and wasgranted a twenty-nine-year lease of Rothley in 1529.106 More often, theentry of a family into service or tenancy appears to have been coeval with orpost-dated the profession of relatives in the order. The Chetwoods, Dalisons,Docwras, Dorset Husseys, Langstrothers, Malorys, Passemers, Pecks, Pick-erings, Plumptons, Pooles, Rawsons, and Tonges107 who were grantedoffices, corrodies, preceptory leases, manors, rectories, and collectorshipsof confraternity payments all benefited from the profession of relatives whohad become, as preceptors, significant landholders. Such rewards and con-nections might significantly enhance a family’s existing local prestige andposition, as has been argued in the case of theMalorys of Newbold Revel,108

or lead to branches of a family establishing themselves in a new locationassociated with the hospital. Besides the Langstrothers in Lincolnshire and

102 Studd, ‘Keele’, passim.103 Ibid. 13.104 See below, 110, 193, 196, 201.105 See above, 64–5.106 Lansdowne 200, fo. 13r–v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 7v–8v, 69v–70v, 158r–v, 202r, 264v–265r;

LR2/62, fos. 1r–v, 31r–v.107 I mention only those families of which two or more lay members were the recipients of

grants in provincial chapter between 1492 and 1528.108 Field, ‘Sir Robert Malory’, 259; id, Life and Times, 77–9.

104 The Hospital and Society

Norfolk, for example, one can also find several Rawsons in Ireland and anAnthony Tonge in Rhodes.109 Although some such families, most notablyboth branches of the Docwras, might lose offices or influence after the deathof a professed relative, such an event need not herald the end of the order’sgenerosity. Grants were made to members of the Malory family for at leastfifteen years after the death of the last Malory preceptor in 1481,110 whilethe Hertfordshire gentleman George Dalison of Clothall, a servant of theorder since the 1480s, continued to receive grants and offices after the deathof his presumed relatives, the Hospitallers Richard and Robert, in 1498 and1504.111 His importance must have helped to keep the family connectionalive in following years, so that John Dalison became a Hospitaller before1519, and Robert (II) in 1524.112 Those of the order’s leading servants whoappear not to have had pre-existing family connections with brethren wereoften also rewarded for their pains with corrodies, properties within theprioral precinct, and grants elsewhere. The latter might include manors,rectories, and, in the case of Francis Bell, who was granted the farm of themagistral camera of Peckham, even whole preceptories.113 Most such grantswere of properties within striking distance of the priory, but some wereconsiderably more far-flung, and must have been made over to assigns.

The order provided accommodation and employment throughout Eng-land and Wales. The Hospital seems to have been a good employer, andlooked after its own. The number of men whose careers in its service can betraced for twenty years or more is considerable. Its chief officers—theauditor, chief steward, prioral steward, prioral receiver, and scribe of thecommon treasury—held their posts for life and were rewarded with smallsalaries, corrodies, tenements within the priory complex, and leases of landon which they might make considerable profit. Officers such as chaplains,bailiffs, keepers of woods, and stewards of courts also customarily had lifetenure and were provided with their salaries, robes, and other perquisiteseven if they should be infirm. Details of the recruitment of such officers arepractically impossible to come by, but it seems likely that many had servedthe order in its preceptories or in Rhodes before they took up residence inClerkenwell. This is suggested by the fact that their number included severalRhodiots, of whom three in particular—Francis Bell, Constans Bennett, andFrancis Galliardetto—became both prominent and prosperous in prioralservice. Hospitaller brethren could sometimes demonstrate a quite touching

109 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 69–71; CICRE, 89–90; AOM404, fo. 230v.110 AOM388, fo. 132r; Claudius E.vi, fo. 299r; Lansdowne 200, fo. 44v.111 Claudius E.vi, fo. 88v; Lansdowne 200, fos. 27r, 32r, 38r–v, 40v, 43v–44r; Claudius E.vi,

fos. 46r, 78r–v, 87v–88r, 88v, 142r–143r, 243r–v; Excavations, 140, 143–4.112 AOM408, fo. 136r–v; BDVTE, 38, 41–2. The order also presented Dalisons to the

Hertfordshire vicarage of Standon in 1486 and 1536. J. E. Cussans, History of Hertfordshire,3 vols. (1870–81, repr. Wakefield, 1972), i. 181.

113 Claudius E.vi, fos. 202v–203v.

The Hospital and Society 105

paternalism towards their subordinates. Having thought to reward Williamap Rhys’s long service by appointing him his chief auditor, for example,William Weston was aghast at Thomas Cromwell’s attempt to pressure himinto appointing the monastic visitor, William Cavendish, instead. Westonalso intervened with Giles Russell, preceptor of Battisford, on behalf of JohnLaunde, an old servant of the former preceptor, Adam Chetwood, andwhose rent Russell was trying to increase.114

Just as with relatives and servants, the hospital did its best to bring thoseother persons to whom it leased its estates into close and long-lasting affinity.Gentlemen granted leases of former preceptories and camerae would beexpected to find chaplains to celebrate there and to receive the order’sofficials when they came to survey the property or hold court. In returnthey were often granted robes of the order’s livery, might act as its attorneysin local business and might rarely be granted corrodies as was the farmer ofHogshaw, Ralph Lane, at Clerkenwell in 1508.115 The most prestigious ofthe order’s local offices, the stewardships of its courts were, like its majorestates, granted largely to local notables, such as Sir Thomas Burgh atWilloughton in 1493, Sir Thomas Tyrrell at Cressing in 1495, and JohnVillers the younger at Dalby in 1498.116 Tyrrell, at least, was appointedbecause of the ‘good favour and special love’ he had demonstrated to theorder in the past. That these men were all from families who supplied thehospital with brethren is also telling.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to suggest that the order was alwaysable to distribute estates and offices as it wished. In Wales and the WelshMarches, for instance, some gentlemen were effectively paid protectionmoney.117 The large number of grants made to various categories of royalservant across this period also indicates that the hospital felt it necessary toacquire influence at court and suggests that pressure was put upon it to makegrants. In 1518, for example, Henry VIII’s intimate Sir Thomas Boleyn wasgranted the order’s Cambridgeshire estate of Great Wilbraham, while in thesame year the Lancashire gentleman James Anderton vacated his newlygranted lease of Much Woolton in favour of Roland Shakelady, a royalclerk in chancery to whom the preceptor of Yeaveley had promised it.118

The order’s properties in the immediate environs of the capital and of royalpalaces such as Richmond were particularly attractive to courtiers and royalofficers, and with the expansion in the activities and personnel of the crownunder the Tudors considerable pressure was brought to bear on the order forgrants. The important estate of Hampton Court, for example, was held bysuccessively grander personages between the 1470s and 1530s: John Wood,

114 LPFD, xi, no. 419; v, no. 901.115 Claudius E.vi, fo. 60r.116 Lansdowne 200, fos. 13r, 23r, 50v.117 AOM54, fo. 42r; Claudius E.vi, fo. 257v.118 Claudius E.vi, fos. 176v–177r; 185r–v.

106 The Hospital and Society

Sir Giles Daubeney, Cardinal Wolsey, and finally the king himself. BothDaubeney and Wolsey sought a permanent grant of the manor, which theorder was reluctant to allow, and got the crown to intervene on their behalfwith the central convent.119 Yet the order might also find it politic to grantthe requests of even relatively minor officials, or their connections. Writingto the preceptor of Baddesley in 1533, the order’s subprior asked him togrant a property held by copy to a London merchant whose brother was aclerk of the crown and ‘could do the order some good’.120

But what might this good consist of? Above all, the order sought thecontinuance and extension of royal favour. While its priors, as lords ofparliament and royal councillors, were important public figures they didnot reside at court, and were rarely close intimates of the king. In attemptingto gain licence to leave the realm, to acquire benefits for their order, todefend their estates and to pursue their own private interests professedHospitallers directed begging letters, gifts, and pensions to royal councillorsand courtiers. Thus when prior John Kendal wanted to go to Rhodes inc.1500 he made a present of kirtles ‘adorned with crystal gold and silver’ tothe chancellor, Morton, while in the following reign Wolsey and Cromwellwere offered Turkey carpets and pensions for their uncertain favours.121 Yetfor all the attractions of exotic manufactures, property was what manycourtiers were most eager to acquire from their association with the order,and many were able to achieve their wishes.

In seeking Hospitaller properties in and around London, courtiers werenot just competing with the order’s relatives and servants, but with thecitizens and other inhabitants of the capital. The prior of St John, whoseproperties in London and Middlesex were rated at more than £600 in 1540,could be described in 1528 as ‘a very great personage, the chief in that city’,and his order had close commercial and social ties with the capital.122 Itstenants included the lawyers of the Temple area, the clerks of ChanceryLane, and numerous citizens and guildsmen. London merchants sold clothand lent money to the order and its brethren, and their presence as co-lesseesof the estates of those preceptors travelling to convent indicates their im-portance in providing the capital to finance such journeys. In 1506, forinstance, the draper William Stalworth, was among those granted the farmof the Lincolnshire preceptory of Willoughton.123 Such ties begat a certainamount of affection and intimacy in some. Both the liverymen and yeomenof the Merchant Taylors belonging to their twin fraternities of St JohnBaptist were confratres of the Hospital, and attended an annual mass inthe priory, where at least one prominent liveryman was buried. A few

119 See below, 157, 173 and Thurley, Hampton Court, ch. 1.120 LPFD, vi, II, no. 166.121 AOM79, fo. 116v; see below, Ch. 6.122 PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402, mm. 1–13d; CSPV, iv, no. 380.123 Claudius E.vi, fos. 44v–45r.

The Hospital and Society 107

Londoners also left the order money in their wills, the most notable bequestafter 1400 being the £100 bequeathed in 1511 by the Merchant Taylor JohnKyrkby towards the bell tower rebuilt after 1484, in return for which theorder promised to keep an obit in his honour.124 Relations were not alwaysamicable, however. The corporate cohesion of the order and its servants andtheir exemption from secular jurisdiction and penalties prompted someresentment among the citizens of the capital, so that in 1453 a wrestlingmatch between champions of the priory and the city degenerated into abattle in which several people were killed or injured.125 There were occa-sional disputes, too, between the order and the corporation of London.

The same mixture of intimacy and resentment can be found elsewhere.Several individual Hospitallers can be seen to have had close friendships andassociations outside the order. While travelling round his favoured estates,for instance, John Weston went hawking with and provided ‘gode chere’ tohis friends, and visited the houses of lay persons such as Richard Cely theelder. Richard the younger, a close companion of the prior, accompanied himboth on his local travels and his embassy to France in 1480 and was the‘Bedfelow’ of the younger Hospitaller Roland Thornburgh, while hisbrother George provided the prior with news, gowncloth, rich saddles, andhawks from the marts of Calais and Flanders.126 Similarly, the letters ofrelatives and servants provide news about members of William Weston’shousehold and family at Rainham-Berwick and Sutton Temple (Essex),Melchbourne (Bedfordshire), and Clerkenwell.127 In 1526 the order’s‘right trusty and lovyng frende’ Antonio Vivaldi was granted the right totake two bucks and two does from the park at Berwick annually as well as totake out the prior’s boats and fish.128 The order’s preceptors indulged insimilar pursuits. Leases of East Stafford mill in Dorset granted in 1512 and1526 specified that the commander ofMaine and his friends were to have theright to fish there when they should visit.129 Besides such frivolous inter-actions, preceptors were well enough integrated into local society to act asfeoffees and arbiters, to witness marriages, and to join guilds.130 Given the

124 C. M. Clode, The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors of the Fraternity of StJohn the Baptist, London (London, 1888), 111–12, 63; The Merchant Taylors’ Company ofLondon: Court Minutes 1486–1493, ed. M. Davies (Stamford, 2000), 24, 288; Claudius E.vi,fo. 86v.

125 Six Town Chronicles, ed. Flenley, 107, 140; J. Stow, A Summarie of the Chroniclesof England (London, 1604), 373; Excavations, 92.

126 The Cely Letters 1472–1488, ed. A. Hanham, EETS, 273 (London, 1975), esp. nos.19, 25, 37, 39–40, 47, 52, 55, 58, 74, 78, 83, 84, 90, 94–6, 98–9, 102, 104, 108, 121, 123, 134.

127 LPFD, xi, no. 849; Addenda, no. 1095.128 Claudius E.vi, fo. 289r.129 Claudius E.vi, fos. 101r–v, 280v–281r.130 BL Additional Ch. 7386; Ancient Deeds, iv, A7907; Nichols, Leicester, iii, II, 953; The

Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York: With an Appendix of IllustrativeDocuments, Containing some Account of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Canterbury, withoutMicklegate Bar, in the Suburbs of the City, ed. R. H. Skaife, Surtees Society, 57 (Durham, 1872),45, 189.

108 The Hospital and Society

largely secular environment in which they operated and the necessity ofdefending their estates, it is not surprising that both priors and preceptorscould sometimes be accused either of personal immorality or of abusing theirpositions in favour of themselves and their relatives. According to the hostileThomas de la Laund, brother John Boswell kept not only the customaryhousehold at Temple Brewer but also adopted John Amwyk ‘as his Fole andYdyot’, besides keeping a mistress and having a son to whom he gaveAmwyk’s estate.131 At least one other English preceptor, Thomas Golyns,had a mistress and child,132 and there must be a suspicion that some of theDocwras with whom prior Thomas surrounded himself, especiallyMartin ofBalsall, were more closely related to him than was canonically licit.133

Whether before or after the dissolution, brother Henry Poole is alsoknown to have fathered a bastard.134 Concubinage may have been rifeamong the Hospitallers of Scotland and Ireland, where brethren were virtu-ally unsupervised. William Knollis, preceptor of Torphichen, had an illegit-imate son,135 and a number of Irish priests claimed to be sons of Hospitallersin petitions to Rome.136 The English prior of Ireland, John Rawson, emu-lated the native-born brethren in fathering a daughter.137 Some such rela-tionships might involve coercion. In 1534 Edmund Hussey was accused ofhaving borne off a Bristol servant girl into captivity at Templecombe,138

while William Langstrother, the bailiff of Eagle, colluded in his lay relativeRobert’s pursuit of Jane Boys, which ended up in her abduction to Lincoln-shire and rape in 1452.139

At least among male heads of families, legal cases probably caused longer-lasting resentments than any sexual misdemeanours. Successive preceptorsof the Lincolnshire house of Temple Brewer had a dispute with the de laLaundes of nearby Ashby which had its origins in the latter’s objections tothe transfer of their donations to the Temple to the Hospital after 1312. Thelast round of litigation between the family and the order began in 1470–1and dragged on until the 1520s, the pretext for action being Ashby church,which Robert de la Laund claimed had been granted to the Temple illegallyby an ancestor. Although Robert’s suit against brother Miles Skayff col-lapsed because of his death it may have prompted the next preceptor, JohnBoswell, to attempt to deprive Thomas of his rights as lord of the manor ofAshby by seizing deeds and forging a will giving him title to a messuage

131 BL Add. MS 4937, fos. 78r–79r.132 Episcopal Court Book, ed. Bowker, 123.133 Martin Docwra does not appear either in the family pedigrees recorded by the Heralds or

in the wills of members of the two main branches of the family.134 Bindoff (ed), House of Commons, iii. 130.135 CPL, xviii, no. 684.136 CPL, xii. 284; xiii. 623–4; xiv. 148, 224, 255, 300; xv, no. 891; xvi, no. 931.137 DNB, xlvii. 336.138 PRO STAC2/6/93.139 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 69–70.

The Hospital and Society 109

there. Laund’s determination to pursue this suit before the common lawcourts and Margaret Beaufort also led Thomas Newport, who becamepreceptor on Boswell’s death in 1495, to adopt strong-arm tactics. Laundcomplained that in 1502 or 1503Newport had withheld land in Ashby fromhim and instructed his tenants not to pay him joysment. Relations haddeteriorated to such an extent by the time that John Babington (I) wasfarmer of the commandery in 1519–20 that he allegedly caused his servantsto bait and make off with Laund’s sheep, destroy his corn, and usurp hisjurisdiction over the Ashby leet courts. When Laund complained about theselatest outrages to the courts, Babington supposedly suborned his counsel sothat the latter passed him documents and ensured the exclusion of Laund’spatron Sir ChristopherWilloughby from the Assizes at which the case was tobe determined.140 Besides his order’s legal clout, a Hospitaller able to securea preceptory near his family estates would also be able to call on physicalmuscle, as Edmund Hussey apparently did during his confrontation with thecorporation of Bristol in 1534.141 Yet the family interests of one preceptorcould sometimes complicate matters for the next incumbent. After ThomasDocwra installed his relative Martin in the important prioral preceptory ofBalsall shortly before his death, the latter became the subject of evictionproceedings by the next prior, while in the 1530s Henry Poole attempted toevict the Babingtons, relatives of the former preceptor John, from theirinterests in Dalby.142

As these examples suggest, the tendency of the Hospital’s family andpersonal connections to perpetuate themselves rarely led to the establish-ment of prolonged family interests in particular preceptories, although moreperipheral estates might become the preserve of a family over several gener-ations. The order’s promotion system, by which brethren would movebetween houses and usually had no say in the appointment of their succes-sors, worked against any such developments, as did the fact that preceptorscould choose their own officers and tenants without reference to provincialchapter. The order was in any case too significant and far-flung a corpor-ation, and too dependent on lay service, support, and counsel to become aclosed shop. Its landed administration was partly dependent on the good willof the gentlemen who leased its manors, acted as stewards of its courts, andwho also served the crown in shire government. Its shipment of men andmonies to the Mediterranean required the goods and credit of Englishmerchants and the expertise of Italian. Priests, legal officers, bailiffs,receivers, scribes, frary clerks, parkers, and menial servants all had to berecruited and paid for, and could hardly be sourced simply among the

140 BL Add. MS 4937, fos. 76v–89v. Babington spent £8 7s. for ‘actions at law in defence of agreat part of the demesne’ at Temple Brewer in the year from 25 Mar. 1521. AOM54, fo. 45r.

141 PRO STAC2/6/93.142 PRO C1/588/36; /732/38.

110 The Hospital and Society

families and friends of the few dozen professed brethren. In granting tenan-cies and appointing to at least some offices, the order showed itself suscep-tible to pressure from influential persons, especially those connected withthe court. In doing so, it sought to secure the approval of those about theking for its activities, the perpetuation of which complemented some trad-itional elements of royal policy, but contradicted other, often more pressing,considerations.

The Hospital and Society 111

CHAPTER FIVE

The Hospital and the EnglishCrown, 1460–1509

Royal support had always been necessary to the order of St John’s operationsin England andWales. Yet there had also always existed potential conflicts ofinterest between crown and order. From the thirteenth century, kings ofEngland had emphasized their right to control the movements of theirsubjects overseas, had limited transfers of bullion out of the country, andhad clamped down on corporations which had allegiances to bodies orpersons outside the realm. Monarchical claims and nationalist rhetoricbecame more wide-ranging and explicit as a result of the Hundred YearsWar and the ‘state building’ of the late Middle Ages, and were sometimesemployed to justify limiting, impeding, or even halting contacts between theHospitaller priory of England and its Mediterranean convent. Usually, how-ever, the crown fell well short of submitting the order to any comprehensivesystem of restrictive legislation, and acted only when it considered its mem-bers to have slighted the royal dignity or breached royal prerogatives in someway. In this chapter I will attempt to establish what the crown’s usualattitude to the Hospital was, what theoretical and practical bases underlayroyal perceptions, and what the normal patterns of interaction were betweenthe two. I will then trace the development of the relationship betweenindividual kings and priors of England on a reign-by-reign basis, payingparticular attention to the conflicts which occasionally arose between crownand order, and the context in which these occurred.

5.1 The Framework of Interaction before 1460

In June 1459 Henry VI forbade his ‘trusty and welbeloved counsailler’Robert Botill, prior of the Hospital in England, to travel to Rhodes to attendthe forthcoming chapter-general of the order. His grounds for doing so wereBotill’s age and sickness and the belief that his presence in England was ‘to usfull necessarie for many causes’. Informing the English brethren in Rhodes ofhis decision, he proceeded to instruct them that ‘as ye wol we shal take youfor our trewe subgittes’ they must ‘in noowise suffre as ferre as ye may and inesp(ec)iall yeve noo consent to any g(ra)unts imposicons or charges that may

be thought or taken p(re)judiciall or hurte to the lawes of this o(u)rreaume’.1 Henry’s instructions to his Hospitaller subjects reflect two peren-nial elements in royal policy: a dislike of the imposition of taxes on the realmby foreign authorities, and a desire to limit the movement and activities ofsubjects overseas.2 From the fourteenth century such considerations had ledto the restriction of papal authority to tax the English Church, to thediversion of ecclesiastical taxation to fund the war effort against France,and to occasional prohibitions on people leaving the country on businessother than the king’s.3 Suspicion of all things French had further led to theseizure or Anglicization of those ‘alien’ priories and cells which owedallegiance to foreign mothers and were run and staffed by French monks,4

and to bans on their sending payments (apportum) overseas.5 Although thebrethren of the Hospitaller priory of England were overwhelmingly anglo-phone, their allegiance to an institution whose masters were usually French,whose French provincial priors supported the enemy war effort,6 and whosereceiver-general was based in Avignon left them potentially vulnerable topunitive legislation or even suppression. Preceptories, which were barelyconventual in the early fourteenth century and still less so by the fifteenth,might even have been in particular danger of being suppressed as alien‘cells’.7 The threat was especially great in the first decade of the HundredYears War and during the papal schism. In 1337 Edward III lumped thedispatch of responsions to Rhodes together with the apporti paid by the alienpriories to their overseas mothers, and forbade it, while also requiringmilitary service and loans from the prior of England, Philip de Thame.8 In1339 he reproved Thame for sending responsions in contempt of this order,alleging that by sending monies abroad he had destroyed the goods of theHospital, which ought rather to be employed ‘in defence of the realm’.9 The

1 PPC, vi. 301.2 M. J. Barber, ‘The Englishman Abroad in the Fifteenth Century’, Medievalia et Humanis-

tica, 1st ser., 11 (1957), 69–77.3 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii, esp. 104–5, 113, 117–18, 123–4.4 Recent studies of the legislation against alien priories include A. K. McHardy, ‘The Alien

Priories and the Expulsion of Aliens from England in 1378’, in D. Baker (ed.), Church, Societyand Politics, Studies in Church History, 12 (1975), 133–41; B. J. Thompson, ‘The Statute ofCarlisle, 1307, and the Alien Priories’, JEH 41 (1990), 543–83; id., ‘Laity’.

5 This legislation was introduced by Edward I in 1307, and confirmed in 1330, but was rarelyapplied to the Hospital before Edward III’s insistence in 1335 that no religious man carrysterling out of the realm. Statutes, i. 151, 263, 273. For a pre-1335 enforcement of the statutesee CCR1330–3, 323. In 1335 the prior of England, Philip de Thame, paid his responsions at achapter-general of the order. H. Nicholson, ‘The Hospitallers in England, the Kings of Englandand Relations with Rhodes in the Fourteenth Century’, Sacra Militia, 2 (2001), 25–45, at 27n.I am grateful to Dr Nicholson for sending me a copy of this article.

6 Hermitage Day, ‘Dinmore’, 9.7 For the division of such houses between ‘viable’ conventual priories and ‘unviable’ cells, see

Thompson, ‘Laity’, 21–2, 28–9, 32–3, 35–7.8 CCR1337–9, 140, 240, 290, 436, 500, 632, 635, 643;CCR1339–41, 114, 119, 123, 124–5,

185; Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’, 36–8.9 CCR1339–41, 256; Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’, 37.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 113

confrontation reached its height in 1341, when the prior’s compliance wasagain investigated, the confiscation of the priory threatened under the legis-lation against alien houses, and the arrest of the hospital’s visitors as ‘adher-ents of the king’s enemies beyond the seas’ ordered because they had exportedbullion, urged their brethren to leave the realm, and caused its secrets to bediscovered by conducting visitations.10 Thereafter licences forHospitallers todepart continued to insist that they take no apportum, Edward attempting tojustify the detention of responsions in October 1342 as necessary for thedefence of the Hospital.11 By the late 1350s, however, the order appears tohave convinced the king that it should be treated differently from the alienpriories, with responsions being submitted once more.12 Thereafter, whileindividual Hospitallers were sometimes subject to restrictions or outrightprohibitions on travelling or sending responsions abroad, there was noattempt to put a stop to the order’s activities until Edward’s adverse butshort-lived reaction to the convent’s attempt to detach the preceptory ofScotland from English allegiance in 1374–5.13 The crown even continued tosupport the order during the papal schism, when the allegiance of its conventto the Avignonese lines of popes provided the perfect pretext to confiscate itsestates.14 Despite a parliamentary petition in 1383/4 that responsions be putto the ease of the ‘poor commons’ of the realm, despite the order’s inclusion ina 1410 ‘Lollard’ proposal to disendow the Church, and despite increasingroyal impecunity under Richard II and Henry IV, the order continued to beallowed to transmit men and money to Rhodes as before.15

To some extent, the crown probably left the Hospital alone because it wasnot seen to constitute a threat in the same way as the alien priories and cells,staffed by religious of an enemy allegiance, were.16 Its members were, afterall, English, and the master of the order was supposed to reside in the easternMediterranean. Such difficulties as occurred arose primarily from its ship-ment of money overseas, which was both abhorrent to the bullionist thought

10 CPR1341–3, 203; CCR1341–3, 137–8; Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’, 37. Cf.Marcombe, Leper Knights, 76–7.

11 CCR1341–3, 137–8, 668, 670; CPR1345–8, 50 bis; CCR1346–9, 45–6, 554; CCR1349–54, 379.

12 CPR1358–61, 187.13 CPR1369–74, 568 bis; CCR1374–7, 297–8; CCR1381–5, 12; Cambridge University

Library, MS. Dd. III. 53, fo. 121; Bekynton Correspondence, i. 87–90; PPC, vi. 299–301;Scotland, pp. xxxv–xxxvi.

14 Tipton, ‘English Hospitallers during the Great Schism’, passim. Helen Nicholson hasrecently modified Tipton’s thesis, arguing convincingly that in the mid-1380s, at the height ofanti-Avignon feeling in England, the priory entered into dialogue with the anti-master Carac-ciolo in Rome, but she nevertheless accepts that the English Hospitallers remained loyal toRhodes throughout the schism. Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’, 41–4.

15 Rot. Parl., iii. 179, 213, 670–1; CPR1385–9, 95. The 1410 petition’s statement that‘Clerkenwell’ and its members were collectively worth 20,000 marks must surely refer to theHospital rather than, as Dr Hudson has stated, to the nunnery there. Selections from EnglishWycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), 135 and index.

16 McHardy, ‘Alien Priories’, passim; Thompson, ‘Laity’, esp. 23–4, 37.

114 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries17 and a source of anxiety to thosewho feared that funds dispatched to Avignon might end up in French royalcoffers.18 To satisfy public opinion, it might not only be necessary forClerkenwell to prove it was not funding the French, but also that it wasactively employing its monies in defence of the faith. Thus in 1411 it wasreported in convent that Henry IV had insisted that responsions be employedsolely in Rhodes, while more generally the order evaded suspicion by sub-mitting its dues as letters of exchange to be cashed in Italy or, less usually, inthe form of goods such as cloth and tin.19 Even in the form of letters ofexchange, however, the size of the sums involved might cause concern,particularly if the convent ordered a significant increase in payments orattempted to impose any new forms of taxation. In the fifteenth century,responsions often amounted to more than £1,000 per annum, a sum con-siderably greater than that sent to Rome by the papal collector in usual yearsand which dwarfed the amounts sent to overseas mother-houses by otherEnglish religious orders.20 A second irritant was the possibility that Hospi-taller brethren might be provided to benefices by the pope. Such eventualitieswere covered by the statutes of Provisors, but the crown sometimes saw fit toremind brethren not to seek preferment in Rome or to punish those whohad.21 Only one piece of English evidence certainly indicates that anypressure was placed on the order to conform to the conditions by whichsome of the alien priories escaped confiscation. The legislation against alienhouses exempted ‘conventual priories’ from action, and given this context itis interesting that at some point between 1417 and 1422 Henry V orderedprior William Hulles to transform the order’s chief church in Clerkenwell,which was largely served by secular priests, into a fully conventual estab-lishment, as it had been until the reign of Edward III.22

Nevertheless, the crown’s refusal to act against the Hospital even duringthe schism perhaps requires further explanation, especially in view of thefact that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the English houses ofmilitary or hospitaller orders such as St Thomas of Acre, St Lazarus, andSt Anthony of Vienne became autonomous, acquiring the right to elect theirown masters without reference to their headquarters, ceasing to supporttheir former mother-houses financially, and concentrating instead on local

17 For bullionism, see J. H. Munro, Wool, Cloth and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in theAnglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340–1478 (Toronto, 1972); J. L. Bolton, The Medieval EnglishEconomy 1150–1500 (London, 1980), 79–80, 297–300, 311, 328, 330.

18 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 113.19 Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, 166.20 Payment to Rome by the papal collector, when not swollen by indulgence receipts, usually

amounted to about £250 per annum between 1417 and 1464, while the Cistercians collectivelysent a princely £76 to Cıteaux. Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 75; Knowles, ReligiousOrders, iii. 31–2.

21 CCR1381–5, 75; CPR1441–6, 134.22 Thompson, ‘Alien Priories’, esp. 26–8, 35–8; Monasticon, vi, II, 839.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 115

devotional and charitable activities.23 The Hospital might easily have fol-lowed a similar path. That it did not can partly be explained by royalpronouncements in its favour. Although these tended to be somewhat un-imaginative and conventional, they nevertheless reveal first monarchs’apparently sincere belief that their predecessors had been among the found-ers of the order, whose houses had been established for the defence of thefaith, and secondly a continued commitment to the defence of Christendom,one perhaps ultimately grounded in their responsibility, enshrined in thecoronation oath, to protect the Church.24 Judged by the materialistic criteriaof foundations, endowments, and donations the order of St John had neverbeen an especial favourite of any English monarch.25 Yet when Brother JohnStillingfleet drew up his list of donations to it in the mid-fifteenth century hedrew attention to royal grants, singling out Richard I and Richard II inparticular for their love of the Hospital.26 Richard I, he said, had the orderin special affection because its master and brethren had conferred ‘plurimabeneficia ac commoda’ on him and his entourage during his crusade, asappeared from his confirmation of the Hospital’s liberties. Yet the Lion-heart’s territorial benefactions to the order were modest, amounting to thegrant of two small hospitals and a hermitage, a fact which suggests thatdespite or perhaps indeed because of his dealings with the order in the Latineast he still saw it primarily in the context of its medical rather than itsmilitary work.27 Two centuries later Cœur de Lion’s less impressive name-sake had apparently also shown especial favour in increasing the order’sliberties at the request of prior Robert Hales (1371–81) and protecting it inthe aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt, when its properties had beendestroyed and its brethren fled incognito to hide amongst laymen.28 Giventhat it was Hales’s implementation of the poll tax on the crown’s behalf thatprompted much of the animus against him and his order, and that Hales washimself murdered during the rising, it might, however, have been churlish forRichard II to have done otherwise.29 In fact there had been a steady ifunspectacular stream of royal donations to the order from the reigns ofHenry II until that of Edward I, but these had most characteristically takenthe form not of grants of property but of privileges and exemptions such as

23 Marcombe, Leper Knights, 76–7, 83–7, 92–3, 99–100; Forey, ‘St Thomas’, 496–503. TheLondon house of St Thomas had earlier resisted moves made by its Acre convent to amalgamatewith the Temple. Forey, ‘St Thomas’, 494–5.

24 For these views see, inter alia, CCR1330–3, 67; PPC, vi. 145.25 H. Nicholson, ‘The Military Orders and the Kings of England in the Twelfth and Thir-

teenth Centuries’, in A. Murray (ed.), From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and CrusaderSocieties 1095–1500 (Turnhout, 1998), 203–18, at 204.

26 Monasticon, vi, II, 831–9. Stillingfleet’s writing(s) are discussed in Gervers, HospitallerCartulary, 29–30.

27 Monasticon, vi, II, 839.28 Ibid. Royal protection was extended to the order, its brethren, and its property in July and

August 1381. CCR1381–5, 3, 5; CPR1381–5, 32.29 CPR1381–5, 23.

116 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

the right to hold markets and fairs and grants of free warren.30 The flow hadtailed off towards the end of the thirteenth century, and some of the order’sclaimed privileges had begun to be questioned by the 1250s, but the milk ofkingly kindness did not entirely curdle until well into the reign of Henry VIII,the Hospital’s most remarkable, if reluctant, royal benefactor before thenbeing that unlikely holy warrior, Edward II, who granted it the formerTemplar properties in November 1313.31 Many Hospitaller properties hadoriginally been granted to the Temple by the crown, which had effectivelyfounded several Templar houses, and the Hospital took care to rememberthe masters and patrons of its defunct sister order.32 It also made sure thatkings were aware of the chantries and obits it maintained in remembrance ofpast royal benefactors, hence Henry VI’s claim in July 1453 that his progen-itors were ‘numbered among its first founders’ by the religious of the order.This, the king said, made it incumbent upon him to expend every effort toprovide for the quiet of its brethren and to act to the best of his power toprevent their being offended in any way.33

More potent, perhaps, was the order’s continued role in the defence of theLatin East. It is true that few English monarchs, the last being Henry IV, hadfirst-hand experience of the Hospital’s activities in the east, and that Englishenthusiasm for crusading appears to have declined somewhat in the fifteenthcentury, if chiefly through lack of accessible outlets.34 Nevertheless, if thecrusading adventures of its subjects accorded ill with the crown’s increasingdesire to control movements of persons and bullion out of the realm, and itsinsistence that the place of leading subjects was by the king’s side, they fittedperfectly well with rulers’ strivings, as chief chivalric warlords, to promoteand celebrate the pursuit of honourable deeds of arms.35 Naturally, kingsexpected that knightly excursions should be performed in their own service,but there were long periods when they were not engaged in military activitythemselves. When Edward III and Richard II were at war with France theytherefore demanded the service of their leading subjects in the field, butduring periods of truce, especially the 1390s, crusading activity might beactively promoted.36 If the ideals of Christian brotherhood in arms and ofknight errantry were being eroded during the fifteenth century and replaced

30 These are conveniently listed and summarized in Monasticon, vi, II, 831–9.31 CPR1313–7, 52; Monasticon, vi, II, 809; Statutes, i. 194–6. On Edward’s transfer of

former Templar properties to the Hospital see nowNicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’, 28–33.32 Monasticon, vi, II, 831–9; Secunda Camera, nos. 958–9; Prima Camera, p. cx.33 Robert Botill, the prior of England and a leading counsellor of the king -who was still in

possession of his faculties at this stage -may have suggested the form of words used in this letter.PPC, vi. 145.

34 See above, ch. 4.35 See, e.g. R. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later

Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 1, 7, 12, 199–211; M. Keen, ‘Chivalry and the Aristocracy’, inM. Jones (ed.),NewCambridgeMedievalHistory, vi: c.1300–c.1415 (Cambridge, 2000),209–22.

36 J. J. N. Palmer, England, France and Christendom, 1377–1399 (London, 1972), esp.180–210; Tyerman, England, 294–301.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 117

by ‘national chivalries’ they had not yet been entirely eclipsed and some oftheir force can still be glimpsed in the careers of noble gadabouts such asRichard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick.37 Nor can the effect on royal sens-ibilities of the monarch’s responsibility to uphold and defend the faith beentirely discounted. Crusading tracts, mirrors for princes, romances, ser-mons, papal envoys and letters, and prophecies reminded kings of theirduties in this sphere, and of the increasing Turkish danger to Christendom.38

Their effectiveness can only have been enhanced by the appearance at courtof eastern dignitaries such as Leo of Armenia and the emperor Manuel II.39

Such exalted visitors were rare, but Byzantine envoys made their way toEngland relatively frequently and the numbers of Greek refugees in the westincreased dramatically after the fall of Constantinople.40 Those who madetheir way to the English court and attempted to raise money for the ransomsof their enslaved families presented at least an incitement to pity, if notnecessarily to action, and rulers sometimes responded generously.41

The French war, the mutual suspicion between England, France, andBurgundy which was its legacy, and subsequent upheavals in the Englishpolity meant that there were formidable obstacles in the way of direct royalparticipation in holy war in the fifteenth century, and few monarchs madeserious moves towards such an enterprise.42 And while the crown waswilling to allow men of less than baronial rank to fight in Spain, the Balkans,and the eastern Mediterranean, it would not easily countenance the involve-ment of magnates in crusading warfare. The fifteenth-century nobility wereexpected to be on hand to serve the king in war and offer him counsel inpeace, even if in practice the royal council was often largely composed ofnon-noble experts. Leading nobles who did attempt to set out overseas ascrusaders or to the Holy Land as pilgrims might find themselves forbidden todepart, like Salisbury in the 1420s, impeded and criticized like Rivers in1471, or summoned home from their travels, like Tiptoft in 1461.43 Thevery chivalric lustre which crusading could add to a noble reputation mighteven lead rulers to obstruct the more illustrious subjects who sought to

37 M. Keen, ‘War, Peace and Chivalry’, in id., Nobles, 1–20, esp. 18–20; J. H. Wylie,A History of England under Henry the Fourth, 4 vols. (London, 1884–98), iii. 178–9.

38 Tyerman, England, 297, 303–8, 347, 350–1; Lunt, Financial Relations, ii, passim; Coote,Prophecy, passim; A. Fox, ‘Prophecy and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII’, in A. Fox andJ. Guy (eds.), Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500–1550(Oxford, 1986), 77–94.

39 Tyerman, England, 296, 312–13; D. M. Nicol, ‘A Byzantine Emperor in England. ManuelII’s Visit to London in 1400–1401’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 12/2 (1971),204–25.

40 Harris, Greek Emigres, 45–50, 52, 106–7, 12–13.41 For Byzantine refugees and emigres in the British Isles, see Harris, Greek Emigres, 1–2,

4, 18–23, 33–8, 60–1, 68, 71, 73–4, 90–9, 106–7, 134–49, 164–5, 181, 183–7.42 Harris, Greek Emigres, 66, 108; Tyerman, England, 321–3.43 CPL, vii. 439–40, 468; Tyerman, England, 308; Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 566–7;

R. J. Mitchell, The Spring Voyage: The Jerusalem Pilgrimage in 1458 (London, 1964), 122.

118 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

undertake them, as Richard II seems to have done with Henry earl of Derbyin 1390.44

For both ideological and practical reasons, the crown was also reluctant toallow the imposition of papal crusading levies on the English Church.Having wrested control over taxation of the Church from the papacy inthe fourteenth century, kings of England had no intention of relinquishing itagain in the fifteenth.45 Moreover, the Lancastrians in particular badlyneeded the fruits of clerical tenths to swell their own coffers, and despitethe papacy’s return to Rome there was a lingering suspicion that sums sentthere would not be used properly.46 It was only grudgingly, therefore, thatkings sometimes asked the clerical estate for grants in response to papalattempts to impose crusading tenths, although the clergy’s response to theseappeals was often still more niggardly than rulers would have liked it tobe.47 Monarchs were rather more willing to sanction the proclamation ofcrusade indulgences, but even these could be objected to on bullionistgrounds. Thus, when asked to agree the levy of a crusading tenth in 1481,Edward IV refused, complaining that ‘an infinite amount of money’ hadalready departed the realm as a result of the recent grant of indulgences tothe Hospitallers.48

National and self-interest, as well as dislike of sending money out of therealm, therefore militated against a really effective English royal response tothe threat posed by the Turks. Yet other fifteenth-century rulers were activein funding and planning crusades and some, such as Philip the Good ofBurgundy and Alfonso V of Aragon, even sent small fleets to the easternMediterranean.49 In the face of such activity it behoved the crown to offer atleast some assistance to the defence of Christendom. One of the moreeffective ways of doing so was to support the order of St John. Once theproblem of its receiver-general residing in Avignon had been circumvented,one could at least be reasonably sure that monies sent to Rhodes were beingexpended in the defence of the faith,50 and the order did its best to demon-strate that this was so by building substantial fortifications designed asmuch to impress western visitors as to deter the Turks.51 Periodically,royal envoys were sent to the eastern Mediterranean, partly perhaps tocheck that there was substance to the order’s claims. Formal embassieswere supplemented by the visits of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Such travellers

44 Tyerman, England, 279–80.45 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii, esp. 117–18, 123–4.46 Tyerman, England, 354.47 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 132–40, 145–50, 153; Harris, Greek Emigres, 68.48 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 153–4. See also CSPV, i. 142–3.49 J. Paviot, La Politique navale des ducs de Bourgogne 1384/1482 (Lille, 1995), esp. 105–

51; A. Ryder, ‘The Eastern Policy of Alfonso the Magnaminous’, Atti della Accademia Ponti-ficana, 28 (1979), 7–25.

50 For English attempts to ensure this, see Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, 166.51 Luttrell, ‘Maussolleion’, 145; id., ‘Military Orders’, 341.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 119

often had connections with the royal household, and from the earliest daysof the order’s sojourn on Rhodes many had stopped there.52 They, and theirmasters, appear to have been satisfied, for many royal letters to the order orto other rulers on its behalf commented approvingly on its military activ-ities.53 A corollary of this approval, however, was the danger that should theorder become or appear to become inactive its possessions might come underthreat.54

Moreover, monarchs could appear to support the Hospital without anyundue effort or expense. Simply by confirming the order’s privileges andallowing its brethren and their responsions to travel to Rhodes, the crowncould pose as a facilitator of its work, making a small profit into the bargainfrom the tax levied on exchange operations. At minimal extra cost kingscould go further in writing stern letters supporting the order in its clasheswith the Venetians and Genoese, an activity which could also be calculatedto please the anti-Italian lobby in parliament.55 Additionally, in supportingthe English langue, the government was explicitly upholding the honour ofthe English ‘nation’ and ensuring that its subjects had some say in thegovernment and honours of an ancient, distinguished, and noble corpor-ation which embodied the very highest ideals of chivalry, far though thesewere from the spirit of its rule.56 In particular, doubtless prompted by thelangue, the crown was encouraged to see the turcopoliership as an officeanciently vested in the English, the preservation of the prerogatives of whichmight merit repeated royal intervention, as a royal letter of 1440 demon-strates.57 The langue also constituted the only permanent English commu-nity east of Italy, and its presence in Rhodes was much cherished by Englishpilgrims who visited the island.58 For all these reasons, it made sense forrulers to continue to offer the Hospital their support.

In fact they went somewhat beyond the strictly necessary in doing so. TheEnglish tower at the Hospitaller castle of Bodrum on the Turkish mainland,

52 Bekynton Correspondence, i. 82; CPR1313–17, 274, 277; CCR1343–6, 106. Issues of theExchequer, ed. F. Devon (London, 1837), 159; Foedera, v, I, 14, 35, 167, 175, 186. Tyerman,England, 246, 283, 296.

53 CCR1360–4, 39–40; The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed. E. Perroy, CS, 3rdser., 48 (London, 1933), 114–15; Bekynton Correspondence, i. 79–80; CPR1475–85, 193–4,230; AOM57, cc. 2, 4, 9, 13, 16 [original numeration: 2, 1, 5, 9, 12].

54 Hoyle, ‘Origins’, 282–3.55 Rot. Parl., v. 61; PPC, vi. 144–6; CSPV, i, nos. 397–8; Bolton, ‘Alien Merchants’, esp.

6–17, 236–78.56 Bekynton Correspondence, i. 82. For the English nation as a component of the universal

church see L. R. Loomis, ‘Nationality at the Council of Constance: An Anglo-French Dispute’,American Historical Review, 44 (1939), 508–27, esp. 511, 518–20, 523–6.

57 This dispatch drew attention to earlier calls for the restoration of the prerogatives of theturcopoliership in c.1421–2 and 1435. Bekynton Correspondence, i. 81–3. In letters writtenhome in 1561 and 1575, brother Richard Shelley laid explicit stress on the turcopoliership’simportance as a ‘goodly. . . preheminence’ whose loss would constitute an ‘abasinge of ournation’. R. Shelley, Letters of Sir Richard Shelley. . . (n.p., 1774), 2, 10.

58 See below, ch. 8.1.

120 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

adorned with the royal arms among those of the leading English contribu-tors to its construction, provides impressive testimony for the fashionabilityof support for the order in the first half of the fifteenth century, and directroyal grants to it, whether of lands, churches, equipment or cash, were notunknown.59 On occasion, the crown was also prepared to permit brethrenand benefactors of the Hospital to ship arms and even bullion to Rhodes.60

The size of the sums leaving the realm in responsions and indulgences alsoprovides powerful support for arguing that the crown actively approved ofthe Hospital’s work. The assessments on which the convent based its impos-ition of responsions were, moreover, based on visitations usually conductedby a foreign and a native Hospitaller in tandem.61 In the fifteenth century,when the crown was supporting the efforts of the English branches of otherinternational orders to free themselves from the jurisdiction of their mother-houses, the active welcome extended to foreign knights of St John provides areal indication that the Hospital’s overseas links were felt to be worthpreserving.62

Royal support, however, came at the price of stricter regulation andincreasing financial impositions. Like other religious corporations, after1279 the order was forbidden to acquire more land without royal licence.63

At about the same time Hundred Roll and Quo Warranto investigationsbegan to examine the extent of its claims to jurisdiction and exemption,while from the fifteenth century onwards, judges challenged its claims toprovide sanctuary.64 Despite royal grants of exemption from tallages andtolls, which enshrined at least the principle that the order should not betaxed, it was also subjected to the payment of parliamentary taxation from1290 onwards, although for some years both Hospital and Temple com-pounded for this rather than have their property investigated by laymen.65

Some concessions were made. As its brethren were both laymen and exemptfrom ecclesiastical taxation they were usually asked to pay fifteenths on theirmoveable, non-ecclesiastical goods, while they only paid the tenths imposedin convocation on their appropriated churches.66 The prior’s own estatesalso appear to have been exempt from taxation until 1474.67 Taken across

59 Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, passim.60 Ibid. 166–7; Foedera, v, I, 14, 35, 104;CCR1422–9, 280;CPR1429–36, 452; ‘Calendar of

French Rolls, Henry VI’, The Forty-Eighth Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the PublicRecords (London, 1887), 217–450, at 301, 343.

61 See above, Ch. 3.2.62 Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 28–30, 34; Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 63.63 Raban, Mortmain Legislation, passim; Secunda Camera, p. xlvii.64 I. D. Thornley, ‘The Destruction of Sanctuary’, in R. W. Seton-Watson (ed.), Tudor Studies

Presented . . . to Albert Frederick Pollard (London, 1924), 182–207, at 197–8, 200–1.65 J. F.Willard, Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property, 1290 to 1334 (Cambridge,Mass.,

1934), 96–7, 100, 130, 135, 136, 167.66 CCR1334–8, 100, 128, 148, 186; CCR1369–74, 251–2; Rot. Parl., iii. 217–18; AOM54,

fo. 17r.67 Rot. Parl., vi. 115.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 121

the whole period it was levied on the order, the burden of parliamentarytaxation was not particularly onerous, but it nevertheless constituted a muchgreater charge than the order had hitherto been accustomed to bear, and attimes a very substantial one.

Besides direct taxation, the Hospital was also encouraged to make giftsand loans to the crown. Edward III, in the early years of the Hundred YearsWar, and the financially embarrassed Lancastrian kings were particularlyheavy users of its credit facilities.68 On occasion, it was also expected toprovide hospitality to the king and his entourage or to visiting foreigndignitaries. With the exception of Edward V, whose residence the Hospitalnearly became, it is probable that every reigning monarch between Henry IVand Henry VII either visited the prioral headquarters at Clerkenwell, orspent time on other Hospitaller preceptories and estates.69 Besides theoccasional sojourns of kings, princes, and diplomats, the Hospital was alsoexpected, like other religious houses, to provide a corrody for retired royalservants, and even caps to the ministers of the exchequer and receipt, anobligation which it bought its way out of in 1370.70 As we have seen,pressure might also be put on the order by courtiers and royal servants forgrants of leases, particularly of properties in and around London.71

Most importantly of all, the crown expected the service of Hospitallerpriors and, to a lesser degree, preceptors resident in England andWales. Thiswas understandable. Although not always particularly well educated, by thetime they became priors brethren of the Hospital were widely travelled, hadconsiderable naval and administrative experience, and might well be profi-cient in French and Italian. If the extent of their duties did not rival that ofthe more important administrator-bishops and—abbots of the later MiddleAges, most priors nevertheless served the crown in a number of differentcapacities. In the first place, although originally summoned as an ecclesias-tical lord, by 1389 the prior of England was evidently considered to be atemporal lord and appears to have been a royal councillor ex officio.72

68 Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’,37–8;CPR1334–8, 186, 549;CPR1338–40, 99, 108,116; CCR1346–9, 263, 269, 270, 383; CPR1416–22, 279; PPC, ii. 32; A. Steel, The Receipt ofthe Exchequer, 1377–1485 (Cambridge, 1954), 157, 161, 188, 254–5; AOM357, fo. 162r–v.

69 Memorials of King Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, RS (London, 1858), 109; Chronicle of theGrey Friars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 52 (London, 1852), 13; PPC, iii. 71; TheCrowland Chronicle Continuation: 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (London, 1986),186–7;Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field, ed. P.W. Hammond and A. F. Sutton (London,1985), 198–9; Memorials, ed. Gairdner, 129; H. W. Fincham, The Order of the Hospital ofSt. John of Jerusalem and its Grand Priory of England, 2nd edn. (London, 1933), 21–2.

70 Report, 93, 127; CCR1341–3, 660; CCR1354–60, 393; CCR1360–4, 244; CCR1374–7,524; CCR1377–81, 141; CCR1461–8, 99. John Pavely paid 300 marks towards the charges ofthe king’s wars in order to be released from the obligation to provide caps. CPR1367–70, 456.

71 See above, 106–8.72 CCR, passim. In 1389 the prior was listed between the earl of Northumberland and

various barons in council minutes, while in 1400 he was explicitly stated to be a temporallord. Priors can often be found attending the council in the surviving records dating from after1386. PPC, i. 12, 17, 105–6, and passim.

122 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

As such, he might occasionally hold important offices of state. Threepriors—Joseph de Chauncey, Robert Hales, and John Langstrother(1468–71)—served as royal treasurer and another, Robert Botill (1440–68), as privy seal, while Hales and his successor John Radyngton also heldthe post of admiral of the western fleet.73 More usual, however, were serviceon the council, in parliament as a trier of petitions, on commissions of thepeace and of sewers in counties where the prioral estates were concentrated,and in particular on diplomatic business, whether at home or abroad.74 Attimes Robert Botill came close to becoming a professional diplomat onbehalf of the crown, and Thomas Docwra (prior, 1501–27) was even morenotable in this capacity in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.75 Pre-ceptors and simple brethren, too, were occasionally employed on localcommissions and on diplomatic work, although they were more likely tobe used as envoys, couriers, and escorts to dignitaries on their way to courtthan to be fully constituted ambassadors with power to treat.76 Despite theirmilitary experience and the order’s reluctant concessions that brethren mightfight either in self-defence (1235) or (1367) on behalf of a ‘natural lord’,English brethren, unlike their Irish counterparts, appear to have avoidedmilitary service outside the realm on behalf of the lay power until 1513.77

Thus when Philip de Thame sent a small contingent of men-at-arms to servein Scotland at royal request in 1337 he was careful to stress that this shouldnot serve as a precedent78 and in 1346, summoned to assist in the siege ofCalais, he preferred to bribe his way out of involvement.79 Otherwise themilitary contribution the order was expected to make to the war consisted ofarraying troops to defend the realm against invasion or garrisoning vulner-able coastal towns.80

It is clear that competing royal and conventual claims to prioral loyaltiesmight lead to conflicts of interest. The appointment of a foreigner, Leonardode Tibertis, as prior of England in 1330 provided Edward III with an

73 HBC, 104–5, 107, 139;CCR1374–7, 495, 506, 555;CPR1377–81, 26, 589;CCR1381–5,523; CCR1385–9, 424; Catalogue des rolles normans, gascons et francais, ed. T. Carte, 2 vols.(London, 1743), ii. 120, 148.

74 J. F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913), 123,165–6, 197, 423n., 429, 443–4, 498–9, 504, 517; PPC, passim; ‘Calendar of French Rolls, 1–10Henry V’, The Forty-Fourth Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records(London, 1883), 543–638, passim; ‘Calendar of French Rolls, Henry VI’, passim.

75 Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors’, 89; see also, below, Chs. 5–6.76 R. Graham, ‘The English Province of the Order of Cluny in the Fifteenth Century’, in ead.,

English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), 62–90, at 70; PPC, iii. 89.77 Delaville, Rhodes, 163. Their service at sea was presumably conceived of in terms of the

defence of the realm.78 CPR1338–40, 11.79 CPR1345–8, 211. Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers in England’, 38, interprets this episode some-

what differently.80 See, e.g.CCR1339–41, 114, 119, 123, 124–5, 155–6, 185, 216–17, 288;CCR1360–4, 99;

CPR1369–74, 568. In February 1400, however, the prior was among those lords promising toprovide men for the king’s wars. PPC, i. 105–6.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 123

opportunity to demand fealty as a condition of allowing him seisin, andkings then proceeded to extract an oath of fealty, which they always sworeunder protest, from Tibertis’s successors.81 Vassalic status, however con-tested, brought the further danger that it enabled royal officials to argue thatthe order’s temporalities, like those of bishops’, should be taken into theking’s hand during vacancies. On Tibertis’s death, therefore, royal eschea-tors seized the order’s estates and it was only when the new prior protestedthat the Hospital had been granted them in free alms and that the seizurewas unprecedented that their actions were halted.82 No further attempt toargue that the prior held his lands by fealty appears to have occurred until1468–70, but subsequent royal claims to supervise prioral elections and theadministration of the priory during vacancies, although vague, may havederived from those advanced by Edward III. The order, indeed, took care torecord both its protest against the oath of fealty and Edward’s letter orderinghis escheators to remove their hand from the priory in the cartulary itassembled in 1442.83

By Henry VI’s reign a compromise had been reached and the oath wasmore clearly linked to the prior’s standing and functions in the Englishpolity. Particularly pertinent in this regard was his status as a ‘lord ofparliament’. In 1440Henry VI claimed that as such he was first and foremosta royal councillor, and, while elected by his brethren, should be chosen forthose qualities that suited him for royal service.84 It is perhaps significantthat it was during the same monarch’s reign that prioral visits to Rhodes,frequent until the 1440s, began regularly to be impeded. Prior Botill wasrefused licence to go to Rhodes when summoned in the wake of the fall ofConstantinople, and was again forbidden to proceed there in 1459, as wehave seen.85 The king and council’s reluctance to allow the prior out of thecountry should be seen in the context of the end of the Hundred Years Warand growing political tensions within the realm. Particularly after thelosses of 1449–53, continued hostilities with France and pique at Philipof Burgundy’s ‘betrayal’ of the king in 1435 led Henry’s government torefuse to cooperate in papal and Burgundian crusading projects until itachieved satisfaction of its continental claims, and keeping the prior ofSt John at home appears likely to have been calculated to drive this message

81 CCR1333–7, 363–4; CCR1354–60, 54; CCR1381–5, 208; Nicholson, ‘Hospitallers inEngland’, 35. Despite the order’s assertions to the contrary, it is nevertheless worth noting thatthe king’s representatives claimed in September 1330 that Tibertis’s predecessors had done fealtyfor both their own and the Templars’ former lands. CCR1330–3, 154–5.

82 CCR1333–7, 363–4, 453, 501–2, 638.83 BL MS Cotton Nero E.vi, fos. 7r, 7r–v.84 Bekynton Correspondence, i. 78–9; Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors’, 91.85 Z. N. Tsirpanlis,Anecdota eggrapha gia te Rodo kai te Noties Sporades apo to archeio ton

Ionniton Ippoton (Unpublished Documents concerning Rhodes and the South-Eastern AegeanIslands from the Archives of the Order of St John) [in Greek], (Rhodes, 1991), docs. 309, 309A;Codice diplomatico, ed. Pauli, ii, no. cxvi; see above, 112–13.

124 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

home.86 Furthermore, in 1459 the crown was determined to associate thewhole body of the nobility with its parliamentary denunciation of theYorkist lords,87 and might even have been afraid that if Botill were allowedto leave he would join them, which indeed he did in 1460. If the last of theLancastrians, or his governing clique, kept the prior away from Rhodes forparticular reasons rather than out of principle, Edward IV, who had littlesympathy for the overseas excursions of his magnates, seems to have takenthis practice as a welcome precedent.

Despite the close regulation of priors of the order, and occasional restric-tions on the export of brethren and responsions, most monarchs supportedand appeared to approve of the hospital’s activities. Given that its defiance ofthe Turks appealed to the most respectable religious and chivalric sensibil-ities of the age, this is hardly surprising. Nevertheless, it is clear that therewere potential tensions between the English Hospitallers’ temporal andspiritual allegiances. On several occasions during the period between 1460and 1540 these were to rise to the fore and force both monarchs andHospitallers to question which of their loyalties was paramount.

5.2 The Yorkist Kings and the Order of St John, 1460–1485

In July 1460, as a Yorkist army approached London, Robert Botill wasexpounding the royal will to convocation.88 He was one of Henry VI’slongest-serving and most trusted councillors, of whom he had been amongthe first admitted to witness the king’s recovery of his wits in December1454, a restoration at which, not inappropriately, Botill burst into tears.89

Nevertheless, past service, old affection, and oaths of allegiance did notprevent the prior, along with several other prelates, from throwing in hislot with the Yorkists and accompanying them towards Northampton, whereWarwick defeated the royal army and captured the royal person.90 Botill’sreasons for this volte-face can only be conjectured, but royal refusals topermit him to go to Rhodes, royal contempt for papal crusading initiatives,the presence by the side of the Yorkist lords of the papal legate, the crusadingenthusiast Coppini, and the overwhelming facts of Henry VI’s incapacity torule and subjection to a partial and vindictive governing clique must all haveconspired to provide the prior with powerful incentives to support Richardduke of York and his allies.

86 J. T. Ferguson, English Diplomacy 1422–61 (Oxford, 1972), 32.87 R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (repr. Stroud, 1998), 825.88 Registrum Thome Bourgchier Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi A.D.1454–1486, ed. F. R. H.

Du Boulay, CYS, 54 (Oxford, 1957), 77; C. L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of King Edward IV,2 vols. (London, 1923), i. 78.

89 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, ii. 108.90 Scofield, Edward IV, i. 87.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 125

Botill’s active involvement in regime change appears to have been withoutparallel among his predecessors, and was potentially dangerous for hisperson and his order, but at first it appeared to have been vindicated. TheYorkists, impressively personified by Edward IV, were victorious, and theiropponents forced into exile, with resistance continuing only in the north-east and northWales.91 After his accession, Edward IV continued to trust theageing prior, who was treated, as before, primarily as a royal servant. Botillbriefly had custody of the privy seal in the early 1460s and served on thecouncil and on commissions of array and of the peace until his death.92

He also continued to be employed on diplomatic business, although he wasnow largely confined to treating with foreign ambassadors within therealm.93 During these years, moreover, the king expressed his supportfor the Hospital in a number of ways: by licensing the prior of Rome andthe castellan of Rhodes, John Langstrother, to conduct a visitation of Eng-land, by reproving the Venetians for their attack on Rhodes in 1464, andprobably by supporting the removal of Thomas Talbot as prior of Irelandand his replacement with James Keating.94 Although support for the ordersat well with Edward’s attempt to rule in accord with chivalric expectationsof royal conduct in his first years as king,95 such expressions of approvalrequired little exertion and were quite conventional. And there is other,contrasting, evidence which suggests that the king had a distinct and unsen-timental vision of the order barely compatible with its priorities andpurposes.

Convinced though he was of Botill’s reliability, Edward appears to havebeen less sure of the loyalties of some of the other brethren. In 1463 he hadsupported, and perhaps even proposed an arrangement by which the turco-polier, William Dawney, a former associate of the fervently LancastrianJames Butler, earl of Wiltshire, was to surrender his preceptory to a conven-tual knight, Marmaduke Lumley.96 Moreover, in the following year, Daw-ney’s lieutenant as turcopolier, John Weston, who had complained to theorder’s council about Lumley’s conduct in this matter, was summoned homefrom Rhodes on a charge of disloyalty.97 Evidence against him had perhapsbeen provided by a conventual knight, John Boswell, who had gone toCrete on the service of John Langstrother in March 1464 and while there

91 C. Ross, Edward IV (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 22–63.92 Baldwin, King’s Council, 422, 423n., 429; Select Cases before the King’s Council 1243–

1482, ed. I. S. Leadam and J. F. Baldwin, Selden Society, 35 (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), 114–15;CPR1461–7, 567.

93 CPR1461–7, 102, 115; Catalogue des rolles, ed. Carte, ii. 357, 358.94 Foedera, v, II, 105 (calendared in CPR1461–7, 52); CSPV, i, nos. 397–8; see below, Ch. 7.95 M. A. Hicks, ‘Idealism in Late-Medieval English Politics’, in id.,Richard III and his Rivals:

Magnates and their Motives in the Wars of the Roses (London, 1991), 41–60; Hughes, Arthur-ian Myths, passim.

96 AOM374, fo. 139r–v.97 AOM73, fo. 158r; mentioned in Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 194–5.

126 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

had absconded on a Venetian galley travelling to England.98 There is nodirect evidence as to what might have motivated Boswell’s flight, for whichhe was deprived of the habit, but it is suggestive that he was pardoned andreadmitted into the order at the specific request of the king in December1466.99 No further action appears to have been taken against Weston, butthe suspicion that the king saw the langue as unsound is intensified by alicence granted to Botill in 1467 to admit five brother knights at royalrequest.100 Might this have been an attempt to ensure the loyalty of futureHospitallers to the Yorkist dynasty?

On Botill’s death in September 1468 the king’s distrust and desire toreduce the order to his will became fully apparent. According to the pro-Neville pseudo-William Worcestre, ‘the very greatest disturbance’ occurredwhen Edward ‘suddenly’ attempted to impose his wife’s brother, RichardWydeville, on the order as prior, the brethren at once electing John Langstr-other in response.101 The dramatic and unprecedented nature of this inter-vention should be emphasized. No previous king of England had interferedso directly in a prioral election, andWydeville, a youth of about 20who wasnot even professed, was hardly a suitable candidate to govern a military-religious order whose promotion system was accustomed to reward conven-tual service, seniority, and experience rather more than birth and royalfavour. Langstrother, by contrast, was everything that Wydeville was not.He had been received into the Hospital as a brother knight by 1435 and hadenormous diplomatic and administrative experience in its service. Most ofhis career had been spent in the east, where he held at various times theimportant conventual offices of castellan of Rhodes, captain of Bodrum,proctor of the common treasury, magistral seneschal, and grand preceptor ofCyprus.102 He had also served as a diplomat, visitor, and collector of theJubilee indulgence in various western priories, and receiver of the priories ofEngland and Ireland.103 By 1468, moreover, he held no less than six of thetwenty-one English preceptories not in prioral hands, including the baili-wick of Eagle.104 His collection of benefices brought him considerablewealth, much of which he disbursed to the order’s hungry creditors, which

98 AOM374, fos. 141v, 141v–142r; 73, fos. 133v–134r, 135v–136r.99 AOM374, fos. 141v–142r; 376, fo. 155r.100 AOM376, fo. 157v.101 ‘Annales rerum anglicarum’, ed. Stevenson, 791; Ross, Edward IV, 96n. E. J. King, The

Knights of St. John in the British Realm, 3rd edn., revised and continued by H. Luke (London,1967), 72, misdates Botill’s passing to 1467.

102 AOM351, fo. 135r; 361, fo. 352r–v; 363, fos. 234v, 285v; 364, fo. 119r; 283, fo. 5v.103 AOM362, fos. 126v–127r, 127v, 132v–133r, 192v–193r; 363, fos. 184v–185r and 265v,

261v–262r; 364, fos. 119r, 133r–136r, 138v–139r; 369, fos. 217v, 271v–272r; Tsirpanlis, Anek-dota, 663–4; Foedera, v, II, 53, 57;CPL, x. 261–3, 265; AOM358, fo. 229r; 362, fos. 126v–127r.

104 Besides Eagle, these were the preceptories of Balsall, Beverley, Halston, Ribston, andYeaveley. Grants in AOM73, fo. 128r; 374, fo. 141r; 357, fo. 150r; 358, fos. 226v–227v; 361, fo.243v; 365, fos. 117v–118r; 366, fos. 115v–116r, 117r.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 127

can only have increased his standing in convent.105 Langstrother’s seniority,experience, and affluence virtually precluded any other candidate.

The king, as we have seen, had apparently trusted Langstrother enough toallow him to conduct a visitation in 1461–2, and in the following year hehad been appointed to a commission to arrest Humphrey Neville and bringhim before the council.106 But, leaving aside the possibility that he had beenimplicated in the charges against John Weston, a conjecture for which thereis no supporting evidence, there were two reasons in particular why Edwardmight have changed his mind about the bailiff of Eagle. Most importantly,Langstrother had been associated with Warwick in the 1450s and by 1468the king was quite determined not to improve the earl’s position any fur-ther.107 InstitutingWydeville instead both strengthened the king’s own hand,and also fitted neatly with the policy of providing for his wife’s relativeswhich was so marked a feature of the period after 1464. A primary conditionfor their advancement seems to have been that it should not be at the crown’sexpense, hence the Wydeville stranglehold on the aristocratic marriagemarket in the late 1460s, and the advancement of young Richard to one ofthe richest benefices in England fulfilled this criterion admirably.108 Sec-ondly, there are indications that the king opposed the decision of theRome chapter-general to increase responsions from a third-to a half-annatein February 1467. Langstrother had had an important part in deciding this,for he had sat on the committee that drafted the 1467 statutes, and waselected proctor of the common treasury during the course of the chapter.109

The convent’s later censure of William Tornay, the receiver of the priory ofEngland between 1461 and 1471, drew attention to discrepancies among hisaccounts for the years following this meeting and the English representativesat the next chapter, held in 1471, promised to pay the half-annate thenreimposed themselves but refused to bind their fellows in England to dothe same.110 Reluctance to consent to the imposition of a half-annate prob-ably increased the king’s determination to reduce the order more closely tohis will.

Existing accounts have accepted that Langstrother was in England at thetime of his election, but in fact he was in the east.111 His absence from

105 Between October 1467 and November 1468, for example, he handed about £2,200 tovarious of the order’s creditors. AOM 377, fos. 181r, 182v, 190r–191r, 207r.

106 CPR1461–7, 52; Willis, ‘Langstrother’, 35.107 M. A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George, Duke of Clarence 1449–1478

(Gloucester, 1980), 48.108 J. R. Lander, ‘Marriage and Politics: The Nevilles and the Wydevilles’, BIHR 36 (1963),

119–52; M. A. Hicks, ‘The Changing Role of the Wydevilles in Yorkist Politics to 1483’ in id.,Richard III, 209–28, esp. 211–17.

109 AOM283, fos. 30v, 11r, 5v; CPL, xii. 282–3.110 AOM74, fo. 152r; 283, fo. 61v.111 He had been appointed preceptor of Cyprus on 8 Nov. 1468, but was still in Rhodes on

about 14 December. AOM377, fos. 241r–242r, 242r–v.

128 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

England, and the custom that the priory be governed by its ‘president andconvent’ during vacancy years gave the order breathing space in which todevise a strategy by which Wydeville’s appointment could be overturned.Although an unnamed ‘prior’ of the order, presumably Wydeville, waspresent in the royal council on 15 November 1468, six days later the‘president and convent’ of the vacant priory were recorded presenting to abenefice, which may indicate that they had persuaded the king to delayinstituting Wydeville as prior until the representations of the convent shouldbe heard.112

The response to these events in Rhodes was distinctly cautious. Althoughnews of Botill’s death had arrived by January 1469, nothing was done aboutthe disputed succession to the priory until 5 April.113 Langstrother was thenappointed lieutenant and vicegerent of the master and convent in Englandand Ireland and instructed to examine the knights of the English priory andinstitute a ‘worthy and sufficient’ brother into possession.114 Given chargeof the priory’s finances on 14 April, on the 16th he was licensed to leaveRhodes and instructed to go before Edward IV, present the master’s letters,and explain that because of the vacancy in the priory he had been dispatchedto order its affairs and to supplicate that it should be provided to anappropriate knight-brother, instituted according to its statutes and customs.These, he was to point out, had been violated by the king, whose institutionof Wydeville both breached the promises of his predecessors and would set abad example to other princes. Langstrother, therefore, was to request thatthe collation to the priory be remitted to the order.115 The convent’s reactionto the disputed election was thus both firm and flexible: the master andcouncil insisted that the priory should be in the order’s gift rather than theking’s but were probably willing to countenance the election of someoneother than Langstrother as long as the correct formwas upheld.116 The latterwas even, on 2 August 1469, given power to admit Wydeville as a professedknight.117 It was only on 5 April 1470, by which time the convent must havebeen certified of Langstrother’s acceptability by the king, that bulls wereissued appointing him prior.118

112 CPR1467–77, 131–2; Registrum Bourgchier, ed. Du Boulay, 294. The patent roll doesnot supply the name of the ‘prior’.

113 AOM377, fo. 143r.114 AOM378, fo. 148r.115 AOM378, fos. 162r–163v, 163v–164v, 231r–v.116 The lack of council records between 1467 andMarch 1470makes it difficult to determine

the intentions behind the orders issued in April 1469, but from the analogous case of WestonversusMulton in 1474–7 it appears that the convent, while anxious that undeserving candidatesshould not be raised to the priorate, refused to give explicit support to their more worthy rivalsuntil these should be acceptable to the king.

117 AOM378, fos. 149v–150r.118 AOM379, fos. 140r–141v.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 129

How the king might have responded to Langstrother’s mission in theabsence of any more urgent business cannot now be known, as the latterarrived in England at a time of acute political turmoil. On 12 July 1469Warwick issued a manifesto from Calais condemning various aspects ofgovernment policy for which he blamed those around the king. It is notknown whether Langstrother returned home via Calais, and still less if hehad reached it by this time, but among the manifesto articles was onecriticizing Edward’s advisers for the king’s seizure of crusading levies forhis own purposes, which might perhaps indicate Hospitaller influence.119 Inany case Langstrother andWarwick were soon as thick as thieves. They latershared a place on the list of those accused of responsibility for the murder ofthe Wydevilles at the end of July, and with the king then effectively War-wick’s captive Langstrother prospered, being summoned to parliament asprior on 10 August and appointed treasurer of England in place of theexecuted Rivers six days later.120 After his recovery of power in mid-September, Edward showed his distrust by removing Langstrother fromthe treasurership and waiting until 18 November to admit him as prior.121

He also insisted on enrolling the new prior’s oath of fealty, a practice notfollowed since the reign of Richard II, and may even have laid claim to thefruits of the priory’s vacancy year, for which Langstrother was required toanswer on 21 February 1470.122 This was not only virtually unprecedented,but it must have also have imposed a very heavy financial burden on theprior, who was also expected to make mortuary and vacancy payments toRhodes. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that Langstrother remainedone of Warwick’s most loyal adherents throughout the upheavals of 1470–1.On 7 March 1470, the day after the king left London to deal with risings inthe north of England, Clarence, Welles, Langstrother, and others ‘kept theirecounseill secretly at Saynt Johannez’ before Clarence left the capital torendezvous with Warwick.123 On Edward’s return to the capital at the endof the month, with the other conspirators dead or exiled, Langstrother was‘arestyd and yood a seson undyr suyrte’ of the archbishop of Canterbury. Yetin view of the rebels’ escape overseas the prior was too dangerous to remainunder clerical oversight and was moved to the tower, where he remaineduntil Henry VI’s restoration at the beginning of October.124 A furtherdimension to Langstrother’s involvement in the Lincolnshire rising is pro-

119 J. Warkworth, A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of the Reign of King Edward theFourth, ed. J. O. Halliwell, CS, 1st ser., 10 (London, 1839), 46–51, at 49; Gross, Dissolution,130.

120 Hicks, False, 48.121 CCR1468–76, no. 407; Hicks, False, 53.122 CCR1468–76, no. 407; CPR1467–77, p. 189.123 ‘Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire’, ed. J. G. Nichols in Camden Miscellany I,

CS, 1st ser., 39 (London, 1847), 8.124 The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London, 1938),

210–11.

130 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

vided by the pardon issued to William Tornay, the bailiff of Eagle andreceiver of the common treasury, on 28 July 1470 for all offences committedbefore the eleventh of that month.125 Although as receiver Tornay probablyresided in London, the farmer of Eagle, John Barton, was also granted ageneral pardon in January 1472, as again was Tornay in February.126 Whilethese pardons were granted in connection with the events of 1471 it seemshighly likely that Barton or Tornay acted as a link between Langstrother andthe Lincolnshire rebels in the previous year.

On his release from prison, the prior committed himself fully to therestored Lancastrian regime. On 20 October 1470 he was reappointedtreasurer—the only main office of state that did not go to a Neville—andon 24 February 1471 joint warden of the exchange and mint, while he alsoserved on the commissions of the peace appointed in January. The prior wastrusted enough by both the old Lancastrian nobility and Warwick himself tobe asked to accompany Queen Margaret and Prince Edward home fromFrance in February, and it was in two of his own ships that the Lancastrianparty sailed from Honfleur on 13 April, landing at Weymouth on EasterSunday. Langstrother then remained with the queen during the march toTewkesbury. He shared command of the Lancastrian centre during the battleand took refuge after the defeat in the abbey. Neither this sanctuary nor hisregular status could save him from being dragged out and executed on6 May.127

Langstrother had compromised himself hopelessly by his support forWarwick in 1469–71, yet it was surely Edward’s treatment of him and hisorder which had driven him to such defiance. The king had attempted todeprive him of the office which his seniority and distinguished servicemerited, had forced him to swear fealty and to account for the revenues ofthe Hospital, and had caused these humiliations to be enrolled in the officialrecords, something he resented enough to procure their cancellation duringthe Readeption.128 Finally, the prior had been incarcerated in the tower forseveral months before Henry VI’s restoration. It is scarcely surprising that hetook the field at Tewkesbury.

Nevertheless, from the convent’s point of view, Langstrother’s actions hadscarcely been wise, and might have prompted Edward to take more stringentaction against the order than in fact followed. That is not to say that he gavethe Hospital an easy ride. Langstrother’s successor, William Tornay, appearsto have succeeded him with little difficulty. He was ‘elected’ by the councilon Rhodes on 28 August 1471 but this merely confirmed a previous vote inEngland, for Tornay, as prior, had sworn fealty to Edward prince ofWales on

125 CPR1467–77, 217.126 Ibid. 316, 306.127 Foedera, v, II, 189;Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England, ed. J. Bruce, CS, 1st

ser., 2 (London, 1838), 22, 28, 31.128 CPR1467–77, 231–2.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 131

3 July.129 Tornay, a member of the order since the 1440s, had been receiverof the common treasury since 1461 and bailiff of Eagle since Langstrother’spromotion to the priorate, and might have been considered a safe pair ofhands after the excesses of his predecessor. On 22 December 1472, however,he was cited to Rhodes to justify his accounts for 1466–72, in which ‘verygrave discrepancies’ had been found. Large sums had been expended on giftsfor obtaining graces, payments to lawyers and envoys at times when thepriory had been void, on the liquidation of Langstrother’s debts, and on‘excessive and exorbitant’ payments made at Clerkenwell when the priorywas vacant and its expenses should have been less. Until Tornay had madeproper satisfaction Renier Pot, preceptor of Chalons, was appointed proctorof the Hospital in England, with power to seize those camerae pertaining tothe priory itself and all Tornay’s other assets. Their rule was to be committedto the bailiff of Eagle, Robert Tonge, and Tornay’s successor as receiver ofthe priory, Miles Skayff, was also to be removed from his post.130 Discrep-ancies in Langstrother’s spolia also resulted in proceedings being institutedagainst John Kendal by the officers of the common treasury in January1473.131

Tornay’s summons to Rhodes and the threatened sequestration of hisassets were a significant vote of conventual no confidence in the administra-tion of the priory of England. But it seems likely that the priory’s relationswith the crown, rather than mismanagement, were at the heart of thedispute. Tornay, indeed, had such a reputation for probity and competencethat in 1472 parliament had appointed him an overseer of the collection ofthe fifteenth and tenth designated for war with France, which the commonswere suspicious the king would appropriate for other ends.132 Moreover, theheavy expenditure on bribes, and payments to lawyers and messengers andthe fact that as wealthy a knight as Langstrother had left significant debtswould all seem to reflect royal pressure both during the disputed vacancyand afterwards. Royal acceptance of his position may have cost Langstr-other heavily in 1469–70, and his incarceration in the tower not three weeksafter he had been granted its revenues cannot have helped him collect them.They may even have been seized by the crown. Additionally, Langstrothermay have been fined for his part in the Lincolnshire risings, as also mayTornay, who secured a second royal pardon on 18 February 1472 and wasput under a bond of £300 at the same time as those implicated in the Bastardof Fauconberg’s attack on London. Three prominent prioral servants,Richard Passemer, John Fermour, and Richard Sheldon, were pardoned atthe same time and were party to the same obligation. Passemer had been

129 AOM74, fo. 88v; CCR1468–76, no. 858. Bulls were issued naming Tornay as prior on29 Aug. AOM379, fo. 146r.

130 AOM381, fos. 158v–160r, 161v–162r, 163r–v; CPL, xiii. 216.131 AOM74, fos. 154v–155v.132 Gross, Dissolution, 128; Ross, Edward IV, 215.

132 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

particularly heavily involved in the events of 1469–71, having served ascontroller of the petty custom and of tunnage and poundage in Londonand adjacent ports during both Langstrother’s terms as treasurer.133

Despite the dramatic tone of the convent’s letters of 1472, Tornay wasable to reach agreement with Pot over his disputed accounts, for on 20 April1474 news of a concord between the prior and the proctors of the commontreasury was signified to the order’s council.134 Certainly there is no evidencethat Tornay went to Rhodes to defend himself, for on 2 December 1473 and24 May 1474 he is to be found in England, presenting to benefices in thepriory’s gift. This would also suggest that Pot had not been allowed tosequester Tornay’s assets and preceptories.135 Yet financial problems con-tinued to dog the prior’s relationship with the convent. On 19 April 1474, anew receiver, WilliamWeston, was appointed, with the usual instructions tocollect revenues and compel debtors to payment. More pointedly, RobertMulton was commissioned on the 14th of the same month to requirepayment of the substantial arrears owed for the financial years endingJune 1473 and 1474 so that creditors granted assignments on the priory’srevenues might be reimbursed.136

Tornay’s death, probably in early August 1474, occasioned another ser-ious split between Edward IV and the Hospital. On 21 August RobertMulton, having been elected by its brethren in England, was presented tothe king as prior and swore fealty.137 Although he was put forward byseveral preceptors—John Malory, Marmaduke Lumley, John Turberville,and John Kendal—the new prior was unacceptable to the convent onRhodes. Multon seems to have been marked out for advancement, as thecommission of April 1474 and his service as a representative of the Englishlangue on the council complete between 1470 and 1473 demonstrate, but helacked the seniority and experience appropriate to the dignity of prior, andhad only been a preceptor since April 1470.138 Knights like Robert Tongeand John Weston, who had served since before 1450 and held significantadministrative posts, were unquestionably more qualified. Weston’s vigor-ous conventual service as turcopolier and the past service of his family to theorder were particularly strong arguments in his favour.139

133 CPR1467–77, 306; CCR1468–76, 226–7; Ross, Edward IV, 183; CPR1467–77, 168,231. Passemer was the scribe of the order’s common treasury in England from 1459 andFermour, on his demise c.1489, the farmer of the preceptory of Quenington, while Sheldonwas the prior’s chief auditor until his death in 1496. AOM369, fo. 198v; 393, fo. 112r–v; 390,fos. 134r–v; Lansdowne 200, fo. 42r.

134 AOM382, fo. 136r.135 Registrum Bourgchier, ed. Du Boulay, 315, 317.136 AOM382, fos. 148v–149v, 147r–148r.137 CCR1468–76, 380.138 AOM382, fos. 147r–148r; 74, fos. 20v, 31v–32r, 56r, 56v–57r, 59r–v; 75, fos. 23v–24r; 379,

fos. 142v–143r. Multon first appears as a conventual knight on 7 July 1463, along with twelveother brethren of the langue, at least nine of whom were still alive in 1474. AOM374, fo. 139r.

139 See above, Ch. 2.1, and below, Ch 8.4.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 133

Yet Multon was eminently agreeable to the king. Langstrother, Tornay,and, at least initially, John Weston were kept at arm’s length as far asemployment on government business was concerned and none was everemployed on an important domestic commission by Edward. By contrast,within a year of his appointment Multon was commissioned to take musterof soldiers proceeding to France and was appointed temporary warden ofthe east and middle marches towards Scotland until the earl of Northum-berland should return from France.140 Multon’s activities on behalf of thecrown and his relative obscurity before his election suggest that he was a‘royal’ candidate promoted over the heads of his fellows. In particular, heappears to have had close ties to the earl of Northumberland. In addition toserving as his deputy in 1475, Multon was at the head of Northumberland’sfeed-men when Henry VII made his entry into York in 1485.141

Royal and aristocratic approval alone did not make Multon any moreacceptable in Rhodes than it had Wydeville. Yet the response to his appoint-ment, perhaps understandably given recent events, was still more cautiousthan that to the disputed election of 1468. On 27 February 1475, JohnWeston, the turcopolier, and Multon’s proctors appeared in Rhodes topress their claims to the priory.142 It was decided that neither should beissued with title to it until the king’s will was known, but this did not meanthat the convent had assumed a neutral stance. At the same meeting it wasdecided that for the ‘honour and favour’ of the turcopolier, he should bemade lieutenant of the order in Italy, Germany, and England, and that lettersof commendation should be drawn up for him so that he, or anyone heshould appoint to lobby for him, might obtain the priory.143 Yet, perhapsbecause the order was waiting for news from England, it was some timebefore these recommendations were implemented. Weston’s procuration inthe west was not formally issued until 21 March, and he was not licensed toleave the convent until 17 June.144

In the meantime, Multon continued to occupy the priory undisturbed, asthe evidence of bishops’ registers demonstrates.145 Protected no doubt byconventual fear of incurring Edward IV’s displeasure, he was neither orderedto remove himself from the priory nor cited to Rhodes. Active measures

140 CPR1467–77, 526, 545.141 Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Stapleton, p. xcvi; J. Leland, De rebus brittanicis collec-

tanea, ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols. (London, 1770), iv. 185.142 AOM75, fos. 69v–70r. Robert Tonge, bailiff of Eagle, who had protested in 1471 that he

was as ‘ancient’ as Tornay, and that the latter’s election to the priorate should not be to hisprejudice, appears to have lost interest in the dignity by 1474. AOM74, fos. 88v–89r.

143 AOM75, fos. 69v–70r.144 AOM382, fos. 153r, 139r.145 The Registers of Robert Stillington Bishop of Bath and Wells 1466–1491 and Richard

Fox Bishop of Bath andWells 1492–1494, ed. H. C.Maxwell-Lyte, Somerset Record Society, 52(London, 1937), nos. 311, 341, 358, 362; Registrum Thome Myllyng, Episcopi Herefordensis.A.D.MCCCCLXXIV–MCCCCXCII, ed. A. T. Bannister, CYS, 26 (London, 1920), 187.

134 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

against him commenced only in June 1475, as Weston prepared to travel toEngland. On 14 June all licences to English brethren to receive knights intothe order were cancelled, while six days later Multon’s commission asproctor of the common treasury in England was revoked, depriving him ofhis only conventually derived claim to any form of authority over hisbrethren.146 Moreover, with one exception, in which he was styled ‘pre-ceptor’, assignments made on the order’s English revenues by a hopefulconvent between May 1475 and January 1476 were addressed to an un-named prior and receiver rather than to Multon. These may not have beenhonoured, for no more were issued until September 1477, by which time anew prior and receiver had been appointed.147

While Multon was being snubbed, his rival was accorded every mark ofrespect and favour. Weston’s debts to the convent were remitted to a laterdate, he was assured that when he was granted a commandery ‘of grace’ hecould hold it in conjunction with the priory, and he was provided with lettersin his favour addressed to Edward IV and requesting that collation to thepriory should be remitted to the convent on Rhodes.148 The turcopolierseems to have returned to England by way of Rome. He had been instructedto seek papal dispensation for leaving the convent when licensed to depart in1475, as the order’s brethren at headquarters had been ordered to remainthere during the Jubilee Year, and on 18 September Sixtus IV granted himmembership of the papal household, with a safe conduct whenever he shouldbe on papal business.149 By the time he reached England, probably in early1476, Sixtus had also appointed him prior. Given the traditional Englishhostility to papal provisions, Weston’s acquisition of papal letters wasfoolish, but the king appears to have blamed the issuer rather than therecipient. On 25 February 1476 he wrote to Rome complaining that Wes-ton’s import of letters recommending him as prior was an infringement ofthe rights of the crown. The usual procedure, he stated, was for the prior tobe elected in England, presented to and confirmed by the king, and thenconfirmed at Rhodes by magistral bull.150

The letters the turcopolier was carrying from the master and conventappear to have been of more value to him. Although Multon continued toexercise the office of prior until at least November 1476, after he hadreceived their letters the king seems to have accepted the principal that thecollation to the priory should ultimately be in the hands of the master andconvent. On 27 May 1476 Weston’s proctors appeared in Rhodes andreported that Edward had written that he was content to grant the turcopo-lier possession should he obtain bulls providing him with the priory. The

146 AOM382, fos. 138v, 139r–v.147 Ibid., fos. 177v, 172v–173r, 177r–v, 175v–176r, 176r; 385, fo. 162r.148 AOM382, fos. 139v–140r, 138v–139r; AOM75, fo. 117r.149 AOM75, fo. 83v; CPL, xiii. 281.150 CSPV, i, no. 452.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 135

order’s council, however, was suspicious, considering that Edward had takenso long to reply to the letters dispatched with Weston, and it was decidedthat no further action should be taken until the king’s response was certainlyknown.151 Thus, despite Weston’s claim to have royal approval and the issueof further papal letters confirming his collation on 1 June, he was not electedand confirmed as prior until 24 July 1476.152 His preferral was, moreover,hedged about with conditions. In case the king raised further objections, noprovision was to be made of the turcopolier’s bailiwick or preceptories untilthe convent was certified of his having taken possession of the priory.Furthermore, rather than send the bulls collating him directly to the newprior, they were to be entrusted to an ambassador who would show themfirst to the king and assure him that they would not be consigned to theturcopolier without royal assent.153 The ambassador, the draper NicholasZapplana, appointed on 8 August, was further instructed to arrange forpayment of the 9,000 ecus owed for Tornay’s mortuaries and vacanciesbefore Weston was given possession.154 In the event of the king refusing toaccept Weston, Multon was to be collated on condition he promised tosatisfy the mortuary and vacancy payments.155

By October 1477 Weston was in post and fulfilling his prioral func-tions.156 No further action was taken against Multon, who retained hispreceptory until his death in 1493, but was not granted any further dignitiesor offices in the order and was not summoned to Rhodes during the crisis of1479–81.157 He may have been too busy to leave the realm. His career in theroyal service revived in the reign of Henry VII; he was appointed surveyor ofthe port of Newcastle in August 1487; granted £20 by privy seal in thefollowing year; and made deputy lieutenant of the east and middle marchestowards Scotland in December 1490. Multon was styled variously ‘ourtrusty and well beloved knight and counsellor’ and ‘oon of the knightes ofSainct Johns of Jerusalem’ in these documents.158 His royal service perhapsshielded him from the actions of his religious superiors again, for he hadbeen summoned to convent to account for arrears in his responsions inOctober 1489, and appears not to have obeyed.159

151 Registrum Myllyng, ed. Bannister, 187; AOM75, fo. 117r.152 AOM383, fos. 142r–143v; CPL, xiii. 62.153 AOM75, fos. 131r–132v. An (imperfect) transcript of this document made by H. Finc-

ham, a former librarian at St John’s Gate, is translated and discussed in Gross’s Dissolution,131–2, 127–30. It does not wholly support Dr Gross’s contention that rival elections by theEnglish brethren threw up Multon and Weston as opposing candidates. The election of Westonreferred to in the original text is that by the master and council of the order on Rhodes. He mayhave been elected by the English langue first, but this is not mentioned in the text.

154 AOM383, fos. 170v–171v, 184v–185r, 249v–250r. The draper was the conventual bailiffof the langue of Aragon.

155 AOM75, fos. 131r–132v.156 Registers Stillington and Fox, ed. Maxwell-Lyte, no. 649.157 AOM391, fo. 200v.158 Materials . . .Henry VII, ed. Campbell, ii. 163, 393, 533, 557.159 AOM390, fo. 133v.

136 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

The reasons behind Edward IV’s initial support for Multon and procras-tination over Weston’s appointment must remain conjectural, but Multon’smilitary service and the charges of disobedience laid against Weston in 1465certainly suggest royal involvement in the affair, a conjecture corroboratedby the decision of the chapter of 1478 to hold subsequent elections to all theorder’s European priories in Rhodes.160

The election of the prior in England per se does not seem to have been theproblem. Whatever the order’s statutes said to the contrary, all priors ofEngland were elected there and (probably) presented to the monarch beforeconfirmation in Rhodes in the period between 1417 and 1471, and in thiscase, too, the convent did not formally appoint Weston until it had madesure of royal approval.161 Sixtus IV was not so concerned to uphold theroyal prerogative, and may have contributed to the delay in Weston’s acce-ptance by the king. Besides suspicion of Weston, and a desire to demonstratehis authority over the order, the king perhaps also opposed the dispatch ofthe fruits of the vacancy of the priory overseas, as he seems to have done in1468–9. By mid-1476 Multon had paid no part of Tornay’s mortuaries andvacancies, which might indicate royal refusal to allow these out of thecountry, although licences to John Kendal in 1475 and John Weston in1477 to ship cloth to the Mediterranean at least demonstrate that somedues were being sent to Rhodes.162

After his initial suspicion the king appears to have become quite trustingof the new prior. In many ways, his was a model priorate. Despite thepolitical upheavals of the time Weston maintained cordial relations withEdward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII without apparent difficulty, althoughhis absence from the country in 1483 must have facilitated this. He alsoretained the favour of Sixtus IV, and between 1481 and 1484 travelled toItaly and Rhodes, the last visit to the convent by an incumbent prior beforethe dissolution. Yet there is evidence that he suffered financial difficultiesthroughout his priorate, possibly as a result of the burden imposed on him in1476, which his exclusion from the prioral dignity cannot have helped himto meet. Thus Weston’s occupation of virtually every English preceptorywhich became vacant during the first years of his priorate, while chiefly

160 ‘ne ad eos promoveantur qui minus apti et ignari rerum ordinis sunt . . . statuimus . . . quodbaiulivi aut priores seu Castellanus Emposte in prioratibus vel castellania Emposte In Capitulisprovincialibus vel extra nullo pacto elegi possint sed tantum dictes electiones per Magistrum etconsilium ordinarium fieri debeant’. AOM283, fo. 183r. A further adverse comment on Mul-ton’s administration was provided by an enactment that the common seal of the prior andbrethren of the order in England was not to be used except in provincial chapters at which atleast four brethren, besides the prior, should be present. Ibid., fos. 183r–v.

161 ThusWilliamHulles, appointed in Constance in July 1417, appears in England as prior inthe preceding month; Robert Mallory, appointed in Rhodes in May 1433, appears in England asprior in July 1432, and Robert Botill, elected by his brethren in England in April 1440, wasformally provided in Rhodes on 29 Nov. AOM340, fos. 116r–v; CPR1416–22, 279; Field, SirThomas Malory, 70; Bekynton Correspondence, i. 80–1; AOM354, fos. 207v–208r.

162 AOM383, fos. 184r–185r; CPR1467–77, 506; CPR 1477–85; 58.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 137

occasioned by his disagreement with the langue over their respective rightsto allocate houses, probably also served a useful financial purpose in allow-ing him to exploit the occupied estates. His determination to maximizeincome and minimize expenditure is further evidenced by the issue in De-cember 1479 of papal letters rebuking him for failing to maintain properhospitality and for felling timber belonging to the priory. Additionally, hecontinued to withhold preceptories from his brethren until his arrival inRhodes in 1482, and ignored letters obligatory under which he was bound topay £223 to the Catalan merchants Lluis and Guillem Badorch.163 As late asOctober 1483, Weston was in dispute with the common treasury over sumsstill owed for Tornay’s vacancies.164 Had he not been excluded from thepriory and its fruits for so long, it is doubtful whether he would have facedsuch difficulties.

Nevertheless, his relations with Edward IV became relatively cordial. On24 August 1480Weston was substituted onto an embassy sent to Louis XI todemand the solemnization of the union of the dauphin and the lady Eliza-beth, presumably because he would then also have the opportunity to lobbythe French king on behalf of the beleaguered island of Rhodes. Returning tothe royal presence in mid-November, Weston held the spice plate during thechristening of the king’s daughter Bridget.165 Despite this new-found confi-dence, however, the king’s reaction to the siege of Rhodes was, if notungenerous, rather ambivalent. Certainly, the turcopolier John Kendal wasallowed to publish indulgences and collect indulgence money for the relief ofthe island throughout the crown’s dominions, and some printed indulgencessurvive as evidence of his activity.166 Furthermore, on 30 April 1480, themaster and convent of Rhodes were taken under the king’s protection, giventhe right to display the royal arms, and assured that should they be attackedby Christian pirates the king would issue letters of marque against theirassailants.167 Practical material assistance was also afforded towards thedefence. Edward wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury in August 1480 toinform him that he was contributing an 800-ton ship, theMargaret Howard,to the order and lending another. He urged the archbishop and clergy tocontribute too, and more than £60 was raised in the diocese of Worcesteralone.168 Although there is no indication in the records that the vessels everreached Rhodes, which suggests that they were detained when news came to

163 CPL, xiii. 253; AOM76, fo. 80v; AOM387, fo. 117r.164 AOM76, fos. 160r–161r.165 Foedera, v, III, 112; Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, nos. 98, 102, 108.166 Foedera, v, III, 103; Preston, Lancashire Record Office, RCHy 3/16 (31 Mar. 1480/1 to

John Hawardyne); Duff, Fifteenth Century Books, nos. 204–8. The text of one of Kendal’sindulgences, granted to Dame Joan Plumpton on 22 April 1480, is given in Plumpton Corres-pondence, ed. Stapleton, 118–19. I am grateful to Dr Joseph Gribbin for providing details of theindulgence issued to Hawardyne.

167 CPR1477–85, 193–4 (my italics).168 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 592–3.

138 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

England of the raising of the siege at the end of the year,169 the king alsogranted the order the parish church of Boston on 5 May, for which herecompensed the abbey of St Mary’s, York, the former impropriators, with80 marks per annum from the fee-farm of the duchy of Lancaster. In returnfor this benefaction the Hospital was expected to hand over its rather lessvaluable estate at Beaumont Leys in Leicestershire to the crown.170 Finally,on 1 November 1480, the king licensed Weston and Kendal to export 320grainless cloths from Southampton without payment of subsidy.171

Nevertheless, the king was unsympathetic to the urgent requests from theconvent for Weston’s presence there. On 24 July 1479 the prior and fournamed preceptors were summoned to Rhodes and required to present them-selves by April 1480. Another order, to Weston and nine of his fellows,followed in November, and on 28May 1480, shortly after the appearance ofa substantial Turkish fleet before the island, all the order’s brethren wereinstructed to come to the relief of the beleaguered convent with munitionsand victuals. A further mandate of 23 September 1480, promulgated in thebelief that a second siege was imminent, required the presence of Weston,eight English preceptors and the preceptor of Torphichen, the prior ofIreland, James Keating, and six commanders whom he should deemworthy.172

The response ofWeston and his brethren to the earlier of these summons isdifficult to gauge but the news from Rhodes was certainly taken seriously.Richard Cely the Younger, writing to his brother George in Calais in June1480, asked for more news for Weston, who sent to him each week fortidings. And whilst government business kept the prior from obeying thesummons between August and October, he attempted to comply with themandate of that September, for a letter of January 1481 reported that he hadbeen summoned by the master of Rhodes but refused permission to leave bythe king, and was instead engaged in examining the royal ordinance in thetower.173 It is grimly ironic that, as the convent of his order lay half ruinedand bereft of munitions after a savage siege and subsequent earthquake, theprior of St John of Jerusalem was prevented from going to the aid of hisbrethren because he had to assess the materiels in the Tower of London to

169 The records of the order’s council note the arrival in Rhodes of vessels of severalnationalities during and after the siege, and Edward IV’s are not among them.

170 CPR1477–85, 230, 235, 241; CCR1476–85, nos. 733–4, 741, 778; Rot. Parl., vi.209–15.

171 Overseas Trade of London, ed. Cobb, no. 282. These were packed in London and takenby cart to Southampton. Ibid., nos. 282–7, 314–15.

172 BesidesWeston, Thomas Green, Marmaduke Lumley, WilliamWeston, and the preceptorof Torphichen, William Knollis, were summoned in July 1479. In November were added theprior of Ireland, James Keating, the bailiff of Eagle, Robert Tonge, John Boswell, Miles Skayff,John Turberville, and Robert Eaglesfield. In the following May John Kendal, who had been onthe order’s business in Italy and England in 1479–80, was added in place of Tonge. AOM387,fos. 1–26v, 9v, 5v, 26r–v.

173 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, nos. 90, 114.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 139

make sure that they were adequate to the conduct of war against theChristian Scots. Doubtless the king intended this to be an instructive dem-onstration of priorities. Frustrated of his purpose, Weston requested thatGeorge Cely, who was on his way to Bruges, report any ‘tydyngys of theRodys’ he might get from the Venetians and Florentines there.174

On 4 June, Weston again came into London to plead for leave to depart.This time it was granted, and after holding a provincial chapter to arrangefor the administration of the priory while he was away, he left the capital on3 August, in the company of John Kendal and other brethren.175 Althoughthe prior was only issued with letters of passage for himself and one com-panion, he travelled with a considerable fellowship, and he certainly madesubstantial financial provision for his journey, amounting to £800 to £1,000in cash and letters of exchange. So magnificent was his entourage, indeed,that Weston, writing to Richard Cely from Rome in October, boasted that heand his fellows were ‘ryt welcome, wyth euer nobleman saying that thaysawe not thys C yer so lequelly a felychyppe for so manny and in Þat araycome howte of Ynglonde’.176

Weston’s mission was partially hijacked by both the crown and thepope, for before proceeding to Rhodes he visited Rome and Naples ratherthan taking the quicker route via Venice, which seems to have been hisintention earlier on. He was greeted in some state when he reached Romeon 15 October. Sixtus IV, he reported, ‘made me gret cher’ and would haveabsolved him of any obligation to the contrary had he not insisted oncontinuing his journey to Rhodes. Instead, he was to proceed there as thepope’s ambassador, entrusted ‘wyth materis of gret inportansse’. It waspresumably in this capacity that he enjoyed a ‘ryall ressevyng and . . . grettpresentys’ in the following month in Naples. While in Rome he had alsoassisted the king’s proctor in his attempt to resolve the ancient disputebetween Richard Herron and the Staple.177

Weston did not arrive in Rhodes until June 1482, when he presentedEdward IV’s letters and for the honour of the Apostolic See and of theking was admitted onto the order’s council with precedence over all mem-bers save the master and his lieutenant. The prior remained at the conventuntil sometime after 9 June 1484178 and in the interim served on a variety ofcommissions and prosecuted or defended various actions on his own behalf,as is discussed elsewhere.179 Unusually, all three English bailiffs of the orderwere present in convent in 1482–3, which must have given them consider-able clout on the council and at the chapter-general of 1483.

174 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, no. 114.175 Claudius E.vi, fos. 299r–300r; Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, nos. 117–18, 121–3.176 Ibid., nos. 118–19, 121–2, 129.177 Ibid., nos. 118, 129, 178.178 AOM76, fos. 103r, 170r.179 See above, Ch. 2.2.

140 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

The administration of the priory during Weston’s absence was entrustedto his brother William,180 who presided over a tranquil period in its affairs,although the English brethren were the driving force behind the conventualattempt to unseat the prior of Ireland, James Keating.181 On 18 December1482 Keating was formally deprived, and Marmaduke Lumley, who hadfailed to secure permanent possession of Templecombe, was granted thepriory and the magistral camera of Kilsaran.182 Yet despite the support ofthe archbishops of Dublin and Armagh, Lumley was unable to dislodgeKeating, who resorted to armed force to deny his rival. The crown’s pre-occupation with other matters in 1483–5, and Keating’s alliance with theearl of Kildare were probably crucial to Lumley’s failure to secure posses-sion. In contrast to the turmoil in Ireland, the Hospitaller brethren inEngland managed to avoid significant involvement in the political upheavalsof 1483–7, their prior and turcopolier were internationally respected ser-vants of crown, curia, and convent, the priory’s finances appear to have beensound, and disputes over promotions were infrequent and amicably reso-lved. Attacks on the abuse of Hospitaller privileges by the clergy, and thecontinued defiance of Keating, appear to have been the sole clouds on thehorizon.

By the time Weston reached England, after tarrying in Rome over Christ-mas 1484,183 Edward IV had been dead for nearly two years. It is difficultto escape the conclusion that he had been at the least doubtful of the order ofSt John, which lurched from one crisis to another as a result of his heavy-handed interventions between 1468 and 1481. Despite his actions on itsbehalf in 1465 and 1480 his attitude to the Hospital was often unsympa-thetic and overbearing.184 He had attempted to foist an unsuitable candidateon the order as prior in 1468, defended brethren considered incompetent orinappropriate by the convent against the legitimate actions of their super-iors, and refused licence for the prior of England to go to the defence ofRhodes. The king was probably responsible for the financial trouble whichdogged the priory throughout the 1470s, ensuring that Langstrother haddebts when he died, that Tornay was summoned to Rhodes for maladmin-istration, and that John Weston saw fit to extract every last penny out of hisbrethren and his own resources in the first years of his priorate. His snubs tothe convent went somewhat beyond the traditional hostility of the crown to

180 The Register of Thomas Rotherham Archbishop of York 1480–1500, ed. E. E. Barber,CYS, 69 (Torquay, 1976), no. 912.

181 AOM388, fos. 136r–v.182 Ibid., fos. 134v, 136r–137r. Lumley disputed title to Templecombe with various rivals

between 1463 and 1479. AOM374, fos. 139r–140r; AOM377, fo. 141v; AOM380, fo. 136r;AOM386, fos. 128v–129r; CPL, xiii. 255–6.

183 The prior was granted a papal safe conduct for himself and a company of up to twenty-five persons on 31 Dec. 1484. CPL, xiv. 5.

184 In 1465, he had written at the instance of Botill to protest against the attack of theVenetian fleet on Rhodes in the previous year; CSPV, i, nos. 397–8.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 141

the interference of foreign agencies in English affairs and have to be seenagainst his sceptical attitude to crusading and foreign adventure. The king,like his Lancastrian predecessors, was firmly opposed to the levy of papalcrusade tenths, and although he permitted the clergy to make a grant ofsixpence in the pound for Pius II’s crusade in 1464, some of this seems tohave found its way into the royal coffers, while in 1466 and 1481–2 heactively opposed any grant.185 He may have regarded the Hospitallers’responsions, especially the increased levy decided on by the advice of apapally appointed committee in the chapter of 1466–7, as papal taxationby the back door. Edward’s jaundiced view of the foreign jaunts of hisnobility, and the collapse of the number of licences to noble pilgrims tovisit the Holy Places during his reign, may also shed light on his dealingswith the Hospitallers.186

Nevertheless, Edward IV’s distrust of the order was neither complete norimmutable. While clearly wishing to remind his Hospitaller subjects thattheir first duty was to him, he was willing to offer significant assistance to thedefence of Rhodes in 1480, and seems to have appreciated the order’s successin resisting the infidel. John Kaye’s dedication of his translation of Caoursin’saccount of the siege to Edward indicates at the least that he believed that theking might be interested in the subject,187 and if the decoration of a sub-stantial chamber in the royal apartments at Windsor with scenes of the siegecan be attributed to the same monarch, it surely indicates that his earlierscepticism had become real enthusiasm.188 It is arguable, indeed, that theorder’s success in 1480 greatly reduced criticism of its activities for a gener-ation, and that the relatively placid relationship priors of England enjoyedwith successive kings after the siege bears witness to the effects of the victoryon royal perceptions of the Hospital. Certainly, Richard III’s attitude to theorder was not as bullying and interfering as his predecessor’s. Admittedly,the new king was unsure of his support, especially in southern England, andthe Hospitallers must have been worthwhile potential allies both at homeand abroad, which made it sensible to maintain good relations with them,especially when both the turcopolier, John Kendal, and Weston were out ofthe country and in potential contact with Henry Tudor. The king wrote anenthusiastic letter of welcome to Leonard du Prat, the conventual visitor, inDecember 1484, stressing in it his ‘affection, zeal and devotion’ for ‘so great

185 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 145–51, 153.186 For Edward’s objections to such travel, see above, n. 43. Only one nobleman, Henry Lord

Fitzhugh, is known to have visited Jerusalem in this reign, in contrast to those of his predeces-sors. Whether this was due to royal disapproval or the Veneto-Turkish war of 1463–79 isunclear, but it is significant that numbers of noble pilgrims did not recover thereafter. Mitchell,Spring Voyage, 122; Tyerman, England, 308; G. J. O’Malley, ‘The English and the Levant in theFifteenth Century’, M.Phil. thesis (Cambridge, 1994), 41–2, 97–101.

187 Caoursin, Siege of Rhodes, trans. Kaye.188 The author of the decoration of the ‘Roodis Chambre’, which was not described as such

until 1533, is unclear. W. St John Hope, Windsor Castle: An Architectural History (London,1913), 253–4. I am indebted to Dr Anthony Luttrell for this reference.

142 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

an order’.189 He further recalled Prat’s ‘sincere affection and great love’ forEdward IV.190

Richard’s relationshipwith JohnKendalwas also cordial. On 16December1484, the turcopolier and the bishop of Durham were appointed to give theking’s allegiance to the new pope, Innocent VIII, although Kendal’s residencein Italy at the time makes the appointment a matter as much of convenienceas of trust.191 More telling evidence is provided by a Venetian letter of April1485, which reported that when papal bulls of interdict against the Republichad been taken to England, Kendal had exerted himself in such wise that theking tore them up.192 Furthermore, Richard not only visited the prioryhimself, but also used it to stage one of the more important public eventsof his reign when he held an assembly of London worthies in its Great Hallto refute rumours that he was planning to marry his niece Elizabeth. Hemust have felt that it was friendly territory.193

5.3 Henry VII and the Hospital, 1485–1509

Despite his amicable relationship with Richard III, John Weston was not soheavily identified with the Yorkist regime that he was unable to serve theTudor. Within a couple of years of his accession Henry VII was employingWeston on as much government business as any of his predecessors. It is afeature of the relationship between the order and the Tudor monarchs thatthe priors of England, always subordinate to the crown, now became littlemore than public servants, albeit valued and respected ones. This processbegan in the very early days of Henry VII’s reign. The prior appeared totestify to the degree of the king’s blood relationship with his bride-to-be thelady Elizabeth in 1486, stating that he had known the latter for ten years andthe former since 24 August 1485.194 Weston was in Rome by May 1487,

189 Letters of the Kings of England, ed. J. O. Halliwell, 2 vols. (London, 1848), i. 151–2;quotation after British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. R. Horrox and P. W. Hammond,4 vols. (Gloucester, 1979–83), iii. 123.

190 Ibid. I have not come across any evidence that Prat had met Edward.191 Kendal arrived in Italy inFebruary1484.A letterwritten fromRomebyhimand thepriorof

Champagne was read out in convent on 4May, and Kendal was appointed to present the order’sallegiance to Innocent VIII on 18 October. He had already played a prominent part in theceremonies surrounding the papal election in August and September. AOM76, fos. 167r–v, 177r;CSPV, i, nos. 489, 493; J. Burckardi,Liber notarum ab annoMCCCCLXXXIII usque ad annumMDVI, ed. E. Celani, 2 vols., Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 32 (Rome, 1906–13), i. 20, 55, 80.

192 CSPV, i, no. 493. Sixtus had placed Venice under interdict on 23 May 1483. Setton,Papacy, ii. 376 & n.

193 Crowland Chronicle Continuation, ed. Pronay and Cox, 176–7; Richard III, ed. Ham-mond and Sutton, 198–9; A. Hanham, Richard III and his Early Historians 1483–1535(Oxford, 1975), 51, 53.

194 CPL, xiv. 19–20. This was two days after Bosworth, indicating that Weston had eitherhurried north to proffer his allegiance to the new king or had been in the vicinity at the time ofthe battle.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 143

having been sent by Henry to do homage to the pope and, being delayed atCalais on his return journey in January 1488, can hardly have had time toreturn to Clerkenwell before he was placed at the head of a commission totreat for peace with Isabella and Ferdinand of Castile-Aragon.195 Althoughclearly valued as a diplomat, Weston was equally prominent in the govern-ment’s service at home, serving on commissions of the peace in Essex, Kent,Middlesex, and Warwickshire between 20 September 1485 and 10 Novem-ber 1488.196

Elected prior of England in Rhodes on 22 June 1489,197 John Kendal wasthe outstanding English knight of his generation. Already an immenselyexperienced diplomat, who had served as the convent’s procurator-generalat the curia since 1478, and lieutenant general of the order in the west tocollect the indulgence of 1479–81, he had conducted negotiations with therulers of England, France, Naples, Burgundy, Venice, and Savoy on theorder’s behalf in the 1480s, chiefly on the difficult matter of the custody ofJem Sultan, the Turkish prince who had fled to Rhodes in 1482.198 Hispassage between Venice, Rome, and Paris at various times between 1485and 1488 also made him useful as an emissary to the Republic, the Holy See,and the English crown at various times. In January 1488, for example, theVenetian ambassador in France reported that Kendal, who had arrived inParis as the representative of the convent and curia, was now retained thereon the business of Henry VII.199 The Venetians valued his friendship sohighly that they ordered public receptions to be provided for him in thetowns of the contado when he left the city on his way to Rome in May1485.200

From the point of view of both order and crown, Kendal would thusappear to have been an ideal candidate for the priory of England. Yet HenryVII, despite his evidently friendly relationship with JohnWeston, was no lessconcerned to uphold his prerogatives in the appointment of a new prior thanEdward IV had been, as the turcopolier found out to his cost between 1489and 1491. On 21 July 1489 the archbishop of Canterbury, John Morton,wrote to Innocent VIII reporting the arrival of the papal collector, AdrianoCastellessi, in England and saying that he would do his best for John Kendal,whose merits he well knew, but that the king nevertheless resented theturcopolier having usurped the name and title of his priory without havingasked his advice or tendered allegiance to him. Clearly, the new prior hadfollowed neither the traditional procedure of election in England, presenta-

195 Burckardi, Liber notarum, i. 195;Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, no. 240; Foedera, v, III, 189.196 CPR1485–94, 486, 490, 493, 503–4.197 The bull confirming the prior’s appointment was dated 20 June, before Kendal’s election

by the council. AOM77, fo. 18r; AOM390, fos. 128r–129r.198 AOM386, fos. 146v–148r, 149v–51r; CPR1477–85, 194; CSPV, i, nos. 489, 493–4,

496–7, 518, 523, 526, 533–4; iv, Appendix, no. 993; AOM386, fos. 157r–v.199 CSPV, i, no. 526.200 Ibid., no. 497.

144 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

tion to the king, and confirmation in Rhodes, nor waited for election inRhodes in accordance with the statute of 1478. He had probably assumedthe title in Rome on learning ofWeston’s death. Henry VII could hardly haveobjected to his appointment as early as July 1489 if it had taken place inRhodes the previous month, so Kendal must have either arrogated the prioryto himself without formal appointment by the order, or been provided by thepope.201 It is conceivable that he had already been granted the expectancy ofthe priory in Rhodes, but there is no record of this.

Morton assured Innocent that the king would ‘bear all tranquilly’ in thematter because of his devotion to the pope, but a year later Kendal wasprobably still in bad odour at court, for Castellessi, returning to Rome inJuly 1490, was instructed to acquaint his master with Henry’s opinions onthe priory of St John.202 In the following month, Kendal was granted licenceto leave Rome for his ‘urgent causes’ by d’Aubusson, and the prior ofAuvergne was appointed to various commissions in Italy in his place. Des-pite getting permission to go home, the prior was still in Italy in the earlymonths of 1491, for he was commissioned to admit an Italian protege of thecardinal of Parma into the order and a preceptory on 23 February 1491, andwas granted membership of the papal house of Cibo on 1 March.203 Al-though Kendal’s name appears as patron of an English benefice in theHospitallers’ gift in May, which may indicate a brief visit home, in Augustand October Robert Eaglesfield was acting as his lieutenant while he was ‘inremotis’, as he had done in 1490.204 It seems unlikely that he took uppermanent residence in the priory before the last months of 1491. It wasnot until the following January that he was pardoned for bringing magistralbulls preferring him to the priory into England without royal licence orelection by his fellows in England.205

If Kendal, like his predecessor, had some difficulty getting possession of hispriory, like Weston he nevertheless became a valued public servant and dealtwith a considerable range of government business. In June 1492 he wasappointed a commissioner to treat for peace with Charles VIII; in February1496 he was among those deputed to arrange a treaty with the ArchdukePhilip—the so-called Intercursus Magnus; and in May 1500 he was with theking at his meeting with the archduke at Calais.206 On this occasion,reported the king, particular honour was done the prior, who visited Philip

201 CSPV, iii, Appendix, no. 1475. Morton did indeed know Kendal’s merits, havingemployed him as one of his proctors in the curia in 1490. Register Morton, ed. Harper-Bill,i, no. 61.

202 CSPV, iii, Appendix, no. 1475; i, no. 577.203 AOM390, fos. 131v–132r, 141r–142v, 147r, 154r; CPL, xiv. 273–4.204 The Register of Thomas Langton Bishop of Salisbury 1485–93, ed. D. P. Wright, CYS, 74

(n.p., 1985), nos. 352, 124, 274, 326; Register Morton, ed. Harper-Bill, ii, no. 52.205 CPR1485–94, 368.206 Foedera, v, IV, 45, 82; LPRH, ed. Gairdner, ii. 87; The Chronicle of Calais, in the Reigns

of Henry VII and Henry VIII, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 35 (London, 1846), 3.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 145

in St Omer with the royal secretary, Thomas Ruthall. The pair were received,asserted Henry, ‘In such honourable wyse that the lyke thereof hath not beenseen In tyme passid’, and rode on either side of the archduke in processionthrough the town.207 It was, however, on government business in Englandthat Kendal was more frequently employed. Traditionally, priors of St Johnsat on commissions of the peace in Essex, Middlesex, and sometimes Lin-colnshire, counties where there was a heavy concentration of Hospitallerproperties. Both John Weston and his successor served in these shires and in1493, at a time of administrative experiment, Kendal was appointed JP in noless than twenty jurisdictions, including all the administrative divisions ofYorkshire and Lincolnshire. Subsequently, following a reversion to the prac-tices of Henry VI’s reign, Kendal sat only on commissions of the peace inEssex and Middlesex.208 Other government service was more occasional:commissions of walls and ditches in Lindsey in 1497, of sewers in Essex andMiddlesex, and of inquiry into the recent insurrection in theWest Country inJune 1497.209 A bare list of the employment of the prior on royal businessdoes not tell us much about relations between crown and order but it servesto demonstrate that Kendal was a trusted government servant. His appoint-ment to inquire into recent rebellions, and the reception at St Omer, areparticularly telling of the esteem and confidence in which he was held.

It is all the more extraordinary then that on 14 March 1496 a Frenchservant of the prior, Bertrand de Vignolles, made a public deposition accus-ing Kendal of masterminding a series of bizarre and convoluted plots tomurder Henry VII and, more recently, of complicity in Perkin Warbeck’sactivities in the Low Countries.210 According to Vignolles’s statement, Ken-dal, together with his Hospitaller nephew John Tonge and William Hussey,the archdeacon of London, had conspired over a period of several years tokill the king, his children, and others about his person. The plot had beenhatched in Rome, where the conspirators, said Vignolles, hired a Spanishastrologer, a Master John Disant, to accomplish their design. AlthoughDisant demonstrated his credentials by eliminating a Turk of the householdof Jem Sultan, Kendal returned home without providing the astrologer withenough money to ensure his continued service. Nevertheless, after two yearsthe prior sent Vignolles to Rome to urge Disant to carry out his task and tomurder another astrologer, whom Kendal had also approached to arrange

207 Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, 292–3.208 CPR1485–94, 482, 484, 486, 489–93, 495–8, 500, 503–8; CPR1494–1509, 638; J. R.

Lander, English Justices of the Peace, 1461–1509 (Gloucester, 1989), 28, 112–19.209 CPR1494–1509, 90, 118, 180–1.210 This document, contained in British Library MS Cotton Caligula D.vi, was edited by

Madden in his ‘Documents relating to PerkinWarbeck’, at 205–9, and by Gairdner in LPRH, ii.318–23. Gairdner also appends letters from Kendal to some of the parties involved, notablyNoion and Vignolles. The most sensible recent discussion of Kendal’s part in the Warbeckconspiracy is I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491–1499 (Stroud, 1994) ratherthan A. Wroe’s [otherwise interesting] Perkin: A Story of Deception (London, 2003).

146 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

the king’s death and who was now beginning to talk. Disant was to come toEngland dressed as a friar, under pretext of a pilgrimage to Santiago, butagain the prior failed to furnish him with sufficient funds for the task.Instead, the astrologer supplied Vignolles with a box of ointment which, ifsmeared on a doorway through which the king was to pass, would causeHenry’s friends and relations to turn against him and murder him. Returninghome, Vignolles threw this away and replaced it with a harmless mixturepurchased from a Parisian apothecary. He gave this to Kendal, telling himthat it was dangerous to handle, and the prior instructed him to get rid ofit.211

Vignolles further stated that on his return to England he had seen letters,partly in code, from a Hospitaller and servant of the prior’s in Flanders,Guillaume de Noion,212 giving news of Perkin Warbeck’s progress on theContinent. Warbeck was given the code name of the ‘Merchant of Ruby’ inthe letters and as such, Vignolles reported, attempted to sell ‘stones’ at thecourts of Margaret of Burgundy and Maximilian. Noion was also the agentfor Kendal in his attempts to raise money for Warbeck by bills of exchangedrawn up between the prior and a prominent merchant of Bruges, DanielBeauvivre. The prior had also, it was alleged, had advance warning ofWarbeck’s descent on England in July 1495, in which James Keating tookpart, and prepared jackets of his livery at Melchbourne, to which Yorkistemblems he had prepared might be sown as occasion demanded. He alsoshared his intelligence of the landing, and of the imposter’s other doings,with the bishop of Winchester, Thomas Langton, and his fellow conspir-ators, Hussey’s nephew John, and Sir Thomas Tyrrell, another member ofthe order.213 Kendal had discussed the possibility of ‘a son of Edward IV’visiting Tyrrell one day, as the father had done. Others acquainted with thetreason were Kendal’s secretary, William Yolton, and two servants of thearchdeacon’s, William Lily and John Water, who had both been in Rome atthe time of the original plot.214 By this stage, Vignolles claimed, he had beendetermined to unmask the conspirators, but was unfortunately taken ill forsix months. On his recovery, he asked Kendal’s permission to visit hisbrother in Dieppe, so that he could reveal the plot without fear of bodilyinjury from ‘ceulx qui ont conpille ceste traison’.215

211 ‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. Madden, 205–7.212 Noion was a professed sergeant-at-arms and the farmer of the magistral camera of the

priory of France between June 1491 and June 1496. AOM391, fos. 102r–103r; AOM392, fos.114r–115r.

213 He is not mentioned in the order’s archives as such, but may have been a confrater.214 ‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. Madden, 207–9, 177–8. Arthurson also

links Kendal and a conspirator executed in 1495, the Warwickshire knight Sir Simon Mount-ford. Mountford had purchased an indulgence from the then turcopolier in 1480. Arthurson,Perkin Warbeck, 85, 90–1.

215 ‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. Madden, 207.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 147

Despite its wealth of detail and allegations, it would be simple to dismissthis statement as an elaborate fantasy—the malicious gossip of an embit-tered servant, or perhaps a French plot to destabilize Henry VII. Vignolleswas vague about dates, and had to go to considerable lengths to explain whythe conspirators had failed to make an actual attempt on the king’s life. Yetthere is circumstantial evidence that might suggest to the suspicious mindthat Kendal had been intriguing in Rome at some time between 1485 and1491, and more substantial material suggesting that he was at the very leastinvolved in treasonable correspondence with Warbeck’s ‘court’ in the LowCountries. The rather nebulous poison plot which Vignolles alleged that theprior had masterminded against Henry can presumably, if it existed, bedated to c.1489 to c.1492, as Kendal returned home during its course. Asthis was precisely the period when the king was hindering his promotion tothe priorate, he may well have been disgruntled and might conceivably haveplotted to kill his monarch. He had, after all, loyally served the Yorkistcrown for years and may not have ever met the Tudor king. He was,moreover, in an environment where people could more safely speak theirmind about the new dynasty than at home. Several of the other allegedplotters, including William Hussey, were with him in Rome in the 1480sand early 1490s, and Kendal, the two Husseys, and Thomas Langton wereall members of the Confraternity of the Hospice of St Thomas in Rome.Between 1486 and 1491, indeed, Kendal was its chamberlain.216

The Holy City, moreover, was notorious for poisonings at this time, andKendal was certainly in a position to procure the murder of members ofprince Jem’s household, as he had been appointed the captain and prefect ofhis guard in 1488.217 Rumours that Jem had been poisoned in 1495 can onlyhave helped strengthen the case against him.218 Yet despite this attractivemixture of fact, supposition, and common prejudice, Vignolles producedprecious little evidence to support his claims of an attempt to poison HenryVII, which even he had to admit did not actually take place. The prior’sinvolvement in the Warbeck conspiracy is more plausibly attested. Shortlyafter Vignolles’s deposition was made, letters of the English prior’s to theprior of France, to Noion, and to StefanoMaranycho, a Sardinian servant ofKendal’s, were seized by the crown, possibly along with Kendal himself.219

At first sight the correspondence seems innocuous enough. Kendal wrote toNoion and the prior of France in April 1496 recommending Vignolles, whohad left England two months before to find his brother. While awaiting thearrival of his absent relative he had met two of Kendal’s friends, who hadsomething to sell. Vignolles was instructed to meet the two merchants, whowere wont to sell ‘stones’ at Rome, and who wished to know whetherKendal wanted any of their merchandise. He was to take them to Noion,

216 Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 76, 232 n. 54. 217 AOM389, fos. 209v–10r.218 Setton, Papacy, ii. 482. 219 LPRH, ii. 323–6.

148 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

who was in Artois, and would assess the quality of the jewels, and thenreturn to England bearing his response. One of the ‘merchants’ was probablyMaranycho, also accused of complicity in the poison plot, for another letterof Kendal’s was addressed to him, instructing him to trust Vignolles andsuggesting he sell his ‘good things’ at the fair of Antwerp, where he wouldalso find Noion.220

The language of the letters is deliberately obscure, and would seem tosuggest financial dealings rather than treason were it not for the fact thatNoion and Maranycho had already been mentioned in Vignolles’s accusa-tions, and that the references to gems are clearly reminiscent of the codeallegedly used for Warbeck. The letter to Maranycho is particularly suspi-cious. The Sardinian had travelled all the way from the kingdom of Naples,yet the prior evinced no desire to meet him and encouraged him to sell hisgoods in Flanders rather than bring them to England. Arthurson evensuggests that ‘good things’ may have been code for poison, and ‘Antwerp’for Margaret of Burgundy. Kendal’s reluctance to buy such wares would fitwith his instruction to Vignolles to throw away the poison he had broughtfrom Italy.221

The key link in the supposed plot, however, is Noion. It is not difficult todemonstrate his closeness to the prior: the letters seized in April 1496 alonedo that. In addition, three English knights, including Kendal’s nephewTonge, had stood surety for Noion when he was granted the farm of thepreceptory of Flanders, and when he fell into debt in 1492 he was able to setpayments he had made to Kendal against his arrears.222 Yet, besides Vignol-les’s testimony, no further proof of any link between Noion andWarbeck hasbeen found. If this had been as close as he had alleged Sir Robert Clifford,who returned from Malines with a long list of English plotters in December1494, would surely have brought down the prior, Tonge, the Husseys, andLangton. Although Kendal may have been under suspicion, and was putunder a bond of £100 inMarch 1495, he was certainly not tried either at thistime or in 1496. Indeed, his appointment to negotiate with Burgundy inFebruary 1496, which Arthurson describes as ‘splendid cover for his otheractivities’ could hardly have been possible if he had been mistrusted, unlesshe was some kind of double agent.223

The king, in any case, was suspicious of uncorroborated testimony,224 andmay have decided that Vignolles’s accusations, delivered in public beforerepresentatives of the French crown, had been engineered to cause trouble.The letters seized by the crown are suspiciously opaque, but correspondencebetween business partners was often unspecific, treasonable talk was

220 ‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. Madden, 205; LPRH, ii. 323–6.221 LPRH, ii. 323–6; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 137.222 AOM391, fos. 102r–103r, 159r–v.223 CCR1485–94, no. 792; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 83–6, 137.224 Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 77.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 149

common, and Kendal did not make the mistake either of mentioning the‘Merchant of Ruby’, or of referring to Scotland, where Warbeck was thenstaying. Although the prior was pardoned on 1 July 1496 of all offencescommitted before 17 June, the king cannot have believed he was guilty of allthe charges against him or he would not have trusted him with sensitivebusiness again.225

As it was, Kendal continued to serve on commissions of the peace, ondiplomatic missions, and on the royal council. He even investigated theCornish rising of 1497, an affair which Arthurson considers to have beenlinked with the Warbeck conspiracy.226 Besides these formal activities onbehalf of the crown, there is evidence that Kendal was personally favouredby the king both before and after 1496. He was licensed to hold a market andfairs at Baldock and to import Gascon wines in 1492, and was cleared of hisand the priory’s debts to the crown. King and prior actively cooperated in theremoval of the traitor and rebel James Keating from the priory of Ireland,and Henry did not punish the Hospitallers for Keating’s treason.227 Hence-forth, priors of Ireland were to be English preceptors, something whichsuited both the langue and the crown, to whose ‘better service’ the actforbidding the priory to the Irish brethren drew specific attention. And ifHenry’s intervention in Ireland was largely a result of self-interest, a clearermark of genuine favour was provided by his dispatch of hobbies and artil-lery, the latter to be placed on the ante-mural or bouleverde defended by theEnglish langue, to Rhodes in 1499. The gift represents the most significant ofa number of diplomatic exchanges between Rhodes and Westminster con-cerning the priory of Ireland, the proposed exchange of lands between theorder and Giles Lord Daubeney, and the Jubilee Indulgence of 1500.228 TheVeneto-Turkish war which began in 1499, and which the order entered in1501, prompted considerable crusade enthusiasm in the West: a French fleetwas dispatched to the Levant in 1499, the Spanish were also consideringmilitary involvement in the area, and Henry VII, besides his support for theHospitallers, contributed 20,000 crowns of his own revenues to the crusadefund in Rome, to the astonishment of the curia. The king’s support for theorder needs to be seen in this context.229

The internal history of the priory during Kendal’s incumbency is lessdramatic than the prior’s personal vicissitudes, but is not without interest.There is little sign in the Maltese archives that the problems surrounding hisappointment caused any great concern in convent, yet there are indicationsthat his exclusion from his dignity may have disrupted the functioning of the

225 CPR1494–1509, 49.226 CPR1494–1509, 638; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 162–5.227 CPR1485–94, 375, 405; Foedera, v, IV, 47; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 214; Rot. Parl.,

vi. 482b–3a.228 AOM78, fos. 37r, 95r–v; Porter, Knights of Malta, 294.229 Setton, Papacy, ii. 518; LPRH, ii, pp. lxii–lxv, 116. For the order’s involvement in the war,

see above, Ch. 1.1.

150 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

priory during his absence. No provincial chapters seem to have been held inKendal’s name during his continued residence in Italy230 and neither are anyorders to Hospitaller brethren enrolled in the Libri Bullarum betweenNovember 1489 and February 1492. In August 1490 there was even worryin Rhodes that the prioral seal might be misused ‘during the dissensionconcerning the priory’ and a letter was dispatched to the receiver on thesubject.231 Moreover, when the convent did begin to issue orders to Kendalto act in England, in October 1492, he was instructed to compel his brethrento pay substantial arrears owed to the common treasury: John Boswell,Robert Peck, Robert Evers, and Robert Dalison owed over £600 betweenthem. By the same February, Henry Halley had still not paid any part of theresponsions of the preceptory he had been granted in 1489.232 In April 1493,the receiver, Thomas Newport, was ordered to collect, besides the 4,723ecus owed by prior and brethren for that year’s responsion, a total of 5,679ecus owed by the prior, eight English preceptors, and the prioress of Buck-land, of which 2,785 ecus was still owed for the prioral vacancy year of 1489to 1490.233 Although Evers had by now apparently paid his debts, Boswell,Peck, and Dalison were still in considerable arrears, as was John Tonge, whoowed £170 for the vacancy year of Ribston.234 Newport was to collect themonies, buy cloth with them, and ship it on the Venetian galleys whichwould be travelling between England and Messina in 1494. The type andquality of textiles he was to purchase were rigidly defined.235

Although it was common for at least some English brethren to owe moneyto the common treasury, the debts accumulated by 1493 were unusuallylarge, and would have been far greater had the convent not, ‘usant demoderance et non pas de severite et Rigueur’, agreed to limit the vacanciesof the priory to 4,000 ecus, a sum considerably lower than its net annualincome.236 The fact that of the men granted preceptories during the round ofpromotion which accompanied Kendal’s accession to the priorate in 1489only the receiver had paid his vacancies in full by April 1493 probablyindicates administrative disruption during the period before Kendal gainedpossession. The convent’s leniency on the question of the prior’s debtssuggests genuine difficulties in collection, partly, perhaps, caused by hisearlier exclusion from the priorate. Kendal’s absence certainly cannot have

230 The first chapter recorded in the lease book of the English Hospitallers dating fromKendal’s priorate was held in June 1492, after his return from Italy. The first chapter recordedin Docwra’s began on 20 July 1503, while he was still in Rhodes. Lansdowne 200, fos. 2r–9r;Claudius E.vi, fos. 3r–5v.

231 AOM77, fo. 27r.232 Boswell owed £139/9/9, Green £75/4/10, Peck £83/18/7, Evers £341/17/6, Dalison

£82/0/11, and Halley £198/11/4¼. AOM390, fos. 134r–v; AOM391, fos. 100r–101r, 103r–v.233 AOM391, fos. 106r–107v, 199r–v.234 Ibid., fos. 107v, 106r.235 A worthy man was to accompany the cargo to its destination. Ibid., fo. 199v.236 Ibid., fo. 199v.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 151

helped him regain control of the Warwickshire preceptory of Balsall, aprioral camera and favourite residence of John Weston which between1489 and 1496/7 was in the hands of a secular usurper, Robert Bellinghamof Kenilworth. In 1487 Bellingham had abducted the daughter and heir ofthe farmer of Balsall, John Beaufitz, from her parental home by force, butdespite a considerable scandal eventually acquired Beaufitz’s consent tomarry her.237 On Beaufitz’s death in 1489, Bellingham entered into posses-sion of Balsall and remained there until at least the last months of 1496,ignoring an order by the royal council that he vacate.238 The order was ableto remove him shortly afterwards, but significantly Kendal then granted thelease to Robert Throckmorton, the head of one of the most substantialgentry families in the county. It is interesting to note that Beaufitz, Belling-ham, and Throckmorton all held significant posts in the administration ofWarwickshire, and it might be speculated that it was only with the assistanceof such notables that the order’s more desirable properties could be retainedin its grasp. Such recoveries were not only difficult and time-consuming; theywere expensive too, so that it is not surprising that both Kendal and hissuccessor, Thomas Docwra, asked to be allowed a pension against theirresponsions on account of the heavy legal costs incurred in defence of thepriory.

Kendal remained in arrears throughout his priorate. In October 1495, inthe presence of the grand master, the turcopolier, the prior’s secretary, andothers a declaration was made touching his accounts. He was quit of sevenitems amounting to 4,990 Venetian ducats which the chapter of 1493 hadremitted to magistral judgement, but a further twenty-three payments,amounting to perhaps £360, which the prior had made in Italy were notallowed against his arrears, as he had claimed, but were to be submitted tothe next chapter for arbitration, as were 1,000 ecus (£200) which he claimedshould be subtracted from his vacancy payments. A further claim for £300over which Kendal pretended he was prejudiced by an error in Thornburgh’saccounts, which he said he had not seen, was disallowed because he hadsigned the documents in question in London in the presence of a notary. Theprior remained 1,567 ecus in debt.239 Although the Libri Bullarum for1497–1500 are missing, Kendal had not paid his debts by September 1498,for Richard Boswell then appeared before the council in Rhodes protestingthat he should not be granted the preceptory of Carbrooke, as he owed thecommon treasury 1,500 ecus. Although the proctors of the treasury said theywere confident of its payment and the collation of Carbrooke was granted to

237 E. W. Ives, ‘ ‘‘Agaynst taking awaye of Women’’: The Inception and Operation of theAbduction Act of 1487’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht, and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds.), Wealth andPower in Tudor England (London, 1978), at 26–9.

238 PRO/STAC2/33/40.239 AOM392, fos. 104v–107r.

152 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

the prior, Kendal was still in debt when he died,240 probably in earlyFebruary 1501.241

Kendal’s demise was reported to the council on Rhodes on 12 June.242 Theturcopolier, Thomas Docwra, who was in Rhodes, seems to have been theonly candidate for the priory, despite the greater seniority of Thomas Green,the aged bailiff of Eagle.243 Although the order’s council initially deferredthe election of a new prior ‘because of certain legitimate respects concerningthe utility and honour of the whole religion’, on hearing of Kendal’s death itgranted immediate licence to the English langue to meet so that the prioralfifth camera, Melchbourne, could be granted to Thomas Docwra, who gaveup his preceptory of cabimentum, Dinmore, in return. The election to thepriorate was suspended until the chapter-general should meet, for on the dayafter its inception, 6 August, Docwra appeared before the council to petitionfor the priory, having first been granted the right to exchange it for theturcopoliership by the English langue. Despite a protest by the proctors ofthe common treasury,244 he was duly elected prior, retaining Melchbourneas his fifth camera.245 The provision to the turcopoliership, claimed byHenry Halley, Robert Dalison, Thomas Newport, and Robert Daniel,was remitted to the sixteen capitulars, who on 26 August allocated it toNewport.246

There is little remarkable in the bull providing Docwra to the priory,although the farm of his four prioral camerae was, unusually, specified at350 ecus until such time as commissioners should be appointed to revaluethem.247 A later confirmation of the terms of his appointment set the farm ofthe priory’s vacancy year at 4,000 ecus, and that of Melchbourne, the fifthcamera, at 950.248 Although these sums considerably undervalued all hisestates saveMelchbourne, the new prior was eager to reduce his burdens and

240 AOM78, fos. 93r–v; 79, fos. 89r–v.241 The editors of Dugdale’sMonasticon state that Kendal died in November 1501 but a later

dispute about his spolia states that they were executed on 10 February 1501. The prior’s deathseems to have been sudden. He had presided over a provincial chapter held on 20 January andwas apparently planning to visit Rhodes shortly before his demise, hardly the intention of a sickman. Monasticon, vi, II, 799; Lansdowne 200, fo. 84r; AOM79, fos. 114v–117v.

242 AOM79, fos. 11v–12r.243 Green had been a Hospitaller for longer, having attended the chapter-general of 1459. He

had been a preceptor since 1471 and bailiff of Eagle since 1481. Docwra first appears as aconventual knight in 1474. Green does not appear to have visited Rhodes after the early 1480s,however, and took little part in the order’s affairs after 1489, dying early in 1502. AOM282, fo.54r; 378, fos. 148v–149v; 76, fo. 70v; 388, fos. 132r–v; 382, fo. 136v; 394, 171r.

244 The treasury officials held that no one should be elected prior without first swearing touphold the ordinance made in the 1498 chapter concerning the dues owed to the treasury fromEngland. Docwra replied that the statute had ruled that the prior should be given time to provehis right to certain of these monies, and petitioned that the matter should be examined bythe chapter. AOM 284, fos. 5r, 9r–11r; 79 fos. 117v, 118r.

245 AOM79, fos. 11v–12r, 22v.246 AOM79, fos. 23r, 23v; AOM284, fo. 35v.247 AOM393, fos. 109v–110v.248 AOM394, fos. 174v–175v.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 153

renewed Kendal’s claim for a pension of 630 ecus, averring that this wasnecessary to support the heavy burden of litigation on the English priory,and also demanding a smaller sum from the preceptory of Scotland. Notonly were these demands rejected, the prior and the more senior Englishknights were later forced to swear to uphold the capitular ordinance on thematter, to seek no pension from the common treasury in lieu of the sumsclaimed, and not to impede responsions from Scotland.249

What is perhaps most interesting about Docwra’s appointment was that itproceeded without any apparent hitch and that it was neither preceded byelection in England nor accompanied by the issue of papal letters in hisfavour. These facts seem to indicate that the statute of 1478 insisting thatpriors should henceforth be elected in Rhodes was now uncontroversial andthat the order and the crown had come to a working arrangement whichrespected the rights and claims of each. Docwra appears to have beenunopposed as prior and there is no sign either that Henry VII found himunacceptable, or that the king was unhappy at his absence in Rhodes, whichextended until 1504. Docwra had an impressive record of service in the east,having been, while turcopolier, visitor of Cos, captain of Bodrum, andcaptain of the order’s galleys. With the order’s entry into the Veneto-Turkishwar in 1501, practised commanders such as he became indispensable, andaccordingly he was twice appointed the captain of one of the order’s galleyspatrolling the Aegean in 1501, although on the first of these occasions hisvessel was among two defeated off Syme by a Turkish squadron. The masterof the order, the still formidable Pierre d’Aubusson, conducted the warvigorously, and called on other Christian powers to contribute ships ormoney should they not be able to enter the lists themselves. If the maintargets of his appeals were the rulers of Hungary and Venice, more distantpotentates like Henry VIII were not forgotten. Writing to Ladislas VI ofHungary in January 1502 the master professed himself hopeful of securingnaval aid from England, the pope, and the king of France.250 Duplicates of aletter informing Louis XII of events in the east had been dispatched to HenryVII in the previous December.251 A further letter was sent to the king ofEngland in October 1502, reporting a Turkish naval build-up in the Helle-spont and requesting some of the money which the order had heard he hadset aside for the faith. This would, it was promised, be used to arm galleys orbarques which would be marked with Henry’s royal insignia and maintainedin his honour until the subsidy ceased. The letter, together with generalsupplications for the royal favour, was to be presented at court by ThomasNewport.252 There is no record that Henry VII responded to this plea with

249 AOM284, fo. 9r–11r; 79, fos. 117v, 118r.250 AOM79, fos. 51v–52r; Vatin, L’Ordre, 266–7.251 The letter was to be carried to England by Thomas Sheffield, the preceptor of Beverley.

AOM79, fos. 47r, 49v–50v.252 Newport was already in England. AOM79, fos. 103v–104r.

154 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

material assistance but the order’s later flattery might indicate that he sentsome help.253

Although the prior of England does not seem to have played any great partin the naval operations of 1502–3, he could not be spared to return homeuntil after the arrival of the new master, Aimery d’Amboise, in September1504.254 In the meantime he served on the council and was employed on anumber of commissions, especially after the death of d’Aubusson in July1503. Some of these were of considerable delicacy and importance. In lateJuly, for example, Docwra was one of three commissioners appointed todraw up letters announcing the death of the former master to Korkud, thegovernor of southern Anatolia.255 In the following month he was given thetask of reporting on the state of the harbour defences at Rhodes, and inFebruary 1504 he was among four senior brethren deputed to treat with thecaptors of one of Korkud’s chief servants, Kemal Beg, who had been takenprisoner in the Aegean.256

Despite the significance of these activities, the new prior was keenly awareof his responsibilities to the king. In April 1503 he wrote to inform SirReginald Bray that he had sought licence to leave Rhodes but had beenrefused because the Turks were preparing a fleet and army against the ordernow that the Venetians had pulled out of the war. He asked Bray to approachthe king, excuse his absence, and stress his fidelity. He also asked Bray tofavour the priory’s affairs while he was away.257 During his absence thepriory was administered by Thomas Newport, the receiver and turcopolier,acting as ‘president’ during Kendal’s vacancy year (June 1501 to June 1502)and as Docwra’s lieutenant thereafter.258 Despite his initial failure to upholdthe prior’s prerogatives in the case of Kendal’s dispropriamentum,259 New-port exercised a relatively vigorous lieutenancy. He held provincial assem-blies in Docwra’s name, presented to benefices in prioral gift, served on royalcommissions and in April 1502 presided with Thomas Sheffield over the

253 See below, 158.254 The plague of 1499–1500 and war against the Turks left the order short of manpower

until Amboise’s arrival. All permission to leave had been rescinded on 26 August 1503. Docwrawas granted licences to depart on 11 and 20 September 1504, but was still in convent on 24September. Vatin, L’Ordre, 258, 274; AOM80, fos. 110r, 56v, 143v, 142r–143r.

255 AOM80, fo. 43r; Vatin, L’Ordre, 279.256 AOM80, fo. 55r. For the latter episode, see Vatin, L’Ordre, 280–3.257 Westminster Abbey Muniments 16072. On Bray, see M. M. Condon, ‘From ‘‘Caitiff and

Villain’’ to Pater Patriae: Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office’, in M. Hicks (ed.), Profit, Pietyand the Professions in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1990), 137–68.

258 The Registers of Oliver King Bishop of Bath and Wells 1496–1503 and Hadrian deCastello Bishop of Bath and Wells 1503–1518, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, Somerset RecordSociety, 52 (London, 1937), nos. 395, 444, 472, 542.

259 This was a declaration of assets made by a sick brother of the order. Kendal had drawn hisup in an irregular manner in conjunction with his nephew, John Tonge, erring further by makingseveral bequests and endowing a chantry to pray for his soul even though he remained a debtor.AOM79, fos. 114v–117v.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 155

re-examination of Kendal’s spolia.260 Combining the duties of lieutenantprior and receiver may have been too much of a strain, however, and on 14July 1503 Sheffield was appointed receiver in Newport’s place.261 CertainlyNewport had plenty to keep him occupied. There are signs that the prior’sabsence may have hampered the order’s defence of its property and privil-eges. In 1501 the order was in dispute with Charles Booth, the vicar-generalof Lincoln diocese, over its encroachment on episcopal jurisdiction. Boothmet prioral representatives to discuss the matter at St Paul’s, but withoutreaching any definite resolution.262 A more serious dispute concerned Bal-sall. In November 1495 it had been leased to Sir Robert Throckmorton for athree-year term, renewable on its expiry. This arrangement was to continuefor twenty years, or until the prior died, when the order had the option tobuy out Throckmorton’s interest, but on Kendal’s death the farmer refusedto vacate the property. Although the lease had not been renewed in 1498–9he was still in possession in 1503, when the order agreed to regrant it for theyear to that midsummer on condition that he pay his arrears and render upthe property to Lancelot Docwra on his return from Rhodes. But when thelatter and Thomas Sheffield came to make Balsall ready for the prior theyfound that the Throckmortons had fortified it and that they were refusedadmission.263 By the time the case was brought to Star Chamber, theThrockmortons had put a chaplain and other persons into the manor, soldits hay, done other damage, and run up arrears of more than £150.264 Intheir defence the family alleged that the knights had breached the Statute ofRetainers by coming to Balsall with a large following clad in their livery,none of whom was their servant or a member of their order.265

The dispute of 1495–6 over the same house had been resolved rather lessdramatically,266 and the absence of the prior may have weakened attemptsto safeguard his property and encouraged the farmer to defy his officers.Certainly Newport did his best to avoid litigation during his lieutenancy,acceding to the bishop of Hereford’s demand for payments from the order’schurch at Garway,267 and only proceeding against Throckmorton whenthere appeared to be no other option. On his return the prior initiallyseems to have been unsure how to restore Balsall to his authority, for alease of the manor of Chilvercoton dated June 1505 and stating that its farm

260 AOM79, fos. 89r–v.261 AOM394, fos. 177r–178r.262 Registrum Bothe, ed. Bannister, p. vii.263 PRO STAC1/2/109/5.264 Ibid., 1/2/109/1–5; 1/1/50 (1–2). The case is noticed in VCH Warwickshire, ii (London,

1908), 99; M. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society,1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), 129. Neither the grant of 1495 nor the renewal of the lease in1503 is recorded in the order’s lease book.

265 PRO STAC1/2/109/4, 2; Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, ed. C. G. Bayne, SeldenSociety, 75 (London, 1958), p. cxxiii; Statutes, ii. 658–60.

266 PRO STAC 2/33/40.267 Registrum Mayew, ed. Bannister, pp. iii, 19–34.

156 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

should be paid to Docwra at Balsall, implies that he had decided to take thepreceptory in hand, while another Warwickshire lease granted in the samechapter required payment of rent to the preceptor or farmer of Balsall.268

This might indicate a desire to come to an agreement with Throckmorton,but within a few months Docwra had petitioned the convent for licence torestore Balsall to the hands of his fellow religious, on account of the dilapi-dation caused by the exploitation of successive farmers since the days ofRobert Botill.269

In June 1505 Docwra held his first provincial chapter. There was muchbusiness to transact. The three assemblies held by Newport in 1503 and1504 had only granted short-term leases of those preceptories whose incum-bents were in or on their way to Rhodes,270 and had not let any prioralproperties. As opposed to only nine leases granted in the meetings of 1503–4, at Docwra’s first chapter in 1505 thirty-five separate properties wereleased.271 The most important grant was the renewal of a lease of themanor of Hampton Court to Giles Lord Daubeney, the king’s chamberlain,who had petitioned the order to exchange it for his manor of Yeldon as longago as 1495, and secured royal and prioral letters in his favour at thattime.272 The authorities on Rhodes had appeared to cooperate, appointingcommissioners to view both properties to ensure that the exchange was inthe order’s favour, as the statutes required, but the chapter-general alonecould authorize the alienation of Hospitaller estates and there was consid-erable institutional reluctance to do so.273 While Kendal was waiting for adecision on the permanent grant of the property, he had done the next bestthing and granted an eighty-year renewable lease, which was now ex-changed for one with a ninety-nine-year term, also renewable.274 This washardly in keeping with the order’s policy, which was to discourage attemptsto gain permanent possession of its property, and the terms of the grant wereto cause some embarrassment later.275

Once in England, Docwra became more a servant of the crown than of hisorder and was involved in a heavy volume of government business fromshortly after his arrival. Initially Docwra served in traditional ways, oncommissions of the peace or on the royal council,276 although thescope and variety of his employment began to increase after the death ofHenry VII. The most characteristic manifestation of his royal service was

268 Claudius E.vi, fos. 22r–v, 21v–22r.269 AOM397, fo. 140r–v.270 Claudius E.vi, fos. 3r–7v.271 Ibid., fos. 8r–27v. Two grants were of the same property to the same man, at slightly

different rents. Ibid., fos. 16r–v.272 Claudius E.vi, fo. 8r; AOM78, fo. 37r.273 AOM78, fos. 37r, 79v; 392, fos. 103v–104r.274 Lansdowne 200, fos. 30r–v, Claudius E.vi, fo. 8r.275 See below, 173.276 CPR, 1494–1509, 639, 650, 663; Select Cases, ed. Bayne, pp. cvi, 46.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 157

diplomatic business. On 4 March 1506 he was among those appointed totreat with Philip the Fair of Burgundy-Castile, a parley which resulted in theIntercursus Malus, a one-sided agreement which collapsed after Philip’sdeath.277 The experience was not wasted, however, for in October 1507the prior travelled to Picardy to treat for the marriage of the lady Mary andthe young duke of Burgundy, the future Charles V.278 When the Burgundianambassadors paid a return visit to England in December Docwra was amongthe noblemen whomet them at Dartford and he entertained the Burgundians‘splendidly and festively’ to a banquet at Clerkenwell in the followingFebruary.279

Even before Docwra’s building programme was completed, the prioryseems to have been a desirable stopping place. The king himself had visitedin 1486, and the Scottish ambassadors were lodged there in 1501. An evenmore pointed display of the royal favour was Henry’s stay ‘in the country inthe buildings of St. John’s’, where he received the French ambassador in thesummer of 1508. Henry may even have gone hawking with the prior, for in1506 the common treasury had accepted Docwra’s claim that two falconspurchased as presents for the king should be allowed against his accounts,and his visit to the order’s estates would seem an ideal time for Henry todeploy the birds.280 Relations between crown and order had apparentlynever been friendlier. On 27 May 1506 the convent bestowed the title ofprotector of the order on Henry VII.281 Whether this honour was granted inrecognition of favours already received or in anticipation of more it isdifficult to say. The letter is general in tone, stressing the order’s constantstruggle against the Turks, the precariousness of its position in the east, and,perhaps significantly, bemoaning the difficulty the Hospital had in collectingits rents in the west and stressing its need for protectors there. This may havebeen a veiled plea for royal support in matters such as the Balsall case, or fora reconsideration of the king’s insistence on levying taxes on Hospitallerproperties.282

277 Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations betweenEngland and Spain, preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere, vols. i–xiii (London,1862–1954), i. 384, 447.

278 Chronicle of Calais, ed. Nichols, 6; Memorials, ed. Gairdner, 100; The Reign of HenryVII from Contemporary Sources, ed. A. F. Pollard, 3 vols. (London, 1913–14), i. 302.

279 ‘ ‘‘The Spousells’’ of Princess Mary, 1508’ in Camden Miscellany IX, CS, 2nd ser., 53(London, 1895), 6; Memorials, ed. Gairdner, 109.

280 CCR1485–1500, no. 67; Great Chronicle, ed. Thomas and Thornley, 315; Memorials,ed. Gairdner, 129; AOM397, fo. 142v.

281 LPRH, i. 287–8; AOM397, fos. 139v–140r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 186.282 The preceptor of Baddesley, Robert Peck, was in debt to the king on his death in 1505,

which, to take an uncharitable view of Henry VII, may indicate a royal levy on his person orproperty. Furthermore, in 1503, Thomas Newport asked to be excused £32 of his responsionsfor Dalby and Rotheley because tenths granted to the crown in convocation were being levied onBoston church, which had been appropriated to the preceptory since 1482. AOM397, fos. 143r,145r.

158 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

Although the king’s sojourn in the order’s estates in the summer of 1508speaks highly of the good relations between Henry and the prior, Docwra,having been summoned to attend the chapter-general to be held in August1508, should really have been in the eastern Mediterranean instead.283

When the king died in April 1509, Docwra was still in England. Henrymay have felt that with two of the three English bailiffs of the langue alreadyin Rhodes,284 the order could afford to leave the prior at home. Docwra,who was conducting a dispute with the bishop of Hereford in 1507 whilesimultaneously quarrelling with the English langue and the convent over thecollation of Halston, may himself have felt disinclined to travel.

Henry VII died on 22 April 1509. His relationship with all three priors ofEngland during his reign had been relatively fruitful. All had performed thecustomary service of priors on royal commissions, the king’s council, andparticularly on the diplomatic business for which they were so well suited. Inreturn, although he had been determined to uphold the royal prerogativewith regard to John Kendal’s appointment, Henry took little or no actionagainst Kendal when he was accused of treason in 1496, sent artillery toRhodes, and may conceivably have been prepared to allow the prior to gothere at the turn of the century.285 The new prior, Thomas Docwra, wasrefused permission to perform conventual service but the king may have feltthat as he had only arrived in England in late 1504, the order for him toreturn by 1508was rather precipitous. In the meantime, the king was heavilyinvolved in crusade schemes, and donated funds from his own pockettowards them. His interest in the order is perhaps further indicated by hisdisgraced councillor Sir Richard Guildford’s journey to the Holy Land in1506. Besides making expiation for his financial misdeeds, Guildford mayhave been asked to make contact with the English langue in Rhodes: hischaplain was certainly impressed by the warmth of the English brothers’hospitality there.286 The order’s nomination of the king as its protector canbe seen both as a culmination of these contacts and an encouragement tomore.

Nevertheless, if Thomas Docwra’s priorate in some respect represents themost active period of cooperation between crown and order since the 1430s,the fervent royal embrace in which the more prominent English Hospitallersfound themselves after about 1500 proved at times to be stifling, andcertainly constituted a brake on their freedom of action. The ideological

283 AOM397, fos. 140v–141r. The chapter was not held until early 1510. AOM399, fo. 146v.284 The bailiff of Eagle had been summoned to Rhodes in 1504, and had arrived by 7 May

1506. He was given licence to leave on 4 September 1508. The turcopoliers Robert Daniel (to1508) andWilliamDarrell were also resident, as was usual. AOM395, fos. 139v–140r; AOM81,fos. 44r, 108r.

285 See above.286 R. Guylforde, The Pylgrymage of Sir Richard Guylforde to the Holy Land, ed. H. Ellis,

CS, 1st ser., 51 (London, 1851), 57.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 159

underpinnings, administrative personnel, and institutions of the early Tudorstate may not have been all that different from those of its Yorkist predeces-sor, but the new regime did preside over a larger and more lavish court, amore intrusive and interventionist government, and a growing insistence onthe duties of subjects to the crown.287 These developments had a morenoticeable impact on the Hospital in the reign of Henry VIII, but some ofthem are foreshadowed in the reign of his father, whose addiction to diplo-matic intrigue kept Weston, Kendal, and Docwra extremely busy on hisservice, and whose decisive intervention in the order’s Irish affairs beganthe transformation of the notoriously independent priory of Ireland into anarm of the state. Closer ties to court appear to have enhanced the prestigebestowed on the order by its defence of Rhodes, but also led to somebrethren, particularly those from families prominent in royal service suchas theWestons, being singled out for favour and even attached to the court asgentlemen pensioners. The physical growth of the court, too, led to in-creased competition for grants of the order’s property, such as Daubeney’sfor Hampton Court. It is certainly true that earlier priors had been promin-ent as diplomats, that kings had sometimes pressed the order to admit orfavour particular brethren, and that courtiers had often sought leases of itsproperty. The difference is more of degree than of kind, of tone than ofsubstance, but there are indications that all of these pressures were intensi-fying from the 1490s onward. During the next reign they were to becomevery pronounced indeed.

287 Recent views of Henry VII’s regime include M. C. Carpenter, ‘Henry VII and the EnglishPolity’, in B. J. Thompson (ed.), The Reign of Henry VII (Stamford, 1995), 11–30; J. Watts,‘A Newe Ffundacion Of is Crowne: Monarchy in the Age of Henry VII’ in ibid., 31–53; andS. J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government 1485–1558 (Basingstoke, 1995).

160 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

CHAPTER SIX

The Hospital and the EnglishCrown, 1509–1540

With hindsight it is readily apparent that Henry VIII was no great friend ofthe order of St John, whose English, Welsh, and Irish houses he dissolved in1540. Nevertheless, in his first fifteen or so years on the throne, during whichhe posed on occasion as the champion of papal foreign policy against theFrench and of Catholic orthodoxy against Luther, relations between thecrown and the Hospital were generally friendly, following the pattern estab-lished during the reign of his father. The son, indeed, showed a positive andgratifying interest in Levantine and crusading matters in the first years of hisreign. He rewarded a hermit who had visited the Holy Sepulchre, patronizedthe friars of Sion and monks of Sinai, and even dispatched a body of Englishcrusaders to assist Ferdinand of Aragon in north Africa.1 It was during thisreign, too, that the tentative English mercantile contacts with the easternMediterranean begun in the reigns of Edward IV and Henry VII became an‘ordinarie and usuall trade’.2 The permanent community of Hospitallerbrethren in Rhodes was an important component in the embryonic English‘network’ in the region and from the start Henry kept himself informed bothof the order’s affairs as a whole and of the langue’s in particular. Hiskeenness to do so is indicated by a collection of Hospitaller and otherLevantine letters in the British Library which allows us to trace the corres-pondence between crown and convent in unprecedented detail.3 In recogni-tion of this interest, and hope that he would emulate his father’s activesupport, Henry was appointed protector of the convent two years after hisaccession to the throne.4 Fulsome letters were exchanged between Englandand Rhodes, gifts of balsam and Turkey carpets dispatched to Henry andWolsey, and the wealthy prior of England, Thomas Docwra, allowed inreturn to send large consignments of goods to convent in advance of hisresponsions. In consideration of his qualities, Docwra was very nearly

1 LPFD, i, nos. 885 (7), 3586, 3587; E. Hoade, Western Pilgrims to the Holy Land (Jerusa-lem, 1952), 96; Tyerman, England, 351–2.

2 A. A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton 1270–1600 (Southamp-ton, 1951), 218–19, 231; Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, v. 62–4.

3 Otho C.ix.4 LPFD, i, no. 767.

elected grand master in 1521, which would have constituted a considerablecoup for both langue and crown.5

Nevertheless, the new king could sometimes be cynical about the reportsof Turkish advances in the letters reaching him from Rhodes, and hisprimary concerns when dealing with the English brethren of the orderappear to have been to remind them of their responsibilities as subjectsand to make them useful in his service. From the beginning the priors ofEngland and Ireland were treated as government servants and habituallyrefused licence to go to the convent, while their brethren were sometimesrequired to fight in France, and the order as a whole to contribute contin-gents to royal armies. Some brethren were actively groomed for service,being appointed gentlemen pensioners and recommended to the authoritieson Rhodes, but a corollary of such favour was that the king demanded hisproteges receive early preferment, which might cause disruption in thelangue. Above all, there was an insistence, reminiscent of Edward IV’s,that when the crown’s priorities conflicted with those of the order in anyrespect the latter must give way. Accordingly royal interventions on behalf ofthe English brethren in their struggle to subject the order’s houses in Scotlandand Ireland to the authority of the langue ceased when the order’s interestsno longer coincided with Henry’s own. John Rawson, for instance, washelped to secure possession of Kilmainham because a strong priory ofIreland was a useful adjunct to the crown’s authority there, but Henry’sinsistence that those born in Ireland were ipso facto unfit to hold any dignityat all in the priory possibly contributed to Edmund Seys’s rebellion againsthis superior. Moreover, when Rawson tried to go to Rhodes to prosecute hiscase against his brothers and to perform his conventual service, he wasdenied permission to leave Ireland. Henry’s withdrawal of support fromGeorge Dundas, the favoured candidate of langue and convent for promo-tion to Torphichen, in the hope of a slight strengthening of MargaretTudor’s position in Scotland provides an even more telling insight intoroyal priorities.6

Yet the king’s reservations about the Hospital had not become apparent inthe first days of his reign and the order evidently held out hope of hisassistance in its struggles. In late September 15107 Amboise wrote to theking congratulating him on his accession, encouraging him to work towardsthe ‘expedition’ planned by his father, and reporting the order’s destructionof the Mamluk fleet on 23 August. The victory, warned the master, brought

5 J. Fontanus, De bello rhodio, libri tres, Clementi VII, Pont. Max. dedicati (The Hague,1527), 13–14 (Bii-Bii verso); Setton, Papacy, iii. 203.

6 See below, 249–50, 263–4.7 Misdated in LPFD to 1 October 1509. The content of the letter is identical to that of

one enrolled in the Liber Bullarum for 1510–11, but dated there 28 September 1510. LPFD, i,no. 191 (Otho C.ix, fo. 1); AOM400, fos. 223v–224v; text in Codice diplomatico, ed. Pauli, ii.174–5.

162 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

new dangers, for it had brought the Turkish and Mamluk rulers together indetermination to avenge the insult. It was therefore necessary for the orderto summon its brethren to Rhodes to meet the threat and the king wasrequested to release Thomas Docwra for conventual service. In the followingMay, the order petitioned Henry, like his father, to act as the order’s pro-tector, a title he retained until the dissolution.8

This letter is the first of a series of bulletins on Levantine affairs directed tothe king, to Wolsey, and later to Thomas Cromwell. Although their contentand tone altered with events, the conclusion—that prompt and substantialhelp should be sent to combat the Turkish menace—remained the samethroughout the period before 1522. In the first few years of the reign theorder was fairly bullish, reporting the victories of Shah Isma’il (the ‘Sophi’)in Anatolia in 1511 and 1514–15with some hope that these could provide aplatform for the overthrow of Turkish power in conjunction with westerncrusading armies and Christian revolts.9 But when these dreams were shat-tered by Ismai’l’s defeat at Chaldiran in 1515, the need for action against theTurks became more pressing, particularly after Selim I’s seizure of Egypt andSyria in 1516–17. The Hospital spent the last six or seven years of its sojournon Rhodes in a state of invasion phobia, and the letters of masters Carrettoand L’Isle Adam to Henry VIII and Wolsey document the evolution of itsfears.

Besides stressing the danger to the Christian east and consequently thewhole of Europe, the letters naturally emphasized the specific threat toRhodes, and the need for the presence of Hospitaller brethren, and especiallyDocwra, at the convent, where his experience and prudence would beinvaluable.10 At the same time, the prior was requested or ordered to appearin time for the chapters-general held in 1510, 1514, 1517, and 1520, and atother times as well.11 Although Henry VIII refused to let Docwra leave therealm, he was not completely insensitive to the order’s needs. In 1513, inresponse to a major invasion scare,12 the bailiff of Eagle, Thomas Newport,the receiver, Thomas Sheffield, and a large contingent of conventual knightswere permitted to go to Rhodes.13 Having served in the royal army in Francein July and August, they probably travelled on without returning home, for

8 LPFD, i, no. 767; Galea, ‘Henry VIII and the Order of St. John’, 62.9 LPFD, i, nos. 766–7, ii, nos. 17, 23, 76, 715.10 Docwra’s presence was requested in October 1509, November 1513, November 1515, and

August 1517. After 1515 there were repeated pleas that all available brethren should be sent toRhodes. LPFD, i, nos. 191, 2447; ii, nos. 1138, 3607, 3695, 4252.

11 AOM398, fo. 116v; 400, fos. 143r–144r; 401, fo. 160r–v; 404, fo. 146v; 408, fo. 135r; 405,fo. 134r.

12 In January 1513 an Ottoman fleet had gathered in the ports opposite Rhodes and an armyparaded before Bodrum. In fear of imminent attack the convent instructed its English brethrento send £2,700 (12,000 ducats) by exchange to Rome to meet the threat. Claudius E.vi, fo. 112v.

13 On 10 April the master, Blanchefort, had requested that Docwra, Newport, and Sheffieldbe dispatched to headquarters. LPFD, i, no. 1765.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 163

on 3 September Newport and Sheffield were being received in Venice asHenry’s ambassadors.14 On 15November the lieutenant master and councilwrote acknowledging the king’s wish to keep Docwra with him and request-ing that he should be sent when he could be spared. Newport and Sheffieldwould be kept in Rhodes in the meantime.15 Although the prior had beenretained, the two younger knights had at least been allowed to proceed to theconvent with a considerable company and large sums of cash, although thiswas probably provided by exchange rather than bullion export.16 Both wereretained on conventual service until 1518, when they were sent to the west asambassadors.17 Newport served as a proctor of the common treasury and asan active naval commander, and sent several reports on eastern affairs toEngland, while Sheffield was captain of Bodrum castle between 1514 and1517.18 Judging by the variety and volume of the business they were asked toundertake, the English contingent in Rhodes exercised an unusual degree ofinfluence during these years.

Besides keeping the king appraised of events in the east the order also, atNewport’s suggestion, dispatched gifts of balsam and carpets to Henry byEdward Hills in January and further luxuries by the merchant Hugh Ball inJuly 1515.19 These tokens may have been intended to encourage Henry toallow Newport and Sheffield, who were refused permission to depart in July,to stay in Rhodes, and to permit Docwra to travel thither. While notpermitting his departure, the king nevertheless allowed Docwra to make aremarkable donation to the order in late 1515. On 7 December LancelotDocwra and the prior’s Rhodiot servant Francis Bell handed over 20,000ducats in unworked silver and cash to the common treasury as a gift fromtheir master, with instructions that it should only be spent if the Turks laidsiege to the order’s possessions. Should the prior need to, he was also to bepermitted to set the donation against his responsions, although there isno sign this was ever done.20 Moved by this generosity, in 1517 theorder sent Hills back to England with gifts of carpets and camlet for kingand prior.21

14 See below, 170; LPFD, i, nos. 2234, 2254, 2263.15 LPFD, i, no. 2447.16 There were thirty-eight ‘English’ knights present at the assembly held to elect a newmaster

on 15 December 1513, whereas only sixteen were at a similar gathering on 22November 1512.Newport, at least, brought plenty of ready money with him, and paid the responsions of his fourpreceptories due in June 1514 in cash on his arrival. See below, Table 8.1; AOM82, fo. 38r; 402,fo. 103v, 164r–v.

17 LPFD, ii, no. 4485; AOM407, fo. 150v.18 AOM81, fo. 46v; 406, fos. 220v–221r; LPFD, ii, nos. 1756, 3814, 2760, 2898, 3611,

3814; AOM82, fos. 114v, 137v.19 LPFD, ii, nos. 17, 715; AOM404, fo. 234v; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 615.20 AOM404, fos. 149r–150v. The prior continued to pay the responsions of his prioral

camerae until his death. His debts to the common treasury in 1520 dated from before 1504,and only amounted to £82 8s. AOM406, fo. 160r–v; 54, fos. 1v–3r.

21 AOM406, fos. 155v–156v.

164 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

Evidence for a close relationship between Rhodes and England in thisperiod is, however, mostly provided by letters written in convent, whichwere naturally, given the order’s need of his support, rather fulsome in theirpraise of the king. The lack of surviving correspondence from Englandmakes it difficult to ascertain exactly how the Hospitallers were viewed atcourt but other evidence hints of a certain cynicism towards news fromRhodes, and that views of the order current at Westminster or Greenwichwere quite different from its perception of itself. Despite Henry’s earlyenthusiasm for eastern Mediterranean affairs, by the late 1510s the prospectof Turkish attacks on the Christian east and calls for a crusade were some-times treated with amusement at court. When Sebastian Giustinianiniinformed the king about Turkish military preparations in March 1518Henry replied that he had had news from Rhodes that there was nothingto fear from the sultan in the current year, and, laughing, said that Venicewas on such good terms with the Turks that she had little cause for alarmanyway. The real threat to Christian peace, he said, was provided byFrancis I.22 In fact, Carretto’s recent letters had reported that, althoughSelim was delayed in Egypt by an uprising, he was building fleets in Egyptand Rumelia, and that his dispatch of an ambassador to Rhodes to makepeace was probably a ruse before attack. Carretto was alarmed enough torequest that all brethren be sent to Rhodes to cope with this ‘emergency’.23

News from Rhodes was similarly misrepresented in December 1515, whenWolsey wrote to the bishop of Worcester, then in Rome, to justify the king’srefusal to allow the collection of a half-tenth to support Hungary. Carretto’slast letters, he asserted, had mentioned nothing of any threat to Hungary andhad stated that the Turk was afraid of the ‘Sophi’, so Christendom hadnothing to fear.24 The order’s belief that Ismai’l’s advances in Asia Minorrepresented a rare opportunity for an offensive crusade had evidently pro-duced only complacency in England. As late as May 1521, the Venetianambassador reported that the king and his courtiers had a quite differentperception of the way eastern affairs were progressing from ThomasDocwra, who based his views on letters from Rhodes.25

A similarly cynical view was taken of the Hospitallers’ internal organiza-tion. In common with other European rulers Henry VIII appears to haveregarded the order’s system of promotion as an inconvenient obstacle to be

22 LPFD, ii, no. 4009. The king had expressed similar opinions in 1512. Housley, ReligiousWarfare, 142–3.

23 LPFD, ii, nos. 3607, 3695.24 LPFD, ii, no. 1280. Wolsey was probably referring to optimistic reports of the Shah’s

progress sent from Rhodes in the first two months of 1515. A magistral missive of mid-July,which should have reached England by December, had been much more gloomy, reporting thatalthough the issue was still in doubt, Selim would turn against Italy and Rhodes if he wasvictorious, and that therefore Newport and Sheffield had been refused licence to depart. LPFD,ii, nos. 17, 23, 194, 715.

25 CSPV, iii, no. 206.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 165

bypassed rather than an essential component of its discipline and organiza-tion. The king took a personal interest in the careers of English brethren suchas Richard Neville, Lancelot Docwra, and William Weston, and requestedtheir advancement by the master and council on Rhodes.26 He was particu-larly insistent in the case of Neville, who was the brother of George LordAbergavenny, and a royal annuitant.27 Although Amboise wrote to the kingin October 1510 stating that he had received the young man as a novice ofhis chamber, this failed to satisfy Henry, who requested that Neville beprovided with a preceptory forthwith.28 Frustrated of these wishes, theking went over Carretto’s head in July 1515, writing to Leo X. The letterprovides a real insight into the king’s attitude, and early evidence for theHospital’s role as a ‘finishing school’ for naval officers and ambassadors.29

Complaining that he had written to three successive masters on the subjectand been ignored, Henry requested that since Neville had now finished hismilitary education at Rhodes, he should be provided to the first vacantpreceptory in the order’s gift.30 The king’s appreciation of the order’s mili-tary utility but lack of understanding of or regard for its internal dynamicwere to receive further illustration as the reign progressed. His viewpointwas apparently shared by Neville, who pleaded sickness so he could returnto England in late 1514,31 used the opportunity to make a complaint aboutthe turcopolier to Henry,32 and failed to return when promised.33

The acid test of the Hospital’s relationship with the crown was the siege ofRhodes in 1522. Unfortunately it is difficult to gauge what, if any, supportHenry VIII’s government gave to the Hospitallers in their hour of need.Although it had been urging available brethren to come to the convent foryears, the order had less immediate warning of the sultan’s intentions thanhad been the case in 1480, when a general citation had been issued ninemonths before the siege began.34 Only on 19 March 1522, following thereturn of spies from Constantinople, did L’Isle Adamwrite to Henry VIII andWolsey pleading for the dispatch of the remainder of the English knights tothe convent, and stressing rather disingenuously that the order’s ‘chief hope’was in the king. Even then, the master admitted that he could not absolutelyverify that the assault was directed against Rhodes, although he pointed out

26 LPFD, i, no. 591; ii, no. 1138.27 LPFD, i, no. 190 (36).28 Ibid., no. 591; ii, no. 737.29 See D. Allen, ‘The Order of St. John as a ‘‘School for Ambassadors’’ in Counter Reforma-

tion Europe’, MO, ii, 363–79.30 My italics: LPFD, ii, no. 737.31 AOM404, fo. 147r.32 LPFD, ii, no. 1264. The turcopolier, William Darrell, responded that he had had to

discipline Neville for immoderate speaking in a meeting of the order’s council. Magistral lettersto the king and council upheld Darrell’s actions. Ibid., nos. 1139–40; Otho C.ix, fos. 27r–v/34r–

v

.33 Neville eventually returned to Rhodes in 1516 and was provided to Willoughton in 1519.

He fought in the siege ofRhodes in1522. AOM405, fo.130v;408,fos.135v–136r;410, fo.177r–v.34 See above, Ch 5.2.

166 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

that precautions had been taken on that basis and members of the order inthe west cited to come to Rhodes with ships.35 Further letters followed on 17June, reporting that the Turkish fleet was in sight, sending a French transla-tion of Suleiman’s letter demanding the order’s surrender, and requestingthat Docwra and Newport be allowed to export the coin they had collectedto Rhodes.36 This last point was significant. Docwra, more aware of thedanger than the king and Wolsey, bought up large quantities of cloth and tinin 1521, doubtless because he could not obtain licence to send cash, and sentit to Rhodes. On 30 October Francis Bell agreed a composition with theproctors of the treasury for 20,000 ducats’ worth of kersey and unworked tinthat Docwra had sent over and above his responsions to Rhodes. Thisconsignment was effectively an interest-free loan to the order to tide itover any forthcoming siege.37 As the prior was not to be repaid until1527, and was already old, it might almost be termed a gift. Furthermore,in letters to the straticus and merchants of Messina in mid-October L’IsleAdam explained that due to the restrictions on the export of bullion fromEngland the prior and receiver of England had been commissioned to buycloth and tin for the use of the convent, the latter for both domestic use andfor the order’s artillery. The responsions for 1521 had, they understood, justreached Sicily in this form and they therefore requested that they be sent toRhodes without payment of duty, as the order’s privileges required.38 It isdifficult to say whether there was any overlap between Docwra’s ‘loan’ andthis other consignment of goods, but the commodities involved were muchthe same, even if the quantities specified were not. Whether they were of asmuch use to the order in 1522 as cash would have been is another matter.

In a sense, the cargoes of cloth and tin shipped to Rhodes were far morecrucial in determining the effectiveness of the English ‘response’ to the siegethan any measures that could have been taken after news of it was receivedin England. The English Hospitallers had been preparing for this event foryears, paying the increased responsions ordered by the convent in 1517,39

increasing the rents of selected estates,40 selling reserved assets,41 and sup-porting an English contingent in Rhodes in 1522 that was more numerousthan it had been forty years before, and was also equipped with Henry VII’sartillery.42 Docwra’s gift of 1515 is particularly noteworthy in this regard.By contrast, the crown’s reaction to the news of the siege was disappointing.While a multitude of letters from Rome, Venice, and the Low Countries

35 LPFD, iii, nos. 2117–18.36 Ibid., nos. 2324–5.37 AOM409, fos. 117v–118v.38 AOM409, fos. 195v–196r, 197v–198r.39 AOM54, fo. 2v.40 See above, 70 and below, n. 55.41 The order sold 40 acres of wood at Halse in 1519. Claudius E.vi, fo. 190r–v.42 There were probably more than twenty English brethren present at the siege of 1522. See

below, Ch. 8.3.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 167

demonstrate that the government was kept abreast of every report andrumour about the progress of the siege, there is no prima-facie evidencethat anything was done to help. Admittedly, Henry VIII had just renewedthe war with France when L’Isle Adam’s letters reached England, and insuch circumstances it was difficult to prepare a military response yet thereis no evidence even that indulgences were offered for the order, andno royal grants were issued to it. Indeed, far from helping financially, in1522 the crown included the prior in the assessment of an annual ‘loan’to be devoted to the recovery of France. Docwra was to pay £1,000.43

Evidence from other sources may indicate more active Hospitaller involve-ment in the English war effort too. The first, a draft in the hand of the earl ofSurrey listing the ships which were to compose the navy to be sent againstFrance, includes the ship of the ‘lord of St John’s’ in its number.44 Thesecond, the Dover harbour accounts, record that between 8 August and2 September more than a hundred men of the ‘lord of St. John’s’ wereshipped over to France at precisely the time when Surrey was building uphis troops for the operations which he undertook in September and Octo-ber.45 Although both the prior’s inclusion in the loan and the troop move-ments may have been set in motion before certain news of the siege reachedEngland in late August,46 the king did not show himself helpful in otherrespects, as he refused to allow the export of bullion to aid the island’sdefence despite L’Isle Adam’s plea that he do so.47 The only indication thatthe king intended to send help to the convent himself is provided by a letterof 14 January 1523 written by Henry’s ambassadors with the emperor totheir master. They thanked him for his promise of aid to Rhodes but told himthat the emperor’s chancellor, Gattinara, had said that there was no need ofit as the siege had been lifted.48 Conflicting and often erroneous rumours ofthe succour or premature fall of Rhodes bedevilled the Christian response tothe siege throughout and gave the governments of western Europe ampleexcuse for not sending aid thither, but the king’s lack of sympathy for themaster’s requests that any monies sent to its aid should be submitted as cashis very telling.

The order’s response to the crisis was naturally rather more vigorous. On10 September the prior’s men were followed across the Channel by thehorses of the receiver, John Babington, and a French Hospitaller.49 Althoughthere is no record of the receiver’s presence at the siege of Rhodes and hedoes not appear in the minutes of the English langue from meetings in Italy

43 LPFD, iii, no. 2483.44 Ibid., no. 2480.45 LPFD, iv, Appendix no. 87, p. 3108; Chronicle of Calais, ed. Nichols, 31–2.46 AOM54, fo. 67r.47 AOM54, fos. 70r, 68r, 70v.48 LPFD, iii, no. 2772.49 LPFD, iv, Appendix no. 87, p.3109.

168 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

in 1523 it is most probable that he was involved in financial transactions onthe order’s behalf rather than royal service on this occasion, as by mid-October he seems to have been in southern France to pick up monies hehad exchanged for bankers’ drafts in London. These sums were mostlyhanded over to deputies appointed to receive them by the master.50 Newsof the siege, and a magistral letter of 17 June addressed to Babington, hadreached Clerkenwell on 28 August, and couriers had immediately beendispatched to summon the English preceptors and prior of Ireland to aprovincial chapter,51 which was held on 18 September.52 With Babingtonstill absent, the gathering was composed of the prior and the five otherpreceptors resident in England and Wales.53 In accordance with the master’sinstructions, they prepared to go to Rhodes, and leased their command-eries.54 The order also managed to let other estates worth nearly £400, someof them for higher rents than before.55 On 10 November a quittance wasissued for £1,766 13s. 4d. (8,000 ecus) which Babington had paid theGenoese merchant Antonio Vivaldi, who sent the equivalent sum to thereceiver of the priory of Auvergne in Lyons. A further 13,000 ecus(£2,925) was transferred to Babington, again using Vivaldi’s offices, whenhe reached Lyons later in the year and was then handed over to the com-mander of Ville Franche.56 The Nazi company of Lyons were also given6,000 ducats (£1,400) which they sent by exchange to the receivers of thepriories of Barletta and Venice,57 and Babington consigned 1,649 ecus toFr. Jean Yseran in Marseilles for the use of individual English brethren inRhodes and of Thomas Newport when he should reach Provence.58 But thisdescent was never to occur. The order finally managed to dispatch a ship inDecember 1522 or January 1523, possibly the one in which Surrey had beenferrying troops over to France in the summer. Commanded by Newport, itemulated the considerable misfortunes of earlier attempts to relieve Rhodesby foundering off the coast of Spain on 24 January 1523, along with

50 AOM54, fos. 68r, 70v, 70r. At least some of these letters were sent by courier, however.Ibid., fo. 68r.

51 Ibid., fos. 70r, 67r.52 Claudius E.vi, fo. 212r.53 Ibid. These were Thomas Newport, Edward Roche, Roger Boydell, Clement West, and

Thomas Golyn. The English preceptors in Rhodes were John Bothe, the turcopolier, ThomasSheffield, WilliamWeston, Alban Pole, Nicholas Fairfax, Edward Hills, and Richard Neville. Asseveral preceptories were vacant due to the recent deaths of Lancelot Docwra and WilliamCorbet this left only the prior of Ireland and John Babington as holders of English preceptoriesabsent from the meeting.

54 Claudius E.vi, fos. 212r–214v.55 The farm of Harefield was increased from £19 to £20, that of six cottages in London from

£3 3s. 4d. to £4 13s. 4d., that of Sutton-at-Hone from £48 to £50, and that of Edgeware from £96s. 8d. to £10. Claudius E.vi, fos. 163v–164r, 225v–226r, 227v–228r, 214v–215r, 218v–219r.

56 AOM54, fo. 68r.57 Ibid., fo. 68v.58 Ibid., fo. 70v.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 169

its captain and most of its contingent.59 The other preceptors, despite farm-ing their estates, may not have set off for the convent by the time that newsof the fall of Rhodes reached England in the early months of 1523.

If the response of the Hospitallers in England to news of the siege was onan impressive scale it was also rather ponderous, and it seems probable thatsome of their resources were diverted into the French war at exactly the timewhen they should have been used to aid the beleaguered convent. Certainly itwould not have been the first time Henry VIII had required the order toprovide a contingent in the royal army. The two Docwras, Newport, Shef-field, and William Weston had been appointed to raise and lead a force of300 men to serve in the vanguard of the royal army in France in 1513,although in appointing them the king was careful to stress that he had beenexpressly requested to fight by Julius II.60 While there are no other certaininstances of English Hospitallers serving in a military capacity for the crownuntil the 1540s, save in Ireland, the cost of providing contingents for theroyal army in 1513 and 1522 appears to have prompted the order to requiresome of its tenants to provide armed men at their own expense in the eventof further expeditions.61 Henry VIII’s government also found plenty of otheroccasions to employ the priors of England and Ireland, and occasionallyother brethren as well. John Rawson was kept in Ireland almost continu-ously between 1511 and 1525, and consistently refused licence to go andperform his conventual service. Moreover when he did go to Italy, and in1527 exchanged the priorate for the turcopoliership held by John Babington,the king, cutting off his incipient career as a conventual bailiff, ordered himto reassume his former dignity.62 Thomas Docwra was in a similar position.The prior of England became a career diplomat after 1509 and was abroadon diplomatic business in 1510, 1511, 1514, and every year from 1517 to1521. He served on commissions to ratify the renewal of the treaty ofEtaples and receive Louis XII’s oath to pay the arrears of the French pensionto the English crown in 1510,63 to congratulate the pope on his accession inearly 1514,64 to convey the lady Mary to France and witness her marriage toLouis XII in the same year,65 and to witness Francis I’s signature to theTreaty of London and surrender Tournai to the French in the winter of1518–19.66 With Thomas Newport, he accompanied the king to France in

59 The account book of the priory of England relates that Newport had ‘morte e siperso su lamer dispagna’. Ibid., fos. 93v, 107r.

60 In the event the prior’s retinue numbered only 200 or 205 men. LPFD, i, nos. 1836 (3),2052, 2053 (2), 2392; Chronicle of Calais, ed. Nichols, 10–11.

61 PRO LR2/62, fo. 18r.62 See below, Ch. 7.63 LPFD, i, nos. 455, 508, 519 (47), 538, appendix, nos. 10, 11.64 LPFD, ii, p. 1467. Docwra had been appointed to go to the Lateran council in 1512, but

the ambassadors had remained at home because of the war in Italy. LPFD, i, nos. 1048, 1067.65 LPFD, i, nos. 3226 (21), 3186, 3193, 3240, 3298, 3324 (33), 3361, 3424; ii, no. 68.66 LPFD, ii, nos. 4564, 4582, 4617, 4649, 4652–3, 4661, 4663, 4669, iii, nos. 58, 71;

Chronicle of Calais, ed. Nichols, 17–18.

170 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

June 1520 and played a prominent part in the festivities which accompaniedtheir meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, acting as a judge of the joustsand other competitions which enlivened the proceedings.67 The prior alsoattended on the king and Wolsey when they met Charles V in the followingmonth68 and in October and November 1521 he headed his first embassy, tothe emperor at Courtrai, in a last-ditch English attempt to restore the peaceagreed in 1518. He must have been cruelly aware that his failure to getCharles to agree to the French peace terms might doom Rhodes to fall, asarguably it did.69

Even when Docwra was in England, much of his time was taken up withdiplomatic and ceremonial business. He attended important public occa-sions such as Henry VII’s funeral, his son’s coronation, Wolsey’s processionto celebrate his promotion to cardinal in 1515, and Charles V’s landing atDover in May 1522.70 He was sometimes in the company of foreign ambas-sadors. During May 1516, for example, Docwra was one of three ecclesiastswho accompanied the Scots ambassadors to dinner at Wolsey’s, while in thesame month he acted as an interpreter between the duke of Suffolk and theVenetian ambassador.71 More formal diplomatic employment was providedin May 1524 when he was commissioned to treat with the imperial ambas-sadors for a joint invasion of France.72

None of this was new, and nor was the prior’s attendance at parliamentand on the council, which seems to have been fairly assiduous.73 Butthe sheer weight of diplomatic and judicial business laid on Thomas Doc-wra’s shoulders was without recent precedent, reflecting an appreciationof his worth as a talented homme d’affaires, as well as the expansionof the Tudor state. Besides the usual commissions of the peace, of sewers,and of walls and ditches, the prior was placed in charge of conductingsearches for suspicious persons in the Islington ward of London in 1519and 1524–5, and other members and servants of the order were also named

67 LPFD, iii, nos. 704 (pp. 240, 243), 869 (pp. 304, 308, 313); Rutland Papers: OriginalDocuments Illustrative of the Courts and Times of Henry VII and Henry VIII, ed. W. Jerdan,CS, 1st ser., 21 (London, 1842), 30–2, 45.

68 LPFD, iii, no. 906; Rutland Papers, ed. Jerdan, 73.69 LPFD, iii, nos. 1705, 1707–8, 1712, 1714–15, 1727, 1733, 1736, 1738, 1750–1, 1753,

1768, 1777, 1778.70 LPFD, i, no. 20 (p. 14); H. Miller, Henry VIII and the English Nobility (Oxford, 1986),

92–3; LPFD, ii, no. 1153.71 LPFD, ii, nos. 1864, 1870.72 LPFD, iv, nos. 363, 365.73 Docwra was present in council in sessions in autumn 1509, October 1510, June 1514, May

1516, August 1520, and October 1525, and was also often present when the council sat as acourt in Star Chamber. He sat in virtually every parliament which occurred while he was prior,and served as a trier of petitions in the assemblies of 1515 and 1523. LPFD, i, nos. 190 (25), 257(37), 3018; J. A. Guy, The Cardinal’s Court: The Impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber(Hassocks, 1977), 37–9, 42; G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government,3 vols. (Cambridge, 1974–83), i. 319; LPFD, ii, no. 1856; Addenda, no. 160; iii, Appendix, no.12; iii, no. 2956.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 171

to them.74 More occasional employment was also offered to Docwra oncommissions of gaol delivery in 1511, to muster soldiers at Southampton inMay 1512, to inquire into the extortions of the late masters of the mint in thesame year and as an assessor of loans and collector of the subsidy for therecovery of France in 1522 and 1523, a similar demonstration of priorities tothat offered by Edward IV in 1480.75 The prior was employed on judicialbusiness, too, being appointed to hear various suits in 1519 and 1524 and todetermine disputes between English and French merchants in 1517.76 Hewas also among the peers who passed judgement against the duke of Buck-ingham in 1521.77

Royal service was not entirely without its rewards. The prior was able toobtain small grants and mortmain licences from the crown in the early yearsof Henry VIII’s reign and was made guardian of Kildare’s heir, ThomasFitzgerald, when the latter remained in England as a hostage for his father’sgood behaviour.78 Although it is not known when he joined the order, thefact that Thomas’s uncle, John Fitzgerald, had become a Hospitaller by 1527might indicate some family affection for the order.79 At any rate Bucking-ham, who purchased Fitzgerald’s wardship from the crown in 1519, wassufficiently impressed with Docwra’s care of the boy to consign his illegit-imate son Francis to the prior when he was arrested in the following year.80

It was natural that the prior’s service at court and overseas should bringhim closer to the peers and gentlemen serving the crown and there are signsthat Docwra did his best to turn this to his advantage. In 1517 the conventon Rhodes confirmed grants of confraternity made by an English provincialchapter in the previous year to Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby, and to theprior’s colleague on diplomatic work, Charles Somerset earl of Worcester.81

Another courtier who had served with the prior overseas, Sir Nicholas Vaux(created Lord Vaux in 1522), was buried at the priory in 1523,82 andDocwra also had dealings with the earl of Northumberland, who wasrelated to the Hospitaller knight Nicholas Fairfax, and to whom the priorlent money in the early 1520s.83 But links with court might also have helped

74 The prior was regularly named to commissions of the peace in Middlesex, Essex, Hert-fordshire, Warwickshire, and Bedfordshire. LPFD, passim. His service as a commissioner of thesearch is recorded in LPFD, iii, no. 365; iv, no. 1082; Addenda, nos. 430–2.

75 LPFD, i, nos. 731 (27), 969 (17), 1083 (24), 1221 (6); iii, nos. 2485, 3504; iv, no. 214 (82).76 LPFD, iii, no. 571; Addenda, no. 422; ii, no. 3861.77 LPFD, iii, no. 1284 (p.493).78 LPFD, i, no. 414 (13), iii, no. 2482 (11), no. 1070 (30).79 AOM412, fo. 201v.80 C. Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham 1394–1521

(Cambridge, 1978), 137; LPFD, iii, no. 1285, pp.502–4.81 AOM406, fos. 155r–v, 156r.82 Miller, English Nobility, 18; Smith, PRO PROB11/21 (PCC 11 Bodfelde).83 LPFD, Addenda, no. 312 (i, iv); iv, no. 3380. Fairfax was one of the earl’s attorneys

appointed to receive the profits of his courts in Lent 1521. On Fairfax’s death in 1523Northumberland acted as the executor of his spolia. LPFD, Addenda, no. 312 (i); AOM54,fo. 95r.

172 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

to attract the unwelcome attention of those seeking grants of the order’sproperty or the offices in its gift. The Hospitaller estates in and aroundLondon were particularly attractive to land-hungry crown servants inHenry VIII’s reign, as the court expanded. Thus an orchard and gardensbelonging to the priory in Fleet street, which had been demised to RichardEmpson for a term of ninety-nine years, were regranted to Thomas Wolseyby the first provincial chapter held after Empson’s execution.84 Similaralacrity was demonstrated by the cardinal when another of the order’shouses fell vacant by the death of Thomas Layeland in 1523. Wolseyasked it should be given to Thomas Tonge, Norroy Herald, in recompensefor the services of his brother, father, and ancestors to the ‘religion’.85 In thesame year the cardinal sent a rather stronger letter on the subject of theorder’s house at Bridewell, which the king had asked should be allocated tothe justices Sir John Fineux and John Roper, who needed a convenient houseto keep their records in. Docwra’s reply that a reversion of the property hadalready been granted to Sir Thomas Neville under capitular seal, and couldnot be revoked, brought a sharp response. Neville, saidWolsey, had remittedall interest in the matter to the king, with the tenor of whose letters the priorshould comply without excuse or delay.86 Further requests for property wereinitiated by Richard Lord Darcy and others.87

The most blatant pressure from court for a grant of Hospitaller propertyin fact came from the cardinal himself. Although Hampton Court had beenleased to him on much the same terms as Daubeney had held it in 1514, thecardinal sought a permanent grant of the property. In return he proposed togive the order enough to be able to purchase a replacement estate of equalvalue, but when his proposal was put to the chapter-general in 1517, itreplied sternly that the original grant of 1495 was in breach of the statutesand refused to countenance anything as unseemly as exchanging estates forcash. Instead it was ordained that the cardinal should only have a permanentgrant of the manor if he could supply in exchange a property free fromlitigation and worth a third more than Hampton Court.88

Although some of his business was doubtless nominal, there remains theimpression that Docwra’s workload in the royal service was exceptional,and must have affected the running of the priory. It seems likely that theprior found it difficult to discharge his duties, particularly with respect to hisdefence of the order’s rights in the courts. After 1516 the vice-receiver, JohnBabington, and Clement West were prosecuting the farmers of Slebech forover £90 which had been owing on Robert Evers’ death,89 and the Hospitalwas also defending its rights over Halston,90 and against the earl of Devon inthe courts.91 Despite his claims to be allowed a pension against his legal

84 LPFD, i, no. 357 (43). 85 LPFD, iii, no. 3679. 86 Ibid., no. 3678.87 LPFD, Addenda, no. 211; iii, no. 1669. 88 AOM406, fos. 162v–164r.89 AOM54, fo. 13v. 90 PRO REQ2/4/212. 91 LPFD, iv, no. 771 (p. 341).

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 173

costs, the prior’s liberal distribution of loans and gifts to the convent in the1510s and 1520s show that the difficulty in prosecuting such actions was notlack of money to execute them. Yet the order’s legal business was evidentlybeing neglected. On 27 March 1517 the convent complained to the priorthat it had learned that much business touching the ‘religion’ was in greatperil in England because of a lack of solicitors and promoters in the king’scourts and that it expected the prior to act in these matters.92 Furthermore,when Thomas Newport was appointed the order’s ambassador to HenryVIII in June 1518 he was instructed not only to ask for the king’s help infurthering the crusade planned by Leo X, but also his aid in conserving theHospital’s liberty and property in its ‘many and various actions’ in Eng-land.93 Whether Docwra was too busy to attend to affairs properly or wasneglecting those actions that did not directly concern the prioral estatesbecause of pique at the convent’s refusal to grant him a pension to upholdhis legal costs is unclear.

In addition to legal actions against the farmers of its estates, in 1518–19the order was also forced to defend its rights of sanctuary against the crown.These had already come under attack from royal justices in the reigns ofEdward IV and Henry VII, but an important test case begun in 1516 was todestroy the Hospitallers’ claims in this field.94 The affair was triggered by themurder of John Pauncefote, a Gloucestershire justice shot and mutilated onhis way to the sessions in 1516. One of the murderers, Sir John Savage,sheriff of Worcester, took sanctuary at Clerkenwell after the killing but wasseized a month later and taken to the Tower. He recited the priory’s title tosanctuary by prescription, papal bull, royal confirmation, and allowance inthe reigns of Henrys VII and VIII in his defence.95 Although by the followingyear Savage had waived his plea, the prior was nevertheless summoned tojustify the claims of his house. On 10 November 1519, in a session of theInner Star Chamber at which the king himself presided, Wolsey and the twochief justices argued over the priory’s rights. Henry, who seems to have takena personal interest in this matter, stated that sanctuary had never beenintended to serve for voluntary murder and vowed that he would reducethe privilege to the original plan intended by its founders.96 Other rulings

92 AOM406, fos. 155v–156r.93 AOM407, fos. 176r–177r.94 Thornley, ‘Sanctuary’, 197–8, 200–1; The Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. J. H. Baker,

2 vols. (London, 1976–8), ii. 342–4. The text of the 1516–19 action is provided in Reportsd’ascuns cases . . . de Robert Keilwey Esquire, ed. J. Croke (London, 1688), 188a–192b.

95 The justices had declared in 1399 that the king could not alienate the royal prerogative ofpardoning felony, although those who already held such rights by prescription supported byallowance in eyre might legitimately continue to exercise them. By the time of Henry VIII ‘nosanctuary could be maintained in law, unless the owner could show a royal grant as the basis ofthe privilege, supported by usage and by allowance in eyre’. The pleading of papal bulls was notonly useless but dangerous, as it left those resorting to such expedients liable to the penalties ofpraemunire. Thornley, ‘Sanctuary’, 197–8.

96 Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. Baker, ii. 343–4; Thornley, ‘Sanctuary’, 200–1.

174 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

against felons who took sanctuary on the order’s property followed and by1520 its privileges had effectively been lost, an important factor in Docwra’sdefeat being his failure to produce sufficient evidence of a royal grant ofsanctuary rights to the order.97

Another important challenge to the order was, like the attack on sanctu-ary, not aimed chiefly at the Hospital but a matter which nevertheless cameto involve it. The 1517 inquisition into rural depopulation and enclosurelaid down that where houses had decayed or been destroyed and agriculturalland converted into pasture since the statutes passed against enclosure in1489, 1514, and 1515 the tenant would be required to pay half the value ofthe same houses and lands to the king or lord of the fee until they wererebuilt or restored to their original usage.98 A substantial number of mag-nates fell foul of this inquiry, the prior of St John prominent among them.99

The order or its farmers were found to have enclosed land at Shingay inCambridgeshire, Greenham and Woolhampton in Berkshire, at Hogshawand Addington in Buckinghamshire, Kirby in Northamptonshire, andRyton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire, an impressive showing consideringthat returns only survive for eleven counties and are not always complete.100

Subsequent proceedings against Docwra in chancery and the Exchequersurvive in the cases of Greenham, Woolhampton, and Hogshaw. The prior’sservant Thomas Layeland appeared in chancery to answer for the enclosuresat Greenham and Woolhampton in 1518. Although Layeland pleaded thatland use there alternated between tillage and pasture, the prior was never-theless put under a bond of £100 to rebuild the devastated messuages ineach.101 The case against the farmer of Hogshaw, Ralph Lane, was ratherstronger. Eight messuages belonging to the Hospital had been allowed todecay during his occupation of the property and 213½ acres of land, worth£15 per annum, had been enclosed.102 Under the statute of 1489, when Lanefailed to repair the damage to the decayed houses, the moiety of their profitsfell to the crown. Accordingly, the moieties of certain messuages, worth

97 LPFD, Addenda, no. 208; Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. Baker, 344.98 E. Kerridge, ‘The Returns of the Inquisitions of Depopulation’, EHR 70 (1955), 212–28,

at 212–13; Statutes, iii. 127, 176–7.99 Nine lay peers, three bishops, thirty-two knights, and fifty-one heads of religious houses

(including Docwra) were proceeded against. J. J. Scarisbrick, ‘Cardinal Wolsey and the Com-mon Weal’, in Ives et al. (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor England, 45–67, at 63, 60.

100 Scarisbrick, ‘Cardinal Wolsey’, 60; I. S. Leadam, ‘The Inquisition of 1517: Inclosures andEvictions, Part III, London and Suburbs’, TRHS, 2nd ser., 8 (1894), 253–331, at 304; TheDomesday of Inclosures 1517–1518, ed. I. S. Leadam, 2 vols., consecutively paged (London,1897), 117–18, 150, 192–5, 200–1, 294–5, 429. An incomplete entry also indicates that at leastsome of the order’s estates at Sandford in Oxfordshire had been enclosed. Ibid. 362–3.

101 Scarisbrick, ‘Cardinal Wolsey’, 60; Kerridge, ‘Inquisitions of Depopulation’, 216. Scar-isbrick says Melchbourne here, citing Kerridge, but it seems clear that Kerridge is referring toGreenham andWoolhampton, as he states that the enclosed lands amounted to 46 acres and twomessuages in two Berkshire villages, which is equivalent to the returns for the latter settlementsgiven by the inquisition of 1517. Domesday of Inclosures, ed. Leadam, 117–18, 150.

102 Domesday of Inclosures, ed. Leadam, 192–5.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 175

69s. 4d. per annum, were granted to one of the enclosure commissioners,Roger Wigston, in May 1527.103 Moreover, the grant was backdated toNovember 1515, and in 1531 the prior ordered to pay all that was thusowing from the previous fifteen years.104 This was a considerable sum, and ifthe rest of the order’s property at Hogshaw was dealt with in a similar way,the prior would have been left with a bill of over £100 from only one of hisestates. Half the profits of other Hospitaller estates under investigation in1517 may also have been seized, although placing the offending landlordunder a bond to repair decayed properties was a more common penalty.Even if the sequestration was not repeated elsewhere, it illustrated thepotential dangers of the order’s allowing or even encouraging its tenants toenclose their lands. Clauses allowing enclosure were common in leasesgranted in provincial chapter, and Ralph Lane had been so licensed in twoleases granted to him since the relevant statutes had passed.105

In the aftermath of the fall of Rhodes, the extent of the prior’s involvementin English affairs almost certainly militated against his visiting Italy andparticipating in conventual business there. Yet his closeness to the courtmust also have helped him advocate the order’s interests there at an uncer-tain time during which the convent migrated around Italy without a per-manent home, harried by war, ravaged by plague, and threatened withthe confiscation of its fleet and, worse still, its lands in Portugal, Naples,and Germany.106 Initially, the order’s existence was not threatened in Eng-land, despite reports from English agents in Rome that the master, PhilippeVilliers de L’Isle Adam, was held in contempt by Adrian VI and thatThomas Sheffield, the master’s seneschal, and bailiff of Eagle, had disre-garded the royal will.107 Although the evidence is uncertain, Henry mayeven have allowed Docwra a brief visit to the convent in 1523. On 22September L’Isle Adam wrote to the king saying that he had sent ‘ourprior’ and the turcopolier, William Weston, to England the previousmonth, but that they had been delayed by the order’s entry into Rome.108

It seems unlikely, however, that the dignitary in question was ThomasDocwra rather than another prior of the order. In July 1523 Docwra wasreported to be supporting one ‘Swift’ in a suit for the lands of Lord

103 LPFD, iv, no. 3142 (18); Domesday of Inclosures, ed. Leadam, 490–2.104 Domesday of Inclosures, ed. Leadam, 490–2.105 Claudius E.vi, fos. 38r–v, 110r–v.106 LPFD, iv, 2810, 2915, 4666; see below, n. 113.107 LPFD, iii, no. 3025 (Hannibal to Wolsey, 15 May 1523). Hannibal reported that the

master was ‘ruled’ by Sheffield, who had not done his duty (to cast his vote for Docwra?) in themagistral election of 1521 and in other things. On the same date a junior knight, NicholasRoberts, wrote to the earl of Surrey complaining that despite having presented the letters of theking, Wolsey, and Norfolk in his favour to the master, and another such letter of recommenda-tion to Sheffield, the bailiff of Eagle had persuaded L’Isle Adam to confer the vacant preceptoryof Dinmore on him instead, and had said that neither the cardinal nor ‘my lord’s grace’ shouldthink to rule the master. Ibid., no. 3026.

108 LPFD, iii, nos. 3356–7.

176 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

Mounteagle,109 and he was not present at meetings of the English langueheld in July and August.110 Further letters from the master in Decemberreported Clement VII’s election and eagerness to restore the Hospital, nar-rated that the pope had asked the emperor for the grant of Malta and othernecessities, and besought the king to protect the order in his dominions.111

In response, Henry VIII wrote on the Hospital’s behalf to the kings ofHungary and Poland in January 1524, and reported to L’Isle Adam that hewas impressed by the ‘care and love’ with which his emissaries had outlinedits needs, and had written to Charles Von behalf of its request for Malta.112

At a time when the viceroy of Naples and the king of Portugal had seques-trated various of the order’s lands, and when the priory of Castile was beingdisputed between two ducal bastards, the support of Henry VIII must havecome as a welcome relief.113 But it came, as ever, at a price. In August 1524the turcopolier, William Weston, set off to Italy with fourteen novices toreplenish the numbers of English knights in convent. Travelling incognito as‘Christopher Barber’ he was entrusted with 50,000 crowns (ecus), whichwere to be delivered to Henry’s agents in Rome, who would then keep itready to be passed on to the ultimate beneficiary, the renegade duke ofBourbon. The party travelled via Antwerp and had reached the convent atViterbo by 3 October.114 There are conflicting reports of what then hap-pened to the money. John Clerk wrote to Wolsey from Rome on 10 Octobersaying that Sir John Russell had arrived on the 8th with the funds sent withthe turcopolier, yet on the same day Russell reported that he had met Westonat Viterbo, but, having heard news of the break-up of Bourbon’s army, hadleft the cash with him and returned to Rome.115 The money seems to haveremained with William Weston until December, by which time the cardinalhad advised that it should be transferred home by exchange.116 Carrying somuch cash around, especially in the turbulent conditions then prevailing inItaly, may have putWeston in some danger. The pope advised him not to stayin Viterbo with it for fear of the pro-French Orsini, but he remained therenonetheless, so ill with gout that when Wolsey’s will became known he wasunable to ride to Rome to hand over his charge.117

109 Ibid., nos. 3356–7, 3187. The prior dispatched with the turcopolier was not named. BLMS Cotton Vitellius B.v, fo. 203.

110 BDVTE, 4–6.111 LPFD, iii, nos. 3610, 3664.112 AOM57 cc. 2–4 (originally 1–3); Galea, ‘Henry VIII’, 59–61. For the text and an English

translation of Henry’s letter to the king of Poland, see B. Szczesniak, The Knights Hospitallers inPoland and Lithuania (The Hague, 1969), 38–9.

113 R. Valentini, ‘I Cavalieri di S. Giovanni de Rodi a Malta: Trattative diplomatiche’,Archivum Melitense, 9/4 (1934), 137–237, at 139; Sire, Knights of Malta 151.

114 LPFD, iv, no. 590; BDVTE, 40–1.115 LPFD, iv, nos. 724–5.116 Ibid., no. 909.117 Ibid.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 177

The Hospitallers again proved useful when the English governmentsought the return of its funds. In early December Russell, seeking to avoidthe exorbitant fees of the Rome bankers, entrusted 10,000 crowns to Doc-wra’s servant Francis Bell, who had a commission from his master to receivethe money for the order. Docwra would repay the sum in like money orsterling in six months time.118 By the time Wolsey changed his mind early inthe following year, and ordered that the money be entrusted to the imperi-alists, the turcopolier and Bell had returned to England along with 18,000crowns.119

The frenzied diplomacy of the 1520s continued to provide service for theEnglish Hospitallers as couriers for both crown and order. When L’IsleAdam visited Spain in 1525 to try to arrange a peace between the emperorand the then captive Francis I the junior knight Bryan Tunstall was sent tothe English ambassadors in Toledo with letters.120 Early in the followingyear L’Isle Adam, still in Madrid, dispatched Ambrose Layton, thecommander of Yeaveley, to the king with instructions to seek help in re-establishing the order, and the same messenger carried Henry VIII’s replies tothe master’s letters in August.121 Another Hospitaller, Antonio Bosio, alsovisited England in 1525/6. Although the instructions given to Layton andBosio do not survive, it is clear that their missions to England were chieflyconnected with the order’s projected recapture of Rhodes, in which Bosiowas the leading actor. A letter written by a Rhodiot priest to the master in1525 reporting the willingness of the janissaries and Rhodiots on the islandto hand it over survives among the Hospitaller correspondence in the BritishLibrary, while in the following year John III of Portugal wrote to Henry VIIIthanking him for his letters on the ‘affair of Rhodes’, which had been carriedto him by Bosio, and promising to donate 15,000 ducats to the cause.122

A letter from Bosio to the cardinal requesting Henry’s answer to the letters ofthe pope, emperor, king of Portugal, and master in the order’s favour, andstressing that the matter was not to be mentioned to the Venetians orFlorentines, also survives.123

Relations between crown and order thus appear to have been quiteconstructive after the siege of Rhodes. Yet there are hints that by 1526king and cardinal were losing patience with the order. Henry VIII tookmore than six months to reply to the letters sent with Layton in late January1526 and when he did so expressed disappointment at the order’s failure to

118 LPFD, nos. 923–4.119 Ibid., nos. 1085–6. Bell had been given a safe conduct by the order on 5December, and on

4 January John Babington was ordered to pay Weston 442 ducats for his stipend in going on theorder’s business to the king. AOM411, fos. 205r, 188v.

120 LPFD, iv, nos. 1655, 1684.121 Ibid., nos. 1934–5; AOM57, c. 9 (originally 5); Galea, ‘Henry VIII’, 62–3.122 LPFD, iv, nos. 2270, 2271 (i). For this affair see Vatin, L’Ordre, 368–71.123 LPFD, iv, no. 2271 (ii).

178 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

decide on the offer ofMalta, but hoped that the forthcoming chapter-generalwould come to a decision about it and asked to be informed as soon as it didso.124 Although the king promised continued support for the Hospital in thisletter, relations between crown and convent had come to a very poor pass bythe first months of 1527. The cause of the breakdown is unclear, but seems tohave been made up of several elements. There may have been genuineirritation in England that despite the king’s approval of the cession ofMalta, and his letters to other monarchs in the order’s favour, it had stillfailed to find a home. Until it should do so, it could hardly fulfil its functionsefficiently and its endowments and responsions might be seen as beingwasted. Additionally, there are hints that Henry, always touchy wherematters of honour were concerned, was piqued that the master of theorder had seen fit to visit the emperor and Francis I but failed to pay hisrespects to him. He was after all the order’s ‘protector’, a title constantlystressed in the convent’s correspondence, yet his protection was evidentlynot as worthwhile as that of his rivals. L’Isle Adam wrote to Henry inFebruary 1527 stressing that he had wanted to visit England from Bordeaux,but had been recalled by the pope to discuss the recovery of Rhodes.125

A final grief was provided by the order’s delay in granting the prioralpreceptory of Sandford to Wolsey for his projected college at Oxford, adecision which had been held over until the chapter-general which was to beheld at Viterbo in May. Despite a conciliatory gift of carpets by ThomasDocwra, there must be a suspicion that the cardinal, irked at this obstructionof his plans, played on the king’s sense of injury to bring about whatoccurred in early 1527.126

On 25 February 1527 L’Isle Adam wrote to the king apologizing for hisfailure to visit England, narrating his return journey to the convent andrecounting that on arriving in Viterbo he had been shocked to learn thatHenry had forbidden the goods of the order to be taken out of England andordered the English knights to serve at Calais. He begged the king to desistfrom this scheme, which would serve as an evil example to other Christianprinces.127 A flurry of orders demonstrates how seriously the convent tookthis threat. An envoy, Carlo Pipa, was dispatched to England and the priorwas given power to hand Sandford over to the cardinal in advance of thedecision of chapter. In return, Wolsey was asked to induce the king to revokehis letter forbidding the export of responsions and ordering its brethrento repair to Calais.128 Docwra, however, was probably already sick, the

124 AOM57, c. 9 (originally 5).125 LPFD, iv, no. 2915.126 Ibid., no. 6184 (p. 2767).127 Ibid., no. 2915. The master also went on to say that he would try to comply with Henry’s

letter of 14 January, although the latter, curiously, made no mention of the Calais business at all,but rather sought the master’s help in securing preferment for the king’s Latin secretary, PeterVannes. AOM57, c. 10 (originally 6); Galea, ‘Henry VIII’, 62–3.

128 AOM412, fos. 193r–v, 249r–v; LPFD, iv, no. 2909.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 179

vultures were hovering over the priory, and the king apparently refused tosee Pipa. The prior’s death on 17 April129 could not have come at a worsetime. Not only had Pipa’s mission failed to secure the abandonment ofthe Calais scheme, but as the prior lay dying the king expressed his wishto grant the prioral lands and those of other Hospitaller brethren to courtiersas they fell vacant. Thus Thomas Magnus wrote to Wolsey on 12 Aprilrequesting that provision should be made for Henry’s illegitimate son theduke of Richmond out of the order’s estates.130 The threat was seriousenough for the courtier Sir Richard Weston, brother of the turcopolierWilliam, to write to the cardinal begging that his sibling’s rights be upheldand he be promoted to the dignity should Docwra die.131 Despite thisappeal, the king made good his threats on the prior’s death, for boththe prioral estates and Docwra’s personal possessions were seized by thecrown.132

The chapter-general which met in Viterbo on 20 May 1527133 was stillunaware of these developments, although steps were taken to remedy theissues which L’Isle Adam evidently believed lay behind the Calais scheme,namely the delay in granting the Oxfordshire preceptory of Sandford toWolsey and the order’s failure to find a home. The commission to Docwra,Alban Pole, and John Babington to hand over ‘Francford’ to the cardinal wasratified in chapter on 31 May and, under pressure from the Spanish andGerman langues to decide on the emperor’s offer of Malta, the chapter votedon 20 May to accept the island.134

Whether because there had been no news from Pipa, or because of theupheavals attendant upon the convent’s relocation to Corneto in early Juneto escape the imperial troops who had sacked Rome,135 nothing more wasdone about the English situation in convent until the master and council hadbeen appraised of Docwra’s death, although John Rawson’s appointments asprior and magistral lieutenant in Ireland were confirmed, probably becausehe had been summoned home.136 Headquarters was probably aware of theprior’s illness before this, however, for on 4 June Rawson was also grantedexpectancy to the priory of England and other dignities of the langue afterWilliam Weston.137

129 A later suit in chancery, the manuscript recording which is damaged, gives the date ofdeath as 17 Ma[rch], but the date of another event in Docwra’s last illness, also in March, iscrossed out in a contemporary hand, and April substituted. PRO C1/392/57.

130 LPFD, iv, no. 3036.131 Ibid., no. 3035.132 There is no evidence for the seizure in Letters and Papers, but it can be inferred from the

order’s later protests. See below.133 AOM85, fo. 28r; 286, fo. 3r.134 LPFD, iv, no. 3141; AOM412, fo. 197v (Sandford); AOM286, fos. 5r–v (Malta).135 AOM85, fo. 28v; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 58.136 AOM412, fos. 193v–194v, 196v.137 Ibid., fos. 193v–194v.

180 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

News of the prior’s demise apparently arrived in late June, possibly by the23rd and certainly by the 26th, when Clement West protested before thecouncil that a future prior of England, the dignity now being vacant, shouldnot be given the fifth camera which Docwra had held, since it pertainedinstead to him. West’s protest was overruled and it was decreed that thepriory and all its appropriated preceptories should be reallocated accordingto the custom of the langue.138 On 27 June Weston was duly elected prior bythe council ordinary on the same terms as Docwra, with Melchbourne againserving as the prioral fifth camera.139 On the same day John Rawsonexchanged the priory of Ireland for the turcopoliership, and John Babingtonwas elected to Kilmainham, despite a rival claim by West.140 In accordancewith the practice followed since Thomas Docwra had been granted thepriory of Ireland, and which had recently been the subject of a protest byWest, Babington was allowed to retain his English preceptory, Dalby andRothley.141 Weston’s former preceptories, meanwhile, were both granted toRawson, Ribston by meliormentum in exchange for Swingfield, and Din-more by magistral grace.142 Despite also having petitioned for SwingfieldClement West received nothing, a snub which may have rankled later.143

The convent does not seem to have been informed of the seizure of thepriory and of Docwra’s goods much before 4 July, when the well-oiledmachinery for dealing with such fits of monarchical pique swung into action.On 23 June L’Isle Adam had written to Henry VIII stating that he wassending Rawson home to explain the present state of the order’s affairs,and announcing Weston’s collation to the priory of England. The royalsequestration of the priory was seemingly not mentioned.144 Changingnews from England may have caused the modification of Rawson’s mission,however, for it was not until the first week of July that he and Weston weregranted licence to go home and assume their dignities, although Rawson wasalso granted leave to proceed to Ireland.145 At the same time Carlo Pipa wasinstructed to return to England to be followed by a more formal embassyheaded by Jean Pregent de Bidoux, the prior of S. Gilles, and letters weredispatched to the king and cardinal.

138 AOM85, fos. 28v–29r.139 Ibid., fo. 29r; 412, fos. 198r–199r; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 58.140 AOM85, fo. 29v; 412, fo. 199r.141 AOM85, fos. 24r–v; 412, fo. 199r.142 AOM412, fos. 199r–v, 199v.143 Swingfield was also claimed by the conventual knights Edward Bellingham and Roland

White, the council deciding on Bellingham because White, despite having been received into theorder more than three years before, had still not produced adequate proofs of nobility. AOM85,fo. 29v.

144 LPFD, iv, no. 3196. The letter is fire damaged, so it is difficult to be sure. Otho C.ix, fos.50r–v/62r–v.

145 AOM85, fo. 29v; 412, fo. 201v. Weston was also, on 5 July, appointed the master’slieutenant in the priory of England, with the usual powers. AOM412, fos. 202r–203r.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 181

Pipa’s instructions were brief and left him considerable scope for man-oeuvre.146 Passing into England he was to find the receiver (and now prior ofIreland) John Babington, and Roger Boydell, and inform them of theirpromotions. Associating with them and others, he was to decide on thebest way of proceeding with respect to Docwra’s spolia, and was to presentthe letters of the master and convent to Wolsey, the French ambassadors inEngland and others, so that they could use their influence in that regard. Assoon as he had executed his instructions he was to return to headquarters.Bidoux was given more specific orders, which explain the events of 1527more fully than earlier sources. King Henry, he was informed, had com-manded that none of the order’s goods should be allowed out of the countryand had proposed to find employment for those knights who were hissubjects in Calais ‘until we should have some stable and convenient placefor our exercitio’, a course of action which would prevent the order’sbrethren from fulfilling their duty and would cause their ships ‘to giveoffence rather than to be useful to Christians’. Bidoux was further informedthat although both Clement VII and the master had written to the king aboutthis no resolution had yet been achieved, and that following the death ofDocwra Henry had not only caused his goods to be sequestrated, but hadalso expressed his wish to give the priory to a secular person, ‘which wouldbe the total ruin of our religion’. To remedy this situation Bidoux was to goto France and summon Jacques de Bourbon, another prominent FrenchHospitaller, to his side. The two were to ask Francis I to write to HenryVIII and Wolsey in the order’s favour, and then proceed to England wherethey should discuss what should be done with the English brethren. Theywere to go before Wolsey, thank him for his past assistance, and entreat himto approach the king on their behalf, informing Henry of the perils facing thereligion, of its acceptance of Malta, of news from the Levant and of anyother matters they considered appropriate. The appeal for the cardinal’sassistance was bolstered by a magistral letter promising to hold a chapter-general at which the exchange of Sandford would be proposed shortly. Oncemore it was stressed that the handover could not be effected without theconsent of chapter, and, L’Isle Adam now added, the presence of the Englishknights. This was perhaps a hint that if the refusal to let members of theorder leave the country were not lifted the exchange would remain still-born.147

Having spoken to Wolsey, the ambassadors were to approach the king,and ask him to leave the disposition of the order’s business to the master andconvent, as his predecessors had done, so as not to increase the difficultiesunder which it laboured in this time of affliction, or provide encouragementto others to invade and usurp the benefactions of past generations of the

146 AOM412, fo. 252v.147 Ibid., fos. 254r–v (Partial text in Valentini, ‘I Cavalieri’, 194–6); LPFD, iv, no. 3242.

182 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

faithful. They were to tell the king of Weston’s election, and were to beg thatHenry uphold his collation, making the king understand that to bestow thepriory outside the order would lead to its ‘total ruin’, and would encourageother princes to do the same. They were further to inform the king that theorder had acceptedMalta on condition that the emperor donate it freely, andthat ambassadors had been sent to the king of France and Charles to effectthis.148

The accompanying letter to the king more or less duplicated the verbalmessage to be conveyed by the order’s ambassadors. Henry was entreated tolift the sequestration, to recognize Weston’s election, and to relinquish theorder’s ‘possessions, business and faculties’ to its care. He was assured thatthe past bequests of the faithful, formerly employed in the east, would behonoured with continued service in works of hospitality, and the defence ofpilgrims and all Christians sailing in infidel-infested waters. By alwaysundertaking such works the order would avoid arrogance and thus notincur jealousy. To achieve these ends the Hospital had accepted Malta forits dwelling and for the exercise of its functions, as Bidoux and Bourbonwould more fully explain. Finally, the king was humbly requested to approvethe order’s decision and labour along with Charles V for its establishment onMalta in accordance with his heroic virtues and merits and his titles ofprotector (of the order) and Defender of the Faith.149

These appeals, eloquent though they were, appear never to have beendelivered. According to Bosio, the ambassadors returned to the convent,now in Nice,150 in late 1527, with the king having refused even to see them.Henry’s courtiers had reported that he was angry because he had beenslighted by the order by having not been appraised of the fall of Rhodes orthe proposal to acquire Malta, and that the grand master’s failure to visitEngland was strictly a secondary issue.151 In fact Henry’s own letters showthat he had been fully informed on both matters, although L’Isle Adam’s visitto Spain and France in 1525–7 may have left him with the impression thatnegotiations of which he was not aware were going on behind his back andthat he was being excluded from involvement in the order’s choice of a newhome. The reasons for the sequestration of the priory on Docwra’s death aresurely closer to those suggested in the convent’s letter to the king, involving‘jealousy’ of the order’s wealth and irritation at its perceived ‘arrogance’ andinactivity. Certainly the royal proposal to have the English knights serve inCalais until they should find a home suggests a genuine belief that the

148 AOM412, fo. 254r–v; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 53.149 AOM412, fo. 253r–v; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 53.150 The convent left Corneto after an outbreak of plague in August 1527, going first to Ville

Franche and reaching Nice in early November. AOM85, fos. 31v–33r.151 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 58–60. Bosio’s contention is upheld by the fact that the letters

entrusted to Bidoux and Bourbon and addressed to Henry do not survive in the Public RecordOffice or British Library.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 183

Hospitallers were not fulfilling their responsibilities, although this, as well asHenry’s irritation at not having been properly consulted, was probablywhipped up by courtiers eager to get their hands on the order’s property. Itis interesting that Magnus’s letter requesting that the duke of Richmondshould be a beneficiary of any confiscation also suggested that some of theproceeds should be devoted to the upkeep of Berwick. Both the Calaisproject and Magnus’s idea suggest a perception that if the Hospitallerswere no longer useful to Christendom as a whole their resources andmilitary traditions would be better employed in the defence of the Englishcommonweal.152

The king was certainly aware of the order’s military capabilities, andparticularly its naval prowess,153 and seems to have envisaged a naval rolefor the order at Calais, as suggested by the convent’s worries that the schememight cause its ships to ‘offend’ against other Christians.154 Although therewere recent parallels in the secularization of the Teutonic order in Prussiaand the attempts to devote the Spanish military orders to the defence of thePortuguese and Castilian crowns’ north African bases, Henry’s ideas alsohad similarities with Edward III’s wartime insistence that responsions shouldbe devoted to the defence of the realm and underlined the fact that unless theHospitallers were seen to be useful, they might become extinct.155 Havingstressed its defence of Christendom and defiance of the Turk in its propa-ganda for so many years, it is not surprising that when it seemed to be failingto fulfil this role, the order came under attack.

The master’s response to the failure of his emissaries was appropriatelydecisive. On 5 December 1527 he proposed in council that as business wasoccurring in England and France which could not be dealt with without hispresence he would proceed there, notwithstanding his age or the perils andcolds of winter. The bailiff of Casp, Juan de Homedes, and a number of otherbrethren were elected to accompany him.156 L’Isle Adam’s mission to Eng-land is one of the most interesting episodes in the order’s sixteenth-centuryhistory, and was celebrated appropriately by Giacomo Bosio, but his visitvirtually escaped notice in contemporary English sources, evidence beingchiefly provided by the order’s archives and Bosio, who was evidentlyfurnished with information which does not appear among the order’s regis-ters, perhaps from family tradition passed down by his relatives Antonio andTommaso. The former was often used as an envoy by the order in the 1520s

152 Hoyle, ‘Origins’, 282–3.153 He had perhaps been alerted to this by the exploits of the Hospitaller Jean Pregent de

Bidoux in the Channel in the early years of his reign. E. Hall, Chronicle (London, 1809), 535–6,560, 568–9.

154 AOM412, fo. 254r.155 Luttrell, ‘Military Orders’, 332, 348–50; Tyerman, England, 324–42; N. Housley, The

Later Crusades 1274–1580 (Oxford, 1992), 450–4.156 AOM85, fo. 33v.

184 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

and 1530s, and was sent on ahead of the master in 1528, while the latter wasalso among the master’s entourage in England in the same year.157

It was not until 2 January 1528 that L’Isle Adam left Nice.158 Travellingacross France in a rather leisurely fashion, he had reached Avignon by 13January, Lyons by 27 January, and Paris by 24 February. He remained in theFrench capital until at least 13 March but had arrived in Clerkenwell by 26April.159 His way was prepared by Antonio Bosio, who according to hisnephew Giacomo not only managed to smooth the king’s ruffled feathers,but also to secure the promise of 20,000 crowns to aid the reconquest ofRhodes, and letters from the king and cardinal confirming this.160 Bosiorecords that L’Isle Adam was received into London with much pomp byHenry, Wolsey, and the nobility and lodged at ‘the royal palace’. The kingapparently took a personal interest in the master’s account of the siege ofRhodes, and professed himself enthusiastic at the prospect of the island’srecovery, which was still being plotted. He confirmed the order’s privileges,reiterated his commitment to make a donation to the cause, eventuallycontributing artillery rather than cash, and both released Docwra’s spoliaand remitted an annual levy of £4,000 which he had supposedly imposed onWilliam Weston.161

Bosio’s account of the last of these events seems to be based on a misread-ing of L’Isle Adam’s travel-bullarium. As this document demonstrates, theroyal threat to seize the priory had been lifted by Weston before the masterreached England.162 An instrument drawn up at Clerkenwell on 19 May1528 explains that the prior, having been prevented from assuming hisdignity for a long time, and acting on the advice of bailiffs and preceptorsof the order, had given Henry £4,000 out of the responsions and othermonies belonging to the common treasury, and by means of this payment,and a promise to pay ‘other sums’ annually, had obtained possession. Thereis no indication that these annual payments amounted to £4,000 or anythinglike it. Although L’Isle Adam may have managed to get the king to drop hisdemands for an annual payment from the order, he had to secure repaymentof the large lump sum from Weston himself. On arriving in England themaster complained that the latter should not have mortgaged the order’sproperty so lightly, and demanded restitution. Weston had no cash in handand was unable to refund the money at once, so that L’Isle Adam was forcedto accept a compromise offer of £200 per annum from him.163

157 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 62–3; Galea, ‘Henry VIII’, 66; AOM413, fo. 21r.158 Galea, ‘Henry VIII’, 66.159 AOM413, fos. 1r, 3r, 4v, 13r–v, 16r, 17v.160 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 62–3.161 Ibid. 64; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 54; King, British Realm, 101.162 A fact noted by Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 55.163 AOM413, fos. 20v–21v; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 55–6. Sannazaro also tran-

scribes this document at 76–8.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 185

Thus a dispute apparently provoked by profound questions about theroyal honour and the Hospital’s utility to the Christian commonweal wassettled by simple bribery.164 The king had asserted his authority over theorder, exacted a heavy entry fine from the new prior, and now ostentatiouslyregranted almost exactly the same sum to the Hospitallers as a gift towardseither their ‘holy expedition’ to recover Rhodes, or their establishment onMalta. The original extortion from Weston being concealed, Henry couldparade as the champion of Christendom and exhort other princes to con-tribute to the cause.165 Admittedly this also suited the propaganda purposesof the order. It was always useful to turn the attentions of secular rulers tothe benefactions of their princely colleagues on its behalf, even if these wereimaginary. The only real loser from the affair was Weston, who had beendenied his advancement for a number of months and was now saddled withannual pension payments to the convent and possibly the crown.

The master also attended to other important business during his visit toEngland. Fifteen knights were received into the order by the provincialchapter over which L’Isle Adam presided,166 the grant of Sandford toWolsey was re-authorized,167 and in early June Rawson and Babington re-exchanged the dignities of prior of Ireland and turcopolier.168 This lastmeasure will receive further comment elsewhere, but it is noteworthy thatthe exchange was initiated by L’Isle Adam rather than the parties involved,as it suited the order both that Rawson return to Ireland and that Babington,the receiver of the common treasury in England, remain at Clerkenwell torecover the goods of Docwra’s vacancy year and spolia, from which ‘multabona . . . furto subtracta sunt’. Rawson and Babington consented to thepermutation ‘as good religious, wishing to satisfy his (L’Isle Adam’s) will’,but it is also worth noting that the return of Rawson to Ireland was to thebenefit of the crown, obedience and service to whom the master and languecited respectively as reasons for the exchange.169 It seems clear that the kingand cardinal wanted Rawson back in Ireland where he could be useful, andthat the exchange had been arranged with this in mind.170

Within days of witnessing this act the master had returned to France,escorted by the naval administrator and Levant merchant WilliamGonson.171 L’Isle Adam reached Boulogne on 6 June and wrote to Wolsey

164 Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 56.165 LPFD, iv, nos. 4722, Appendix 214; AOM414, fo. 248r; AOM57, cc. 11–12 (originally

7–8). The king also threw the expenses he had supposedly incurred on behalf of the faith into theequation when in 1529 he asked parliament (successfully) to remit his debts.Many of these wentback to 1522–3, when Thomas Docwra had ‘lent’ himmoney. S. E. Lehmberg, The ReformationParliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970), 89–90; above, 168.

166 BDVTE, 44–5.167 LPFD, iv, no. 4322 (original); AOM413, fos. 22r–v (Hospitaller chancery copy).168 AOM413, fos. 23r–24r.169 AOM413, fos. 24v–25r; Bosio, Dell’ Istoria, iii. 64; BDVTE, 61–4.170 See below, 251.171 LPFD, iv, no. 4344.

186 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

thanking him for his and the king’s letters on his behalf and recommendingthe order to their protection.172 After a stay of some weeks in Paris hereturned to Nice,173 having again written thanking Wolsey for his interven-tion with Henry and Francis I, and informing him that he had presented theletters of king and cardinal to representatives of Francis,whohad been unableto see himpersonally.174 Themagistral visit to England had apparently been agreat success, having prompted the king to offer generous aid towards therecovery of Rhodes, which was now noised round Europe, or at least to those(non-Venetian) parts of it which viewed such a project with equanimity.Partly in response to Henry’s letters announcing his gift, Charles V promisedto add 25,000 ducats towards the fighting fund, while the king of Portugalwas prompted to donate a further 15,000 ducats.175 Yet for all its propagandavalue, Henry’s gift was slow to reach the convent and impediments continuedto be put in the way of the submission of responsions to Nice.176 On 18November 1528 Clement VII wrote to Wolsey professing himself pleased atthe honour shown to the master and the liberal aid proffered the ‘holyexpedition’, but reminding the cardinal that he had promised to send amember of the order with the promised aid after the king had received repliesto his letters from the emperor and the king of Portugal, which he understoodhad now been answered.177 In the following January Antonio Bosio wasdispatched to England with letters from L’Isle Adam, the emperor, the kingof Portugal, and the pope on the order’s behalf and instructed to present themto the king, Wolsey, and Cardinal Campeggio. The aid of Henry and thelegates was to be requested in the order’s ‘great enterprise’, which it hadinsufficient strength to perform itself.178 The accompanying letter to the kingstates that Bosio, recently returned from Spain and Portugal, would informHenry of the state of the order’s affairs in those countries and in ‘the lands ofthe east’, in accordance with his professed willingness to assist.179 Henry’sdonation had still not reached the convent in early March, although theorder’s envoy to Savoy, Louis de Tinteville, was instructed to report thatBosio had been sent to collect it and that his arrival was expected daily.180

172 Ibid., no. 4339.173 He left Paris on about 15 July, having had the English ambassadors there to a dinner at

which he had spoken ‘asmoche honour of the Kinges Highnes, as may be spoken of any Prynce’.Ibid., no. 4515. Text in SP, vii. 88–9.

174 LPFD, iv, no. 4504.175 Ibid., no. 4722; AOM414, fo. 248r. John III’s benefaction was hardly more disinterested

than Henry’s, being advanced in return for the installation of his brother Luiz as prior ofPortugal. Sire, Knights of Malta, 151.

176 For this see below, 197–9.177 LPFD, iv, Appendix, no. 214.178 AOM414, fo. 249r–v. It seems certain, especially considering the reference in the accom-

panying letter to Henry to the ‘lands of the east’, that the order’s ‘great enterprise’ was stillconceived to be the recovery of Rhodes. Bosio was sent back there later in 1529. Vatin, L’Ordre,370.

179 LPFD, iv, no. 5196.180 AOM414, fos. 255v–256r.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 187

As the months went by the order’s ‘enterprise’, defined in the instructionsissued to Tinteville as ‘Reconnoir lieu pour loger et asseoir la Religion’,became, if only by default, more solidly identified with the imperial donationof Malta. It may not have been until after November 1530, when Henrywrote to L’Isle Adam congratulating him on the order’s final agreementwith the emperor on the matter,181 that his aid finally reached theconvent, having by then been converted from cash into cannon and otherordinance.182

Welcome as the king’s gift may have been when it arrived, its utility wassurely outweighed by the disruption caused to the order’s affairs in Englandin 1527–8. This was not confined to the threatened implementation of theCalais scheme and the quite real sequestration of the priory and Docwra’sgoods. Although the latter were restored, at a price, when he gained posses-sion of the priory Weston was confronted with a chaotic state of affairswhich if not directly attributable to the royal pressure on the order musthave been worsened both by the uncertainty over the priory’s future occa-sioned by Henry’s threats and by the exclusion of the prior from his dignityfor so long.

Shortly after his accession to the priorate, Weston began legal actionsagainst several relatives and former servants of Thomas Docwra who had,he claimed, made off with cash, jewellery, goods, and muniments belongingto the priory during and immediately after his predecessor’s last illness.Proceedings were instituted against William Stockhill, the former prior’sfactor in the Mediterranean, Thomas Chicheley, a relative of Docwra’s bymarriage, and John Docwra, the defunct prior’s nephew, for withholding hisgoods, while action was taken against another Docwra, Martin, for detain-ing possession of the prioral camera of Balsall. The cases concerning the lateprior’s goods bear out the necessity of keeping John Babington, who hadwitnessed some of the events reported in Weston’s complaints, in England.All three involved considerable sums, testifying once more to Thomas Doc-wra’s wealth and providing further evidence that Henry VIII’s proceedingsand threats against the order in 1527–8 were motivated more by profit thanprinciple. The Stockhill case, for which evidence survives in a countercomplaint by the defendant against the prior in chancery, was perhaps theleast serious of the four, although significant sums were nevertheless in-volved. In his plea against Weston, Stockhill explained that he had beenretained by Docwra and his Rhodiot servant Francis Bell as their factorin charge of merchandise dispatched to the Levant for nine years before

181 AOM57, c. 13 (originally 9); Text in Valentini, ‘I Cavalieri’, 219–20. Henry also ex-pressed his joy at the move and determination to protect the order in letters to Clement VII andFrancis I. LPFD, iv, nos. 6731, 6732.

182 The cannon were placed on the walls of Tripoli and captured by the Turks when they tookthe town in 1551. They were subsequently re-employed in the Turkish siege of Famagusta in1570. Exhibition notes, SJG.

188 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

Docwra’s death.183 During the grand master’s visit to England, he added,Antonio Bosio and the Genoese merchant Antonio Vivaldi had beenappointed auditors to determine his account, by which it had appearedthat he had £172 worth of Docwra’s and Bell’s goods in his possession, butwas owed £180 salary for the nine years that he had been their factor. Thisconsidered, it had been agreed that he would keep £100 of the goods andwould hand over the residue when paid £80 in cash by John Babington.Despite this agreement, Babington had commenced a plea of debt before thesheriffs of London inWeston’s name against Stockhill for the sum of £72 andfor a further £2,000 in cash and goods that Docwra had allegedly deliveredto Stockhill during his life, but which he had never received. Consequentlyhe had been arrested and committed to prison. Stockhill complained that notonly did he know nothing of the larger amounts alleged by Babington, but hewas also unable to produce the earlier account as it was in the hands of themagistrally appointed auditors. He asked that a writ ofCorpus cum causa bedirected to the sheriffs and the case be removed into chancery.184

Although there seems to be no further evidence on the proceedings of thiscase, it is likely that it was settled relatively amicably, with Babingtonagreeing to drop the more substantial charge in return for Stockhill’s admit-ting liability in the smaller matter. On 20 July 1534 Stockhill paid £20towards the £72 he owed the common treasury, with no mention of thelarger sums at all.185 The £2,000 alleged against Stockhill may conceivablybe identical with the 8,000 or 9,000 ducats the order believed it was owed byAntonio Vivaldi, Bell’s executor, in respect of his will, 7,000 of which Vivaldipromised to pay in late 1528.186 It is possible that Vivaldi was waiting forthe profits from those of Bell’s and the prior’s goods which had been in thehands of Stockhill before he could satisfy the convent. Vivaldi himself,however, seems not to have been proceeded against in the courts, and settledmatters with the order amicably, continuing to conduct exchange operationson its behalf well into the 1530s.187

Evidence for the case against Chicheley survives in a counter-plea againstWeston in chancery.188 Chicheley, a Cambridgeshire esquire, explained that

183 Corroborating evidence for this is provided by Bell’s will, which was drawn up before heleft for Italy with Weston in August 1524, and proved in April 1526. Bell left the prior all hiskersey and tin in Stockhill’s hands, which had been given to the latter on his (Stockhill’s)departure from England, and ordained that he should give a true account of the same toDocwra. PRO PROB11/22, fos. 44b–45.

184 PRO C1/569/25.185 AOM54, fo. 260v; PRO SP2/Q no. 32, p. 134b.186 AOM414, fos. 206v–207r. This money was to be dispatched to Naples with Vivaldi’s

associate Miguel Hieronymo Sanchez. It had not arrived by October 1529, prompting the orderto instruct its ambassador to the pope and emperor to find out where it had got to, although byMarch 1532, when John Babington was instructed to arrange for the payment of the remainderof the monies, only 2,000 ducats were still outstanding. Ibid., fo. 260v; 415, fo. 230r.

187 AOM54, fos. 261v–262r.188 PRO C1/392/57.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 189

he had been a servant of Docwra for ten years before his death and hadmarried his niece. His service to the prior had caused him great pains, costs,and charges and left the latter in his debt. Trusting to be recompensed he hadappeared before Docwra on 11 April 1527 and the prior had then orderedJohn Babington to go into the priory’s treasury house and fetch out its plate,of which Chicheley had been given 2,000 ounces on the spot, besides furtheramounts189 given to him, to his nephew John Docwra, and to AnthonyHaseldon, another relative of the prior by marriage.190 Finally, claimedChicheley, the prior had commanded the recipients of his largesse to takeit home with them to their own use whether he lived or died. This Chicheleyhad done.

On gaining possession of the priory Weston sued a bill of trespass beforethe king alleging that Chicheley and others had wrongfully carried off plateto the value of £3,000. Chicheley denied having had more than 100marks tohis own use, and prayed that the members of the prioral household presentat the time of the prior’s alleged gift should be summoned to testify so that hecould prove his version of events.191 Although further proceedings of theChicheley case do not survive among chancery records,192 the prior’s com-plaint against John Docwra corroborates many of its details. The proceed-ings against Docwra, the former prior’s ‘nye kynsman’, survive almost infull, and provide considerable detail on Weston’s accusations against hispredecessor’s associates. Two bills of complaint by the prior, two answers byDocwra, and Weston’s replication to these survive, although the final judge-ment on the case is wanting.193 The new prior presented that as ThomasDocwra had lain ‘sore sick in his dethe bedde’ John Docwra had borne awaybonds wherein several parties stood bound to the late prior, other writingsand indentures concerning the priory’s right title and interest with a facevalue of 3,000 marks, and great sums of money, plate, jewels, and goodsworth another 3,000. Docwra’s failure to deliver these upon demand, andthe prior’s consequent ignorance of the contents of the documents and of theform, weight, fashion, and value of the bullion and plate left him unable toprove his right according to the common law, hence the appeal into chan-

189 These were specified in a schedule attached to Chicheley’s plea, which does not survive.190 Thomas Docwra’s brother James, the father of the John mentioned in these proceedings,

had married Catharine Haseldon of Cambridgeshire. Visitation of Cambridgeshire, ed. Clay,44–5.

191 These were, according to Chicheley, John Mablestone (the subprior), Christopher New-ton, gentleman, Thomas Cork, Ralph Wasse yeoman, Henry Porter, gentleman, and one Swift,gentleman, presumably the same man for whom Docwra had been seeking the Mounteaglelands in 1523, and probably to be identified with John Swifte, gentleman, who was granted thefarm of the order’s Warwickshire manor of Temple Grafton in 1533. PRO C1/392/57; seeabove, 176–7; PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402, m. 22d.

192 The case may have been settled informally. On 1 June 1532 Clement West reported thatWeston and he had concluded business with ‘Schechle’. Chicheley paid £20 to the commontreasury in 1536. LPFD, v, no. 1069; AOM54, fo. 299r.

193 PRO C1/598/7–11.

190 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

cery. Both this bill and a second, almost identical, requested that Docwrashould be subpoenaed to appear before the chancellor (Wolsey) bringing thewritings and muniments in question, as well as written declaration of thevalue and other details of the other goods.194

The cardinal took these charges seriously. On 29 May 1528195 Docwrawas bound in £4,000 to do as Weston had requested, and duly delivered aschedule listing the letters of obligations and ‘specialties’ in question, all ofwhich save two he claimed had been made out jointly to the prior andhimself, and had been assigned to him by his uncle for the term of his life.Of the remaining bonds, one had been made out solely to the prior but hadlikewise been granted to his nephew before his death and the other, anobligation by the master of the Rolls in £40, had not been made over toJohn at all. The defendant admitted that he kept all other ‘specialities’ notdelivered into chancery according to the recent gift.196 He did, however,deny that the value of the goods and monies taken amounted to 6,000marksand asserted that as the values of the money and goods he was supposed tohave taken had not been individually specified, the allegations lacked legalsufficiency and proceedings should be dropped.197

By this time, however, Weston had evidently procured more specificinformation about the goods and muniments carried off by Docwra, for inhis replication he listed many of them. He claimed that yet more had beenremoved in the eight days immediately before the late prior’s death, and thatDocwra had since conveyed even more muniments, plate, and jewels secretlyout of the said ‘monastery’, specific details of which he lacked. Althoughincomplete, the list provided by Weston is nevertheless impressive. Healleged that Docwra had received £4,000 in gold besides goods, plate, andjewellery worth over £285 and bonds worth £1,245. Indeed, Docwra hadadmitted in his schedule to having received £3,100 in gold and cash andmost of the ‘writings obligatory’, but had failed to admit to two bonds worth£250. Weston denied that his predecessor had owed or given his nephew anyof the items mentioned or that he had had any intention to make any suchgift. He further denied his predecessor’s right to make such a donation andalleged that the defendant had forfeited his recognizance of £4,000 by hisfailure to deliver up everything he had had from the priory or to appear dailyin chancery as was required.198

194 PRO C1/598/7–8.195 The date given is 29May 19Henry VIII, which should indicate 1527 given that the regnal

year began on 22 April, but Weston could hardly have launched an action against his predeces-sor’s nephew when he was in Italy and had not even yet been appointed prior. 1528 thereforeseems much more plausible.

196 PRO C1/598/9197 PRO C1/598/10.198 PRO C1/598/11.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 191

Although the judgement on the case is missing, it seems to have beensettled at least partly in Weston’s favour, for in 1532 one of John Docwra’sexecutors submitted £260 to the receiver towards the 800marks which theyowed.199 Further payments were made by various creditors, including Doc-wra’s executors, in subsequent years.200 The evident, if gradual, success ofthe prior’s legal proceedings against those who had embezzled his predeces-sor’s spolia must owe something to the good offices of Wolsey. The cardinaltook a personal interest in the speedy expedition of justice, often hearingseveral cases a day and doing his best to ensure that his judgements werecarried out. It was partly for this reason that so many property disputes wereremoved into chancery during his tenure there. Moreover, it is surely signifi-cant that proceedings against John Docwra were initiated in chancery whileL’Isle Adamwas still in England. After his return to the convent he continuedto take an interest in the case, and when Antonio Bosio was dispatched toEngland in January 1529 he was instructed to approach the cardinal andrequest that he see to it that ‘the dispute we have with the nephew of theformer prior’ should be expedited quickly.201 More generally, Bosio was toget what help he could fromWolsey so that the order could get hold of all themonies due to it from England. He was also to approach the bishop ofLondon, Cuthbert Tunstall, and inform him of the appointment of hisnephew Ambrose Layton as receiver of the common treasury, presentinghim with the letters of master and convent and asking his favour.202

Despite the usefulness of the cardinal’s offices in bringing the cases involv-ing Docwra’s spolia to some kind of conclusion, it may have been thethreatened sequestration of the order’s assets in 1527 which promptedThomas Docwra to alienate gold, plate, jewellery, and letters of obligation,which were of considerable importance to the priory’s running, to hisrelatives. The same cause may also account for the complicity of JohnBabington and long-standing prioral servants such as John Mablestone inthe handover, although it is also possible that their dying master made itworth their while to turn a blind eye. Docwra may have reasoned that if thecrown was going to seize the order’s lands and goods he might as well set uphis family and servants with as many of them as he could get away with. Thethree chief recipients of his largesse, John Docwra, Thomas Chicheley, andAnthony Haseldon, were all related to him by blood or marriage, and theprior had been conspicuously generous to his family throughout his incum-bency.203 Nevertheless the sums involved were enormous and it is difficult to

199 AOM54, fo. 221r.200 Ibid., fos. 260v–261r, 279v–280r, 299r.201 AOM414, fo. 249v.202 Ibid., fo. 249v. Layton had been appointed receiver on 7 January 1529, but died by 12

February, when he was replaced by Clement West. AOM414, fos. 208v, 211r.203 He had paid 300 marks for his niece Elizabeth’s dowry on her marriage to Thomas

Chicheley, and arranged numerous grants for other members of both branches of the family.CPR1494–1509, no. 755; Lansdowne 200, fo. 1r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 29r–v, 46r–v, 60r, 65v–66r,

192 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

believe that the prior, who had always been so conscientious about sendingas much as possible to the convent, would have wilfully alienated so much tothose surrounding him had he not been convinced that the order would notbenefit if he bequeathed his goods to it. Even if Docwra had no such desire tosave his possessions from the grasping hands of the crown and was simplymotivated by family loyalty, the delay in Weston’s being granted the prioryand the royal sequestration of its assets cannot have aided him in his pursuitof his predecessor’s goods. The insistence that Babington give up the prioryof Ireland in June 1528, made specifically so that he could aid the prior inprosecuting the matter, demonstrates that the convent was concerned thatwithout Babington’s help the trail, already cold, would fade beyond hope ofrecovery.

An alternative explanation for the prior’s actions, and one that wasadvanced by William Weston, is that he was bullied into them by Docwraand Chicheley while he was dying. Yet Chicheley’s assertion that that therewere several witnesses to the gift, and especially Babington’s readiness tofetch his master’s plate from the treasury, suggests that the prior’s facultieswere unimpaired, and that he was not under any undue pressure, unless itwas from all of those present at the time, which seems unlikely in view of thecontinued favour shown to Mablestone, Porter, and Swift by William Wes-ton after 1527. Despite the crown’s partial responsibility for the mess, thehelp of the courts was instrumental in securing what help was possibleagainst Docwra’s relatives. A further suit was launched in chancery soonafter Weston’s accession against Martin Docwra, who had been granted atwenty-six-year lease of Balsall in May 1526.204 Unfortunately for therecipient, the grant bound him, on being served with a year’s notice, toremove himself and return the estate to the prior or commander of Balsallshould he be so required. On gaining possession of the priory, Weston hadduly given Docwra the requisite notice and the latter had promised to vacatepossession. This he failed to do, retaining possession of the commanderybuildings and refusing to surrender any estate documents, so that the priorwas unable to hold courts or discover the value of his rents, a state of affairsby which he justified his appeal to chancery rather than the common law.205

66v–67r, 72v–73r, 73v–74r, 87r, 129v, 129v–130r, 131r–v, 159r–v, 202r–v, 265v–266r, 266v–267r,270v–271r, 288v.

204 Martin Docwra had already been steward of Balsall for some years. I have been unable toestablish the exact nature of his relationship to the prior. His will does not mention anymembersof the family save his three daughters and a cousin, Thomas, who resided in London. ClaudiusE.vi, fos. 265v–266v; PRO PROB11/25, fos. 143r–v.

205 PRO C1/588/36. A later stage in the proceedings is represented by Martin Docwra’sanswer not toWeston’s original bill of complaint, but to his replication, which evidently accusedthe lessee of detaining the manor of Tolle and removing the altar cloths from its chapel. Docwradenied that Tolle had anything to do with Balsall, or that it had been let to him by the last prior.PRO C1/598/12.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 193

Although Wolsey’s decree on the matter does not survive it can be recon-structed from later proceedings. Sometime in the late summer or earlyautumn of 1529 the cardinal ordained that possession of the disputedcommandery should be committed to the keeping of Sir George Throckmor-ton206 until it should be determined which party had the better right to it.207

But Wolsey’s influence was waning and when Throckmorton and his retinuearrived to take charge of Balsall on 7October 1529 chaotic scenes ensued asDocwra’s wife and servants, allegedly supported by ruffians from a nearbysanctuary, refused entry to them. In the weeks following this incident Doc-wra went on the offensive against the chancellor and Throckmorton. Amongthe articles advanced against Wolsey in Parliament on 1December 1529wasone alleging that he had issued an injunction forbidding possession of Balsallto the lessee without the latter ever having been called to make answer inchancery.208 Some weeks before Docwra had appeared in Star Chambercomplaining that the descent of Throckmorton and his retinue on Balsallhad amounted to a riot and claiming that they had entered the manorforcibly, hauling his servants out of the house there and threatening to killhis wife. Both parties were ordered to appear on penalty of £100.209

The case was slow to come before the court, for the rest of the survivingdocumentation, comprising the answer of Throckmorton’s co-defendantsto Docwra’s bill, further questions put to them, their replies thereto, andthe complainant’s replication, dates from after the cardinal’s death inNovember 1530. In their answer to Docwra’s complaint Throckmorton’sco-defendants210 explained that the late cardinal had commanded bothparties to avoid possession because he had been warned that the disputebetween Weston and Docwra would lead to ‘grete bessenez and unquytnez’among the king’s subjects in Warwickshire. Accordingly Throckmorton hadbeen directed to enter the commandery and keep indifferent possessionthereof, levying its rents and issues until the matter should be decided bythe king in chancery. The prior had obeyed the order, but Docwra had notonly demurred but had fortified the manor-house and gathered sixteen ormore criminals from the sanctuary at Knowle to keep it. Save for breakingdown the door of the chamber in which Docwra’s wife and various thievesand misdoers were holding out by force, they denied the charge of forcibleentry, and asserted moreover that two of the criminals found in the roomhad been dispatched to Warwick gaol. They admitted that Docwra’s wife

206 George Throckmorton was the head of the family with whom Thomas Docwra had beenin dispute over Balsall in the early 1500s, but whose relations with the Hospital had evidentlyimproved thereafter. In the 1530s he was close toWeston and his nephew Thomas Dingley, withwhom he was accused of treason in 1537–8. LPFD, xii, II, no. 952.

207 PRO STAC2/17/401/1.208 LPFD, iv, no. 6075 (42).209 PRO STAC2/17/401/1.210 Only six of these came before the court, although Docwra had alleged that Throckmor-

ton’s retinue had comprised at least twenty persons at the time of the incident at Balsall.

194 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

and servants had been removed from the premises and that they had takenpossession in accordance with the writ.211 Questioned on the threat to killDocwra’s wife all but one of the defendants denied that any such utterancehad been made while the last remembered hearing something similar from aservant of Throckmorton whose name he could not recall.212 Questionswere also asked about Wolsey’s writ of injunction, although not necessarilyin accordance with Docwra’s agenda, as Throckmorton’s associates wereasked whether it had been purchased at Docwra’s suit or if he had been privyto it, despite his earlier protest that he had been wholly unaware of the order.

Docwra also refuted the other allegations of Throckmorton and his ser-vants concerning the circumstances of their entry into the manor. He deniedfortifying the manor house or placing felons therein, and refuted allegationsthat these had held out by force of arms. He attacked the basis of the prior’sclaims to the property, claiming that Balsall was not currently a comman-dery and that Weston had not been made its commander, as Throckmortonhad alleged. Additionally he denied that he had been warned to vacate theproperty by the prior or that, on receiving notice, he had promised to do so.Despite his claim that Weston had no right to Balsall, however, it is evidentthat there had been some negotiation between the two parties, for Docwradid admit that he had written to the prior offering to allow him to occupy themanor, farm, and park of Balsall whenever he should wish to stay there. Hehad not, he said, promised to give up any other part of Balsall’s estates.

Unfortunately, no further information survives on the case in Star Cham-ber, although it seems unlikely that Docwra’s flimsy charges, which werepossibly advanced to bolster the attack on Wolsey in parliament, wereupheld. The suit in chancery over the actual possession of the commandery,however, dragged on for years. Sir Thomas More, who followed Wolsey aschancellor, adjudged Balsall to Weston at some point between 1530 and1532,213 but in 1535 Martin Docwra’s widow Isabella, now married toGiles Forster, reappeared to contest the case. On 28 June 1535 judgementwas given in the couple’s favour and the continued validity of the lease madein 1526 was confirmed.214 Weston eventually reconciled himself to havingBalsall as a source of revenue rather than a residence, for in 1539, afterIsabella’s death a provincial chapter renewed the lease to Forster at a rent of£156 13s. 4d. The commandery’s subsidiary manors of Grafton, Ryton,and Fletchhampstead, however, were successfully returned to the prior’spatronage.215

211 PRO STAC2/17/401/2.212 PRO STAC2/17/401/4–5.213 More was appointed chancellor on 26 October 1529, and resigned in May 1532.214 LPFD, viii, no. 936.215 The lease was dated 24April 1539, as were those of Ryton and Fletchhampstead. Grafton

was let on 27 June 1533, the lease to run from June 1537. PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402, mm.22–23d.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 195

The Balsall case provides an example of the conflict that could arisebetween the wish of priors to provide for their families and the interests oftheir successors. Although it had the authority of the provincial chapterbehind it, Thomas Docwra’s desire to grant such an important property toa relative on long lease when his own days were numbered was ratherirresponsible considering the trouble he had himself had in removing theThrockmortons at the beginning of his priorate, and his own request that hemight reserve Balsall to the hands of his fellow-religious. His neglect of thisprinciple involved his successor in years of expensive litigation which ultim-ately failed to return the commandery to prioral control, and if Weston’spetitions against Martin Docwra’s dilapidation of the property are to bebelieved, did considerable material damage as well.216 The conflicting judge-ments of successive chancellors, and especially Wolsey’s high-handed deci-sion to suspend the right of both parties to the property and interpose athird party with an old family interest in it, did not help matters, especiallywhen the case became entangled in the charges laid against the cardinal inparliament.

AlthoughWolsey gave judgement, in this matter as in others, largely in theorder’s interest, his influence was already declining when L’Isle Adam visitedin 1528, and by the autumn of 1529 it had collapsed.217 His protection ofthe Hospitallers apparently did not extend to ensuring the dispatch of theirresponsions to the convent in June 1529, although those due in 1528 wereprobably remitted. Awareness of such help as he did offer, moreover, must bequalified by the haughty and condescending manner in which he had treatedthe Hospital in his pursuit of its property at Hampton Court and Sandford.His pique at the failure to expedite the grant of Sandford may have led himto stir Henry up against the order in 1527, and he may also have used hisposition as papal legate to bully it into submission for in c.1528 he con-firmed its papally bestowed privileges and the patronage of its hospitals onthe basis that the latter might have pertained to him by virtue of his legatineauthority.218 Such heavy-handedness evidently caused bitterness, forWilliam Weston was among the signatories of the articles against the car-dinal in the first session of the Reformation Parliament, and after thecardinal’s attainder, which detained in the hands of the crown those of theorder’s goods which had been granted to him, the prior protested to Crom-well that the lease of Sandford had passed ‘without free assent . . . to theperpetual loss of my religion’.219 But without his protection the order wasfor the moment without a powerful intermediary, and the arrest of itsresponsions and pursuit of its property by the court continued unchecked.

216 See above, 156–7; PRO C1/925/35; C1/598/12.217 J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Harmondsworth, 1968), 307–8.218 LPFD, iv, no. 5093.219 LPFD, v, no. 335. Dated 12 July 1531.

196 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

The king’s decision to appropriate Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court leftthe order in a difficult position. Henry would not be content with a lease ofthe property, no matter how long the term or generous the conditions. Theorder was thus prevailed upon to substitute Hampton Court, the advowsonof the prebend of Blewbury, its plum ecclesiastical appointment, and amessuage in Chancery Lane for Sandford in an exchange in which it receivedthe lands of the former monastery of Stansgate in Essex, a foundation whichhad been suppressed by the cardinal.220 Sandford, the order’s ‘great mes-suage’ in Chancery Lane, and the nearby Ficketsfield were returned to theorder in late 1531 or 1532, the crown having enjoyed usufruct sinceWolsey’sattainder.221 Both the release of Sandford and the dispatch of the order’sresponsions to Malta may have been conditional on the grant of HamptonCourt.

While the prior was attempting to recover the order’s property in England,L’Isle Adam was struggling to maintain its integrity, discipline, and self-confidence in the central Mediterranean. The maintenance of the itinerantconvent in temporary accommodation in central Italy, the upkeep of a fleetwhen the order no longer had its own port facilities, and the complicateddiplomacy associated with its search for a home and a role were expensive aswell as debilitating, and the 1527 chapter-general had imposed a three-yearhalf-annate on the order’s property which was extended year by year there-after.222 The English contribution to this levy is impossible to quantify, as noreceiver’s accounts survive for the financial years ending June 1527 to June1530 but it does not seem to have been particularly impressive, and the verylack of accounts may indicate, as it surely does in 1527, that no responsionswere being dispatched at all. Although L’Isle Adammay have collected thosedue in 1528when he was in England, as no mention was made of arrears forthat year when the order later brought the matter up, a letter sent to Westonand his brethren in early March 1532 complained that ‘for three years theresponsions and dues of our common treasury have not been sent to us’ andthat Clement West, the turcopolier, who ought to have converted them intogoods and brought them to Malta, had so far failed to appear. AccordinglyJohn Babington, now bailiff of Eagle, was sent to England to procure allmoney, goods, and writings pertaining to the common treasury which mightstill be in West’s hands and ensure their delivery to the newly appointed

220 The exchange was formally agreed on 30 May 1531, and the order’s provincial chaptergranted Hampton Court and the other properties to Sir Richard Paulet et al., to be held to theking’s use, on 5 June. It was not until 19 December that letters patent were drawn up grantingStansgate to the prior and brethren of the Hospital in mortmain, however. The swapwas ratifiedby parliament in the session beginning 15 January 1532. PRO LR2/62, fo. 69r et seq.; LPFD,v, nos. 264, 285, 627 (18), 720 (6), 722 (11). Statutes, iii. 403–6.

221 The editors of the Letters and Papers date the disposal of the lands of Cardinal’s College,of which these formed a part, to 1532. LPFD, v, no. 47 (1), and see n.220, above.

222 AOM286, fos. 9r, 23r; 54, fo. 173r; 85, fo. 94v; 286, fos. 37v et seq.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 197

receiver, John Rawson junior, so that the latter could arrange for the dis-patch of the outstanding responsions.223

Although allowance was made for the fact that West may have beendetained ‘by sickness or some peril . . . or by other impediments’ the missivewas, as Sannazaro pointed out, ‘saturated with distrust’. Weston and hisbrethren were instructed to implement the order’s statutes against disobedi-ence and invoke the aid of the secular arm against the turcopolier should heprove difficult, and he was in any case summoned to appear in Malta withinsix months of the letter reaching England. Babington, who had been licensedto leave Malta on 16 February,224 was ordered on 5 March to proceed toEngland by way of Messina and Palermo, arranging some way by which theorder’s monies might be exchanged ‘with whatever advantage possible’. If itshould not be possible to send the money by exchange, Babington, Rawson,and Weston were to collaborate in purchasing such merchandise as theythought appropriate, and dispatch it at the first opportunity to Sicily, makingsure that it was not taxed on the way. Babington was also to secure theremainder of the sums owed by Antonio Vivaldi, and to investigate thegovernment of the magistral camera in England.225

There are two questions that need to be answered here. First, we need toknow who was responsible for impeding the dispatch of the English respon-sions, and secondly why it took the order so long to complain about thesituation. The evidence that can be gleaned from the order’s archives onthese matters is extremely limited, the instructions given to Babington inFebruary 1532 providing the first direct evidence that monies were notreaching Malta. Since his appointment in 1529, Clement West’s administra-tion of the receivership had provoked only routine interference from head-quarters. Ambrose Cave was appointed proctor of the common treasury inEngland to supplement West in February 1530 but this was quite usual, andso too was the summons issued to the receiver in the following November toattend the next chapter-general.226 Even West’s removal from the receiver-ship in early March 1531 does not necessarily suggest that anything wasamiss. Although it was unusual for a receiver to be removed so soon afterhis appointment, West had been elected turcopolier in the precedingJanuary and was clearly expected to come toMalta to assume his conventualdignity.227

The fact that no responsions or other dues were submitted toMalta duringthis time caused no comment at all. No ambassadors were sent to England,the king was not asked for the release of the monies, and no orders wereaddressed to the English brethren to act until 1532. It seems to have beenonly after John Rawson took over fromWest that the latter’s administration

223 AOM415, fos. 163v–164r. Transcribed in Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 85–7.224 AOM415, fo.163v. 225 Ibid., fos.229v–230r. 226 AOM414, fo.219v,193r,8v–9v.227 Ibid., fos. 240r, 194r.

198 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

was put under the spotlight. There are two likely explanations for theconvent’s failure to act against West beforehand, the first being that thecrown had decided to hold back the order’s responsions until it should beassured of a home. Charles V had ceded Malta in March 1530, but, partlybecause of the order’s insistence that it should be assured of tax-free grainsupplies from Sicily, the offer had not been accepted until late in the year.228

Although Henry had congratulated L’Isle Adam on the gift in late November1530, there may still have been doubts in England, as indeed there were inthe convent, as to whether the order would actually take up its new home. Itmay only have been when these were laid to rest, and when the king hadmanaged to bully the Hospital into a permanent alienation of HamptonCourt, that its responsions were freed. A second possible cause of the delaywas the legislation forbidding religious persons from engaging in tradepassed by Parliament in late 1529.229 This could certainly have been inter-preted as prohibiting the order’s export of commodities and possibly even itsexchange operations. Such a supposition is supported by the fact that on 26May 1531 royal letters patent were granted to the prior and his successorslicensing them to purchase clothing and other goods for the use of theirbrethren and to convey the same overseas. The convent’s instructions toBabington in 1532, which stated that West should have come to Malta withgoods bought in England, and admitted it might not be possible for themoney to be exchanged for letters of credit, provide evidence that it may stillhave been difficult for the order to engage in financial operations at thistime.230 On 18 September 1532, however, West remitted nearly £2,600 inletters of exchange to the convent.231 It seems likely that before this he hadbeen collecting cash as receiver and stockpiling the surplus rather thandispatch it to the convent. When he was required to convert the moniesinto goods and bring these with him to Malta,232 however, he balked atdoing so and seems to have refused to hand over the written evidencepertaining to his office to his successor. He did not have any legitimatereason to do either, and it is also suspicious that in March 1532, just asproceedings were being instituted against him in Malta, his casket, £200 incash, and other ‘matters of importance’ were stolen from Clerkenwell by oneof his servants.233 Although JohnMablestone, who wrote to Giles Russell onthe day of the theft, evidently believed that it was genuine, West’s dismay athis losses may well have been mitigated by the fact that his accounts with the

228 Ibid., fo. 278r.229 Statutes, iii. 293; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 92–4.230 LPFD, v, no. 278 (41); AOM415, fos. 229v–230r.231 AOM54, fo. 186r.232 Although it does not survive, the order for this was probably given when West was

replaced as receiver in March 1531. The dating of this would suggest that the conventwas anticipating the imminent release of its monies, and further support the suspicion thatthis was contingent upon the order’s establishment in its new home.

233 LPFD, vi, no. 253 (misdated to 1533).

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 199

order were among them.234 It is worth reiterating that the instructions toBabington to ensure the handover of all the goods pertaining to the receiv-ership to John Rawson junior suggest that West had been reluctant to do soand in such circumstances the loss of his accounts may be regarded as at besta fortuitous coincidence and at worst something which had been arranged.Another succeeding receiver, John Sutton, petitioned the order’s councilsome years later to get West to deliver goods and monies that were owedto him.235

There is further evidence that the turcopolier turned the theft of hismuniments to his advantage in the months to come. Towards the end ofSeptember he wrote to an unknown associate, enclosing the copy of a leasegranted under the common seal, the original of which, also enclosed, hadbeen thrown into water by the thief and was now illegible. West more or lessadmitted altering the text of the lease to favour the lessee, for he urged hiscorrespondent to present both documents for confirmation at the nextprovincial chapter before handing over any old leases. West explained thatno one was aware of the specifics of the lease save he and that once the newlease had been registered it could not be overturned. This at the least wassharp practice, and may even point to the possibility that the turcopolier wasgifted with an uncanny foresight into the theft of his casket.236 Some daysafter he wrote this letter West left for Malta, departing from Southamptonon a vessel prepared by Antonio Vivaldi.237 Before his departure he emptiedthe order’s treasury to buy letters of exchange and cloth to take to theconvent,238 and wrote another letter, asking the recipient to sign and seal abox he had left behind and send it on to him at Southampton. He praisedVivaldi’s friendship and bemoaned the loss of his accounts, the consequencesof which might yet be amended by ‘a good king and duke’.239 His corres-pondent was probably the subprior, John Mablestone, to whom he hadremitted his business while he was away.

The turcopolier left England on 15 October 1532, travelling via Calaisand Alicante to Messina and thence to Malta.240 On reaching the conventhe presented his accounts for 1531 to the common treasury, whichdiffused criticism sufficiently for him to escape without being further pro-ceeded against over the lack of similar documents for 1529–30.241 Hethen threw himself into litigation, protesting before the council on 4 Febru-ary that Melchbourne rightly pertained to him rather than to Weston.A commission was appointed to consider this242 but had not reportedwhen, five days later, the order’s chapter-general began, and the extraordin-ary events which ensued therein obviated the need for further discussion ofthe issue.

234 LPFD, Addenda, no. 790. 235 AOM85, fo. 116r.236 LPFD, Addenda, no. 789. 237 Ibid., nos. 789–90.238 LPFD, v, no. 1588; AOM54, fo. 186r. 239 LPFD, Addenda, no. 790.240 LPFD, v, no. 1626. 241 AOM54, fo. 173r. 242 AOM85, fo. 109v.

200 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

Without going into too much detail, it seems appropriate to draw atten-tion to some of the salient features ofWest’s career up to this point to providea background to what followed. Three characteristics in particular standout: the turcopolier’s litigiousness, his highly developed sense of hisown rightness, and his rather dubious record when in positions of responsi-bility. West’s zeal for litigation had really begun to manifest itself inthe 1510s, when he had conducted a vigorous campaign against ThomasDocwra’s claim to have the right to appoint to preceptories in Englandunder the agreement of 1483 between John Weston and the English langue.Although his fear that the prior would use his claims to retain the patronageof the rich Welsh preceptory of Slebech, to which he was next in line,proved well founded, West’s aggressive manipulation of an existingdispute to defend his rights to Slebech did not go down well with the council,which insisted that the cases be dealt with separately. An equal determin-ation was apparent in West’s struggles against Roger Boydell, to whosemeliormenta he made objection, and in other appeals against the restof the langue over the grant of a preceptory to George Hatfield in 1524,against John Rawson senior over the langue’s concession that he mightexchange his English preceptory for a better one, against William Westonover Melchbourne, and even against the master, whom he opposed in 1509over Robert Pemberton’s spolia.243 On reaching England in 1518 or 1519244

he began further litigation against Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys. The latter had beengranted a lease of Slebech byWest’s proctors but, together with accomplices,had failed to maintain the charges on the house, taken money for repairswhich had not been carried out, cut down woods, extorted money fromtenants, made off with household goods and muniments, taken the profits ofcourts held in the preceptor’s name after the expiry of the lease, and sentservants to intimidate the preceptor and hunt in his woods.245 Repeatedroyal intervention was necessary to protect West, a knight of the body, from

243 AOM82, fos. 192r, 193r, 193v–194r; 84, fo. 46v; 85, fos. 24r–v, 26v, 28v–29r, 48r, 53v,109v; 81, fos. 137v.

244 On 28 November 1517 West was ordered to appoint a proctor to act for him in thedispute over Slebech when he should leave Rhodes. However, he was represented by proctors inthe presentation to a Welsh benefice in his gift on 20 April 1518, and was not present at theprovincial chapter held in that year. His proctors probably also leased his preceptory to SirGruffydd ap Rhys at about the same time. West had evidently been at Slebech for some timebefore 16 August 1519, when Sir Gruffydd’s associate Harry Cadarn of Prendergast and thirtycompansions allegedly broke into the preceptory and assaulted him. AOM406, fo. 166v; TheEpiscopal Registers of the Diocese of St David’s 1397 to 1518, ed. and trans. R. F. Isaacson,2 vols. (London, 1917), ii. 836/7; F. Jones, ‘Sir Rhys ap Thomas and the Knights of St. John’,Carmarthen Antiquary, 2/3 (1951), 70–4, at 72; R. A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and hisFamily (Cardiff, 1993), 71–2.

245 PRO STAC2/22/290; REQ 2/10/76; Jones, ‘Rhys ap Thomas’, passim. The vice-receiver,John Babington, had prosecuted several former farmers of the preceptory in the late 1510s butthese actions had proved unsuccessful and had been abandoned by 1520. In March 1527 Westcomplained that Babington was holding him responsible for the old debts. AOM54, fo. 13v;85, fo. 23r.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 201

the physical and legal pressure exerted by Rhys in response to his alle-gations.246

Unquestionably West was hard done by. Although Slebech was a richbenefice, his long exclusion from it and the circumstances he was forcedto confront on his arrival in Wales left him at a disadvantage when itcame to ‘improving’ the preceptory, so that his contemporaries had allbeen granted promotions by the time his meliormenta were accepted in1524.247 It was not until 1526 that West was granted ancienitas to seekanother commandery, and when this was forthcoming he was passed overfor promotion in 1527, when the death of Docwra occasioned the usualturnover of offices, and in 1531, when the much more junior John Suttonwas granted an additional preceptory by magistral grace, which wasusually exercised on behalf of the turcopolier if he was not possessed ofa second commandery.248 Although his bitterness was understandable, hisinsistence on objecting to the promotion of his brethren and on makingan issue of questions such as the master’s right to dispose of the spolia ofbrethren who had died in convent when he was himself so junior cannothave endeared him to the English knights or the order’s council, whichspent much of its time considering his petitions. It is noteworthy that heprosecuted most of these actions on his own behalf rather than that ofthe langue and that when he challenged the langue’s decisions he wasusually the sole objector. It is also worth noting that, with the exceptionof his provision to Slebech, which was upheld, he lost all of these actions,despite frequent appeals. In particular his objection to the grant ofDinmore to George Hatfield after the latter was dead may have rankledwith those younger brethren who had fought alongside Hatfield in 1522and may not have appreciated West’s long conventual service, for severaljunior knights objected to the grant of ancienitas to him in 1526, al-though they were unable to give grounds for doing so to the council.249

That he was not universally popular received further illustration at thechapter in 1533, when the langue which he headed voted for two repre-sentatives to serve among the sixteen capitulars responsible for the for-mulation of new statutes. Three brethren, including West, shared thevotes equally.250

The convent’s evident failure to promote West to the dignities he felt werehis due may have had other causes than the excessive zeal he showed in theirpursuit. In addition to his possibly dubious record as receiver, West hadalready been investigated in 1515 for his conduct as castellan of Rhodes, an

246 PRO REQ 2/10/76. Text in Jones, ‘Rhys ap Thomas’, 71–3; Griffiths, Rhys ap Thomas,71–2.

247 AOM410, fos. 178v, 177v, 178v; 411, fo. 154v.248 BDVTE, 8; AOM414, fos. 194v–195r.249 AOM84, fos. 46v, 95r.250 AOM286, fo. 32v.

202 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

office to which he had been appointed in December 1512.251 Although noaction had been taken against him at this time, he never held a commissionor office again in Rhodes, and was only appointed to commissions in thepriory of England infrequently after his return home. The grant of thereceivership was the first important Hospitaller business on which he hadbeen employed since 1514. The reluctance to make use of him may also havereflected doubts about his loyalties. In 1508 the order’s council appointed acommission to examine the contents of a letter sent by West to Henry VIIand, although again no action was taken, his rabid nationalism and readi-ness to identify his personal grievances with the national interest and appealover the heads of his religious superiors to the authorities in England,characteristics which were so marked during the 1530s, surely did not springfully formed out of the Henrician breach with Rome.252

The twin catalysts by which the turcopolier’s keen sense of injustice andrampant xenophobia were awakened seem to have been a magistral prohib-ition of his parading around Malta with his mace of office and the appoint-ment of foreign proctors by the dignitaries of the English langue to representthem in the chapter-general held in February 1533. According toWest, it wasthe mace that was at issue.253 The privilege of having a mace bearing theroyal arms carried before him while in convent had been granted the turco-polier in 1448, and probably exercised ever since.254 In the circumstances of1533, however, when Henry VIII’s assaults on the church were becomingever more strident and he had just divorced the emperor’s niece, it may havebeen seen as provocative to accord his arms such conspicuous honour inMalta. It has also been asserted that a further contribution to West’s behav-iour in chapter was made by the ‘theft’ of the mace in the wake of themaster’s ban on its display, but no complaint was made about this until 29March255 so that it seems more likely that it vanished in conjunction with orafter West’s arrest on 12 February rather than before it. Indeed, by 22 April,‘L’Isle Adam was convinced that West’ had himself sent the bauble home,although it is unclear when this he thought this had occurred.256

The records of the chapter-general which began on 9 February certainlymake no mention of the mace, and give wholly different reasons for theturcopolier’s conduct. The appearance of foreign proctors in chapter torepresent Weston, Rawson, and Babington, against each of whom Westhad a grievance, prompted him to complain that these should not be reck-oned as members of the English langue and should neither be given a vote in

251 AOM82, fos. 137r–v, 51r.252 AOM81, fo. 110r.253 LPFD, vi, no. 370.254 CPL, x. 25. The grant had beenmade to HughMiddleton, turcopolier, and his successors.

The mace was not to be borne in the order’s council chamber.255 AOM85, fo. 113r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 176, wrongly states that West made the

complaint rather than Boydell.256 LPFD, vi, no. 369.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 203

the election of the capitular committee which drew up statutes nor in anyother decision to be made by the chapter as a whole. Although it wasconceded that the proctors, not being members of the langue, should notbe involved in electing its representatives, their right to vote in chapter wasupheld and the election of the capitulars took place.257 West’s subsequentbehaviour was quite extraordinary and deserves to be recounted in detail.After breakfast, as the chapter sat down to begin proceedings, the turcopo-lier ‘not wishing to accept the . . . sentence of the chapter general that theproctors of the priors of England and Ireland and the bailiff of Eagle shouldhave votes in chapter, leapt up with unjust accusations, no less rashly thanimpudently, (and) without good reason before his reverend lordship andchapter, and blaspheming God, he named the said proctors Saracens, Jewsand bastards.’ Having heard this charge, from whichWest ‘would not desist,asserting that he did not know whether they were Jews since they were notEnglish’, the master and chapter, ‘although the same turcopolier ought tohave been punished by grave penalties according to capitular statutes andconstitutions, not wishing that the business of the chapter be perturbed ordeferred, sentenced him to ask grace from his reverend lordship for thosethings he had uttered before everyone so irreverently, injuriously and withsuch great clamour, in excess of all modesty.’ West was then called before themaster and chapter again and the sentence against him read out, but he ‘notonly refused to obey and ask grace but, blaspheming furiously, tore, threwoff and cast to the ground the habit or mantle and vest in which he wasattired with many indecent and shameful words, especially saying that if hewas disobedient he ought to be deprived of the habit and, drawing hisdagger, that he deserved death. And thus like a madman without mantleand habit, since neither by words nor force nor by the persuasions of eitherfriends or honest men could he be restrained, he left the chapter.’258 Lestsuch ‘nefarious and unheard of disobedience and temerity’ go unpunished,master and chapter at once ordered that West should be imprisoned andproceeded against in accordance with the statutes.259 On 25 February hewas deprived of the turcopoliership, and the office was provided to RogerBoydell a week later.260

Every aspect of West’s tirade was offensive both to the order’s regulationsand to the sensibilities of the men gathered in chapter. He had broken thestatutes so comprehensively in word and deed that it seems unnecessary todraw attention to individual breaches here, but one item in particulardeserves comment. West’s initial accusations against the foreign proctorswere not only the ‘gravest insult that could ever be inflicted on a knight of

257 AOM286, fos. 31v–32r.258 Ibid., fo. 32v. An alternative translation, abbreviated for stylistic purposes, is provided by

Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 62–3.259 Ibid.; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 177.260 AOM286, fos. 35v–36r; 85, fo. 110v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 177.

204 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

St John’261 since the order technically excluded the illegitimate and thedescendants of infidels from its ranks, but they were also in contraventionof the statutes, which laid down severe penalties for those who mademalicious accusations against their fellows. By extending the charge to allthe non-English knights in chapter the turcopolier was further implying thatnone of the order’s chief dignitaries, save he, was fit to wear its habit. It is atribute to the patience of those present that he was allowed a chance toapologize at all. His other chief offences were blasphemy, the drawing of hisdagger, and the casting off of his habit, the effects of which were exacerbatedby the fact that they happened in front of the master and the order’s supremelegislative body.262

Given its delicate relationship with the crown, the turcopolier’s behaviourleft the convent in a difficult position, a fact of which West took fulladvantage when he reported these events to Henry VIII and Thomas Crom-well. His first such letter, written to Cromwell between 25 and 28 Febru-ary,263 represented that he had been deprived of office solely for having themace borne before him, and that L’Isle Adam had refused to suffer this andhad accused him of disobedience in consequence. West had replied that hehad taken leave of his prince to enter the order and reminded the master thatHenry was a good king who had done much for the religion, citing his gift ofartillery and the export licence of 1531 as evidence of his largesse. Whenagain refused permission to bear the mace he had told the master to ‘takeyowre abite’ and removed it, whereupon he was put in prison. He beggedCromwell to put his cause before the king, so that the latter could intervenewith the pope to procure his restoration, as L’Isle Adam would not do it.

AlthoughWest’s account clearly misrepresented the events of 12 February,the record of which makes no mention of the mace at all, it seems unlikelythat the appointment of foreign proctors by the other English dignitaries ofthe order provided sufficient reason in itself for his pronouncements inchapter, even given his existing grievances and the aggressive nationalismdisplayed in this and later correspondence. A perceived snub to the dignity ofhis office and his nation seems a better explanation for his behaviour,although there can be no doubt that he was deprived of the turcopoliershipfor his extraordinary conduct before chapter rather than for the matter ofthe mace itself.

The letter to Cromwell was followed on 22 April by a dispatch to theking264 rehearsing West’s version of events and adding an account of whathad happened since, by which he sought to discredit the master further by

261 Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 62.262 These were the issues which particularly grieved the commissioners appointed to inves-

tigate West’s conduct. AOM286, fos. 35v–36r.263 Misdated in LPFD to 22 April. It refers both to West’s deprival of office on 25 February

and to his arrest on ‘twelfth instant’. LPFD, vi, no. 370.264 Otho C.ix, fos. 170r–v (abstract in LPFD, vi, no. 369).

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 205

presenting him as vindictive and at odds with the order’s council. Herecounted his deprival of office, imprisonment, and replacement by Boydelland the latter’s subsequent death, following which the council had requestedthat he be freed from prison, as there was no reason to keep him therewithout a conciliar order. The master had not only ignored this petition butwhen the council had elected a lieutenant turcopolier to exercise the officeuntil Henry’s pleasure should be known he had caused the decision to beoverturned and had appointed John Rawson (junior) full turcopolier, al-though he had not yet dared to send him the ‘brod cross’ worn by a bailiff.265

West added that the mace had been sent back to England, and that he hadbeen advised that if the master were to take his habit and commandery fromhim he should appeal to the king for restoration. He also reported theinsurrection which had occurred in Malta on 17 April, saying that 300brethren had rebelled against L’Isle Adam, calling into question the justiceof his suppression of the revolt and saying that he was now at loggerheadswith the Spanish brethren, who were demanding that he appoint a Spanishlieutenant, ‘to the wych he must consent or aventyr all’. Having paintedthis picture of misgovernment and injustice, he begged the king to ‘delyverus owght off thys thraldom’, stressing once more that he had only beendeprived of his dignity for bearing the royal arms.266

As West’s letters arrived in England before the convent’s explanations ofthe affair, they were highly successful in shaping the court’s view of thecircumstances behind his removal from office.267 A letter which Cromwellwas drawing up in July may only have requested clarification of the matter,as for the time being no action was taken in England, but in late October andearly November William Weston, the duke of Norfolk, and the king sentletters to Malta by John Sutton, who presented them to the council inFebruary 1534.268 Norfolk urged that West be released and reinstatedwithout delay so that he might return to England ‘for otherwise thingsmay turn unpleasant and be of considerable prejudice to the whole orderin the near future’. Weston’s letter provided rather more substantial evidence

265 Otho C.ix. The Liber Conciliorum records that Bellingham was elected lieutenant turco-polier on 17April, and Rawson on the 19th. Bulls appointing Rawsonwere also drawn up on 19April, John Sutton being appointed receiver in his stead on the same date. AOM85, fo. 113r;415, fos. 166r–v, 191r.

266 Further details of these troubles are provided by Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 130–1 andAOM85, fos. 112v, 113v, 115r.

267 Otho C.ix, fos. 170r–v. Carlo Capello, writing to Venice from London on 12 July 1533reported that an envoy had arrived from the ‘prior’ of Rhodes asking the king’s help insuccouring Coron, which Charles V was proposing to hand over to the order. This may havebeen the prior of France, with whom Louis de Vallee had been sent to consult on 17March, withinstructions to ‘adresser celles dangleterre’ as he saw fit. It seems possible that the proceedingsagainst West were explained in conjunction with these orders. A note among Cromwell’smemoranda dated 2 July indicates that a letter to L’Isle Adam was already being drawn upthen, however. CSPV, iv, no. 943; AOM415, fos. 241v–242r; LPFD, vi, no. 756.

268 AOM85, fos. 125r–v; Transcript in Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 178–80.

206 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

on the nature of this threat, reporting that some days before the letter hadbeen written he and the other peers gathered to transact the king’s businesshad discussed West and the reasons for his imprisonment. Nearly all hadopined that this had been a punishment for the Englishman’s pretension inhaving the mace bearing the royal arms carried before him even in themaster’s palace and in public functions, which, as had been reported to theking and lords, he had every right to do by right and custom. The master,they added, ‘had cast into prison the said brother Clement, for wishing . . . tohonour his king . . . So they all irately declaimed, uttering hard words againstyou’.269 Sutton added verbally that all this was known at court throughWest’s letters and a messenger he had sent.

Since appeals by brethren to secular rulers or indeed the pope wereforbidden270 Sutton’s testimony resulted in West being brought before thecouncil and interrogated. He denied writing to the king, and affirmed that hebelieved he owed his degradation solely to the matter of the mace. L’IsleAdam refuted this claim and deputed the draper,271 the prior of Pisa, andEdward Bellingham to investigate the events of the previous year.272 Shortlyafterwards, on 13 April, a majority of the English langue instructed itsproctor to complain against West on the subject of the mace and requestthat his appeals to England should be judged according to conventuallaw.273

West responded by writing to England again, although he was careful toaddress subsequent letters, until L’Isle Adam had died, to Cromwell ratherthan to the king. On 14 March he thanked the secretary for his help butprotested that the letters of Henry and Norfolk had done little good becauseof Weston’s letter, without which he would have been restored. He reportedthat proceedings had been instituted against him by the master and claimed,truly enough, that pressure was being brought on him and his supporters todeny that L’Isle Adam had ever made an issue of the honour of the Englishnation or of the matter of the mace. Moreover, he claimed to be sick andunable to get representation and asked that the case be heard in England andthe English knights summoned home, as the master’s control of patronagemade the younger knights forget the honour of their sovereign and nation. Inparticular he singled out John Sutton for criticism, asserting that he was thetool of L’Isle Adam, whom Sutton’s uncle Thomas Sheffield had mademaster, and who in return had provided Sutton with the commandery ofgrace which ought to have gone to West as turcopolier. For further informa-tion he referred Cromwell to John Story, who was probably the messengermentioned by Sutton and later entered the royal service. West claimed that

269 Quotations after Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 64–5.270 Stabilimenta, ‘De fratribus’, xliiii (Statute of Jean de Lastic, 1437–54).271 The draper, or drapier, was the conventual bailiff of the langue of Aragon.272 AOM85, fos. 125v–126r; transcript in Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 181.273 AOM85, fo. 128r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 170.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 207

Story had been refused audience by the master and (subsequent) licence toleave Malta with Sutton.274

On 12 May this letter was followed by another giving West’s version ofthe proceedings of the chapter-general against him. He asserted that theassembly had been packed with members of the master’s household,and pointed out that foreign proctors had sat in the place of Englishmen.275

He repeated his complaints regarding the detention of Story and the‘untrue demeanour’ of Sutton, and his wish that all the English knightsbe summoned home and heard together. He also drew attention to the plightof Oswald Massingberd, a junior knight who had been investigated inMarch for brawling with three other brethren, for having praised the murderof four men in one of the order’s galleys during the previous year’s insurrec-tion, and for having repeatedly said out loud that L’Isle Adam should bekilled.276 By the time West wrote his letter Massingberd had been put ontrial for the murder himself, as well as for duelling, sedition, and lese-majeste.277 West glossed over these indiscretions, saying that Massingberd’sonly crime had been to accuse Sutton of being untrue to his prince andcountry.278

The impact of West’s allegations on the order’s affairs in England was lessthan it might have been. The master’s secretary was dispatched thither in thelast months of 1533 and after the commission appointed to investigate theformer turcopolier’s claims of having been dismissed for bearing the macehad reported in the following February John Sutton was sent home toexplain its findings.279 Sutton probably carried an extract of the proceedingsof the chapter of 1533, now bound up with the Hospitaller correspondencein the British Library and endorsed by nine English brethren, to England atthe same time.280

In the short term the order’s damage limitation exercise appears to havebeen a success. Despite the continued imprisonment of the two Englishknights, no action was taken against the order in England in response toWest’s reports in 1534. In any case, after the death of L’Isle Adam in August1534 the situation of the prisoners improved. On 26 August an Italian, Pierodel Ponte, praised by West as ‘a wise man and esteemed’ and an old friend,was elected grand master. West marked the occasion with a scathing attackon the former master and asked Cromwell and the king to write to Malta

274 LPFD, vii, no. 326.275 Ibid., no. 651.276 AOM85, fo. 126v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 169–70; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable

Langue’, 539–40.277 AOM85, fos. 128r, 130r, 130r–v.278 LPFD, vii, no. 651. Sutton’s step-nephew, Nicholas Upton, was among the brethren

Massingberd had been convicted of fighting with in March. AOM85, fo. 126v.279 On 9 March L’Isle Adam wrote thanking the deputy of Calais for the civility shown his

secretary on his return to England. His letter was carried by Sutton. LPFD, Addenda, no. 925.280 LPFD, vii, no. 236.

208 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

asking for his and Massingberd’s release.281 This was effected shortly after-wards, despite L’Isle Adam’s deathbed refusal to pardon Massingberd, forthe latter was in more trouble in November for fighting with John Babingtonjunior in the English auberge in Malta.282 West was also freed and, after acivil exchange of letters between Henry VIII and Cromwell and the newmaster, was re-elected turcopolier in April 1535.283

Although the events following West’s outburst in chapter were resolvedquite amicably, this may only have been because of L’Isle Adam’s demise,and it is noteworthy that whatever the friendship between Del Ponte andWest, the order had been pressurized into relaxing sentences against twoaggressive and disruptive brethren who had, according to the statutes,merited deprival of the habit and perpetual imprisonment or death. More-over, West’s accusations, although they did no immediate damage to theorder’s operations in England, certainly increased suspicion of the Hospital-lers at court at a time when the order’s international status and privileges, ifnot yet its very existence in England, were being challenged in the courts andin parliament. Over the next few years the order was to find itself in anincreasingly untenable position as the king sought clarification of where itsloyalties lay.

While the order’s position had partly been safeguarded by the letterspatent of 1531, the anti-clerical and anti-papal legislation passed in parlia-ment and convocation from 1529 onwards was potentially extremely dam-aging to its independence, privileges, and finances. The ‘Reformation’parliament, which met intermittently between November 1529 and April1536, processed a vast corpus of legislation which gradually destroyed theties the English Church had with Rome.284 Inherent in the process was achallenge to the status of those religious orders which had active inter-national roles, among them the Hospital, the brethren of which were par-ticularly vulnerable because their service in and submission of funds to theconvent on Malta provided their raison d’etre and their sense of corporateidentity. At the same time as the king and parliament were abolishing theChurch’s links with Rome, moreover, they were questioning ecclesiasticalprivileges and taxing the clergy, including the Hospitallers, to an unpreced-ented extent. Appropriately enough, given his past dealings with the king, itwas the financial assault that William Weston found hardest to resist.

Although the attack on the papacy did not begin in earnest until 1531,anti-clerical legislation proposed in the very first session of the Reformation

281 AOM85, fos. 133v–135v; LPFD, vii, nos. 1100–1.282 LPFD, vii, no. 1100; AOM85, fo. 140v.283 Following the death of John (I) Babington, John Rawson junior was provided to Eagle on

15 February 1535, but the choice of a new turcopolier was suspended ‘until the return of theship’, presumably a vessel bearing news from England. West was re-elected on 26 April. LPFD,viii, nos. 459, 499, 546–7; AOM85, fos. 144r–v, 148r.

284 Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, passim.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 209

parliament already constituted a challenge to certain of the order’s privil-eges. The act laying down heavy fines on clergy guilty of non-residence orpluralism and on those holding land at farm was not applicable to knight-brethren, who were, after all, laymen, but were a potential check on thedisposal of the order’s appropriated churches and effectively abolished thepapal privilege which had permitted eight clergy in the prior’s service to benon-resident. Although exceptions were made, offenders against the actcame before the courts in large numbers.285 Besides the restrictions onclerical non-residence there was also an attack on the payment of mortuar-ies, which were only to be levied from the goods of those who possessedmoveable property worth 10 marks or more, and were limited to a max-imum of 10 shillings. They were not to be paid at all by women, peoplekeeping the house, or travellers. All three categories probably comprehendedmany of those who had paid mortuaries to the Hospitallers, one of whosemost cherished privileges was the right to bury people outside their homeparishes.286 Although other, more serious attacks on the order’s revenue-producing privileges were to follow, even in 1533 Thomas Cromwell wasseeking a more favourable lease of Sutton-at-Hone, as its ‘pardon’ wasutterly decayed.287

The following years saw more anti-clerical legislation and increased royaldemands on the clerical estate. In 1532 convocation was forced to submit tothe review of existing, and royal approval of all new canon law, and thepapal pocket was threatened by the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates,which came into effect in the following year. In 1533 the Act of Successionimposed an oath to be administered throughout the kingdom acknowledg-ing the king’s second marriage and its offspring, and all appeals to, andprocurements of licences, faculties, and dispensations from, Rome wereforbidden by the Acts of Appeals and Dispensations.288 The following yearpapal authority over the English Church was definitively suppressed by theActs of Supremacy and Heresy.289

These measures, particularly the Acts of Dispensations and Supremacy,had serious implications for the Hospital. While the restraint of annates toRome and the investigation of canon law had a potential rather than animmediate effect on the order, the attack on papal supremacy and thedispensations and licenses which flowed from Rome did call into questionits exemptions and privileges, which, although traditionally confirmed byEnglish monarchs on their accession or that of new priors, were now at thewill of a crown which was carrying out a thorough review of ecclesiastical

285 Statutes, iii. 292–6; CPL., x. 189; Scarisbrick,Henry VIII, 330; Lehmberg, ReformationParliament, 93–4.

286 Statutes, iii. 288–9.287 LPFD, vi, no. 1665.288 Statutes, iii. 460–1, 385–8, 462–4, 471–4, 427–9, 492, 464–71.289 Ibid., 454–5 (clause 7).

210 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

privileges. The Hospital’s status as an ‘exempt’ order of the church underpapal protection was not unique in England, but its links with its overseasconvent were unusually concrete, and its international activities were, in thelast analysis, an expression of papal policy. Moreover, the Acts of Dispen-sations and Appeals, which struck at the recourse of Englishmen to the curiaas a fount of justice and privilege, also forbade any resort to other foreignauthorities. Although the order was able to secure a proviso that Dispensa-tions should not extend to those privileges it had been granted before March1532, its brethren were, at least technically, prohibited in future fromobtaining licences, faculties, and dispensations not merely from Rome butfrom any other foreign source. Nor was the Hospital exempted from theclauses forbidding the visitation of exempt monasteries by foreign visitorsand prohibiting members of English houses from acting as visitors or attend-ing chapters or assemblies abroad. Visitations, Dispensations declared, werehenceforth to be by commission from the king, although when these wereordered the Hospitallers were not listed among those orders whose houseswere to be visited.290 The order probably managed to avoid these provisionsby pleading its past exemptions, but these were to be allowed only insofar asthey were in accordance with English law and it seems probable that ap-pointments from Malta and the participation of English brethren in deci-sion-making processes there were now technically illegal, a possibility thatlends a certain irony to Clement West’s protest against the use of foreignproctors in the chapter of 1533.

Perhaps most importantly, by abolishing the title and authority of thepope within the realm, the Act of Supremacy made it impossible for theHospital to plead past papal privileges when soliciting confraternity pay-ments, effectively curtailing their collection. Coupled with the restrictionson mortuary payments, this had a crippling effect on the profitability ofHospitaller ‘pardons’. The indirect assaults on the order’s revenues, more-over, were complemented by the imposition of direct taxation, for Westonwas unable to procure exemption from the Act of First Fruits and Tenthswhich reserved the profits of the vacancy year of all ecclesiastical beneficesand possessions and a tenth of their annual value thereafter to the crownfrom 1 January 1535.291 This was a major setback. The order’s revenues hadalready declined considerably because of the attacks of convocation andparliament, and it was now subjected to the payment of a tenth of its netincome in addition to the responsions and other dues demanded by theconvent. In 1534 the council complete had already permitted the brethrenof the English langue to pay a third-annate for their responsions ratherthan the half levied by the last chapter and this new imposition provokedDel Ponte to ask Cromwell for the Hospital to be exempted in April 1535,

290 Ibid., 464–71, clauses 19, 14; Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 829–30.291 Clause 21 of the act specifically included the order in the levy. Statutes, iii. 493–9, at 498.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 211

but his appeal was fruitless and the measure remained in force until theDissolution.292

As a result of parliamentary prohibitions and impositions, payments tothe convent declined drastically. Having deducted a tenth from the respon-sions they were prepared to pay as a result of First Fruits, the preceptors ofthe order’s houses in England and Wales then sought rebates of up to three-quarters of the remaining sum as a result of their loss of confraternitypayments and oblations.293 Even given these reductions, most fell rapidlyand heavily into arrears. The suspension of the confraria, in particular, was aserious blow to the order’s revenues, although there was some initial confu-sion about whether its collection had been forbidden or not. Although valueswere given for the confraria in many of theValor Ecclesiasticus returns, theirfarmer in south-west Wales had collected nothing in 1534 or 1535 becausethe king’s will on the matter was not yet fully understood. Despite the order’sexemption from Dispensations, he was clearly afraid of punishment shouldhe proceed to collection.294 By 1536 the order was finding confraternitypayments impossible to collect anywhere. Accordingly it lobbied the crownfor redress, with the remarkable result that the privilege granted to theHospitallers by Henry in 1537 conceded that they might be levied hence-forth ‘in vim Regiorum diplomatum’ rather than in accordance with papalletters.295 In 1539 we find the chancellor, Audley, reporting to Cromwellthat WilliamWeston had requested he be granted ‘commissions to gather thefrary’ under the ‘great book’ granted by the king to the grand master, andasking the king’s pleasure on the matter.296

Some brethren appear to have reacted aggressively to the erosion of theirprivileges and revenues. The impecunious preceptor of Carbrooke, ThomasCoppledike, who spent much of the 1530s either petitioning for a reductionin his responsions or seeking to augment his estate,297 was provoked to furyin 1534 by the attempt of his tenant John Payne to serve a writ against somelocal adversaries in Great Carbrooke. Pronouncing that ‘by goddes soulether shal be no warraunts servyd withyn my Town for I am lord and kyngether myselffe’, Coppledike gathered a band of armed men, who tore downPayne’s hedge while singing verse to commemorate the deed. Although

292 Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 47; AOM286, fo. 85v; LPFD, viii, no. 547.293 In 1536, the further rebates sought on top of the deduction of a tenth because of First

Fruits and Tenths were a tenth from the sums owed by the prioral preceptories and Newland, aninth from Beverley and Dinmore, a seventh fromHalston and Quenington, a fifth fromMountSt John and Slebech, a quarter from Dalby, Swingfield, Yeaveley, a third from Ansty andBattisford, and three-quarters from Carbrooke. The preceptors of the former Templar housesof Eagle, Ribston, Temple Brewer, Templecombe, and Willoughton, which were not centres forthe collection of confraternity payments, did not ask for rebates beyond the initial tenth.AOM54, fos. 286r–296r.

294 Valor, iv. 388.295 AOM36.296 LPFD, xiv, II, no. 36.297 AOM86, fos. 60r, 61r, 73r, 75r.

212 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

allegations of riot were often made in order to transfer business into StarChamber, and Payne does seem to have enclosed land on which Coppledikehad right of common for his cattle, the words attributed to the Hospitaller,even if exaggerated, probably demonstrate that the order was perceived tobe vulnerable to accusations of arrogance and disloyalty to the crown.Further complaints that the preceptor had threatened to evict Payneand leave him destitute, and that an attempt had been made to murderhim by one of Coppledike’s associates, cannot have improved the order’sreputation.298

A case more directly connected with the order’s defence of its privilegesoccurred in Bristol in the same year. It began with the abduction of the femaleservant of a Bristol merchant by the commander of Templecombe, EdmundHussey, and escalated into a major clash between the corporation andthe order over the district of Temple Fee, a jurisdictional peculiar inwhich Hussey had held the unfortunate girl before conveying her elsewhere.The corporation alleged that Hussey had refused to hand over his captive,to pay sureties to the town Constable, and to acknowledge the jurisdictionof its officers in Temple Fee. His defiance had culminated in an armedmarch by Hussey, his friends, and tenants into the centre of Bristol, wherehe had dared the civic officials to arrest him and assaulted the sergeant sentto do so with a dagger. Again there are the same intimations that the orderconsidered itself above the law and supported its pretensions with violenceand intimidation. The town’s real reason for reporting these matters wasprobably the separate jurisdiction of Temple Fee, which Hussey and theprior claimed was exempt from visitation or correction by Bristol officialsand in which, the mayor alleged, the order gave sanctuary to a host ofcriminals and operated a string of unlawful brewhouses and other un-savoury establishments. The issue of sanctuary was decided in favour ofthe corporation and the mayor’s officers given the right to serve processes inTemple Fee without resistance from prior or preceptor. Any decisionstaken on the more specific allegations against Hussey appear not to havesurvived.299

The particular accusations surrounding the Hospitallers in 1534 mayconceivably have encouraged their inclusion in a contemporary plan forthe disendowment of the Church, which probably originated in governmentcircles but evidently failed to meet with parliamentary approval.300 But thisgeneral scheme having failed, the crown did not involve the order in itsattack on the smaller monasteries in 1535–6. Thus, despite mostly beingvalued under £200 and staffed by but one knight-brother, the order’s pre-ceptories were not investigated by Cromwell’s visitors in 1535–6. While the

298 PRO STAC2/29/134; 2/29/65.299 PRO STAC2/6/93; M. C. Skeeters, Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation

c.1530-c.1570 (Oxford, 1993), 69.300 Hoyle, ‘Origins’, 291–4.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 213

priory’s incorporation as a single entity in common law, and perhaps oppos-ition raised against the order’s dissolution in parliament may have somethingto do with this, part of the credit must also go to William Weston, who hadhandled the king skilfully in 1528, and who took care to demonstrate hisloyalty during the early 1530s, professing his support for the annulment ofthe royal marriage in July 1530, attending parliament and taking the oathof succession there, serving on royal commissions and providing sweetenersof cash, cloth, and carpets to Thomas Cromwell, the master of the Rolls, andthe king respectively.301 It is noticeable that he confined his opposition toreligious change to the impositions and grants which specifically affected theorder’s functioning and finances rather than making an issue of its subjectionto the papacy. The restoration of the flow of responsions to the convent in1531 must have owed much to his prudence. The crown’s continued com-plaisance in the order’s activities was doubtless also assisted by the grant ofHampton Court, although this did not entirely sate the king, as the prior wasinduced to alienate more property in 1536, when his manor of Paris Gardenwas exchanged for the lands of the suppressed monastery of Kilburn andgranted to the queen.302 Pressure from other court luminaries for grants ofleases and offices also continued. The provincial chapter of 1529 hadgranted the major Essex estate of Cressing-Witham to a baron of the ex-chequer, John Smith, and in 1535 Lord Lisle was petitioning for the farm ofRodmersham, a part of the magistral camera, which was still in the hands ofFrancis Bell’s widow.303 Two years later the magistral camerawas granted toCromwell in its entirety.304 In 1536, as we have seen, Cromwell alsoattempted to procure the auditorship of the priory for an adherent, pressingthe matter despite Weston’s protest that he had already granted the officeand could not revoke it without appearing weak.305 The prior was so upsetby the demands for leases that he delayed holding a provincial chapter in1533,306 while the peril of association with courtiers was demonstrated, as ithad been on Wolsey’s death, when the order’s lands in the tenure of WilliamBrereton were seized on his attainder in May 1536. In 1537 Clement Westwas still petitioning for the recovery of goods that had been in Brereton’skeeping.307

301 LPFD, iv, no. 6513 (letter); v, no. 1518; vii, no. 391 (parliament, oath); vols. iv–v, xi, xiv,passim (commissions of the peace); Addenda nos. 609, 655 (commissions of searches); iv, no.5330; ix, no. 478; xi, no. 66; v, no. 686.

302 Statutes, iii. 676–7, 695–7.303 PRO SC6/Henry VIII/ 2402, mm. 33–33d; LPFD, viii, no. 381.304 PRO LR2/62, fos. 160r–v.305 LPFD, xi, nos. 406, 419, 425, 450.306 LPFD, vi, no. 166.307 LPFD, xi, no. 489; xii, I, no. 347. A list of Brereton’s debts drawn up in 1545 includes

West among his creditors. Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas, ed. E. W. Ives,Lancashire & Cheshire Record Society, 116 (Old Woking, 1976), 279.

214 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

Yet although Weston did his best to allay royal suspicions, he was nolonger fully trusted. He was not named to commissions of the peace betweenFebruary 1532 and October 1537 and was conspicuously absent from thoseordered north against the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, being instructed toremain behind and guard the queen instead. Nor was he employed on thediplomatic business for which his predecessor had been so remarkable.Although he was among the English notables who welcomed the Venetianambassador to London in December 1528,308 the prior was never sent on anembassy abroad and was not involved in drawing up treaties at home either.He was, moreover, refused permission to go to Malta himself in 1536,despite making ‘great suit’ to do so.309

While Weston took steps to show himself loyal to the crown during itscourse, in the longer term the effects of the Pilgrimage of Grace probablyintensified royal distrust of the order and helped to ensure its suppression.Although Sir William Fairfax wrote to Cromwell in January 1537 statingthat the northern religious houses were still patronizing the poor to get theirsupport and that none were so busy in stirring up the people as the Hospi-tallers’ chief tenants, the Pilgrimage and its associated risings did not promptany royal attack on the order’s brethren or properties.310 Nor did Westonsuffer any contemporary loss of favour at court, where he was seeking royalconfirmation of the grant of Shingay to his nephew Thomas Dingley byDidier de Saint Jalhe, who had been elected master after the death of PieroDel Ponte in November 1535.311 The king had written to either L’Isle Adamor Del Ponte in 1534/5 asking the (unnamed) master to present Dingley tothe next vacant preceptory in England and had written again to the nextmaster asking for Dingley’s promotion to be remembered.312 His wisheswere upheld when the prior’s nephew was provided to Shingay on 25 April1536.313 The order’s statutes, however, laid down that masters-elect had nopower to confer benefices until they should reach the convent and be ‘swornin’, and pleading this Ambrose Cave was able to have Saint Jalhe’s decisionoverturned by the lieutenant master and council on Malta, who granted himthe preceptory for his meliormentum on 14 June 1536.314 Cave’s existingpreceptory, Yeaveley, was conferred on Anthony Rogers.315

By the time the dispute came to the notice of the English court, mattershad been further complicated by the death at Montpellier in October 1536of Saint Jalhe, who had never reached Malta after his election.316 In thefollowing January Cave wrote to Cromwell asking for his rights to Shingay

308 CSPV, iv, no. 380. 309 LPFD, x, no. 339. 310 LPFD, xii, I, no. 192.311 AOM86, fo. 19v.312 The letters are undated exempla lacking addresses. LPFD, x, no. 391.313 LPFD, x, no. 731.314 AOM86, fo. 40r; 416, fo. 157v.315 AOM416, fos. 158r, 158v.316 AOM86, fos. 47r, 47r–48r.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 215

to be upheld, and protesting that Dingley already held another preceptoryand had also been granted a pension of 100 crowns together with, subse-quently, the member of Stansgate, which was worth another £40 per annum.No man, he said, was so rewarded having served so little time.317 Hiscomplaints were supported by Clement West, who confirmed that mastersof the order could only confer its dignities after they had sworn in convent tomaintain its customs and statutes. None of the masters he had seen, five ofwhom had been elected overseas, had done otherwise.318 To further under-mine Dingley’s credentials the turcopolier also sent Cromwell an old letterfrom Sir Richard Weston to his brother William concerning their nephew’syouthful misdemeanours, which had been serious enough to prompt hisexpulsion from Richard’s household. The prior’s brother had warned atthe time that if the king should get hold of Dingley £10,000 would notsave his life.319 Although the lieutenant master and council on Malta didnot, as yet, write to the king about Shingay, the prior was told that SaintJalhe’s actions had been illegal and ordered to put Cave into possession, aninstruction he actively disobeyed.320

A royal commission had by now been established to determine the truthof the opposing claims, but the prior’s influence at court was still strongenough to ensure Dingley’s confirmation as preceptor of Shingay on 19 April1537, before the commissioners had reported.321 But his rivals continued topress their claims. The new grand master, Juan de Homedes, had beenelected in Malta in November 1536 and had dispatched Aimery de Reaulxto announce his election to the king.322 Although Reaulx had no writtenorders to intervene in the Shingay case, the prior wrote on 7 September 1537to warn Dingley that Reaulx, John Sutton, and Ambrose Cave had per-suaded Cromwell that the death of Saint Jalhe before he had reachedMalta had invalidated the gift of Shingay. The king now apparently believedthat the matter should be ‘put to justice’.323 Anthony Rogers hadbeen petitioning Cromwell for some time before this, initially with littlesuccess, but had threatened that he would ‘have his pennyworth’ of Dingley,and eventually had been sent to court by the minister, where he waitedfor an audience for several weeks. The king had still not seen him by5 September.324

317 Weston had granted Dingley’s pension in 1526 and Stansgate in the provincial chapter of1533, the latter being confirmed in convent in 1535. Dingley had been received into the orderonly in 1526. LPFD, xii, I, no. 78 (1); AOM416, fos. 157r–v; BDVTE, 42.

318 LPFD, xii, I, no. 207.319 LPFD, Addenda, no. 1191.320 AOM416, fos. 158v–159r.321 LPFD, xii, I, no. 1103(28).322 AOM86, fos. 47r–48r; LPFD, xii, I, no. 204.323 LPFD, xii, II, no. 663.324 Ibid., no. 427; Addenda, no. 1095 (misdated in Letters and Papers to 1536; Rogers was

on caravan in that year: BDVTE, 35).

216 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

Whether as a result of Rogers’s interview with the king, or for otherreasons, within a fortnight of Reaulx’s meeting with Cromwell Dingleyhad been arrested and committed to the Tower on suspicion of treason.325

The nature of his offence is perhaps best illustrated by a letter from RobertBranceter, a London merchant in the imperial service, to Richard Patewritten in May 1538, and either intercepted by the crown or sent by Pateas evidence. Branceter reported that Dingley had said openly at table inPate’s house in Genoa that ‘if bad fortune should happen to the king in thismatter (the Pilgrimage)’ then the lady Mary could marry the Marquis ofExeter’s son and the two enjoy the realm together.326 The act of attainder bywhich Branceter and Dingley were condemned in 1539 accused them both ofcomplicity in the rising and of stirring foreign princes to war against theking.327

What is unclear is the identity of the original informant against the prior’snephew. In October 1537, shortly after his arrest, Thomas Cromwellinstructed Sir Thomas Wyatt, then at the imperial court, to deliver anintercepted letter from Pate to an Englishman there, possibly Branceter, asthe king ‘much desired to try out the matter of Dingley’. Ten days lateranother dispatch requested information on the business ‘touching Dingley’,which the king, Cromwell said, had ‘specially to heart’.328 While Henry VIIIwas seeking proof of Dingley’s guilt he remained in the tower and underinterrogation admitted to conversing with Sir George Throckmorton aboutthe Act of Appeals and the king’s remarriage some years earlier. Throckmor-ton was pulled in and confessed that he had expressed disapproval ofthe latter when speaking with Dingley in the garden of St John’s, promptinghis interrogators to ask pointedly whether he had known that theprior’s nephew ‘was a man sometime travelling in far countries, wherebyhe might the rather spread abroad the said infamy’.329 Although Throck-morton was later released, Dingley was already past saving, and by3 November his preceptories had been bestowed upon the courtiers SirThomas Seymour and Sir Richard Long.330 Shortly afterwards the priorwas forced to surrender to the crown the monies he was ‘detaining’ fromDingley’s estates for responsions and, as a further punishment, the £200which he stood bound to pay ‘for Dingley’, presumably as a surety or fine,and for which he had hoped to be recompensed from the profits of hisnephew’s preceptories.331

325 Dingley was incarcerated on 18 September. LPFD, xiii, I, no. 627.326 Ibid., no. 1104.327 S. E. Lehmberg,The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII 1536–1547 (Cambridge, 1977), 60.328 LPFD, xii, II, nos. 870, 950.329 Ibid., nos. 952–3.330 Ibid., no. 1023.331 LPFD, Addenda, no. 1269. Dingley had owed the common treasury £75 12s. 10½d. in

1536. AOM54, fos. 293v–294r.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 217

Although his fate might have been sealed by Branceter’s letter of May1538 anyway, Dingley’s cause cannot have been helped by Clement West’sletters home. Besides his reminder of the prisoner’s past misdeeds in 1537,the turcopolier wrote to Cromwell and the king early in the following year toreport the arrival of Juan de Homedes inMalta. He added that Homedes hadbeen accompanied by Oswald Massingberd and John Story, who evidentlyinformed West that Dingley had been executed following his imprisonment.The turcopolier saw this as an opportunity to further blacken the youngerknight’s reputation, opining that he had deserved to die, and reporting thatthe hospitaller,332 Robert Dache, had recently informed him of a conversa-tion which he had had with Dingley in France, during which the latter hadtold him that the king ‘sought avanys moreskys to put men to death’. Westalso mentioned the currency in Malta of prophecies forecasting woe for theking, Norfolk, and Cromwell.333 Although he may have been misled in thematter of Dingley’s supposed death, the turcopolier’s letter probably helpeddoom the prisoner and hardly redounded to the greater good of his order,which was viewed with increasing suspicion in England.

Dingley was attainted in May 1539 and executed on Tower hill on 9 Julyalongside Sir Adrian Fortescue and two of ‘their’, probably the latter’s,servants.334 The exact offence for which he was executed remains unclear.The reference to his complicity in the Pilgrimage of Grace is the moredifficult to substantiate of the charges levelled against him in the act ofattainder, for the only reference to it before the act is provided by Branceter’sletter, which only hinted that he approved of the revolt, not that he wasinvolved in it, which could hardly have been possible if he was abroad.Taken in conjunction with the accusation that Dingley had stirred foreignprinces to war against the king, however, the former charge may refer to theHospitaller urging the emperor to become involved in the rising. CertainlyDingley had made no secret of his opposition to royal policies while he wasabroad, and although direct evidence that he had conversed with any foreignpotentates is lacking his position as a Hospitaller would have provided himwith relatively easy access to them.

It is difficult to be sure of the source of the initial accusation againstDingley. Possible candidates are Rogers, Cave, West, the interception ofone of Pate’s or Branceter’s letters, or more direct collaboration with the

332 The hospitaller was a conventual bailiff and the chief dignitary of the langue of France.333 LPFD, xiii, I, nos. 230, 234.334 LPFD, xiv, I, nos. 867, 980; ‘A London Chronicle during the Reigns of Henry VII and

Henry VIII’, ed. C. Hopper, in Camden Miscellany IV, CS, 1st ser., 73 (London, 1859), 14;Chronicle of the Grey Friars, ed. Nichols, 43; C.Wriothesley,AChronicle of England during theReigns of the Tudors, ed. W. D. Hamilton, vol. i, CS, 2nd ser., 11 (London, 1875), 101–2.Dr Richard Rex has conclusively established that there is no evidence that Fortescue wasconnected with the order of St John. R. Rex, ‘Blessed Adrian Fortescue: A Martyr without aCause?’, Analecta Bollandiana, 115 (1997), 307–52, esp. 339–49. I am grateful to him formaking a copy of this article available.

218 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

crown by one of these two. Whether Dingley was condemned by his ownbrethren or not, the Shingay case demonstrated the bitterness of the divisionswithin the English langue, which had developed to such an extent by 1539that there were then two fairly distinct factions among the English brethrenon Malta, one composed of convinced royalists and the other of moderatesseeking to balance their conflicting obligations to crown and convent. Theorder soon realized that Dingley was doomed, but continued to appeal forthe confiscation of his commanderies to be rescinded. Homedes and thecouncil wrote to the king in May 1538 reiterating the invalidity of Dingley’scollation to Shingay and asking that Cave be granted it. Clement Westdispatched letters to the king, Norfolk, and Cromwell on the same themein the following July and as late as March 1540, when the order drew upinstructions for its visitors and ambassadors to England, they included amandate to seek the restoration of the confiscated estates.335

By this time, however, the order’s credibility in England had been com-prehensively undermined, largely by the turcopolier. Despite his restorationto office in 1535, a subsequent grant of ancienitas to the other chief dignitiesof the langue, and an appointment to act as the ‘regent’ of the magistralelection of October 1535, which he reported with some enthusiasm toCromwell, West’s tendency to complain whenever he was denied any ap-pointment which might pertain to him soon reasserted itself.336 He con-tinued to petition for the grant of Melchbourne, which had been denied himby the ‘maintenance’ of the ‘cruel’ L’Isle Adam, and attempted to appealagainst the election of proctors of the common treasury in January 1536 andthe appointment of a younger Italian knight, Leone Strozzi, as captain of theorder’s galleys a year later.337 In both cases the council refused him licenceeven to mount an appeal, prompting him to complain to Cromwell thatEnglishmen were allowed little chance to participate in the honours of theorder, and that no Englishman had been given a naval command since thesiege of Rhodes.338 His attempt to turn a personal grievance into a matter ofnational honour was intentionally undermined when William Tyrrell andGiles Russell were given important positions of responsibility later in thesame year.339 Despite their appointments, West repeated his complaints in aletter to the king in September 1537, adding gloomily that the little powerthe English knights had would be further reduced when Homedes arrived.340

His complaints seem to have affected the order’s attempts to get someclarification of its privileges from the crown in the face of the attacks onthem. Certainly West reported in early 1538 that some in the convent

335 LPFD, xiii, I, nos. 1358, 1397–8; AOM286, fos. 130v–131r.336 AOM416, fos. 155r–v; 86, fos. 18r–19v; LPFD, ix, no. 920.337 LPFD, xi, no. 917; AOM86, fos. 27r, 51v.338 LPFD, xii, I, nos. 347, 365.339 AOM86, fos. 54r, 54v.340 LPFD, xii, II, no. 792.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 219

believed that the confirmation of the order’s privileges which had occurred inthe previous year would not have been so ‘strait’ had it not been for hisletters home. Despite the king’s ignorance of Thomas Dingley’s treason atthe time, the letters patent issued on the order’s behalf in July 1537 had bothexposed his distrust of his Hospitaller subjects and, in restoring confratern-ity payments and permitting travel to Malta, confirmed his belief in thecontinued validity of their enterprise. The letters were aimed at forcing thebrethren to choose between their national and ecclesiastical allegiances.341

They not only named the king Supreme Head of the English Church, but alsorequired that henceforth candidates received into the order should acknow-ledge his supremacy by oath. Furthermore they established that those pro-moted to the order’s preceptories were not only to pay annates to bothcrown and convent and tenths to the king, but were also to take an oath tothe king and be instituted by him. The order’s brethren were additionallyforbidden to support or promote the jurisdiction, authority, or title of thebishop of Rome, and were to collect confraternity payments in accordancewith royal licence rather than papal privileges. Finally it was laid down thatthe order should hold annual provincial chapters, those feeling wronged bytheir decisions appealing to the king’s ‘vicar’ for remedy.

Historians of the order have generally misdated the grant of 1537 to1539 and presented it as an ultimatum rejected by the convent withoutfurther ado, resulting in the dissolution of the Hospitallers in England,Wales, and Ireland.342 In fact while Henry’s letters were not officially rec-ognized in Malta, neither were they actively repudiated, and the orderconducted its affairs in England in accordance with them for two and ahalf years before it was dissolved.343 The specific causes of the dissolution of1540 have rather to be sought in the after-effects of Dingley’s treason and inthe divisions of the English langue in Malta, to which Clement West wasnaturally central. It was only when a junior knight, Nicholas Lambert, madean issue of Henry VIII’s letters that they became a significant bone ofcontention.

In September 1537 the turcopolier was in trouble with the order’s councilagain. His problems were chiefly self-inflicted, but he sought as usual todepict them as having serious national and international implications. Thefirst serious matter of which he was charged was provocation to duel in thecouncil, for which he was confined to his chamber on 10 September 1537,and although he managed to stay out of trouble in the following year he

341 AOM36 [Original]; LPFD, xii, II, no. 411(25) [Enrolment].342 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 200–1; King, British Realm, 104; Tyerman, England, 358.

The Catalogue of the order’s archives dates the document to 7 August 1538, following Porter. Itis in fact dated 7 July 29Henry VIII, i.e. 1537.Catalogue of the Records of the Order of St. Johnof Jerusalem in the Royal Malta Library, ed. A. J. Gabarretta and J. Mizzi, vols. i-(Valletta,1964– ), i. 105.

343 LPFD, vii, no. 1345; See below, 222.

220 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

continued to portray the order in an unflattering light.344 In addition to hisletters of February, which condemned Dingley and reported propheciesagainst the king, in July 1538 West reported words spoken in the king’sdespite in Marseilles while Tyrrell had been there as captain of the order’sgalleon, and in the following month he sent a sycophantic missive to the kingin which he asserted that a ‘strength’ was to be made against Henry, thatSpain and France bore him no favour, and that in Malta there was objectionto the king’s naming the pope ‘bishop of Rome’, with people saying thatHenry had created martyrs and held rude opinions.345 It was only in early1539, however, that the turcopolier passed the point of no return, beingconfined to his chamber for three months for having insulted Homedes incouncil ‘without any reverence and respect’.346 As a chapter-general was tobe held shortly, Giles Russell was elected lieutenant turcopolier to representthe langue during its proceedings347 before West’s confinement wasextended for another four months on 20 May.348 Not only had the order’scouncil finally lost patience with him but so, it seems, had the langue, for on16 May certain English brethren appeared before the council complete andcomplained that West’s earlier restoration by the council ordinary had beeninvalid, as he had been deprived of office by the council complete, whosedecisions had the force of those of chapter.349 On 3 September their petitionwas upheld, West was stripped of the grand cross and of his habit andwas sent back to the tower where he had been imprisoned in 1533. On5 September he and his proctor, Nicholas Lambert, were ordered to beconfined indefinitely for having appealed to ‘another tribunal’.350

The turcopolier’s reaction to his travails was predictable. On 25 March1539 he wrote to Cromwell to request that he be recalled to the royalpresence for the safeguard of the king’s person. There he would tell Henrywhat no other man could, which he would rather do than have any goods inthe world. For further news he referred the minister to the bearer, John Story,whom he suggested should be taken into Cromwell’s service.351 The royalreaction to West’s cryptic threats is unknown but according to NicholasLambert Homedes opened the letters that had come from England in re-sponse in early September. West sent Lambert’s report of this on to Crom-well, and followed it on 24 November with his version of the events behindhis deprival of the habit.352 Ignoring his public insults to the master and theconstitutional inadequacy of his restoration four years earlier, he depicted

344 AOM86, fo. 62r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 183.345 LPFD, xiii, I, no. 1397; II, no. 103.346 AOM86, fo. 82v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 183.347 AOM86, fo. 82v.348 Ibid., fo. 86r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 184.349 AOM286, fo. 119r.350 Ibid, fos. 120r–v; 86, fo. 92v; LPFD, xiv, II, no. 135.351 LPFD, xiv, I, no. 605.352 Ibid., II, nos. 578–9.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 221

the whole affair as having arisen from his attachment to the king. Themaster, he said, had called him to his presence some time before, told himthat Weston was sick and likely to die and called upon him to ‘leve yowrkyng and all his ill works’ if he would be prior. West had asked how the kinghad ever injured Homedes, and when the latter replied that Henry had takenhis privileges and his commanderies, the turcopolier had said that thelaw had given him Dingley’s possessions because he was a traitor. Theargument had moved on to the injuries done by the king to the pope andwhen West had asked what the bishop of Rome had to do with England themaster had risen and said ‘Call you him beschop of Rome? . . . Ye be accorsydand owght not to syt yn counsell’. It was after this exchange that West hadbeen confined to his room for three months, and, because of his appeal to theking, had been deprived of the grand cross and kept under lock and key,denied permission to speak to anyone. Finally, in spite of his appeal to theking, the turcopoliership had been bestowed on Giles Russell on 10Novem-ber.353 According to a letter written by the imprisoned Lambert to Cromwellon the same day, Russell’s election had not been without controversy, asseveral members of the langue had wished to wait for royal approval beforeconducting it, and had stayed away. Lambert expressed himself unsurprisedthat the foreign lords in Malta were unwilling to accept the king’s patentwhen so many English brethren had ‘gone clear against it’.354

The order’s official line on these events was upheld by Russell andWilliamTyrrell in letters to England at about the same time. The new turcopolierwrote to Lord Russell on 1 December reporting that West’s deprivation hadbeen due not only to the inadequacy of his restoration by the councilordinary, but also to his misbehaviour towards the lieutenant master, ‘mostof the lords of the religion’, and Homedes since he had recovered theturcopoliership. Russell added that he himself was now heir to the dignitiesof the langue and asked his powerful namesake’s favour in securingthe priory of England when the time should come.355 Tyrrell’s letters tothe prior and subprior are rather less naive, and show awareness of howWest was likely to react to his deprivation. Besides reiterating the constitu-tional reasons for West’s deprivation, Tyrrell supposed that West wouldrespond by alleging that he and the master had quarrelled over the king’spatent, which would be ‘but his excuse’, as the order had petitioned for itsgrant for a long time, and had observed it to the king’s pleasure since.Although Tyrrell was not quite right, the issue of the letters patent beingraised by Lambert rather than West, his insight into the latter’s modusoperandi is striking.356

353 AOM86, fo. 96r.354 LPFD, xiv, II, no. 580.355 Ibid., no. 625. Giles’s family, the Russells of Strensham, were not closely related to John

Lord Russell but claimed kinship with him. Bindoff (ed.), History of Parliament, iii. 236.356 LPFD, vii, no. 1345 (wrongly assigned to 1534).

222 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

West’s appeal had a powerful effect at home, especially as the envoys ofthe order who were supposed to depart for England in October 1539 did notleave until March 1540, with the result that West’s version of events wentunchallenged for several months.357 By then royal letters ordering West’srelease from confinement had arrived in Malta. This Homedes refused toeffect, saying that he would send an explanation back by John Story, butStory was reluctant to carry Homedes’ letters, which denied the king the titleof Supreme Head. Homedes would not allow Story to return until he agreedto take the letters and consequently it was two months before he wasreleased to go home.358 Writing to Cromwell from Paris on 1 June, hereported that West and Lambert were still in confinement.359 By the timethe master’s envoys, who had instructions to explain the arrests and theevents leading up to them, had reached the Channel, the decision to dissolvethe order had already been taken, and they were denied entry to the realm.Subsequent appeals for Henry to reconsider were equally fruitless, and bythe time the first of them had been launched in September the king hadalready alienated a large proportion of the order’s estates, 600marks’ worthbeing given to contenders in the May Day tournament, before the actdissolving the order was yet law.360

The act dissolving the order of St John was sent down from the Lords on1 May 1540, and passed in the Commons within the week.361 The order’shouses in England,Wales, and Ireland were to be dissolved, its brethren wereto give up their habit and were no longer to meet, and those overseas were toappear home within a year if they were to receive their pensions and avoidthe royal displeasure. Although their mobile goods were to be confiscated,relatively generous pensions, amounting to about half the revenue they hadenjoyed as knights, were allocated to twenty-eight brethren, and to themaster and chaplains of the Temple.362 Weston was to receive £1,000 perannum, Rawson 500 marks, senior preceptors such as West and Sutton£200, junior preceptors between £30 and £100, and conventual brethren£10. Rawson, moreover, was accorded the title of Viscount Clontarf and aseat in the Irish lords. Maurice Denis was appointed receiver of all theorder’s lands and made responsible for the payment of the former Hospital-lers’ pensions from the local issues of its estates. The prior, however, receivednot a single payment for, according toWriothesley’s chronicle, he expired on

357 AOM286, fos. 121v–122r, 130v–131r.358 LPFD, xv, nos. 430, 520, 531–2.359 Ibid., no. 741.360 AOM6425, fo. 278r; Wriothesley, Chronicle of England, 118–19.361 Elton, Studies, i. 217; Wriothesley, Chronicle of England, 118–19, dates Weston’s death

and the dissolution to 7May, while Hall,Chronicle, 838, and R. Holinshed,The First Volume ofthe Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, 2 vols. (London, 1577), ii. 1578, haveWilliam Weston’s death following the dissolution on ‘the Assencion daie, being the fifth daie ofMaie’. In fact the Ascension fell on 6 May in 1540.

362 Statutes, iii. 779–81. Hospitaller pensioners are listed in Appendix VIII below.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 223

the very day of the dissolution ‘of pure grief’.363 He was accorded anappropriately dignified funeral and the clear value of his remaining goodsat St John’s were found to comprise nearly £600 in cash as well as plate,church ornaments, and other goods.364 It was perhaps as well that he did notlive to see the priory used as a storehouse, its church partially demolishedand its remarkable bell tower blown up for building stone.365

The process of dissolution took some time. The order’s preceptors wereformally permitted to retain possession until Michaelmas, and in practicemight remain for another month or two, although any rents they mightcollect during this additional period were reserved to the crown.366 It wasnot until late December that they were granted their pensions.367 In themeantime, surveys of their property were carried out and plate and othervaluables carried away. Doubtless to encourage cooperation, the preceptorwas allowed a sixth of the profits of these.368 Even after their removal fromtheir former houses there was some continuity—several knights saw sharedservice to the crown in the 1540s, others lived on portions of their formerestates, and four rejoined the order in 1557. But, save among those brethrenwho remained behind in Malta, the bonds of conventual life, cooperation,and competition which had united them before 1540 ceased to exist there-after.369

It is difficult to believe that the Hospital could have survived long in anEngland and Wales where all other religious orders had been swept away.Proposals had been advanced for the confiscation of its property in 1527,1529, 1534, and 1537, and even if there was some propaganda value insupporting its activities, the order’s allegiance to the pope rendered it vul-nerable to accusations of disloyalty, and its wealth made confiscation anattractive prospect.370 The 1534 scheme to disendow the Church proposedthat the king devote the Hospital’s revenues to war against the Turk,371

suggesting that the crown no longer felt that the order’s convent could betrusted to expend its revenues on appropriate objectives, and perhaps eventhat it feared Hospitaller involvement in imperial military action againstEngland. Yet after these proposals were dropped, the government proceededmuchmore circumspectly towards the religious orders, and particularly with

363 Wriothesley, Chronicle of England, 119.364 LPFD, xv, no. 646.365 Stow, Survey, ii. 85.366 Crossley, ‘Newland’, 10, 21; id., ‘The Preceptories of the Knights Hospitallers’, YASRS

94, Miscellanea, 4 (Leeds, 1937), 73.367 LPFD, xvi, no. 379 (57).368 VCH, Norfolk, ii. 425.369 See Chapter 9, passim.370 LPFD, iv, no. 3036; Youings, Dissolution, 146; LPFD, xii, I, no. 264; Hoyle, ‘Origins’,

passim.371 In the light of the emergency in Ireland this article was altered so that these monies would

be directed against Irish rebels instead. Hoyle, ‘Origins’, 292.

224 The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40

regard to the Hospital, coming up in 1537 with regulations which wouldallow it to continue its operations. The accusation at the dissolution that theorder’s brethren had failed to hazard their lives and goods against theinfidel,372 while demonstrably untrue, shows an awareness even at thisstage that dissolving the order left the government open to criticism. Eventhen, the fact that the Hospital’s properties were not absorbed into the Courtof Augmentations suggests that Henry may have been prepared either to re-erect it at a later date, or to use the endowment for some other, perhapsmilitary, purpose. Had the petulance, misrepresentation, and scaremonger-ing of West not made the order’s divided allegiances so starkly apparent, theking might well have decided that it was useful enough to tolerate for a fewyears longer, perhaps until the renewal of war with France necessitatedmassively increased government expenditure in the mid-1540s.373

Two issues dominated the relationship between the order of St John andthe crown duringWilliamWeston’s priorate: the Hospital’s continued searchfor a home after the fall of Rhodes, and the royal breach with Rome. Thesecond made by far the most significant contribution to the order’s dissol-ution, although Clement West probably hastened its end. Nevertheless, theproblems which Henry’s squabble with the Holy See had forced into theopen—namely the order’s allegiance to a ‘foreign’ power, its submission ofmonies overseas, and the long and frequent absences of its brethren in anenvironment where they could not be effectively supervised—had alwaysbeen inherent to relations between the hospital and the crown. Successivemonarchs had never let the English Hospitallers forget whose subjects theywere, instructing them not to agree to higher impositions of responsions,directing how these should be spent, punishing brethren who imported papalbulls into the country and refusing them permission to proceed to headquar-ters. The order had been tolerated because its activities were seen as meri-torious and because the crown had genuinely believed in the unity ofChristendom, but it had never been entirely trusted. To a suspicious, belea-guered, and cupiditous monarch like Henry VIII, it was a luxury he couldnot afford.

372 Statutes, iii. 779; CSPV, v, no. 228.373 The link between the timing of Henrician dissolutions and royal financial needs is noticed

in Youings, Dissolution, 78; Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 122.

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–40 225

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Hospitallers in Ireland andScotland, 1460–1564

7.1 The Priory of Ireland

Many commentators have seen the history of the Hospital of St John inIreland as that of a fundamentally alien military institution implanted todefend and expand the Anglo-French colony there.1 There is some evidenceto support this view. The Hospital may have received anticipatory grants ofland in Ireland even before 1169 and its first master there, Hugh de Clahull,was probably the brother of Strongbow’s marshal.2 What records of dona-tion there are also suggest that most of the order’s properties in Ireland weregranted it by the settlers.3 Nevertheless, the Hospital was still seen essen-tially in the context of its charitable and military work in the Holy Land inthis period, so the foundation of its houses in Ireland should be explained asa manifestation of the enthusiasm of the colonists for the defence of theLatin East rather than as a consequence of any military or colonial role itmight have been expected to play in the lordship.4 Certainly, there is everysign that, until at least the fourteenth century, the priory of Ireland was fairlyfully integrated into the order’s wider network. It was expected to contributerelatively healthy responsions of 300 marks or so to headquarters and bothcomparison with the Templars and fourteenth-century evidence suggest thata number of Hospitallers based or born in Ireland performed conventualservice in the east.5 Legacies for the Holy Land were left in the care of theIrish Hospitallers for some years after the fall of Acre and fourteenth-centurydonations to the order were explicitly linked to its defence of the faith.6

1 See e.g. Falkiner, ‘Hospital’, 296–7, 299–300; RK, pp. vii–ix; A. Gwynn and R. N. Had-cock, Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (London, 1970), 332–3; J. Watt, The Church inMedieval Ireland, 2nd edn. (Dublin, 1998), 49.

2 Falkiner, ‘Hospital’, 283; E. St J. Brooks, Knights’ Fees in Counties Wexford, Carlow andKilkenny (13th–15th Century) (Dublin, 1950), 56–7.

3 Donors are listed in Gwynn and Hadcock, Ireland, 334–9.4 H. Nicholson, ‘The Knights Hospitaller on the Frontiers of the British Isles’,MMR, 47–57,

esp. 55–6.5 CPL, ii. 164; Tipton, ‘Montpellier’, 304; Concilia, ed. Wilkins, ii. 373, 376–7, 379;

CCR1346–9, 554.6 RK, 13; Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 585.

There were probably family ties between Irish crusaders and Hospitallers aswell.7 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the order’s wider role con-tinued to be publicized in Ireland. The indulgences granted the Hospital in1409–14, 1454–5, and 1479–81 were collected in the island, and in 1467large numbers fromMunster, Leinster, and Connacht came to the preceptoryof Any to benefit from a plenary indulgence which had been proclaimedthere, although the Munster and Connacht horsemen failed to enter into thespirit of the occasion and exchanged blows after a sermon had beenpreached, with fatal results.8 The confraria, too, was evidently collectedthroughout Ireland, an early sixteenth-century letter signed by its receiver-or collector-general surviving among the Dowdall deeds.9

The priory of Ireland was also associated with Hospitaller work. Therewas probably an almshouse and hospital at Kilmainham, the prioral head-quarters near Dublin, until 1312, and place-name evidence suggests thatother sites, such as Killure (‘Lepers’ Church’), were concerned with the careof the sick.10 Although some such establishments had ceased to function wellbefore the dissolution, others were probably still active. In 1319 the earl ofKildare, with the blessing of the archbishop of Dublin, granted the church ofRathmore to the Hospital for the sustenance of pilgrims and the necessitiesof the poor. This grant was probably linked to the establishment of axenodochium at nearby Kilteel, which was still well known in the 1530s,when the archbishop of Dublin however commented that the order’s Irishbranch might more appropriately have St John the Evangelist as a patronthan the Baptist.11 Care was also taken to maintain hospitality. The orderpossessed a network of frank-houses in the towns, and while some of thesewere established as places where travelling brethren could stay, and werereserved to them, substantial facilities for travellers and pilgrims appear tohave been maintained at Kilmainham, Kilteel, Cork, and perhaps else-where.12 In the fourteenth century the order’s record in upholding itsother chief responsibility—the performance of divine service—was alsorelatively healthy. A college of priests was maintained at Kilmainham,13

7 Cf. ‘A Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus of Christ Church, Dublin’, ed.H. J. Lawlor, PRIA 27 (1907–9), C, 1–93, at 31–2, and CCR1346–9, 554.

8 ‘Calender of the Register of Fleming’, ed. Lawlor, no. 133; CPL, x. 261–3, xiii. 259–60;CPR1475–85, 194; ‘A Fragment of Irish Annals’, ed. B. O Cuiv, Celtica, 14 (1981), 83–104,at 93/97 (item 17).

9 Dowdall Deeds, ed. C. McNeill and A. J. Otway-Ruthven (Dublin, 1960), no. 516. For itscollection in the fourteenth century, see RK, 36, 161.

10 ‘The Repertorium Viride of John Allen, Archbishop of Dublin, 1533’, ed. N. B. White,Analecta Hibernica, 10 (1941), 173–222, at 184–5; P. N. N. Synnott, Knights Hospitallers inIreland 1174–1558 (privately printed, n.d.), 30.

11 ‘Repertorium Viride’, ed. White, 200–1; Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s Register,c.1172–1534, ed. C. McNeil (Dublin, 1950), 167.

12 Gwynn and Hadcock, Ireland, 333–42; Extents, 87; CICRE, 112.13 This was the case by 1413 at the latest. ‘Calender of the Register of Fleming’, ed. Lawlor,

nos. 226–7. In 1525 an organist was appointed to play in the choir of the church at Kilmainham.Extents, 84.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 227

the conventual church there possessing its own endowment,14 and chaplainswere appointed to preceptories and impropriated churches.15 Under RogerOutlaw, prior between 1316 and 1341, the Hospital still had enough of areputation for competence in this field to be granted churches on conditionthat it maintained chantries therein.16

By the early thirteenth century the Hospital’s holdings were sufficientlyextensive to be erected into a prioral province and a hundred years later,after the acquisition of a large proportion of the Templars’ estates, therewere at least seventeen functioning preceptories.17 All were then situated inlands subject to English lordship and English law. The surviving register ofIrish provincial chapters, which contains deeds dating from 1321 to 1349,shows that chapters were held regularly, that they were attended by mostpreceptors, and that care was taken to ensure that properties were kept ingood condition and divine service maintained. Preceptors were sometimesappointed in provincial chapter to the custody of two or three housestogether, but there seems as yet to have been no decision to unite any ofthese permanently. What evidence there is for the payment of responsionsindicates that some preceptories were expected to contribute fairly healthysums.18

In the first half of the fourteenth century, then, the priory of Ireland wasprobably still a productive branch of the Hospital’s international network,managing to fulfil both its military and charitable responsibilities. Never-theless, it could hardly cut itself off from the society in which it operated. Itsheadquarters occupied a strategic site on the approaches to Dublin and thevast majority of its estates were in areas of the country controlled by the‘English born in Ireland’. So, like other institutions based in the lordship, itwas expected to play its part in defence and administration. Indeed, Irish-born Hospitallers were generally more prominent in a local political andadministrative context than their English or Scots counterparts. The prior ofIreland was a major figure in the lordship. Like the prior of England hefrequently served as a royal councillor and was a lord of parliament, whichwas sometimes held at Kilmainham.19 In addition he was also very likely tohold a major office of state. As in England, the crown initially valued the

14 In the parliament of 1478 it was asked that four churches and the ferry of the city ofWaterford, traditionally reserved for the upkeep of the ‘prior, sub-prior and chaplains of thechurch and convent of Kilmainham’, should be resumed into their hands. SRPI, 12/13–21/22Edward IV, 626/7.

15 RK, passim.16 Calendar of Ormond Deeds, ed. E. Curtis, 6 vols. (Dublin, 1932–43), i: 1172–1350, 183–

9; CPR1330–4, 319.17 RK, pp. iii–iv.18 RK, 51, 97, 109, 127–8.19 Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth,

Miscellaneous, ed. J. S. Brewer andW. Bullen (London, 1871), 140, 152, 157; T.W.Moody, F. X.Martin, and F. J. Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, ix: Maps, Genealogies and Lists(Oxford, 1984), 601.

228 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

Irish Hospitallers for their financial expertise, and the first Hospitaller tohold a major office of state there—the Englishman Stephen de Fulbourn—served initially as treasurer.20 Thereafter, however, Hospitallers in Irelandmore usually served as chancellor, chief governor, or lieutenant or deputychief governor. Prior James Keating (1461–94) boasted in 1463 that severalof his predecessors as prior had ‘borne the state of the king and governmentof this . . . land, to the great ease, honour and profit of all liege people ofour. . . Sovereign lord’ and he was substantially right: between the 1270s and1420s seven priors had served as chancellor and nine as deputy lieutenant orjusticiar.21 Priors thus appear to have been considered trustworthy stand-inswho might serve as deputy justiciar on a temporary basis rather than naturalchoices for the office, but several served relatively long terms as chancellor,often more than once. The crown, in fact, appears to have realized that theHospitallers made ideal soldier-administrators of a type always needed inIreland. Here they perhaps scored over other prelates who, although quiteoften expected to lead bodies of men into battle or defend fortresses, couldnot bear arms themselves. Both priors and preceptors of the Hospital wereable to perform all of these functions, and did so.22 At other times, brethrenmight be employed to treat with Irish lords, or as translators in parleys withthem.23

Even if Hospitaller houses had not been founded primarily with themilitary and administrative contribution they might make in mind, by the1270s the Hospital had assumed major and practically continuous respon-sibilities in these areas. This was not merely because of the suitability of itspersonnel for such service but also because the Anglo-Irish colony was facedby growing external threats and internal difficulties. Until quite recentlythese have been viewed as driven by a Gaelic Revival or Resurgence havingboth cultural and political components.24 From this standpoint late medi-eval Irish history is chiefly characterized by a bitter struggle for supremacybetween two nations, the native Irish and the English born in Ireland, inwhich the former gradually gained the upper hand. In the course of thisconflict the native Irish were gradually able to drive out or Gaelicize thecolonists in Connacht, in all but the south-eastern corner of Ulster and inmuch of Munster. In other areas septs subdued in the early days of theconquest resumed open struggle, so that formerly secure areas of the

20 Nicholson, Knights Hospitaller, 108–9.21 SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 70/1; Moody, Martin, and Byrne (eds.), Maps, 471–6, 501–3,

505–6; HBC, 165–6.22 See below, 234–5.23 Parliaments and Councils of Medieval Ireland, ed. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles,

vol. i (Dublin, 1947), 101; Calendar of Carew Manuscripts, Miscellaneous, ed. Brewer andBullen, 378, 380.

24 The debate is summarized in A. Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland, ii: MedievalIreland 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1993), 302–5.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 229

lordship, ‘lands of peace’, became marcher lands subject to native Irish raidsand extortion, and others active frontiers, ‘lands of war’.25

These developments were facilitated by royal exactions and negligence,26

by the Bruce invasion of 1315–18,27 by the division of the great marcherlordships between absentee heirs,28 and by the mortality, flight, or Gaelici-zation of large numbers of colonists.29 Confronted by these difficulties, theEnglish born in Ireland attempted to force landholders and tenants to resideon or defend their estates,30 to ban the adoption of Irish dress, language, andlaw by the colonists, and to exclude the native Irish from lay or ecclesiasticaloffice.31 In formulating these policies, they supposedly developed a clearsense of their own identity as a ‘middle nation’, opposed not merely toGaelicization but also to interference by English-born officials, and tobreaches of their legislative and other privileges.32 Such behaviour was notconfined to the Irish estates. The Irish branches of religious orders owingallegiance to English provincial heads, such as the Dominican and Austinfriars, also demonstrated a growing spirit of independence, resisting visit-ations from and neglecting to pay taxes to their superiors in England andappealing to their masters-general over the heads of their English provin-cials.33 In general, however, the effects of the sundering of the Irish betweentwo ‘nations’ were held to have been disastrous for the Church, leading to itsdivision into segments inter Hibernicos and inter Anglicos, to the seizure ofecclesiastical estates and the Church’s consequent impoverishment, and to alow level of clerical education and morals.34 The older established religiousorders, especially the Augustinian canons and Cistercians, were depicted asmoribund and riven by interracial strife and their houses as increasinglysubject to takeover by both Irish and Anglo-Irish magnate and gentle fam-

25 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 241, 256–8, 261–8, 301–2, 307, 347–8, 369,448–9, 452, 457, 461–2, 533–7, 542–4, 571–4, 584, 632–3, 647, 658, 668, 674.

26 Ibid. 241, 273, 275–7, 374, 380–1, 472, 485, 530–1, 537–9, 541, 545–6, 560–1; S. Duffy,Ireland in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 1997), 125–33.

27 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 282–96, 448–9, 462.28 Ibid. 247, 250, 264, 354–5, 385, 453, 462–3.29 Ibid. 268–73, 370, 387–8, 447–50, 458, 461–2, 553.30 Ibid. 269, 271–2, 361, 378–9, 383, 385, 391, 449–50, 515, 526–7, 529–30, 553,

576, 608, 555.31 Ibid. 242, 272–3, 377, 387–90, 396, 551–5, 585–6, 599–600.32 Discussion ibid. 304–5, 352, 371–3, 564–6. Rather than a ‘middle nation’, a term coined

by their enemies, Robin Frame sees the ‘English born in Ireland’ as a subset of the English genswith a clear sense both of their Englishness and of their distinctness from the English of England.R. Frame, ‘ ‘‘Les Engleys Nees en Irlande’’: The English Political Identity in Medieval Ireland’,TRHS, 6th ser., 3 (1993), 83–103, esp. 97–103.

33 F. X. Martin, ‘The Irish Augustinian Reform Movement in the Fifteenth Century’, in J. A.Watt, J. B. Morrall, and F. X. Martin (eds.), Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey Gwynn,S.J. (Dublin, 1961), 230–64; B. O’Sullivan, ‘The Dominicans in Medieval Dublin’, in H. Clarke(ed.), Medieval Dublin, 2 vols. (1990), ii. 83–99, at 91–4; Cosgrove (ed.), MedievalIreland, 589.

34 J. Watt, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 1970), esp.chs. 9–10.

230 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

ilies. Eventually they acquired ‘the racial and cultural colouring of the areasin which they lay’, local pressure and papal provisions producing the ap-pointment of ‘ever more secular individuals as commendatory abbots andpriors’. The last generation of these before the dissolution were ‘little betterthan laymen, local lords or men of war’.35 The sole bright point wasprovided by the vigour of the mendicants and particularly by the foundationof new houses of friars, many of strict observance, in Gaelic-speakingareas.36

Over the past quarter of a century interpretations centred on the struggleof the two nations have been partially replaced by those emphasizingthe fragmentation and localization of society in Ireland. Scholars haveargued that cultural accommodation could be a two-way process,37

that the struggle for power in the localities was carried on withoutmuch regard for ethnicity,38 and that political changes in late medievalIreland should be seen in the context of wider European developments.Plague, warfare, and depopulation were, after all, hardly problems exclusiveto Ireland and if landlords were faced with a lack of tenants and fallingagricultural profitability they might compensate for these difficulties invarious ways. Thus, in return for propping up the ailing government,which they effectively took over, the magnates and greater gentry wereable to usurp the royal prerogatives of lordship and justice and toconduct private war and quarter soldiers on and levy comestibles from thepopulace.39 The tempting parallel here with some French nobles’ exploit-ation of conflict and monarchical weakness during the Hundred Years Waras a cover to return to forms of ‘pure lordship’ should perhaps not bepursued too far: the proliferation of tower houses in late medieval Irelandhas recently been interpreted as usually betokening not the insecurity ofthe populace but the growing self-confidence of servile tenants turned free-men, and as owing as much to questions of display as of security.40 While

35 Watt, Church in Medieval Ireland, 187–8, 192–3; Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 437,584, 587–8. For the use of papal provisions in Ireland see R. D. Edwards, ‘The Kings ofEngland and Papal Provisions in Fifteenth-Century Ireland’, in Watt et al. (eds.), MedievalStudies, 265–80.

36 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 588–9; Watt, Church in Medieval Ireland, 193–201;Martin, ‘Irish Augustinian Reform’, passim.

37 Discussion and examples in Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 308–9, 317–18, 328–9,354, 383, 393–4, 420–3, 552–5, 625, 634–6; id., ‘Hiberniores ipsis Hibernis’, in A. Cosgroveand D. McCartney (eds.), Studies in Irish History Presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin,1979), 1–14. Such accommodations did not extend to public life within the lordship, where ‘onewas English or nothing’. Frame, ‘Les Engleys’, 98.

38 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 316, 324–5, 360, 374, 379–80, 560–3, 569–72, 577–8,581–3, 621–2, 629–30, 632–3.

39 Ibid. 270, 272, 356–7, 379, 382–3, 408–10, 426, 535, 537, 541–2, 547–9, 560, 580,605–8, 641, 649, 670–1.

40 N. Wright, Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years’ War in the French Countryside(Woodbridge, 1998); T. McNeill, Castles in Ireland: Feudal Power in a Gaelic World (London,1997), 206, 208–9, 218–20.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 231

acknowledging the decline in agriculture and the conversion of marginalareas into pasture, revisionists have also pointed out that the Anglo-Irishcontinued to hold nearly all the significant ports and could thus partiallycontrol exports from the hinterland.41 Citing the construction of towerhouses, friaries, and parish churches after a comparative lack of such activityin the fourteenth, they have posited a period of economic recovery in thefifteenth century.42

It is nevertheless apparent that the late medieval Irish Church was facedwith considerable challenges. Recently Henry Jefferies has argued that thesecular clergy of the province of Armagh coped with these fairly well.43

Despite the loss of their primatial seat to the O’Neills, the archbishopsretained their moral authority and were able to instruct and disciplinetheir clergy effectively and to supervise areas inter Hibernicos in conjunctionwith local officials. But no similar attempts have yet been made to counterthe prevailing picture of decline among the traditional religious orders, sothat here the older orthodoxy remains largely unchallenged. Even so, it isclear that the religious did not meekly accept their fate. Houses that sufferedfrom Irish raids might reinvest in property in more sheltered areas, whileothers fortified their church towers and sat tight. Some, particularly thoselucky enough to find powerful patrons or sited in sheltered locales, were ableto rebuild their monastery churches substantially.44 Even in their decay, theCistercians made some efforts to reform.45

The Hospitallers were in some ways better placed than the monasticorders to cope with new challenges. As active religious, they were notbound by a vow of stability, and were flexible when it came to abandoningor amalgamating houses which proved unviable. Priors of Ireland were alsoable to use their position in government to secure favourable leases andgrants from the crown. The most important of these were successive leases ofthe royal manors of Leixlip and Chapel Izod, the latter adjoining the prioralestate at Kilmainham, from the mid-thirteenth century onwards.46 Othergrants might be linked to the specific circumstances in which the order founditself. Thus, in compensation for damage to the order’s lands in Ulster,Meath, and County Dublin during the Bruce invasion, Roger Outlaw wasable to secure grants of land and forfeited estates, appointment as an execu-tor of the heir of the earl of Ulster, and licence to go looking for tenants to

41 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 311, 421, 472, 480, 483, 490, 501, 516.42 Ibid. 490, 597.43 H. A. Jefferies, Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformations, 1518–1558

(Dublin, 1997).44 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 437, 597, 762–3.45 Watt, Church in Medieval Ireland, 187–8.46 CCR1307–13, 300;CFR1307–19, 31; M. Archdall,Monasticon hibernicum, 2nd edn., ed.

P. F. Moran, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1873–6), ii. 99; CPR1330–4, 314; CFR1337–47, 85; CCR1341–3,30, 415–16, 416–17; CFR1356–68, 270, 293; CCR1364–8, 327–8; CPR1396–9, 19;CPR1396–9, 293, 482, 509; CPR1401–5, 122.

232 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

replace those who had fled.47 At various times, he was also granted orpermitted to obtain a number of rights and properties, particularly churches,and had the sums he owed to the crown reduced.48 Most of his acquisitionswere in relatively sheltered locations, and so went some way towards com-pensating the order for its losses in Ulster and Connacht. None of Outlaw’ssuccessors were quite so successful in exploiting their position in this way,but several were able to extract some compensation for their service to thecrown in the form of life grants, mortmain licences, leases, and wardships.49

On occasion even individual preceptors might be granted the custody ofcastles or episcopal temporalities in royal gift.50

Nor was the order militarily defenceless. In the first half of the fourteenthcentury it already possessed what were described as castles at its houses atKilmainham and Kilteel, and was planning the fortification of other sites.51

In 1360 its brethren in Ireland were described collectively as holding ‘a goodposition for the repulse of the king’s Irish enemies’.52 Sixteenth-centurydocuments and surviving remains provide evidence that by the time of thedissolution many commanderies were fortified. Most fortified structuresappear to have been five-storey tower-houses typical of late medieval Ire-land, although some might have been built by tenants rather than the orderitself.53 Nevertheless, with one or two exceptions, those listed in 1540 wereerected on estates that were still in the order’s grasp and provide testimony ofits determination to defend itself. The most substantial was Kilmainhamitself, with its walls, four towers, fortified gatehouse, and fortified bridgeover the Liffey.54 A fifteenth-century order by the great council that thebridge should be fortified demonstrates that the prioral complex wasregarded as holding a key position in the defence of Dublin.55 The substan-tial tower with attached gatehouse which survives at Kilteel, overlooking theKildare plain, is also rather more than a mere gentleman’s tower-house. Thefields surrounding it are littered with the remains of substantial stone build-ings probably hospitaller rather than military in function, but the latefifteenth-century Pale ditch incorporated the preceptorial enceinte and the1543 patent granting the property to the Alens stressed the necessity ofthe site for resistance to the O’Tooles. Significantly, the tower-houseresisted destruction by Rory O’More in the 1570s, although the church

47 Nicholson, ‘Frontiers’, 53; CPR1317–21, 197; RPCCH, 21b, 37b; CCR1333–7, 63.48 CPR1317–21, 197; CPR1321–4, 246; CPR1327–30, 171, 175; CPR1330–4, 301, 314,

319; CCR1333–7, 610; CPR1338–40, 83, 88, 90.49 RPCCH, 73, 73b; Calendar of Ormond Deeds, ed. Curtis, iii. 390; CPR1447–52, 29, 38.50 CPR1385–9, 438; RPCCH, 254.51 RK, 24–5, 63–4.52 CCR1360–4, 39–40; Nicholson, ‘Frontiers’, 53–4.53 P. Harbison,Guide to the National and Historic Monuments of Ireland, 3rd edn. (Dublin,

1992), 333.54 Extents, 81.55 SRPI, Henry VI, 402/3–404/5; Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 563.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 233

was probably destroyed.56 Less impressive fortifications are known to haveexisted at nine or more other sites, and fine fifteenth-century tower-housessurvive at Kilclogan and Ballyhack.57 Kilclogan, like Kilteel, was describedas an important defensive position in the 1540s.58

Nevertheless, although other orders tended to fortify their church towersrather than construct purpose-built tower-houses, incastellation was a com-mon response of religious houses to the disorders of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries.59 Where the Hospital’s reaction to the military threatposed by ‘Irish enemies and English rebels’ really differed from those of theCistercians and the Augustinian canons was in the personal engagement ofits members in military action. From the 1270s onwards, priors of Kilmain-ham commanded armies or contingents in them or defended fortresses onbehalf of the crown or chief governor.60 One prior, Thomas Bacach Butler,even led a body of soldiers from both ‘nations’ to serve Henry V during thesiege of Rouen.61 Furthermore, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centur-ies the masters of many of the order’s local houses served on the commissionof the peace, at least two being killed in battle with ‘Irish enemies’.62

Preceptors might be granted commands over castles, too. In 1388 ThomasMercamston, probably already preceptor of nearby Castleboy, wasappointed castellan of Carrickfergus, which had recently been attacked byNiall O Neill.63 These, however, were public responsibilities undertaken onbehalf of the lordship or comitatus. There is less direct evidence for the ordertaking military action on its own account, but there are indications that itwas both willing and able to do so. As early as 1262 we find brother Elias ofKillerig donning mail and leading an ‘armed multitude’ to resist the arch-bishop of Dublin’s officers.64 On a more substantial scale, Thomas Butler

56 C. Manning, ‘Excavations at Kilteel Church, County Kildare’, JCKAS 16 (1981–2),173–229, at 177, 213, 219; Falkiner, ‘Hospital’, 310; H. Hendrick-Aylmer, ‘Rathmore’,JCKAS 6 (1902), 372–81, at 377.

57 Extents, 89 (Clontarf), 96 (Tully), 97 (Killerig), 102 (Homisland, Wexford), 108 (Temple-ton and Moreton, Louth), 111 (Kilmainhamwood); RK, 161 (Crook), 166 (Kilmainhambeg);CICRE, 93 (Glanunder alias Ballymany, Dublin); Gwynn and Hadcock, Ireland, 336 (CountyLimerick, in 1604, citing RK). Some of these structures (Glanunder, Moreton, Templeton) werealready in ruins by 1540.

58 Extents, 100.59 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 763.60 CDI, iii, 1285–92, 265; RPCCH, 35, 69, 73; Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts,

Miscellaneous, 328; Marlborough in Ancient Irish Histories, ed. J. Ware, rev. edn., 2 vols.(Dublin, 1809), ii. 21; W. Harris, The City and Antiquities of Dublin (Dublin, 1766), 276–7;CCR1341–3, 438.

61 See Cosgrove (ed.),Medieval Ireland, 527–8, 570, and authorities cited there; Issues of theExchequer, ed. Devon, 356.

62 R. Frame, ‘Commissions of the Peace in Ireland, 1302–1461’, Analecta Hibernica, 35(1992), 1–44, at 8, 12–13, 16–20, 25, 31–3;Calendar of the CarewManuscripts,Miscellaneous,157, 471.

63 CPR1385–9, 438; Nicholson, ‘Frontiers’, 54; T. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: TheHistory and Archaeology of an Irish Barony, 1177–1400 (Edinburgh, 1980), 119.

64 Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s Register, ed. McNeil, 93/95.

234 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

was using bases in Kilkenny and Tipperary to wage private war againstWalter Burke in 1417 and his successor-but-four James Keating summonedan army to chastise the archbishop of Armagh for supporting a rival to thepriorate in the mid-1480s.65 Members of the order were clearly more thanready to take up arms in pursuit of private quarrels within the lordship and itcan probably be assumed that they maintained some kind of armed force attheir houses. This is certainly suggested by the fact that in 1297 the master ofthe Templars of Kilcork was reproved for his failure to keep armed horsemenat his preceptory and that in 1356 the government ordered that Kilteel beadequately guarded.66 The dichotomy between the order’s defence of itsown property and that of the wider Anglo-Irish community is in any caseprobably a false one. Although there are instances which suggest the con-trary, it is unlikely that the order was often targeted specifically by raiders,and the participation of its brethren in communal defence must have servedboth their own interests and those of the locality they were acting to defend.Equally often, however, brethren appear to have used force in pursuit oftheir own family and personal interests.

Despite the order’s vigorous protection of its possessions, its estates andinterests suffered significant damage during the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies. The preceptory of Castleboy on the Ards peninsula, for example,was the order’s sole conventual house in the whole of Ulster and by the mid-fifteenth century so many of its estates had been lost to the native Irish that itbecame unviable as a residence for brethren and was abandoned to layfarmers. At the dissolution it was reported that it lay in the hands of theMagennises and O’Neills, where the king’s writ did not run, and could notbe extended. The Magennises paid a nominal rent of 66s. 8d. for theproperty.67 The Hospital’s estates in the west, which appear to have includedfairly substantial properties, suffered a similar fate, and barely feature evenin the chapter acts of 1321–49. In 1529 a leading Galway merchant wasgiven power of attorney to lease out all of the order’s holdings in Connacht,which amounted to two churches and a scattering of other properties, butnone of these was mentioned in the extents made in 1540–1, although theiromission may indicate deliberate concealment on the part of the order or itslessee rather than their occupation by lay usurpers.68 Many of the estatesthe order did retain, moreover, suffered from a considerable decline in

65 A. J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland, 2nd edn. (New York, 1980), 353;Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 520.

66 Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls, 1295–1303 (Dublin, 1905), 175; Hendrick-Aylmer,‘Rathmore’, 373.

67 Extents, 110.68 ‘Report on Documents relating to the Wardenship of Galway’, ed. E. MacLysaght, Ana-

lecta Hibernica, 14 (1944), 139. In November 1560 the order’s holdings in Connacht were‘reveled and brought to light’ by a former prioral servant, Walter Hope, who was granted themas a reward. ‘Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland, 1556–1571’, ed. J. T. Gilbert, HistoricalManuscripts Commission, Fifteenth Report, Appendix, Part III (London, 1897), 113.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 235

profitability, often as a result of warfare. In 1446, for example, ThomasTalbot successfully petitioned that his prioral camera of Kilmainhambeg anda number of other estates should be exempted from non-parliamentarytaxation because they had been ‘destroyed and wasted by Irish enemies’,69

while in 1470 the prior and convent of St Wulstan, who leased estates inCounty Kildare from the order and the manor of Salt from the crown, soughtrelief of the due rent, complaining that these possessions were destroyed byIrish enemies and English rebels. The prior of St John was, however, able tohave the payments due from his leases of royal manors in County Dublinreduced to make good the loss.70 Faced with agricultural depression, declin-ing membership, and Irish raids the order increasingly resorted to leasing itsestates, often for notably low rents. Thus the preceptory of Tully, valued at£16 in 1540, was let to the dean of Kildare for 10 marks shortly before1472.71 Although the position of the English born in Ireland began toimprove in the later fifteenth century, at the dissolution a large proportionof Hospitaller properties were still let out for sums much lower than theirpotential value and many buildings were described as ruined and estates aswaste.72

The challenge was not merely military. In the fifteenth century, delation atthe curia became a popular strategy by which religious houses and individualchurches could be taken over and held as family sinecures, primarily by thenative Irish.73 The order was certainly not immune to this process. In 1430the preceptor of Tully was accused of detaining the rectory of Rosfyndglaissewithout canonical title, and was ordered to be removed if this was true,while in 1447 the order’s appointee as vicar of Any was likewise challengedby an native Irish delator.74 In the likely event that they could convince theCuria and local judges delegate that they would make apt members of theorder, native Irishmenmight also be able to force their way into its ranks andgain control of its preceptories in some areas. While the Hospital appears tohave enforced the legislation forbidding the native Irish entry into religioushouses throughout the fourteenth century during the course of the fifteenththe important preceptories of Clonoulty (Co. Tipperary) and Mourne (Co.Cork) were taken over by the O’Dwyers and the MacCarthys of Muskerryrespectively. Thomas ODuibhidhir (O’Dwyer), preceptor of Clonoulty in the1440s, at least attended provincial chapters, but the MacCarthy occupation

69 SRPI, Henry VI, 90/1–92/3.70 SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 678/9–680/1.71 SRPI, 12/13–21/22 Edward IV, 78/9–80/1.72 Extents, passim.73 The English born in Irelandmight employ their existing local influence to achieve similar, if

less permanent, dominance. For example, the Vales or Walls held the preceptory of Killerig in1327 and 1406; the Northamptons Ballyhack in 1355–65 and 1382, and the Powers Kilbarry in1449 and 1516. Other families held both Ballyhack and Killerrig in intervening periods. RK, 14;Frame, ‘Commissions of the Peace’, 8, 33; AOM362, fos. 121v–122r; 404, fos. 147v–148r.

74 CPL, viii. 200–1; x. 344.

236 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

of Mourne in the 1490s, although legitimized by appeals to Rome, wasconducted in the teeth of the order’s opposition.75 Both were rich benefices:Clonoulty had been the richest Templar house in Ireland, with an income ofmore than £80 from lands and churches in 1308, and in the 1490s Mourne’svalue was estimated at between 80 and 140 marks.76

The effects of military action and lay occupation were exacerbated by theprolonged agricultural depression common to much of western Europe inthe later Middle Ages. Even in the absence of the Gaelic challenge theHospital, like other major landowners, might have found it difficult tocope with economic and social upheaval. Its potential adaptability, more-over, was undermined both by the nature and interests of its own brethrenand by the involvement of the English langue and the convent in prioralaffairs. The convent was not entirely unsympathetic to the difficulties in-volved in running its western priories, hence, for example, its willingness topermit the amalgamation of smaller preceptories.77 Nevertheless, given itsresponsibilities in the east and its perennial shortage of money, its primaryconcern was to ensure the continued flow of responsions to Rhodes. Increas-ingly, these were expected to take the form of cash, a commodity latemedieval Irish landlords often had difficulty obtaining. In 1471, for ex-ample, prior James Keating was licensed to take wheat and malt intoEngland to satisfy his responsions because his tenants had insufficient cashwith which to pay him.78 Such difficulties must have been exacerbated bypriors’ responsibilities within the lordship, which frequently required themto hire troops or perform other functions for which reimbursement might bedifficult to obtain.79 In 1422, for example, William FitzThomas, prior andjusticiar, had to pay 160 marks out of his own pocket to Gearatt MacMurchadha to prevent a threatened attack on counties Dublin and Kildare.He was still seeking recompense from the government six years later.80

Moreover, if the Irish-born brethren failed to send their dues to headquar-ters, the English langue was always ready to send an Englishman to step intothe breach. In this it was supported by successive kings of England, whooften preferred to employ Englishmen to administer Ireland in the four-teenth century and remained doubtful of their Irish-born subjects thereafter.As a result, from the mid-fourteenth century a struggle developed betweenthe English and Irish-born brethren for control of the priory, the English

75 AOM362, fo. 122r;CPL, xiv. 224; xvii, I, no. 938; xv, no. 891; xvi, no. 740; AOM402, fo.136v; 410, fo. 181r; K. W. Nicholls, ‘The Development of Lordship in County Cork,1300–1600’, in P. O’Flanagan and C. G. Buttimer (eds.), Cork: History and Society (Dublin,1993), 157–212, at 174.

76 ‘Documents relating to the Suppression of the Templars in Ireland’, ed. G. MacNiocaill,Analecta Hibernica, 24 (1967), 181–226, at 205–6; CPL, xvi, nos. 146, 347.

77 See above, 63.78 SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 722/3.79 See e.g. RPCCH, 69.80 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 544.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 237

maintaining that priors of Ireland should be appointed in convent, where theEnglish always outnumbered other ‘British’ brethren, and the Irish that theyshould be elected at home.81 On Roger Outlaw’s death in 1341, a year inwhich Irish-born ministers were removed from office and royal grants inIreland revoked, he was replaced by the English-born John le Archer, despitethe Irish brethren’s preceding election of John le Mareschal as prior.82 Mostof the priors appointed in the next forty years were Englishmen and some ofthem displaced Irish-born incumbents elected in provincial chapter after thedeath of the previous prior. At least two English brethren were alsoappointed to Irish preceptories in the same period.83

Although the Irish-born brethren apparently accepted these superiors, in1384 they took advantage of the death of their English-born prior, WilliamTany, to throw off their allegiance to Rhodes and transfer it to the anti-grandmaster supported by the Roman pontiff. This allowed them to elect theirown priors without reference to either langue or convent.84 Despite theconventual appointment of the turcopolier, Peter Holt, as prior of Ireland,in c.1396, and the issue of royal letters in his favour, he was unable to gainpossession of the priory against Irish opposition.85 The need to resist hisclaims, however, appears to have induced the Irish-born prior, Robert White,to resign in favour of an illegitimate son of the earl of Ormond, ThomasButler, in about 1407.86 By 1410 Butler had seen off the challenge from Holtand was able to extract the privilege that priors should henceforth be electedin Ireland from the chapter-general as a condition of the priory’s return toobedience. The Irish-born brethren continued to cite this concession formany years to come, while the English langue sought equally strenuouslyto overturn it.87

By 1410 the priory of Ireland was thus a very different institution thanthirty years previously. A generation of successful resistance to authority hadtaught it self-reliance and solidarity, as manifested in the joint petitions theIrish preceptors made to Rome in 1400 and 1421, and to the convent in1449.88 It had also left the priory in the hands of the first of a series of scionsor clients of the great ‘Anglo-Irish’ magnate families at just the momentwhen these began to compete seriously for control of the government of thelordship. The priory was a valuable prize in the struggle for dominance, andpriors’ political involvements might have unfortunate consequences for

81 Tipton, ‘Irish Hospitallers’, 38–9.82 CPR1340–3, 289, 333; RK, 105. Le Archer was, however, sent to Edward III to protest at

the removal of Irish-born ministers. Frame, ‘Les Engleys’, 97, 101.83 CPL, iv. 15.84 Tipton, ‘Irish Hospitallers’, 36, 39–40.85 Ibid. 40–2; C. L.Tipton, ‘Peter Holt, Turcopolier of Rhodes and Prior of Ireland’, AOSM

22 (1964), 82–5.86 Tipton, ‘Irish Hospitallers’, 41–2.87 Ibid. 42.88 CPL, v. 323; vii. 196; AOM362, fos. 121v–123v.

238 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

themselves and their order. By the first half of the fifteenth century, theresponsion expected from Ireland had fallen to £40 Irish, while successivepriors were accused of alienating estates, misusing the conventual seal togrant long leases at minimal rents, admitting unfit persons into the order,engaging in wars waged without conventual authority, and neglecting torepair their appropriated churches or pay their vicars properly. In order forthe Hospital to reintegrate the priory into its structures and restore itsefficiency, it was obviously necessary to reduce these lordly priors to obedi-ence, but this was more easily said than done. Time and again threats andcajolery proved insufficient and the convent ordered an incumbent priorremoved. Its preferred alternatives were usually Englishmen, but when thesefailed to establish themselves, as they invariably did, the order was willing toturn to Irish-born brethren who promised to pay their responsions. It wasnot until 1494 that the repeated insubordination of James Keating towardsboth his religious and secular superiors prompted more drastic action to betaken and the priory was forbidden to Irish-born brethren by act of parlia-ment. Thereafter, Englishmen served as priors until the dissolution, althoughthe resistance of the Irish-born brethren was not broken until almost the veryend.

An indication of the extent to which the turmoil surrounding the prioraloffice and the accusations of maladministration and improper conductdirected at priors were tied to the politics of the lordship is provided bythe career of Thomas FitzGerald (prior, 1436/8–44). FitzGerald was closelyinvolved, as an ally of the Talbots, in their feud with the Butler earls ofOrmond, which repeatedly disrupted Irish politics in the first half of thefifteenth century.89 In 1440 the Irish council ordered all the Hospital’s estatesto be confiscated in response to FitzGerald’s brothers’ ambush and kidnap ofthe deputy lieutenant, William Welles.90 When the prior escaped fromprison some time later all offices and fees belonging to the priory wereagain seized.91 The convent, meanwhile, had determined to revoke theprivilege of 1410 on the grounds of the maladministration and non-paymentof responsions of ‘Maurice FitzWilliam’.92 It turned first to Edmund Ashton,an English conventual knight who was elected prior by the langue but when

89 M. C. Griffith, ‘The Talbot-Ormond Struggle for Control of the Anglo-Irish Government,1414–47’, Irish Historical Studies, 8 (1941), 376–97. For the involvement of prior ThomasButler in the feud see also Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 550, 581–2.

90 RPCCH, 262.91 Ibid.; Calendar of Ormond Deeds, ed. Curtis, 142; SRPI, Henry VI, 648/9–652/3.92 AOM 354, fos. 203v–204r. If Lord Walter FitzGerald’s pedigree of the FitzGeralds of

Ballyshannon is to be believed, the order seems here to have conflated two persons; MauriceFitzGerald, who appears in an Armagh archiepiscopal register as prior in September 1436, andperhaps died on 19October 1438, and Thomas FitzGerald, the third son of Thomas Oge sheriffof Limerick, who became prior immediately afterwards. It is more probable, however, thatthe unnamed prior who deceased in 1438 was William FitzThomas, who had retired in 1436,and that Thomas and ‘Maurice’ FitzGerald were identical. In 1449 the Irish brethren could

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 239

told he could not hold an English preceptory with it in commendam hur-riedly stepped down.93 Its next choice, Hugh Middleton, was appointedvisitor and governor as well as prior, with instructions to conduct a thoroughreform and administer the priory until further notice. Presumably to fore-stall revolt, the Irish brethren were instructed to obey him as visitor but werenot informed that he had been granted the prioral dignity.94 Conventualinterventions, however, sometimes had results neither anticipated nor wel-come. The earl of Ormond took advantage of the visitor’s arrival in 1444 toeject FitzGerald from the prioral office and have Thomas Talbot, with whosefamily he had recently settled his feud, appointed instead.95 Despite hiscommission, Middleton contented himself with Ormond’s promise thatresponsions would be paid and a down payment towards the same andquickly returned to England, having first instituted Talbot, an illegitimateson of the archbishop of Dublin, as prior.96 FitzGerald, however, did nottake his removal lying down, and broke into the priory by force, removingthe conventual seal and granting leases and quittances to his supportersbefore making his way to London, where he accused Ormond of treasonand challenged him to a duel.97 The combat was only cancelled after listshad been erected and the erstwhile prior of a military order instructed inpoints of arms by a London fishmonger apparently more expert than him.98

Despite securing support for his restoration from the Irish-born brethren, thecrown, the pope, and eventually even the convent, FitzGerald remainedunable to recover possession.99

The degree of the convent’s miscalculation is made more painfully appar-ent by a letter of 1449, in which the Irish-born brethren protested theremoval of their prior in the strongest terms and provided an interpretation

remember only FitzThomas and Thomas FitzGerald as having been prior between 1420 and1444 and having governed the priory for sixteen and seven years respectively. W. FitzGerald,‘The FitzGeralds of Ballyshannon (Co. Kildare) and their Successors Thereat’, JCKAS 3 (1899–1902), 425–52, at 426–7; Register Swayne, ed. Chart, 168; The Annals of Ireland, Translatedfrom the Original Irish of the Four Masters, trans. O. Connellan and ed. P. MacDermott(Dublin, 1846), 241; Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1887–1901), iii.142/3; AOM362, fos. 121v–123v (original foliation: 120v–122v).

93 AOM354, fos. 202r, 202v, 203v–204r.94 AOM355, fos. 174r, 174v–175v, 176r.95 CPL, ix. 437–8; H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle

Ages (Philadelphia, 1952), 202.96 Ancient Deeds, C.3613; AOM362, fos. 121v–123v. In September 1445 the convent com-

plained that Middleton had failed to render account for the money he had been given in Ireland.AOM357, fo. 162r–v.

97 SRPI, Henry VI, 260/1–262/3; PPC, vi. 57–9; Issues of the Exchequer, ed. Devon, 450–1,456–7, 461; Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century,ed. J. Gairdner, CS, 2nd ser., 17 (London, 1876), 186–7; Great Chronicle of London, ed.Thomas and Thornley, 178.

98 Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, 178; PPC, vi. 59.99 AOM362, fos. 121v–123v; CPL, ix. 437–8; CPR1447–52, 47. The text of the convent’s

discussion of FitzGerald’s plea for reinstatement (AOM362, fos. 123v–124v [original foliation122v–123v]) is in Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors’, 100–2.

240 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

of recent prioral history which shows the extent of their attachment to thesuperiors they had elected. The prior of the conventual church of Kilmain-ham, the subprior, eight preceptors, and a conventual brother wrote to themaster and convent in support of royal letters asking for FitzGerald’srestoration. In doing so they looked back on the priorates of WilliamFitzThomas (1420–36) and FitzGerald as a golden age. They recalled thatFitzThomas had been elected in Ireland and received magistral confirmationaccording to the privilege of 1410 and had ‘worthily and laudibly’ ruled thepriory for sixteen years, faithfully paying his responsions.100 Exercisinghimself in strenuous acts of virtue he had grown old and, desiring to fill alesser and quieter office, retired. In his place, the brethren had electedThomas FitzGerald, apparently a living exemplar of every knightly andlordly virtue; strenuous in arms, learned and practised in each law, maturein council and decorated with many virtues. His fall, after seven years inwhich he had patiently withstood adversity, had come about solely due tothe enmity of the earl of Ormond. Ormond had captured and chained theprior without cause and seized the tithes and rents of both the prioralcamerae and other preceptories into the king’s hand. Being liberated, Fitz-Gerald had gone to England, where he had been honourably received andmaintained for four years and granted the officer of chancellor of Ireland.For these reasons, and most especially because of the inexperience andmaladministration of Thomas Talbot, they begged that FitzGerald berestored to his dignity.101

It is not necessary to take the Irish-born Hospitallers’ account of theseevents entirely seriously. FitzThomas appears to have been a competent anduncontroversial public servant, serving as both chancellor and justiciar, buthe may not have been as diligent a remitter of responsions as was claimed,and in 1429–30 he fell foul of the archbishop of Armagh because of hisfailure to pay procurations or adequately remunerate the vicar of Kilde-mock.102 FitzGerald was certainly not the paragon he was claimed to be in1449, but in removing him and appointing Talbot, Middleton had alienatedthe Irish-born brethren without ensuring that the priory would be any moreefficiently administered. It is not surprising that they reacted angrily to theintrusion of an outside party into an already complicated situation, and theirresistance to conventual interference would be demonstrated again.

Although initially confirming Talbot as administrator of the priory, theorder’s government was clearly unhappy at the manner of his appointmentand the new prior’s failure to pay responsions and other lapses only served tosubstantiate its reservations.103 Perhaps wisely, the convent did not attempt

100 FitzThomas was ‘chosen, succeeded and confirmed’ prior in Ireland on 15 February 1420.Marlborough in Ancient Irish Histories, ed. Ware, ii. 28.

101 AOM362, fos. 121v–123v.102 Register Swayne, ed. Chart, 118–19; Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 88.103 AOM358, fo. 228v; CCR1447–54, 233–4.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 241

to replace him with another Englishman but reappointed FitzGerald in1450, accepted Talbot as prior in the following year, and in 1459, on thelatter’s renewed failure to reform himself, provided an Irish-born knight whohad performed several years’ service in Rhodes, James Keating.104 Its deci-sion to choose an Irishman for the post may have been prompted not just bythe reluctance of English brethren to reside there, but perhaps also by thesolidarity displayed by the Irish-born in 1449. At first Keating’s enterpriseappeared as unlikely to succeed as its predecessors. Talbot’s cousin, thesecond earl of Shrewsbury, was by now a leading royal councillor and it ismost unlikely that Henry VI’s government would have removed him had itremained in power. As it was, however, Shrewsbury was killed at the battleof Northampton in July 1460. His Hospitaller cousin had already been introuble for opposing the duke of York’s rule in Ireland earlier in the year andwith the Yorkist victory in 1461 his removal became desirable to the crownas well as the order.105 Although the erstwhile prior was appointed to head acommission of the peace in County Dublin in June 1461, three months afterEdward IV’s accession to the throne, the conventual renewal of Keating’sappointment as prior in early July suggests that word had been had fromEngland that the new king would approve an election in Rhodes and theremoval of the previous incumbent.106 In any case, Keating was soon in situ,and remained prior until the 1490s. Considering his past service the conventmust have had high expectations of his future good conduct. For a few yearsthese were not disappointed. The new prior submitted responsions,107

attempted to recover alienated lands through parliament with at leastsome success, and attended the Rome chapter-general of 1466–7.108

Yet in spite of these encouraging signs, Keating was from the start in-volved in the factional politics of the lordship and soon proved to have ananti-authoritarian streak. Within a year of taking up his post he had beenattainted by the Irish parliament for attacking the chief justice of the Com-mon Bench, Robert Dowdall, while the latter was on pilgrimage.109 After anappeal to the king, however, the attainder was quickly removed,110 the easewith which Keating managed this perhaps owing something to his politicalconnections. His family were probably clients of the FitzGerald earls of

104 AOM362, fos. 124v–125v, 126r; 363, fo. 156v; 369, fos. 179r–1780v.105 SRPI, Henry VI, 648/9–652/3, 752/3–754/5; Richardson and Sayles, Irish Parliament,

204.106 Frame, ‘Commissions of the Peace’, 13; AOM73, fo. 107r; 371, fos. 142r–144r, 144v.107 The proceedings of the 1466–7 chapter-general, which list what each priory owed the

common treasury, do not record any Irish arrears. AOM283, fo. 31r.108 SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 68/9–72/3; AOM283, fo. 5v.109 SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 32/3–34/5. Dowdall, it was stated in 1473, had formerly held the

farm of the preceptory of Clontarf ‘for many years’, which may indicate an affiliation withTalbot. ‘Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus’, ed. Lawlor, 13. Despite this, ThomasDowdall was granted the farm of Clontarf by Keating and his brethren in February 1484.Dublin, National Archives, RC13/8, c.21 (pp. 30–2).

110 PRO SC8/251/12529; SC1/57/103; SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 72/3–74/5.

242 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

Desmond, and after their eclipse he remained close to the distantly relatedearls of Kildare until the 1490s. Yet two events in 1467 appear to have ledhim to distrust both his religious and his royal superiors. First, he may havebeen irked that the convent rewarded his attendance at the Rome chapter-general by increasing his responsions from £40 to about £96 Irish.111 Afterhis visit to Italy he fell rapidly and heavily into arrears with the commontreasury and largely ignored repeated attempts to compel him to pay. In1471, 1473, and 1474 priors of England or visitors were instructed to securepayment and to remove him if he failed to comply, but he presumably hadthe support of Kildare and Edward IV did nothing to support the convent’sdemands.112 Secondly, in October 1467, after Keating’s return from Rome,John Tiptoft earl of Worcester was appointed deputy of Ireland. He arrivedwith a considerable retinue and, for reasons that remain unclear, had Kildareand Desmond attainted. Kildare managed to escape but to general conster-nation Desmond was executed. Presumably because of his association withthe earls, Tiptoft also had Keating imprisoned and extorted a fine of £40from him, an exaction which he later claimed had prevented him frompaying his responsions.113 After Tiptoft’s departure, the Irish council electedKildare justiciar in his place and the earl held a parliament to have hisattainder reversed. Further attempts to assert royal authority in Irelandwere actively resisted by his followers, including Keating. In 1478 the prior,by then constable of Dublin castle, broke down its drawbridge rather thanadmit Henry Lord Grey of Ruthin, the newly appointed royal deputy.114

While insisting that Keating repair the damage he had caused, the kingwas not yet prepared to remove him or to enforce conventual demands thathe satisfy his debts. Indeed, in 1479 he and the other malcontents wereinvited to London to discuss Irish affairs with the king, a meeting whichwent so well that the prior was soon reappointed constable.115 In the sameyear the convent ordered the turcopolier, John Kendal, to secure payment ofKeating’s arrears.116 Neglecting this opportunity to redeem relations withhis superiors, the prior finally put himself beyond the Pale, or rather did notput himself beyond the Pale, when he failed to come to the defence of Rhodeswhen summoned in 1480.117 In December 1482, by which time it was clearthat he was not coming, the convent decided that enough was enough.

111 AOM283, fo. 31r.112 AOM380, fo. 136r–v; 381, fo. 161r–v; 382, fo. 148r–v; Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors’,

92–5.113 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 591–618, at 600–1; SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 722/3.114 SRPI, 12–22 Edward IV, 664/5–666/7; Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 601, 605;

Archdall, Monasticon hibernicum, ii. 111–12.115 SRPI, 12–22 Edward IV, 664/5–666/7, 752/3–754/5; Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland,

606; Archdall, Monasticon hibernicum, ii. 112.116 AOM386, fos. 156r–157r.117 The summons had been presented to him on 23 June 1481. AOM387, fo. 26v; 388, fo.

136r–v.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 243

Keating was formally deprived of office and an English knight, MarmadukeLumley, appointed to the priory and to the magistral camera of Kilsaran.118

In an effort to bolster Lumley’s chances of success the convent turned ratherpathetically to the disgraced prior of Ireland, Thomas Talbot, and orderedhim to put the new one into possession.119When Lumley landed in Ireland inthe following year, Keating met him at Clontarf with an armed force, seizedhim, and kept him prisoner until, afraid for his life, he surrendered his papaland magistral bulls.120 In return for renouncing his documents and claims,Lumley was then released and allowed possession of Kilsaran.121 He used hisfreedom to seek support from ‘gentyles and certain portownes’, from the kingand from the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin.122 The primate of Ireland,Octavian de Palatio, who had recently been summoned before King’s Benchat Keating’s behest over his refusal to attend parliament, was particularlysympathetic.123 After his release, Lumley came before Palatio at Droghedaand persuaded him to write to Rhodes on his behalf and to order Keating notto hinder his possession of the priory. Lumley was then formally inducted bythe archdeacon of Richmond, and when Keating continued to deny himpossession, Palatio and the archbishop of Dublin, JohnWalton, excommuni-cated him. In June 1484 the Primate wrote to Richard III, invoking his aid insecuring possession for Lumley and asking for Keating to be excluded fromparliaments, councils, and the royal courts.124 As ever, Keating respondedvigorously to the challenge, occupyingKilsaran in September, seizing its fruitsand expelling its tenants. Moreover, hearing that Palatio was bringing anarmy to Kilsaran in Lumley’s support, the old prior gathered a force toconfront him with the aid of the chancellor of Ireland and various magnates,so that the Primate had to back down.125 Lumley was still at liberty to reportthese events to Rhodes later on in the same year, but at some stage was againtaken into custody by Keating. This time he was not released and died inprison, probably before October 1489.126

118 AOM76, fos. 132r–v; 388, fos. 134v–137r. The pope confirmed his appointment in thefollowing spring. CPL, xiii. 130; Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 461.

119 AOM388, fo. 134v. Talbot had still been alive in 1463 and in May 1479 a man of thesame name was preceptor of Kilsaran. SRPI, Ireland, 1–12 Edward IV, 72/3; RegistrumOctaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 19.

120 Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, nos. 185, 218a, 520. Walter Harris’s copy of Lumley’sletter narrating these events (ibid., no. 185) is in Dublin, National Library of Ireland, MS 14,pp. 230–1, and is transcribed in Falkiner, ‘Hospital’, 302 n.

121 On 18 March 1484 Roger Walcott, merchant, was granted an annuity of 40 marks Irishper annum out of Kilsaran until the 325 marks 4s. 8d. he had advanced towards the order’sexpenses should be repaid. This deed was signed by Keating and other Hospitallers and had theexplicit consent of Lumley. Dublin, National Archives, RC13/8, c.17 (pp. 23–5).

122 RegistrumOctaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 185. The letter ‘to our king’ can probably be dated tomid-1483, when there might have been confusion in Ireland as to who this was.

123 Ibid., no. 242.124 Ibid., nos. 218a, 240.125 Ibid., no. 520.126 Ibid., no. 520; AOM390, fos. 133v–134r.

244 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

This affair, still more than previous attempts to appoint Englishmen aspriors of Ireland, demonstrated that without active royal support backed upat the very least by a plausible threat of force an outsider stood very littlechance of unseating an Irish-born incumbent. Luckily from the convent’spoint of view, however, Keating soon manoeuvred himself into a positionwhere he represented a danger to the crown. He played so prominent a rolein the support of the Pretender Lambert Simnel, who was crowned king inIreland as Edward VI, that in 1488 Henry VII’s deputy, Sir Richard Edge-combe opined that Keating and Justice Plunket ‘were specially notedamongst all others chef causes of the seyd Rebellion’.127 Alone of the rebels,Edgecombe refused to pardon the prior, instead removing him from Dublincastle and sending him to court to ask the king’s forgiveness. Other erstwhiledissidents, including Kildare, also came to see Henry VII, who feasted thembut had Simnel wait on them at table.128 Despite his record, Keating waspardoned in January 1489, but one condition of his restoration to grace mayhave been that he settle his debts with the order, which he indicated hiswillingness to do later in the year.129

Keating’s pardon secured him against further action by the convent forseveral years. Archdall’s assertion that he was replaced by James Wall in1491 appears to be mistaken.130 Even if he was removed Keating probablyrecovered possession, for he continued to have the protection of Kildare andremained influential enough to provide support for a second pretender to thethrone, Perkin Warbeck. It was this that finally brought about his downfall.Although Kildare and several leading gentry gave surety for Keating’s goodbehaviour in May 1494, the king and convent seem already to have beenplanning coordinated action against him.131 In October 1494 the preceptorof Dinmore, Thomas Docwra, was appointed prior of Ireland and Keatingagain declared deposed.132 Despite the statutes to the contrary, Docwra wasto be permitted to retain with the priory both Dinmore and, should heprocure either, the bailiwick of Eagle or the turcopoliership. The brethrenof the English langue even conceded him ancienitas to be promoted toanother English preceptory in addition to Dinmore and the Irish priory.133

Such generosity probably reflected limited expectations of success and it isnoteworthy that when the turcopoliership fell vacant three months later,

127 Hibernica, or, Some Antient Pieces Relating to Ireland . . . , ed. W. Harris, 2 vols. (Dublin,1747–50), i. 34; Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 614.

128 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 614–15.129 CPR1485–94, 263; Materials . . .Henry VII, ed. Campbell, ii. 389; AOM390, fos.

133v–134r.130 Archdall,Monasticon hibernicum, ii. 113; Wall was probably identical with the John Vale

recorded as prior of the conventual church of Kilmainham in 1487, 1495, and 1500. RegistrumOctaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 232; ‘Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus’, ed. Lawlor, 25, 32.

131 RPCCH, 270.132 AOM77, fos. 135r–v; 392, fos. 100v–101r, 100r.133 AOM77, fos. 135v–136r.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 245

Docwra exchanged it for title to the priory.134 It was not until September1497 that the convent was able to persuade another English knight, RobertEvers, to accept the poisoned chalice.135

Despite Docwra’s personal reluctance, within months of his appointmentas prior a parliament held by Sir Edward Poynings had taken steps toensure that the priory would be brought permanently under Englishcontrol. It was explained that ‘where as the hedde house & priorate ofSeint Johns Jherusalem . . . hathe byn above all other houseis of Religion . . .foundeid & Endueid with possessions whereof agreate parte lye desolate& (have) ben Alyoned by Evill dysposed priours’, henceforth the prior wasto be a man of English blood, ‘sad, wise and discreet’, and ‘haveing lyvelodby the religion within the Reallme of Englande’ (i.e. an English preceptory).He was to be appointed by the grand master and confirmed by the kingbefore taking possession of the priory. The alienations and grants of annu-ities and leases made by James Keating and Thomas Talbot were alsorevoked and a succeeding prior given authority to re-enter such possessions,while those received into the order by Keating were to appear before hissuccessor and show by what authority they had been professed andgiven preceptories.136 Irish-born brethren continued to hold individual pre-ceptories, but Irishmen were not henceforth to be allowed to claim thepriory.

This was an important victory for the langue. Since 1384 the priory ofIreland had effectively been denied to the (English) majority of its brethren,and the order in Ireland had been virtually independent of both Clerkenwelland Rhodes. Marmaduke Lumley’s had been only the latest in a series ofhumiliating failures to reverse this situation. The statute of 1494 and Keat-ing’s conviction for treason by the English parliament in 1495 helped pavethe way for the restoration of the payment of responsions to Rhodes andprovided a new source of patronage for the English brethren.137 Yet thetriumph was entirely dependent on the support of the crown. Requests forroyal assistance in reducing the priory of Ireland to obedience had repeatedlyfailed to secure effective intervention and it was only James Keating’s mani-fest and dangerous treason that made the events of 1494 possible. Had hebeen more careful the Irish-born might have remained in control of thepriory until the dissolution.

The measures taken by the parliament of 1494–5 were clearly a majorturning point in the priory’s history. Some have also asserted that they hadthe effect of transforming it into an ‘instrument of royal rule’ and that thefeeble resistance in Ireland to the dissolution is explicable in the light of the

134 AOM77, fo. 147r.135 AOM78, fo. 80r.136 Falkiner, ‘Ireland’, 304; A. Conway, Henry VII’s Relations with Scotland and Ireland

1485–1498 (Cambridge, 1932), 210–11; Archdall, Monasticon hibernicum, ii. 113.137 Rot. Parl., vi. 503b–506b.

246 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

disenfranchisement of the Irish brethren.138 There is some truth in thesecontentions. The act had indeed been passed with the king’s ‘better service’as its specific intention and John Rawson, who was appointed administratorin 1511 and prior in 1514, was certainly a capable and committed royalservant, who upheld rather than opposed the Henrician Supremacy. Never-theless, in 1494 and for twenty-odd years thereafter, things might not haveseemed so clear-cut. In the past a number of priors had repudiated theactions of their predecessors without managing to do any better themselves,and the sorry record of previous attempts to appoint Englishmen to Kilmain-ham must have been fresh in the minds of all concerned. Robert Evers, whowas in possession by 1499,139 seems not to have been greatly disturbed bythe Irish-born brethren, but this was probably precisely because he made noserious attempt to reform them. There is certainly no evidence that heinvestigated the titles of those who held preceptories, or that the conventhad any more control over the appointments of Irish preceptors during hispriorate than before. The growing strength of the native Irish presence in theorder in the first decade of the sixteenth century may also be a sign ofweakening prioral control, with the preceptory of Killerig falling into thehands of Padraig O Curryn, who appears to have taken the side of his familyagainst that of the order in a dispute between the Hospital and the prior ofKells.140 Nor was Evers’s administration of his own estates much of asuccess. While he was able to submit about half of the responsions duefrom Ireland during the course of his priorate, which was a considerableimprovement on Keating’s performance,141 this perhaps caused him finan-cial difficulties, for in 1504 he owed the archbishop of Dublin seven years’worth of procurations. He earned further opprobrium in the capital in 1506when, during the course of a dispute over the possession of a meadow, heseized hay belonging to the Dublin Dominicans, prompting the mayor andcitizens to come forth and drove him back into the prioral complex atKilmainham.142 Still more seriously, as gradually became apparent, hismanagement techniques were just as flawed as those of his predecessors.

Although understanding about his failure to attend the 1504 chapter-general, by 1506 the convent had begun to show signs of worry aboutEvers’s activities, and commissioned Thomas Docwra to compel his Irish

138 Sire, Knights of Malta, 182.139 Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 480 (i, p. 50; ii, pp. 223–4).140 Irish Monastic and Episcopal Deeds A.D. 1200–1600, ed. N. B. White (Dublin, 1936),

55–63, at 62.141 On his death Evers owed £188 14s. 33⁄4 d. for the fourteen years, from June 1498 to June

1511, on which he was due to pay responsions. Throughout this period the priory had been dueto pay £40 Irish, or £26 13s. 4d., per annum. AOM54, fo. 13v.

142 Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s Register, ed. McNeil, 255; Harriss, Dublin, 286; O’Sulli-van, ‘Dominicans’, 91. In some senses Evers was only continuing the policies of his predecessors,many of whom had fallen out with either archbishop (over procurations) or municipality (overfishing rights).

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 247

counterpart and all benefice-holders in Ireland to pay their dues to thecommon treasury.143 Besides his evident failure to submit responsions infull, Evers also neglected to send the results of a visitation ordered in 1504to the convent. In February 1510 he was ordered to dispatch these andprohibited from conferring the order’s habit on anyone else without expresslicence.144 The following October, seemingly aware that matters were badlyawry, the grand master appointed an English knight, John Bothe, to solicitEvers to pay his debts to the common treasury; to inform himself continuallyon the business of the priory ‘lest it fall into greater ruin’ and to prevent theprior frommaking grants or alienations without authorization from Rhodes.Bothe was to petition the relevant authorities for assistance in implementinghis instructions and to proceed against anyone who obstructed him.145

The visitors’ report, which finally reached Rhodes in May 1511, wasdamning. The priory had been reduced to a state of almost ‘total andmiserable ruin’ by the ‘wicked and damnable’ administration of Evers,who had not only imitated the errors of his predecessors but augmentedthem. He had alienated goods to seculars and failed to redeem the ecclesi-astical ornaments and jewels distributed by Keating. Worse still, he hadexposed the prioral church to ruin, removed its stipendiary priest, and failedto maintain hospitality. Furthermore, the principal house of the order was sodemolished that man could not live in such vile conditions. Besides hisevident failure to maintain the prioral estate, Evers had also conferred thehabit on seculars and preceptories and benefices on unsuitable persons by hisown authority, and had sealed instruments using the common seal when nochapter had been held, farming out a great proportion of the priory’s estatesin this way.146 Supporting evidence for some of these claims can be gleanedfrom such details of Evers’s leases as survive. His grant of the prioralpreceptory of Kilmainhambeg to the Barnwells at the low rent of 50 marksat a time when the lordship’s fortunes were relatively secure is particularlystriking.147

Perhaps mindful of the successful resistance of previous priors to removal,and the prospect that he might make grants to his followers before hisreplacement, the convent did not strip Evers of his dignity, but encouragedhim to give it up by promising him a pension and allowing him to retire to hispreceptory in Wales. These concessions, however, were dependent on hishanding over the priory and its appurtenances in full and without delay tothe newly appointed proctor and lieutenant in Ireland, John Rawson. Alladministrative documents, the common seal, and the prioral jewels were

143 In addition they were to pay passage monies, which may indicate that there were Irish-born brethren in Rhodes at this time. AOM397, fos. 146r–v.

144 AOM395, fos. 144r, 148v–149r, 57r; 399, fo. 144r.145 AOM400, fo. 170r–v.146 AOM81, fos. 105v–106r; 400, fos. 146r–v, 146v–147r, 148r–149v.147 RK, 166.

248 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

also to be surrendered before he crossed the Irish Sea. He was prompted togive title to the priory back to the order, and Rawson permitted to assume iton his surrender, but in fact the latter was not formally appointed prior untilMarch 1514, after Evers had died.148

Rawson proved a rather more successful administrator than his predeces-sor. As lieutenant and visitor he was given extensive powers to investigateand remedy the priory’s affairs and the life of its brethren. The manner inwhich brethren had assumed the habit and obtained their preceptories wasto be investigated, but those who appeared worthy in their status andbenefices were to be confirmed in them subject to conventual approval.Unfit and disobedient brethren were to be removed from their positionsand any who resisted correction were to be sent to Rhodes for punish-ment.149 To some extent Rawson was successful. By 1514 he had made theconvent aware of the names and appointments of its Irish brethren, asituation probably without recent precedent, and he had also won theconfidence of Henry VIII, who made frequent interventions in Irish affairsalmost from the beginning of his reign.150 It was in the royal interest to havea strong English-run priory, particularly in 1511, when the king was makinghis first attempts to impose English ministers on the Irish government. Heinsisted that Rawson be placed onto the Irish council in the same year, andRawson’s ease in gaining control of the priory surely owed something toroyal support. By the spring of 1515, when he came over to England with thenew earl of Kildare and dined with the king, Rawson had become animportant figure in Ireland.151 Nevertheless, Henry clearly saw the newprior primarily as a royal servant and repeatedly caused him to sacrificethe interests of his career in order that he might serve the crown. Nor wereroyal interventions in the priory always wise. In 1514 Rawson’s appoint-ment had been vigorously opposed by an Irish-born conventual knight,Edmund Seys, who had asserted quite justifiably that the exclusion of theIrish from the prioral dignity ran contrary to the whole tenor of the order’sstatutes.152 As a reward for his conventual service, and in compensation forhis exclusion, Seys was awarded the preceptory of Mourne, the magistralcamera of Kilsaran, and the expectancy to the next house to become va-cant.153 But Mourne was still occupied by the MacCarthys and in c. 1515Henry wrote to the grand master recommending that Rawson be provided toKilsaran instead of Seys, who, being an Irishman, was unfit for prefer-ment.154 It is unclear whether he did so at Rawson’s prompting. The prior

148 AOM81, fos. 105v–106r; 400, fo. 150r; 402, fos. 137r–138v.149 AOM400, fos. 188v, 190r–193v, 195r–v.150 AOM403, fo. 162r.151 Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 655, 658.152 AOM81, fos. 205r–206r.153 AOM402, fos. 136v, 139r–v; 401, fo. 160v; 403, fos. 163v–164r, 167r–168r.154 LPFD, ii, no. 1359.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 249

had left Seys in charge of the preceptory of Killerig when he travelled toEngland to meet the king, and so clearly had not subscribed to Henry’s viewson his appropriateness for office at that stage. Nevertheless, on Rawson’sreturn Seys refused either to render account for Killerig or to hand over itsresponsions. His defiance soon escalated into a full-scale rebellion in thecourse of which the Irish-born brethren, led by Seys and Richard FitzMaur-ice, threw the prior into prison in chains and allegedly committed an assaulton him that he scarcely survived.155

Rawson escaped confinement fairly quickly, perhaps due to royal inter-vention, but the rebellion rumbled on for some years. The prior, Seys, andFitzMaurice were summoned to Rhodes, ostensibly to serve against theTurks, in January 1517, and Thomas Docwra was given authority to invokeroyal aid to force the rebels to go, but they were still resisting in May 1518,when Rawson’s brother, the stapler Christopher, reported to a provincialchapter in England that Seys, who had effectively expelled himself from theorder by continually machinating his superior’s death, was ‘persevering inhis malignancy’ and refusing to obey conventual orders.156 In the followingyear, having been summoned by the convent, which proposed that hiscousin, John Rawson junior, should act as his lieutenant during his absence,the prior received royal permission to leave Ireland for three years so that hecould pursue his case against the rebels in Rome and Rhodes.157 At the lastminute, however, and after he had leased several properties to Kildare to payfor his journey, Henry revoked Rawson’s licence and forced him to return toIreland with the new deputy, the earl of Surrey.158 The prior had been maderoyal treasurer in 1517 and his financial skills were evidently too valuablefor him to be allowed to leave. He was refused licence to answer repeatedsummons to Rhodes and his reappointment as treasurer in February 1522meant that he was denied any chance to join the English relief force sent tothe convent at the end of the year.159 He was not permitted to depart untilApril 1525 and probably proceeded to the convent in Italy only in thefollowing year, taking two Irish-born brethren, John FitzGerald and Nicho-las Plunket, with him.160 This visit appears to have marked a partial rap-prochement between Rawson and his brethren and the success of the order’sattempts to secure obedience and conventual service from the Irish Hospi-tallers. In return, five Irish preceptories were reserved to the Irish-bornbrethren in perpetuity and their holders confirmed in their appointments atthe prior’s supplication.161 In reward for Rawson’s labours and expenses in

155 AOM405, fo. 132r–v.156 Ibid., fos. 133r–v, 134v; Claudius E.vi, fo. 174r–v.157 AOM407, fos. 149v–150v; LPFD, ii, no. 4252; iii, no. 194.158 LPFD, iii, no. 2089.159 Archdall, Monasticon hibernicum, ii. 114; LPFD, iii, nos. 2087, 2089.160 LPFD, iii, no. 1294; AOM412, fo. 201v.161 AOM412, fos. 195r–v, 194v–195r. The five were Tully, Killerig, Kilclogan-Ballyhack,

Crook, and Any. In practice, Crook and Any were treated as a paired house, however.

250 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

Ireland, the latter having amounted to 4,000 ducats, all other Irish houseswere explicitly reserved to him, he was awarded Kilsaran for life, and he wasgranted ancienitas after William Weston to the other dignities of thelangue.162 Even at this stage, however, Rawson may still have been havingtrouble with brethren who were ‘wandering’ in defiance of their superiors, asL’Isle Adam reported to Henry VIII in June 1527.163

Despite the convent’s attempts to strengthen his position, later in the samemonth Rawson was elected turcopolier, releasing the priory of Ireland toJohn Babington.164 But the renewal of his conventual career was not to last.Dispatched almost immediately afterwards to plead for the removal of theking’s hand from the order’s property in England, he was persuaded toexchange his dignity for the priory of Ireland once again in the followingyear. The bull regranting the priory to Rawson drew attention to his longyears of rule there and the many expenses, labours, and perils which he hadundergone in the process. As he was aware of its customs and would be moreeasily able to administer it than would Babington it was more useful andconvenient for the Religion if he remained in Ireland.165 His return there wasalso to the benefit of the king, to whose wishes the master drew specificattention in a letter of 5 June 1528. Rawson, it was pointed out, had‘conducted a great deal in the service of the king, whom we cannot disobey’and had been regranted the priory by the ‘consent and will’ of Henry andWolsey. The langue too noted the ‘service’ that might thereby be done ‘to theinvincible king of England’ when it confirmed the exchange at royal re-quest.166 Shortly afterwards Rawson was reappointed treasurer of Ireland,whither he had returned by October.167

His reappointment proved its worth in 1534, when Thomas FitzGerald,the heir of the earl of Kildare, rose in violent revolt against Henry VIII, whohad detained his father in the Tower. For several months he ravaged thelordship of Ireland, twice assaulting Dublin. Hospitallers were in the thick ofthe action from the outset, for Thomas had been fostered by ThomasDocwra and his paternal uncles, including the Hospitaller John, were in-volved as well.168 Although James and Richard FitzGerald defected to theking’s deputy in November 1534, John FitzGerald remained committed tothe rebels to the very end.169 Rawson had an equally critical role to play. Theanimus of the rebels was particularly directed against the English-born

162 Ibid., fos. 193v–194v, 195r–v, 196r–v.163 LPFD, iv, no. 3196. Text in Otho C.ix, fos. 50r–v/62r–v.164 AOM85, fo. 29v; 412, fo. 199r.165 AOM85, fo. 41r; AOM413, fos. 23r–24r.166 AOM413, fos. 24v–25r; BDVTE, 61–4.167 LPFD, iv, nos. 4759, 4846.168 Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy, iii. 606/7–608/9; Annals of Ireland, ed. MacDermott,

405 n.169 L. McCorristine, The Revolt of Silken Thomas: A Challenge to Henry VIII (Dublin,

1987), 98, 124–5.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 251

members of the council, especially Archbishop Alen, with whose family theprior had close ties, and Rawson himself. In late July Alen was caught tryingto escape and killed by James FitzGerald; fear of suffering a similar fateprobably prompted Rawson to flee Ireland a few days later.170 Despite thisdisplay of pusillanimity, which the Ulster annalist took great delight inreporting, Rawson must soon have returned, as Eustace Chapuys wrote atthe end of August that the prior and the earl of Ossory had been the only twolords to oppose the rebellion.171 Over the following months they continuedto resist the rebels, Rawson lending many of his servants to the defence ofDublin castle, where they did good service over a period of twelve weeks.One, Anthony Mores, was singled out for praise for his bravery during therebel assault on the city gates, when he sallied forth and slew several ofFitzGerald’s best foot. In revenge, the rebels burnt the prior’s great barn atKilmainham, destroying his corn.172 Even after the immediate threat toDublin had passed, Rawson and the rest of the council were busy for severalmore months putting down the rebellion. The prior’s most important con-tribution at this stage of the affair was to invite the earl’s brothers, includingJohn, to dinner at Kilmainham, where they were arrested before beingdispatched to England and, eventually, executed.173

John Rawson’s career, and particularly the events of 1534, thus demon-strate the potential usefulness to the crown of having a ‘sad, wise anddiscreet’ English Hospitaller in charge of the priory. The English priors ofIreland were not a great success from the conventual point of view, however.Although Rawson was eventually able to reduce his recalcitrant brethren toobedience, he did so at enormous expense and at the price of reducing thepriory to a rump of half a dozen brethren, including himself.174 Moreover,while both Evers and Rawson were able to submit rather higher responsionsthan their immediate predecessors, they managed this by neglecting orexploiting the preceptories they held in the priory of England. A residentpreceptor was particularly needed at Evers’s house of Slebech: hisabsence left it in the hands of farmers who ran up considerable arrearswhich they refused to repay when their leases had expired.175 AlthoughRawson’s English houses, Swingfield and later Ribston, were run rather

170 PRO LR2/62, fos. 2v–3r; LPFD, vii, no. 1045.171 Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy, iii. 594/5; LPFD, vii, no. 1095.172 LPFD, vii, no. 1141; viii, no. 695; vii, no. 1389; Extents, 81.173 LPFD, vii, no. 1574; viii, no. 448; xvi, no. 304 (ii); x, no. 301; Annals of Ulster, ed.

Hennessy, iii. 616/17. Despite the Greyfriars’ chronicle’s description of Richard Fitzgerald as‘lord of sent Ines in Ireland’ and Archdall’s more plausible assertion, derived from Leland, thatJames Fitzgerald of Leixlip was also a Hospitaller, the attainder of the earl’s brothers states onlyJohn to have been such. Chronicle of the Grey Friars, ed. Nichols, 39; Annals of Ireland, ed.MacDermott, 405 n.; Statutes, iii. 674.

174 AOM412, fos. 193v–194v; The Irish Fiants of the Tudor Sovereigns during the Reigns ofHenry VII, Edward VI, Philip and Mary, and Elizabeth I, ed. K. Nicholls and T. G. O Canann,4 vols. (Dublin, 1994), i. Henry VIII, nos. 212, 221, 226, 230, 253.

175 AOM54, fo. 13v.

252 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

more competently by relatives and English prioral officials, from the late1520s he fell behind with his responsions, arrears of which continued toincrease until at least 1536.176 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, theresponsions expected from Irelandwere in any case so tiny compared to thosefrom England that the restoration of their payment was amoral rather than afinancial victory. Other hoped-for results of the priory’s reduction to obedi-ence had barely begun to materialize by 1540. At a time of partial economicand territorial recovery, Robert Evers failed to regain either Mourne orClonoulty, possibly lost control of Killerig, and farmed the Hospital’s estateselsewhere for greatly less than they were worth to lords and gentry. JohnRawson appears to have been more successful in gaining recognition of theorder’s rights, but he failed to wring much benefit from his recoveries, if suchthey were. In defending property on the marches and further afield, he wasforced to rely on local interests, notably the great Anglo-Irish magnates.Particularly during his first term as prior, he had close contacts with theninth earl of Kildare, to whom he paid a retainer and leased a substantialportion of the prioral estates rather cheaply.177 His reliance on Kildare isfurther underlined by the fact that at least two Hospitaller preceptors, theearl’s brother John, and the preceptor of Tully, Oliver Harebrik, were closelytied to the FitzGerald interest.178 As late as 1532, Rawson and other mem-bers of the council came to England to defend the earl from the accusationslaid against him by SirWilliam Skeffington, the royal deputy.179 In the south,Rawson entered into alliance with the new earl of Desmond. Abandoning thepretence that Clonaulty was still a religious house, which competingO’Dwyers had still maintained in 1503, he leased it in 1535 to Desmondand to Risdeard O Duibhidhir (Richard O’Dwyer) for £12 per annum, afraction of its real worth.180 Without Desmond’s support it might not havebeen possible to exert any authority over the house at all. His cousin Johnbeing grantedMourne in 1523, the prior probably also came to an agreementwith Desmond whereby the latter was to recover and administer the houseand pay rent to him as prior. The defeat of the earl’s father by theMacCarthysin a battle fought at Mourne in 1521 may conceivably indicate an earlierattempt to regain the house. Desmond had not been able to reverse thisverdict by 1541, when he was recorded as owing arrears for the preceptory,then in the hands of Diarmaid MacCarthaigh Oge.181 Finally, after 1527

176 The arrears owed by Rawson for his holdings in both countries stood at £84 odd in 1531,and had risen to more than £248 by 1536. AOM54, fos. 174v–175r, 286v.

177 Crown Surveys of Lands 1540–41 with the Kildare Rental begun in 1518, ed.G. MacNiocaill (Dublin, 1992), 242, 233–5, 241, 261; CPCRCIr, i. 19.

178 Crown Surveys, ed. MacNiocaill, 345; McCorristine, Silken Thomas, 32, 46.179 S. G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End

of Gaelic Rule (Harlow, 1998), 132.180 CPL, xvii, I, no. 938; Extents, 99; RK, 160.181 AOM410, fo. 181r; Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 629–30; Extents, 120, 104. Its

properties in Cork itself were still in the order’s hands, however. Ibid., 103–4.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 253

a Desmond client, Aonghus O hIffearnain, became preceptor of Any, thevicarage of which was also in the earl’s gift.182 O hIffearnain’s commitmentto the religious life seems not to have run very deep, for in 1541 he and hiscomital patron were commissioned to suppress religious houses in Limerick,Cork, and Kerry.183 Rawson’s association with Desmond may thus havebrought some recognition of his authority and limited financial benefits, buthardly bespeaks a determination to restore the order’s religious life wherethis had lapsed. In the west, as we have seen, the prior entered an agreementwith a Galway merchant to lease out the order’s lands in Connacht in 1529and in the south-east, where the order still had a substantial presence, heagain leased properties to local interests.184

Rawson can hardly be claimed to have infused the order with new vigouror to have maximized prioral resources in the Pale or its marches either.There are no signs that he did anything to restore conventual life and divineservice at Kilmainham, which appears to have still been a functioning pre-ceptory and the residence of four or more brethren and a college of priests,some perhaps Hospitallers, before 1494,185 but which was apparentlyinhabited only by Rawson, the subprior, and some servants and corrodiansin 1540. Details for his administration are hard to come by before 1534, andrelate mostly to his relations with Kildare, but after the overthrow of theGeraldines the prior turned instead to a small clique among whom English-born government servants, Pale lawyers and gentry, and his own relativeswere especially prominent. Even before he was told that the priory would bedissolved in November 1538, the prior’s distribution of pensions and leaseshad demonstrated a desire to profit his family and associates.186 After thisdate, the number of grants multiplied, and several were reissued on morefavourable terms. In 1539, for example, anticipatory leases of the precep-tories of Crook, Killure, and Kilbarry, which had been granted to the Cahellsof Waterford for a twelve-year term in 1535, were issued to another localfamily, the Wises, for terms of eighty-one or ninety-nine years.187 Kilbarry,which had still been a separate preceptory in 1516, and was extended at only£10 or so in 1541, was leased for a still more unspectacular £4.188 InFebruary 1540 Kilteel and its substantial possessions were leased to theAlens in perpetuum for only £5 Irish and its dependent rectory for £12.189

This was too much for the crown, which reduced the term of the lease to

182 Extents, 116.183 B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII

(Cambridge, 1974), 165–6; Irish Fiants, ed. Nicholls and O Canann, i: Henry VIII, no. 251.184 ‘Report on the Wardenship of Galway’, ed. MacLysaght, 139; Extents, 99–103; CICRE,

112.185 AOM362, fos. 121v–123v; SRPI, Henry VI, 403/405; CPL, xiii. 272.186 LPFD, xiii, II, 937.187 CICRE, 112.188 AOM404, fos. 147v–148r; Extents, 99; CICRE, 112.189 Extents, 91.

254 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

fifty-one years, but left the Alens in occupation.190 In addition to the over-generous leases granted by the prior, after its surrender in November 1540the crown found that the priory was more encumbered with pensions andannuities than any other house.191

Even had convent and crown not insisted in 1494 that only an Englishmanshould hold the priory it is unlikely that the order would have survived itssuppression. Those of its houses in the hands of Gaelic septs were hardlyvigorous and popular beacons of spirituality in the way that some of themendicant houses in Ulster and Connacht were. Nevertheless, the order’srepeated interventions in the priory’s affairs, although prompted by a laud-able concern to ensure that the priory paid its responsions and upheld itsother responsibilities, appear to have been counter-productive. Certainly theHospital had had a difficult time in the fourteenth and early fifteenthcenturies. Estates had been laid waste or occupied, houses amalgamated,numbers of brethren had declined, and conventual service and the paymentof responsions had largely fallen by the wayside. Although the Irish-bornbrethren had sometimes striven to remedy these problems, their publicduties and family interests proved at best mixed blessings and at worstpositive distractions. Yet whatever their failings, the Irish-born brethrenclearly enjoyed considerable solidarity and managed both to maintainsome sort of conventual establishment at Kilmainham and to offer hospital-ity and perhaps medical care at other sites. Compared to the size of theorder’s endowment, these achievements were unimpressive but even theyappear to have been placed under threat by the administration of Evers andRawson, outsiders who, without connections of their own in Ireland, wereeven more reliant on the Anglo-Irish magnates which dominated the lord-ship to maintain their hold. The English-born priors did manage to bringsome of the Irish-born brethren to heel and restore the payment of respon-sions, but in doing so they dissipated the resources of their English precep-tories to such a degree that the convent would have done better, at least froma financial point of view, to leave James Keating in charge. This, of course,was not an option. To headquarters the recalcitrance and lack of cooper-ation of the Irish brethren was a matter not merely of money but also ofdiscipline. This at least the convent had managed to restore, but the priory’svery reduction to order left it in the hands of a man who was primarily aroyal servant and who at a critical juncture in the fortunes of the lordship ofIreland was prepared to sacrifice his brethren and to support a governmentwhich had already broken with Rome. Had a relative or supporter of SilkenThomas been prior in 1534, it might not have made much difference to theoverall course of the rebellion and might well have precipitated an earliersuppression than that which occurred, but at least the Hospital would havedisappeared with a bang rather than a whimper.

190 Bradshaw, Dissolution, 90. 191 Ibid. 89–90; Extents, 117.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 255

Yet the dissolution, from which Rawson was able to secure a substantialpension and the title of Viscount Clontarf, has nevertheless an extraordinarycoda. In November 1540, the very month in which the order’s houses werebeing surrendered, the council of Ireland, attended by both the former priorand his ally John Alen, advanced proposals to devote the proceeds of thesuppression to the establishment of a new military order to be based at thecastle of Ferns and to have as its object the reduction of Leinster to tran-quillity by a mixture of military action and judicial inquiry. Composed of aGreat Master and twelve pensioners each commanding a small body ofhorse, the members of this association were to be celibate knights wearinga distinctive habit, and promoted according to ‘auncyentie and goode beha-veour’. After the initial intake, several of whom were to be Kavanaghs,O’Tooles, or O’Briens to save on the cost of endowment, entry into theorder would gradually be restricted to English, or at least English-speaking,gentlemen. Although the new order’s members were not to live in common,meeting only four times per annum, including on St George’s day to attend amass in honour of the king and the royal family, in other respects, not leastits celibacy and the proposed status of the master as premier baron ofIreland, the new order was strikingly reminiscent of the Hospital.192 Despitethe fact that none of the proposed members were Hospitallers, the royalcouncil in England ‘myslyked’ the whole scheme as an ‘institucon of a newSaint Johns Ordre’, an attitude shared by their master, who dismissed it as an‘erection of . . . fantasies’ of which he ‘in noo wyse’ approved.193 Neverthe-less, and whatever Rawson’s contribution to the proposal, it is clear that theIrish council were convinced of the utility of such an establishment, whichwould, they claimed, save the king £10,000 which might otherwise be spentin reducing Leinster to order.194 Along with the pronouncements of Poyn-ings in 1494, and Henry’s own scheme to devote the order to the defence ofCalais, the Irish council’s ‘devises’ of 1540 is a striking monument to theTudor political establishment’s regard for the military utility of the hospitalof St John, and to the intermittent conviction that its organization anddiscipline might more usefully be harnessed to the service of the state.

In 1557, the priory of Ireland was restored by the crown in essentially thesame form as it had existed in the 1530s, albeit with fewer estates.195 It wasplaced once more under an English prior, Oswald Massingberd who, likehis predecessors, served the crown as a commissioner of the peace and aroyal councillor.196 Notwithstanding King’s assertion that ‘no separateCommanderies’ were re-established in Ireland, at least two Irish-bornbrethren were received into the reconstituted priory, and inducted into the

192 SP, iii. 271, 272–6. 193 PPC, vii. 92; SP, iii. 293. 194 SP, iii. 271.195 ‘Six Documents Relating to Queen Mary’s Restoration of the Grand Priories of England

and Ireland’, ed. E. J. King, OSJHP 7 (1935), 4–5, 11–17.196 Irish Fiants, ed. Nicholls and O Canann, i: Philip andMary, no. 222;CPCRIr, i. 380, 396,

397; ‘Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland’, ed. Gilbert, 50, 53, 55, 68, 71.

256 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

preceptories of Kilclogan and Crook, and at least one provincial chapter washeld during the priory’s brief swansong.197 As can be seen elsewhere, Mas-singberd’s career hitherto had been rather turbulent, encompassing amongstother extravagances a scheme, hatched in conjunction with Cardinal Pole, tooverturn Tudor government in Ireland.198 Although he was the last of theEnglish brethren who had remained inMalta after the dissolution to survive,Massingberd was perhaps not an appropriate candidate for promotion toeven so unglamorous a priorate as Ireland, so that Pole’s influence may wellhave played a part in securing his appointment. It is perhaps in keeping withhis career thus far that the last we certainly hear of him he was in troubleagain, being summoned to go before the Irish parliament on pain of treasonbecause he was suspected of ‘raising and fomenting insurrections’ inconjunction with the native Irish. Faced with this tribunal, Massingberd,records Archdall, ‘privately withdrew from the kingdom and died in obscur-ity’.199 Given his record, he was probably wise to do so.

7. 2 The Preceptory of Torphichen

From the beginning of its existence in Scotland, the Hospital’s chief housethere had been the preceptory of Torphichen, situated to the west ofEdinburgh. Torphichen had probably been granted the order by David I(1124–53), and its donation was followed by further grants of lands,churches, burghal properties, and exemptions by royal and non-royaldonors.200 Before the wars of independence, the Scottish establishments ofboth the Temple and Hospital were fully integrated with those in England andWales. Most brethren whose names survive were probably English-bornand the Templars arrested in Scotland in 1307 had had careers in bothEngland and Scotland as well as, in some cases, the Latin East.201 Both ordersheld extensive properties, although, as in England, the Temple was morefavoured than the Hospital until well into the thirteenth century. In 1338 itwas claimed that before 1296 the Templar possessions had paid responsionsof £200 sterling, and the Hospitaller 200marks, while in 1345 it was said thatthe fruits of the two combined should have been worth more than £420sterling to the Hospital.202 By the early sixteenth century, however, the

197 CPCRIr, 397, 482. King, in id., (ed.), ‘Six Documents’, 5, appears to have been misled bythe fact that Cardinal Pole’s letters specifically incorporated all the order’s preceptories inIreland into the re-erected priory. Ibid. 12, 15.

198 See below, Chs. 8.4, 9.199 Calendar of Carew Manuscripts, 1515–74, ed. Brewer and Bullen, 327; Irish Fiants, ed.

Nicholls and O Canann, ii: 1558–1586, no. 6784; CPR1558–60, 29; T. Leland, The History ofIreland from the Invasion of Henry II with a Preliminary Discourse on the Antient State of thatKingdom, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1773), ii. 226; Archdall, Monasticon hibernicum, ii. 115.

200 Scotland, pp. xxvii–xxviii.201 Ibid., pp. xxvii–xxviii, xx–xxii.202 Report, 201, 129; Scotland, pp. xix, xxvii, xxxii.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 257

responsions expected from Torphichen were fixed at no more than 50 markssterling. Some causes of this decline can be suggested, but they do not accountfor it entirely. Both the Hospital and Temple supported the English crownduring the first stages of the wars of independence and their estates appear tohave been occupied or devastated and their brethren expelled for long periodsas a result. While Robert the Bruce was willing to confirm the Hospital in itspossessions and privileges in 1314, these were left unspecified, and towardsthe end of his reign the Hospital’s estates were granted to lay administratorsfrom whom it was impossible to extract any revenue until the 1340s. There-after the order slowly recovered control of its properties and returned to somesort of solvency: nothing reached Clerkenwell in 1338 or in the years before1345, but David de Mar and later farmers were occasionally able to payresponsions of 200 florins in the 1370s and 1380s, while in 1418 the sumowed by Scotland was set at 400 ecus and in 1445 at 500 Venetian ducats.203

The latter figure, however, seems to have been rather too high, and had notbeen paid for years. By 1489 it had again been reduced to c.200 florins, a sumprobably equivalent to the 50 marks sterling payable between 1506 and atleast the 1530s.204 Between the 1480s and 1509, responsions were partlydispatched in the form of lasts of salmon, from the payment of custom onwhich the preceptor was released by a royal grant made during James IV’sminority, when the preceptor of Torphichen, William Knollis, was royaltreasurer. This concession was revived between 1518 and c.1523, but discon-tinued thereafter.205 After the dissolution of the order in England, responsionswere transmitted to Malta via the priory of France.206

Although some brethren—probably brother priests—evidently continuedto reside in Scotland between the 1320s and 1380s its estates were adminis-tered by unprofessed lessees with Scottish surnames.207 Nevertheless itremained subject to the priory of England. In 1374 the convent attemptedto remove two farmers, the papal chaplain David de Mar and Sir RobertErskine, and replace them with Robert Mercer, lord of Inerpeffray, but it didso without consulting the prior of England, Robert Hales, who objected tothe removal of Torphichen from his purview and persuaded Edward III tointervene. In response, Edward arrested the order’s English responsions untilthe convent backed down.208

The administration of the Scottish preceptory during the papal schism israther more obscure but given the priory of England’s continued allegiance

203 Scotland, pp. 162, 165, 173–81. The approximate equivalents of these sums in sterlingare £80 and £93 15s. P. Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London, 1986), 205.

204 The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, 1264–1600, 23 vols. (Edinburgh, 1878–1908), x. 134;Scotland, 173.

205 Exchequer Rolls, Scotland, vii. 665; x. 134, 237, 363; xi. 50, 220, 374; xii. 86–7, 162,265, 378, 473; xiii. 93, 237, 372; xiv. 438, xv. 183.

206 Scotland, doc. no. 54 (pp. 142–5).207 Scotland, pp. xxxi–xxxv.208 Tipton, ‘English and Scottish Hospitallers’, 241–2; Scotland, pp. xxxv–xxxvi.

258 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

to Rhodes, and hence Avignon, there seems to have been no fundamentalconflict of interest between Torphichen and Clerkenwell, and there are somesigns of continued intercourse between the two,209 which was only signifi-cantly disrupted when the order transferred its allegiance to the Pisan popeAlexander V in 1409, while Scotland remained attached to Benedict XIII.Thereafter, there was open competition for control of the preceptory be-tween brethren loyal to each of these pontiffs in which Benedict XIII’sappointee, Alexander Leighton, eventually triumphed. After Leighton wasaccepted by the order as preceptor in 1418, he followed up his victory byattempting to remove Torphichen from subjection to the priory of England,but his efforts in this direction were resisted by the langue and did not meetwith conventual approval.210 Despite such tensions, the struggle of 1409–18was the last serious rupture between the priory and the preceptory until thesixteenth century. In the meantime a modus vivendi was established whichworked relatively well. As had generally been the case in the fourteenthcentury, Scots alone were promoted to Torphichen, but they were appointedby the convent after a majority vote of the langue, which insisted that theyshould not seek preferment in the priory of England as a condition of theirappointment.211Whatever its disadvantages, this arrangement seems at leastto have encouraged the Scots to travel to the Mediterranean to performconventual service, for between the 1430s and 1560s there was very oftenone Scottish brother in convent, and occasionally two.212 During hostilitieswith England, Scottish responsions might be sent to Rhodes via Brugesrather than Clerkenwell, but Scottish preceptors evidently continued toattend provincial chapters in England.213

While Torphichen was always considered to be the order’s chief house inScotland, and usually its only preceptory, the order’s estates were sometimessplit between different brethren or lay administrators, each being heldresponsible for the submission of a portion of responsions. Thus in 1418most of the order’s estates in Scotland were assigned to Alexander deLeighton, with John Binning being allotted the church of Torphichen andits appurtenances and Thomas Goodwin the church of Balantrodoch. Good-win and Binning together were to contribute 110 ecus of the 400-ecu farm.Similarly, in 1449, the conventual visitor granted Torphichen to HenryLivingston and allotted Maryculter and Liston to Andrew Meldrum as a

209 Tipton, ‘English and Scottish Hospitallers’, 242–5. Dr Macquarrie’s account of theseevents proceeds from the incorrect assumption that Tipton erred in stating that the priory ofEngland remained attached to Rhodes during the schism and that therefore the movementsbetween England and Scotland of brother John de Binning in 1388 provided ‘no evidence ofcontact’ between priory and preceptory. He does, however, accept that the preceptory continuedto pay responsions to the convent in the 1380s. Scotland, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii.

210 Scotland, pp. xxxviii–xl.211 Ibid. pp. 170–1. Carbourg (i.e. Carbrooke) is misread as Tarbing at p. 170.212 Ibid., pp. xlii, 167 et seq.213 Tipton, ‘English and Scottish Hospitallers’, 243, 245; Scotland, pp. 165, xlii.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 259

preceptory. Such arrangements were often compromises reached afterperiods of conflict between rival candidates for the preceptory, and rarelyprecluded further disagreement over the division of spoils, so that they weredispensed with after 1460 or so.214 Thereafter the preceptory remainedundivided and, except for a hiatus in 1510–18, its holders managed to paytheir responsions faithfully until at least 1536, performing rather better thanmost of their English counterparts in this respect.

Between them, the Temple and Hospital possessed property in at least 800places in Scotland. These were scattered across large areas of the country,but most were in the south, centre, and east, their distribution largelyfollowing the activity of Anglo-Norman settlers in the country.215 Afterthe acquisition of the Templar estates the Hospital possessed six baronies,and a host of smaller properties. From the very beginning most of these musthave been rented out, short-term leases apparently being prevalent until anineteen-year lease became common in the fifteenth century. In commonwith other religious houses, from at least the early sixteenth century theHospital resorted to feuing its estates for fixed sums, a practice which hadshort-term advantages but drawbacks should rents or prices increase. Des-pite the potentially negative consequences, the convent gave explicit consentfor Walter Lindsay to let outlying estates to farm either at term or inperpetuity in 1533, and he soon availed himself of this concession to letout even the baronial estates which had formerly been kept in hand. By 1559the convent had decided that this process had gone too far, and instructedthe next preceptor, James Sandilands, to recover these properties.216 The1539–40 rental shows that cash revenue produced from rents was supple-mented by more extensive payments in kind than was probably the case inEngland and Wales by then. These were predominantly made up of cerealcrops, legumes, and poultry, although there were also quantities of dairyproducts, fish, and livestock.217 On some estates a significant number oftenants continued to owe labour services, of which carriage appears to havebeen the most common. The order’s tenants at Liston, for example, wereexpected to carry produce to Torphichen.218

From the mid-fifteenth century, the order’s estates were being organizedinto bailiwicks based on the territorial divisions of the kingdom. Its bailies,who were assisted by deputies, took an oath of fidelity, and their dutiesconsisted chiefly of holding courts, delivering sasine, collecting rents, anddelivering evidence of the order’s holdings to its Scottish chancery.219 Thefirst of these was perhaps the most important. The bailies not only adminis-tered royal justice within the six baronies, but also held jurisdiction onbehalf of the preceptor over all the order’s members and tenants, who

214 Scotland, pp. xxxix–xl, 162, xliv, 165–6, 197–8. 215 Ibid., pp. lviii, 1–40, 202–32.216 Ibid., pp. lxii–lxiv, lxxvi–lxxviii. 217 Ibid., lxvi–lxviii. 218 Ibid., pp. lxiv–lxv219 Ibid., pp. lxxii, lxxv–lxxvi.

260 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

could be repledged were they arraigned before another tribunal. They hadthe right to judge in all cases not involving treason, a significantly widercompetence than that enjoyed by the order’s courts in England by thisperiod. Outside the baronies, courts were usually held in the order’s housein the head burgh within the sherrifdom.220 Fines levied on tenants of theorder by other courts were payable to the preceptor, and must have consti-tuted a useful additional source of income.221

The order’s bailies were often members of families both ‘long associatedwith the order’ and involved in local administration on behalf of the crown.Some were relatives of contemporary brethren: Thomas Scougal appears in1494 as the temple bailie in the sheriffdom of Angus and Gowrie, forinstance.222 Relatives of brethren also appear as administrators of its estatesand jurisdictions, as vicars of its churches, and as members of the precep-torial household.223 Walter Lindsay’s brothers Andrew and Alexander wereeach entrusted with one of its baronies, for example.224 Several preceptorsattempted to secure the succession to Torphichen for a member of theirfamily. Andrew Meldrum was unable to pass the house on to his namesakeWilliam in the 1450s, but George Dundas was succeeded by his nephewWalter Lindsay in 1533, and another Dundas, Alexander, was admitted intothe order in 1538, while between the 1540s and 1560s the Hospital wasdominated by members of the Sandilands family.225 Most of these familieswere significant landowners of long standing, indicating that the orderattracted high-status recruits in this period, and the prominence of pre-ceptors of Torphichen in Scottish life is further demonstrated by theiractivities on behalf of the state. William Knollis, preceptor between 1466and 1510, sat as a secular baron in parliament and on the royal council, wastreasurer of Scotland during the minority of James IV, and saw service onvarious embassies and royal commissions.226 His designated successor,George Dundas, was a member of the royal household by 1508 and mighthave become more prominent in the royal service had events not intervened,while Walter Lindsay sat on various royal commissions and commanded adetachment of the royal army with some success in 1542.227 In 1560 the lastpreceptor, James Sandilands, was sent by the Lords of the Congregation tothe French court, where he was snubbed on account of both his Protestant-ism and his marriage.228

Nevertheless, the close ties the preceptor enjoyed with the crown were notalways to the order’s advantage. Although William Knollis attended thechapter-general of 1466–7 in Rome, where he was appointed preceptor, he

220 Ibid., p. lxxii. 221 Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, i. 592; vii. 5.222 Scotland, pp. lxx–lxxi, lxviii. 223 Ibid., passim. 224 Ibid., pp. lxxvii–lxviii.225 Ibid., pp. xlii, xliv, l–li. 226 Ibid., p. xlv.227 The Letters of James the Fourth, 1505–1513, ed. R. K. Hannay, R. L. Mackie, and

A. Spilman (Edinburgh, 1953), no. 159; Scotland, p. lii.228 Scotland, p. liii n.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 261

seems not to have performed any previous conventual service and may havebeen a royal candidate parachuted in over the head of Patrick Scougal, anassociate of the last preceptor who had been in Rhodes in the early 1460sand had probably administered the preceptory since 1463.229 Perhaps be-cause of Knollis’s political associations,230 Scougal found it impossible to actagainst his rival in Scotland and in about 1471 returned to Rhodes to seekjustice, a quest in which he was unsuccessful.231 Yet if royal connectionsperhaps secured Knollis in possession of the preceptory and allowed him todispatch responsions and brethren to Rhodes without hindrance, his partialdisgrace in 1492 nevertheless led to his being frozen out of royal service andpursued for monies he had allegedly received as treasurer for some years tocome.232More significantly, Knollis’s very prominence in secular affairs, andhis probable wealth, may have encouraged other parties to turn their gazetowards the preceptory after his death. This was not through any fault of thepreceptor, who did his best to ensure that he should be succeeded by anappropriate candidate, George Dundas, who was appointed his coadjutorand granted the expectancy to Torphichen in Rhodes in 1504.233 At firstthere was every sign of royal support for Dundas’s promotion. He wasadmitted to Torphichen’s temporalities on 30 November 1508, and in July1510, after Knollis’s death, he was issued with a safe conduct to travel toRome and Rhodes as ‘lord of St Johns’.234 Yet while Dundas was travellingto Rome with royal letters recommending his provision, James IV’s secre-tary, Patrick Paniter, set about using his influence with king and Curia toobtain the preceptory for himself, securing a letter in his favour from Julius IIas early as 30 January 1511.235 Paniter’s hold over the king was so consid-erable that James wrote to the pope in February with the extraordinaryrequest that no royal letters from Scotland nominating to vacant beneficesshould be accepted as genuine unless countersigned by his secretary.236 Bythe summer Dundas had obtained a sentence upholding his right to the

229 News of the death of the previous incumbent, Henry de Livingston, reached Rhodes inNovember 1462, whereupon Scougal was licensed to return home. Scotland, 168.

230 He was first appointed treasurer in 1469. N. Macdougall, James IV (Edinburgh, 1989),96.

231 Scotland, pp. xlv, 169–70.232 Ibid., p. xlvi; Macdougall, James IV, 95–6.233 Scotland, p. xlvii.234 Ibid. Dundas did not leave for Rome until after 20 September, when James IV wrote to

Henry VIII requesting safe conduct for him and his entourage. Macdougall, James IV, 209.235 Macdougall, James IV, 209. Even quicker to take advantage of the vacancy was James

Cortesius of Modena, a member of the pope’s household and solicitor of papal letters, who wasgranted the preceptory, supposedly detained without title by Dundas, on 29 July 1510. Corte-sius’ claim was pressed seriously, and in June 1512 the Scottish proctor in Rome reported toJames IV that the case had been decided in his favour. Whether because of a decline in hisinfluence after the death of Julius II, or because of the king’s steadfast support for Paniter,Cortesius appears to have dropped his suit soon afterwards. CPL, xviii, no. 61; LPFD, i, no.1230.

236 Macdougall, James IV, 209.

262 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

preceptory at Rome. Paniter and the king replied with letters to thoseentrusted with their affairs at the Curia, alleging spuriously that Knollis’sresignation in favour of Dundas as coadjutor had been invalid and that hehad died without having legally resigned the preceptory.237 With Paniter’sspecific claim to the preceptory so weak, the issue of the English overlord-ship of Torphichen was dragged into the case to bolster the argument againstDundas. Writing to the master, Guy de Blanchefort, in June 1513, James IVasserted that the provision of Dundas with the consent of the English languein 1508 was an insult to Scotland and that no one, even a Scot, whorecognized the prior of England as his superior could be granted the pre-ceptory. He also objected to the payment of the vacancy monies of Torphi-chen through Clerkenwell and the past referral of legal disputes involvingthe Hospital in Scotland to England. The tone of outraged surprise at thediscovery of these practices, which were all of respectable antiquity, mayring hollow but ‘the spectre of English ecclesiastical overlordship’ had longbeen a source of irritation and worry to James, and the growing tensionbetween England and Scotland in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign turnedthe Torphichen affair into a matter of national pride.238 Although Paniterpromised to revive the order’s affairs in Scotland, his primary qualificationfor provision to Torphichen was his status as ‘an anti-English councillor ofJames IV’.239

None of the orders to the langue’s brethren enrolled in the order’s chan-cery registers mentions this case, which was contested chiefly at the Curia.Yet it is clear that at first the order worked with Henry VIII to secure theprovision of Dundas. Thomas Docwra supported Dundas’s expenses duringthe four years he spent in Rome,240 while Henry’s chief representative atRome, the Scot-hating cardinal Bainbridge, was instrumental in securing adefinitive sentence in Dundas’s favour in early 1513.241 Despite winning hiscase Dundas would probably have remained excluded from his preceptoryhad James IV not been killed at Flodden on 9 September 1513.242 Even so, itwas still several years before he could secure possession. For some monthsafter the battle Paniter continued to petition for the preceptory, with thesupport of James’s widow, Margaret Tudor. As the queen mother and theregent, the duke of Albany, jockeyed for position, Albany’s half-brother,Alexander Stewart, took over Torphichen’s temporalities,243 perhaps todeny Paniter the preceptor’s customary place in Parliament. With James no

237 LPFD, i, nos. 843, 1077–8; ii, nos. 87–9.238 LPFD, i, no. 1263; Macdougall, James IV, 209.239 Macdougall, James IV, 210.240 Scotland, l, 112–13.241 LPFD, i, nos. 1566, 2911; Macdougall, James IV, 263; D. S. Chambers, Cardinal Bain-

bridge in the Court of Rome 1509 to 1514 (Oxford, 1965), 75.242 Despite a tradition to the contrary, accepted by Macquarrie, Paniter was not slain

alongside his master. Scotland, p. xlix; Macdougall, James IV, 275243 Scotland, p. xlix.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 263

longer a threat, and his sister in need of his support, Henry VIII performed avolte-face and wrote to the pope supporting Margaret’s recommendationthat Paniter be provided.244 This cynical manoeuvre did nothing to shakethe regent’s ascendancy, however, and Stewart excluded both Paniter andDundas until 1517 or 1518, pleading the unacceptability of the latter’sEnglish links as a justification for his exclusion. Dundas was unable to payany responsions until 1October 1521, although he then paid for those of thefinancial years from 1518/19 to 1520/1.245 His arrears for the years he wasexcluded from the preceptory were not remitted until 1526.246

Although the dispute of 1510–18 illustrates the difficulties the ScottishHospitallers might face because of their membership of the English langueand allegiance to the prior of England, it is a considerable testament to theHospital’s attraction for successive Scots kings that these links had not beensevered long before and that, after 1518, they were restored.247 This is all themore remarkable given the general indifference to monasticism in Scotland,which found expression in the widespread appointment of unsuitable andunprofessed commendators, often connected with the royal house, to run themajor abbeys. This practice, while not unknown elsewhere, was particularlyrife in Scotland, especially after 1487, when James III had secured a papalindult which allowed the crown eightmonths to nominate a successor when avacancy occurred in any benefice or abbey valued atmore than 200 florins.248

Both Paniter and Stewart presumably made use of this provision, but what isstriking is that after 1518 it was not used again, all the men appointed toTorphichen thereafter having performed conventual service during whichthey secured the anticipation to the preceptory. In addition, both Dundasand his successor continued to send their responsions to Clerkenwell until thedissolutionof the order inEngland,while at least one Scot, James Irving,madehisway toMalta andwas received into theEnglish langue after the conversionof the order’s estates in Scotland into a hereditary barony in 1564.249

As in England, the reasons for continued royal support of the ordermust largely be conjectured. Scots kings, like other Christian monarchs,were committed to the defence of the Church, an obligation which incorp-orated crusading, and which led to demonstrations such as the dispatchof the hearts of Robert I and James I to the Holy Land,250 and the schemes

244 LPFD, ii, no. 90.245 Scotland, pp. xlix–l, 113–15.246 Ibid. 177–8.247 The Scottish attitude to ‘alien’ religious houses was much the same as the English. See R.

B. Dobson, ‘The Last EnglishMonks on Scottish Soil: The Severance of Coldingham Priory fromthe Monastery of Durham, 1461–78’ in id., Church and Society in the Medieval North ofEngland (London, 1996), 109–33.

248 J. Wormald,Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470–1625 (Edinburgh, 1981), 76–7,79–80.

249 Scotland, 190–1; Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades, 118–19.250 Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades, 75–9, 92–3.

264 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

for pilgrimage and crusade of James IV, on the planning and preparationof which he expended much time and effort.251 The literature of the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries also suggests, more clearly than in England, thatthe Hospital’s continued activity in the defence of Christendom strucka chord in Scots which appears also to have resonated with their kings.The Black Book of Taymouth celebrated the service at Rhodes of Sir ColinCampbell of Glenorchy, while a notice of Walter Lindsay’s service in theScots army in 1542 asserted that he had ‘fouchtin oft tymeis against theTurkis witht the lord of the Rodis’, who made him a knight for his ‘walleiandacts’ before he ‘seruit our king and had great credit witht him’.252 In1542 James V ordered his commander, the earl of Huntley, to do nothingwithout Lindsay’s advice, his confidence being well rewarded when Lindsaydefeated the English in the same August at Haddon Rig.253 Both Lindsayand James Sandilands were also referred to favourably in contemporaryballads.254 Given this relatively high profile, it is not entirely surprisingthat Scottish Hospitallers continued to serve their kings and have ‘greatcredit’ with them until the order was dissolved, not by order of the crown,but at the request of the last preceptor, a kind of Scottish Albert of Bran-denburg.

Neither the Scottish nor Irish Hospitallers made a particularly impres-sive contribution to the material or human resources of the Hospital’scentral convent. Nevertheless, the survival of the order in both countriessuggests that its brethren there had a role to play both in local affairs andin the order’s wider activities. The central convent might more profitablyhave sold its estates in Ireland and perhaps even Scotland, or have insteadsatisfied the stirrings of the Scots and Irish towards self-organizationwithout reference to England. But a reluctance to part with land and anawareness that its western houses were responsible for maintaining divineservice and hospitality held it back from doing the first, while pressurefrom the English-dominated langue and the manifest misgovernment of thepriory of Ireland caused it to retreat from the latter. Instead, urged on bythe langue, it upheld the links between Clerkenwell, Torphichen, andKilmainham. In doing so, it was assisted not merely by kings of England,who did little to prevent the organization of separate Irish provinces ofAugustinians and Dominican friars, but belatedly came to the realizationthat the Hospital should not be allowed to develop in the same way, butalso by kings of Scots, most of whom managed to restrain their ownirritation at this last survival of a Scottish house with ties to an Englishmother. Like the refusal of English monarchs to count the hospital as an

251 Ibid. 209–13.252 Ibid. 93–5, 117. Cf. G. Phillips, The Anglo-Scots Wars 1513–1550: A Military History

(Woodbridge, 1999), 46.253 Phillips, Anglo-Scots Wars, 46, 148.254 Calnan, ‘Some Notes’, 69.

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland 265

alien priory, the grudging cooperation of the two crowns on this issue issurely a demonstration of the Hospital’s assured place in the ordering ofChristendom, a place that could only be overturned after each crown hadbroken with Rome.

266 The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland

CHAPTER EIGHT

The English Langue in Rhodes,Italy, and Malta, c.1460–1540

Writing to Henry VIII in 1537, Clement West begged the king’s continuedprotection for the order, of which it was worthy because it was resisting theTurk.1 We have seen that some Hospitaller brethren, not least West himself,might be distracted from this duty both by their squabbles with each otherand by the requirements imposed by allegiance to their natural lords inBritain, while others, like James Keating, might avoid service altogether. Ithas also become apparent that the order’s attempts to exploit the resourcesof its western houses so that it could better defend Christendom might leadto friction with rulers who were often suspicious of their subjects’ exports ofcash, goods, and themselves to the Mediterranean. Yet if the supply of menand money from the priories of England and Ireland was never as reliable asthe convent would have liked, brethren from Britain and Ireland served therein significant numbers until 1540–1. Even thereafter subjects of the Tudorsand Stuarts occasionally came to Malta to join the English langue until wellinto the seventeenth century.2 The leading brethren of the langue played asignificant part in the order’s governing bodies, its chapter-general andcouncil, and were also likely to be appointed to conventual offices or toexecute conciliar commissions. But all the British-born brethren had a partto play in the life of the convent and in the island societies governed by theorder. They garrisoned its fortresses and served in its galleys, assisted theturcopolier in his supervision of the coastguard, and, despite the formalseparation of conventual collachium and secular borgo in Rhodes andMalta, lived cheek-by-jowl with the populations of both islands. In orderto understand their participation in both conventual and island life, it isnecessary to glance briefly at the administrative, geographical, social, andeconomic contexts in which these were carried on.

In 1460, with the exception of various lost properties in Latin Greece andCilician Armenia, the extent of the order’s possessions in the east wasessentially the same as it had been in c.1340.3 They comprised the

1 LPFD, xii, I, no. 207.2 See Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, chs. 4–7; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 209–28.3 Cos was not definitively conquered until c.1337. Luttrell, ‘Hospitallers at Rhodes’, 293.

Dodecanese islands of Rhodes, Cos (or Lango), Nisyros, Simi, Alimnia,Halki, Tilos, Kalimnos and Leros, the castle of St Peter on the Turkishmainland,4 large estates on Cyprus,5 and a few smaller properties in LatinGreece and Euboea. In 150 years, however, the order had not stood still, andif its territories were of similar extent they were more economically devel-oped and populous and far better defended than they had been under theByzantines.6 Besides Rhodes, the most important of the order’s possessionswere Cos and the castle of St Peter, both of which had considerable garrisons,but the entire Dodecanese was littered with fortifications of various sizes andsophistication.7 On Rhodes, the chief strongpoints were the town itself, andthe castles of Pheraclos, Lindos, Villanova, Monolithos, and Archangelos. Intimes of danger the inhabitants of neighbouring villages repaired to these forsafety.8 Considerable sums were spent on the fortification and provisioningof these structures, and of those on the other islands too.

The jewel in the crownwasRhodes itself, the seat of the order’s convent andfocus of its Europe-wide operations. Although not entirely self-sufficient, theisland was large and fertile enough to support a considerable part of itspopulation, and sustain a lively entrepot in Rhodes town, where trade wascarried on with much of the Mediterranean, most notably in local produce,sugar, spices, carpets, and slaves.9 The prosperity of Rhodes was supportedand ensured by the presence of the Hospitallers and the flow of responsionsfrom the west, which contributed far more of the order’s income than did itseastern possessions.10 The order provided employment for dockyard work-ers, sailors, soldiers, builders, and ancillary staff, while its fleet and fortifica-tions afforded a level of protection unknown elsewhere in the Aegean.

While their well-being was its constant concern, the order’s chief purposewas not to provide for the material prosperity of its subjects. As we haveseen, the Hospitallers had three primary functions—to perform divine ser-vice, to care for the sick poor, and to defend the people and faith of Christagainst the infidel. The organization of the convent reflected all these duties.Rhodes town itself was heavily fortified both on landward and seawardsides, a stone testament to the defence of the populace and the Christianfaith, and within its walls justice was dispensed, commerce regulated, divineservice upheld, and both sick and poor assisted.11 Moreover, the order’s

4 The smaller islands, the castle of St Peter, and the state of their defences in 1522 aredescribed in Vatin, L’Ordre, 17–22.

5 A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers in Cyprus after 1291’,Hospitallers in Cyprus, art. ii, 161–71.

6 The economy of the Dodecanese under the order is described in Vatin, L’Ordre, 57–62. Seealso A. T. Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes, 1306–66’, Mediterranean World, art. v, 273–81.

7 Details and illustrations in Spiteri, Fortresses of the Knights, 23–48, 105–218.8 AOM74, fo. 63r–v; Vatin, L’Ordre, 16.9 Vatin, L’Ordre, 57–62.

10 Luttrell, ‘Malta and Rhodes’, 272.11 AOM396, fos. 194r et seq; Torr, Rhodes, 53–4.

268 The English Langue

chief conventual buildings each reflected one of its chief purposes, theconventual church signifying its continued determination to render duepraise to God, the Infirmary providing care for ‘our lords the sick’, and themagistral palace, built into the city walls, serving as the administrative andmilitary headquarters of the struggle against the infidel. Although the Reli-gion’s conventual brethren were mostly of military nature, and served ac-cordingly, its other functions were neither forgotten nor neglected.

By 1462 Hospitaller administrative structure had largely assumed theform it was to keep until well after the suppression of the order in Scotland.At the top was the master of the order, who, although he ruled through itscouncil, had wide prerogatives both on Rhodes and in the west. Rhodes andits profits were reserved to the master, who thus controlled a considerablereservoir of largesse to dispense to brethren in the form of administrativeposts, estates, and rents.12 He controlled the movement of brethren to andfrom headquarters, and appointed to both the magistral camerae and topreceptories in each priory every five years. As a result, the order’s councilswere often dominated by brethren who owed some form of preferment topast or present masters. Moreover, most masters in the period covered bythis study were granted the administration of the order’s treasury13 and theconsequent right to appoint to a wide range of conventual offices14 bysuccessive chapters-general, concentrating even more power in their hands.The master and his household resided in his palace inside the collachium, thewalled conventual enclosure comprising the northern portion of Rhodestown. The palace also served as the usual seat of the order’s council,chapters-general, and chancery, and as the repository of its treasury andrecords.15

The conventual brethren, whose number increased from about 250 to 550or more between 1446 and 1522,16 were divided into langues to which theywere allotted according to birthplace.17 These were, in order of precedence:Provence, Auvergne, France, Spain (Aragon-Catalonia-Navarre after 1462),Italy, England, Germany, and Castile-Portugal, the last being created in 1462when the Spanish langue was divided by chapter. The langues, or ‘nations’,dominated the activities of their members. When a brother arrived in

12 Luttrell, ‘Settlement’, 274.13 As previously noted, fifteenth-century masters were habitually granted the governance of

the common treasury from at least 1429. See above, 82 and n.14 These were specified in the chapter-general of 1454 as the bailiwick of merchants, the

castellany of Rhodes, the islands of Lango (Cos) and Nisyros, and the grand commandery ofCyprus. The master was given power to hold them or confer them for life as he saw fit, a grantrepeated in 1467. AOM282, fos. 12v–15r; 283, fo. 35v.

15 AOM395, fo. 142r; 74, fo. 75r; 282, fo. 99r; 74, fo. 107v; A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers’Historical Activities: 1400–1530’, Latin Greece, art. ii, 145–50, at 147.

16 See below, Table 8.1.17 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 283–4; Tipton, ‘Montpellier’, 294–6; J. Sarnowsky, ‘Der

Konvent auf Rhodos und die Zungen’, 44–6.

The English Langue 269

convent, he presented the documents authenticating his reception into theorder to the langue, which voted whether to accept him or not. Duringhis conventual service he lived, ate, and worshipped along with othersof his nation, prayed in the langue’s chapel,18 and manned the post ofthe langue on the city walls in times of emergency. Even while on ‘cara-van’—mandatory military service at sea or in the castles of St Peter andCos—a brother usually lived with other members of his ‘nation’.19 Thelangue also decided if a brother had fulfilled the requirements to be granteda preceptory in the west or not, and determined whether the ‘meliorments’brethren had made to their commanderies were of sufficient quality to merittheir promotion to another house.20 Although the grant of preceptories bymagistral and prioral grace, the retention of brethren in the master’s service,and the right of brethren to appeal to the order’s council to overturn thelangues’ decisions somewhat mitigated the dependence of the conventualbrethren on them, their importance to their lives and careers is unquestion-able.

The langues were also central to the order’s administrative organization.Its council ordinary was composed of the master, the pilier of each langue,those priors and other capitular bailiffs who were in convent, the order’svice-chancellor, and sometimes magistral and treasury officials, while twofurther representatives of each langue sat on the council complete.21 Two ofthe sixteen ‘capitulars’ who framed the order’s statutes at chapters-generalwere also chosen from among each langue.22 The order’s chief officers andamong its highest-ranking dignitaries were the conventual bailiffs, the eight(after 1462) piliers of the langues. These were elected from among the mostsenior brethren in the langue by the order’s council and each was theoretic-ally responsible for one area of conventual activity, although in practice agreat deal of business was done by appointees of the master or council ratherthan the appropriate conventual bailiff or his subordinates. Thus, while theadmiral, the pilier of Italy, was nominally in charge of the order’s fleet, inpractice captains were appointed from every ‘nation’ represented at theconvent to command the galley tours, including the English. When a non-Italian was chosen the langue merely contented itself with a formal protest

18 The langue of Italy had a chapel and chaplain in its auberge in 1441. Fiorini and Luttrell,‘Italian Hospitallers’, 211, 225.

19 See below, Ch. 8.3.20 BDVTE, passim.21 Gabarretta and Mizzi’s contention that the council ordinary comprised merely the master

and two elected members of each langue, and that capitular bailiffs only sat on the councilcomplete is rendered untenable by examination of the council registers, which regularly listattendees. In fact the master, the conventual bailiffs or their lieutenants, and those capitularbailiffs in convent attended meetings of both councils, while two representatives of each languesat on the council complete in addition. Catalogue of the Records, ed. Gabarretta and Mizzi,vol. ii, Part I, Archives 73–83 (Valletta, 1970), 3; e.g. AOM73, fos. 13v, 52v; 74, fos. 20v, 56r,132r–133v, 145v; 75, fos. 14v, 18v, 23v–24r, 50r, 107r, 153v; 80, fo. 29r–v.

22 AOM282–7, passim.

270 The English Langue

that this should not be to its prejudice.23 In addition to their responsibilityfor one area of conventual business, and their automatic seat on councils andchapters-general, piliers were also responsible for running their nationalauberges, presiding over the meetings of the langue held there, and ensuringthat their younger brethren followed regulations.24 In return for their dutiesthey received a salary25 and a chamber of their own in the auberge.26

Below conventual bailiffs were ranked successively those priors, capitularbailiffs, and preceptors resident in convent and, finally, conventual brethren.Priors and capitular bailiffs, whose dignities, with the exception of thepreceptory of Cyprus, were essentially western,27 were not allocated specificduties pertaining to their office, but were nevertheless kept busy at head-quarters, to which they were theoretically summoned in rotation,28 andwhere they had a number of privileges and responsibilities.29 They sat, forinstance, on meetings of the council and of chapters general and werefrequently appointed to ad hoc commissions and fixed-term posts such asthe captaincy of St Peter. Senior brethren also enjoyed certain privilegesdenied to their juniors.30

Unbeneficed conventual brethren probably outnumbered their seniors bythree or four to one.31 They were overwhelmingly, and almost exclusively inthe langue of England, professed knights, received into the order by thechapters of their home provinces and dispatched to the convent.32 Within

23 See e.g. AOM83, fo. 37v; 84, fo. 41v.24 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 89.25 The stipend of conventual bailiffs was reduced from 300 to 200 florins of Rhodes by the

chapter-general of 1466–7, and remained at that level thereafter. In their absence their lieuten-ants were to receive 100 florins. AOM283, fo. 35r.

26 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 250; BDVTE, 20.27 After 1470 the bailiwicks of Negroponte and the Morea were essentially titular.28 In 1466/7 it was ordained that at least three priors should be present in convent at any one

time. They were to be summoned in rotation and priors were to remain at headquarters for atleast two years after their arrival. In practice, however, it was usually only French, Italian, andAragonese priors who visited the convent regularly thereafter. AOM283, fo. 38v.

29 Summoning John Rawson senior to Rhodes in 1516, the grand master, Fabrizio delCarretto, explained that the order’s statutes required that each prior had a duty to reside inconvent ‘for some years’ after the adoption of their dignity, ‘ut tamquam vir consiliarius et unusex proceribus religionis nostre magistro assistat consulturus super statu ordinis et rebus occur-rentibus’. Rawson was also to come armed and with a fit company, a usual requirement.Claudius E.vi, fo. 187r–v; AOM404, fo. 148r–v.

30 The chapter-general of 1466–7, for example, ruled that only priors and bailiffs were to bepermitted to ride mules, a privilege extended to indisposed brethren over 50 in 1475 andconfirmed in 1504, while in the last chapter before the fall of Rhodes it was ordained thatbrethren who had been received more than twenty years hence and had performed ten years’service in convent should not have to serve in the order’s galleys. AOM283, fos. 38r, 139r–v; 284,fo. 77r; 286, fo. 15v.

31 In 1522 a census of conventual brethren excluding preceptors and grand crosses (bailiffsand priors) produced a total of 311. Up to 150 more brethren, mostly conventual knights, mayhave been at Bodrum and Cos or on the guard galley, while the total number of brethren in theeast was probably between 550 and 600. Sire, Knights of Malta, 36; below.

32 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, no. xvi (Statute of Fluvia).

The English Langue 271

two years of arrival they were to pay their ‘passage’ money and to produceproofs of their nobility authenticated by provincial chapter.33 In returnthe order provided small stipends, the soldea and tabula, to pay fortheir upkeep.34 After 1467 the soldea was paid in cloth to most of thebrethren and officers eligible for it.35 A brother was expected to remainat the convent for at least three years,36 and perform military servicebefore he was eligible for the grant of a western commandery. His senioritywas measured from the day of his reception in convent rather thanthat which had taken place in provincial chapter. Although some knightsbroke up their conventual service by returning home for a while, mostremained in convent until granted a commandery, which might take ten ormore years.37

Brethren served in the order’s fortifications, galleys, and hospital andin various other capacities. Promising ones, even if quite junior, wereoften retained among the master’s socii and subsequently appointedto offices or commissions by the order’s council. Effectively there wasa ‘fast track’ for such men, who could expect to be granted a comman-dery of grace or the farm of a magistral camera, often before they hadreceived provision from the langue. Even those not so favoured, however,might be appointed to offices in the gift of the master or council, andserve as proctors and auditors of their langues. Always aware of the over-riding importance of western resources to its functioning, the order wasas keen to encourage the development of administrative skills as it wasmilitary.

While they were in convent, the behaviour of brethren was laid down insome detail. Although the order managed to secure papal dispensation fromits Rule in the 1470s,38 large portions of the Rule, the Usances, and theEsgarts, as well as a mass of statutes of varying vintage, were incorporatedinto the recodified statutes drawn up in 1489, and added to thereafter.39 Thisbody of legislation established strict codes of conduct for the brethren atheadquarters. Their worship, military service and combat training,40

33 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, no. xx (Statute of d’Aubusson).34 The 1504 chapter-general laid down that each brother was to have 100 florins per annum

to cover his soldea, tabula, and apodicia servitoris, and to provide hay for his horse. AOM284,fo. 72v.

35 AOM283, fos. 39r, 89r–v, 185r; 284, fos. 24r, 145r; 285, fo. 12v.36 Statute of Helion de Villeneuve (1319–41), cited in Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 27, n.

52. This measure was repeated in 1410. AOM1649, fo. 265v; Delaville, Rhodes, 318.37 Claudius E.vi, fos. 156r, 174r, 206r; See above, Ch. 2.2.38 Brethren were sent to Rome to secure this in 1475 and 1478. The resulting permission is

enrolled in the recodified statutes drawn up in 1489 and given papal approval in 1492.AOM283, fos. 120r, 168v–169r; Stabilimenta, ‘Prohemium in volumen stabilimentorum’ and‘Exordium in Stabilimenta’.

39 AOM76, fo. 124r; Stabilimenta. The recodification is discussed in Sarnowsky, Macht undHerrschaft, 37–42.

40 AOM1649, fos. 331v–332r; Stabilimenta, ‘De fratribus’, no. xlvi (Statute of 1433).

272 The English Langue

dress,41 movements,42 and means of transport43 were regulated. They wereforbidden to blaspheme,44 play cards or dice,45 engage in trade or usury,46

wound seculars, and insult or assault each other, and were enjoined topoverty, chastity, obedience, and modest conversation.47 Although in prac-tice some of these requirements, especially that of poverty, were bypassed,other lapses came before the order’s council continually, and were punishedin various ways.

It is very difficult to assess the actual quality of the communal, conventuallife of the order’s brethren from its statutes, since these clearly representedideals of behaviour. However, the Libri Conciliorum and Libri Bullarum,and other sources such as pilgrim accounts illuminate certain aspectsof conventual life in practice. While they tell us little about such mattersas the living conditions, personal piety, and intellectual interests of thebrethren, and their day-to-day relationship with each other, they demon-strate that if conventual life was heavily regimented it was nonethelesspermissive of a wide variety of experience and activity. The knights mightlive with members of their own ‘nation’ inside a walled enclosure in a smalltown on the very edge of Latin Christendom, but their isolation was far fromcomplete. Members of one langue had many opportunities to mix with theirfellows in the others, being thrown together by communal worship andceremonial, shared military service, conventual commissions or offices,and a great variety of less formal intercourse. Moreover, while the colla-chium was theoretically reserved for the order’s brethren, in practice numer-ous slaves and servants resided within its walls, and the cosmopolitanresidents of Rhodes town, visiting merchants and pilgrims, and the Hospi-tallers themselves came and went freely during the day. Some Rhodiots, bothGreeks and Latins, even owned property within the conventual enclosure48

while brethren too might own ships, houses, and land, and lend or otherwisedispose of property while they were alive. The associations they built up inthe convent were often strong enough to endure after their return home. Theparticular experiences of the brethren of the English langue are discussedbelow.

41 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 255–7; Delaville, Rhodes, 167; AOM1649, fos. 227v–228r, 271v, 374v–375r; 284, fo. 28v.

42 A curfew had been imposed on brethren in 1466/7 and in 1501 it was ordered that thosebreaching it were to suffer the quarantaine. In 1504 brethren were forbidden to frequent tavernswhere wine was sold or to make a ‘king of St Martin’s night’ in the lobia. AOM283, fos. 37v–38r; 284, fos. 29r, 77v, 78v.

43 See above, n. 30.44 AOM284, fos. 28v–29r.45 Ibid., fos. 82v–83r.46 Delaville, Rhodes, 168; AOM1649, fo. 312r–v; 283, fo. 167v.47 AOM1649, fo. 333r; 284, fo. 29r.48 Luttrell, ‘Malta and Rhodes’, 268.

The English Langue 273

8.1 The Conventual Brethren, Auberge, and Langue of England

English and Irish members of the languewere usually received into the orderat the provincial chapters of their respective priories, while Scots seem tohave been received in both Scotland and England. Brothers received simul-taneously were known as filii arnaldi and usually agreed to hold the sameseniority should they reach the convent within a certain time of each otherand prove their nobility to the satisfaction of the langue.49 They then set offfor headquarters. Travel to the convent was expensive, potentially danger-ous, and sometimes daunting. Although many newly professed brethren, likethose conducted to Italy by WilliamWeston in 1524, must have left home ingroups under the tutelage of senior brethren soon after their reception, asignificant number arrived at headquarters later or not at all. Of a group offifteen received at a provincial chapter held in England in 1528 on conditionthat they reach the convent within six months of the first of their number todo so if they wished to enjoy the same seniority, seven were received into theEnglish langue in late July, while another five had appeared within sixmonths of these.50 The remaining three—Hugh Croft, Roger Chingleton,and John Cheyney—seem never to have reached headquarters at all. Similarreluctance was displayed by William Alterward, who failed to arrive fromEngland in 1532 or thereafter51 and in 1500 by Richard Passemer and JohnRussell, who remained in Venice for months despite having numerous op-portunities to take passage to Rhodes, even breaking an express compactthey had made to travel there on a Hospitaller vessel.52 Although mostbrethren received in England must have reached the convent eventually,for there are no other such complaints, the journey was a long and poten-tially dangerous one. Most English brethren seem to have travelled toRhodes via Venice,53 which they may have reached overland from Calaisor the Low Countries.54 The journals of Vincenzo and Lorenzo Priuli

49 e.g. BDVTE, 44–5.50 BDVTE, 44–5, 67, 44, 13; AOM85, fo. 45v.51 BDVTE, 46–7.52 AOM78, fo. 147r; see above, 49.53 English Hospitallers occur in Venice on their way to and from Rhodes in 1485, 1501,

1505–6, 1508, 1510, and 1513. Furthermore, John Malory, given licence to leave Rhodes inDecember 1469, was granted express permission to return again on the Venetian galleys whichmade regular journeys from London and Bruges to Beirut, although these were not necessarilyvia Venice. CSPV, i, no. 493; AOM78, fo. 147r; CSPV, i, no. 912; ii, nos. 64, 285–6, 289, 298,305; AOM384, fo. 28r.

54 An Itinerary to Rhodes bound upwith papers relating to the priory of England in the 1380sgives a route from Bruges to Venice and thence to Rhodes, while John Radyngton, prior ofEngland, travelled from Dover to Calais and thence through the territories of Charles VI ofFrance on his way to Rhodes in 1386. Colker, Descriptive Catalogue, citing Trinity College,DublinMS 500, 2, 3. Thomas Newport and Thomas Sheffield probably travelled overland fromTournai or Calais to Venice in 1513, having served on Henry VIII’s campaign in the same year;William Weston travelled to Viterbo via Antwerp in 1524. LPFD, i, no. 1836 (3); iv, no. 590.

274 The English Langue

preserved in Venice show Vincenzo drawing up bills of exchange in Londonfor Hospitaller brethren who then cashed them at the family bank in Ven-ice.55 The conventual knights Charles Lyster, William Haseldon, and JamesGreen cashed bills for the equivalent of £20 each in Venice in 1505–6 and afurther brother, Geoffrey Militon, one for £12, while Thomas Newport,Lancelot Docwra, and the receiver of the priory of Venice, Andrea Martini,drew rather larger sums, probably representing responsions rather thanmerely passage money.56 Newport’s travel from England to Rhodes in1505–6 can be traced in detail. He let his preceptories to farm in late June1505, reached Venice by 16 September, and remained there until at least 19January 1506, when he cashed a bill of exchange drawn up for him inDecember by Vincenzo Priuli. Newport then departed the Lagoon on avessel captained by Vincenzo Tiepolo, and was responsible for the safearrival in Rhodes, which he had reached by 6 May, of a hundred loads ofsteel belonging to another Venetian.57 The order’s English responsions hadfrequently been submitted by means of letters of exchange payable in Venicein the past, and it was natural that the bearers of these should be brethren ontheir way to headquarters.58

While the route outlined above may have been the most common way toRhodes, it was not taken by all brethren. This was, indeed, not alwayspossible. In 1480 and 1522 the Venetians forbade their subjects from landingat Rhodes for fear of upsetting the Turks and there were other occasionswhen Venetian captains refused to go near Rhodes lest they encounterTurkish forces.59 Some Hospitallers visited Rome on their way to headquar-ters and once there it was easier to take passage from the kingdom of Naplesthan to return north. John Weston’s party probably did this in 1481–2 andRobert Pemberton, who arrived in Rhodes in August 1498, had come byway of Rome, having been robbed on the way.60 Others perhaps reached theAegean on the vessels of English merchants like William Gonson, EdwardWater, and John Gresham, who carried on a ‘usual trade’ to Sicily, Crete,Chios, and sometimes to Muslim territories between 1511 and 1534.61 It is

55 Mueller, Venetian Money Market, 346–8.56 Ibid. 347.57 Claudius E.vi, fos. 25r–27v; Mueller, Venetian Money Market, 347; AOM397, fo. 223r.58 See above, Ch. 3.2.59 L. L. G. Polak, ‘French Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Fifteenth Century’, MA thesis

(London, 1954), 79–80; R. Torkington, Ye Oldest Diarie of Englysshe Travell, ed. W. J. Loftie(London, 1884), 21–2; LPFD, iii, no. 2840.

60 See above, Ch. 5.2; AOM78, fo. 90v. It had been reported from Rome in the same July thatan English Hospitaller carrying a great deal of money had been robbed and killed along with hiscompany near Viterbo. It seems likely that the victim was Thomas Plumpton, the commander ofCarbrooke, news of whose death had reached Rhodes by September, and that Pemberton hadbeen travelling with him. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Existing in the Archivesand Collections of Milan 1385–1618 (London, 1912), no. 575; AOM78, fo. 93r–v.

61 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, v. 62–4, 68–9. English merchants trading in Chios arenoted in contemporary records in 1514, 1519, 1521, and 1522. P. Argenti, The Occupation ofChios by the Genoese, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1958), iii. 838, 866, 876, 882.

The English Langue 275

conceivable that Gonson or one of his captains delivered his son David toMalta or Sicily so that he could be received into the order in 1533.62

Travel to the convent after the fall of Rhodes may have been quicker, but,given the disturbed state of Italy in the 1520s, was possibly more dangeroustoo. The order’s various residences in Italy and Provence were presumablyreached overland, but after the move to Malta it is possible that brethrenused the established sea route to Sicily, where there had been an Englishmercantile presence since 1463.63 One such trader, James Grantham, wasinvolved in financial dealings with the order in the 1530s and may have beenrelated to the Hospitaller Christopher Grantham,64 while Clement Westwaited in vain for Giles Russell’s cousin Anthony at Messina on his way toMalta in December 1532, having sailed from Southampton to Calais, Ali-cante, Seville, and Sicily in turn.65 John Story, who carried letters back andforth between Clement West and Thomas Cromwell during the 1530s, alsopassed throughMessina.66 Other English brethren, however, are to be foundin Genoa, the Low Countries, and France during the same period, sometimesperforming errands for the order while returning home overland.67

Although references to English brethren in transit between Rhodesand England are few, travel home must often have been more difficult thanthe outward journey, especially in winter. The experience of Richard Tor-kington, an English chaplain taken ill at Rhodes on his way home fromJerusalem in 1517, provides an illustration of the difficulties involved.Torkington took passage on a Rhodiot vessel on which there were nineHospitaller knights on 12 November 1517 and suffered an extraordinarilyunpleasant and protracted voyage through the equinoctial gales, not reach-ing Cephalonia until 7 January and remaining there until the 31st. The shipthen tried to go up the Adriatic but was thrice driven back to Corfu bycontrary winds, finally leaving only on 5 March and reaching the Calabriancoast three days later. From there Torkington and at least some of the ship’scompany rode to Reggio, took ship to Messina, returned to Calabria, androde up to Rome.68 The storms through which they had passed had been sosevere that at several times during the journey both crew and passengers hadbeen afraid that their vessel would sink or be driven ashore on Turkishterritory.69

On arrival in convent a probationary brother appeared before the languewith his proofs or a promise to produce them within the requisite term, and

62 BDVTE, 3.63 A. P. Vella, ‘A Sixteenth Century Elizabethan Merchant in Malta’, MH 6/3 (1970),

197–238, at 197.64 PRO SP2/Q fo. 135b; LPFD, vii, no. 1346.65 LPFD, v, no. 1626.66 LPFD, vii, no. 326.67 LPFD, x, nos. 882, 900, 905; xiii, I, no. 448; xiv, II, no. 373; AOM54, fo. 293r.68 Torkington, Ye Oldest Diarie, 58–67.69 Ibid. 59–62.

276 The English Langue

was then admitted.70 Reservations of equal seniority for brethren who hadnot yet arrived were made at the same time. The probationary knight thenpaid small sums for his ‘passage and dinners’ to the auberge, although oftennot for several months after his reception, and was presumably fed there inreturn.71 His soldea and tabula were fixed at 50 or 60 and 20 florins ofRhodes per annum respectively, and were paid by the order’s common treas-ury.72 Presumably because of the difficulty of exporting money from Englandand the fact that English brethren sometimes brought cloth with them toheadquarters in lieu of responsions, they were paid in cash rather than cloth,unlike the brethren of other langues.73 Preceptors or bailiffs coming toconvent did not receive the soldea, being expected to support themselvesfrom the fruits of their preceptories.74 Although brethren were expected tosecure the licence of their provincial superior before coming to convent, it isunlikely that this was often refused,75 and judging by the evidence of theorder’s lease books, they were usually conscientious in setting off as soon asthey learned they had been summoned. Ad hoc assemblies of brethren wereoften held solely so that preceptors on their way to the east could lease themquickly rather than have to wait for the annual provincial chapter to do so.76

To support the expense of the journey to and residence in convent, preceptorswere permitted to farm their estates for up to three years and to receive thefirst two years’ payments in advance.77 After the fall of Rhodes, a number oflicences for leases of one or two years were granted, reflecting the reducedjourney time from England.78 Similarly, after 1522 those summoned toconvent were allowed six months to get there rather than nine.79

Evidence for the total number of brethren at headquarters, and for thenumerical strength of the English langue comes mainly from two sources,statutes laying down the theoretical strength of the order’s establishment inthe east, and censuses of brethren present at magistral elections. Both haveimperfections. The statutory figures represent an ideal which balanced whatthe order could afford with what was thought necessary for the defence of itspossessions, and may have no more than an approximate relationship to

70 BDVTE, 3, 20–1, 23–4, 26–30, 41–2, 44–8, 65, 71, 77.71 Payments in BDVTE, 66–8.72 AOM283, fos. 39r, 89r–v, 145r, 185r; 284, fos. 24r, 35r.73 AOM283, fos. 35r, 185r; 284, fo. 24r.74 AOM284, fo. 28r.75 I have only found one instance of a lease being cancelled because the preceptor had to stay

in the west. This was in 1513, when a licence granted to Lancelot Docwra to proceed to Rhodesin accordance with a magistral bull of February 1510was cancelled because the prior appointedhim his lieutenant while he went to France with the king. Claudius E.vi, fo. 98r.

76 Ibid., fos. 3r, 6r, 6v, 81v, 97r, 112v, 156r, 156v.77 Preceptors who remained longer than three years in convent and those retained in the

order’s service rather than allowed to go home were granted further licences to farm their estatesas the need arose, although never for more than three years at a time.

78 e.g AOM412. fos. 190v–191r.79 AOM415, fos. 163v–164r, 167v–168r; 416, fo. 154r.

The English Langue 277

actual numbers, but they do at least represent a working total of all thebrethren in the convent and on caravan. By contrast, the totals of thosepresent at magistral elections probably do not include brethren serving oncaravan, and may not even include those who held military posts on theorder’s islands, but they nevertheless provide ‘snapshots’ of the actual num-ber of brethren resident in the order’s capitals at various times in its devel-opment, as can be seen from Table 8.1.

It is interesting that despite the modesty of the numerical contribution laiddown for the English langue, in practice it proved impossible to fulfil. Al-though the number of brethren present at magistral elections was usuallybelow the statutory requirement the proportion of ‘Englishmen’ was evenlower than that envisaged in legislation, at between 4 and 6 per cent ratherthan 7 or 8 per cent. Only in 1513, when a large company was sent fromEngland in response to the invasion scare of January, was the ‘English’contingent at full strength. The figures may hide brothers who were oncaravan or on other service in the east, but these would probably not addmore than about six to the total.80 After 1523 the survival of the langue’sminute book allows us to trace almost exactly which brethren were inconvent and which absent at any one time, something only possible withpreceptors before.Many of itsmeetings list those present, and if these lists arecompared carefullywith the records of knights going on caravan, they allowamore accurate assessment of the size of the ‘English’ contingent than ispossible before. Judging by the figures given below, the langue seems tohave been understandably short of manpower after the siege of 1522, butafter its reinforcement by fourteen probationary knights in 1524, twelve in1528, and a trickle of ones and twos in other years, numbers hovered betweenabout 15 and 22 between 1524 and 1533, before falling back somewhat laterin the decade.81 It is noticeable that many of the probationary knightsdisappear from view after two or three years of service and do not resurfacein the records thereafter.

The number of Scots and Irish knights in convent was very small. As wehave seen, the Irish brethren often acted without much reference to thedictates of the convent, or, on occasion, of their prior. Very few came toheadquarters to perform conventual service, probably because there waslittle chance of reward at the end of it, especially after 1494. Only five Irishknights certainly appear in the order’s records in this context between 1460and 1560: James Keating, who was at headquarters in 1459, 1461, and atthe Rome chapter-general of 1466–7; John Feguillem (Fitzwilliam?) between1465 and 1467; Edmund Seys, between 1512 and 1514; and NicholasPlunket and John Fitzgerald in 1527.82 Others summoned included five

80 See Table 8.2.81 For receptions of brethren see BDVTE, 3, 20–1, 23–4, 26–30, 41–2, 44–8, 65, 71, 77.82 AOM282, fo. 53v; 371, fos. 142v–143r, 144r–v; 283, fo. 5v; 375, fo. 102r; 377, fo. 141r; 81,

fos. 195v, 205r–206r, 207v; 82, fos. 24r–v, 25v–26r, 73v–74r, 128r; 412, fo. 201v.

278 The English Langue

Table 8.1. Numbers of brethren in convent, 1445–1536a

Date Total brethren English langue Source

1445 n/a 10 þ 3 absent Meeting of langue1446 250 pro rata Statuteb

1449 n/a 16 þ 3 absent Meeting of langue1459 335 Unspecified Statutec

1461 (Aug.) 286 13 Election1463 (July) n/a 13 Meeting of langue1467 350 28 Statuted

1471 450 28þ Statutee

1475 450 28þ Statutef

1476 (June) 259 14 Election1501, 1504, 1510 400 Unspecified Statutes15101503 (July) 377 19 Electiong

1508 (Aug.) 23 List of Englishbrethren in Rhodes

1512 (Nov.) 410 (368) (16) Electionh

1513 (Dec.) 551 38 Election1514 550 Unspecified Statutei

1522 (June) 311 11 Incomplete Censusj

1535 (Nov.) 300 Unspecified Election1536 (Dec.) c.360 Unspecified Election

a Sources: AOM356, fo. 142r (1445); 1649, fo. 560v (1446); 361, fo. 241v (1449); 282, fos. 76r

et seq. (1459), 140r (1461); 374, fo. 139r–v (1463); 282, fo. 39r–v (1467); 283, fos. 88v (1471),

144r (1475); 75, fos. 122v–123r (1476); 284, fo. 69v (1501–10); 80, fos. 30v–31r (1503);

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1137, fo. 113r (1508); AOM82, fos. 38v–39v (1512); 402, fo.103v (1513); 285, fo. 2r (1514); Bosio,Dell’ Istoria, ii. 641–3 (1522); AOM86, fos. 18r (1535),

47r–v (1536). cf. Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 511.b This statute was never ratified.c Of the 335, thirty were to be chaplains.d Thirty of the brethren were to be chaplains and twenty sergeants, although the ‘English’

contingent was to be made up entirely of knights.e One hundred brethren were to be added to the contingent laid down in 1467.f The statute of 1471 was confirmed, but it was established that the extra hundred brethrenwere all to be knights, and were to be drawn from among the langues ‘pro rata et portione

cuiuslibet’. Numbers of chaplains and sergeants were to remain at the level laid down in 1467.g The document declares that 387 brethren were present, but gives totals for the langues which

add up to 377.h The total of brethren at the convent is given as 410, but I make the sum of totals given for the

langues to be 368. Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 511, gives 383.i This chapter added 150 brethren to the complement laid down in 1504.j A roll-call of conventual knights and sergeants only. Bailiffs, preceptors, and brethren not in

Rhodes are excluded from the figures. Sire, Knights of Malta, 36.

The English Langue 279

named preceptors in 1516 and Seys and Fitzmaurice in 1517.83 AlthoughKeating certainly did well out of his conventual service, Feguillem disap-pears from view after licensed to leave Rhodes in 1467, Seys was denied

Table 8.2. The numerical strength of the langue, 1523–1537

Date Present at meeting On caravan

10 July 1523 11 None?14 Aug. 1523 9 None?23 Mar. 1524 8 Unknown10 Apr. 1525 14 Unknown26 Aug. 1525 12 Unknown21 Aug. 1526 11 Unknown13 Jan. 1527 14 Unknown14 Feb. 1528(–9?) 9 Unknown16 Oct. 1528 14 Unknown19 Feb. 1529 13a Unknown4 Nov. 1529 16 6b

16 June 1530 12 3?7 Dec. 1530 7 5?c

25 Feb. 1531(–2?) 14/154 Mar. 1531(–2?) 1413 July 1531 13 24 Aug. 1531 15 212 Feb. 1532 9 3?8 Apr. 1532 14 5 (caravan of 1 Mar. 1532)28 Jan. 1533 18 0 or 1?d

18 Apr. 1533 10 6 (caravan of 1 Apr. 1533)20 Oct. 1533 11 6 (caravan of 1 Apr. 1533)13 Apr. 1534 7 4 (caravan of 24 Mar. 1534)1 Feb. 1535 7 3 (caravan of 29 Aug. 1534)29 May 1535 13 08 Mar. 1536 10 3 (caravan of 24 Jan. 1536)14 July 1536 14 08 Mar. 1537 12 3 (caravan of 11 Oct. 1536)e

a For meetings referred to between 1523 and February 1529, see BDVTE, 4–11, 44, 13.b Although their service was not due to begin until 9 March 1530, none of the six knights who

had promised to make their caravans on 24 October 1529 were present at this meeting.

BDVTE, 25, 11.c Of seven knights who undertook to make caravans on 9 March, four were present at themeeting of 16 June, but only two on 7 December. BDVTE, 17, 14–16, 12.d Of six knights named to the last caravan in March 1532, five were at this meeting. The last,

John Marshall, is never heard of again and may have been killed during the heavy fighting the

order was involved in in 1532. BDVTE, 65, 18.e Meetings and caravans from 18 April 1533 in BDVTE, 4, 3, 23–4, 26–9, 23–6, 35.

83 AOM404, fos. 147v–148r; 405, fos. 132r–133v, 134v.

280 The English Langue

advancement, and Plunket and Fitzgerald probably came to Viterbo for avery brief visit to receive grants of their preceptories.84 The order’s Scottishbrethren did not see much conventual service either. Chiefly this was becausethere was only one commandery available to them, and although conventualservice was sometimes necessary to secure it, once the goal was achievedthere was little incentive to return. Given the often troubled state of Scottishaffairs and the frequent need to defend the order’s possessions there, it wasneither in the commander’s nor the order’s interest for him to do so. Theattempts of Scottish brethren to secure English commanderies were con-stantly frustrated by the langue, which would only appoint them to Torphi-chen.85 Thus, although a number of Scottish brethren performed conventualservice in the century after 1460, most left once they had obtained approvalof their ancienitas or better still expectancy to or an outright grant ofTorphichen.86 The only exceptions were Patrick Scougal, who served atthe convent over a period of at least sixteen years on and off, and mayhave fought at the siege of 1480, and John Chamber or Chalmers, who hadfought as a secular at the siege of 1522, and remained in convent until atleast 1533, supported initially by the convent and later by a pension fromWalter Lindsay.87 To these should be added other unprofessed volunteers ormercenaries.88 Soldiers and servants from Britain and Ireland may indeedhave outnumbered their professed compatriots in convent. The retinues thatpriors were licensed to take to Rhodes were often considerable, and whenthe English government licensed Hospitallers to leave the realm in the mid-1530s junior preceptors were allowed three servants apiece, and conventualknights one.89

Although on both Rhodes and Malta many brethren must have owned orrented rooms or houses, and it is likely that only some conventual knights, aswell as a single donat90 and perhaps slaves91 lived in the auberge of England,the building was still the focus of the communal life of the langue. OnRhodes it has been identified with a modestly sized and heavily restorededifice sited towards the seaward defences of the collachium very close to the

84 See above, Ch. 7.85 Scotland, ‘Calendar of Maltese Materials’, nos. 49–51, 69–70, 90, 100, 133.86 Ibid., nos. 39–40, 42–4, 55, 72–3, 97–8.87 AOM372, fo. 142v; 380, fo. 137v; Scotland, ‘Calendar of Maltese Materials’, nos. 45–6,

48–9, 51, 69–70, 74–5, 82; AOM84, fo. 74r–v; 411, fo. 158r–v.88 Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades, 93–5; Scotland, pp. 62–4 and ‘Calendar of

Maltese Materials’, no. 36; AOM75, fo. 79r; 78, fo. 142r–v; 79, fo. 11v; 382, fos. 138r–v, 235r;387, fo. 202r; 389, fo. 162r; 395, fo. 196r; 404, fo. 230v; 405, fo. 134r; 406, fos. 156v–157r;Lansdowne 200, fo. 36v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 136v–137r, 254r–v.

89 CCR1396–9, 249; Foedera, iv, I, 19; LPFD, ix, no. 1063 (2, 4); x, nos. 597 (37–8), 775 (8).90 In 1533 the ‘donatship’ of the English langue was granted to Guy Lawson for life on

condition that he perform all service pertaining to the office. According to Mifsud one donat‘managed’ each auberge. BDVTE, 4; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 86.

91 The chapter of 1357 had permitted each auberge to keep one Turkish slave. A. T. Luttrell,‘Slavery at Rhodes, 1306–1440’, Latin Greece, art. vi, 81–100, at 86–7.

The English Langue 281

order’s Hospital.92 The auberge was the site of communal meals and ofassemblies of the langue.93 Although under the authority of the turcopolier,it was actually run by two proctors elected annually by the nation. These hadcharge of its monies and plate, and rendered accounts to similarly chosenauditors at the end of their term of office.94 The auberge drew its revenuefrom the passage and dinner payments of conventual knights, from levies onthose promoted to preceptories or bailiwicks,95 from the spolia of deceasedbrethren96 and from the common treasury, which apparently paid the tabu-lae of some brethren through the auberges.97 Although these paymentsshould have been enough to cover ordinary expenses they were often slowto come in, and difficulties arose during times of crisis or when unforeseenexpenses occurred. In these situations extraordinary levies could be im-posed, or the master and council asked to compel non-payers to satisfytheir dues. In May 1484, for example, John Kendal secured a papal grantof the first fruits of all Hospitaller churches in the priory of England, whichwere to be applied to the fortifications in the care of the langue and to itsauberge, which had been damaged during the recent siege and earthquakes.The langue was responsible for repairing these, but no revenues had been setaside for the purpose.98 The sums raised by this expedient were evidentlyinsufficient, for five years later the auberge was described as being in ‘nosmall ruin’ and a levy of £80 was imposed on preceptories in the priory ofEngland so that it might be rendered more habitable.99 Repairs had againbecome necessary by 1504, when the order’s houses in Britain and Irelandwere collectively ordered to pay £10 per annum towards its upkeep.100

92 The auberge was heavily damaged in the explosion which destroyed the order’s conven-tual church in 1856, and restored by the Italians in 1919. Gabriel, La Cite de Rhodes, ii. 68–9.

93 AOM84, fo. 91v; BDVTE, passim. Cf. Fiorini and Luttrell, ‘Italian Hospitallers’, 211,216, 223.

94 BDVTE, 17, 68.95 AOM74, fo. 155r–v; LPFD, v, no. 579; BDVTE, 66–8; AOM415, fo. 166r.96 The chapter-general of 1475 laid down that on the death of a brother at Bodrum, on the

order’s galleys or on Lango (Cos), the brethren of his langue should have the first choice of itemsof his spolia, followed by the other langues in turn. This was apparently an extension of ageneral principle to the specific circumstances of a brother’s decease on caravan. In September1509 Clement West complained unsuccessfully that a licence granted to Robert Pemberton tobequeath a portion of his goods had prejudiced the langue’s right to his spolia. AOM283, fo.112r; 81, fo. 137v.

97 The chapter of 1466–7 established that 8,000 florins of Rhodes per annum should be setaside ‘pro tabulis albergiarum, camerarum at aliorum fratrum’. AOM283, fo. 35r.

98 CPL, xiii. 177–9. Rebuilding seems to have begun in the previous year, and been financedat first by the master, possibly in his capacity of administrator of the common treasury, for aninscribed marble noticed by Rottiers at the foot of the towers of the Arsenal, which would seemlikely to have been originally placed on the auberge or post of England, read ‘Lingue Anglie edesac podia obsidione delapsa dominus frater petrus Daubusson reedificavit Anno 1483’. Gabriel,La Cite de Rhodes, ii. 69.

99 AOM390, fo. 131v. Preceptors in several langues were expected to make regular pay-ments, or pitancia, to support their conventual brethren. Fiorini and Luttrell, ‘Italian Hospital-lers’, 210, 214, 220–2, 230; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 160–1, 625.

100 AOM395, fos. 144r–145r.

282 The English Langue

Rather different problems arose during the convent’s migrations after the fallof Rhodes to the Turks. Although the langue saved at least some of its platefrom the Ottomans,101 it probably lost its household goods during the siegeor at some stage during the convent’s subsequent itinerations, for in July1527 Thomas Docwra’s Rhodiot servant Francis Galliardetto brought nap-ery and cutlery to Corneto for the use of the auberge.102 In 1534, similarly, agift of a pewter dinner service was made to the langue byWilliamWeston.103

Between 1523 and 1535 the langue was housed in rented accommodationand although the rents were not excessive their payment, and the cost ofproviding domestic utensils, chapel ornaments and military hardware, ap-parently taxed the langue’s finances to their limit.104 Matters were nothelped by the failure of brethren to pay their dues to the auberge. Therewere a number of protests about its poverty in the 1530s, and in 1533 and1536, following complaints by the proctors of the langue and the turcopolierrespectively, prior Weston was instructed to compel the debtors to pay-ment.105 Among the latter was John Rawson, who in 1533 still owed 100florins for his readeption of the priory of Ireland five years earlier.106

Despite these difficulties, the langue managed to stay afloat, aided byprioral gifts, and the payment of the auberge’s rent by successive turcopoliersout of their own pockets.107 The English conventual brethren must haveacquired rented property soon after the move to Malta, for in September1530 commissioners, among them Richard Salford, had been appointed togo on ahead of the order’s arrival to select buildings to serve as auberges.108

In March 1532 the langue was renting a property and building work wasordained to create a fit chamber for the turcopolier and his lieutenant at oneend of the ‘palace of the auberge’.109 This property evidently failed tomeet all the langue’s needs, however, for in October 1534 Clement Westpaid 30 ounces of silver for a house in Birgu which he bestowed on thelangue some months later. This building may have served as an auberge orlodging house thereafter. In 1559 Cardinal Pole, through Tresham, provideda considerable sum of money for the purchase and furnishing of an auberge,but financial difficulties forced the langue to sell what property it alreadypossessed, and Pole’s bequest had not been used by 1564.110 While JamesShelley then bought a house in Valletta, no purpose-built auberge was ever

101 BDVTE, 76.102 Ibid. 75.103 Ibid. 25.104 The rent of the langue’s house in Viterbo was 18 ecus per annum, while in 1532 the

turcopolier was paying 13 ducats, also presumably per annum, for a house in Malta. AOM53,fo. 49v/70v; BDVTE, 20; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 102, 124–5.

105 LPFD, v, no. 579; AOM415, fo. 166r; AOM416, fo. 158v.106 AOM415, fo. 166r.107 BDVTE, 20.108 AOM414, fo. 281v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 95–6.109 BDVTE, 20.110 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 97; BDVTE, 27, 68; Luttrell, ‘Birgu’, 134, 142–3.

The English Langue 283

constructed for the langue.111 Some idea of the expense of the upkeep of theauberge can be derived from the fact that in 1546 the council voted 20 ecusper annum towards it, even though there were only two English brethren inconvent by this time.112

The recorded proceedings of the langue provide little evidence about thequality of its communal life, which has to be sought in the three main classesof chancery documents, particularly in the Libri Conciliorum. We knowlittle about the brothers’ living conditions, intellectual interests or, until the1530s, relationships with each other. Their religious life is particularlyopaque. Although the langue possibly possessed a vaulted chapel on Rhodes,decorated with frescos of St George and the arms of England and of Hospi-taller brethren,113 the names of the chaplains who served there are un-known. The statutes did not require English chaplains to live in convent,and although the non-Hospitaller chaplains of some of the wealthier breth-ren came to headquarters with them and presumably served the languewhilethey were there it is likely that divine worship and the administration of thesacraments were often conducted by foreigners.114 In 1529 the provincialchapter in England decided that the absence of English priests in conventwas a scandal, especially because the younger knights knew no language butEnglish and could not easily make their confessions. Accordingly, the rev-enues of a number of the order’s churches in England and Wales were setaside for the purpose of providing for one or two brother priests of the orderto minister to the brethren in convent.115 If any did go to Syracuse or Malta,however, there is no record of it, which might indicate that the measure wasnever implemented, although it is also possible that secular priests ratherthan Hospitaller brethren were used, and that they have escaped mention inthe surviving documents.

Evidence for the commercial interests and property holdings of the Britishbrethren is easier to come by. Besides the auberge, the langue also owned avineyard in the castellany of Villanova, which had been granted to a prior ofEngland by Philibert de Naillac (master, 1398–1421) and regranted by theprior to the English conventual brethren some time later. In 1504–5 thelangue was in dispute with John Rawson senior, to whom it had grantedthe property, but who had failed to give an account of its fruits to theconventual brethren.116 Some individual English brethren, too, owned orheld property elsewhere on Rhodes or Malta, usually by magistral grant.John Langstrother, who was castellan of Rhodes for most of the 1450s, had alife grant of a substantial garden at Malipassi along with its fountain,houses, rents, and other appurtenances from Jean de Lastic. In 1459 he

111 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 101–4. 112 Ibid. 97.113 Belabre, Rhodes, 88–92; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 121.114 AOM75, fo. 79r; 405, fo. 134r.115 BDVTE, 14–16.116 AOM80, fo. 122v; 284, fo. 91v.

284 The English Langue

secured a regrant of it from chapter-general in consideration of improve-ments he had made to its fabric. It was probably here that Langstrother hadthe Milanese nobleman Roberto da Sanseverino and John Lord Tiptoft todinner while they were staying in Rhodes on their way to Jerusalem in1458.117 Langstrother also possessed houses adjoining the castellany build-ings in the ‘lower’ collachium in Rhodes town, which he had acquired bylicence of Jacques de Milly (master, 1454–61) and in 1459 was confirmed inhis possession of a domunculum which he had been improving there.118

Other prominent English knights were also able to acquire houses andestates, probably also by magistral grant. John Kendal still held lands in thecountryside of Phileremos and La Bastide some years after he had leftRhodes for the last time, and in 1491 his proctor was involved in litigationwith the prior of Phileremos over them.119 In 1521 William Weston, whoalready resided in an adjoining or nearby house (domo . . . contigua), wasgranted a ‘place’ outside the curtilage (ex corsilio) belonging to the castel-lany which had been allocated for the ‘houses of the langue’,120 and there arerecords of other senior knights dwelling in their own houses. ThomasNewport lived in a house in Rhodes town during at least one of his visitsas bailiff of Eagle, John Babington snr. owned a house in Birgu in c.1532,and Giles Russell was in dispute with the lieutenant castellan over a prop-erty, also presumably in Birgu, in 1539.121

As well as owning property, some brethren engaged in commercial orfinancial activities while in theMediterranean. Typically these were confinedto providing cloth and tin to the convent and lending money to the commontreasury. These activities were closely linked to the payment of responsions,for if a knight was in arrears with the common treasury any payments hemade to it in Rhodes would be deducted, and if in credit the receiver of thecommon treasury in England would be instructed to reduce the sums duefrom him there accordingly. The import of cloth into the convent by brethrenof the English langue can be seen in every decade between 1460 and 1540.JohnWeston, for example, sold cloth to the common treasury in 1465, whilethe Rome chapter-general of 1466–7 established that the arrears of the priorand preceptors of England should be submitted to headquarters either incash or in cloth to be shipped to Rhodes byWeston and Robert Pickering.122

Cloth was also sent from England to the lieutenant master to pay the spoliaof Nicholas Passemer in about 1471.123 In the 1470s the volume of tradeincreased. In 1471 John Kendal and Robert Tonge promised to pay the

117 AOM369, fo. 178v; Mitchell, Spring Voyage, 80–1.118 AOM369, fo. 175v.119 AOM77, fo. 45r.120 AOM83, fos. 14v–15r.121 AOM81, fo. 107r; 86, fo. 87r; Luttrell, ‘Birgu’, 134.122 AOM73, fo. 183v; 283, fo. 30v.123 AOM283, fo. 54v.

The English Langue 285

master in cloth in lieu of the pension they owed for the magistral camera inEngland and before 1477 Kendal also contracted to supply the convent withcloth and corn, the latter presumably to be brought from Italy.124 Severalsources show Weston and Kendal shipping cloth to the Mediterraneanduring the 1470s and 1480s.125 Cloth was also consigned to the commontreasury by Robert Multon in 1474 in part payment of responsions owed forthe two previous years.126

Considerable sums were involved in this traffic. In September 1477 theorder’s receiver in England was ordered to repay over 8,000 florins ofRhodes which Kendal was owed by the treasury by reason of his contract.At the same time the turcopolier and the treasury agreed to deduct 6,000florins he owed for his responsions and for the spolia owed by the magistralcamera in England from the greater worth of cloth and corn for which hewas its creditor.127 Still larger quantities were brought from England toRhodes by Catalan and Genoese merchants. Letters of exchange payablein London were issued to these men, who would use the cash thus raised,which they were not allowed to export, to buy more English goods, whichmight again be brought to Rhodes.128 Even when English brethren handedover cloth to the convent themselves it is probable that they used foreignvessels to carry it rather than their own. Thus, when the common treasuryratified the accord between Renier Pot and William Tornay regarding thepayment of the latter’s arrears it ordained that he should dispatch the 800canes of cloth which John Langstrother had been accustomed to send whenhe was alive, the first 400 on the vessel of the Genoese Tobia Lomelino andthe second on a ship of the prior’s choosing.129 In 1493 Thomas Newport,the order’s receiver in England, was ordered to arrange for the vacancymonies of the priory and some of the arrears owed by the other Englishpreceptors to be sent to Rhodes in the form of cloth and lead, which were tobe carried on Venetian galleys by way of Messina.130 After this date theinvolvement of English brethren and foreign merchants in the shipment ofcloth to Rhodes is more difficult to trace, probably because most paymentsto the convent were being made by letters of exchange through Venice,131

although shortly before his death in 1501 John Kendal had bought woollen

124 AOM379, fo. 149r–v; 385, fo. 180r.125 CPR1467–77, 506; CPR1477–85, 58; CCR1476–85, 99–100 (no. 339); Overseas Trade

of London, ed. Cobb, nos. 282–7, 314–15.126 AOM382, fos. 167r, 167r–v.127 AOM385, fos. 162r, 180r, 180r–v.128 Martı de Caralt, for example, consigned cloth to the common treasury worth 4,181 and

8,350 ecus in 1475 and 9725 ecus in 1479. AOM382, fos. 177r–v, 177v; 387, fos. 142r–v.129 AOM382, fo. 136r.130 AOM391, fo. 199v.131 In 1493Newport had also been told to send monies to the Garzoni bank in Venice, and in

1503 it was ordered that all responsions and other dues of the common treasury in Englandshould be submitted to the receiver of Venice, Andrea de Martini. AOM394, fos. 177r–178r.

286 The English Langue

cloths worth £48 10s. from a London mercer to send to Rhodes.132 From the1510s onwards there was something of a revival in the traffic. Consignmentsof kersey and tin were sent in lieu of responsions by the prior and receiver tothe order’s representative in Messina in 1519 and 1521, and in October1521 Francis Bell handed over to the convent Thomas Docwra’s ‘loan’ of126 ‘rocks’ of unworked tin and 880 pieces of kersey worth 6,444 and 8,800ducats respectively.133 This sum, and a further 4,000 ducats worth of kerseyexpected from the prior before June 1522, was to be repaid, along with 756ducats owed to the prior by various debtors, only in 1527, although Docwrawas to be allowed to keep the responsions due from him between 1525 and1527 as security for the repayment.134

Brethren of the langue also made cash payments to the convent. Generallythose mentioned in the records were loans to the common treasury, pay-ments of arrears, and sums owed to the master either for the preceptory ofDalby and Rotheley, which had been granted to him by chapter in 1493 and1501,135 or for the vacancy years of preceptories held by magistral grace.136

Ordinary submissions of responsions and other dues owed to the commontreasury are not recorded in the Libri Bullarum, as they were paid to thereceiver of the common treasury in England and submitted by him to Rhodesin bulk. Although most of these payments were routine, some brethrenloaned sums considerably in excess of their annual responsions to theorder. In 1468 alone letters of exchange worth a total of 10,600 ecus and2,000 florins of Rhodes were issued to John Langstrother in recompense forsums he had paid the order or its creditors in the same year, while in 1469Langstrother and John Weston between them advanced a further 1,945 1⁄3ducats, 3,952 ecus, and £21 13s. 4d.137 In 1471 and 1475 headquartersissued urgent appeals to the conventual brethren for ready cash and al-though the numbers of English and Scots brethren who contributed werelimited, the sums they advanced were relatively generous.138 John Westonalso lent money to Giovanbattista Orsini, the master, in the 1470s andwas repaid from his spolia in 1478.139 Although the slow improvement inthe order’s finances after the 1470s may have obviated the necessity for

132 AOM79, fo. 115v.133 AOM409, fos. 195v–196r, 197v–198r, 117v–118r.134 Ibid., fo. 118r. Docwra nevertheless handed over his responsions to the receiver in 1525

and 1526. AOM54, fos. 131r, 157r.135 AOM393, fo. 148v; 394, fos. 225r–v, 226r; 16, no. 72; 284, fos. 31v–32r.136 AOM383, fo. 144v; 392, fo. 160v; 397, fo. 141r–v.137 AOM377, fos. 181r, 189v–190r, 190v–191r, 207r, 248v; 378, fos. 149r, 180r, 180r–v, 190r–v,

190v–191r.138 The langue’s brethren lent the convent 100 ducats of Rhodes in 1461, while ten years later

Robert Tonge promised 400 florins, and John Weston, John Kendal, and John Bourgh 60, 50,and 10 florins respectively. In 1475Weston and Richard Sandford contributed 100 florins each,John Boswell 200, Patrick Scougal 15, John Bourgh 50, and George Badstret, a possible Englishknight, 50. AOM371, fo. 180v; 74, 60v–61v; 75, fo. 62r–v.

139 AOM382, fo. 140v; 386, fos. 127v–128r.

The English Langue 287

emergency subventions, substantial advance payments were made by anumber of knights afterwards. Thomas Newport, who raised £1,000 beforeleaving England in 1513, paid his responsions in advance and in cash whenhe reached Rhodes in November.140 Most spectacular, of course, was Tho-mas Docwra’s gift of 20,000 ducats’ worth of unworked silver and cash,which was brought to Rhodes by Francis Bell and Lancelot Docwra in1515.141 It is not always clear how these sums were raised, or if the brethrenwho made them benefited materially from their largesse, but nearly all thoseknights who lent significant sums to the order in the 1460s and 1470sadvanced in the hierarchy later and Thomas Docwra’s near-election asmaster in 1521 probably owed much to his earlier generosity.142

In addition to advancing money and importing cloth while they were atheadquarters, brethren of the langue sometimes had other business interestsin the Aegean. Both John Langstrother and John Weston owned ships andwere involved in the corso.143 Thomas Newport, who captured severalTurkish transports in 1516, may also have indulged in piracy on his ownaccount, although he did have a formal naval command at about the sametime.144 Newport also imported goods into Rhodes on behalf of a Venetianmerchant in 1506 and in the following year entered into partnership with theRhodiot Francino Ux to trade with Egypt, although their goods were to besent on another merchant’s vessel.145 Even unbeneficed conventual knightsmight import goods on their own account.146

Brethren had other commercial and personal interests too. Giles Russelland Oswald Massingberd, for example, owned, or claimed to own, slaveswhile a correspondent of Clement West expressed disappointment at nothaving been able to procure the latter ‘some little Turk’ as a prize at thebattle of Preveza.147 Other knights had ties of service or friendship withRhodiots. Several came to England with their masters and were grantedcorrodies or properties by provincial chapters there, and one, Mark Pilletto,even became a knight of the English langue.148 The Rhodiots Francis Belland Francis Galliardetto were among the most prominent servants ofThomas Docwra and William Weston during their priorates,149 andwhen the order sought the restoration of its lands in the 1550s it in-structed its ambassadors to England to consult with Galliardetto, who had

140 Claudius E.vi, fos. 113r–114v; AOM402, fo. 164r–v.141 AOM404, fo. 149r.142 See above, 161–2.143 AOM377, fo. 179v; 74, fo. 42r.144 LPFD, ii, no. 1756.145 AOM397, fo. 223r; 398, fo. 198v.146 AOM54, fo. 93r.147 AOM86, fo. 33v; 88, fo. 126r; LPFD, xiii, II, no. 966.148 e.g. Lansdowne 200, fo. 44v; Claudius E.vi, fos. 111r, 132r, 132r–v, 153v, 198v, 232r–v,

251v–252r; PRO LR2/62, fos. 8r–v, 14r–v; AOM412, fos. 200r–v.149 Galliardetto was William Weston’s general receiver by 1529. PRO LR2/62, fos. 22r–v.

288 The English Langue

‘administered the priory for many years’.150 Galliardetto shared a surnamewith a banneret of the 1470s, George, perhaps an indication that there weretraditions of family service to the langue.151 The brethren also built upassociations with Catalan and Italian merchants involved in exchange andtrade between England and the convent, such as the Genoese AntonioVivaldi, who was prominent in the order’s affairs in the 1520s and 1530sand was granted corrodies and leases by provincial chapters in England.152

Another facet of the langue’s operations was the provision of hospitalityand care to ‘British’ pilgrims passing through Rhodes on their way to orfrom Jerusalem, and to other travellers too.153 Richard Guildford’s chaplainin 1506 and Richard Torkington in 1517 mentioned the ‘cher(e) and wellentre(a)tyng(e)’ they enjoyed from the English knights there and singled outseveral of their hosts for praise. Torkington further remarked on ‘whatcomfort was Don to us, and speciall that was sek and desesyd’.154 As wellas hospitality, travellers could get information on local political conditionsand advice on further progress in Rhodes. Anonymous advice issued to aprospective English traveller to Turkey in c. 1422–51 advised the traveller to‘spede you to Rodes-ward, wher is good aire and felishipe of Ingeland as wellas of alle other landes cristen’.155 There he could take counsel as to wherethe sultan might be and make further arrangements accordingly. In the caseof the humanist William Lily, who learnt Greek in Rhodes at some timebefore the 1490s, an association probably begun in the convent was con-tinued after the traveller’s return home, as Lily was granted a benefice in theorder’s gift, Holcote in Bedfordshire, on coming back.156 The order’s linkswith others of its associates in England, such as the Throckmortons ofWarwickshire, may also have been forged or strengthened in Rhodes.

8.2 Disputes and Discipline

The most common notices of ‘English’ brethren in the convent are thoseconcerned with their seniority, the state of their preceptories in the west,their disciplinary breaches, and their conventual service. As we have seen,

150 AOM425, fo. 205r.151 AOM76, fos. 19r–v. The banneret was an officer under the command of the turcopolier.

See below, Ch. 8.3.152 See, e.g. Claudius E.vi, fos. 254r, 264r–265v, 288v–289v.153 For an incomplete list of English pilgrims to Jerusalem between 1390 and 1520 see

O’Malley, ‘English and the Levant’, 97–102.154 Guylforde, Pylgrymage, 57; Torkington, Ye Oldest Diarie, 57.155 This document is undated but refers to ‘Amaratte’ (i.e. Murad II?), as ‘grete lorde’ of the

Turks, to an independent Constantinople, and to the order’s castle of St Peter, the constructionof which began in c. 1407. BL MS Cotton Appendix VIII, fos. 108v–112v. Text in ‘Rathschlagefur eine Orientreise’, ed. C. Horstmann, Englische Studien, 8 (1893), 277–84, at 282.

156 G. B. Parks, The English Traveler to Italy, i: The Middle Ages (to 1525) (Rome, 1954),463; Register Morton, ed. Harper-Bill, ii, no. 186.

The English Langue 289

the promotion of brethren was based on the display of adequate proofs ofnobility, on seniority, and on conventual service. This manner of proceedingcreated something of a rat race, as it was in the interest of brethren todiscredit the nobility and challenge the ancienitas of their contemporariesshould either be in doubt. Inadequate proofs of nobility, failures to reachthe convent on time, and the reversal of losses of seniority inflicted asa punishment all provided occasion for protest. The worst effects of thesystem were mitigated by private compositions between individuals orgroups of Hospitallers agreeing a time limit within which they were toreach headquarters if they were to enjoy the same seniority and by agree-ments between brethren that one should pay a pension to another shouldhe be provided to a preceptory first, or to divide up which benefices eachwould seek in advance.157 Knights came into chancery to have suchaccords registered, and into council to complain if they were broken.A great proportion of the langue’s proceedings were also concerned withseniority. Ancienitas was granted to brethen to ‘cabish’ or to ‘melior’ them-selves of their first and subsequent preceptories and to seek bailiwicks, andsometimes it was bestowed on those conventual knights who had performedthe longest service and wished to go home.158 Preceptors at convent weregreatly concerned with the state of their preceptories, writing anxiousletters home to make sure that they were being administered properly,that visitations were carried out without undue expense, and that theirmeliorments were drawn up correctly. Time was of the essence in thisprocess, for until meliorments had been approved there was no possibilityof promotion. Accordingly brethren often sought the grant of chancerycommissions to brethren in England to view the meliorments they hadmade rather than wait for the provincial chapter to deliberate on them.159

Having secured reports from the commissaries they then presented them tothe langue for approval. Should the grant of seniority to ‘melior’ oneself ofanother commandery be denied, or should another brother feel aggrievedthat the meliorments had been accepted, an appeal might be made to theorder’s council.

It was inevitable that in an institution filled with young noblemen com-peting for advancement arguments, brawls, and even duels would sometimesoccur. The Libri Conciliorum provide considerable evidence relating to suchmisdemeanours as it was the council which appointed those who investi-gated them and which pronounced sentence after these had reported. It wasthe council, too, which ordered the formal deprivation of serious criminalsfrom the habit. Between 1460 and 1522 only three serious crimes or discip-linary breaches involving brethren of the langue are recorded. The first wasthe flight of John Boswell from the convent after he had been sent to Crete by

157 AOM378, fo. 148r–v; 383, fo. 144v; 388, fo. 134r. 158 BDVTE, 44.159 e.g. LPFD, xiv, II, nos. 62, 405.

290 The English Langue

John Langstrother.160 Following the intervention of Edward IV, Boswellreturned to convent, did formal penance, and was restored to his ancieni-tas,161 going on to enjoy a successful career in the order. Another seriousincident occurred in September 1482, when it was reported that HenryFreville, who had already been in trouble for a crime committed against asecular two years earlier,162 and Henry Battersby had struck each other withswords ‘with wounds and effusion of blood from the head’, with the resultthat the surgeons feared the death of both combatants. Although it wasordered that justice be done according to the statutes, no further proceedingsare recorded against either of the men, both of whom survived for someyears.163 Perhaps reflecting the discipline instilled in the convent by theaustere Pierre d’Aubusson, no further serious charges were laid against‘English’ brethren, save in connection with events at home, until 1504. Inthat year ‘Griman Oswell’, probably one of the Boswell clan and an Englishconventual knight, came into council complaining that John Tonge, the lateprior’s nephew, was ‘touched by the crime of sodomy’ and had stolen fromthe spolia of his uncle. Tonge alleged in response that Boswell had lain inambush for him before the door of his chamber with intent to injure him.164

Although no further proceedings were taken against either man, Tongereturned to council soon afterwards alleging that he was suffering fromsevere dysentery and asked to be allowed to go home to recover hishealth. While he may genuinely have been ill his departure may alsohave been a face-saving arrangement designed to spare all parties furtherembarrassment.165

Unless one counts the offences of Thomas Boydell and Alban Pole in1507,166 no more serious disciplinary charges were laid against Englishbrethren until 1528. From this date onwards, however, and especially after1533, incidents multiplied. Seven separate instances of violent conduct andvarious accusations of immoderate and disrespectful behaviour and blas-phemy were recorded between 1528 and 1540, several of them of the utmostgravity. Three knights—Philip Carew, Oswald Massingberd, and Christo-pher Myers—were deprived of the habit for murder in this period. AlthoughCarew at least had the excuse of having killed his victim, Thomas Hall, in aduel, Massingberd’s murder of four fettered slaves and Myers’s ‘base andmiserable’ slaughter of a certain ‘foolish’ woman in her own bedchamberrank as the most unpleasant crimes committed by any member of the languebetween c.1460 and 1565.167 BothMassingberd andMyers were involved inother violent incidents too. The latter was imprisoned for a fight with DavidGonson and Philip Babington in 1535 which was so serious that Myers and

160 AOM73, fos. 133v–134r, 135v–136r; 282, fo. 21r. 161 AOM376, fo. 155r.162 AOM76, fo. 56v. 163 Ibid., fo. 121r; 77, fos. 37r–v. 164 AOM80, fo. 112v.165 Ibid., fo. 115r. 166 See below, Ch. 8.4.167 AOM85, fos. 44r, 45v; 85, fos. 126v, 128r, 130r; 86, fos. 46v–47r.

The English Langue 291

Gonson, who had ‘shed much blood’, had merited deprival of thehabit.168 Gonson, too, had something of a temper, for in 1536 he was sentto prison on Gozo for beating three seculars and in October 1539 wassentenced to another year there for striking one of his brethren in the facewith a dagger.169 It is tempting to assume that this was, once again, Babing-ton, for the latter accused Gonson of treason after his flight from Malta in1540.170 Even after 1540, when the langue was reduced to a rump of a fewbrethren, Oswald Massingberd and the Scot John James Sandilandsmanaged to get themselves into serious trouble, the latter being twice impri-soned for brawling in 1557 and 1558, deprived of the habit for mistreatingOliver Starkey in 1564, and subsequently executed for theft from achurch.171

The reasons for this upsurge in violence are not entirely clear but there areseveral possibilities. One is a general weakening of discipline after the fall ofRhodes. L’Isle Adam never enjoyed the full confidence of the Spanish andItalian brethren after his execution of the Portuguese chancellor, Andread’Amaral, during the siege, and some English brethren, too, had little respectfor his judgement. The disrespect which was shown the master on severaloccasions after 1522 may have extended to his placemen. The lack of aseparate collachium for the brethren, too, perhaps made it easier for them tobreak curfew, arrange duels, and plot against their superiors in relativesafety. In the event of serious crime, moreover, both Italy and Malta wereeasier to escape than Rhodes and both Carew and Myers managed to getclear of the convent before they could be tried for their crimes.172 Moststriking, however, are the divisions within the langue and the lack of respectof its brethren for their own and the order’s officers. John Babington com-plained about the injurious deeds and sayings of certain English brothers in1530, and Clement West, who was hardly in a position to criticize suchfailings, went to the council to request action against members of the languefor blasphemy and disrespectful conduct in 1536.173 Indeed, West’s conductin the chapter of 1533 and his appeals behind his fellows’ backs to Englandmust have helped to polarize opinion within the langue. As has been sug-gested, by the late 1530s there appears to have been a division between anultra-Henrician faction composed of Clement West, Oswald Massingberd,Nicholas Lambert, and Philip Babington, and a ‘Catholic’ party composedof men such as John Sutton, his step-nephew Nicholas Upton, DavidGonson, and Thomas Dingley.174 Other conservatives probably includedThomas Thornhill and William Tyrell, both of whom were investigated by

168 AOM86, fo. 12v. 169 Ibid., fos. 31v, 95r. 170 See below, Ch. 9.171 Scotland, liii–lv, 184, 186–7, 189–90. For Massingberd, see Ch. 8.4.172 AOM85, fo. 45v; 86, fo. 46v. 173 AOM85, fo. 65r; 86, fo. 30v.174 Besides the incidents mentioned above it is worth noting that David Gonson and Oswald

Massingberd were sentenced to the septena (a beating followed by a week’s fasting) for havingexchanged insults in 1539. AOM86, fo. 88v.

292 The English Langue

the royal council in 1541, and Giles Russell.175 Yet one should not makethese divisions too sharp. Despite his earlier association with West andrepeated disciplinary breaches, after 1540 Oswald Massingberd remainedin Malta in apparent harmony with Nicholas Upton and later in the decadewas even involved in plans to raise rebellion against Edward VI’s govern-ment in Ireland.176 West himself related the order’s campaigns against theTurks with apparent pride in his letters home and might have been able tostay on as turcopolier had he not been afraid to sue for papal confirmation ofhis restoration to his dignity.177

8.3 Military Service

For all their other activities, the ‘British’ brethren in convent were thereprimarily to perform service, chiefly military service. This was done in anumber of contexts and locations. Those resident in convent manned thepost of England on the walls of Rhodes town and occasionally one of thethree port towers as well. Others, especially the turcopolier or his lieutenant,whose usual duty this was, would tour Rhodes, and later Malta, checkingthe alertness of those appointed to keep watch. A third category consisted ofthose knights allocated to the caravans at sea, on Cos, in the castle of St Peteror, later, at the fortress of Tripoli. Evidence of the particulars of such activityreferring specifically to the ‘English’ is hard to come by before 1529, butmuch general information is available. The overall dimensions of the order’sprofessed manpower at headquarters are known as are the numbers deputedto the garrison duty of various places on certain occasions. Almost completelists of the captains of the order’s galley squadron, of St Peter, of Cos, and ofTripoli can be obtained and frequent notices of military actions involvingHospitaller forces occur in the Libri Conciliorum and in letters sent to thewest. Detailed contemporary accounts exist of the sieges of 1480 and 1522.Only rarely can one discern, however, who was serving where and when.

The posts of the various langues were allocated in 1465. That of Englandextended between the towers of Spain and St Mary, including the former butnot the latter, which was held by the Aragonese langue. Also included in thezone of English responsibility were the boulevard of England and the walls,barbicans, and magazine between the two towers.178 The usual manninglevels of the posts are not known; few brethren probably served on the wallsin usual circumstances, but numbers were increased during emergencies. On30March 1475, for example, the langueswere convoked in order to allocateposts to their brethren in response to the news of the construction of a

175 See below, Ch. 9. 176 See Chs. 8.4, 9. 177 LPFD, xiv, II, no. 579.178 AOM73, fos. 159r–160r. The location of the posts of the langues, which altered some-

what between 1480 and 1522, can be seen in Rossi, ‘Hospitallers at Rhodes’, facing 338; Sire,Knights of Malta, 52, 56, and Spiteri, Fortresses of the Knights, 124–5.

The English Langue 293

Turkish fleet at Gallipoli.179 The commanders of the English post are, save in1522, unknown.

During those times when the master did not have charge of the commontreasury the port towers of Naillac, St Nicholas, and the Windmills, andvarious other posts were allocated ‘per turnum linguarum’ and were thussometimes held by the English.180 Accordingly, the English langue acceptedthe tower of Naillac, the least exposed to attack, as its responsibility for athree-year term on 11March 1521 although it is unclear whether it still hadcharge of it during the siege of the following year.181 Additionally thosebrethren retained on the master’s service were at his disposal whether in waror peace. One of Giovanbattista Orsini’s socii, Nicholas Passemer, wascastellan of Lindos in the 1460s.182 Given their various responsibilities,and the absence of some brethren on caravan, it is not surprising thatsometimes there were too few English brethren to perform their dutiesadequately. In February 1513, for example, when guards had been increasedfor fear of Turkish attack183 the langue protested that Clement West, thencastellan of Rhodes, should not be allowed to exempt two brethren fromguarding the city because there were too few of their fellows. The councilordained that the master of the castellan’s house should be exempt but thatany other brother in his service was to perform guard duty.184

Many authorities have commented enthusiastically on the English lan-gue’s contribution to the sieges of 1480 and 1522. Their writings need to betreated with caution. The first conflict has been particularly ill served, largelydue to a general adherence to Bosio’s highly inaccurate list of those hethought had participated and those he believed had been killed in thehostilities. As the author himself admitted, his figures were compiled bylooking at the order’s registers for the years before and after the siege, andnoticing who disappeared and who was promoted at about the right time.185

A comparison of the most recent list at least partially based on Bosio, that ofSir Edwin King, with who actually fought in 1480 may be instructive.186

179 AOM75, fos. 72v et seq.180 The chapter of 1471 had established that the three port towers should be held by the

langues in turn, a captain being elected for each every three years. In October 1473 and February1474 the council ruled that the captaincy of the sea-gate and the gates of the city were to beallocated in similar manner. In November 1478, however, these dispositions were overturnedwhen the master was granted liberty to appoint the captains of the port towers and gates atpleasure. AOM283, fo. 78v; 75, fos. 30r, 43r; 283, fo. 186r.

181 AOM83, fos. 10v–11r.182 AOM283, fo. 54v.183 AOM82, fos. 56v–57r.184 Ibid. fos. 61v, 61v–62r.185 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 422.186 Bosio only lists the commanders he believed present at the siege. These were John

Wakelyn (Vaquellino), Marmaduke Lumley (Lomelai), Thomas Green (Grem), Henry Hales(Haler), Thomas Plumpton (Ploniton), Adam Chetwood (Tedbond), Henry Battersby (Batasbi),and Henry ‘d’Auulai’. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 422, 423, 425. The chief sources for King’s otherasserted combatants appear to have been the order’s archives and Taaffe.

294 The English Langue

King lists the following as killed during the siege: Thomas Green, bailiff ofEagle, John Waquelin (Wakelyn), commander of Carbrooke, Henry Halley,commander of Battisford, Thomas Plumpton, Adam Tedbond (recte Chet-wood), Henry Battersby, and Henry Anlaby; and says that John Kendal, theturcopolier, Marmaduke Lumley, John Boswell, Thomas Docwra, Leonardde Tibertis, Walter Westbrough, and John Roche survived.187 There is someerror in nearly every one of his attributions. Anlaby, Tibertis, Westbrough,and Roche do not appear in any of the order’s fifteenth-century records asknights of the English langue, and save for Tibertis, who had been dead forover a century, can probably be discounted as ever having been members ofit. None of the bailiffs or preceptors he mentions save Halley was at thesiege, and Halley was still a conventual knight until late September, after ithad ended.188 Green, Lumley, and Boswell were in England, and althoughsummoned to Rhodes in July and November 1479, had not reached it bySeptember 1480, when they were summoned again.189 Similarly, JohnWake-lyn, who was replaced as preceptor of Carbrooke by Halley in 1480, hadprobably died in England, for he had been appointed receiver of the commontreasury there in 1477, and been issued with several orders as such.190 Hisexercise of this office would itself be sufficient reason for the failure tosummon him in 1479–80, and the grant of his preceptory just after thesiege may simply indicate that the convent had known of his death earlierbut had not done anything about it because of the suspension of conventualbusiness during the hostilities. John Kendal, who certainly attempted to getto Rhodes during the siege, was delayed at Modon with a cargo of olive oiland wine he was bringing to the relief of the garrison by a Venetian portofficial.191 He then seems to have returned to England via Italy and did notreach Rhodes until 1482.192 Of the other knights mentioned by King, Chet-wood and Battersby also reached the convent in 1482.193 The only relativelysafe attributions King makes are those of Halley, Plumpton, and ThomasDocwra, and Plumpton lived until 1498.194

The English contingent was not, however, quite as weak as all this.A number of brethren in convent in the 1470s and not subsequently licensedto leave may well have still been alive and at headquarters in 1480. Docwra

187 King, British Realm, 88–9.188 AOM387, fo. 117r.189 SJG, Butler Papers, citing AOM387, fos. 6v–10r (mandate of 24 July 1479), 1r–6r

(mandate of 25 November 1479), 19r–v, 23r–26v (mandate of 23 September 1480). Summonsto British brethren are noticed on fos. 5v, 9v, 26r–v.

190 AOM385, fos. 137v, 162r, 162v–163r; 387, fo. 142r–v.191 CSPV, i, no. 493.192 See above, Ch. 5.2.193 AOM388, fo. 134r; 76, fo. 98r.194 Hales was in convent in September 1480, Docwra in 1474 and 1476, and Plumpton was

granted a preceptory as a conventual knight in May 1481. AOM387, fo. 117r; 382, fo. 136v;383, fo. 144r; 388, fo. 132r.

The English Langue 295

himself falls into this category. Three knights who occur in the mid-1470sbut not again—Robert Danby, William Beaufitz, and Thomas de Nygton—were perhaps killed in the fighting.195 Somewhat more likely combatants areRobert and Richard Dalison and Thomas Newport, who are to be found inconvent in the 1470s and 1480s and the Scot Patrick Scougal, who lastoccurs in December 1478 and was not licensed to leave thereafter.196

More likely still are Walter Fitzherbert, who was licensed to leave headquar-ters in 1479, but whose permission may have been revoked,197 and JohnBourgh, whose leave to depart certainly was overturned and who was inRhodes in early 1482.198 Almost certain combatants are Steven Lynde, whowas granted his first preceptory in January 1483, and Henry Freville, whowas in Rhodes in November 1480.199 If all these brethren were in conventthe ‘British’ contingent at the siege would have amounted to fourteenknights, besides servants and mercenary soldiers, a figure identical withthat given for the strength of the langue in 1476.200 Others not recordedanywhere may also have fought.

It is striking that Fitzherbert and Bourgh were the only preceptors amongthese brethren and that if they were not at the siege the post of England musthave been commanded by a conventual knight, probably Scougal. As ac-counts of the siege, even the English translation presented to Edward IV,make little mention of the participation of the ‘English’ brethren or the postof England in the fighting,201 it is extremely difficult to say what part thelangue played, although an English sailor, Roger Jervis, was reportedlyresponsible for severing the rope linking a bridge of Turkish ships to thetower of Saint Nicholas during a heavy assault on 19 June, an action forwhich he was rewarded by the master.202 Subsequent reports of heavydamage to the boulevard, walls, and post of England, and of the expenditureor loss of all its munitions and war machinery during the fighting make itclear that the langue played a full part in the hostilities, however.203

Both Bosio and the narrative sources provide surer and fuller informationon the siege of 1522, and lists of those who participated in the fighting arecorrespondingly more accurate. Bosio had access to a roll-call taken of

195 AOM382, fo. 136v; 383, fos. 142r, 144r–v.196 AOM283, fo. 174v; 382, fo. 136v; 76, fo. 209r; 283, 175r.197 Fitzherbert and John Bourgh were both to leave convent in February 1479 and Bourgh’s

licence was revoked on 22March. In early July it was decided that all necessary brethren wouldbe retained. Although there is no evidence that Fitzherbert’s licence to leave was revoked he wasnot summoned to defend Rhodes in 1479–80. AOM386, fo. 130r; AOM76, fos. 26r, 31r–v; SJG,Butler Papers.

198 AOM76, fos. 26r, 97v.199 AOM388, fo. 135r; 76, fo. 56v.200 See above, 295.201 See above, Ch. 4.202 R. A. de Vertot d’Aubeuf, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem, 5

vols. (Paris, 1726), iii. 112–3; King, British Realm, 86–7.203 AOM76, fo. 66r; CPL, xiii. 177–9.

296 The English Langue

knights and sergeants in convent just before the start of the siege which isnow lost and which recorded the names of eleven English conventualknights, and also refers to a number of brethren in other contexts.204

Based on examination of Bosio, King lists twenty English brethren whoparticipated, reproduced below:205

John Buck (recte Bothe) Nicholas Hussey William WestonThomas Sheffield Henry Mansel Nicholas FairfaxJohn Rawson (junior) Giles Russell John BaronFrancis Buet William West Thomas PembertonGeorge Askew John Sutton George AylmerMichael Roche Nicholas Usel Otho de MonsillRichard Neville Nicholas RobertsSeveral adjustments need to be made to this contingent. Most signifi-

cantly, there is no evidence that Henry Mansel, the master’s standard-bearer,or Baron and Buet, who were posted at the tower of St Nicholas during thefighting,206 were English, save for their vaguely English sounding names.Secondly Nicholas Usel, who was listed among the conventual knights onthe roll call, and Nicholas Hussey, the commander of the bastion of England,were almost certainly one and the same. Of the others, Monsill and West areon the roll of brethren but are not found in any other of the order’s records,and Bothe and Roche occur before the siege but not after it. Bothe wascertainly killed during the fighting, and it is tempting to assume that theother three were too. Another probable casualty was Arthur Sothill, whowas in Rhodes as a conventual knight in 1521, but is not mentioned there-after.207 The participation of those who survived was noted in grants ofpreceptories after 1522, which specifically refer to their service ‘in the manyfierce conflicts of the siege’, or a variant thereof, a citation which occurs inbulls issued to Rawson, Fairfax, Hussey, Sheffield, Sutton, Neville, Weston,Roberts, and Russell and also to Alban Pole, George Hatfield, Edward Hills,and Ambrose Layton, who should therefore be added to the list of combat-ants.208 A further knight, George Horton, was licensed to go home in July1523, and may also have fought.209 George Aylmer, who was probably inRhodes during the siege, was not thanked for his service during the fightingwhen granted a preceptory in November 1523, a detail that fits with his laterreputation for cowardice.210 A number of gentlemen volunteers seekingentry into the order also participated. In 1525 the Scot John Chalmers was

204 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 639–43, 642, 645–6, 666, 675.205 King, British Realm, 90–1.206 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 643.207 AOM54, fo. 93r.208 [‘In tot acerrimis rhodie obsidionis conflictibus’] AOM410, fos. 175r, 176r–177v,

178v, 179r, 180r; 411, fos. 153v–154v.209 AOM410, fo. 177r.210 Ibid., fo. 181r; BDVTE, 17.

The English Langue 297

received into the order and granted a pension of 80 ducats in considerationof his services during the siege, and Edward Bellingham and John Whitting-ton or Huntington, who were received into the order in Crete in early 1523,may also have fought, or at least set off in order to do so.211 Bellingham’suncle, John Shelley, had been involved in trade with the order in 1513, andwas supposedly killed at Rhodes.212 If one removes Baron, Buet, Mansel,and Usel from King’s list but adds Pole, Hatfield, Hills, Layton, and Sothill,one arrives at a minimum figure of twenty-one professed English brethreninvolved in the fighting, to which should be added gentlemen and stipendiarysoldiers and servants who had come from Britain or Ireland with theirmasters.213

The langue’s profile during the events of 1522 was much higher than in1480. A number of its knights had been prominent in conventual service foryears and several of them held important administrative and military postsbefore and during the hostilities. Most important were John Bothe, theturcopolier, and Thomas Sheffield, the master’s seneschal, both membersof the order since the 1480s. Besides his conventual bailiwick, which gavehim responsibility for the coastguard, Bothe had been appointed a proctor ofthe common treasury in March 1521 along with the chancellor, Andread’Amaral.214 These two, together with the grand commander and lieutenantmaster, Gabriel de Pomerolx, had charge of the order’s finances until thesiege began, and thus controlled the provisioning of the convent in thecrucial months before it. Their failure to perform this task adequately isstressed in accounts of the fighting, which say that when the master tookcouncil for the provisioning of the town in the weeks before the Turkishassault he was told to ‘take no thought to it’ by the three, who averred that itcontained enough stores of victuals and ordnance to last for a year.215

Although in discrediting Amaral and absolving L’Isle Adam from responsi-bility for the fall of Rhodes this detail served the dramatic purpose of theFrench knight who wrote this account of the siege, it is certainly true that theorder’s store of gunpowder ran out after four months.216 As the same authoradmitted, however, this was due more to the unprecedented intensity of theartillery exchanges during the fighting than to any lack of forethought.217

Other English brethren too, were involved in preparing for the siege. Nicho-las Fairfax was among those appointed to arrange accommodation for

211 AOM411, fo. 158r–v; 410, fo. 176v.212 Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, i. 414; AOM402, fo. 175r–v.213 In 1523 a serving man who had been ‘at the Rhodes’ was involved in an uprising in

Coventry and executed. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England, i. 14.214 AOM83, fos. 13v–14r.215 Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 8–9; J. de Bourbon, La grande et merveilleuse et

trescruelle oppugnation de la noble cite de Rhodes (Paris, 1525), 19 (B.iiii).216 Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 9.217 Ibid. 9; Bourbon, Oppugnation, 20 (B.iiii verso).

298 The English Langue

country people coming to shelter in Rhodes town in February 1522, while inthe previous August John Rawson junior and George Aylmer had beencommissioned to visit the fortifications to establish what repairs needed tobe made.218

On 7 May the brethren of the langue, bearing longbows rather than thearbalest more usual to the order’s knights, were mustered and showed theirarms in their auberge before the turcopolier and a foreign knight. WilliamWeston, meanwhile, was examining the arms of the langue of Provence.219

By mid-June the Hospitallers had received Sultan Suleiman’s letter orderingthem to surrender their islands and Turkish troops began to disembark on 26June.220 In the subsequent siege, several Englishmen held important com-mands. Bothe was the captain of one of four reserve companies and was incharge of succouring the posts of Spain and England; Thomas Sheffield, themaster’s seneschal, was responsible for the artillery and defence of themaster’s palace and its surrounding area; the post and boulevard of Englandwere commanded byWilliamWeston and Nicholas Hussey respectively, andNicholas Fairfax was sent to Crete to raise reinforcements in November.221

The English sector of the walls was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting,being subjected to a long artillery bombardment in August and a series ofmassive assaults in the following month. Particularly serious were those of4 September, when a mine exploded under the English bastion and the Turkscaptured the breach before being driven back by a combination of theEnglish knights and the grand master’s household and guard and 17 Sep-tember, when an assault was launched on the repaired walls of the Englishbulwark by a Turkish host of 5,000 men, under five banners. Havingcaptured one of these standards, Bothe, ‘a valyaunt man and hardy’, ‘wasslayne with the stroke of a handgonne’.222 It may have been his demisewhich prompted a grieving Rhodiot woman to slay her children, arrayherself in armour, and hurl herself against the Turkish lines.223 A generalassault on 24 September did further damage, although the English distin-guished themselves again by pouring onto the Turks attacking the adjoiningpost of Spain a flanking fire so lethal that the ground could not be seenfor corpses. During the fight one of the fingers of William Weston, who‘behaved hym ryght worthely at all the assautes’ was shot off by an

218 AOM83, fos. 46r, 23r.219 Ibid., fo. 60r–v.220 Ibid., fos. 61v–62r; King, British Realm, 91.221 Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 645–6; King, British Realm, 97.222 Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 25–6. Bosio,Dell’Istoria, ii. 675, says that he was killed by

an arquebusier, while Bourbon, from whom the English account of the siege may be derived,relates that he ‘fut tue dung coup descoupette’ and makes no reference to Bothe’s supposedvalour. Bourbon, Oppugnation, 56–7.

223 The womanwas supposedly the mistress of an English commander. As Bothe was the onlyEnglish Hospitaller of this rank killed, it seems likely that if the tale relates to a professedHospitaller, it must have been him. Vertot, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers, iii. 342–3.

The English Langue 299

arquebusier.224 On 17October the Turks got into the barbican at the foot ofthe bulwark of England and could not be dislodged, and on 10 Decembersurrender negotiations began.225 At some stage in the fighting ThomasPemberton suffered a severe leg injury, and knights such as Roche, West,Monsill, and Sothill were presumably killed.226 After the injury to Weston,which may have been more serious than the sources suggest, a French knightwas put in charge of the English post.227

After surrender terms were agreed in December the order left Rhodes on1 January 1523, its great ship under the command ofWilliamWeston.228 Forall the savagery of the fighting they had been involved in, the convent’sperambulations around Italy seem to have been equally lethal. A corres-pondent of Wolsey reported from Rome on 1 May 1523 that NicholasFairfax had just died so poor that ‘he had scantly (enough) to bring him tothe earth at his departing’ and was ‘stark mad; insomuch that nother hisconfessor nor none other could tell what his mind was’.229 Within the nextthree years he was followed to the grave by George Askew, NicholasRoberts, Thomas Sheffield, and George Horton. All, save Sheffield, wererelatively young men. Whether the effects of the siege played any part in themadness and death of Fairfax, the demise of his confreres, and the reputa-tion for cowardice and later madness of George Aylmer remains an openquestion.

Not all the order’s military adventures were quite so dramatic, but regularservice in the order’s fortresses and voyages in its galleys helped to form theesprit de corps which was so evident at moments of crisis such as the siegesof 1480 and 1522. The total number of brethren expected to serve oncaravan had been laid down in 1459 as forty on the guard galley whichpatrolled the waters around Rhodes, twenty-five on Cos, and fifty at thecastle of St Peter.230 These contingents were increased in subsequent years,especially on the galleys, but the total number of brethren expected to be oncaravan at any one time is not always clear. Except on rare occasions, thedistribution of brethren of the individual langues between various forms ofcaravan service is not known either. Save for brethren retained on magistralor conciliar service, participation in the caravans was an essential prerequis-ite of promotion, however, and it can be assumed that at any one time someBritish brethren were thus engaged. Judging by evidence from the minute

224 Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 28.225 LPFD, iii, no. 2841; Vatin, L’Ordre, 358.226 AOM413, fo. 21v.227 King, British Realm, 95, says that this was because there were no Englishmen left to

command the bastion.228 AOM84, fo. 19r. For this vessel see M. Fontenay, ‘De Rhodes a Malte: l’evolution de la

flotte des Hospitaliers au XVIe siecle’, Atti del V Convegno Internazionale di Studi Colombiani,2 vols. (Genoa, 1990), i. 107–35, at 110–19.

229 LPFD, iii, no. 2999.230 AOM282, fo. 76v; cited in Fiorini and Luttrell, ‘Italian Hospitallers’, 217 n. 32.

300 The English Langue

book of the langue, between two and seven brethren usually served together.It was typically conventual knights who went on caravan—save as officersunder conciliar commission no English preceptors are mentioned in thiscontext before 1529 and only four between then and 1540. Younger knightsmay indeed have had first refusal on caravan places, for in 1559 the ScotJohn James Sandelands insisted that he rather than the older George Dudleyshould so serve.231 Caravaners were supposed to be twenty years old,however, and the langue was required to pay their stipends while theywere on service if they were under age, a rule which occasioned a protestby the proctors of the langue in 1487 that if John Bothe, who had secured aplace at the partitio of the caravans, should prove to be too young his uncle,the lieutenant turcopolier, should pay rather than the nation.232 It was alsopossible to serve by proxy. When the proctors of the langue of Francecomplained that Pierre Clovet had not performed his caravan in 1491, heasserted that it had been accomplished for him by an English brother,Thomas Gryng, but that all the witnesses to this were now in England.233

Other brethren may have compounded for their service rather than send asubstitute.234

In this period, the langue’s brethren seem to have served mainly on thegalleys and at St Peter, for none is mentioned on Cos.235 Although before1522 there is only one specific mention of ‘English’ brethren performingcaravans on the galleys, a number of pieces of evidence suggest that navalservice was quite usual for the English brethren. An illustration of anengagement of c.1460 between the order’s galleys and the Turks quite clearlydepicts a brother bearing a longbow, an exclusive privilege of the Englishlangue, and a list of sixty Hospitallers who participated in the actionincludes the names of three English knight-brethren.236 In addition, a num-ber of Englishmen captained the order’s galley fleet or ‘great ship’ between1460 and 1540, which assumes prior experience at sea, and a council minuteof 1524, which records that rolls were to be made of all brethren of the eightlangues ‘for the arming of the triremes’, suggests that naval service wascommon to all the nationes which made up the order.237 Two letters sentby an ‘English’ knight on one of the galleys to ClementWest towards the endof 1538, and the promises of brothers to serve on the ‘galls of owr tonge’ in

231 This was, however, in accordance with the recently elected master’s instructions ratherthan any older establishment. BDVTE, 38.

232 AOM68, fo. 128r; 76, fo. 209r.233 AOM77, fo. 41v. The name ‘Gryng’ does not occur elsewhere and might be a scribal error

for Green or Golyn.234 In 1446 and 1451 Italian brethren paid 40 florins of Rhodes to be released from caravan

service. Fiorini and Luttrell, ‘Italian Hospitallers’, 216, 225–6.235 An English brother was on caravan in Cos in January 1445, however. AOM356, fo. 142r.236 Reproduced in Luttrell, ‘Military Orders’, facing p. 340. Dr Luttrell very kindly supplied

me with a list of brethren who took part in the action.237 AOM84, fo. 36v.

The English Langue 301

1540 and 1541 provide more concrete evidence of English caravans atsea.238

Galley tours were of variable duration, although six months’ service mayhave been enough to complete a caravan at sea.239 Little is known about lifeand conditions on Hospitaller galleys in this period, although comparisonswith contemporary navies and evidence from later sources can provide someof what is lacking. Naval service was probably not particularly strenuousduring most of the Rhodian period. Although privateers operating fromRhodes ranged all over the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, the order’sfleet did not usually go far outside its home waters, save sometimes toNegroponte, Cyprus, or the Syrian coast. Even during the hostilities of the1470s and 1501–4 casualties appear to have been moderate, althoughconstant minor engagements and sickness must both have taken their toll.The only major naval battle involving the order between 1460 and 1522, thevictory over the Mamluk fleet off Alexandretta in 1510, was certainly hardfought240 and may have cost the lives of brethren of the langue but it isimpossible to be certain of this. After 1530, when the order was confrontingthe Turkish navy and the formidable north African corsairs head on, navalservice probably became more dangerous.241 Of the thirty English and Scotsbrethren who promised to perform caravan service between 1529 and 1541,at least six do not reappear in the records after their last such undertakingand may have perished during their tours of duty.242 The seriousness ofcaravan service is underlined by a decision of the langue in March 1530that George Aylmer, ‘who it is thought by the hole tonge is not hable tomake his carvan beinge not a man of curage’, should appoint a deputy toperform it for him.243 At times during this period the brethren on caravan onthe galleys were joined by almost the entire convent. The order contributedhundreds of knights to the Modon, Tunis, and Algiers expeditions of 1532,1535, and 1541 and suffered heavy casualties, particularly at Algiers.244

The numbers of tours performed varied. Between 1529 and 1541, sixty-eight undertakings to go on caravan were made by thirty knights.245 Several

238 West’s correspondent was probably either James Hussey, Henry Gerard, or the ScotAlexander Dundas, all of whom had promised to make their caravans in July 1538. LPFD,xiii, II, nos. 965–6; BDVTE, 36.

239 Sarnowsky,Macht und Herrschaft, 221–2. The Italian Hospitallers who agreed to under-take caravans on Cos and at Bodrum typically served for a year, however. Fiorini and Luttrell,‘Italian Hospitallers’, 225–6, 230–1.

240 ‘Longam, et sanguinolentam pugnam’. AOM410, fo. 143r.241 Fontenay, ‘Les Missions des galeres de Malte’, 103–19.242 These were William Askew, Thomas Cavendish, John Forest, John Marshall, Anthony

Russell, and George Sands. Another possible casualty, James Hussey, agreed to go on caravan inApril 1540 and does not appear in either the order’s archives or in England thereafter.

243 BDVTE, 17.244 AOM85, fos. 105r, 107v; Vella, ‘Tripoli’, 368; Sire, Knights of Malta, 65.245 BDVTE, 17–18, 23, 25–6, 35–6.

302 The English Langue

made more than the three periods of service later enjoined in the statutes.Henry Gerard, with six, Philip Babington, with five, and Dunstan New-digate and Anthony Bentham, with four apiece, all exceeded their quota. Toundertake three caravans appears to have been normal for conventualbrethren, however, although the few preceptors who performed such serviceafter 1529 did not repeat the experience.

Caravans in the order’s fortifications were probably less dangerous thantheir maritime equivalents, at least before 1530. Although it is impossible togive any idea of the number of brethren of the langue serving at the castle ofSt Peter, English knights are mentioned there in 1470, 1480, 1482, 1491,1505, and 1507–8 and English brethren were elected to its captaincy in1459, 1498, and 1514.246 They resided in the tower of St Catharine, animpressive edifice constructed by the langue in the 1420s or 1430s, butsquabbled over this habitation and the servants therein with the Hispanicbrethren who came to share it with them.247 In February 1480 the proctorsof all three ‘nations’, who were in dispute over whether the English orSpanish should appoint a companion to the tower, agreed to remit the choiceto the master,248 while in 1505 the English complained that a companionthere had been deprived of his pitancia by the castle’s captain for his refusalto perform certain services for the brethren who resided in the tower.249 Theissue resurfaced in 1507, when a commission was appointed to consider thelangue’s contention that the companion should not have to perform serviceoutside the tower’s camera, but should only have to clean this room andmake the beds there. The master and council ruled that the camera should beunderstood to comprise not merely the sleeping quarters of the brethren butthe whole interior of the tower and that both the companions must not onlypolish the bedchamber and make the beds, but also take water to thebrethren, sweep the tower, and light the lamp at night. They were, however,exempted from service outside the building and from more menial worksuch as washing underwear.250

It seems likely that the English brethren made an issue out of this becausethey thought that they and the Spanish should each have one companion fortheir exclusive service rather than hold them in common. It is possible thatthe man disciplined in 1505 was one Thomas, an English companion of thecastle who had been arrested by its captain on 13 April 1501 and restored tohis position by the council eight weeks later, and that it was this man’sobjection to performing menial tasks for foreigners that was at issue.251 At

246 AOM74, fo.35r–v;76, fos.44v–45r,100r;80, fos.133r–v,136v–137r;81, fos.71r–72r,96r–v;282, fo. 73r–v; 78, fo. 83r; 82, fo. 114v. Luttrell, ‘Maussolleion’, 195.

247 Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, 167–9.248 AOM76, fos. 44v–45r.249 AOM80, fos. 140v, 143v.250 AOM81, fos. 71r–v.251 AOM79, fo. 11v.

The English Langue 303

least one other English and one Irish layman are also known to have servedat St Peter after 1460. Some such residents may have been companions in thetower, but most were probably gentlemen volunteers or soldiers performingmilitary service rather than household servants.252 Although there weresometimes skirmishes between the castle’s garrison and local Turks andoccasional demonstrations by Turkish armies before the castle walls, cara-van duty there was often uneventful, to such an extent that Robert Gay, whowas commended in 1474 for having performed several months’ service inpursuance of a vow to fight the Turks had been unable to find any whowould agree to do so.253 Such was emphatically not the case at Tripoli after1530, where almost daily battles took place between the garrison and theinfidel.254 Service there was so unpleasant that in 1536 Anthony Rogers wasimprisoned for avoiding boarding the galleys going to its aid.255

8.4 The Turcopolier and Turcopoles

The third, and most characteristic form of military service performed by thelangue’s brethren was that particular to the turcopolier, its pilier. His was anoffice dating back to the order’s days in the Holy Land, when the holder hadcommanded the turcopoles, light cavalry apparently of mixed Latin, Mus-lim, and eastern Christian stock.256 The turcopoliership was not then im-portant enough to rank as a conventual bailiwick, and it was only from1330, well after the move to Rhodes, that it is known to have been associ-ated with the English langue.257 On Rhodes, the turcopolier was the sixth-ranked conventual bailiff, just as the English languewas sixth in precedence.He had command of turcopoles who appear to have been a mixture of nativeGreeks and Latin settlers.258 In wartime these, and their officers, might

252 AOM382, fo. 138r–v; 387, fo. 202r.253 AOM382, fo. 138r–v. Conditions may have been unusually quiet in 1474. There had been

frequent skirmishes between the garrison and local Turks as recently as 1470, but a Venetianraid in 1472 had cleared the surrounding area of Turks. Luttrell, ‘Maussolleion’, 164–5.

254 Vella, ‘Tripoli’, 370.255 AOM86, fos. 43v–44r. Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 142–3.256 There has been considerable controversy about the ethnic background and military

functions of the turcopoles in the period before 1291. See Y. Harari, ‘The Military Role of theFrankish Turcopoles: A Reassessment’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 12 (1997), 75–116.

257 The custom by which each conventual bailiwick was reserved to a particular langue seemsto have been established during the early fourteenth century, and can be clearly seen for the firsttime in the proceedings of the chapter-general of 1330, which provide the first definite referenceto the turcopolier’s status as a conventual bailiff, and the first instance of an English turcopolier.Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 283–4, 280; Tipton, ‘Montpellier’, 296–7, 301.

258 The turcopoles listed in a case of 1495 involving one of their number had the surnamesPatera, Cassari, Sacce, Maria, Lagouardo, and Stefano. AOM78, fos. 31v–32r. Anthony Luttrellhas noted a Greek turcopole, Leo Cycandilli, on Kos in 1415, and turcopoles called Peyrolus deNegroponte and Bussottus at the casali of Diaskoros and Lardos on Rhodes in 1347 and 1382respectively. A. T. Luttrell, ‘TheMilitary and Naval Organisation of the Hospitallers at Rhodes:1310–1444’, Mediterranean World, art. xix, 133–53, at p. 138 and nn. 30–1.

304 The English Langue

continue to fight as light cavalry,259 but their most usual and characteristicresponsibility was to visit the guard posts of the island. In common with theother conventual bailiffs the turcopolier was ‘elected’, or rather confirmed inoffice, by vote of the master and council ordinary, having first been chosenfrom among its ‘most ancient and worthy’ members by the langue.260 Likeother piliers, he presided over meetings of his langue and had an automaticseat on councils and chapters-general. He was allowed a relatively generousstipend to support the burdens of office,261 and was usually granted apreceptory ‘of grace’ in addition to his existing benefice when one becameavailable.262 By office, the turcopolier was also the most senior Englishbrother in the order, outranking, at least in convent, the priors of Englandand Ireland, and being in a good position to claim the rich English priorywhen it fell vacant.263

The turcopolier’s more characteristic duties and privileges had beendefined in an agreement drawn up in 1445/6 by the lieutenant turcopolier,John Langstrother, and the English brethren and Jean de Lastic, the mas-ter,264 and confirmed by Nicholas V on 31 May 1448.265 By it, the partiesagreed that the turcopolier or his lieutenant had authority over the chief

259 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 87 and n.260 Quotation from BDVTE, 22–3.261 See n.25, above.262 Hence the protests of Clement West at the refusal of successive masters to grant him a

preceptory of ‘grace’. See above, Ch. 6.263 Of the six priors appointed by the order between 1470 and 1527, four were turcopoliers

and two bailiffs of Eagle immediately prior to their provision to the priory.264 AOM357, fos. 153v–154r; text in Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 630–1; Mifsud,

Venerable Tongue, 90–1. The agreement is in the Liber Bullarum for March 1445 to March1446 but is undated, and it is possible that it was copied from a statute drawn up in theRome chapter-general of February 1446. This assembly, which Lastic did not attend, washeld under the auspices of Eugenius IV and presided over by three papally appointed ‘presi-dents’, among them the prior of England, Robert Botill. These officers directed a majorcodification of the order’s statutes, and further provided for the establishment of a committeeof seven brethren, headed by the turcopolier, to be ‘protectors of the convent’. These were toprotect the statutes enacted in Rome, with power to admonish the master and council shouldthey breach them, and appeal over their heads to a chapter-general should such warnings beignored. Although these reforms proved stillborn, the clauses of the agreement enrolled in theLiber Bullarum of 1445 defining the turcopolier’s government of the watch were appended tothe section of the capitular proceedings appointing the turcopolier chief ‘Protector’ of theconvent, with the exception of the clause referring to Langstrother and Lastic. The date ofcomposition of the Liber Bullarummakes it likely that the agreement was a proposal submittedto Rome which was subsequently modified in chapter, but it is also possible that it was an editedversion of the Rome statute more acceptable to Lastic’s dignity than the original. AOM357, fos.153v–154r; AOM1698, fos. 57r–58r. An eighteenth-century copy of the capitular document(AOM1649, fos. 517v–519r) is transcribed in Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 307–9 anddiscussed at 10–14. See also Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 287–8.

265 CPL, x. 25–6. The confirmation was registered in the Liber Conciliorum on 1Oct. 1481,together with a translation into Italian. AOM76, fos. 76v–78r, 78r–80r. Both these versions aretranscribed in Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 309–13, and discussed at 15, although the authorseems to have been unaware of the enrolment of the Langstrother–Lastic concord in thebullarium of 1445.

The English Langue 305

officers—the banneret266 and the viglocomites267—of his command so far asthe exercise of his duties required, and that he and his deputies were not tobe molested in their persons, animals, or goods by the castellans and otherofficials of the island, save by express magistral mandate or in a matterinvolving the master’s personal service. No one was to be dispensed fromguard duty save for one servant of the castellan in each castellany, and theturcopolier and his deputies were to visit the guard posts, punishing thosefailing in their duty. Once a year, the turcopolier was to gather all thosebound to the watch to discuss how and where it could best be performed. Intime of war, or the threat of it, the castellans could visit the watch and punishthe negligent in the absence of the turcopolier or his deputies.

Unfortunately this document does not make clear how many watch sta-tions there were, how they were manned, or how watch duty was allocated.The frequency of the turcopolier’s visitations is not defined, and nor are theexact duties of his deputies, or of the banneret and viglocomites. The turco-poles themselves are not mentioned specifically, although it can be safelyassumed that they were the ‘deputies’ referred to. However, the enrolment ofthe papal bull confirming the agreement in the council minutes in October1481, and a number of subsequent cases in the council referring to the ‘bullaturcopelieratus’ demonstrate that the concord of 1445/6 was upheld wellinto the sixteenth century, and also help to shed further light on the nature ofthe turcopolier’s office.268 The picture is made more complete by capitularordinances, which laid down the number and salary of the turcopoles, andvarious records that provide more information on the bannerets.

Considering the constant danger of Turkish landings, visiting the watchwas a task of considerable importance, which needed to be performeddiligently. Essentially, as council records make clear, the job of the turcopo-lier was to set the guards in the first place269 and then to ride around theisland at night and ensure that those deputed to the watch were on duty andawake.270 To aid him in his task he was accorded the assistance of his

266 Banerarius. AOM357, fo. 153v. This officer was called the ‘Vexillifer Turcopoli’ in theRome statute of 1446. AOM1649, fo. 518v; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 309 says that thevexillifer/banneret acted as the ‘Ensign’ of the ‘corps’ of turcopoles.

267 Sannazaro calls these officials the ‘ChiefWardens’ of the guard. They were to be presentedto the turcopolier within fourteen days of a vacancy and were to take an oath of fidelity to him.AOM357, fos. 153v–154r; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 14.

268 The turcopolier’s pre-eminence and prerogatives as established in the bull of 1448 and theorder’s statutes were confirmed by the chapter-general of 1558. AOM288, fo. 75r.

269 It is unclear whether the guards were actually appointed, rather than positioned, by themaster or the turcopolier. In 1471 it was decided in chapter-general that the turcopolier couldappoint one or two custodes for the guard of the villages of Cathagro and Lavadeto. Thisconcession was given the express consent of the master’s proctor, suggesting that the master hadsome say in such appointments. However, a council decree of 1503 upheld the turcopolier’s rightto appoint viglocomiti who would give orders to the guards in the villages under the control ofthe marshall, Hospitaller, and admiral, just as he did in those belonging to the master. AOM283,fo. 62v; 80, fos. 49r–50r.

270 AOM75, fo. 11v–12r; 78, fos. 31v–32r; 81, fo. 81v.

306 The English Langue

banneret,271 viglocomites and a body of turcopoles forty-four in number in1504,272 who seem to have been of peasant stock273 and were paid by thecommon treasury.274 Although this was straightforward enough in theory, inpractice there was considerable scope for conflict between the turcopolier, hissubordinates and other authorities, most notably the master, whose subjectsthe villagers and hence the guards of Rhodes were, but also including thosecastellans and senior brethren who held authority over the islands’ villages.

Essentially disputes arose from three causes: the dismissal or discipliningof turcopoles or viglocomites by their superior; alleged failures of the turco-poliers or their deputies to perform their duties properly; and jurisdictionalconflicts between the turcopolier, the master and his officers, and otherdignitaries. Three cases in the council records concern appeals against thesuspension or dismissal of turcopoles from office, while another pertains tothe removal of a viglocomes. Thus in March 1460, the council ordered therestoration of a turcopole removed from office by the lieutenant turcopolierin a manner not in accordance with the statutes,275 while some sixteen yearslater the master and council ruled that the lieutenant turcopolier hadwrongly removed a turcopole of Paravibilinos whose horse had damagedvines and other possessions. As his offence had nothing to do with theperformance of his office, the latter was committed instead to the justice ofthe castellan of Rhodes and judge of ordinaries.276 A further appeal of 1495sheds rather more light on the functions of the turcopoles. A turcopole, onePatera of the castellany of Catania, had been suspended from office by thelieutenant turcopolier for failings in his duty and on his appeal the councilordered the local castellan to examine witnesses. Five turcopoles and twoother men came forward.277 Their evidence suggests that Patera had failedto visit the merovigli (coastguard) because he was accustomed to do thiswith a dignitary called the diantrecari who had been absent when he hadcalled. Both the turcopoles and other witnesses agreed that whether thediantrecari could be found or not the turcopole should visit the merovigli.Patera was accordingly declared deprived, and the turcopolier instructed toreplace him.278 The last such appeal was launched in June 1508 by Martin

271 The banneret was appointed by the turcopolier and paid a salary fixed at 40 florins and 18aspers in 1504 from the revenues of the common treasury. He, like the turcopoles, was mounted.AOM284, fo. 73r.

272 AOM284, fo. 73r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 88.273 In 1506 they were described as ‘rustici et parici hoc est servi a scriptici ac viles persone’.

AOM81, fo. 40r.274 Their stipend was fixed at 20 florins of Rhodes in 1467, and remained so in 1504.

AOM283, fo. 35v; 284, fo. 73r.275 AOM73, fo. 15v.276 AOM75, fo. 144v.277 These were Antonio Cassari, turcopole, Antonio Sacce turcopole, Guillelmo Maria

turcopole, Antonio Lagouardo, turcopole of sixty years’ service, Joanne Stefano, turcopole ofnine years’ service, Nicolao Cardeli, and Michael Piteni, who had been at the guard ‘del Trolli’.

278 AOM78, fos. 31v–32r.

The English Langue 307

Vincent, viglocomes of Archangelos, against the turcopolier, Robert Daniel.Vincent felt aggrieved because he had been deprived of office de facto insteadof suspended first according to custom. Daniel responded that Vincent,along with a number of turcopoles, had manifestly failed to perform hisduty, so breaking his oath of fidelitas and meriting immediate removal fromoffice. The council upheld the pilier’s actions, but also ordered him toremove Vincent’s replacement, who had been disqualified from furtherpreferment after deprivation from another office. As it was unfitting thatan ‘infamous and condemned’ man should hold the dignity, Daniel was tonominate another viglocomes of good name. Moreover, since the testimonythe turcopoles of Archangelos had given in the case had unwittingly pro-vided evidence of their failings in their duty, their depositions were presentedto Daniel so that he could take action against them.279

Although none of these cases is especially informative on the nature of theturcopolier and his officers, they do make some things clear. They prove thatthe turcopoles fulfilled the functions of the turcopolier’s deputies as laiddown in the agreement, that they were mounted, and that they could besuspended by their superior only for failure to do their job, and removedonly by consent of the master and council, limitations which were based onstatutes of 1410 and 1440, the latter repeated in the statutes of 1489.280 Theremaining disputes recorded in the archives are more complex, involving avariety of disciplinary and jurisdictional issues, but they too illustrate theprimacy of the agreement of 1445/6. The most serious conflicts arose in thetense conditions obtaining after the war of 1499–1503. In such circumstan-ces it was essential that the watch be kept diligently and that exceptions to itbe curtailed. In November 1501 a council meeting to provide for the defenceof Rhodes in the absence of the order’s fleet laid down that the lieutenantturcopolier and his deputies should visit the guards with extreme diligenceevery night, and that if turcopoles were lacking they should be supplementedby the castellans and their officials. Considering that the master’s subjectsand officials were not exempted from guard duty, moreover, it was ruled thatthe lieutenant turcopolier should not release his officials or servitors eitherand that the inhabitants of the casali of the marshal and admiral shouldsimilarly be constrained to the watch without exception.281 The inclusion oftheir villages in this measure irked the other conventual bailiffs, and inSeptember 1503, following a protest by the marshal, Hospitaller, and ad-miral, the council ruled that although the inhabitants of their villages were toperform guard duty on the coast as the turcopolier should order, he was notto punish them for any failings to keep watch himself, but to report faults tothe castellans appointed by the conventual bailiffs.282

279 AOM81, fos. 100v–101r, 101v–102r.280 AOM1649, fos. 266r, 347r; Stabilimenta, ‘De baiulivis’, no. xxvi.281 AOM80, fo. 35v. 282 Ibid., fos. 49r–50r.

308 The English Langue

Despite this ordinance, the turcopolier’s responsibility for the watch andhis associated rights and privileges continued to be at issue over the next fiveyears, during which a struggle developed between the turcopolier, RobertDaniel, and the new master, Aimery d’Amboise. This was perhaps natural.The removal of Pierre d’Aubusson’s guiding hand after twenty-seven years ofrule during which there had been little jurisdictional dispute between turco-poliers and master appears to have created some confusion about the re-spective rights of each which both Daniel and d’Amboise’s lieutenantseneschal, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, were too inexperienced to dispel.In such a situation both parties attempted to exploit what they felt weretraditional rights to their fullest extent. On 2 May 1504 Daniel complainedthat L’Isle Adam had ordered the inhabitants of the island not to make theaccustomed solutio formagiorum to the turcopolier and his officials. L’IsleAdam replied that the payment was a new imposition, a great burden on thepopulace, and something that he, as proctor of the absent master, could notallow. He added the charge that not only did Daniel pretend the right to freeone man from the guard in every castellany, but so did his lieutenant andbanneret, with the result that three were released in each.283 Although thecouncil ruled that nothing further was to be innovated until d’Amboise’sarrival, each party evidently regarded this as an excuse to carry on as before,for eighteen days later Daniel again complained that L’Isle Adam hadforbidden him the ius formagii. While admitting that the levy was voluntary,he claimed that those wishing to donate cheese were now prohibited fromdoing so by the lieutenant seneschal’s order. L’Isle Adam again defendedhimself stoutly, saying that he now understood that a cheese was taken fromevery man who stood guard by not only the turcopolier but his lieutenant,the banneret, and the local turcopole and viglocomes too, and that it wasbecause of this unacceptable and burdensome imposition that he had writtento the island’s officials.284

Unfortunately the conclusion of this affair is unrecorded, presumablybecause Amboise dealt with it after his arrival from the west,285 but themore serious claim, that the turcopolier released excessive numbers from thewatch, was repeated by the inhabitants of the island in the following monthsand soon became the subject of real concern.286 In April 1506 news reachedRhodes that a fleet of Turkish fusts had just issued from the Dardanelles. Theusual order that the watch should be kept diligently was made, but themaster added a protest that Daniel and his chief officers had released morethan seventy men from guard duty, which, seeing that it was the turcopolier’sresponsibility to improve its efficiency rather than diminish it, was intoler-able. He called upon the papal bull recognizing the agreement of 1445/6 asevidence, saying quite correctly that it allowed only castellans to exempt

283 Ibid., fos. 90r–v. 284 Ibid., fos. 92v–93r.285 Amboise arrived on 1 September 1504. AOM80, fo. 110v. 286 AOM284, fo. 90v.

The English Langue 309

people from guard duty, and that even they needed express magistral licencefor this. Requesting that such relaxations cease forthwith, d’Amboise alsorequested a thorough overhaul of the visitation, based on the clause of thesame bull providing for its joint conduct by the turcopoles and castellans intimes when the Turkish fleet was at large. Henceforth, he proposed, castel-lans and deputies appointed by himself should visit the guard stations incompany with the turcopoles. This would be more secure than allowing theturcopoles to do it alone, as they were ‘rustici’, intent on agriculture by dayand too tired to visit the guards on horseback by night as a result. The masterclaimed that many scandals had arisen from their lack of vigilance and citedthe success of the recent Turkish attack on Archangelos, which had borne off120 Christian souls into slavery, as an instance.287 Daniel, however, refusedto consent, claiming that his release of men from guard duty had the sanctionof custom, and that allowing castellans to visit the guards would prejudicehis pre-eminence. His obstinacy exasperated the council, who exhorted himto compel everyone to guard duty and to consent to turcopoles and brethrenvisiting the guard posts together. He would have command of the brethrenso deputed, which would enhance the dignity of his office rather than detractfrom it. The honour and utility of the Religion should move him to this evenif they could not. When Daniel refused to listen to their urgings, Amboisepublicly excused himself from any scandal that might occur.288

Although the turcopolier seems to have fought off this attempt to co-optmagistral officers onto the visitation of the watch, spiteful clashes in thefollowing year indicate that Amboise’s castellans were still performing thisfunction, and that the master’s other officers were denying the turcopoleshay for their horses and thus the means of doing their job. The Englishknights launched vigorous countermeasures against this threat. On 5 August1507 Amboise came before the council complaining that Thomas Boydelland Alban Pole had broken the seal of the castellan of Villanova, which hadbeen placed on the door of a certain villager, and had come into the casale ofSoreni by night, broken into the master’s storeroom, and removed the haytherein.289 Robert Daniel and the bailiff of Eagle, Thomas Newport,defended the culprits, saying that Boydell had been seeking to uphold theturcopolier’s right to take hay from the villagers of Rhodes, which JeanAubin, the master’s cavallaritus (master of horse), had annulled.290 Theyadded that they had suffered a number of injuries from the master’s officials,

287 This had occurred in August 1503 but the failings of the turcopoles had not beenmentioned at the time. AOM80, fos. 53r–54r.

288 AOM81, fos. 39v–41r; Vatin, L’Ordre, 30–1, 292.289 AOM81, fos. 77v–78v.290 A statute of 1440 had laid down that the turcopolier could take food or pasture twice per

week from the turcopoles during his peregrinations about the island, although not ‘continuoso’but at diverse times, lest the expense of the burden injure the order’s subjects. No mention ismade of the turcopoles themselves having such rights. AOM1649, fo. 347r–v; Stabilimenta,‘De baiulivis’, no. xxvii; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 286.

310 The English Langue

which they detailed later, when the commissioners appointed to examinewitnesses at Villanova and Soreni came into council to report their findings.To the master’s demand that those brethren involved in the incidents bepunished, Newport and Daniel responded with a string of accusations. Theycomplained that, in company with the castellans of Villanova and Triande,Aubin had visited the guards in prejudice of the turcopolier’s pre-eminence,and had carried off hay from the turcopoles and viglocomites so that theyhad no food for their horses and could not perform their duties. They alsoasserted that certain brethren in magistral service had wounded and impri-soned turcopoles and viglocomites and taken hens, she-goats, and otheranimals belonging to the turcopoles which they had given to their ownmen. The council, however, considering that these matters had been newlyintroduced, postponed deliberation on them until the following day, andsentenced Boydell and Pole to three months’ imprisonment.291

Representatives of the langue appeared in council the next day to insistthat their complaints be considered and after the interested parties haddeparted, the lieutenant and council discussed them. They exonerated thecastellan of Soreni from blame, since he had had every right to retain the hayuntil given orders to do otherwise and had warned the Englishmen not totake it without licence. Although not upholding the seizure of hay by Aubin,Amboise claimed the right to purchase any excess fodder produced by theturcopoles and not needed for the exercise of their office as well as any haypossessed by those of the viglocomites who were unmounted. He alsodefended his cavallaritus from an accusation, previously unrecorded, thathe had wounded a guard, alleging that Aubin had found the latter asleep farfrom his station, and had struck him ‘cum lancee hasta’ only to wake him.The more serious charge that turcopoles and viglocomites had been impri-soned and assaulted was not discussed, while the seizure of animals wasremitted to another council.292

The council evidently found Amboise’s defence of his officers convincing.It upheld his claims to purchase hay, and ruled that although anyone whobreached the terms of the 1448 bull thereby incurred excommunicationand should be judged by the ecclesiastical authorities, in general unvigilantguards, who were also beaten by the English brethren, should be punishedby the master because they were his subjects.293 Amboise had clearly gotthe better of these exchanges, and the English knights, probably realizingthat the council would give them short shrift if they again appealed,but convinced that the sentence of 25 August had broken the terms of thebull of Nicholas V, suggested that mediators be appointed to determinethe disputed matters.294 By 3 February 1508 concord had been reached.295

The exemption of the turcopolier’s deputies from molestation in their

291 AOM81, fos. 78v–80r. 292 Ibid., fos. 80r–82r. 293 Ibid.294 AOM81, fos. 82r–83r. 295 Ibid., fos. 91v–93r.

The English Langue 311

persons and goods was reiterated, and it was laid down that the turcopolesand viglocomites were to provide Daniel and themselves with hay fortheir cavalcatura first, although should there be any excess fodder themaster would have the right of pre-emption. Hay was not to be removedfrom the storehouses without the licence of the master or his seneschal.The visitation of the guards was also considered. It was agreed that thebull of 1448 should be observed to the letter as far as this was concerned,and that it should be performed with greater diligence when necessary,although without breaching the turcopolier’s pre-eminence. The turcopo-lier’s deputies were to be permitted to strike sleeping guards moderatelyand without causing effusion of blood, broken limbs, or enormous lesions.Furthermore, the master’s right to take comestibles and revenues fromthe turcopoles was upheld, but nothing further was to be levied fromthem by his officers without his express mandate, as laid down in 1448.Additionally an order of the previous August that the turcopoles and viglo-comites sleep within the castles on nights when they were not visitingthe guards was overturned, although it was ruled that in troubled timestheir families must. Finally, because the master claimed that the bull wasstill not being followed properly, both parties swore to uphold it. Whilefurther mention was made of the turcopoles’ failings in June 1508 theagreement of February seems to have put an end to the jurisdictionalquarrels between Daniel and Amboise. Indeed, no further disputes concern-ing the turcopolier’s office, rights, or deputies reached the council until the1530s, a fact which suggests that the squabbles of 1503–8 were occasionedby a clash of personalities as much as by the importance of the issuesinvolved.

After the fall of Rhodes the turcopolier’s regular duties probably remainedin abeyance for a time, for no mention is made of his office in connectionwith the watch between 1522 and 1530. On moving to Malta, however,responsibility for the coastguard was again deputed to the head of theEnglish brethren. This caused some ill feeling among the Maltese. The Juratsof the island’s ancient capital, Mdina, had been accustomed to organizingthis duty before the order’s arrival, and the Hospitallers had sworn to upholdtheir privileges on taking over the island. Intermittent clashes occurred overthe watch into the 1550s. Commissioners were appointed to investigate whowas responsible for it in November 1533, but there seems to have been nofurther serious disagreement until April 1547, when the Jurats complainedof injuries they had suffered from the lieutenant turcopolier, Oswald Mas-singberd, and the order’s council appointed a commission to investigatethese and to inquire whether certain men who claimed to be too old tokeep watch should be dispensed from doing so.296 Further disputes with theMaltese were avoided while Nicholas Upton held the office between 1547

296 AOM85, fo. 121r; 87, fo. 113r.

312 The English Langue

and 1551297 and only recurred when Massingberd was reappointed to thelieutenancy in February 1552.298 Between 1552 and 1554Massingberd wasin constant trouble with the council for abusing his office and throwing hisweight around. In August 1552 the Jurats of Mdina once more complainedof injuries they had suffered at his hands, and on the same day he wasordered confined to his house for two months for having carried off aslave girl and her daughter from the house of a Maltese nobleman, whomhe had beaten in the process.299 By the following April Massingberd wasasking the master and council to restore his rights over the watch, which heclaimed had been removed.300 Although it was ruled that he should exercisethese according to the bull of 1448, this did not help matters, for on 5 June1553 the council appointed commissioners to investigate a fight which hadoccurred between certain men and Massingberd and to commit any laymenfound guilty to prison for the time being.301 Two weeks later the Jurats againcomplained of Massingberd and in early October a commission wasappointed to ensure that guard duty was being performed diligently interms that strongly suggest that it was not.302 Over the autumn and winterof 1553–4 the order repeatedly resisted Massingberd’s demands that he beraised to the dignity of turcopolier, an issue over which he made such anuisance of himself that in February he was imprisoned for a month, yetsoon after his release he was again quarrelling with the captains of Mdinaand the parishes of the island over the coastguard and in June was investi-gated for having accused the captain of the parish of Siggiewi of havingexempted the inhabitants of the countryside therefrom in return formoney.303 Shortly afterwards he left Malta and it is remarkable that despitehis behaviour and a supplication from the Jurats of Mdina in 1556 that theprivileges and customs of the city with regard to the night-watch andcoastguard be upheld, the chapter of 1558 again upheld the validity of thepapal bull of 1448.304

8.5 Service on Conventual Commissions

The turcopoliers’ duties were not confined to supervising the coastguard,presiding over their langue, or attending councils and chapters-general.Along with visiting priors of England or bailiffs of Eagle, they were

297 Upton was elected lieutenant turcopolier on 22 September 1547, and turcopolier on5 November 1548. BDVTE, 31; AOM88, fo. 15r.

298 AOM88, fo. 108v.299 Ibid., fo. 126r.300 Ibid., fos. 150v–151r.301 Ibid., fo. 158v.302 Ibid., fos. 159v, 173v.303 Ibid., fos. 170r, 172v, 190r; 89, fos. 6v, 140r.304 AOM288, fos. 46r, 75r.

The English Langue 313

appointed to many more conventual commissions, offices, and commandsthan were their lesser fellows. In practice, however, it is difficult to separatethe service of turcopoliers or bailiffs on conventual commissions from thatof other brethren.

Many commissions were routine investigations of disputes between breth-ren over their seniority or possessions in the west,305 of brawls, thefts,disturbances, and duels in and around the convent,306 or of unlicensedpiracy.307 But some were rather more significant, concerning diplomaticbusiness, conventual finances, or the security and provisioning of the order’spossessions. English brethren, for example, were sometimes sent to examinethe state of the fortifications on Rhodes, a task that fitted neatly with theirresponsibility for the watch. Thus on 16March 1471 the turcopolier and thehospitaller were appointed to traverse the island and consider which placesthey believed were worth defending against the Turks,308 while three yearslater JohnWeston and two other brethren were sent to assess the defences ofthe castle of Slemio.309 In later years former turcopoliers or lieutenantturcopoliers such as John Boswell, John Weston, and Thomas Docwra andyounger knights like John Rawson junior undertook similar operations.310

Although English involvement in provisioning the convent was relativelyunusual, John Weston was among commissioners appointed to negotiatewith patroni whom the order wished to bring corn to Rhodes in 1474 andJohn Kendal was appointed to send oil and wine from Italy to the convent in1479 and corn from the kingdom of Naples in 1484.311

Similarly rare was the employment of Englishmen on Hospitaller diplo-matic business in the east. John Wakelyn, who was dispatched to Cyprus in1477, was the only English brother sent on a diplomatic mission in theregion after 1460, although John Langstrother treated with Cypriot ambas-sadors in Rhodes in 1467, John Weston and John Kendal helped to arrangethe arrival and business of Jem Sultan in 1482, and Thomas Docwra wasinvolved in negotiations with an envoy of the Ottoman Prince Korkud in1503.312 Those English knights who were captains or lieutenants at St Petermust also have dealt with local Turks fairly regularly through interpreters.A junior knight, Nicholas Roberts, was among the ambassadors to theTurkish sultan during the surrender negotiations of 1522 and left a descrip-tion of Suleiman’s entourage which appears to be the first English account of

305 AOM73, fo. 99v; 74, fo. 131r; 75, fos. 41r, 88v; 76, fos. 156v, 195v; 86, fos. 96r, 107v,112v, 118v–119r, 123v, 127v, 132r; 282, fo. 65r.

306 AOM74, fos. 24r, 128r, 139v, 140r; 75, fo. 45v; 76, fo. 178v; 77, fo. 115v; 79, fos. 10v–11v;86, 114r–v.

307 AOM74, fos. 57r–58r, 62r, 68v; 75, fo. 169r–v; 76, fos. 17v, 97r–v.308 AOM74, fo. 63r–v.309 AOM75, fos. 54r, 55v–56r.310 AOM75, fos. 148v, 151r; 76, fo. 166r; 77, fo. 138r; 80, fo. 55r; 83, fo. 23r.311 AOM75, fo. 55r; 76, fo. 176r–v; CSPV, i, no. 493.312 AOM385, fo. 137r; 377, fos. 162r–163r; 76, fos. 109v, 125r–126r; 80, fos. 81v–82r.

314 The English Langue

a meeting with an Ottoman sultan.313 Rather less groundbreaking was theemployment of English knights such as John Langstrother and John Westonon conventual business in Italy and Germany while they were returning toEngland.314 Thomas Sheffield was even sent to Spain as the order’s visitorand ambassador in 1518 before he returned home.315

The only ‘British’ brother who came close to being a permanent diplomaton the convent’s service was John Kendal, who as procurator-general of theorder in the Roman Curia316 from November 1478 spent most of the nexttwelve years in Italy.317 Kendal negotiated successfully with Sixtus IV for therelaxation of the order’s Rule and the grant of indulgences for the relief ofRhodes,318 and was heavily involved in the diplomacy surrounding JemSultan, who was sent to the order’s keeping in France in 1482, and whosecustody several powers sought to wrest from the Hospitallers. In 1488,shortly before Jem’s transfer to Rome, Kendal was appointed captain ofhis guard.319 He was also appointed proctor of the common treasury inseveral Italian priories in 1478, and to various commissions in and aroundRome and in the kingdom of Naples over following years.320 In return forthis service he was granted the magistral camera of the priory of Pisa.321

Presumably as a reward for his diplomatic work for popes and kings, he wasalso appointed a member of the family of Innocent VIII and chamberlain ofthe English hospice in Rome.322 He both wrote and received letters in Italianand, judging by his later diplomatic employment, was probably at homewith Latin and French too.323 The sheer variety of his contacts—withcardinals, nobles, Hospitallers, and messengers—is attested by his accountsfrom this period, which were examined in 1493.324

8.6 Conventual Offices Held by Brethren of the langue

Although no other English brother was as prominent in European diplomacyas Kendal, several achieved considerable distinction in conventual affairs. At

313 Otho C.ix, fos. 39r–41r. Partial transcripts of this text are provided inLPFD, iii, no. 3026;Porter, Knights of Malta, 711–13.

314 See e.g. AOM378, fo. 162r; 75, fos. 69v–70r.315 LPFD, ii, no. 4485.316 As such he was effectively the order’s resident ambassador in Rome. His part in public

ceremonial there can be traced in Burckhardi, Liber notarum, i. 21, 55, 80, 106, 195–6.317 AOM283, fo. 170v; AOM386, fos. 149v–151r; see above, Ch. 5.3.318 AOM283, fos. 168v–169r, 170r, 170r–v.319 AOM389, fos. 209v–210r.320 AOM386, fo. 155v; 387, fos. 130v–131r; 76, fos. 176r–v, 177r, 178r, 186v–187r, 191r; 389,

fo. 163r–v; 390, fo. 154r.321 AOM387, fo. 177v.322 See above, Ch. 5.3; CPL, xiv. 273–4; Parks, English Traveler, 361.323 AOM76, fo. 167r–v; see above, Ch. 5.3.324 AOM391, fo. 199r–v.

The English Langue 315

least six held naval commands between 1460 and 1540, all except one beingturcopoliers or lieutenant turcopoliers when they did so. John Weston wascaptain of the order’s galley squadron twice, in 1461 and 1473, as wasThomas Docwra in 1495, and Robert Daniel in 1504.325 Docwra alsocommanded a single galley in 1501, as did John Kendal in 1477 and 1478,and Thomas Newport in 1516, while William Weston had charge of theorder’s ‘great ship’ in 1523, and William Tyrrell of its ‘great galleon’ in1537–9.326 John Weston’s activities in 1472–3 are particularly well docu-mented. His squadron was supposed to be assisting the Venetian fleet com-bat the Turks in conjunction with Uzun Hasan, but when news of the deathof King James of Cyprus reached the Republic’s captain general, AlvaroMocenigo, in July 1473, the latter dispatched his entire force there toforestall any attempt by the former queen, Charlotte, then exiled in Rhodes,to recover her throne. This placed the order in an embarrassing position andWeston withdrew his galleys to Rhodes, claiming they needed refitting.327

He was then sent, without his ships, to Mocenigo with the excuse that theorder’s sailors had refused to rejoin their vessels because they were involvedin the vintage, that the Hospital was poor, and that honour prevented it fromassisting Charlotte’s adversaries.328 In the following January, Weston wasagain appointed to negotiate with Mocenigo when the latter put in atRhodes to demand the delivery of two Cypriot fugitives, the archbishop ofNicosia and the Catalan James Zapplana.329 The record of Thomas Doc-wra’s unsuccessful action against Turkish fusts off Syme in 1501 and theinstructions given to Tyrrell in 1537 and 1538 detailing where he was to goand what to do also provide some flesh for the bare records of English navalservice.330 Moreover, the appointments of former English brethren as cap-tains in the royal navy in the 1540s suggest they had served as naval officersin the 1530s.

The other important military command held by brethren of the languewas the captaincy of St Peter’s castle, which was garrisoned by fifty knight-brethren in 1459 and seventy or more in 1475, and was a source of unceas-ing concern to the order’s council, which sent out a stream of orders relatingto its safe keeping, repair, and garrison.331 Four English knights were ap-parently elected to the captaincy between 1459 and 1522, although thecaptaincies of the first two, John Langstrother and Robert Tong, are some-what uncertain. Langstrother was elected to the post in 1459 after promisingto spend considerable sums on repairs to the castle, but his term as captain

325 AOM73, fo. 99r; 75, fos. 18v–19r; 78, fo. 28v; 80, fo. 98r; 395, fos. 142r–143r.326 AOM79, fo. 17r–v; 75, fos. 168v, 176v; 84, fo. 19r; 86, fo. 54r.327 AOM75, fos. 18v–19r; G. Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1940–52), iii.

599.328 AOM75, fos. 20r–21r, 24v–26r; Hill, Cyprus, iii. 599–600.329 AOM75, fos. 41r–42r.330 See above, Ch. 5.3; AOM416, fos. 220v–221r; 417, fo. 255r–v.331 AOM282, fo. 76v; 75, fo. 68r.

316 The English Langue

was not to commence until 1463, at which date he was in England, and bythe time he had returned to Rhodes another captain had been elected.332

Also dubious is Robert Tonge’s supposed captaincy in 1472–4.333 One is onsurer ground with the captaincies of Thomas Docwra between March 1499and March 1501 and Thomas Sheffield between March 1514 and March1517.334 Both Docwra and Sheffield made repairs to the castle, the latter’scosting nearly 6,000 florins of Rhodes, and willingness to pay for thesebefore awaiting repayment by the common treasury may have been crucialto their provision to the post in the first place.335 Both employed otherEnglish knights as their lieutenants.336

A number of English brethren also held administrative posts on Rhodes.Several served as one of two prud’hommes in charge of the day-to-dayfinances of the Infirmary, a post to which English knights were electedseven times between 1467 and 1539, and which gave them some, admittedlymanagerial, involvement in the order’s Hospitaller activities.337 Others wereappointed to distribute alms to the order’s dependants after the fall ofRhodes.338 After 1460, two knights—John Weston in 1470 and ClementWest between 1512 and 1514—held the post of castellan of Rhodes, anoffice in which they had charge of the administration of justice in Rhodestown and the surrounding area.339 Another English brother, Roland Thorn-burgh, held the sister office of bailiff of merchants in 1475.340 Both theseposts were generally in the gift of the master as administrator of the commontreasury, could only be held by brethren with at least eight years’ seniority,and were among the most important on the island, carrying with them a seaton the chapter-general.341 Brethren in the master’s household, such asThornburgh,342 were not only more likely to be employed by the councilas a result, but had considerable opportunities to benefit from magistralpatronage. Most of the brethren who went on to further advancement in theorder’s English and conventual affairs had been retained in the master’ssocius first. John Kendal, for example, was the chamberlain of Giovanbat-tista Orsini in the 1460s and was granted both the magistral camera in

332 AOM282, fos. 73r–v; 73, fo. 182v. He was licensed to leave Rhodes on 23 Oct. 1459.AOM369, fo. 175r.

333 Cited S. C. Spiteri, Fortresses of the Cross (Malta, 1994), 258. I have not found anyarchival reference to this.

334 AOM 78, fo. 83r; 393, fos. 155v–156r; 82, fos. 114v, 137v.335 AOM78, fo. 108r; 406, fos. 189v–190r. Most of the money Sheffield spent on repairs had

been lent him by Thomas Newport.336 These were Thomas Sheffield and Nicholas Fairfax respectively. AOM78, fo. 96r; 82, fo.

118r.337 AOM282, fo. 167r; 76, fo. 247r; 78, fo. 74v; 82, fo. 118r; 83, fo. 23r; 86, fos. 46r, 87r.338 AOM84, fo. 59r; 86, fo. 116r.339 AOM74, fo. 42r; 82, fo. 51r.340 AOM75, fo. 98r.341 AOM283, fo. 39r.342 Thornburgh had been retained in magistral service in 1471. AOM380, fo. 138r.

The English Langue 317

England and a commandery of magistral grace in the same decade, wellbefore he was granted a preceptory of cabimentum by the langue. A furthercommandery of grace, Melchbourne, followed in 1477.343 Other examplesof such favour are provided by John Langstrother, who was granted the richcommandery of Cyprus while the master’s seneschal in 1468, and ThomasSheffield, who was appointed magistral seneschal in 1518 and was grantedDinmore by magistral grace in 1523.344

The most powerful conventual offices usually in the master’s gift werearguably the two proctorships of the common treasury. The proctors, actingtogether with the grand commander, scrutinized conventual income andexpenditure, prosecuted debtors before the council, and judged pleas for theremission of debts. They usually served for a two-year term, although thiswasoften renewed. A number of English brethren, usually senior and rich, heldoneof the proctorships at various times in the century after1460. JohnWestonand John Langstrother were successively elected at a time of acute financialcrisis in the mid-1460s, John Kendal was similarly appointed in 1478, andserved as such on his return to the convent in 1482–4, Thomas Newport heldthe office in 1506–8 and 1518, John Bothe, as we have seen, during the early1520s, and William Weston in 1526–7. Even after the dissolution, GilesRussell was appointed proctor in July 1542.345 The proctorship was perhapsthe one important conventual office in which the English punched theirweight, and it is surely significant that the dignity was a financial one andthat the priory of England was among the richest in the order.

Despite this litany of employment, it would be a mistake to overemphasizethe prominence of the ‘English’ brethren in convent. Numerically they werea small minority at headquarters and if this imbalance was modified becausethe langues elected equal numbers of representatives to the order’s governingbodies the balance swung against them again because the bailiffs who sat onthe council or in chapters-general were generally French, Spanish, or Italianand the conventual officers who also attended were magistrally appointedand thus usually drawn from the three largest nations at the convent. NoEnglish knight was elected or appointed master or lieutenant master in thefifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Nor was there any area of conventualoperations, except those duties particular to the turcopolier, in which theEnglish ‘nation’ was pre-eminent among, or even on an equal footing with,the other langues, except perhaps those of Germany and Castile. The Englishcontributions to the order’s diplomacy, religious and intellectual life, andmedical activities were very limited, and even in those areas in which theywere more prominent, such as moneylending, financial administration,naval service, and service on conciliar commissions they were outclassed

343 AOM377, fos. 141r, 142r; 379, fos. 149r–v; 383, fos. 144v–145r.344 AOM377, fos. 241r–242r; 409, fo. 142v; 410, fo. 175r; LPFD, iii, no. 3026.345 AOM73, fo. 139v; 283, fos. 5v, 155v; 76, fos. 145r, 153r; 81, fo. 46v; 406, fos. 220v–271r;

AOM412, fos. 206r–v; 286, fo. 6r; 86, fo. 128v.

318 The English Langue

by the more numerous French, Italians, and Catalans. Although their mili-tary contribution to the sieges of 1480 and 1522 was significant, the Englishsector being about as long as those of the other langues, it was artificiallyenhanced by a more or less equal distribution of stipendiary soldiers to eachpost, and when the order was engaged in offensive operations at sea or onland, the English forces involved were largely nominal, between three andseven knights being typical, although these would have been accompaniedby servants and sometimes volunteers from the British Isles.

Yet the order’s constitutional structure and almost obsessive respect forprecedent coupled with fear of the confiscation of its ‘British’ estates ensuredthat the English langue was never marginalized, and if the langue’s brethrendid not get an eighth of the conventual appointments on offer, they did get arather larger share of the order’s major offices than their numbers merited.Some of the most important dignities in the gift of both masters and councilwere granted to English brethren and some Englishmen became majorfigures in the order’s politics in both east and west. The future priorsLangstrother, Kendal, Docwra, the two Westons, and the bailiffs of EagleNewport and Sheffield stand out in particular as men influential in theorder’s councils and involved in a wide range of conventual activity, lendingsums sometimes running into thousands of pounds, commanding navalexpeditions, holding administrative and military posts in convent, and serv-ing on various commissions. Other brethren, even mere conventual knights,could gain a wide variety of experience during their service at headquartersand by doing so stand in good stead for future preferment if they performedwell. In this respect the small size of the English langue did its members afavour, allowing those with ability to stand out in a way that the scramblefor preferment in the other nations may not have permitted.

A study of the English langue thus serves to underscore the mutualinterdependence of all the order’s activities, whether in the Mediterraneanor in western Europe. Conventual service was the essential first rung of thecareer ladder for a Hospitaller, but repeated visits to headquarters wereessential if one was ambitious and wanted to get on, and were sometimesrequired on pain of loss of benefices even if one did not. Although the mostprominent knights had often been marked out for advancement from theirfirst years in the order and accumulated benefices and offices with ease,some, like Thomas Docwra, were slower starters who made the grade bydint of long years of service in the east and by out-surviving their peers.Because it was worth their while and because the order’s brethren regardedwhat they were doing as valuable, they were prepared to invest time andeffort and to risk their lives in conventual service. It was this ability toharness the ambition and self-belief of individuals that made the order ofSt John so formidable an organization and which ensured that its Englishpriory did not escape from its control but remained a flourishing survivor ofthe international religious orders of the High Middle Ages.

The English Langue 319

CHAPTER NINE

Brethren and Conformists,1540–1565

Historians of the order of St John have traditionally exaggerated the heroismof the English Hospitallers’ resistance to Henry VIII. Concentrating on thoseof their number, real or supposed, who died for the Catholic faith, and onthose English knights who remained inMalta after 1540, they have generallycreated the impression that a majority of the English brethren of the orderweremartyred, remained inMalta, or fled to theContinent rather than submitto the Henrician supremacy and the dissolution of their ‘religion’.1 Mifsud’streatment of the subject usefully embodies the mass of supposition and wish-ful thinking that hadbuilt up over the years.Commenting, accurately enough,that tenEnglishknight-brethrenwere still tobe found inMalta severalmonthsafter the suppression, and assuming that the five knights readmitted into theorder on theMarian restoration in 1557, besides others, ‘must have’spent theintervening seventeen years in conscientious exile on the continent, the mon-signor ignored the possibility of apostasy entirely, except in the cases ofClement West and Nicholas Lambert, who he assumed died in prison onMalta. Such solidarity, had it existed, would have made the Hospitallersmore remarkable than the Carthusians in steadfastness. This chapter willexplore the truth of these statements, and examine the careers of the formerEnglishHospitallers between thedissolutionof1540and the re-establishmentof the order in England in 1557, with a brief discussion of the latter event.

Although twenty-seven English knights and between one and four pro-fessed chaplains were provisionally granted pensions by the statute of sup-pression of 1540, examination of the Maltese archives quickly establishesthat by 1542 only three knight-brethren—Giles Russell, Nicholas Upton,and Oswald Massingberd—remained in Malta as active members of theEnglish langue.2 West and Lambert, who had been sentenced to be confinedat pleasure by the council of the order in 1539, were not, asMifsud assumed,unable to return home because of their imprisonment.3Warrants were issued

1 See Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 204–5, 211; Porter, Knights of Malta, 412, 574; King,British Realm, 106–7; L. de Boisgelin, Ancient and Modern Malta, 2 vols. (London, 1805),ii. 26–7.

2 Statutes, iii. 779–80; AOM86, fo. 118v.3 AOM86, fo. 92v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 204.

for the payment of their pensions in England in October 1541, ten monthsafter their delivery to those brethren who had been there when the Hospitalwas dissolved.4 Additionally, Augmentations records show West regularlyreceiving his pension in England in the mid-1540s.5 Given the damage hisactivities had done to the order’s standing with Henry VIII, and the fact thathe had twice been deprived of the habit, his release is somewhat surprising,but it may have been a diplomatic gesture timed to coincide with the order’sdispatch of ambassadors to England in September 1540.6

The evidence for the five English knights—Edward Brown, Henry Gerard,James Hussey, Dunstan Newdigate, and Thomas Thornhill—who were oncaravan at the time of the dissolution and who were traditionally assumed tohave remained in Malta, is less clear-cut as no similar orders for the grant oftheir pensions have been enrolled in the public records.7 As the act for thesuppression laid down that, unless constrained to do otherwise, members ofthe order were to return to England by Pentecost 1541 if they were to receivetheir pensions, they may well have had difficulty in claiming them. Never-theless, the records of the Privy Council and of pension payments demon-strate that four of the five were in England by 1544.8 The fate of the fifth,James Hussey, is unclear. No further reference to him appears in England orMalta after he agreed to go on caravan in April 1540. He may have beenamong the Hospitallers killed at Algiers in 1541, but may equally well, giventhe fragmentary record of pension payments, have returned to England.

At least one of the two knight-brethren supposed by Mifsud to have‘sought refuge with their fellow knights in commanderies on the continent’9

can be found in England after 1540. Cuthbert Layton, the former preceptorof Ansty, was in temporary command of the castle of Norham in 1545,following the death of the previous captain, his brother Brian, in battle withthe Scots.10 The whereabouts of the other, George Aylmer, are more obscure.Aylmer, who in 1535 had been confined to Gozo for deeds committed byreason of his insanity, does not reappear until his readmission into the orderin Mary’s reign.11 It seems unlikely that he would have been restored to apreceptory if he had been shut away for twenty-two years, however.

4 LPFD, xvi, nos. 379 (57), 1308 (15).5 LPFD, xx, I, no. 557 fo. 33; xxi, I, no. 643 fo. 39; xxi, II, no. 775 fo. 33. News of his death

may have reached Malta by July 1547, when Oswald Massingberd was appointed commanderof Slebech in his place. AOM420, fo. 165r–v.

6 AOM86, fo. 109r; 417, fos. 234v, 281v–282v, 239r; 6425, fo. 278r.7 Edmund Brown, Thomas Thornsby (i.e. Thornhill), and James Hussey agreed to perform

caravan service on 2 Apr. 1540, and Henry Gerard and Dunstan Newdigate as late as 2 May1541. BDVTE, 36.

8 Statutes, iii. 781; LPFD, xvi, nos. 925, 1397; xviii, II, no. 231 ii (3); xix, I, no. 1036,p. 645.

9 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 204–5.10 LPFD, xx, I, nos. 280, 340.11 AOM86, fo. 10r; CPR1557–8, 313.

Brethren and Conformists 321

It seems probable, then, that the great majority of the Hospitallers pen-sioned off in 1540, whether then resident at home or overseas, acquiesced intheir new status as royal pensioners. Indeed they had little realistic alterna-tive. The convent on Malta, while willing to grant pensions to the threeknights who remained there,12 could not easily have afforded to finance alarger body of English brethren permanently, and the dissolution of theEnglish priory cut the English knights in Malta off from their only sourcesof income.

It is one thing to establish that most of the English Hospitallers were inEngland shortly after the dissolution, but it is quite another to trace theirsubsequent careers. Records of the payment of their pensions are lacking inmost cases. At first, only William Armistead, the master of the LondonTemple, and his underlings, and Philip Babington, a junior knight, wereregularly paid by the treasurer of Augmentations, rather than by the receiverof the Hospital’s lands in England and Wales, Maurice Denis.13 Yet nineformer knights, beside Babington, appear in occasional receipt of pensionsor annuities paid out of Augmentations between 1540 and 1547, and suchpayments become more common after the massive alienations of monasticlands occasioned by the French war in 1544 and 1545, which probably madeit more difficult for Denis to pay the pensioners himself.14 John Sutton, forexample, was paid his pension for the first half of 1545–6 out of Augmen-tations, the entry of the payment cancelled with a note that this had beenrepaid by the receiver of the hospital.15

Further information may be gleaned from the inquests into monasticpensioners carried out in the 1550s. Unfortunately, only about half ofthese survive and some returns are more thorough than others, but theynevertheless rescue some pensioners from obscurity. For example, JohnRawson junior, the former bailiff of Eagle, seems to be unmentioned inany other source after 1542. The Gloucestershire return to the inquest of1552, however, tells us that he had died in the same May.16

12 AOM86, fo. 118v.13 LPFD, xvi, no. 745 fos. 13, 40; xvii, no. 258, fos. 5, 12, 16–17; xviii, I, no. 436 fo. 52;

xviii, II, no. 231 ii (3,4); xix, I, no. 368 fo. 36; xx, I, no. 557 fo. 33; xxi, I, no. 643 fo. 39; xxi, II,no. 775 fo. 68; PRO E315/258 fo. 20v; /259, fo. 21r; /260 fo. 20v; /261 fo. 20v; /262 fo. 19v.Denis had been William Weston’s receiver since 1536 and was reappointed to the post by thecrown on 20 Dec. 1540. LPFD, vii, no. 1138 (misdated to 1534); xvi, no. 1500 p. 714.

14 These were Edward Bellingham, Edward Brown, Henry Gerard, David Gonson, DunstanNewdigate, Anthony Rogers, John Sutton, William Tyrell, and Clement West. References topension payments related specifically to their status as former Hospitallers appear in: LPFD,xvi, no. 745 ii; xvii, no. 258 fo. 18; xviii, I, no. 982 p. 549 (E315/235 fo. 117b); II, no. 231 ii (3);xix, I, no. 1036 p. 645 (E315/236 fo. 1); xx, I, no. 557 fo. 33; xxi, I, nos. 643 fo. 39, 1165 (89,90); II, nos. 774, p. 436, 775 fo. 33.

15 LPFD, xxi, I, no. 643 fo. 25.16 G. Baskerville, ‘The Dispossessed Religious of Gloucestershire’, Transactions of the Bristol

and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 49 (1927), 63–122, at 120.

322 Brethren and Conformists

Evidence from pension records can provide little information savewhether a particular pensioner was alive or dead, and whether paymentswere up to date or not. Yet, with the possible exception of wills or parishregisters, Exchequer or Augmentations records of pension payments are theonly notice of a number of the former Hospitallers after 1540. Althoughseveral former Hospitallers became prominent in royal service, two of themost senior—Clement West and Edward Brown—appear only in the con-text of pension payments, while George Aylmer, Thomas Pemberton, andThomas Coppledike do not appear in any published public records at all. Allof these men were granted relatively generous pensions and all, exceptBrown and Coppledike, had been received into the order before the siegeof Rhodes. They may have considered that their long service merited aleisurely retirement, but their absence from muster rolls and local govern-ment commissions is surprising nonetheless. The subsequent obscurity ofsome of the junior knights is more understandable. Their pensions of £10,while better than those enjoyed by the rank and file of other religious houses,were not sufficient to maintain the estate necessary to be considered forpublic appointments which would make them stand out enough to benoticed.

Of the ten ex-Hospitallers provisionally allocated pensions of £10 at thetime of the dissolution, Nicholas Upton and Oswald Massingberd remainedin Malta, and enjoyed careers of some prominence and incident therealongside Giles Russell, the turcopolier. Before his death in 1543, Russellsat on several commissions and served as a procurator of the commontreasury.17 Upton, appointed turcopolier in 1548 and castellan of Birgu in1549 ended his life leading the order’s cavalry to victory over a large force ofTurkish raiders devastatingMalta in July 1551. He expired in the moment oftriumph, overcome by his corpulence and the strain of fighting in thesummer heat.18 Massingberd, despite his serial misdeeds, was appointedtitular prior of Ireland in August 1547, and in May 1548 was in Italyplotting a rising in Ireland with Cardinal Pole and the dispossessed heir tothe Kildare earldom, Gerald Fitzgerald.19 The latter had spent severalmonths in Malta and Tripoli prior to this, and was entertained by NicholasUpton while in convent.20Massingberd seems to have been occupied in theseschemes for some time, for he was absent from convent between 1547 andthe last months of 1551.21 He was licensed to go to Ireland in August 1554,

17 AOM86, fos. 96r, 103r, 107v–108r, 112v bis, 114r, 114v, 116r, 118v–119r, 123v bis, 128v.18 AOM88, fos. 15r, 36v; 421, fos. 162v–163r; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, iii. 298–9.19 AOM87, fo. 123r–v; 420, fos. 165v, 196r–v; CSPV, v, no. 539; Holinshed’s Chronicles of

England, Scotland and Ireland, ed. H. Ellis, 6 vols. (London, 1808), vi. 304–7.20 Holinshed’s Chronicles, ed. Ellis, vi. 307; AOM287, fo. 74r.21 AOM420, fo. 196v; 88, fo. 101v–102r. He may also have attempted to visit Ireland as in

1547 he was commissioned to collect 1,000 ecus from the spoils of John Rawson. AOM421,fo. 173r–v.

Brethren and Conformists 323

but was unable to take possession of his dignity until the priory was restoredin 1557.22 Between 1545 and 1547 Upton and Massingberd were joined inMalta by George Dudley, the seventh son of Lord Dudley of Sutton, but afterbeing licensed to visit Germany in 1547 the younger knight-brother did notreturn to Malta until 1557, when he confessed to having apostatized andtaken a wife and was restored to grace.23

Of the other junior knights, Henry Gerard and Thomas Thornhill weregranted preceptories in 1557,24 but are virtually anonymous in the interim.Gerard, at least, was in England, and was paid his pension by the receiver ofAugmentations in Dorset in 1544.25 In 1558, he returned to Malta—theonly one of the pensioners of 1540 to do so—and was elected lieutenantturcopolier.26 The rest, with the exception of Philip Babington, David Gon-son (or Gunstone), and Dunstan Newdigate, are still more obscure. Between1540 and 1542, Thornhill, Babington, Gonson, Newdigate, and the juniorpreceptor William Tyrrell, all appear in the records of the Privy Council.27

The statute of dissolution had laid down that on arrival in England Hospi-tallers were to present themselves before two senior royal officials and takean oath of allegiance to the king.28 It may be in this context that Thornhillwas sent for to appear at Westminster in July 1541, having just arrived homefrom Malta, but the summons may have been of less innocent character.29

David Gonson, the son of the naval administrator William, was executed fortreason later in the same month, and it appears that he was only one ofseveral knights under suspicion.30 John Story, the royal servant who hadbeen carrying letters to and from the captive Clement West, put in articles oftreason against Gonson ‘which seemed to depend upon the sayings of PhilipBabington’ in or before October 1540.31 By July 1541 William Tyrrell wasalso confined in the tower under suspicion of treason. He was ordered to bereprieved on the 7 July, ‘in order to know his name and confront him withsome accomplices’,32 but was later attainted and pardoned only in March1543.33 In December 1541, moreover, Dunstan Newdigate and another,

22 AOM424, fo. 162r; CPR1557–8, 43–6.23 AOM87, fo. 61r; BDVTE, 29–30; AOM420, fo. 162r; 89, fo. 127r.24 CPR1557–8, 313.25 LPFD, xix, I, no. 1036 p. 645 (PRO E315/236 fo. 1).26 AOM90, fos. 22r, 26v.27 LPFD, xvi, nos. 132, 925, 973, 1397.28 Statutes, iii. 781.29 PPC, vii. 205. In view of Henry VIII’s earlier scheme to transfer the English brethren to

Calais, it is intriguing that a Nicholas Lambert, and a Mr Brown (Edward?), captains atGuines, were also sent for on the same date. They may have been the former Hospitallers ofthe same names.

30 LPFD, xvi, nos. 973, 1011 p. 483.31 PPC, vii. 57.32 LPFD, xvi, no. 1011 p. 483, 973; PPC, vii. 210–11.33 LPFD, xviii, I, no. 346 (9).

324 Brethren and Conformists

unnamed, ‘of the order of Rhodes’ were discharged of a bond to appear dailyin Star Chamber, but remained bound to appear upon warning.34

Both Gonson and Tyrrell were probably attainted for treasonable talkoverseas, the offence for which Thomas Dingley had suffered two yearsearlier. Babington had accused Gonson of having ‘at Malta and elsewherepublicly denied and opposed’ the royal supremacy, and of having called theking a traitor.35 Tyrrell was pardoned in March 1543 ‘for diverse dailytreasons’ committed between July 1536 and August 1539. To these wereadded three specific offences, probably treasonable talk of some kind, com-mitted in Malta during the same period.36 It is possible that Gonson’snemesis, Philip Babington, was a spy in royal service. He had abscondedfrom Malta without leave in early 1540, and while he was granted hispension in December 1540 at the same time as ten other knights, he hadalready received a payment from Augmentations in February, before the actfor the suppression of the priory was passed.37 Considering that the Hospi-tallers were riddled with informers in the years before the dissolution, withNicholas Lambert and Clement West also reporting the loose words of theirfellows, it is remarkable that more were not executed on their return home.

Yet the line between favour and the block was always a thin one in TudorEngland, and after the suspicion and bullying with which they were faced in1540 and 1541, the crown found considerable use for the talents of theformer knights of St John, including Tyrrell and Newdigate. This is notaltogether surprising. Senior knight-brethren had often served as diplomatsand couriers for the English government, and the priors of England andIreland had practically become professional royal servants. While WilliamWeston died in 1540 and John Rawson senior was too old and sick to be ofmuch use thereafter,38 a number of mostly middle-ranking brethren forgednew careers for themselves in the crown’s service in the 1540s and 1550s.The most successful were Ambrose Cave and Edward Bellingham, who roseto be chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and deputy of Ireland respect-ively,39 but William Tyrrell, Richard Broke, Dunstan Newdigate, HenryPoole, John Sutton, and Edmund Hussey also found employment on gov-ernment commissions and in the navy.40 To these may be added the former

34 PPC, vii. 278.35 M. Elvins, Bl. Adrian Fortescue: Englishman, Knight of Malta, Martyr (London, 1993),

20.36 LPFD, xviii, no. 346 (9).37 LPFD, xv, no. 522; xvi, no. 745, fo. 13.38 See above, 223–4; LPFD, xvi, no. 42; xvii, nos. 688, 1182.39 Cave appears in the Dictionary of National Biography, while his government service, as

well as that of Bellingham and of Henry Poole, is summarized in the more recent History ofParliament. DNB, iii. 1247; Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, i. 414–15, 594–5; P. W. Hasler(ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603 (London, 1981), i.563–4.

40 See below, 327–9.

Brethren and Conformists 325

master of the Temple, William Armistead, who, as Dean of St Paul’s, servedon a number of important commissions during the reign of Philip andMary.41

It is difficult to establish exactly when or how these men entered royalservice. The closest to court initially was Edward Bellingham, who wasemployed almost continuously on crown business from 1542 until hisdeath in 1550. It may have been he who suggested that some of his formerbrethren should also be employed, and who secured the statute of 1545permitting members of the order to marry, a concession not made to anyother former religious by Henry VIII.42 The extent and variety of Belling-ham’s work on behalf of the crown is impressive. He was sent to theHabsburg court in Austria and Hungary in 1542, served in various capaci-ties in Dover, Calais, and Boulogne between 1543 and 1545, being at onestage taken prisoner by the French, and was in charge of the defence of theIsle of Wight in the summer of 1545.43 By the same year, Bellingham was agentleman of the privy chamber.44 His service and position at court saw himrewarded with a number of handsome royal grants, including the manor andlordship of Bradford in Wiltshire, worth £142 odd per annum, and he wasleft 200 marks in Henry VIII’s will.45 Under the government of SomersetBellingham continued to flourish. He was dispatched to the imperial court inFebruary 1547 to announce Edward VI’s accession, to Ireland the sameMayto put down a rebellion, was knighted in September, and was appointeddeputy of Ireland in April 1548.46

The service of Bellingham’s former confreres was rarely as adventurous ashis. None of them appears to have served in a diplomatic capacity after1540, but the former Hospitallers were quite active in local government andmilitary matters. In both areas, their employment on behalf of the crownowed much to their former occupation. The pensioners were sometimesappointed to government commissions in the shires where they had heldpreceptories. Henry Poole, for example, served as a JP, MP, and sheriff inLeicestershire, where he had been preceptor of Dalby.47 John Sutton, latepreceptor of Willoughton, served on commissions of the peace and of sewersin Lincolnshire.48 Others, like Ambrose Cave who removed fromDerbyshireto Leicestershire, and Edmund Hussey who returned to Dorset from

41 CPR1553–4, 73–4, 74–5, 76.42 LPFD, xx, II, no. 850 (c. 31).43 LPFD, xvii, no. 459; xviii, I, nos. 526, 675 p. 390, 729, 771; II, nos. 345, 352, 365, 413;

xx, I, nos. 297, 435, 848, 1275, 1281, 1291, 1306, 1329; II, nos. 142, 368–9, 501, 1051.44 LPFD, xx, II, no. 142. He had been a gentleman pensioner for some time.LPFD, xix, I, no.

275, pp. 161–2.45 LPFD, xxi, I, nos. 558, 643 fo. 76; II, nos. 476 (4), 774 (pp. 434, 441), 634 (1), 771 (9).46 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Edward VI (London, 1861), 2,

2–3, 3, 3–4, 5; CPR1553 & Appendices 1547–53, 404.47 CPR1547–8, 85; CPR1553–4, 21; Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 130–1.48 CPR1547–8, 86, 78; CPR1553–4, 21.

326 Brethren and Conformists

Somerset, moved back to estates nearer their families, and served on gov-ernment business in these counties.49

The pensioners’ employment on such work is a testament to their previousstanding as landholders, a position that was partly maintained by the rela-tively generous pensions granted them in 1540. A further element of continu-ity was provided by the fact that several former brethren continued to live onproperty that had previously belonged to the order. John Mablestone, thesubprior, was allowed to keep his house within the priory precincts by thestatute of 1540, and still lived there in 1546.50 Richard Broke, by then amember of the royal household, secured a lease of Mount St John in 1542,and continued to hold a messuage in St John’s Street in Clerkenwell.51 Atabout the same time John Rawson, junior, still held properties that hadbelonged to the bailiwick of Eagle, and John Sutton remained a tenant atWilloughton until his death in 1555.52 Ambrose Cave, who departed Yeave-ley after the dissolution, nevertheless purchased the former camera of Roth-ley in Leicestershire in 1544.53 The former preceptor of Dalby and Rothley,Henry Poole sat on commissions with Cave in the same shire, married hissister, and left him a mourning ring in his will.54 There was even morecontinuity among the order’s servants, many of whom administered theorder’s estates and lived in its properties as they had done before 1540.

The employment of several former Hospitallers in military service in the1540s and 1550s also demonstrates contintuity with their former careers.The mobilization of men and ships for the war with France between 1544and 1546 was probably the largest since Edward III’s siege of Calais in1346–7, and the former gentlemen ‘of the Roodes’ naturally came to thefore because of their military experience. Ambrose Cave, Henry Poole, andEdmund Hussey were all appointed to take contingents to France in 1544,and to raise troops and escort them to Dover in 1546, and Edward Belling-ham was responsible for seeing victuals across the Channel in 1543.55 Themost striking use of the former Hospitallers’ expertise, however, was innaval operations.

By mid-1543 Dunstan Newdigate and Richard Broke had already seenactive service as captains in the royal navy in the North Sea and Channel.56

49 CPR1547–8, 85; CPR1553 & Appendices 1547–53, 328, 351, 356, 387; Calendar ofState Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Edward VI 1547–1553, preserved in the PRO,rev. edn., ed. C. S. Knighton (London, 1992), 273; LPFD, xxi, I, no. 91 (1).

50 Statutes, iii. 780; LPFD, xxi, I, no. 970 (1); Excavations, 135, 222.51 LPFD, xvii, no. 1258, p. 697; xix, II, no. 340 (21); xxi, I, no. 970 (1); Excavations, 226,

231.52 LPFD, xvii, no. 881 (16); CPR, 1553–4, 156, 419.53 LPFD, xix, I, no. 80 (64).54 Bindoff, House of Commons, iii. 131.55 LPFD, xix, I, nos. 273 (p. 154), 274; xx, I, no. 91 (1–3); xxi, I, nos. 91 (2, 3), 643 fos. 81,

82; xviii, I, nos. 675 (p. 390), 729, 771; Hussey later admitted to claiming expenses for raisingmore men than he had actually done. LPFD, xxi, I, nos. 678, 1080.

56 LPFD, xvii, no. 895; xviii, I, nos. 133, 200, 225, 414, 434, 447, 466, 596, 765.

Brethren and Conformists 327

In May 1544, Broke was commanding a small fleet in Scotland with somesuccess, and in the following November he was created vice-admiral of theships appointed to keep the Narrow Seas and harass French shipping.57

Newdigate, and William Tyrrell, now forgiven and in receipt of a royalannuity,58 also captained ships in French waters in the same year.59 Tyrrell,who had captained the galleon of the order between 1537 and 1539, was aparticularly valuable asset to the royal navy.60

Lists of ships appointed to serve in the king’s wars drawn up in 1544 and1545 variously put vessels in the charge of five former Hospitaller knights—Richard Broke, Edmund Hussey, Newdigate, Tyrrell, and Ambrose Cave.61

The admiral, Lisle, seems to have personally recommended at least some ofthese for their positions. He wrote to Paget in August 1545 praising ‘An-thony’ (recte Edmund) Hussey, ‘gentleman of the Roodes’, as ‘a very hardyman and one that hath been brought up in the feat of the sea’. In the sameletter Lisle proposed that William Tyrrell be appointed to command thegalley wing of the fleet as the fittest man in the army, ‘for he is a man thathath seen the feat of the galleys and is a sure man and a diligent in anythingthat he is committed unto’.62 Lisle’s recommendation was upheld, andTyrrell put in command of the galley squadron. In the previous year, RichardBroke had commanded theGalley Subtill, which had been specially commis-sioned by the king and fitted out by the Venetians in 1544. In 1546, however,the captaincy of the vessel was given to a Spaniard, possibly because, asOppenheim suggests, ‘the English captain of the preceding year had not beenfound efficient’.63

The government was short of naval officers in 154564 but the nominationof no less than five former Hospitallers as captains remains a considerabletribute to their training and experience in the order’s service. AlthoughHussey and Newdigate were apparently released from service after 1545,Tyrrell and Broke continued to receive naval commands well into the 1550s.Tyrrell was named admiral of the fleet appointed to relieve St Andrews inlate 1546,65 and in 1549 he and Broke were commanding galleys in the

57 LPFD, xix, I, nos. 472, 813; II, no. 600.58 LPFD, xix, I, no. 1036 p. 644. This was increased to £100 in the reign of Edward VI.

CPR1550–3, 177.59 LPFD, xix, I, no. 643; II, nos. 502 (4), 600, 674 (xv, xxvii).60 AOM416, fos. 220v–221r; 417, fo. 255r–v.61 LPFD, xix, II, no. 502 (4); xx, II, nos. 39, 62, 88; Addenda, no. 1697 (iii).62 LPFD, xx, II, no. 62.63 LPFD, xx, II, no. 88; M. Oppenheim, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy

and of Merchant Shipping in Relation to the Navy from MDIX to MDCLX with an Introduc-tion Treating of the Preceding Period (London, 1896), 51 and n. A contemporary illustration oftheGalley Subtill is reproduced in N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval Historyof Britain, i: 660–1649 (London, 1997), plate 24.

64 ‘In 1545 the demand for captains exceeded the supply for the smaller ships’. Oppenheim,Royal Navy, 78.

65 LPFD, xxi, II, nos. 123, 331 (1). In the event he was too ill to execute his commission.Ibid., no. 475 (72).

328 Brethren and Conformists

Channel. On this occasion the admiral was told to take special heed of theadvice of the former Hospitallers.66 At the end of the same year Tyrrell wasalso sent to survey the Scilly Isles.67 Broke, who was in charge of seven shipsappointed by Northumberland to defend the east coast was, according to theimperial ambassadors in London, among the first significant governmentservants to desert to Queen Mary in the succession crisis of 1553, taking hisships, arms, and artillery over to her at the most crucial moment in herfortunes.68 He last appears in March 1554, reporting with Tyrrell on thestate of the defences of Alderney,69 while Tyrrell continued to receive com-missions until just before he died, a particular honour being his appointmentto receive the king in the barque of Boulogne in 1555.70

On 16 November 1557, according to the Diary of Henry Machyn, ‘wasburied at St. Martin’s at Ludgatt, master Terrell, captayn of the galee, andknyght of the Rodes sum-tyme was; with a cote, penon and ii baners ofemages, and iii haroldes of armes, and ii whyt branches, and xii torches, andiiii gret tapurs’.71 At his demise, Tyrrell’s former career as a Hospitaller wasthus recalled with honour alongside his naval service to the crown. Never-theless, it might not have been remembered at all had he not served thecrown so diligently and skilfully after the dissolution. Not all the formerHospitallers showed themselves as enterprising as Bellingham, Broke, Cave,or Tyrrell, yet after the dissolution a large proportion adjusted to secular lifewith little difficulty. Their profession had always been a practical one,accustoming them to the rigours of military action and the needs of admin-istration in equal measure, and after 1540 these capabilities were deployedin the service of their crown rather than their order. This may not have beena particularly drastic adjustment to make, for it is arguable that the alle-giance of members of the order had always, if only by necessity, been givenas much to Westminster as to the convent. The employment of seniorHospitallers resident in England on government business was traditional,and it is likely that many of the pensioners of 1540 would have seen royalservice even had the order not been dissolved. Yet the executions of ThomasDingley and David Gonson, the near miss suffered by William Tyrrell, andthe exile undergone by Russell, Massingberd, and Upton demonstrate thatthere was considerable disillusion among the brethren with the policies ofthe Henrician government in the 1530s, and that some were not afraid toexpress their misgivings. Their boldness was perhaps unwise, but it was in

66 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, ed. Knighton, 221, 224.67 Ibid. 425.68 Calendar of Letters . . . Spain, xi. 107; he was evidently persuaded to this by Henry

Jerningham. D. M. Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1989), 178.69 APC, v. 5–6.70 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580, ed.

R. Lemon (London, 1856), 90; APC, v. 234.71 The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from AD 1550 to

AD 1563, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 42 (London, 1848), 158.

Brethren and Conformists 329

keeping with the self-confidence and corporate awareness that made theorder of St John such a formidable organization that not all its memberscould be tamed by Henry VIII.

Often relegated to the status of an unimportant aside in the brief accountsof the restored orders of Queen Mary’s reign offered by English historians,the restoration of the priories of England and Ireland in 1557–8 has beenvariously interpreted by more interested commentators as a natural mani-festation of the queen’s piety,72 as an aspect of Philip II’s Mediterraneanstrategy,73 or as a personal project of Reginald Pole.74 There is something tobe said for each of these theories, but all three actors played a part in theorder’s recovery of its position, and all three were almost certainly welldisposed towards it in 1553. The queen’s own interest in restoring thehospital is not immediately apparent, but she was determined to re-establishboth the English Church’s obedience to Rome and the position of thereligious orders within it, and the order of St John served as a useful emblemof each.Moreover, both the support of Richard Broke in her own restorationand her contacts with successive imperial ambassadors since her mother’sdivorce probably encouraged her to advance the order’s cause as an institu-tion both significant in the defence of the faith and potentially loyal in hersupport.75 It may have been with such considerations in mind that she sentan envoy toMalta, one ‘Captain Ormond’, soon after her accession.76 PhilipII’s part in the negotiations can be more readily explained by self-interest.The maintenance of the order in Malta was crucial to the defence of thewestern Mediterranean against Turks and Barbary corsairs, and the restor-ation of its English estates would boost the convent’s finances and margin-ally increase its manpower. Philip’s sustained interest in the matter is shownby the fact that it was an Aragonese knight-brother who was chosen to replyto the queen’s overtures in 1555, that his adviser Antonio de Toledo, prior ofCastile, was heavily involved in the restoration, and that when the priorywas revived in 1557 a Spaniard, Pedro Felizes de la Nuca, was chosen to bebailiff of Eagle.77 Pole, too, probably had some say in the choice of the menwho were received as brethren in 1557. His links with Oswald Massingberdand Richard Shelley went back to the 1530s or 1540s, he may have metOliver Starkey while he was in the Low Countries waiting to be admittedinto England, and the new prior of England, Thomas Tresham, was employ-ing one of his former chaplains.78

72 King, British Realm, 109–10.73 T. F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000), 285, inclines (guard-

edly) to the view that it was ‘Philip’s and the pope’s pet cause, and not Mary’s nor his [Pole’s]’.74 Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 309, 378.75 Charles V had urged the English authorities to restore the order in 1549. Calendar of

Letters . . . Spain, ix. 419, 430.76 ‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 4.77 Ibid. 4, 6; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 209; Mayer, Pole, 285.78 See above; Bindoff (ed.), History of Parliament, iii. 308, 378–9; Mayer, Pole, 285.

330 Brethren and Conformists

Despite the goodwill of the relevant authorities, jurisdictional, proced-ural, and financial difficulties put back the re-establishment of any religioushouses in England until 1556,79 so that it was not until March and April1557 that royal letters patent authorized Pole, as papal legate, to restore theorder.80 This was set in motion at the beginning of May, when Pole issueddecrees confirming the priory of England in its dignities and in possession ofnine commanderies still in crown hands,81 and instructing members of theIrish episcopate to place Oswald Massingberd in possession of the order’sestates in Ireland.82 It was not, however, until 1December 1557 that the newprior of England, Thomas Tresham, a religious conservative who had beenprominent in the queen’s service since the first days of her reign,83 wasformally inducted at Clerkenwell, together with Massingberd and the Eng-lish commanders.84 Several had not been previously professed, and appearto have been chosen for the capabilities they had already demonstrated in theservice of Mary, Philip, and Pole. These ‘new’ knight-brethren, moreover,dominated the revived order, being appointed to all the bailiwicks of thelangue save the priory of Ireland. But several former brethren also receivedpreferment, George Dudley being the only man who rejoined not to be sorewarded. By the end of 1558 six ‘English’ knight-brethren (including de laNuca) were in Malta,85 while Tresham and Massingberd were occupied intheir duties as royal councillors and lords of parliament, a sign that thedivision of responsibilities between priors and preceptors obtaining since thefourteenth century was expected to continue. Indeed, the order’s subordin-ation to the crown was more pronounced than at any time before 1537: therestoration of 1557 was specifically stated to be a new foundation in whichthe crown was sole founder and patron, notwithstanding the constitutions offormer legates, the English Church, or the order’s convent and its Englishpriory.86 Although there were legal reasons for these pronouncements, their

79 D. M. Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England,1553–1558, 2nd edn. (Harlow, 1998), 299–300.

80 ‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 4.81 Ibid. 4–5, 7–10; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 209, 323–5. These were Baddesley, Eagle,

Halston, Newland, Quenington, Slebech, Temple Brewer, Willoughton, and Yeaveley. Theywere distributed among eight knight-brethren, the turcopolier Richard Shelley receiving Hal-ston and Slebech.

82 ‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 4, 15–17; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 210–11, 334–5.83 Like Broke, he had been among the first to proclaim Mary queen. Bindoff (ed.), House of

Commons, iii. 482.84 ‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 5, 25–7. Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 209–10, 325–8. Pole

presided over the ceremony at Clerkenwell, but Tresham had been ‘creatyd’ prior and four‘knyghtes of the Rodes made’ before the king and queen at Whitehall on the previous day. Thisoccasion presumably incorporated an oath of fealty.Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. Nichols, 159.At some stage William Barlow, clerk, was also admitted as a brother chaplain. CPR1558–60,249–50.

85 BDVTE, 49, 37.86 ‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 8–9. Cf. for Ireland ibid. 12–13.

Brethren and Conformists 331

effect was to give the crown, acting through Pole, carte blanche to appointwhom it saw fit to the langue’s dignities.87

The revived order was, of course, short-lived. In Elizabeth’s first parlia-ment the properties and revenues of the religious houses restored in theprevious reign were vested in the crown, although no formal decree dissolv-ing the hospital was issued, a fact which excited the nineteenth-centuryenthusiasts who sought to restore its English langue. Like his predecessor,Thomas Tresham conveniently expired before having to be provided for,88

while when faced with the choice between their allegiance to the crown andan uncertain future in Malta, brethren such as Henry Gerard, CuthbertLayton, and Thomas Thornhill again plumped for a royal pension.89 Yetsome of the newly admitted brethren were rather more zealous. OliverStarkey remained in Malta, where he held the posts of bailiff of Eagle andlieutenant turcopolier, until his death in the 1580s, and commanded amixture of Greeks and Maltese soldiers on the post of England during thesiege of 1565.90 Richard Shelley, the turcopolier and later titular prior ofEngland, dwelt in uneasy exile in Spain, Rome, and Venice, but did reside inconvent between 1566 and 1570, while his brother James, despite beinggranted a royal pension in 1563, also returned to Malta. The priory’srestoration, the exile of Starkey and the Shelleys, and the obvious prideRichard Shelley showed in his dignity and his order in letters home arepowerful arguments against any assumption that the order of St John wasuniversally considered redundant in mid-Tudor England.91

87 ‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 8–9. Cf. for Ireland ibid. 18–19.88 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 211.89 CPR1558–60, 324–5;CPR1560–3, 78. Mifsud contended that they ‘returned to the places

where they had sought shelter’ in the 1540s and 1550s. Id., Venerable Tongue, 211.90 Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 378–9.91 Shelley, Letters, passim.

332 Brethren and Conformists

CHAPTER TEN

Conclusion

It is easy to see why the Hospital of St John’s British and Irish houses andpersonnel have not attracted much scholarly attention. They have left only alimited number of scattered architectural remains, amounting usually to oneor two modest buildings at any particular site. The order’s members werefew, their intellectual output undistinguished, their lives generally unsaintly,if not always undramatic, and their aggregate wealth, although substantial,hardly comparable to that of the Black monks. Before the days of cheap andfrequent air travel, moreover, few scholars ventured to Malta, and thosewho might have wished to do so were informed that there was practically nouseful ‘British’ material to look at there. The common perception that post-1291 crusading thought was composed of unrealistic and anachronisticdaydreaming rather than serious planning, and particularly so in a ‘British’context, and that the order had become reduced to a rent-collecting agencyproviding comfortable lives for a few gentlemanly brethren, also conspiredto limit interest in the order among historians. Consequently, writers on thereligious orders have tended to ignore it, and their neglect has chimed wellwith the tendency of some scholars working on the Later Middle Ages todismiss religious orders as generally unable to fulfil the ritual and spiritualaspirations of the laity. Yet in contrast a few literary and other scholarswriting with chivalric, prophetic, or alchemical literature in mind havestressed that the order’s activities accorded with the highest ideals of atleast some contemporaries.

As a historian keen to establish the importance of one’s own subject it istempting to side with the latter. Yet it is impossible to do so without somereservations. There is very little contemporary comment in English sourcesabout the international activities of the order of St John, which appearstherein to have been as renowned for operating a confraternity and admin-istering peculiars as for expending its livelihood and the blood of its mem-bers in the east. While the order certainly tried to draw attention to itsstruggle in its liturgy and fund-raising, and succeeded in attracting substan-tial support when it offered papally derived plenary indulgences, it attractedrelatively few testamentary bequests at other times, and even its confratresappear as likely to have been attracted by the spiritual and temporal privil-eges of membership as by thoughts of contributing to the war againstthe Turks. While confraternity was technically voluntary, moreover, many

payments were evidently owed in perpetuity, and sanctions might bedeployed against some non-payers. Nevertheless, the order’s provision ofconfraternity and extra-parochial services to the laity clearly elicited aresponse in many, as the complaints of the clergy make clear, and mayprovide indirect evidence of support for its participation in sacred violence.

The ties of tenancy, service, and friendship which bound the order’sbrethren to wider society can also be interpreted in differing ways. Thatmany families contributed brethren to the order across generations or evencenturies is easily demonstrated, and the fact that enthusiasm for it might betransmitted through wives and mothers to their marital relations and off-spring is suggestive of its appeal, or at least of the attraction that weather-beaten uncles’ tales of daring-do held for their nephews. As we might expect,familial fascination with the order was rarely selfless. Those who contrib-uted brethren to it might reasonably suppose that should they survive tobecome preceptors, lucrative leases and offices would follow, and, useful asrelatives’ service might be, their determination to hang on to grants after thedecease of their Hospitaller relatives sometimes involved the order in ex-pensive litigation. Nevertheless, whether related to brethren or not, many ofthe order’s officials served loyally for life, some making the dangerousjourney to the convent in the train of their masters, and others choosingburial in its houses. In return for such commitment, the order attempted topromote existing servants to vacancies, and rewarded them with properties,corrodies, benefices, and administrative offices. Those who sought rentedproperty from the Hospital, such as the Babingtons of Dethick, might also bedrawn into relations of confraternity or service with it which could last forgenerations. Yet others’ relationships with the order appear to have beenmore exploitative. Some courtiers and royal servants became its confratres,and others such as Edmund Weston of Rozel contributed sons to the order,but the order was as dependent on the favour of those close to the crown asany other, as its dealings with Daubeney, Bray, Wolsey, Norfolk, and Crom-well demonstrate. If the Hospital avoided the indignities suffered by someother houses, its priors and preceptors nevertheless felt it necessary todistribute gifts, pensions, and, sometimes after principled opposition,favourable leases to ministers or their intimates. The favour such personagesextended in return could be temporary and of dubious worth, and thepressure they exerted to obtain it became more obvious and oppressiveduring the reigns of the early Tudors, especially in the 1520s and 1530s.

Indeed, all the activities of the British and Irish Hospitallers hinged ontheir relationship with the governing authorities of those islands, and withtheir leading servants. It seems likely that kings protected the order becauseof their responsibilities to defend Christendom and the Church as evinced incoronation oaths and sermons, and reinforced by papal letters and otherliterary productions. But in return, as ‘founders’, protectors, and naturallords, they made certain claims on the order’s houses and brethren which

334 Conclusion

undoubtedly affected the contribution they made to its headquarters. First,priors of England and Ireland, as ‘lords of parliament’ and natural council-lors of the king, were increasingly expected to remain in his service, so thatfrom the 1450s licences for them to travel to convent practically ceased. Theweight of government business placed on their shoulders also increased,especially after 1485, with John Kendal, Thomas Docwra, and John Rawsonbeing particularly heavily burdened. Similar developments obtained in Scot-land, where William Knollis and Walter Lindsay became important royalservants, neither visiting the convent after becoming preceptor. Secondly, thecrowns were determined to uphold their respective rights in the matter ofprioral elections and promotions to Torphichen. It had long been the customin England that priors should be presented to and take an oath of allegianceto the king before entering their offices. Usually this caused few problems,but should the king object to the prior-elect, or attempt to impose his owncandidate, a struggle might develop between crown and order which usuallytook years to resolve, and during which the order would suffer severeadministrative disruption. In addition, English kings and royal officialsalso appear to have held vague notions that the monarch, as ‘founder’ andperhaps as protector of the order, was entitled to the fruits of prioral vacancyyears, a claim which was vigorously contested, and which contributed to theupheavals of 1468–71 and 1527–8. In the third place, monarchs clearlyexpected the order to actively pursue its defence of Christendom. Suchconsiderations lay behind the insistence that responsions should not passthrough Avignon but should proceed directly to Rhodes, and also contrib-uted to Henry VIII’s attempt to divert the order’s English revenues andpersonnel into the defence of Calais. Lay persons who suggested the Hos-pital, or an organization like it, defend Berwick or subjugate Leinster prob-ably had a similarly high regard for its military worth and took a similarlyutilitarian view of its activities, evidently seeing the defence of Christendomand of the realm as comparably worthy objectives. It is noteworthy thatHenry VIII chose to present a primarily utilitarian justification when hedissolved the order, although his accusations that it was not doing its jobare unconvincing.

This, of course, is not to deny that personalities and circumstances playeda part in shaping the Hospital’s development, but rather is to state that theframework of interaction between rulers and the order tended to determinethe areas in which disagreement was likely to arise in moments of crisis.Edward IV’s usual lack of crusading fervour, Henry VIII’s cupidity anddetermination to be obeyed, John Langstrother’s bold miscalculation, andClement West’s personal persecution complex and aggressive nationalism allplayed their part in the crises which arose between crown and order, as did,perhaps more centrally, the political climate of the 1460s and 1530s, or, in aScottish context, of 1509–18. In less sensitive times, however, the tensionsbetween the order and each crown generally remained below the surface,

Conclusion 335

and a cooperative relationship was usual. The essentiality of such cooper-ation to the order’s functioning is shown not merely by the disruptive effectsof its occasional disputes with rulers, but also by its usual reliance on royallicences to carry on its international activities, and on the royal courts toprotect its properties. Where this support was lacking, as in much of Ireland,the order’s ability to mobilize its resources suffered and its houses becamethe plaything of local dynastic interests.

Bolstered, or at least relatively unhindered, by royal protection, the orderwas able to pursue those policies by which it might best support both itslocal and international responsibilities. In the first place, it was concernedthat its brethren should be of the right calibre. Accordingly, entry into theorder at the rank of knight-brother was restricted to persons of provengentility who were expected to possess the qualities necessary for bothmilitary service and efficient administration. With possible exceptions suchas that of George Aylmer, the signs are that this was largely achieved, andthat sending brethren off to headquarters provided them with a usefulapprenticeship in both arms and business. Secondly, and perhaps moreimportantly in an ‘English’ context, the convent wished to maximize theproductivity of its houses in the west. Its most pressing concern in thisregard, at least judged by the volume of correspondence devoted to it, wasto ensure that responsions and other dues were paid on time and in full. Theorder’s insistence that brethren make notarially attested ‘improvements’ totheir houses and be free of debt if they were to achieve promotion encour-aged responsible administration in most preceptors. But the hospital wasalso sensible of its reputation and responsibilities as a provider of divineservice and hospitality in the west, a concern to which its Irish correspond-ence bears substantial, if excitable, witness. It was not particularly con-cerned, either at the global or the local level, to ensure that its cures beserved by professed brethren, who were very few in the British Isles, but itwas clearly important that benefices should be filled in some manner. More-over, the evidence generally suggests that the statutes relating to thesematters were taken seriously, with priors and preceptors patronizing gradu-ates, erecting or repairing ecclesiastical structures, and expending large sumson hospitality. In Ireland, too, despite probably higher incidences of dilapi-dation and failure to pay vicars, an establishment which could be termedcollegiate was maintained and travellers and the sick cared for at some sites.The priory of Ireland, indeed, appears to have a more notable record in thelatter regards than its English equivalent.

Nevertheless, conventual policy might lead to difficulties for brethrenultra maris. The obvious potential tension between home improvementand service overseas surfaced on occasion, and the convent’s insistence onlevying annates from newly promoted brethren left many in debt for someyears after acquiring a benefice, although until the 1530s most appear tohave managed to submit responsions and improve properties. Furthermore,

336 Conclusion

the process of amalgamating houses, leaving many to be let on long lease,turned many into little more than gentle residences, and even where therewas a resident preceptor he was usually alone and practically unsupervised,a condition which might result in scandal. Set against these deficiencies mustbe the undoubted success of the order’s policy of insisting on conventualservice before promoting brethren to benefices. Although the remainingpowers of priors to appoint to preceptories were ill-defined, and often ledto conflict as a result, the order’s concern to ensure that all brethren holding‘British’ houses should have performed at least one tour of duty in theMediterranean probably helped to ensure that the order’s houses in main-land Britain did not escape from overseas conventual control, as so many oftheir counterparts in other institutions did. Conversely, the failure to enforcethis requirement in the case of the Irish-born may have enabled the Hospitalto develop more independently in Ireland. The convent’s success in motiv-ating the order’s English brethren to return to the Mediterranean forrepeated tours of duty, particularly when it was increasing its strength inthe later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, both demonstrates the depthof the commitment it was able to inspire and gives the lie to the perceptionthat its houses were merely ‘rent-collecting agencies’ providing a comfort-able life for their brethren. Moreover, while the English langue was not oneof the more important in the order, its brethren participated relatively fullyin conventual life, holding military and naval commands, filling administra-tive posts, and dwelling among and engaging in various forms of intercoursewith the mixed populations they encountered. Some of them emerged fromthe conventual chrysalis as diplomats and captains of international standing,and even the most humble might ship cloth to or own property in theconventual islands. Most distinctively, of course, the langue assiduouslyprotected its right to inspect the coastguard of both Rhodes and Malta,and despite the clear distaste of the convent’s officers for the excesses ofturcopoliers and their lieutenants, its conservatism and its respect for thepope and English crown prevented the reassignment of this duty until longafter the dissolution. Moreover, the letters of kings of England, the reports ofpilgrims, and the writings of Scottish poets and chroniclers demonstrate thatthe langue’s presence in the convent could be seen as upholding the honourof the nations from which its brethren were derived. Its creditable perform-ance in the sieges of 1480 and 1522 was a vindication of such perceptions,and had the Reformation not supervened, there is little reason to believe thatBritish and Irish Hospitallers would not have continued to perform conven-tual service for centuries to come.

Conclusion 337

Appendix I. (Grand) Mastersa of theOrder of St John, 1461–1568

Name Langue Elected Died

Pere Ramon Zacosta Spain 24.8.1461 21.2.1467Giovanbattista Orsini Italy <4.3.1467 8.6.1476Pierre d’Aubusson Auvergne 17.6.1476 3.7.1503Aimery d’Amboise France 10.7.1503 8.11.1512Guy de Blanchefort Auvergne 22.11.1512 24.11.1513Fabrizio Carretto Italy 15.12.1513 1.1521Philippe Villiers de l’Isle Adam France 22.1.1521 21/22.8.1534Piero del Ponte Italy 26.8.1534 1535Didier de St Jailhe Provence 22.11.1535 26.9.1536Juan de Homedes Aragon 20.10.1536 6.9.1551Claude de la Sengle France 11.9.1551 18.8.1557Jean Parisot de la Valette Provence 21.8.1557 23.8.1568

a The title of grand master first appears regularly in the order’s internal documents after the

creation of Pierre d’Aubusson as a cardinal in 1489. The head of the order had sometimes been

addressed as ‘grand master’ in correspondence before this, however.

Appendix II. Priors of England,1417–1540

Name Election/appointmentDeath/deposition/resignation

William Hulles By 21.6.1417; confirmed 16.7.1417 By 18.7.1432Robert Malory By 18.7.1432; confirmed 4.5.1433 By 29.4.1440Robert Botill By 29.4.1440; confirmed 29.11.1440 Sept. 1468John Langstrother Sept. 1468; confirmed 5.4.1470 6.5.1471(Richard Wydeville) (Sept. 1468)William Tornay By 3.7.1471; confirmed 28.8.1471 By 21.8.1474(Robert Multon) 21.8.1474 Resigned 1477John Weston 24.7.1476 1489John Kendal 20.6.1489 By 10.2.1501Thomas Docwra 6.8.1501 18.4.1527William Weston 27.6.1527 5/6/7 May 1540

Appendix III. Turcopoliers,1449–1551

Name Elected/appointed Resigned/died

William Dawney 17.6.1449 Died before Nov. 1468a

Robert Tonge 1468 Resigned 29.8.1471John Weston 16.10.1471 Resigned 1476John Kendal 28.4.1477 Resigned 22.6.1489John Boswell 20/22.6.1489 Died before 8.1.1495Thomas Docwra 8.1.1495 Resigned 26.8.1501Thomas Newport 26.8.1501 Resigned 21.2.1503Robert Daniel 4.3.1503 Died 7.1508?William Darrell 31.7.1508 Died 29.4.1519John Bothe 1519b Killed 17.9.1522William Weston 9.2.1523 Resigned 27.6.1527John Rawson I 27.6.1527 Resigned 1.7.1528John Babington I 1/3.7.1528 Resigned 7.1.1531Clement West 7.1.1531 Deposed 25.2.1533Roger Boydell 3.3.1533 Died 27.3.1533John Rawson II 19.4.1533 Resigned 15.2.1535Clement West (again) 26.4.1535 Deposed 3.9.1539Giles Russell 10.11.1539 Died before 28.12.1543Nicholas Upton 3/5.11.1548c Died 16.7.1551

a AOM377, fo. 142r.b The Liber Conciliorum for 1517–19 is missing.c BDVTE, 32; AOM88, fo. 15r.

Appendix IV. Priors of Ireland,1420–1540

Name Appointed Death/resignation

William FitzThomas Butler 15.2.1420 Ireland Resigns 1436, possiblyDies 19.10.38

Maurice FitzGeralda By 9.1436 Ireland Dies 19.10.1438?Thomas FitzGerald 1436, or 1438 Ireland Removed 1444Thomas Talbot 1444 Ireland Removed 1461James Keating 9.7.1461 Rhodes Removed c.1495Marmaduke Lumley 20.12.1482 Rhodes—grant

ineffectiveDies c.1488–9

Thomas Docwra 24.10.1494 Rhodes Resigns 9.1.1495Robert Evers 27.9.1497 Rhodes Dies 1513John Rawson (I) 15.3.1514 Rhodes Resigns 27.6.1527John Babington (I) 27.6.1527 Viterbo Resigns 3.7.1528John Rawson (I), again 3.7.1528 Surrenders 11.1540

a See above, 239.

Appendix V. Bailiffs of Eagle,1442–1540

Name Appointed Resigned/Died

William Langstrother 19.6.1442 Died 1463John Langstrother 28.2.1464 5.4.1470William Tornay 5.4.1470 28.8.1471Robert Tong 29.8.1471 Died by 11.7.1481Thomas Green 11.7.1481 Died by 6.5.1502Thomas Newport, senior 21.2.1503 Died 24.1.1523Thomas Sheffield 4.5.1523 Died 10.8.1524Alban Pole/Poole 26.8.1524 Died 9.8.1530John Babington, senior 7.1.1531 Died 10.1.1534John Rawson, junior 15.2.1535 1540

Appendix VI. Receivers of the CommonTreasury in England, 1457–1540

Name Appointed/First Occurs Replaced/Last Occurs

John Lambton 17.1.1457 31.10.1459Thomas Damport 27.10.1459?a Replaced 3.2.1461William Tornay 3.2.1461 25.8.1469Miles Skayff After 26.11.71?b Replaced 23.12.1472William Weston, snr 19.4.1474 Replaced 15.12.1477John Waquelin 15.12.1477/13.3.1478 Died 1480Roland Thornburgh 4.10.1480 Replaced 20.10.1489Thomas Newport 20.10.1489 14.7.1503Thomas Sheffield 14.7.1503 30.10.1521John Babington 30.10.1521 7.1.1529Ambrose Layton 7.1.1529 Died by 12.2.1529Clement West 12.2.1529 8.3.1531John Rawson, jnr 8.3.1531 15.1.1533John Sutton 19.4.1533 1540

a An undated note of Damport’s appointment follows the text of a bull granting the receivershipof the priory of Portugal which bears this date, but Lambton was still being addressed as receiver

on 31 October. AOM369, fos. 199r, 215r.b On this date, Thomas Damport was given licence to substitute some worthy brother to the

office of receiver in case of a vacancy in the same. AOM380, fo. 159r.

Appendix VII. Members of theLangue, c.1460–1565

priory of england

Alterward, William Received England June 1531—never reachedconvent?

Askew, William Occurs as conventual knight 1532–4.Askew, George Occurs as conventual knight 1522.Aston/Ashton, William Conventual knight by January 1445. Granted

Battisford July 1454. Died before 23 January1461.

Aylmer, George Of Aylmer Hall, Norfolk? In convent 1522?,conventual knight by March 1524. GrantedHalston November 1523 and held till 1540, andagain from 1557.

Ayscough/Ascon, James Of Stallingborough and South Kelsey,

Lincolnshire.1 Conventual knight by January1483. Granted Battisford June 1489. Died before23 February 1492.

Babington, James Of Ottery St Mary, Devon? Conventual knight byOctober 1524. Granted Swingfield (if bornnearest) March 1528. Died by 8 May 1528.

Babington, Joan Of Ottery St Mary, Devon? Nun at Buckland,1539.

Babington, John, snr Of Dethick, Derbyshire. Conventual knight byJanuary 1501. Appointed to Yeaveley August1510, promoted to Dalby May 1523, and retainedtill death. Granted priory of Ireland June 1527;exchanged it for turcopoliership June 1528;

1 Details of the family provenance of brethren have usually been taken from wills, theDNB,the History of Parliament, and those county histories and heralds’ visitations listed in thebibliography. Those for which definite, or near-certain evidence has been found are in boldtype, while those who may not have been professed brethren are indicated by italic type.Evidence for presence in convent and for appointments is to be found in the three classes ofchancery documents in Malta, and, more rarely, in British sources such as the lease books, theLetters and Papers of Henry VIII, and the Irish parliament rolls. The grant of pensions to formerHospitallers is noted in the Statutes of the Realm, the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, and theIrish Fiants of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Dates of death have generally been arrived at bylooking at the dates of appointment of brethren to the benefice(s) held by the deceased. Exactdates of the deaths of many preceptors from 1519 to 1536 are given in AOM54. Other sourcesused include bishops’ registers (especially of Armagh, Canterbury, Hereford, and London),Weaver’s Somerset Medieval Wills (for Hospitallers connected with Buckland, and RobertPemberton), the Handbook of British Chronology, the order’s lease books, and Horrox andHammond’s edition of Harleian MS. 433.

exchanged this for Eagle January 1531. Appointedpreceptor Dinmore by title of MG2 June 1528;exchanged for Willoughton November 1529;exchanged for Temple Brewer August 1531. Diedat Eagle 10 January 1533/4.3

Babington, John, jnr Of Ottery St Mary, Devon. In convent June 1528to September 1538. Died by May 1540?

Babington, Philip Of Ottery St Mary, Devon. Conventual knightfrom July 1531. Granted royal pension 1540.

Bachelor, William Brother priest? Bishop of Carvahagonensis inGreece, suffragan in Chichester. Died 1515.

Bailey, Robert Brother priest. As subprior, occurs in EnglandNovember 1469, June 1477.

Barlow, William Brother priest. Admitted 1557? Granted royalpension November 1560.

Baskerville, Roland Conventual knight by January 1501. Occurs untilAugust 1508.

Battersby, Henry Of Yorkshire? Conventual knight by February orMarch 1482. Died by 10 December 1490.

Beaufitz, William Of Warwickshire? Occurs as conventual knightOctober 1474.

Bekley, Stephen Brother priest? Died by 30 July 1487.Bellingham, Edward Of Eringham, Sussex. In convent 1522?; certainly

conventual knight by May 1523. GrantedSwingfield June 1527, promoted to WilloughtonMarch 1528, exchanged for Dinmore November1529 and retained till 1540. Died 10 April 1550.

Bentham, Anthony Conventual knight by July 1529; occurs until May1536.

Bernard, Thomas Conventual knight, occurs October 1524.Bevercotes, Humphrey Of Nottinghamshire? Occurs in convent

September 1505, March 1506, August 1508.Blaseby, Robert Of Lincolnshire? Conventual knight—occurs July

1528 to February 1529.Blome, John Brother priest. Attends English provincial chapter

November 1515.Boswell, German Conventual knight—occurs September 1504.Boswell, John Conventual knight by November 1460. Granted

Baddesley April 1470, resigns July 1470. GrantedDinmore October 1471. Promoted? to TempleBrewer by September 1483. Granted Quenington

2 Magistral Grace.3 Where I have stated that a brother was promoted to a preceptory I have meant that he

exchanged one held by cabimentum for one held by meliormentum. Where I have stated that abrother exchanged one benefice for another, this should usually be taken to indicate that he heldthe new house by the same title. If I have not stated that a brother has exchanged a particularhouse, or been promoted to another one, this should be taken to mean that he retained it untilhis death.

Appendix VII 345

by MG September 1475. Died in convent before10 January 1495.

Boswell, Richard Conventual knight—occurs September 1498.Bothe, John Conventual knight by November 1486. Granted

Quenington January 1495; adds Ansty by MGSeptember 1517 and exchanges this for Dinmorein 1521/2. Killed in Rhodes 23 September 1522.

Botill, John In convent December 1471, August 1475. GrantedQuenington October 1471. Died by 27 September1475.

Botill, Robert In convent February 1439, May 1442. GrantedMelchbourne, Trebigh, and Ansty by January1439. Elected prior of England by 29 April 1440;confirmed in Rhodes November 1440. DiedSeptember 1468.

Bourgchier, Katharine Prioress of Buckland by 1520 to 1539.Bourgh/Borough, John Of Borough, Yorks. Conventual knight by

February 1471. Granted Templecombe November1471, but unable to gain possession. GrantedCarbrooke October 1475; promoted to NewlandMay 1477. Died by October 1482.

Boydell, Edmund Conventual knight—occurs January 1529.Boydell, Ralph In convent November 1486 (under age), February

1487.Boydell, Roger Conventual knight by January 1501. Granted

Halston February 1506; promoted to BaddesleyMay 1523; promoted to Newland December1530. Appointed turcopolier 3 March 1533. Diedon 27 March 1533.

Boydell, Thomas Conventual knight—occurs August 1507, August1508.

Brandon, Edward Stated to be a Hospitaller. In England December1508.

Brewer, Thomas Conventual knight—occurs February 1525.Identical with Thomas Bernard?

Broke/Brooke, Richard Of Leighton, Cheshire. Conventual knight fromJuly 1528. Granted Mount St John April 1533 andretained till 1540.

Brown, Edmund Received in convent June 1529.Brown, Edward Of London or Walcote, Northamptonshire.

Conventual knight from October 1524. GrantedSwingfield May 1528 and retained till 1540.Readmitted to order 1557, and grantedTemple Brewer. Granted royal pensionNovember 1559.

Burton, John Occurs as conventual knight June 1524.Identical with George Horton or JohnHuntington?

346 Appendix VII

Carew (Coren), Philip Of Ottery Mohun, Cornwall. Conventual knightfrom July 1528; deprived of the habit December1528.

Cave, Ambrose Of Stamford, Northamptonshire. Conventualknight from October 1524. Granted YeaveleyFebruary 1529. Promoted to Shingay June 1536(grant ineffective). Died 1568.

Cave, Philip Conventual knight by August 1528.Cavendish, Thomas Conventual knight by July 1529; occurs until

April 1533.Cecilia Prioress of Buckland. Occurs 1509.Chalmers/Chamber, John Scot. Fights in siege of 1522. Received as

conventual knight December 1525. Occurs untilOctober 1533. Possibly then transfers, as John‘Scotti’, to langue of France, dying in September1537.

Cheney/Cheyney, John Received in England June 1528—never reachedconvent?

Chetwood, Adam Probably conventual knight by March 1482.Granted Battisford by March 1493. Died by 11June 1505.

Chingleton, Roger Received in England June 1528—never reachedconvent?

Clopton, Edmund Of Long Melsham, Suffolk. Conventual knight byFebruary 1482.

Coffyn, Joan Prioress of Buckland—occurs 1506.Coort, Thomas Brother priest at Buckland? Occurs 1506.Coppledike, Thomas Of Harrington, Lincolnshire. Conventual knight

by October 1524. Granted Carbrooke June 1529and retained until 1540.

Corbet, William Of Shropshire? Conventual knight by August1508. Granted Temple Brewer July 1519. Died inRhodes 25 May 1521.

Corner, William Brother priest? Died before 29 March 1493.Cornish, Thomas Brother priest? Bishop of Tenos. Suffragan in Bath

1486–1513, Exeter 1487–1505. Died 1513.Cracroft, Thomas Of Lincolnshire? Admitted in England by March

1537? Never reached convent?Croft, Hugh Received in England June 1528—never reached

convent?Dalison, John Of Laughton, Lincolnshire? Attends provincial

chapter November 1515. Conventual knight byMay 1519.

Dalison, Richard Of Laughton, Lincolnshire? Conventual knight byOctober 1474. Granted Ansty by 28 October1493. Died by September 1498?

Dalison, Robert, snr Of Laughton, Lincolnshire? Conventual knight byDecember 1478. Granted Templecombe June

Appendix VII 347

1489; promoted to Shingay May 1502. GrantedHalston by MG before February 1493. Died atShingay 30 December 1504.

Dalison, Robert, jnr Of Laughton, Lincolnshire? Conventual knightfrom October 1524. Occurs until June 1527.

Damport, Thomas Of Cheshire? Conventual knight by January 1445.Granted Shingay September 1459; promoted toRibston October 1471. Granted Swingfield.

Daniel, Hugh Of Daresbury, Cheshire? Conventual knight byNovember 1504. Granted Baddesley May 1505.Mayne added June 1506. Died by 28 September1507.

Daniel, Robert Conventual knight by February 1482. GrantedSwingfield June 1489; promoted to WilloughtonMarch 1503. Died July 1508?

Darrell, William Conventual knight by February 1488. GrantedYeaveley June 1496. Granted Temple Brewer byMG 9 August 1510. Died in Rhodes 29 April1519.

Dawney, William Of Escrick, Yorkshire. Conventual knight byDecember 1437. Granted Dinmore May 1439;exchanges for Willoughton May 1461. GrantedTemplecombe October 1456. Granted Battisford.Died by November 1468.

Denby/Danby, Robert Conventual knight by October 1474; occurs untilOctober 1476.

Dingley, Thomas Of the Isle of Wight. Conventual knight fromMay1526. Granted Baddesley December 1530.Granted Stansgate by provincial chapter June1533 (confirmed in Malta September 1535).Granted Shingay by GM (irregularly) April 1536.Executed 8 July 1539.

Docwra, Lancelot Of Kirkby Kendall, Westmoreland. GrantedDinmore by MG September 1501. GrantedTemplecombe February 1503. Died in England 4May 1520.

Docwra, Thomas Of Hitchin Bradkirle, Hertfordshire. Conventualknight byOctober 1474. GrantedDinmore byMay1486; promoted to Melchbourne June 1501.Granted Beverley by MG before June 1501.Granted Peckham September 1504. Elected priorof Ireland October 1494. Resigns January 1495.Elected prior of England August 1501. Died 1527.

Dodington, Mary Of Dodington, Somerset? Nun at Buckland, 1539.Draycotte, William Conventual knight from October 1524—occurs

until February 1525.Dudley, George Of Dudley castle, Staffs. Conventual knight from

July 1545. Readmitted into order in Malta

348 Appendix VII

October 1557. Granted Eagle. Occurs until May1559.

Dundas, Alexander Scot. Conventual knight from March 1538.Occurs until March 1539.

Dundas, George Scot. Conventual knight by July 1504. Grantedexpectancy of Torphichen July 1504. Died by 23March 1532.

Eaglesfield, Robert Conventual knight by July 1461. Granted AnstyJanuary 1469; promoted to Beverley April 1470.Died after 20 June 1492.

Edwards, George Conventual knight from October 1524. Occursuntil August 1525.

Eluyn, Edmund Admitted as probationary conventual knightMarch 1558. No further occurrences.

Emerford, Alice Nun at Buckland, 1539.Erlyche, Thomas Brother priest. Occurs in England November

1469.Evers/Eure, Robert Of Yorkshire. Conventual knight by January

1483. Granted Slebech before 29 January 1485.Elected prior of Ireland September 1497. Died1513.

Fairfax, Nicholas Of Seaton, Yorkshire. Conventual knight byMarch 1506. Granted Templecombe June 1521.Died in Rome 18/19 April 1523.

Fitzherbert, Richard Of Norbury, Derbyshire. Stated to be Hospitaller,c.1500?

Fitzherbert, Walter Of Norbury, Derbyshire? Conventual knight byAugust 1470. Granted Templecombe November1479. Died in Rhodes before 20 February 1489.

Forest, John Conventual knight from March 1537. Occursuntil April 1537.

Freville, Henry Conventual knight by August 1478. Occurs untilDecember 1490.

Garneys, Francis Of Mendlesham, Suffolk. A Hospitaller in 1515.Geoffroi, Antoine Admitted to English langue April 1547. Granted

expectancy to Torphichen April 1547. Occurs asmember of the langue until September 1556.

Gerard, Henry Conventual knight from February 1532.Readmitted and granted preceptory of YeaveleyNovember 1557. Royal pension to November1559.

Golyn, Thomas Probably of Oxfordshire. Conventual knight byMarch 1491? Granted Battisford June 1505. Died20 January 1523.

Gonson, David Of London. Conventual knight from October1533. Executed July 1541.

Grantham, Christopher Of Lincolnshire? Conventual knight from August1528—no further occurrences.

Appendix VII 349

Green, Elizabeth Nun at Buckland, 1539.Green, James Conventual knight before April 1507. Occurs

until August 1511.Green, John Brother priest. Occurs in England November

1469.Green, Thomas Conventual knight by October 1459. Granted

Baddesley April 1469; exchanged for SlebechApril 1470. Promoted to Shingay October 1471.Elected bailiff of Eagle July 1481. Died by 6 May1502.

Guisguet (Fitzwhite?), John Conventual knight by November 1464.Hall, Thomas Of Grantham, Lincolnshire? Conventual knight

from October 1524. Killed in convent December1528.

Halley/Hales, Henry Occurs in convent from September 1480. GrantedCarbrooke August 1480; exchanged for BattisfordMay 1481. Promoted to Willoughton June 1489.Died by 27 March 1503.

Haseldon, William Of Cambridgeshire. Conventual knight by March1506.

Hatfield, George In Rhodes 1522. Conventual knight by March1524. Granted Dinmore August 1524. Died by7 February 1525.

Hill, Joan Of Taunton, Somerset. Nun at Buckland, 1539.Hills/Hyll, Edward Conventual knight by March 1506. Granted

Ansty 1521/2; exchanged for Shingay August1524. Died 29 March 1536.

Hillyard, William Of Winestead, Yorkshire? Occurs in convent byAugust 1501. Granted Dinmore June 1501. Diedby 23 September 1501.

Horton/Hyerton, George Conventual knight by July 1523. Occurs untilAugust 1523.

Huntington, John Conventual knight from May 1523—to provenobility. No further occurrences.

Huntington, Thomasina Nun at Buckland, 1539.Hussey, Edmund Of Shapwick, Dorset. Conventual knight from

October 1524. Granted Templecombe March1528 and retained until 1540.

Hussey, James Of Shapwick. Conventual knight from June 1529.Occurs in convent until April 1540.

Hussey, Nicholas Of Shapwick. Conventual knight by June 1521.Granted Carbrooke May 1523; promoted toTemple Brewer June 1529. Granted Ansty August1524. Died in Malta 20 February 1531.

Hyde, Thomas Conventual knight from October 1524. Nofurther references.

Hyves, James Conventual knight by April 1533. Occurs untilMarch 1539. Identical with James Hussey?

350 Appendix VII

Kendal, John Of Westmorland. Conventual knight by May1465. Granted Willoughton by MG November1468. Holds Peckham (with Robert Tong) fromNovember 1471. Granted Halston October 1471;promoted to Newland October 1482. GrantedMelchbourne by MG March 1477. Elected priorof England June 1489. Died 1501.

Kendal, Juliana Nun at Buckland, 1539.Kendal, Thomas Possibly subprior in 1492.Knollis, Patrick Scot. Conventual knight by October 1492. No

further references.Knollis, William Scot. Granted Torphichen February 1467. Died

before 30 November 1508.Lambert, Nicholas Conventual knight from April 1534. Occurs until

1540.Lambton, John Conventual knight by December 1444. Granted

Temple Brewer June 1449 but resigns August1449. Granted Beverley September 1450. Diedc.1461/2?

Langstrother, John Of Crosthwaite, Westmorland. Grantedancienitas March 1435. Granted Dalby June1442. Exchanges for Balsall September 1449.Granted Yeaveley April 1445. Holds PeckhamApril 1454 to October 1454. Granted HalstonSeptember 1454. Granted Ribston October 1456.Granted Beverley by February 1464. ElectedBailiff of Eagle February 1464; resigns whenconfirmed as prior of England April 1470. DiedMay 1471.

Langstrother, William Of Crosthwaite. Preceptor of Quenington byAugust 1434. Elected bailiff of Eagle June 1442.Granted Newland April 1446. Died by February1464.

Layton, Ambrose Of Dalemain, Cumberland. Conventual knight byApril 1516. Granted Yeaveley 23May 1523. Diedby 12 February 1529.

Layton, Cuthbert Of Dalemain, Cumberland. Conventual knightfrom January 1527. Granted Ansty February 1531and held until 1540. Readmitted 1557 andgranted Newland. Granted royal pension 1561.

Lee, Thomas Conventual knight by February 1525. Occursagain April 1525.

Lindsay, Walter Scot. Conventual knight from December 1525.Granted Torphichen by James V March 1532.Provided by langue and convent March 1533.Died 1548.

Livingston, Henry Scot. Granted Torphichen September 1449. Diedbefore November 1462.

Appendix VII 351

Lumley, Marmaduke Of County Durham. Conventual knight byOctober 1459. Granted anticipation ofTemplecombe July 1466, and grantedTemplecombe August 1468. These grantscancelled November 1471. Elected prior of IrelandDecember 1482 but grant ineffective. Died byOctober 1489?

Lynde, Stephen Granted Halston January 1483. Probably diedbefore June 1492.

Lyndesey, John Brother priest. Appointed chaplain ofMaltby June1492. Probably dead by April 1516.

Lyster, Charles Of Yorkshire? Conventual knight by March 1506.Occurs until June 1515.

Mablestone, John Brother priest by 1510. Appointed chancellorof the priory August 1526. Subprior atdissolution.

Malory, John Of Newbold Revell, Warwickshire. Conventualknight by October 1459. Granted BattisfordJanuary 1469. Died by May 1481.

Marshall, John Conventual knight from February 1532. Occursuntil March.

Massingberd, Oswald Of Bratoft, Lincolnshire. Conventual knight fromJuly 1528. Remained in convent after 1540.Granted Slebech July 1547; priory of IrelandAugust 1547 (grants ineffective)—gainedpossession 1557. Occurs until November 1559.

Matthew, Agnes Probably of Wells, Somerset. Nun at Buckland,1539.

Matthew, Mary Of Wells? Nun at Buckland, 1539.Maunsell, Agnes Nun at Buckland, 1539.Mawdesley, William Brother priest. Chaplain of Buckland, 1539.Middlemore, Augustine Of Grantham, Lincolnshire? Conventual knight

by July 1461. Granted Halston April 1470. Diedin Cyprus before 4 October 1471.

Middleton/Militon, Geoffrey Conventual knight by March 1506. OccursAugust 1508.

Monsill, Otho de Among the conventual knights of the languemustered in 1522 according to Bosio (recte ArthurMansell?).

Multon, Robert Probably of Yorkshire. Conventual knight by July1463. Granted Mount St John April 1470. Electedprior of England in England August 1474 butremoved by 1477. Retained MSJ and died beforeJanuary 1494.

Myers, Christopher Conventual knight from May 1535. Deprived ofhabit for murder October 1536.

Neville, Richard Of Billingbear, Berkshire. Conventual knight byOctober 1510. Granted Willoughton by MG May

352 Appendix VII

1519. Granted Templecombe May 1523. Died byMarch 1528.

Newdigate, Dunstan Of Harefield, Middlesex. Conventual knightfrom January 1533. Occurs in convent untilMay 1541.

Newdigate, Silvester Of Harefield. Conventual knight from July1528. Occurs until October.

Newport, Robert Probably of Soberton, Hampshire. Conventualknight by August 1504. Granted Ansty September1507? Died by 1 September 1517.

Newport, Thomas, snr Of Soberton, Hampshire? Conventual knightby December 1478. Granted Newland June1489. Granted Poling by MG August 1489.Granted Temple Brewer January 1495;exchanged for Ribston August 1510.Granted Dalby by MG September 1497.Elected turcopolier 26 August 1501;exchanged for Eagle 21 February 1503.Drowned 24 January 1523.

Newport, Thomas, jnr Of Soberton, Hampshire, or London. Conventualknight—died in Rhodes 22 September 1502.

Newton, Thomas, snr Conventual knight by April 1516.Newton, Thomas, jnr Conventual knight from July 1528. Occurs until

February 1529.Nuca, Pedro Felizes de la Admitted into English langue 1557 and granted

Eagle. Killed 1565.Paniter/Painter, Patrick Scot. Usurped preceptor of Torphichen 1509/10–

1513. Possibly never professed.Parapart/Pocapart, Robert Subprior—occurs November 1515, November

1516.Passemer/Pismar, Laurence Conventual knight by February 1467.Passemer, Nicholas Conventual knight by October 1459. Died before

November 1471.Passemer, Richard Received in provincial chapter before August

1500. Never reached Rhodes?Peck, Robert Conventual knight by March 1479. Granted

Baddesley October 1481. Died by May 1505.Pemberton, Robert Probably of Pemberton, Lancashire. In convent by

August 1498; admitted as knight August 1500.Occurs until August 1508.

Pemberton, Thomas Conventual knight by 1522. Granted MountSt John May 1523; promoted to Newland April1533. Retained until 1540.

Pickering, Robert Of Yorkshire? Conventual knight by October1449. Granted Shingay June 1461 (ineffectivebecause incumbent still alive). GrantedQuenington February 1464. Died by October1471.

Appendix VII 353

Pilletto, Mark Rhodiot. As knight of the house and langue ofEngland granted the member of Chippenham June1527.

Plumpton, Thomas Of Plumpton, Yorkshire.Granted CarbrookeMay1481. Died by September 1498.

Pole/Poole, Alban Of Chesterfield? Conventual knight by January1501. Granted Mount St John November 1510;promoted to Newland May 1523. Elected bailiffof Eagle August 1524. Died at Eagle 9 August1530.

Pole/Poole, Henry Of Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Conventual knightfrom July 1528. Granted Dalby May 1534 andretained until 1540. Died 3 February 1559.

Popham, Katharine OfHuntworth, Somerset.Nun at Buckland, 1539.Rawson, John, snr Of London. Stated to have been a Hospitaller by

c.1497. Granted Swingfield July 1503; promotedto Ribston June 1527. Elected prior of Ireland15March 1514; exchanged for turcopoliership 27June 1527 and granted Dinmore by MG;re-exchanged turcopoliership and Dinmore forIreland and pension from John I Babington 4 June1528. Retained until 1540.

Rawson, John, jnr Of London or Yorkshire; cousin of the above.Conventual knight by October 1506. GrantedQuenington January 1523. Granted MourneAugust 1523. Elected bailiff of Eagle February1535, and retained until 1540.

Rawson, Thomas Of London or Yorkshire. Conventual knight fromJanuary 1527. Occurs until June 1529.

Roberts, Nicholas Conventual knight by September 1519. GrantedHalston August 1523. Probably died by 6November 1523.

Roche, Edward Conventual knight by August 1508. GrantedCarbrooke July 1512; promoted to TempleBrewer June 1521. Died by 14 June 1529.

Roche (Michael) A conventual knight surnamed Roche present atprovincial chapter March 1520. Michael Rochestated to have fought at Rhodes 1522.

Rogers, Anthony Of Brianstone, Dorset? Conventual knight fromFebruary 1529. Granted Yeaveley June 1536, butnever gained possession. Granted royal pension1540.

Russell, Anthony Of Strensham, Worcestershire. Conventual knightfrom December 1535. Occurs until May 1537.

Russell, Giles Of Strensham, Worcestershire. Conventual knightby April 1516. Granted Battisford August 1523;promoted to Temple Brewer July 1535 andretained until 1540. Elected turcopolier

354 Appendix VII

November 1539; died in Malta before 28December 1543.

Russell, John Of Strensham, Worcestershire. Received inEngland before August 1500. Had not arrived inRhodes by January 1501, but later stated to havedied in Rhodes.

Salford, Richard Conventual knight from July 1528. Occurs untilApril 1532.

Salisbury, William Conventual knight from February 1537. Died byApril 1540.

Sandford, Richard Conventual knight by October 1449. GrantedCarbrooke February 1464. Died before 7 October1475.

Sandford, Thomas Conventual knight by February 1488.Sandilands, James Of Calder. Conventual knight from December

1540. Granted Torphichen March 1547 andretained until 1564. Created lord Torphichen anddied 1579.

Sandilands, James junior Of Calder. Conventual knight from January 1555.Possibly identical with John James Sandilands. Ifnot, occurs until May 1555, and possibly again inOctober 1559.

Sandilands, John James Of Calder? Conventual knight by May 1556.Deprived of the habit July 1564, and executed.

Sands, George Of Shere, Surrey? Conventual knight from June1529. Occurs until March 1530.

Scot, John See Chalmers, John.Scougal, Patrick Of East Lothian. Conventual knight by November

1462. Occurs until December 1478.Sheffield, Bryan Probably of South Cave, Yorkshire. Conventual

knight by July 1463.Sheffield, Thomas Of South Cave, Yorkshire, and Butterwick,

Lincolnshire. Conventual knight by March1497. Granted Beverley July 1501. GrantedShingay by MG December 1504. GrantedDinmore by MG January 1523. Elected bailiffof Eagle May 1523. Died in Viterbo 10 August1524.

Shelley, James Of Michelgrove, Sussex. Admitted into order1557 and granted preceptory of Templecombe.Occurs in Malta until September 1561, and againin 1577. Granted royal pension May 1563.

Shelley, John Of Michelgrove, Sussex. Stated to have becomeknight of Rhodes and to have died in 1522 siege.

Shelley, Richard Of Michelgrove, Sussex. Admitted into order1557 and appointed turcopolier and preceptorof Halston and Slebech. Died in Venice 15 July1587.

Appendix VII 355

Skayff, Miles Conventual knight by October 1449. GrantedTemple Brewer April 1469. Died beforeSeptember 1483.

Sothill, Arthur Of Stokerston, Leicestershire. Conventual knightby c.1521.

Spens, Adam Scot. Brother (priest?) and MA. Occurs January1486 as alleged detainer of parish church ofKilbethoc, diocese of Aberdeen.

Stafort/Stafford, Henry Conventual knight by October 1495.Starkey, Oliver Admitted in England 1557 and granted

Quenington. Bailiff of Eagle. Died 1583–6.Stewart, Alexander Scot. Usurped preceptor of Torphichen 1513–18.

Probably never professed.Stewart, Robert Aubigny, France. To be admitted as conventual

knight 1502. Uncertain whether ever professed.Sutton, John Of Burton-by-Lincoln, Lincolnshire. Conventual

knight by 1522. Granted Beverley August1524. Granted Temple Brewer by MGFebruary 1531; exchanged for WilloughtonAugust 1531. Held Beverley and Willoughtonuntil 1540.

Sydenham, Elizabeth Of Somerset. Nun at Buckland, July 1497.Sydenham, Margaret Of Somerset or Dorset. Subprioress of Buckland in

1539. Died before 1556.Thornburgh, Roland Conventual knight by November 1470. Granted

Yeaveley October 1471. Died by June 1496.Thornhill, Thomas Possibly of Thornhill in Stalbridge, Dorset.

Conventual knight from June 1529. Granted royalpension 1540. Readmitted into order 1557, andgranted Willoughton. Granted royal pensionNovember 1559.

Tompson/Thompson, John Brother priest. Ordained by title of the HospitalMarch 1515. Rector of St Audoen’s July 1525.Signified for arrest as apostate February 1529.Died before 28 May 1539.

Tonge, John Of Yorkshire. Granted Ribston July 1489.Granted Mount St John January 1494. GrantedCarbrooke by 27 November 1499. Died byNovember 1510.

Tonge, Robert Of Yorkshire. Conventual knight by January1445. Granted Mount St John September 1454;promoted to Dalby April 1470. Holds Peckham(with John Kendal) from August 1471. Electedbailiff of Eagle August 1471.

Tornay, William Of Lincolnshire? Conventual knight by January1445. Granted Baddesley July 1454; promoted toDalby April 1469; exchanges (Baddesley/Dalby)for Melchbourne April 1470. Granted Mayne

356 Appendix VII

April 1470. Elected bailiff of Eagle April 1470.Confirmed as prior of England 29 August 1471.

Tovyngton/ De Nygton, Thomas Conventual knight by April 1476. Occurs untilOctober.

Tresham, Thomas Of Rushton, Northamptonshire. Granted prioryof England November 1557. Died in England 3March 1559.

Tunstall, Bryan Of Thurland, Yorks. Hospitaller—occurs as royalenvoy in Spain 1525.

Turberville, John Conventual knight by July 1463. GrantedBaddesley July 1470. Adds Mayne October 1471.Died shortly before 24 October 1481.

Tynemouth, John Brother priest. Franciscan, but transferred toHospital 1506. Bishop of Argos 1510–24,suffragan in Salisbury. Died 1524.

Tyrrell, William Of Essex. Conventual knight from July 1528.Granted Battisford July 1535.

Upton, Nicholas Of Northolme-by-Wainfleet, Lincolnshire.Conventual knight from July 1531. GrantedRibston November 1547 (grant ineffective).Elected turcopolier November 1548. Died inMalta 16 July 1551.

Verney, Joan Of Fairfield, Somerset. Nun at Buckland,November 1506.

Villers, Blase Of Brokesby, Leicestershire. Conventual knightfrom October 1524. Occurs until April 1525.

Villers, Ralph Occurs as conventual knight July 1526. Same asabove?

Wakelyn, John Conventual knight by December 1475. GrantedCarbrooke May 1477. Died by September 1480.

Waring, Thomas In Malta September 1535: proofs opposed.Proctors appointed to examine the case April1537.

West, Clement Conventual knight by January 1501. GrantedSlebech April 1514 and retained until 1540.Appointed turcopolier 7 January 1531—deprived25 February 1533. Reappointed turcopolier 26April 1535 and deprived again 3 September 1539.Granted royal pension and died by July 1547.

West, William Among the conventual knights of the languemustered in 1522 according to Bosio.

Weston, John Of Boston, Lincolnshire. Conventual knight byOctober 1449. Held Peckham October 1454 toMarch 1464. Granted Battisford January 1461;resigned for Dinmore May 1461; promoted toBalsall October 1471. Granted Newland by MGFebruary 1464. Elected prior of England July1476.

Appendix VII 357

Weston, William, snr Of Boston, Lincolnshire. Conventual knight byJuly 1461. Granted Ansty April 1470. Occurs untilFebruary 1482. Probably died 1483–6.

Weston, William, jnr Of Rozel, Jersey. In Rhodes as preceptorSeptember 1498. Probably granted Anstybefore September 1498; promoted to BaddesleySeptember 1507; promoted to Ribston May 1523.Granted Dinmore by MG February 1525. Electedturcopolier February 1523; exchanged for prioryof England June 1527. Died May 1540.

White, Roland Conventual knight from October 1524. Died inconvent before 8 May 1528.

Wydeville, Richard Usurped prior of England, 1468–9. Probablynever professed.

Yeo, Robert Of Devon? Conventual knight by June 1474.

priory of ireland

Docwra, Thomas See under Priory of England.Evers/Eure, Ralph See under Priory of England.Feguillem, John See FitzwilliamFitzgerald, John Co. Kildare. In convent July 1527. Executed 1536.Fitzmaurice, Richard Occurs 1517–19 as rebel against John Rawson.

Probably identical with Richard Mawril.Fitzmorth/Fitznorth, Richard Confirmed as subprior of Ireland, and as

preceptor of Crooke and Any, 1527Fitzwilliam (Feguillem?), John Received in Ireland by 1461. Conventual knight

by February 1466—occurs until June 1467.Harebrik/Albrit/Herbrit, Oliver Preceptor of Tully by April 1514, confirmed June

1527Keating, Gerald Of Kilcowan? Brother at Kilmainham 1540.Keating, James Of Kilcowan, Co. Wexford. Conventual knight by

October 1459. Elected Prior of Ireland July 1461.Deprived October 1494.

Keating, William Of Kilcowan? Preceptor of Kilclogan by April1514—occurs until 1540.

Laffane, James Preceptor of Crook—occurs June 1559.Lawless, Robert Brother at Kilmainham before May 1481.Levet, Henry Prior of the church of Kilmainham—occurs June

1508.Lumley, Marmaduke See under Priory of England.McCarthy, Diarmaid Of Muskerry, Co. Cork. Usurped preceptor of

Mourne. Receives royal grant of Mourne, 1545.McCarthy, Donnchadh Of Muskerry, Co. Cork. Precentor of Cork, seeks

papal provision to Mourne 1492–3.Maryman, William Probable preceptor of Tully c. 1463–73.

358 Appendix VII

Massingberd, Oswald See under Priory of England.Mawril, Richard Preceptor of Kilteel—occurs (as Mawril) 1516.

Identical with Richard FitzMaurice?O Curryn, Padraig Preceptor of Killerig. Occurs January 1507.O hIffearnain, Aonghus Of Shronell. Brother priest. Preceptor of Any

1540/1. Bishop of Emly 1543–c.1550/3.Plunkett, Nicholas Confirmed as preceptor of Killerig June 1527.

Retains until 1540.Power, Richard Occurs as preceptor of Kilbarry February 1516.Power, William Occurs as preceptor of Crook February 1516.Rawson, John, snr See under Priory of England.Roche, Henry Occurs as preceptor of Mourne, 1492–7.Seys/Cesse, Edmund Conventual knight by January 1512. Granted

Mourne November 1513. Granted KilsaranMarch 1514. Occurs in Ireland until 1519.

Siggenys, Thomas Preceptor of Kilclogan—occurs January 1559.Talbot, Richard Probably held priory of Ireland 1496–8.Talbot, Thomas Of Dublin. Elected/appointed prior of Ireland

June 1444. Deposed July 1461. Occurs in Irelanduntil December 1482.

Vale/Wall, John Probably of Co. Carlow. Rector of Rathwere,diocese of Meath, c.1475–c.1487. Prior of thechurch of Kilmainham, occurs 1487–1500.

Walyngton, John, snr Prior of the church of Kilmainham, occurs 1476.Walyngton, John, jnr Occurs as subprior of Ireland and preceptor of

Tully 1540.

Appendix VII 359

Appendix VIII. HospitallerPensioners after 1540

Name Position Pension Death

KnightsWilliam Weston, jr. Prior of England £1,000 7.5.1540John Rawson, sr. Prior of Ireland;

preceptor of Ribston500 marksa By 1547

Clement West Preceptor of Slebech £200 1546/7Thomas Pemberton Preceptor of

Newland£80

Giles Russell Turcopolier;preceptor of TempleBrewer

£100 Before28.12.1543b

George Aylmer Preceptor of Halston £100 Alive 1558John Sutton Receiver; preceptor

of Beverley andWilloughton

£200 Will 1555

Edward Bellingham Preceptor of Dinmore £100 10.4.1550Edward Brown Preceptor of

Swingfield£50 After 1559c

Edmund Hussey Preceptor of TempleCombe

100 marks Alive June 1546

Ambrose Cave Preceptor of Yeaveleyand Barrow

100 marks 2.4.1568

Thomas Coppledike Preceptor ofCarbrooke

£50 Alive July 1545

Cuthbert Layton Preceptor of Anstyand Trebigh

£60 Alive May 1561d

Richard Broke Preceptor of MountSt John

100 marks Alive 1554

Henry Pole/Poole Preceptor of Dalbyand Rothley

200 marks 3.2.1559

William Tyrrell Preceptor ofBattisford andDingley

£30 <15.11.1557

John Rawson, jr. Bailiff of Eagle;preceptor ofQuenington

200 marks May 1552

Antony Rogers £10Oswald Massingberd £10 Alive 1559

Name Position Pension Death

James Hussey £10Thomas Thornhill £10 After 1559e

Nicholas Upton £10 July 1551Philip Babington £10 1544?Henry Gerard £10 After 1559f

Dunstan Newdigate £10 After 1545Nicholas Lambert £10David Gonson £10 July 1541

Chaplains/PriestsJohn Mablestone Subprior Retained

stipend1552/3

William Armistead Clerk; master of theTemple, London

Dittog 1558/9

Walter Lymsey Chaplain (Temple) DittoJohn Wynter Chaplain (Temple) Ditto

a Rawson’s pension was paid out of the issues of the Hospital’s lands in Ireland.b AOM87, fo.32r.c Brown’s pension was regranted him on 18 November 1559. CPR1558–60, 325.d On 31 May 1561 Layton was regranted his pension of £60, backdated to 25 March 1559.

CPR1561–3, 78.e Thornhill was granted an increased pension of £20 on 18 Nov. 1559. CPR1558–60, 324.f Gerard last appears in Malta on 12 Jan. 1559. By 8 May he had left the convent, and on 18

Nov. was granted an enhanced pension of £20 by the crown. CPR1558–60, 325.g Armistead was in fact paid a pension of £37/6/8 for himself and four (unnamed) chaplainsdirectly out of Augmentations from 1540, e.g. PRO E315/258, fo.20v.

Appendix VIII 361

Appendix IX. Organization and Valueof the Order’s English and Welsh

Estates, 1535–1540

House andlocation

Gross value1535 (£/s./d.)a

Net value1535 (£/s./d.)

Gross value1540 (£/s./d.)b

Net value1540 (£/s./d.)

PRIORY,Clerkenwell

2,385/19/11 2,203/1/8½ 2,464/15/11½ 2,430/14/6½

PreceptoriesAnsty, Wilts.and Trebigh,Cornwall

90/1/9½ 81/8/5½ 98/0/6 86/3/2

Baddesley,Hants. andMayne, Dorset

131/14/1 118/16/7 (c.131/14/1?) 118/16/7c

Battisford,Suffolk andDingley,Northants.

Entrymutilated

(53/10/0 þ108/13/5½)?d

98/1/2¼ 85/8/8¼e

Beverley,Yorks. (E.R.)

Not given 164/9/10 206/1/5½ 190/5/1½f

Carbrooke,Norfolk (withChippenham,Cambs.)

76/5/3½ 65/2/9½ 68/11/5 68/11/5

Dalby (withRothley andHeather),Leics.

274/11/2 231/7/10 222/19/10 210/13/7

Dinmore andGarway,Herefs.

No entry No entry 168/6/8þ(farm)

168/6/8

Eagle, Lincs. 137/2/0 124/2/0 142/16/1 134/12/10Halston, Salop. (170/14/10)g 160/14/0 126/13/4þ

(farm)124/10/4

Mount St John,Yorks (N.R.)(with Chib-burn, North-umbs.)

137/2/0 102/13/9 163/3/9½ 154/3/11½h

House andlocation

Gross value1535 (£/s./d.)a

Net value1535 (£/s./d.)

Gross value1540 (£/s./d.)b

Net value1540 (£/s./d.)

Newland,Yorks (W.R.)

202/3/8 129/14/11½ 191/0/9 174/14/1

Quenington,Glocs.

146/17/1½ 137/7/1½ 140/4/2 122/17/9½

Ribston, Yorks.(W.R.)

224/9/7 207/9/7 264/4/3½ 256/19/11½i

Shingay,Cambs.

175/4/6þ 175/4/6 (farm) 175/4/6þ 175/4/6

Slebech,Pembs.

206/9/10½ 184/10/11½ 163/0/0þ(farm)

162/16/0j

Swingfield,Kent

104/0/2½ 87/3/3½ 113/15/8 94/11/0

Temple Brewer,Lincs.

(207/16/8) 184/6/8 182/19/½ 169/8/5½

Templecombe,Som.

120/10/3½ 107/16/11½ 126/0/1 98/3/4

Willoughton,Lincs.

195/3/0½ 174/11/1½ 206/6/5 186/3/3

Yeaveley andBarrow,Derbys.

107/3/8½ 93/3/4½ 96/15/7½ 96/2/3½

MagistralcameraPeckham (withStalisfield andRodmersham),Kent

60 (farm) þ 3/6/8 (woods)

60þ (farm) 60

total n/a n/a 5,610/15/9 5,369/5/5

MinchinBuckland,Som. (Nuns)

237/5/4 223/7/4¼ 256/19/4 þ38/0/3 (unpaidpensions)k

a References: Valor, i. 86 (Swingfield), 113 (Peckham), 201–2 (Templecombe), 210–11 (Min-chin Buckland), 403–6 (Priory); ii. 26 (Baddesley and Maine), 108 (Ansty and Trebigh), 462–3

(Quenington); iii. 168 (Yeaveley and Barrow), 340 (Carbrooke), 403 (Battisford; incomplete),

503 (Shingay); iv. 124 (Temple Brewer), 127 (Eagle), 137 (Willoughton), 165 (Dalby and

Rothley), 388–9 (Slebech), 455–6 (Halston); v. 68–9 (Newland), 94–5 (Mount St John), 142(Beverley), 256 (Ribston); Hugo, Buckland, 44–50 (Minchin Buckland).b Sources: PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402 (Priory), 4458 (Beverley, Mount St John, Newland,

Ribstone), 7262 (Quenington, Ansty, Templecombe, Slebech, Halston, Dinmore), 7264 (Bad-

desley, Shingay), 7268 (Swingfield, Peckham, Carbrooke, Battisford), 7272 (Dalby, Yeaveley,Dingley), 7274 (Willoughton, Eagle, Temple Brewer). The accounts for Melchbourne and the

Yorkshire preceptories of Newland, Beverley, Mount St John, and Ribston for 1539–40 have

been published in translation. Court of Augmentations Accounts for Bedfordshire, ed.Y. Nicholls, 2 vols., Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 63–4 (1984–5), i. 160–80; Crossley,

Appendix IX 363

‘Newland’, 16–59; id., ‘Preceptories’, 74–141.c No account for Baddesley was given because it had been granted to Sir Thomas Seymour on

Thomas Dingley’s imprisonment in 1537. Seymour was to pay only a tithe based on the

valuation of 1535. LPFD, xii, II, 1023; PRO SC6/Henry VIII/7264 m. 23d.d The entry for Battisford, which may include that for Dingley, is incomplete but seems to valuethe preceptory at £53 10s. net. However, the antiquary Thomas Tanner saw a manuscript valor

of 1535which gave Dingley a value of £108 13s. 5½d. net. To add the two sums together would

seem to value the joint house rather too highly given its relatively low receipts in 1540–1 and its

low responsion. T. Tanner, Notitia monastica, ed. J. Nasmith (Cambridge, 1787), p. lvi andentries under Northamptonshire and Suffolk.e Includes Dingley.f For the Yorkshire preceptories I have followed Crossley’s figures for gross revenues, but havededucted the full annual value of any fees or expenses mentioned in the text, rather than those

for the second half of the year in which the preceptories were in royal hands. Discrepancies

between my totals for net values and Crossley’s should be accounted for by this practice.g Although no expenses are listed in the Valor, the original text of the 1535 inquest intoHalston, which survives in the National Library of Wales, states that the preceptor was bound

to maintain two chaplains with a stipend of £5 each. ‘Miscellanea’, ed. J. F., ArchaeologiaCambrensis, 79 (1924), 413–14.h In common with the Ribston account, the 1539–40 account does not record a sum of receiptsor those expenses deducted from total receipts, meaning that expenses are artificially low.i The 1539–40 account only records payments to the bailiffs of the local bailiwicks at source.

Fees and expenses deducted from the total receipts of the preceptory, such as those paid to

chaplains and stewards, are not recorded. Crossley, however, has noted these for the 1540–1account. Including sums laid out on repairs they came to £24 6s. 7½d. Crossley, ‘Preceptories’,141.j Slebech had been let to Roger Barlow for £123 in 1541, and its dependent rectory ofLlanrhidian for £40 to John Mablestone in 1539. The 4s. deducted from the net value is the

fee of the clerks drawing up the accounts. PRO SC6/Henry VIII/7262 m. 12.k Hugo, Buckland, 69–73 (Account for 1538–9).

364 Appendix IX

Map 1. Houses of the Order of St John in Britain and Ireland. � Courtesy of theMuseum of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem

Map 2. Hospitaller possessions in the south-east Aegean (after Torr, Rhodes in modern times)

Bibliography

manuscript sources

Cambridge, University Library

Additional Manuscript Dd.III.53

Dublin, National Archives of Ireland

Transcripts from the Parliament Roll of Richard III RC13/8

Kew, Public Record Office

Augmentations Office, Miscellaneous Documents E315/235–8Court of Requests Proceedings REQ 2Early Chancery Proceedings C 1Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Ecclesiastical Documents E315/18/14Land Remembrancer Office LR 2/62 – Hospitaller lease book, 1529–39Ministers’ Accounts SC 6/Henry VIII/2402, 4458, 7262–4, 7268, 7272, 7274Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills PROB 11Star Chamber Proceedings, Henry VII–Henry VIII STAC 1 & 2State Papers SP 2/Q, SP2/R

London, British Library

Additional Charters:7386: Enfeoffment by Sir Henry Inglose, 145114030: Indulgences in return for contributions to the Hospital, 145120679: Indulgences in return for contributions to Bodrum, 1411Additional MSS:4937: Peck’s supplement to Dugdale’s Monasticon, vol. iv5493, 5539: Rentals, accounts and court rolls of Sutton-at-Hone17319: Income of the Hospitallers’ western possessions, 1478Cotton Charters:iv. 31: Indulgence in return for contributions to Bodrum, 1411xxv. 2: Deed of William Dawney, 1462Cotton MSS:Claudius E.vi: Register of grants made by provincial chapters, 1503–26Nero C.ix: Cartulary of 1442, CambridgeshireNero E.vi: Cartulary of 1442, south-eastern EnglandOtho C.ix: Hospitaller correspondence, 1510–40Vitellius B.v: Diplomatic correspondenceHarleian Charters:44 E.26, 28–31, 33, 39, 40, 43–5, 47 Quittances of Hospitaller rent-collectors57 F.18 Arbitration concerning Great Wilbraham, 1425Lansdowne MSS:

200: Register of grants made by provincial chapters, 1492–1501Sloane Charters:xxxii. 15: Brief recommending confraternity with the orderxxxii. 27: Account of papal privileges to Hospitaller confratres.

London, Guildhall Library

MS 9531/9 (consulted on microfilm)

London, Museum and Library of the Order of St John

Butler Papers

London, Westminster Abbey

Muniment 16072: Letter of Thomas Docwra, 1503

Mdina, Malta, Cathedral Archive

Archivum Inquisitionis MelitensisCriminal Proceedings, Case 1

Oxford, Bodleian Library

MS Ashmole 1137: List of English Hospitallers in Rhodes, 1508MS Rawlinson Essex 11: Materials relating to Maplestead

Valletta, Malta, National Library of Malta

Archives of the Order of St John (AOM):Cod. 31: Bulls of Pierre D’Aubusson, 1478–95Cod. 32: Bull of Aimery d’Amboise, 1510Cod. 36: Charter of Henry VIII to the order, 1537Cod. 53, fos.49–51: Expense account of the English auberge, 1525–7Cod. 54: Ricette d’Inghilterre, 1520–6 and 1531–6Cod. 57: Letters to grand masters of the orderCod. 68: Registrum Sguardior(um)Cod. 73–90: Libri Conciliorum, 1459–1560Cod. 282–287: Proceedings of chapters-general, 1454–1558Cod. 340–425: Libri Bullarum, 1417–1556Cod. 1649: Statutes of the order to 1466Cod. 1698: Statutes of Rome chapter-general, 1446Cod. 6425: Various correspondence

printed sources

‘Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland, 1556–1571’, ed. J. T. Gilbert, HistoricalManuscripts Commission, Fifteenth Report, Appendix, Part III (London, 1897).

368 Bibliography

Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. J. Dasent, 2nd ser., vols. i–vii, A.D.1542–1570 (London, 1890–3).

Ancient Irish Histories, ed. J. Ware, 2 vols. (Dublin, repr. 1809).The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil A.D.1485–1537, ed. D. Hay, CS, 3rd ser., 74(London, 1950).

‘Annales Rerum Anglicarum’, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of theEnglish in France, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols. in 3, RS (London, 1864), ii. 743–93.

The Annals of Ireland, Translated from the Original Irish of the Four Masters, trans.O. Connellan and ed. P. MacDermott (Dublin, 1846).

Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1887–1901).Archives de l’Orient Latin, ed. P. Riant, vol.ii (Paris, 1884).The Begynnynge and Foundacyon of the Holy Hospitall & of the Ordre of theKnyghtes Hospytallers of Saynt Johan Baptyst of Jerusalem (London, 1524).

Bekynton, T.,Official Correspondence, ed. G.Williams, 2 vols., RS (London, 1872).Book of Deliberations of the Venerable Tongue of England 1523–67, ed. H. P.Scicluna (Valletta, 1949).

Borough Customs, ed. M. Bateson, vol.ii (London, 1906).Bourbon, J. de, La grande et merveilleuse et trescruelle oppugnation de la noble citede Rhodes (Paris, 1525).

British Library HarleianManuscript 433, ed. R. Horrox and P.W. Hammond, 4 vols.(Gloucester, 1979–83).

Burckardi, J., Liber notarum ab anno MCCCCLXXXIII usque ad annum MDVI,ed. E. Celani, 2 vols., Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 32 (Rome, 1906–13).

Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s Register, c.1172–1534, ed. C. McNeil (Dublin,1950).

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library atLambeth, 1515–1574, ed. J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen (London, 1867).

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library atLambeth. Miscellaneous, ed. J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen (London, 1871).

Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward II-Henry VII, 41 vols. (London, 1892–1963).Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and IrelandPapal Letters 1198–1513, 19 vols. in 20 (London and Dublin, 1893–1998).

Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1272–1509, 22 vols. (London, 1911–62).‘Calendar of French Rolls, 1–10 Henry V’, The Forty-Fourth Annual Report of theDeputy Keeper of the Public Records (London, 1883), 543–638.

‘Calendar of French Rolls, Henry VI’, The Forty-Eighth Annual Report of theDeputy Keeper of the Public Records (London, 1887), 217–450.

Calendar of Inquisitions formerly in the Office of the Chief Remembrancer of theExchequer prepared from the MSS of the Irish Record Commission, ed. M. C.Griffith (Dublin, 1991).

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII, 3 vols. (London, 1898–1955).Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls, 1295–1303 (Dublin, 1905).Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiationsbetween England and Spain, Preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere,vols.i–xiii (London, 1862–1954).

‘A Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus of Christ Church, Dublin’, ed. H. J.Lawlor, PRIA 27 (1907–9), C, 1–93.

Calendar of Ormond Deeds, ed. E. Curtis, 6 vols. (Dublin, 1932–43).

Bibliography 369

Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, of the Reigns ofHenry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, ed. J. Morrin, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1861).

Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1307–1563, 56 vols. (London, 1895–1939).‘A Calendar of the Register of Archbishop Fleming’, ed. H. J. Lawlor, PRIA 30(1912–3), C, 94–190.

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Existing in the Archives and Collectionsof Milan 1385–1618 (London, 1912).

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing inthe Archives and Collections of Venice and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy,vols. i–vi, 1202–1674 (London, 1864–84).

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580,ed. R. Lemon (London, 1856).

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Edward VI 1547–1553preserved in the PRO, rev. edn., ed. C. S. Knighton (London, 1992).

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Mary I, 1553–8, ed. C. S.Knighton (Chippenham, 1998).

Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Edward VI (London, 1861).Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign ofMary, 1553–1558, Preserved

in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office (London,1861).

Caoursin, G., Prohemium volumen stabilimentorum in id., Opera.—— Opera (Ulm, 1496).—— The Siege of Rhodes, trans. J. Kaye (London, 1482, repr. New York, 1975).Cartulaire general de l’ordre des hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem, ed. J. Delavillele Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906).

A Cartulary of Buckland Priory in the County of Somerset, ed. F. W. Weaver,Somerset Record Society, 25 (London, 1909).

The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England. Prima Camera.Essex, ed. M. Gervers (Oxford, 1996).

The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England. Secunda Camera.Essex, ed. M. Gervers (London, 1982).

Castiglione, S. da, Ricordi ouero ammaestramenti di S. Castiglione, ne quali conprudenti, e christiani discorso si ragiona di tutte le materie honorate, che siricercano a un vero gentil’huomo (Milan, 1561).

Catalogue of the Records of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in the Royal MaltaLibrary, ed. A. J. Gabarretta and J. Mizzi, vols. i-(Valletta, 1964– ).

Catalogue des rolles normans, gascons et francais, ed. T. Carte, 2 vols. (London,1743).

The Cely Letters 1472–1488, ed. A. Hanham, EETS, 273 (London, 1975).Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert, 2 vols., RS (London,

1884).The Chronicle of Calais, in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, ed. J. G.Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 35 (London, 1846).

Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 52 (London,1852).

‘Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire’, ed. J. G. Nichols in Camden MiscellanyI, CS, 1st ser., 39 (London, 1847).

370 Bibliography

Codice diplomatico del Sacro Militare Ordine Gerosolimitano, ed. S. Pauli, 2 vols.(Lucca, 1737).

Concilia magnae brittanicae et hibernicae, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1733–7).Court of Augmentations Accounts for Bedfordshire, ed. Y. Nicholls, 2 vols., Bed-fordshire Historical Record Society, 63–4 (Biggleswade, 1984–5).

The Crowland Chronicle Continuation: 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox(London, 1986).

Crown Surveys of Lands 1540–41 with the Kildare Rental begun in 1518, ed. G.MacNiocaill (Dublin, 1992).

A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, 6 vols.(London, 1890–1915).

The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from AD1550 to AD 1563, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 42 (London, 1848).

The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed. E. Perroy, CS, 3rd ser., 48(London, 1933).

‘Documents Relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. F. Madden, Archaeologia, 27 (1838),153–210.

‘Documents Relating to the Suppression of the Templars in Ireland’, ed. G. MacNio-caill, Analecta Hibernica, 24 (1967), 181–226.

‘Dodsworth’s Yorkshire Church Notes’, ed. A. S. Ellis, Yorkshire ArchaeologicalJournal, 8 (1884), 1–30, 481–522.

The Domesday of Inclosures 1517–1518, ed. I. S. Leadam, 2 vols. (London, 1897).Dowdall Deeds, ed. C. McNeill and A. J. Otway-Ruthven (Dublin, 1960).An English Chronicle, ed. J. S. Davies, CS, 1st ser., 64 (London, 1856).An Episcopal Court Book for the Diocese of Lincoln 1514–1520, ed. M. Bowker,Lincoln Record Society, 61 (Lincoln, 1967).

The Episcopal Registers of the Diocese of St David’s 1397 to 1518, ed. and trans.R. F. Isaacson, 2 vols. (London, 1917).

The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, 1264–1600, 23 vols. (Edinburgh, 1878–1908).Extents of Irish Monastic Possessions, 1540–1, from Manuscripts in the Public

Record Office, London, ed. N. B. White (Dublin, 1943).Fabyan, R., The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. H. Ellis (London,1811).

Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujuscunque generis, acta publica inter regesangliae, et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communi-tates, ab ineunte saeculo duodecimo, viz. ab anno 1101 ad nostra usque tempora,ed. T. Rymer, 3rd edn., 10 vols. (London, 1739–45; repr. Farnborough, 1967).

Fontanus, J., De bello rhodio, libri tres, Clementi VII, Pont. Max. dedicati (TheHague, 1527).

The Four Visitations of Berkshire 1532, 1566, 1623, 1665–6, ed. W. H. Rylands,HSP, 56–7 (London, 1907–8).

‘A Fragment of Irish Annals’, ed. B. O Cuiv, Celtica, 14 (1981), 83–104.Gascoigne, T., Loci e libro veritatum, ed. J. E. Thorold-Rogers (Oxford, 1881).The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London,1938).

Guylforde, R., The Pylgrymage of Sir Richard Guylforde to the Holy Land, ed.H. Ellis, CS, 1st ser., 51 (London, 1851).

Bibliography 371

Hakluyt, R., The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of theEnglish Nation, 2nd edn., 12 vols. (London, 1598–1600, repr. Glasgow, 1903–5).

Hall, E., Chronicle (London, 1809).Hibernica, or, Some Antient Pieces Relating to Ireland . . . , ed. W. Harris, 2 vols.(Dublin, 1747–50).

Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J. Gairdner,CS, 2nd ser., 17 (London, 1876).

Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England, ed. J. Bruce, CS, 1st ser., 2(London, 1838).

Holinshed, R., The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotland andIrelande, 2 vols. (London, 1577).

Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, ed. H. Ellis, 6 vols.(London, 1808).

The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–71, 1481–1483(Roxburghe Club, 1841–4, repr. with an introduction by A. Crawford, Stroud,1992).

The Inventory of King Henry VIII, ed. D. Starkey (London, 1998).The Irish Fiants of the Tudor Sovereigns during the Reigns of Henry VII, Edward VI,Philip and Mary, and Elizabeth I, ed. K. Nicholls and T. G. O Canann, 4 vols.(Dublin, 1994).

Irish Monastic and Episcopal Deeds A.D.1200–1600, ed. N. B. White (Dublin,1936).

Issues of the Exchequer, ed. F. Devon (London, 1837).Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099–1185, ed. J. Wilkinson, J. Hill, and W. F. Ryan (London,

1988).A Kentish Cartulary of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, ed. C. Cotton, KentArchaeological Society, Records Branch: Kent Records, 11 (Ashford, 1930).

The Knights Hospitallers in England: Being the Report of Philip de Thame to theGrand Master Elyan de Villanova, ed. L. B. Larking, with a historical introductionby J. M. Kemble, CS, 1st ser., 65 (London, 1857).

The Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Scotland, ed. I. B. Cowan, P. H. R. Mackay,and A. Macquarrie (Edinburgh, 1983).

Leland, J., De rebus Brittanicis collectanea, ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols. (London, 1770).—— The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535–1543, ed. L. Toulmin

Smith (London, 1907–10).Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of Malpas, ed. E. W. Ives, Lancashire andCheshire Record Society, 116 (Old Woking, 1976).

Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, 22 vols in 37parts (London, 1864–1929).

Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed.J. Gairdner, 2 vols., RS (London, 1861).

The Letters of James the Fourth, 1505–1513, ed. R. K. Hannay, R. L. Mackie andA. Spilman (Edinburgh, 1953).

Letters of the Kings of England, ed. J. O. Halliwell, 2 vols. (London, 1848).Lincolnshire Church Notes made by Gervase Holles, A.D.1634 to A.D.1642, ed.R. E. G. Cole, Lincoln Record Society, 1 (Lincoln, 1911).

Lincolnshire Pedigrees, ed. A. R. Maddison, 4 vols., continuously paginated, HSP,50–2, 55 (London, 1901–3, 1906).

372 Bibliography

‘A London Chronicle during the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII’, ed. C. Hopperin Camden Miscellany IV, CS, 1st ser., 73 (London, 1859).

Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, ed. W. Campbell, 2 vols. (London,1873–7).

Memorials of King Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, RS (London, 1858).The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: Court Minutes 1486–1493, ed.M. Davies (Stamford, 2000).

‘Miscellanea’, ed. J. F., Archaeologia Cambrensis, 79 (1924), 413–14.Monasticon anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale et al., 6 vols. in 8 (London, 1817–30).Monumenta peloponnesiaca: Documents for the History of the Pelopponese in the14th and 15th Centuries, ed. J. Chrysostomides (Camberley, 1995).

More, T. The Complete Works of St Thomas More (New Haven, 1963– ).North Country Wills . . . 1383–1558, ed. J. W. Clay, Surtees Society, 116 (Durham,

1908).The Overseas Trade of London: Exchequer Customs Accounts 1480–1, ed. H. S.Cobb, London Record Society, 27 (Bristol, 1990).

Parliaments and Councils of Medieval Ireland, ed. H. G. Richardson and G. O.Sayles, vol. i (Dublin, 1947).

Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Davis, 2 vols. (Oxford,1976).

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson, 2nd edn. (London, 1983).Plumpton Correspondence, ed. T. Stapleton, CS, 1st ser., 4 (London, 1839).The Plumpton Letters and Papers, ed. J. Kirby, CS, 5th ser., 8 (Cambridge, 1996).Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, ed. N. H. Nicolas,7 vols. (London, 1834–7).

‘Rathschlage fur eine Orientreise’, ed. C. Horstmann, Englische Studien, 8 (1893),277–84.

The Register of Edward the Black Prince Preserved in the Public Record Office,4 vols. (London, 1930–3).

The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York: With an Appendix ofIllustrative Documents, Containing some Account of the Hospital of St. Thomasof Canterbury, without Micklegate Bar, in the Suburbs of the City, ed. R. H. Skaife,Surtees Society, 57 (Durham, 1872).

The Register of John Morton Archbishop of Canterbury 1486–1500, ed. C. Harper-Bill, 3 vols., CYS, 75 (York, 1985) 78, 89 (Woodbridge, 1987–2000).

The Register of John Swayne Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland 1418–1439, ed. D. A. Chart (Belfast, 1935).

The Register of Thomas Langton Bishop of Salisbury 1485–1493, ed. D. P. Wright,CYS, 74 (n.p., 1985).

The Register of Thomas Rotherham Archbishop of York 1480–1500, ed. E. E.Barber, vol. i, CYS, 69 (Torquay, 1976).

The Registers of Oliver King Bishop of Bath and Wells 1496–1503 and Hadrian deCastello Bishop of Bath and Wells 1503–1518, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, SomersetRecord Society, 54 (London, 1939).

The Registers of Robert Stillington Bishop of Bath and Wells 1466–1491 andRichard Fox Bishop of Bath and Wells 1492–1494, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte,Somerset Record Society, 52 (London, 1937).

Bibliography 373

Registrum Caroli Bothe Episcopi Herefordensis A.D.MDXVI–MDXXXV, ed. A. T.Bannister, CYS, 28 (London, 1921).

Registrum Johannis Mey: The Register of John Mey Archbishop of Armagh, 1443–1456, ed. W. G. H. Quigley and E. F. D. Roberts (Belfast, 1972).

Registrum de Kilmainham, ed. C. McNeil (Dublin, 1932).Registrum Octaviani, alias Liber Niger: The Register of Octavian de Palatio Arch-bishop of Armagh 1478–1513, ed. M. A. Sughi, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1999).

Registrum Ricardi Mayew Episcopi Herefordensis A.D.MDIV–MDXVI, ed. A. T.Bannister, CYS, 27 (London, 1921).

Registrum Thome Bourgchier Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi A.D.1454–1486, ed.F. R. H. du Boulay, CYS, 54 (Oxford, 1957).

Registrum Thome Myllyng Episcopi Herefordensis A.D.MCCCCLXXIV–MCCCCXCII, ed. A. T. Bannister, CYS, 26 (London, 1920).

The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, ed. A. F. Pollard, 3 vols.(London, 1913–14).

‘The Repertorium Viride of John Allen, Archbishop of Dublin, 1533’, ed. N. B.White, Analecta Hibernica, 10 (1941), 173–222.

‘A Report on the Documents Relating to the Wardenship of Galway’, ed. E. MacLy-saght, Analecta Hibernica, 14 (1944).

Reports d’ascuns cases . . . de Robert Keilwey Esquire, ed. J. Croke (London, 1688).The Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. J. H. Baker, 2 vols. (London, 1976–8).Returns of Aliens dwelling in the City and Suburbs of London (Henry VIII to JamesI), ed. E. F. Kirkby and R. E. G. Kirk, pt.1 (London, 1900).

Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field, ed. P. W. Hammond and A. F. Sutton(London, 1985).

Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento, ed. J. Stracheyet al., 6 vols. (London, 1767–77).

Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellariae hibernie calendarium, ed. E. Tre-sham, vol. i, pars 1 (Dublin, 1828).

The Rule, Customs and Statutes of theHospitallers 1099–1310, ed. and trans. E. King(London, 1934).

Rutland Papers: Original Documents Illustrative of the Courts and Times of HenryVII and Henry VIII, ed. W. Jerdan, CS, 1st ser., 21 (London, 1842).

Select Cases before the King’s Council 1243–1482, ed. I. S. Leadam and J. F. Baldwin,Selden Society, 35 (Cambridge, Mass., 1918).

Select Cases before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber, ed. I. S. Leadam, 2 vols.,Selden Society, 16, 25 (London, 1903–10).

Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, ed. C. G. Bayne, Selden Society, 75(London, 1958).

Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978).Shelley, R., The Letters of Sir Richard Shelley (n.p., 1774).‘Six Documents Relating to Queen Mary’s Restoration of the Grand Priories ofEngland and Ireland’, ed. E. J. King, OSJHP 7 (1935).

Six Town Chronicles of England, ed. R. Flenley (Oxford, 1911).Somerset Medieval Wills 1383–1550, ed. F. W. Weaver, Somerset Record Society,

3 vols. in 1 (repr. Gloucester, 1983).Sources Concerning the Hospitallers of St John in the Netherlands, ed. J. M. vanWinter (Brill, 1998).

374 Bibliography

‘ ‘‘The Spousells’’ of the Princess Mary, 1508’, in Camden Miscellany IX, CS, 2ndser., 53 (London, 1895).

State Papers, King Henry the Eighth, 11 vols. (London, 1830–52).Statute Rolls of the Parliament of Ireland, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1907–1939).Statutes of the Realm, vols.i–iv (London, 1810–19).Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483, ed. C. L. Kingsford, CS, 3rd ser., 29–30

(London, 1919).Stow, J., A Summarie of the Chronicles of England (London, 1604).—— A Survey of London: Reprinted from the Text of 1603, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971).‘The Testamentary Documents of Yorkshire Peculiars’, ed. E. W. Crossley, YASRS 74,Miscellanea, 2 (Wakefield, 1929), 46–86.

Torkington, R., Ye Oldest Diarie of Englysshe Travell, ed. W. J. Loftie (London,1884).

Valor ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII auctoritate regia institutis, ed. J. Caley, withindexes by R. Lemon and introduction by J. Hunter, 6 vols. (London, 1810–34).

The Visitacion of Norffolk, made and taken by William Harvey, Clarencieux King ofArms, Anno 1563, enlarged with another Visitacion made by Clarenceux Cooke,with many other Descents; as also the Vissitation made by John Raven, Richmond,Anno 1613, ed. W. Rye, HSP, 32 (London, 1891).

The Visitation of Cambridgeshire made in A8 (1575), continued and enlarged wth theVissitation of the Same County made by Henery St George, Richmond-herald,Marshall and Deputy to Willm. Camden, Clarenceulx, in A8 1619, wth ManyOther Descents added thereto, ed. W. Clay, HSP, 41 (London, 1897).

The Visitation of Suffolk 1561, ed. J. Corder, 2 vols. HSP, 2nd ser., 2–3 (London,1981–4).

The Visitation of the County of Leicester in the Year 1619, taken by WilliamCamden, Clarenceux King of Arms, ed. J. Fetherston, HSP, 2 (London,1870).

The Visitation of the County of Somerset in the Year 1623, ed. F. T. Colby, HSP, 11(London, 1876).

The Visitation of the County of Worcester made in the Year 1569 with OtherPedigrees relating to that County from Richard Mundy’s Collection, ed. W. P. W.Phillimore, HSP, 27 (London, 1888).

The Visitation of Yorkshire in the Years 1563 and 1564, made by William Flower,Esquire, Norroy King of Arms, ed. C. B. Norcliffe, HSP, 16 (London, 1881).

The Visitations of Cornwall, Comprising the Heralds’ Visitations of 1530, 1573,& 1620, ed. J. L. Vivian (Exeter, 1887).

The Visitations of Essex by Hawley, 1552; Hervey, 1558; Cooke, 1570; Raven, 1612;and Owen and Lilly, 1634, to which are added, Miscellaneous Essex Pedigreesfrom Various Harleian Manuscripts: and an Appendix containing Berry’s EssexPedigrees, ed. W. C. Metcalfe, HSP, 13–14 (London, 1878).

The Visitations of Hertfordshire made by Robert Cooke, Esq., Clarencieux, in 1572,and Sir Richard St. George, Kt., Clarencieux, in 1634, with Hertfordshire Pedi-grees from Harleian MSS. 6147 and 1546, ed. W. C. Metcalfe, HSP, 22 (London,1886).

The Visitations of Northamptonshire made in 1564 and 1618–9, with Northamp-tonshire Pedigrees from Various Harleian Manuscripts, ed. W. C. Metcalfe (Lon-don, 1887).

Bibliography 375

The Visitations of the County of Devon, Comprising the Heralds’ Visitations of1531, 1564 & 1620, ed. J. L. Vivian, 2 vols. (Exeter, 1895).

The Visitations of the County of Nottingham in the Years 1569 and 1614, withMany Other Descents of the Same County, ed. G. W. Marshall, HSP, 4 (London,1871).

The Visitations of the County of Surrey made and taken in the Years 1530 by ThomasBenolte, Clarenceux King of Arms; 1572 by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King ofArms; and 1623 by Samuel Thompson, Windsor Herald and Augustin Vincent,Rouge Croix Pursuivant, Marshals and Deputies to William Camden, ClarenceuxKing of Arms, ed. W. Bruce Bannerman, HSP, 43 (London, 1899).

Warkworth, J., A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of the Reign of KingEdward the Fourth, ed. J. O. Halliwell, CS, 1st ser., 10 (London, 1839).

Wey, W., Itineraries, 2 vols. (London, 1857).Winchester College Muniments. A Descriptive List, ed. S. Himsworth, 3 vols. (Chi-chester, 1976–84).

Wriothesley, C.,AChronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, ed. W. D.Hamilton, vol. i, CS, 2nd ser., 11 (London, 1875).

secondary works

Allen, D. F., ‘The Order of St John as a ‘‘School for Ambassadors’’ in Counter-Reformation Europe’, MO, ii. 363–79.

Archdall, M., Monasticon hibernicum, 2nd edn., ed. P. F. Moran, 2 vols. (Dublin,1873–6).

Argenti, P., The Occupation of Chios by the Genoese, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1958).Arthurson, I., The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491–1499 (Stroud, 1994).Balard, M., ‘The Urban Landscape of Rhodes as Perceived by Fourteenth- andFifteenth-Century Travellers’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995),24–34.

Baldwin, J. F., The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford,1913).

Balleine, G. R., A Biographical Dictionary of Jersey (Leyden, 1949).Barber, M., The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 1978).—— The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge,1994).

—— (ed.), The Military Orders, i: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick(Aldershot, 1994).

Barber, M. J., ‘The Englishman Abroad in the Fifteenth Century’, Medievalia etHumanistica, 11 (1957), 69–77.

Baskerville, G., ‘The Dispossessed Religious of Gloucestershire’, Transactions ofthe Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 49 (1927), 63–122.

Bedford, W. K. R., and Holbeche, R., The Order of the Hospital of St. John ofJerusalem (London, 1902).

Belabre, F. de, Rhodes of the Knights (Oxford, 1908).Beltjens, A., Aux origines de l’Ordre de Malta: de la fondation de l’hopital deJerusalem a sa transformation en ordre militaire (Brussels, 1995).

376 Bibliography

Bennett, M. J., Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Societyin the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983).

Berry, W., County Genealogies: Pedigrees of the Families in the County of Sussex(London, 1830).

Bettey, J. H., The Suppression of the Monasteries in the West Country (Gloucester,1989).

Bindoff, S. T. (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558(London, 1982).

Blanchard, I. W. S., ‘Population Change, Enclosure, and the Early Tudor Econ-omy’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 23 (1970), 427–45.

Boase, T. S. R., ‘The Arts in Frankish Greece and Rhodes’, Hist. Crusades, iv.229–50.

Boisgelin, L. de, Ancient and Modern Malta, 2 vols. (London, 1805).Bolton, J. L., The Medieval English Economy 1150–1500 (London, 1980).Bono, S., ‘Naval Exploits and Privateering’, in Mallia-Malines (ed.), HospitallerMalta, 351–95.

Bosio, G., Dell’Istoria della sacra religione et ill.ma militia di San Giovanni Gier-osolimitano, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (Rome, 1622–9, 1602).

Bowker, M., The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495–1520 (Cambridge,1968).

Bradford, E., The Great Siege: Malta 1565 (Harmondsworth, 1961).Bradshaw, B., The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII(Cambridge, 1974).

Brooks, E. St. J., Knights’ Fees in Counties Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny (13th–15th Century) (Dublin, 1950).

Bugeja, L., Buhagiar, M., and Fiorini, S. (eds.), Birgu – A Maltese Maritime City,2 vols. (Msida, 1993).

Buhagiar, M., ‘The Treasure of the Knights Hospitallers in 1530: Reflections andArt Historical Considerations’, Peregrinationes, 1 (2000).

Burke, J., A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 4 vols.(London, 1837–8).

—— A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland, 4thedn., ed. L. G. Pine (London, 1958).

Butler, L., ‘The Port of Rhodes under the Knights of St John (1309–1522)’,Les Grandes Escales: Recueils de la societe Jean Bodin, 32 (Brussels, 1974),339–45.

Calnan, D., ‘Some Notes on the Order in Scotland’, AOSM 22 (1964), 59–71.Carpenter, M. C., Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society,1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992).

—— ‘Henry VII and the English Polity’, in B. J. Thompson (ed.), The Reign of HenryVII (Stamford, 1995), 11–30.

Cassar, P., ‘Medical Life in Birgu in the Past’, in Bugeja, Buhagiar and Fiorini (eds.),Birgu, i. 327–90.

Chambers, D. S., Cardinal Bainbridge in the Court of Rome 1509 to 1514 (Oxford,1965).

Charles, B. G., ‘The Records of Slebech’, National Library of Wales Journal,5 (1947–8), 179–89.

Bibliography 377

Chew, H., ‘The Priory of St John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell’, VCH, Middlesex, vol.i(Oxford, 1969), 193–200.

Clark, G. T., ‘The Babingtons, Knights of St John’, Archaeological Journal, 36(1879), 219–30.

Clark, J. G., ‘Selling the Holy Places: Monastic Efforts to Win back the People inFifteenth-Century England’, in T. Thornton (ed.), Social Attitudes and PoliticalStructures in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 2000), 13–32.

Clarke, H. (ed.), Medieval Dublin, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1990).Clode, C. M., The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors of the Fraternityof St John the Baptist, London (London, 1888).

Cockayne, G. E. (ed.), Complete Peerage, new edn., ed. V. Gibbs et al., 13 vols.(London, 1910–59).

Colker, M. L., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manu-scripts in Trinity College, Dublin, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1991).

Condon, M. M., ‘From ‘‘Caitiff and Villain’’ to Pater Patriae: Reynold Bray and theProfits of Office’, in M. Hicks (ed.), Profit, Piety and the Professions in LaterMedieval England (Gloucester, 1990), 137–68.

Connolly, P., ‘Irish Material in the Class of Ancient Petitions (SC8) in the PublicRecord Office, London’, Analecta Hibernica, 34 (1987), 1–106.

Conway, A., Henry VII’s Relations with Scotland and Ireland, 1485–1498 (Cam-bridge,1932).

Coote, L. A., Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (York,2000).

Cosgrove, A., ‘Hiberniores ipsis Hibernis’, in A. Cosgrove and D. McCartney(eds.), Studies in Irish History Presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979).

—— (ed.), A New History of Ireland, ii: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534 (Oxford,1993).

Cross, C., ‘Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York, 1520–1540’, TRHS,5th ser., 38 (1988), 131–45.

—— ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Yorkshire Church in the SixteenthCentury’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), Government, Religion and Society in NorthernEngland 1000–1700 (Stroud, 1997), 159–71.

Crossley, E. W., ‘The Preceptory of Newland’, YASRS 61, Miscellanea, 1 (Leeds,1920), 1–83.

—— ‘The Preceptories of the Knights Hospitallers’, YASRS 94, Miscellanea,4 (Leeds, 1937), 73–174.

Cussans, J. E., History of Hertfordshire, 3 vols. (1870–81, repr. Wakefield, 1972).Delaville le Roulx, J., Les Hospitaliers a Rhodes jusqu’a la mort de Philibert deNaillac: 1310–1421 (Paris, 1913).

Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephen and S. Lee, 63 vols. (London,1885–1900).

Ditchburn, D., Scotland and Europe: The Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts withChristendom, c.1215–1545, i: Religion, Culture and Commerce (East Linton,2000).

Dobson, R. B., ‘The Last English Monks on Scottish Soil: The Severance of Colding-ham Priory from the Monastery of Durham, 1461–78’, in id., Church and Societyin the Medieval North of England (London, 1996), 109–33.

378 Bibliography

Duff, E. G., Fifteenth Century English Books: A Bibliography of Books and Docu-ments Printed in England and of Books for the English Market Printed Abroad(Oxford, 1917).

Duffy, S., Ireland in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 1997).Dyer, C., Warwickshire Farming 1349–c.1520: Preparations for Agricultural Revo-

lution, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 27 (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1981).Edwards, R. D., ‘The Kings of England and Papal Provisions in Fifteenth-CenturyIreland’, in Watt et al. (eds.), Medieval Studies, 265–80.

Ellis, S. G., Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English Expansion andthe End of Gaelic Rule (Harlow, 1998).

Elton, G. R., Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 3 vols. (Cam-bridge, 1974–83).

Elvins, M., Bl. Adrian Fortescue: Englishman, Knight of Malta, Martyr (London,1993).

Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D.1500, 3vols. (Oxford, 1957–9).

—— A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to A.D.1500 (Cam-bridge, 1963).

—— A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, A.D.1501 to 1540 (Ox-ford, 1974).

Falkiner, C. L., ‘The Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland’, PRIA 26 (1907),C, 275–317.

Ferguson, J. T., English Diplomacy 1422–61 (Oxford, 1972).Field, P. J. C., ‘Sir Robert Malory, Prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem inEngland (1432–1439/40)’, JEH 28 (1977), 249–64.

—— The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Cambridge, 1993).Fincham, H. W., The Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem and its GrandPriory of England, 2nd edn. (London, 1933).

Fiorini, S., ‘Demographical Aspects of Birgu up to 1800’, in Bugeja, Buhagiar, andFiorini (eds.), Birgu, i. 219–54.

—— and Luttrell, A. T., ‘The Italian Hospitallers at Rhodes, 1437–1462’, RevueMabillon, 68 (1996), 209–31.

FitzGerald, Lord W., ‘The FitzGeralds of Ballyshannon (Co. Kildare) and theirSuccessors Thereat’, JCKAS 3 (1899–1902), 425–52.

Fontenay, M., ‘De Rhodes a Malte: l’evolution de la flotte des Hospitaliers au XVIesiecle’, Atti del V Convegno Internazionale di Studi Colombiani, 2 vols. (Genoa,1990), i. 107–35.

—— ‘Les Missions des galeres de Malte: 1530–1798’, in M.Verge-Franceschi (ed.),Guerre et commerce en Mediterranee: IXe–XXe siecles (Paris, 1991), 103–19.

Forey, A., ‘The Militarisation of the Hospital of St John’, in id.,Military Orders andCrusades (Aldershot, 1994), art. ix, 75–89.

—— ‘The Military Order of St Thomas of Acre’, Military Orders and Crusades, art.xii, 481–503.

—— ‘Recruitment to the Military Orders (Twelfth to Mid-Fourteenth Centuries)’,Military Orders and Crusades, art. ii, 139–71.

Fox, A., ‘Prophecy and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII’ in A. Fox and J. A. Guy(eds.),Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500–1550(Oxford, 1986), 77–94.

Bibliography 379

Frame, R., ‘Commissions of the Peace in Ireland, 1302–1461’, Analecta Hibernica,35 (1992), 1–44.

—— ‘ ‘‘Les Engleys Nees en Irlande’’: The English Political Identity in MedievalIreland’, TRHS, 6th ser., 3 (1993), 83–103.

Fryde, E. B., Greenway, D. E., Porter, S., and Roy, I., Handbook of BritishChronology, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, 1986).

Gabriel, A., La Cite de Rhodes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1921–3).Galea, J., ‘Henry VIII and the Order of St. John’, Journal of the ArchaeologicalAssociation, 3rd ser., 12 (1949), 59–69.

Gallwey, H., The Wall Family in Ireland 1170–1970 (Naas, 1970).Gervers, M., The Hospitaller Cartulary in the British Library (Cotton MS NeroEVI) (Toronto, 1981).

Gilchrist, R., Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism (London, 1995).Gooder, E., Temple Balsall: TheWarwickshire Preceptory of the Templars and theirFate (Chichester, 1995).

—— Temple Balsall: From Hospitallers to a Caring Community, 1322 to ModernTimes (Chichester, 1999).

Goodman, J. R., Chivalry and Exploration, 1298–1630 (Woodbridge, 1998).Graham, R., ‘The English Province of the Order of Cluny in the Fifteenth Century’,

in ead., English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), 62–90.Griffith, M. C., ‘The Talbot-Ormond Struggle for Control of the Anglo-IrishGovernment, 1414–47’, Irish Historical Studies, 8 (1941), 376–97.

Griffiths, R. A., The Reign of King Henry VI (repr. Stroud, 1998).—— Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his Family (Cardiff, 1993).Gross, A., The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue and theCrisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-Century England (Stamford, 1996).

Gunn, S. J., Early Tudor Government 1485–1558 (Basingstoke, 1995).Guy, J. A., The Cardinal’s Court: The Impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber

(Hassocks, 1977).—— ‘Thomas More and Christopher St German: The Battle of the Books’, in Foxand Guy (eds.), Reassessing the Henrician Age, 95–120.

Gwynn, A., and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (London,1970).

Hanham, A., Richard III and his Early Historians 1483–1535 (Oxford, 1975).Harari, Y., ‘The Military Role of the Frankish Turcopoles: A Reassessment’, Medi-terranean Historical Review, 12 (1997), 75–116.

Harbison, P., Guide to the National and Historic Monuments of Ireland, 3rd edn.(Dublin, 1992).

Harris, J., Greek Emigres in the West 1400–1520 (Camberley, 1995).Harris, W., The City and Antiquities of Dublin (Dublin, 1766).Harrison, C., ‘The Coming of the Sneyds’, North Staffordshire Journal of Field

Studies, 22 (1982–5), 23–46.Harvey, M. M., England, Rome and the Papacy 1417–1464 (Manchester, 1993).Hasler, P. W. (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603,3 vols. (London, 1981).

Hatcher, J., ‘England in the Aftermath of the Black Death’, Past and Present, 144(1994), 3–35.

380 Bibliography

Heal, F.,Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Social and Economic Position of theTudor Episcopate (Cambridge, 1980).

Hendrick-Aylmer, H., ‘Rathmore’, JCKAS 6 (1902), 372–81.Hermitage Day, E., ‘The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Dinmore,Western Hereford’, OSJHP 3 (1930).

Hicks, M. A., ‘The Changing Role of the Wydevilles in Yorkist Politics to 1483’, inid., Richard III and his Rivals: Magnates and their Motives in the Wars of theRoses (London, 1991), 209–28.

—— ‘Idealism in Late-Medieval English Politics’, in id., Richard III, 41–60.—— False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George, Duke of Clarence 1449–1478, 2ndedn. (Gloucester, 1992).

Hill, G., A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1940–52).Hoade, E., Western Pilgrims to the Holy Land (Jerusalem, 1952).Hodgson, J. C., ‘Chibburn and the Knights Hospitallers in Northumberland’,Archaeologia Aeliana, 17 (1895), 262–80.

Hope, W. St. J., Windsor Castle: An Architectural History (London, 1913).Hoppen, A., ‘The Finances of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in the Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries’, European Studies Review, 3 (1973), 103–19.

—— The Fortification of Malta by the Order of St John 1530–1798, 2nd edn.(Msida, 1999).

Housley, N., The Later Crusades 1274–1580 (Oxford, 1992).—— Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 (Oxford, 2002).Hoyle, R. W., ‘Monastic Leasing before the Dissolution: The Evidence of BoltonPriory and Fountains Abbey’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 61 (1989),111–37.

—— ‘The Origins of the Dissolution of the Monasteries’, Historical Journal, 38(1995), 275–305.

Hughes, J., Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud,2002).

—— Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire(Woodbridge, 1988).

Hughes, J. Q., The Building of Malta during the Period of the Knights of St John ofJerusalem 1530–1795, 2nd edn. (London, 1967).

Hugo, T., The History of Mynchin Buckland, Priory and Preceptory, in the Countyof Somerset (London, 1861).

—— The History of Eagle, in the County of Lincolnshire, a Commandery of theKnights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem (London, 1876).

Hutchins, J., The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, 3rd edn., withadditions by W. Shipp and J. W. Hodson, 4 vols. (Westminster, 1861–74,repr.1975).

Ives, E. W., ‘ ‘‘Agaynst taking awaye ofWomen’’: The Inception andOperation of theAbduction Act of 1487’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht, and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds.),Wealth and Power in Tudor England (London, 1978).

Jefferies, H. A. J., Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformations,1518–1558 (Dublin, 1997).

Jones, F., ‘Sir Rhys ap Thomas and the Knights of St. John’, Carmarthen Antiquary2/3 (1951), 70–4.

Bibliography 381

Jones, T., Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary, 2nd edn. (Lon-don, 1994).

Kaeuper, R. W., War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the LaterMiddle Ages (Oxford, 1988).

Karassava-Tsilingiri, F., ‘The Fifteenth-Century Hospital of Rhodes: Traditionand Innovation’, MO, i. 89–96.

Kedar, B. Z., ‘A Twelfth-Century Description of the Jerusalem Hospital’, MO, ii.3–26.

Keen, M., ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade’, in id.Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms (London, 1996), 101–20.

—— ‘War, Peace and Chivalry’, in id., Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms, 1–20.—— ‘Chivalry and the Aristocracy’, in M. Jones (ed.), New Cambridge MedievalHistory, vi: c.1300–c.1415 (Cambridge, 2000), 209–22.

Ker, N. R.,Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn.(London, 1964).

—— Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Supplement to the Second Edition, ed.A. G. Watson (London, 1987).

Kerridge, E., ‘The Returns of the Inquisitions of Depopulation’, EHR 70 (1955),212–28.

King, E. J., ‘A Letter from Brother Hugh Middleton, Knight of the Order of St. Johnof Jerusalem and Turcopolier of Rhodes, to his Agent in England, written about1448’, OSJHP 4 (1930), 1–18.

—— The Knights of St. John in the British Realm, 3rd edn., rev. and continued byH. Luke (London, 1967).

Knowles, D. M., The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1971).—— and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2ndedn. (London, 1971).

Lander, J. R., ‘Marriage and Politics: The Nevilles and the Wydevilles’, Bulletin ofthe Institute of Historical Research, 36 (1963), 119–52.

—— English Justices of the Peace, 1461–1509 (Gloucester, 1989).Leadam, I. S., ‘The Inquisition of 1517: Inclosures and Evictions, Part III, Londonand Suburbs’, TRHS, 2nd ser., 8 (1894), 253–331.

Lehmberg, S. E., The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970).—— The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII 1536–1547 (Cambridge, 1977).Leland, T., The History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II with a PreliminaryDiscourse on the Antient State of that Kingdom, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1773).

Lloyd, S., English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1988).Loades, D. M., Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1989).—— The Tudor Navy: An Administrative, Political and Military History (Aldershot,1992).

—— The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England,1553–1558, 2nd edn. (Harlow, 1998).

Lomas, R. A., ‘The Priory of Durham and its Demesne in the Fourteenth andFifteenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 31 (1978), 339–53.

Loomis, L. R., ‘Nationality at the Council of Constance: An Anglo-French Dispute’,American Historical Review, 44 (1939), 508–27.

Lunt, W. R., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England 1327–1534, 2 vols.(Cambridge, Mass., 1939–62).

382 Bibliography

Luttrell, A. T., The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291–1440: Collected Studies (London, 1978).

—— ‘The Hospitallers at Rhodes, 1306–1421’, Hospitallers in Cyprus, art. i, 278–313.

—— ‘The Hospitallers in Cyprus after 1291’,Hospitallers in Cyprus, art. ii, 161–71.—— Latin Greece, the Hospitallers and the Crusades 1291–1440 (London, 1982).—— ‘The Hospitallers’ Historical Activities: 1400–1530’, Latin Greece, art. ii, 145–50.

—— ‘The Hospitallers’ Interventions in Cilician Armenia: 1291–1375’, LatinGreece, art. v, 116–44.

—— ‘Slavery at Rhodes, 1306–1440’, Latin Greece, art. vi, 81–100.—— ‘The Later History of the Maussolleion and its Utilization in the HospitallerCastle at Bodrum’, Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 15/2 (Copen-hagen, 1986), 114–214.

—— ‘The Hospitallers’ Western Accounts, 1373/4 and 1374/5’, in Camden Miscel-lany XXX, CS, 4th ser., 39 (London, 1990), 1–22.

—— The Hospitallers of Rhodes and their Mediterranean World (Aldershot, 1992).—— ‘The Hospitallers of Rhodes Confront the Turks: 1306–1421’, MediterraneanWorld, art. ii, 80–116.

—— ‘Notes on Foulques de Villaret, Master of the Hospital, 1305–1319’, Mediter-ranean World, art. iv, 73–90.

—— ‘Settlement on Rhodes, 1306–66’, Mediterranean World, art. v, 273–81.—— ‘The Rhodian Background of the Order of St John on Malta’, MediterraneanWorld, art. xviii, 3–14.

—— ‘The Military and Naval Organisation of the Hospitallers at Rhodes: 1310–1444’, Mediterranean World, art. xix, 133–53.

—— ‘Malta and Rhodes: Hospitallers and Islanders’, in Mallia-Malines (ed.), Hos-pitaller Malta, 255–84.

—— ‘Chaucer’s Knight and the Mediterranean’, Library of Mediterranean History,1 (1994), 127–60.

—— ‘The Earliest Documents on the Hospitaller Corso at Rhodes: 1413 and 1416’,Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 177–88.

—— ‘The Earliest Hospitallers’, in B. Z. Kedar, J. Riley-Smith, and R. Hiestand(eds.), Montjoie (Aldershot, 1997), 37–54.

—— ‘The Military Orders, 1312–1798’, in J. Riley-Smith (ed.), The Oxford Illus-trated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995), 326–64.

—— ‘The Spiritual Life of the Hospitallers of Rhodes’, The Hospitaller Stateon Rhodes and its Western Provinces, 1306–1462 (Aldershot, 1999), art. ix,75–96.

—— ‘English Contributions to the Hospitaller Castle at Bodrum in Turkey: 1407–1437’, MO, ii. 163–72.

—— ‘Hospitaller Birgu: 1530–1536’, Crusades 2 (2003), 121–150.McCorristine, L., The Revolt of Silken Thomas: A Challenge to Henry VIII

(Dublin, 1987).Macdougall, N., James IV (Edinburgh, 1989).McHardy, A. K., ‘The Alien Priories and the Expulsion of Aliens from England in

1378’, in D. Baker (ed.), Church, Society and Politics, Studies in Church History,12 (Oxford, 1975), 133–41.

Bibliography 383

McNeill, T., Anglo-Norman Ulster: The History and Archaeology of an IrishBarony (Edinburgh, 1980).

—— Castles in Ireland: Feudal Power in a Gaelic World (London, 1997).Macquarrie, A., Scotland and the Crusades 1095–1560 (Edinburgh, 1985).Mallett, M., ‘Mercenaries’, in M. Keen (ed.), Medieval Warfare: A History (Ox-ford, 1999), 209–29.

Mallia-Malines, V. (ed.), Hospitaller Malta 1530–1798 (Msida, Malta, 1993).—— ‘The Birgu Phase of Hospitaller History’, in Bugeja, Buhagiar, and Fiorini (eds.),Birgu, i. 73–96.

Manning, C., ‘Excavations at Kilteel Church, Co. Kildare’, JCKAS 16/3 (1981–2),179–230.

Marcombe, D., Leper Knights: The Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England,c.1150–1544 (Woodbridge, 2003).

Martin, F. X., ‘The Irish Augustinian Reform Movement in the Fifteenth Century’,in Watt et al. (eds.), Medieval Studies, 230–64.

Mayer, T. F., Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000).Mifsud, A., Knights Hospitaller of the Venerable Tongue of England in Malta(Valletta, 1914).

Miller, H., Henry VIII and the English Nobility (Oxford, 1986).Mitchell, R. J., The Spring Voyage: The Jerusalem Pilgrimage in 1458 (London,1964).

Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., and Byrne, F. J. (eds.), A New History of Ireland, ix:Maps, Genealogies, Lists (Oxford, 1984).

Morant, P., The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, 2 vols. (London,1763–8).

Mueller, R. C., The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics and the Public Debt,1200–1500 (Baltimore, 1997).

Munro, J. H., Wool, Cloth and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in the Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340–1478 (Toronto, 1972).

New, C. W., A History of the Alien Priories of England to the Confiscation of HenryV (Chicago, 1916).

Nicholls, K. W., ‘The Development of Lordship in County Cork, 1300–1600’, inP. O. Flanagan and C. G. Buttimer (eds.), Cork: History and Society (Dublin,1993), 157–212.

Nichols, J., The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, 4 vols. in 8 parts(London, 1795–1811).

Nicholson, H., ‘The Military Orders and the Kings of England in the Twelfth andThirteenth Centuries’, in A. Murray (ed.), From Clermont to Jerusalem: TheCrusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500 (Turnhout, 1998).

—— ‘The Knights Hospitaller on the Frontiers of the British Isles’, MMR, 47–57.—— ‘The Hospitallers in England, the Kings of England and Relations with Rhodesin the Fourteenth Century’, Sacra Militia, 2 (2001), 25–45.

—— The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, 2001).Nicol, D. M., ‘A Byzantine Emperor in England: Manuel II’s Visit to London in

1400–1401’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 12/2 (1971), 204–25.Nisbet, J., ‘Treasury Records of the Knights of St. John in Rhodes’, MH 2/2 (1957),95–104.

384 Bibliography

Oppenheim, M., A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy and of Mer-chant Shipping in Relation to the Navy from MDIX to MDCLX with an Intro-duction Treating of the Preceding Period (London, 1896).

Orme, N., ‘Church and Chapel in Medieval England’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996),75–102.

Ormerod, G., The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 2nd edn., rev.and enlarged by T. Helsey, 3 vols. (London, 1882).

O’Sullivan, B., ‘The Dominicans in Medieval Dublin’, in Clarke (ed.), MedievalDublin, ii. 83–99.

Otway-Ruthven, A. J., AHistory of Medieval Ireland, 2nd edn. (New York, 1980).Palmer, J. J. N., England, France and Christendom, 1377–1399 (London, 1972).Parks, G. B., The English Traveler to Italy, i: The Middle Ages (to 1525) (Rome,

1954).Paviot, J., La Politique navale des ducs de Bourgogne 1384/1482 (Lille, 1995).Perkins, C., ‘The Knights Hospitallers in England after the fall of the Order of theTemple’, EHR 45 (1930), 285–9.

—— ‘The Wealth of the Knights Templars in England and the Disposition of it aftertheir Dissolution’, American Historical Review, 15 (1910), 252–63.

Phillips, G., The Anglo-Scots Wars 1513–1550: A Military History (Woodbridge,1999).

Phillips, S. D., ‘The Recycling of Monastic Wealth in Medieval Southern England,1300–1530’, Southern History, 22 (2000), 45–71.

Pinks, W., The History of Clerkenwell, 2nd edn., ed. E. J. Wood (London, 1881).Porter, W., A History of the Knights of Malta, 2nd edn. (London, 1883).Puddy, E., A Short History of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem inNorfolk (Dereham, 1961).

Pugh, R. B., ‘The Knights Hospitallers of England as Undertakers’, Speculum, 56(1981), 566–74.

Raban, S., Mortmain Legislation and the English Church (Cambridge, 1982).Rawcliffe, C., The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham 1394–1521 (Cambridge, 1978).

Rees, W., A History of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the WelshBorder (Cardiff, 1947).

Rex, R., ‘Blessed Adrian Fortescue: A Martyr without a Cause?’, Analecta Bollandi-ana, 115 (1997), 307–53.

Richardson, H. G., and Sayles, G. O., The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages(Philadelphia, 1952).

Riley-Smith, J., The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus c.1050–1310(London, 1967; repr. Basingstoke, 2002).

—— (ed.), Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995).—— The First Crusaders, 1095–1130 (Cambridge, 1997).—— Hospitallers: The History of the Order of St John (London, 1999).Ritook, P., ‘Templar Architecture in England’, SJHSP 4 (1992), 14–22.Rodger, N. A. M., The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, i: 660–1649 (London, 1997).

Ross, C., Edward IV (Berkeley, Calif., 1974).Rossi, E., Il dominio degli spagnoli e dei Cavalieri di Malta a Tripoli (1510–1551)(Intra, 1937).

Bibliography 385

Rossi, E., ‘The Hospitallers at Rhodes: 1421–1523’, Hist. Crusades, iii. 314–39.Ruddock, A. A., ‘London Capitalists and the Decline of Southampton in the EarlyTudor Period’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 2 (1949), 137–51.

—— Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton 1270–1600 (Southampton,1951).

Ryder, A., ‘The Eastern Policy of Alfonso the Magnaminous’, Atti della AccademiaPontificana, 28 (1979), 7–25.

Sarnowsky, J., ‘Die Johanniter und Smyrna (1344–1402)’, Romische Quartalss-chrift, 86 (1991), 215–51; 87 (1992), 47–98.

—— ‘Der Konvent auf Rhodos und die Zungen (lingue) im Johanniterorden: 1421–1476’, in Z. H. Nowak (ed.), Ritterorden und Region—Politische, soziale undwirtschaftliche Verbindungen im Mittelalter (Torun, 1995), 43–65.

—— ‘Kings and Priors: The Hospitaller Priory of England in the Later FifteenthCentury’, MMR 83–102.

—— Macht und Herrschaft im Johanniterorden des 15. Jahrhunderts: Verfassungund Verwaltung der Johanniter auf Rhodos (1421–1522) (Munster, 2001).

—— ‘The Oligarchy at Work: The Chapters General of the Hospitallers in the XVthCentury (1421–1522)’, in M. Balard (ed.), Autour de la premiere croisade (Paris,1996), 267–76.

—— ‘ ‘‘The Rights of the Treasury’’: The Financial Administration of the Hospital-lers on Fifteenth-Century Rhodes, 1421–1522’, MO, ii. 267–74.

Scarisbrick, J. J., Henry VIII (Harmondsworth, 1968).—— ‘Cardinal Wolsey and the Common Weal’, in Ives et al. (eds.), Wealth andPower in Tudor England, 45–67.

Schofield, R. S., ‘The Geographical Distribution of Wealth in England, 1334–1649’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 108 (1965), 483–510.

Scofield, C. L., The Life and Reign of Edward IV, 2 vols. (London, 1923).Setton, K. M., (gen. ed.), A History of the Crusades, 2nd edn., 5 vols. (Madison,

Wis., 1969–89).—— The Papacy and the Levant: 1204–1571, 4 vols. (Philadelphia, 1976–84).Seymour, St John D., The Diocese of Emly (Dublin, 1913).Shimield, W. H., ‘On Shengay and its Preceptory’, Proceedings of the CambridgeAntiquarian Society, 7 (1893), 136–47.

Sire, H. J. A., The Knights of Malta (London, 1994).Skeeters, M. C., Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation c.1530–

c.1570 (Oxford, 1993).Smith, J. C. C., Index of Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1383–

1558, 2 vols., continuously paginated (London, 1893–5).Spiteri, S. C., Fortresses of the Cross (Malta, 1994).—— Fortresses of the Knights (Malta, 2001).Spufford, M., A Cambridgeshire Community: Chippenham from Settlement toEnclosure, University of Leicester Department of English Local History Occa-sional Papers, 20 (Welwyn Garden City, 1965).

Spufford, P., Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London, 1986).Steel, A., The Receipt of the Exchequer 1377–1485 (Cambridge, 1954).Studd, R., ‘A Templar Colony in North Staffordshire: Keele before the Sneyds’,

North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, 22 (1982–5), 5–21.

386 Bibliography

Surtees, R., The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols.(London, 1816–41, repr. Wakefield, 1972).

Sutcliffe, S., ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England: An Introduction’, NottinghamMedieval Studies, 37 (1993), 83–9.

Sutton, A. F., ‘John Kendale: A Search for Richard III’s Secretary’, in J. Petre (ed.),Richard III: Crown and People (Gloucester, 1985).

Swanson, R. N., Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge,1995).

—— ‘Letters of Confraternity and Indulgence in Late Medieval England’, Archives,25 (2000), 40–57.

Synnott, P. N. N., Knights Hospitallers in Ireland 1174–1558 (privately printed,n.d.).

Szczesniak, B. B., The Knights Hospitallers in Poland and Lithuania (The Hague,1969).

Taaffe, J., The History of the Holy Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusa-lem, 4 vols. (London, 1852).

Tanner, T., Notitia monastica, ed. J. Nasmith (Cambridge, 1787).Tencajoli, O., ‘Il soggiorno a Civitavecchia e a Viterbo dell’Ordine di S. Giovanni diGerusalemme e di Rodi, 1523–1527’, Roma, 7 (1929), 433–44, 481–94.

—— L’Ordine di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme a Nizza (Turin, 1929).Thompson, B. J., ‘The Statute of Carlisle, 1307, and the Alien Priories’, JEH 41(1990), 543–83.

—— ‘The Laity, the Alien Priories and the Redistribution of EcclesiasticalProperty’, in N. Rogers (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century (Stamford,1994), 19–41.

—— ‘Monasteries and their Patrons at Foundation and Dissolution’, TRHS, 6th ser.,4 (1994), 103–25.

Thompson, E. M., The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930).Thomson, J. A. F., ‘Richard Tollet and Thomas Cornish: Two West Country EarlyTudor Churchmen’, Southern History, 19 (1997), 61–73.

Thornley, I. D., ‘The Destruction of Sanctuary’, in R. W. Seton-Watson (ed.), TudorStudies Presented to Albert Frederick Pollard (London, 1924), 182–207.

Thurley, S., Hampton Court: A Social and Architectural History (London, 2003).Tipton, C. L., ‘The English at Nicopolis’, Speculum, 37 (1962), 528–40.—— ‘Peter Holt, Turcopolier of Rhodes and Prior of Ireland’, AOSM 22 (1964),82–5.

—— ‘The English and Scottish Hospitallers during the Great Schism’, CHR 52(1966–7), 240–5.

—— ‘The English Hospitallers during the Great Schism’, Studies in Medieval andRenaissance History, 4 (1967), 91–124.

—— ‘The 1330 Chapter General of the Knights Hospitallers at Montpellier’, Tradi-tio, 24 (1968), 293–308.

—— ‘The Irish Hospitallers during the Great Schism’, PRIA 69 (1970), C, 33–43.Torr, C., Rhodes in Modern Times (London, 1887).Tsirpanlis, Z. N., Anekdota eggrapha gia te Rodo kai te Noties Sporades apo toarcheioton Ionniton Ippoton (Unpublished Documents concerning Rhodes and thesouth-eastern Aegean Islands from the Archives of the Order of St John) [inGreek](Rhodes, 1995).

Bibliography 387

Tsirpanlis, Z. N., Rhodes and the South-East Aegean Islands under the Knights ofSt John (14th to 16th Centuries): Collected Studies [in Greek] (Rhodes, 1991).

Tyerman, C., England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988).—— The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998).Valentini, R., ‘I Cavalieri di S. Giovanni da Rodi a Malta: Trattative diplomatiche’,Archivum Melitense, 9/4 (1934), 137–237.

—— ‘L’Egeo dopo la caduta di Costantinopoli nelle relazioni dei Gran Maestri diRodi’, Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Mur-atoriano, 51 (1936), 137–68.

Vatin, N., L’Ordre de Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem, l’Empire ottoman et la Mediterraneeorientale entre les deux sieges de Rhodes (1480–1522) (Paris, 1994).

Vella, A. P., ‘A Sixteenth Century Elizabethan Merchant in Malta’,MH 6/3 (1970),197–238.

—— ‘The Order of Malta and the Defence of Tripoli’, MH 6/4 (1975), 362–81.Vella, H., ‘The Report of the Knights of St John’s 1524 Commission to Malta andQuintinus’ Insulae Melitae Descriptio’, Melita Historica, 8/4 (1983), 319–24.

Vertot d’Aubeuf, R. A. de, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers de S. Jean deJerusalem, 5 vols. (Paris, 1726).

Victoria County HistoryVizzari de Sannazaro, L., ‘The Venerable Langue of England: A History of theEnglish Branch of the Order of St John of Jerusalem with a Roll of Englishmenconnected with the Order, and an Appendix of Unpublished Documents’, London,SJG.

Watt, J., The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 1970).—— The Church in Medieval Ireland, 2nd edn. (Dublin, 1998).—— Morrall, J. B., and Martin, F. X. (eds.), Medieval Studies Presented to AubreyGwynn, S.J. (Dublin, 1961).

Watts, J., ‘ ‘‘A Newe Ffundacion Of is Crowne’’: Monarchy in the Age of Henry VII’,in Thompson (ed.), Reign of Henry VII, 31–53.

Wedgwood, J. C., and Holt, A. D.,History of Parliament: Biographies ofMembersof the Common House 1439–1509 (London, 1936).

Willard, J. F., Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property 1290 to 1334 (Cambridge,Mass., 1934).

Willis, P., ‘Sir John Langstrother, a Fifteenth Century Knight of St. John’, SJHSP 2(1990), 30–7.

Woodman, W., ‘The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Chibburn, Northum-berland’ Archaeological Journal, 17 (1860), 35–47.

Wormald, F., and Giles, P. M., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Additional Illumin-ated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982).

Wormald, J., Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470–1625 (Edinburgh,1981).

Wright, N., Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years’ War in the French Coun-tryside (Woodbridge, 1998).

Wroe, A., Perkin: A Story of Deception (London, 2003).Wylie, J. H., A History of England under Henry the Fourth, 4 vols. (London, 1884–98).

Youings, J., The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London, 1971).

388 Bibliography

unpublished theses

Bolton, J. L., ‘Alien Merchants in England in the Reign of Henry VI’, B.Litt. thesis(Oxford, 1971).

Dondi, C., ‘The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem (XII–XVI Century):With Special Reference to the Practice of the Orders of the Temple and St John ofJerusalem’, Ph.D. thesis (London, 2000).

O’Malley, G. J., ‘The English and the Levant in the Fifteenth Century’, M.Phil.thesis (Cambridge, 1994).

Polak, L. L. G., ‘French Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Fifteenth Century’, MA thesis(London, 1954).

Struckmeyer, M., ‘The Sisters of the Hospital of St John at Buckland’, M.Phil.thesis (Cambridge, 1999).

Tipton, C. L., ‘The English ‘‘Langue’’ of the Knights Hospitallers during the GreatSchism’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Southern California, 1964).

Bibliography 389

Index

Notes: Appendices have not been indexed. Entries are given letter by letter. Thefollowing abbreviations are used in the index: abp archbishop b bailiff bp bishopBr brother b/wick bailiwick c chaplain d duke dep deputy e earl f farmer/lessee hosphospital of St John of JerusalemHospr. Hospitaller ld lord mr master Ott. Ottoman ppreceptor pr prior pry priory py preceptory r rectory s siege.

Abergavenny, ld, see Neville, GeorgeAchaea 5see also Greece

Acre 2, 3, 226Addington, Bucks. 175ad voluntatem rents 76administration 52, 55, 56–8, 60–76

passimadmiral, the (conventual bailiff) 270,

306 n. 269, 308admiral, of English navy 328, 329admission/admissions 26–33 passim,

127, 135, 220, 246, 248, 249,256–7, 274

see also nobility, proofs of; provincialchapters

Adrian VI, pope 9, 176Adriatic, the 276advowsons, see appropriated churchesAegean, the 4, 7, 155, 302agriculture, profits of 69–70, 231–2Alderney 329Alen family 233, 252, 254–5Alen, John, abp Dublin 252Alexander V, anti-pope 259Alexandretta, battle of 162–3, 302Alexandria 4Alfonso V, k Aragon 119Algiers 302, 321Alicante 200, 276alien priories 17, 92, 113–14, 264 n.

247, 266alienations 246, 248Allcock, Mr 57allegiances, divided 125, 224–5, 332

alms 94, 97, 98, 100–1Alterward, Br William 274Amalfi 2Amaral, Br Andrea d’, chancellor

hosp 292, 298ambassadors of order 136, 174, 176,

177, 181–4, 216, 223Amboise, Br Aimery d’, mr hosp 155,

162–3, 309–12Amwyk, John, fool and idiot 109ancienitas 32–3, 41–2, 202, 245, 272,

281, 290Anderton, James 106angels 53Anglo-Irish, see Ireland, English born inAnglo-Normans, in Scotland 260Angus and Gowrie, sherrifdom of 261Anjou, Margaret of, q England 131‘Anlaby’, Br Henry 294 n. 186, 295annates, payable to crown and

convent 220Annates, Act in Conditional Restraint

of 210Ansty, Wilts., p and py of 43 n. 122, 48,

62 n. 18, 71, 80, 212 n. 293, 321Antwerp 149, 274 n. 54Any, Co. Limerick, py of 227,

250 n. 161, 254vicar of 236

apodicia servitoris 272 n. 34apostasy 320, 324Appeals, Act of 210, 211, 217appeals, forbidden 46, 207, 221appointments, Hospr. 12, 13, 39, 41–8,

178 n. 107, 249, 272, 337

see also England, priors of; Ireland,priors of; turcopolier

apportum 113–14see also responsions

appropriated churches 30, 98, 145,155

acquisition 75, 228, 233advowsons 65, 75, 101arms in 102leases of 63, 64, 66levies on 282, 284maintenance/improvement of 54, 99,

239, 336prayers in 95revenue and expenses 74–5vicars of, see clergy, secularsee also oblations

Aragon 8, 12Aragonese 5Archangelos, Rhodes 6, 268, 308, 310archaeology 91Archer, Br John le, pr Ireland 238Arches, court of 100architecture, see buildingsarchives of the order 9, 21Armagh, abps of 99, 232clergy of 232see also Palatio; Swayne

Armenia, Cilician 4, 267Armistead, (Br?) William 31, 54, 55,

322, 326arms, displayed 57, 107, 284arquebuses 299–300artillery 150, 185, 188, 296, 298, 299Ashby, Lincs. 109–10Ashton, Br Edmund 239–40Asia Minor 165Askew, Br George 297, 300Askew, Br William 302 n. 242Aslackby, Lincs. r 74 n. 73assignments on order’s revenues 135,

138astrologers 146–7attainder 217, 242, 324attorneys, prioral 92 n. 32see also lawyers

auberges 11, 271English 22, 62, 219, 281–4, 299

Aubigny, seigneur d’, see StewartAubin, Br Jean 310, 311Aubusson, Br Guillaume d’ 47Aubusson, Br Pierre d’, mr hosp 7, 28,

51–2, 145, 152, 154, 155,282 n. 98, 291, 309

Audience, court of 83, 100auditors:of langues 272preceptorial 56prioral 105, 106, 214; see also

Sheldon, RichardAudley, Edmund, bp Hereford 100Audley, ld, see TouchetAugmentations, court/officers of 225,

322, 324, 325Augustinian canons 230, 234Augustinian canonesses 92 n. 23Augustinian friars 265Auvergne, prior of 145receiver of pry 169

Avignon 13, 86, 92, 113, 115, 185, 335order supports popes in 114, 258–9

Aylmer, Br George 297, 299, 300, 302,321, 323

Ayscough family 40Ayscough, Br James 44

Babington family 34, 40, 110, 334Babington, Humphrey 65, 68Babington, Br James 34Babington, Sr Joan 33 n. 58Babington, Br John jnr 34, 48, 219Babington, Br John snr, turcopolier, pr

Ireland and b Eagle 110, 180,203–4, 292

career 49–51p Dalby 65b Eagle 51, 197death 209 n. 283and Docwra’s spolia 182, 186, 188,

189, 193family 34, 37, 104house in Birgu 285sent to England 197–8, 199, 200and s Rhodes 168–9turcopolier and pr Ireland 51, 181,

186, 193, 251

Index 391

Babington, Br John snr, turcopolier, prIreland and b Eagle (cont.)

vice-receiver/receiver 83, 168, 173,178 n. 119, 190, 201 n. 245

Babington, Br Philip 34, 291–2, 304,322, 324–5

Babington, Sir Thomas 104Bachelor, Br William 31Baddesley, Hants, p and py of 30 n. 31,

43 n. 122, 80, 107, 158 n. 282,331 n. 81

Badorch, Guillem 138Badorch, Lluıs 138Badstret, Br George 287 n. 138bailies 260–1bailiffs, manorial/preceptorial 57, 105bailiwick of merchants 269 n. 14, 317Bainbridge, Christopher cardinal 263bailiwicks, pys divided into 76, 103,

260–1bajuliae 28–9, 60–2Balantrodoch (now Temple,

Midlothian), church of 259Baldock, market and fair at 150Balkans, struggle in 93Ball, Hugh, merchant 164ballads 265Ballyhack, Co. Wexford, py 234,

236 n. 73, 250 n. 161Balsall, Warws., py 45–6, 62, 65,

73 n. l, 81 n. bcross at 96disputes over 67, 68, 110, 152,

156–7, 188, 193–6balsam 161, 164Baltic 1, 88, 89banneret 289, 306, 307, 309Barbary, see north AfricaBarletta, receiver in pry of 169Barlow, Br William 331 n. 84Barnaby family 36Barnwell family 248Baron, Br John 297, 298baronies, Scottish 260–1Barrow, Derbys., py 43 n. 122see also Yeaveley

Barton, John, f Eagle 131Baskerville, Br Roland 49

Bassett, Thomas 66Battersby, Br Henry 291, 294 n. 186,

295Battisford, Suffolk, py 43 n. 122,

62 n. 18, 63, 71, 80, 106, 212 n. 293Bayazid II, sultan 7, 8Beauchamp, Richard, e Warwick 118Beaufitz, John, f Balsall 152Beaufitz, Br William 296Beaufort, Margaret, countess of

Richmond and Derby 110Beaumont Leys, Leics. 139Beauvivre, Daniel 147Bedfordshire 172 n. 74Beirut 274 n. 53Bekley, Br Stephen 30 n. 31bell, inscribed 101Bell, Francis 58, 82–3, 105, 164, 167,

178, 188, 189, 214, 287, 288Bell, Marion, widow of Francis 214Bellingham, Br Edward 38, 181 n. 143,

206 n. 265, 207, 298, 322 n. 14,325–6, 327

Bellingham, Robert 152Benedict XIII, anti-pope 259benefices, see appropriated churchesBennett, Constans 105Bentham, Br Anthony 303bequests 36, 53, 94, 101, 108, 333

forbidden 191misuse of 182–3

Berkshire 72Berwick, Essex, see Rainham-BerwickBerwick-upon-Tweed 184, 335Bevercotes, Br Humphrey 32, 33,

44 n. 128Beverley, Yorks., p 36 n. 77, 154 n. 251py 43 n. 122, 65, 70, 72 n. b, 80,

212 n. 293Bidoux, Br Jean Pregent de 181–2,

184 n. 153Binning, Br John 259Birgu, Malta 10, 283, 285birth, ‘nearness of’ 39, 42, 49–50birthplace, see families, geographical

originsBlack Death 63, 69Blakesley, Northants., r 74 n. 73

392 Index

Blanchefort, Br Guy de, mr hosp163 n. 13, 263

blasphemy 204, 205, 273, 291, 292Blewbury, prebend/prebendary of 31,

65, 74Blome, Br John 30Bodmiscombe, Devon, py 61, 73 n. dBodrum, castle of St Peter at 5, 268,

289 n. 155, 293English captains 12, 127, 154, 164,

303, 314, 316–17English contributions to 97, 120–1English and Irish at 301, 303–4number of brethren at 271 n. 31, 300see also caravans

Bolande, Henry 56Boleyn, Sir Thomas 106Bologna university 30bonds 132, 149, 190, 191, 217bondsmen 103books 53–4Booth, Charles, bp Hereford and vicar-

general of Lincoln 100, 156Boreham, Essex, vicar of 95Bordeux 179Bosio, Br Antonio 178, 184–5, 187,

189, 192Bosio, Giacomo 184–5, 294, 296–7Bosio, Tommaso 184–5Boston, Lincs. 38, 40rectory 75, 139, 158

Boswell, Br German 291Boswell, Br John, turcopolier 37, 46, 48,

151, 287 n. 138, 314flight from convent 126–7, 290–1as p Temple Brewer 109–10and s Rhodes 139 n. 172, 295

Boswell, Br Richard 152Bosworth, battle of 143 n. 194Bothe, Br John, turcopolier 37, 41, 248,

301, 318and s Rhodes 169 n. 53, 297–9

Botill, Br John 35Botill, Br Robert pr England 32, 35,

141 n. 184, 157appointment 137 n. 161and brethren 45, 61–2and 1446 chapter-general 305 n. 264

death 44, 127, 129not to visit Rhodes 112, 124royal service 112, 117 n. 33, 123,

125–6Boucicaut, Jean II le Maingre 4Boulogne-sur-Mer 186, 326barque of 329

Bourbon, Charles de Valois d of 177Bourbon, Br Jacques de 182Bourchier, Thomas, abp

Canterbury 101, 130, 138Bourgh, Br John 287 n. 138, 296Bowes, William 65Boydell, Br Roger, turcopolier 49–51,

169 n. 53, 182, 201, 204, 206Boydell, Br Thomas 291, 310–11Boys, Jane 109Bradford, Wilts. 326Branceter, Robert 217, 218–19Brandenburg, Albert of, mr Teutonic

order 265Brandon, Charles d Suffolk 171Bray, Sir Reginald 155, 334Brereton, Sir William 214Bridget (of York), lady 138Bridgettines 92Bristol 75, 109, 213Britain/British Isles 1, 12‘British’ crusaders 87–9Broke, Br Richard 325, 327–9, 330Brown, Mr 324 n. 29Brown, Br Edward 322 n. 14, 323

family 40Browne, Edward, cit. London 85Bruce invasion of Ireland 230, 232Bruce, Robert, see Robert IBruge, Richard 68Bruges 53 n. 191, 140, 147, 259,

274 nn.Brut, the 53 n. 191Buckingham, d of, see StaffordBuckland, see Minchin BucklandBuet, Br Francis 297, 298buildings 56–8, 66–7, 70, 104, 232bulla turcopeleriatus (of 1448) 306,

309, 311–12, 313bullion, export of 114–15, 119, 121,

167, 168, 277

Index 393

burial 16–17, 37, 58, 75, 107, 210of felons and excommunicates 97–8

Burgh, Sir Thomas 106Burgh, William de, fourth e Ulster

(1326–33) 232Burgundian ambassadors 158Burgundian crusades 89, 124Burgundy, duchy of 8, 144, 149Burton, Lincs. 35Bussottus, turcopole 304 n. 258Butler family, earls of Ormond 239Butler, James, fourth e Ormond

(1407–52) 15, 93, 240–1Butler, James fifth e Ormond and

e Wiltshire (1452–61) 97, 126Butler, Lionel 20Butler, Piers Ruadh, e Ossory 252Butler, Br Thomas Bacach,

pr Ireland 234–5, 238Butler, Br William FitzThomas,

pr Ireland 237, 239 n. 92, 241Butterwick, Lincs. 35 n. 70Byzantine empire 5, 118Byzantium, see Byzantine empire

cabimentum 41–2, 46Cadarn, Henry 201 n. 244Cade, Jack, rising of 103Cahell family 254Calabria 32 n. 49, 276Calais 15, 108, 123, 139, 144, 145,

200, 274, 276, 326, 327deputy of 208 n. 279manifesto 130proposal to move Hospitallers

to 179–84 passim, 256,324 n. 29, 335

Cambridgeshire 60, 62 n. 14camerae 13, 29, 60–1

see also magistral camerae; prioralcamerae

Campbell, Sir Colin of Glenorchy 265Campeggio, Lorenzo cardinal 187cannon, see artilleryCanterbury, abps of 99–100

see also Bourchier; Morton; WarhamCaoursin, Guillaume 6 n. 31, 93 n. 36,

142

Capello, Carlo 206 n. 267capitular bs 13, 14, 270, 271, 277capitular b/wicks 42Caracciolo, Br Riccardo de, anti-

master 114 n. 14, 238caravan service 270, 278, 280,

282 n. 96, 293, 300–4, 321Carbrooke, p 37 n. 81, 275 n. 60Carbrooke, Norfolk, py 36 n. 77,

43 n. 122, 73 n. h, 79 n. gcharity at 71collation to 152–3depopulation 69dilapidation of 57dispute in 212–13finances 74, 80, 212 n. 293

Cardelli, Nicolao 307 n. 277cardinals 74 n. 72Cardington, Salops., r 74cards, prohibited 273careers, Hospr. 39, 41–51, 271–2Carew, Br Philip 291, 292Carretto, Br Fabrizio, mr hosp 163,

165, 166, 249, 271 n. 29carriage, tenants perform 260Carrickfergus, castellan of 234Carthusians 92, 320see also London, Charterhouse

cartulary (of 1442) 20–1cash, short in Ireland 237Casp, bailiff of 9

see also HomedesCassari, Antonio, turcopole 304 n. 258,

307 n. 277castellan of Birgu 285, 323castellanies and castellans (on

Rhodes) 305–11 passimcastellany and castellans of

Rhodes 269 n. 14, 285, 307English 12,127, 202–3, 284, 294, 317

Castellessi, Adriano 144, 145Castello del’Mare, Malta 10Castellorizzo 6Castiglione, Br Sabba da 55Castile 12pr/pry of 177, 330

Castilian bases 184Castleboy, Co. Down, py 234, 235

394 Index

castles 233, 234, 268casualties, see mortalityCatalan merchants 286, 289Catania, Rhodes 307Cathagro, Rhodes 306 n. 269Catharine of Aragon, q England 203cavallaritus, see Aubin, Br JeanCave family 37, 40Cave, Br Ambrose 42 n. 110, 198, 326and Dingley affair 215–16, 218–19royal service 325, 327, 328

Cavendish, Br Thomas 302 n. 242Cavendish, William 106Caxton, William 76, 90Cely, George 108, 139, 140Cely, Richard jnr 108, 139Cely, Richard snr 108cemeteries 16, 97–8Cephalonia 276Chaldiran, battle of 163Chalmers/Chamber, Br John 281,

297–8Champagne, pr of 143 n. 191chancellor of England 195see also Touchet; Wolsey

chancellor of Ireland 244priors as 229, 241

chancery clerks 106, 107Chancery, court of 67, 175, 188–95chancery of order (in convent) 269, 290chantries 16, 52, 53, 71, 91, 92, 94, 99,

117, 155 n. 259, 228Chapel Izod, Co. Dublin 232chapels:extra-parochial 99manorial 66see also preceptories

chaplains, Hospr., see priestschaplains, manorial 66, 105see also preceptories

chapters-general 13–14, 16, 46, 47,112, 153–4, 247, 269, 285

and Hampton Court 157, 173and master 269, 287participants in 128, 140, 221, 270,

271, 305and prioral elections 238records of 21, 22

set responsions 77, 79, 128, 197summons to 159, 164, 198and turcopoliership 306individual meetings: Malta

(1533) 200, 202–5, 208, 211;Montpellier (1330) 12; Rome(1446) 36 n. 77, 304 n. 264;Rome (1466–7) 128, 242, 243,261, 285; Viterbo (1527) 10,179, 182, 197

Chapuys, Eustace 252charity 71, 92see also oblations

Charles V, emperor 9, 10, 171, 179,206 n. 267, 330 n. 73

and Malta 177, 180, 183, 188, 199marriage 158and Rhodes 178, 187

Charles VIII, k France 145as dauphin 138

Charlotte, q Cyprus 316Chauncey, Joseph de, pr England 123cheese 309Cheshire 72Chesterfield 40Chetwood family 104Chetwood, Br Adam 106, 294 n. 186,

295Cheyney, Br John 274Chibburn, Northumbs. 62 n. 17, 73 n. jChicheley, Thomas 188, 189–90, 192,

193Chichester diocese 31 n. 44children of Hospitallers 109chief governor of Ireland, prs Ireland

as 229, 241Chilcombe, Dorset 81Chilvercoton, Warws. 156–7Chingleton, Br Roger 274Chios 275Chippenham, Cambs. 29, 69Chirton, Wilts. 64 n. 28chivalry 117–19choirs and choir schools 16, 52Christ, depictions of 101–2Christendom 8, 15, 93, 116, 118, 165,

184, 225, 265, 334–5church, defence of the 116, 264

Index 395

church records 24chronicles 23, 24, 53 n. 191, 93chroniclers 93Cibo, house of 145Cistercians 17, 115 n. 20, 230–1, 232,

234Clahull, Br Hugh de 226Clanfield, Oxon. 63, 73 n. eClarence, duke of, see PlantaganetClark, G. T. 34Clement VII, pope 100, 177, 182, 187clergy, secular 39 n. 97accommodation 57–8and crusades 119employment and education 30–1, 52,

54, 101, 227–8, 230, 232, 261,336

payment of 66, 71, 74, 99, 239, 241relations with order 16, 75, 95,

98–101, 141relations with other orders 91–2

Clerk, John, bp Bath and Wells 177Clerkenwell, bajulia/py of 61–2Clerkenwell, pry at 14, 21, 29, 42, 75,

331buildings and property 34 n. 61, 53,

57–8, 61, 102, 103, 108, 143,217, 224

burials at 97, 107, 172confraternity collections 74 n. gconspiracy at 130to be conventual 115conventual church 29, 30, 37, 52, 97,

224after dissolution 224, 327divided into precincts 58, 97maps at 55payments at/through 103, 258, 263,

264provincial chapters at 169residents of 29, 51, 58, 64, 105, 108as sanctuary 174skirmish at 108treasury 61, 67, 68, 190, 193,

199–200visitors to 53 n.191, 122, 143, 158,

185see also corrodies; masses; obits

Cleveland, Yorks. 73Clifford, Sir Robert 149Clippesby family 36–7Clonoulty, Co. Tipperary, py 236–7,

253Clontarf, Co. Dublin, py 234 n. 57,

242 n. 109, 244Clontarf, Viscount, see Rawson, Br John

snrcloth:shipped to convent 85, 86 n. 124,

137, 151, 167, 200, 285–7soldea paid in 272, 277

Clothall, Herts. 105Clovet, Br Pierre 301coastguard and coastguards 12, 18,

293, 305–13, 337code, letters in 147Coffyn, Sr Joan, prioress of

Buckland 30 n. 33Coleman, Nicholas 104collachium 10, 269, 273, 281, 285, 292collectors, see rentscollegiate churches 16Kilmainham as 227

colonists in Ireland 229–30see also Ireland, English born in

commanderies, see preceptoriescommon law, English 190, 193common seal, of pry England 63, 64,

137 n. 160, 151, 200common seal, of pry Ireland 240, 248–9common treasury, of order 78, 84, 132,

158, 189, 285–6clerk/scribe in England 82–3, 84,

100, 105expenditure 282, 307government 82 n. 99, 269loans to 287–8nuncio 82, 84proctor in Italy 315proctors in convent 82 n. 99, 84, 127,

128, 152, 153, 167, 219, 298,318, 323

receivers inEngland42,62,151,198–9proctors in England 12, 82, 135, 198

accounts of 22, 128, 132, 197,200; appointed/removed 132,

396 Index

156, 295; duties 13, 77, 82–5,285

see also mortuaries; responsions;vacancy payments

communal life 29, 51, 92, 272–3conduct, expectations of 52, 272–3confession 98confraria, see confraternityconfraternity, order’s 16–17, 52, 333–4

and Act of Supremacy 211, 212benefits of 73, 95–6, 98and Merchant Taylors 107papal suspension of 74payments and collection 66, 72–4,

94–5, 103, 227recruitment to 94–5, 97revenue from 72–4

Congregation, Lords of the 261Connacht 227, 229, 233, 235,

254, 255Constantine, George 56Constantinople 118, 124, 166,

289 n. 155convent, central 3, 18, 25, 31, 255, 259,

265, 267–319appointments/elections in 43, 129,

131, 136, 145, 153, 154, 215–16,219, 238, 239–40, 241–2, 243–4,245–6, 248–9, 305

‘British’ and Irish Hospitallers in 5, 6,7, 12, 32, 41, 44, 45, 85, 90, 97,161, 182, 208, 211, 226, 242,259, 264, 267, 274–319

and Edward IV 129, 134–6effects sent to 53English influence in 164, 219, 298flight from 290–1, 292goods imported into 285–8and Henry VII 150, 154–5, 157, 158,

159and Henry VIII 161–8, 170, 177–88,

199, 203, 205–7, 209, 216, 220,222–3

licences to depart 42, 49, 129, 135,181, 198; refused 155, 164,165 n. 24, 208, 296

licences to visit 114, 163, 281;refused 112, 124–5, 275

migrations of 3, 9–10, 176, 180, 183,197, 283, 300

numbers in 271 n. 31, 279;‘British’ 164, 167, 277–81,294–9, 318, 331

‘protectors’ of (1446) 305 n. 264provisioning of 9, 298reception in 41, 274responsions sent to 76–86 and passimretention in 42, 277 n. 77servants in 105, 281, 298, 303summons from 126, 223summons to 42, 124, 132, 136, 139,

159, 163, 166, 198, 243, 250,271

travel to 32, 177, 274–6violence in 206, 208, 209, 291–2, 313volunteers in 89, 281, 297–8, 304

conventual bailiffs 12, 13, 271–2conventual bailiwicks 42, 304conventual brethren 41, 43–8, 241,

269–73, 290, 301conventual church 11, 269conventual commissions, see conventual

serviceconventual seal, see common sealconventual service 12, 18, 41, 44, 47–8,

50, 259, 264, 271, 273, 337administrative 313–19military 219, 272, 293–305, 319; see

also caravansconvocation (southern) 98, 99, 100,

125, 209Coort, Br Thomas 30 n. 33Copeland 72Coppini, Francesco, bp Terni 125Coppledike, Br Thomas 36, 212–13,

323Coppledike, William 36copyhold 63, 64, 76Corbet, Br William 41, 169 n. 53Corfu 276Corinth, Isthmus of 4Cork 227, 253 n. 181Cork, Co. 254Cork, Thomas 190 n. 191corn 286, 314see also grain

Index 397

Corner, Br William 30 n. 31Cornish rising 146, 150Cornish, Br Thomas 31 n. 44Corneto 9, 180, 183 n. 150, 283Coron 10, 206 n. 267corrodies 58, 64, 65, 105, 106, 122corsairs 11, 330corso 4, 7, 288Cortesius, James 262 n. 235Cos 6, 154, 268, 269 n. 14, 271 n. 31,

293, 300, 301council complete 77, 133, 211, 221,

270council, of order 12, 14, 21, 42, 43,

74 n. 72, 130, 136, 153, 215, 216,269–72 passim, 290

and Clement West 201, 202, 206–7,219, 220–1, 294

and discipline 273, 290–2elections in, see convent‘English’ representation on 133, 140,

305immoderate speech in 166 n. 32and turcopoliership 305–13 passim

council ordinary, composition of 270council, preceptorial 56–7council, prioral, learned in law 68council, royal, see royal councilcouriers, Hospitallers as 178court, English 16, 97, 154, 160, 206,

207, 216court, imperial 217Courtenay, Edward e Devon 217Courtenay, Henry e Devon (later

marquess of Exeter) 173courtiers 106–7, 172–3, 180, 183, 184,

214, 334Courtrai 171courts 67, 84 , 96, 173–4courts, Hospitaller 16, 66, 76, 96 n. 50,

200, 260–1stewards of 103, 105, 106

Cotes, Thomas 58Coventry 298 n. 213cow, bequeathed 101cowardice 297, 300creditors 127–8, 133Cressing, see Temple Cressing

Crete 9, 126, 275, 290, 298, 299criticism, see perceptionsCroft, Br Hugh 274Cromwell, Thomas 196, 334and confraternity collection 212correspondence with Malta 163,

205–9, 211, 215–19, 221–3, 276and Dingley affair 215–19gifts to 107and Hospitaller property 210, 214and prioral auditorship 106, 214prophecies concerning 218

Crook, Co. Waterford, py 250 n. 161,254, 257

Cross, Claire 91crosses, Hospitaller and Templar 96crosses, pardon 97Crosthwaite, Westmoreland 36 n. 80crown surveys 23Crownhall, Br Henry 53crusades and crusading:against Ottomans 6attitudes to 17–18, 87–90, 94,

117–19histories 88historiography 87–8, 333leagues and fleets 4, 5, 7, 150of 1499–1503 150projects for 124, 174, 264–5propaganda for 88, 90, 118Second 25taxation for 119, 142, 165

crusaders 87–90, 118–19, 161, 227,303–4

cultural accommodation 231Cumberland 38, 39, 72curfew 273 n. 42Curwen family 36 n. 80custodes 60Cycandilli, Leo, turcopole 304 n. 258Cypriot ambassadors 314Cyprus 5, 314, 316convent in 3, 4grand p and py 14, 127, 128 n. 111,

269 n. 14, 271

Dache, Br Robert, hospitaller 218Dalby, Leics., p 65, 326, 327

398 Index

py 43 n.122, 65, 67, 68, 104, 106,110, 181; finances 79 n. j, 80,212 n. 293; granted tomaster 287

Dalby, Thomas 58Dalison family 35, 38, 104, 105Dalison, George 105Dalison, Br. John 105Dalison, Br. Richard 105, 296Dalison, Br. Robert jnr 105Dalison, Br. Robert snr 44, 105, 151,

153, 296Dalison, William 35 n. 67Danby, Br Robert 296Daniel family 38Daniel, Br. Robert, turcopolier 44, 153,

308, 309–12, 316Darcy, Richard ld Darcy 173Darfield, Yorks., r 75Darrell, Br. William, turcopolier 41,

43 n. 123, 48, 166Daubeney, Sir Giles 107, 150, 157, 173,

334dauphin, see Charles VIIIDavid I, k Scotland 257Dawney, Johanna 35 n. 67Dawney, Br. William, turcopolier 35,

44, 97, 126debtors 82, 83see also responsions, arrears of

De re militari 54delation, see papal provisionsDelaville le Roulx, J. 19demesnes 63, 64, 102Denis, Maurice 223, 322depopulation 69, 231

see also enclosuredeputy (chief governor or justiciar) of

Ireland, priors as 229Edward Bellingham as 326

Derby, earl of, see StanleyDerbyshire 34, 72, 326Dethick, Notts. 34, 37, 40Devon 34, 72Devon, earl of, see Courtenaydiantrecari 307dice, prohibited 273Dieppe 147

dilapidation 57, 66, 99 n. 71, 104, 157,196, 235–6

see also enclosureDingley, Northants, py 43 n. 122,

62 n. 18, 63chaplain of 98see also Battisford

Dingley, Br. Thomas 35, 292and Shingay 215–16treason and execution 194 n. 206,

217–19, 220, 222, 325, 329Dinmore, Herefs., p 38py 20, 43 n. 122, 48, 51, 62 n. 17, 67,

71, 153, 245; appointmentto 176 n. 107, 181, 202, 318;responsions 80, 212 n. 293

diplomacy 18, 55, 108, 123, 170–1,178, 197, 215, 229, 261, 314–15,326

Disant, John, astrologer 146–7discipline 9, 52, 271, 272–3, 290–2Dispensations, Act of 210, 211, 212dispropriamentum 78, 155dissolution of the monasteries 91,

213–14, 225dissolution, of order:in England and Wales 15, 161, 220,

223–5, 257, 264, 324in Ireland 223, 254–6in Scotland 264, 265

divine service, provision of 3, 16, 227,265, 335

Docwra family 34, 38, 104, 105,109

Docwra, Elizabeth 192 n. 203Docwra, Isabella, wife of Martin, and

Balsall 194–5, 196Docwra, James of Hitchin 58,

190 n. 190Docwra, John of Hitchin 58, 188,

190–3Docwra, John of Kirkby

Kendall 34 n. 61, 58Docwra, John, prebendary of

Blewbury 65Docwra, Br Lancelot 47, 156, 170

birthplace and family 34, 38 n. 96, 58death 43 n. 123, 169 n. 53

Index 399

Docwra, Br Lancelot (cont.)delivers Thomas Docwra’s gift 164,

288lieutenant-prior 277 n. 75in Venice (1505–6) 275

Docwra, Martin 65, 67–8, 109, 110,188, 193–6

wife, see Docwra, IsabellaDocwra, Robert 34Docwra, Br Thomas, pr Ireland,

turcopolier, and pr England 165,178, 247–8, 250, 335

appointments 83bequests 53and brethren 46–7, 49–50, 201captain of Bodrum 317close to Henry VII 158conventual service 151 n. 230, 152–4

passim, 314, 316, 319defends order’s privileges 174–5disputes with bps Hereford 99–100elected pr England 153elected pr Ireland 245; exchanges for

turcopoliership 245–6and enclosure commission 175–6factor in Mediterranean, see

Stockhilland family 34, 38 n. 96, 109, 110,

190–3, 196final illness and death 179–80, 188,

190galley captain 154, 316gift and loan to convent 161, 164,

167, 287, 288granted wardships 172holds provincial chapters 157nearly elected master 161–2,

178 n. 107, 288neglects legal business 173–4pressurized for grants 173refused licence to travel 159, 163refused pension 152, 153–4, 174royal service 123, 157–8, 168, 170–2,

277 n. 77secures Balsall 156–7and 1480 siege 295–6spolia 180–2, 186, 188–93supports Dundas 263

ties with court 97, 172visits Italy? 176

Docwra, Thomas, of KirkbyKendall 34 n. 61

Docwra, Thomas, cousin ofMartin 193 n. 204

Dodecanese, the 4, 5, 268see also Aegean; Mediterranean,

easternDominicans 247, 265donat 281Dorset 326Dover 171, 274 n. 54, 326, 327

harbour accounts 168Dowdall, Robert 242Dowdall, Thomas 242 n. 109draper (conventual bailiff) 207dress, regulated 273Drogheda 244Dublin 228, 234, 247, 251–2

castle 243, 245, 252corporation 247

Dublin, abps of 247 n. 142officers of 242see also FitzSimons; Talbot; Walton

Dublin, Co. 232, 236, 237, 242Dudley, John d Northumberland 329Dudley, John ld 36, 324Dudley alias Sutton, Br George 36, 301,

324, 331duels and duelling 93, 208, 240, 291Dundas, Br Alexander 261, 302 n. 238Dundas, Br George 55, 84, 162, 261,

262–4Dunmow priory, Essex 95Dunwich, Suffolk 75Durham, bishopric of 72, 73 n. jDurham, Co. 38, 74dysentery 291

Eagle, Lincs.:bailiffs of 43, 51, 127, 132, 153, 204,

330, 332; at Clerkenwell 58;conventual service 313–14

b/wick of 42, 43 n. 122, 51, 79 n. j;chantry chapel 53; farmer of, seeBarton; property at 56; restored(1557) 331 n. 81

400 Index

Eaglesfield, Br Robert 44 n. 125,139 n. 172, 145

East Stafford mill, Dorset 108Edinburgh 257Edgeware, Middlesex 169 n. 53education 30, 54–6Edward I, k England:reign 116statutes 96, 113 n. 5

Edward II, k England 117Edward III, k England 15, 113–14, 117,

122, 123–4, 184, 238 n. 82, 258,327

Edward IV, k England 15, 126–43, 161,291

and admission of brethren 32, 127and chivalric kingship 126claims vacancy monies? 124, 130,

137and crusade taxation 119, 130, 142dislikes foreign adventure 125, 142distrusts hospital 126–7, 137, 141–2employs priors 126, 134, 138, 140and John Langstrother 127–31and John Weston 137–40justices of 174and prioral appointments 127–9,

134–7and pry Ireland 242, 243and responsions 128, 142and Robert Multon 134and s Rhodes 101, 138–40, 142, 296and William Tornay 131–2

Edward V, k England 122as prince of Wales 131–2

Edward VI, k England 293, 326Edward (of Lancaster), prince of Wales

(d. 1471) 131effects 84, 224see also spolia

Egypt 3, 6, 163, 165, 288Egyptian, see Mamlukelections, prioral, see England, priors of;

Ireland, priors ofElizabeth I, q England 332Elizabeth (of York), q England 138,

143Ellesmere, Salops., r 75

emperor, Holy Roman, see Charles V;Maximilian I

Empson, Sir Richard 173enclosure 175–6England, kings of, see English crown;

and under individual kingsEngland, priors of 14, 31

appointment of 43, 124, 127–37passim, 144–5, 154, 335

appointments by 41, 44–50, 82–3,92 n. 32

and brethren 44–51, 61–2chaplains of 30–1, 101, 210conventual service 313–14as diplomats 123, 138, 170–1education and experience 122estates and finances 61–2, 63as judges and arbiters 172not to be laymen 183lieutenants of 145, 155, 277 n. 77and London 107own ships 53 n. 191, 131, 168pay responsions 62, 78, 79–80property in Rhodes 284receiver of 62, 105, 322 n. 14represented in convent 204royal service 122–5, 160, 170–2, 214standing in parliament 122, 124, 331swear fealty 123, 130, 131–2, 220,

335and travel to convent 112, 124–5,

139–40, 159, 162, 163, 215see also under individual priors

England, pry of 13, 42–3chancellor of 31, 82–3and English auberge 282expectancy to 51, 180, 219general procurator of 61incorporation at law 68, 92, 214lieutenants of convent in 129, 134,

181 n. 145muniments 188, 191president of 129, 155proctor of master and convent in,

see Potrestoration of 37, 330–2sequestrated (1527) 180, 182,

188, 193

Index 401

England, pry of (cont.)taxed by crown 121–2and Torphichen 258–9, 263, 265vacancies 124, 151, 180; government

during 129, 132, 155; paymentsof 136–8, 151, 153, 186

visitation of 77see also Clerkenwell; England, prior

of; estates; income; litigation;responsions

English Channel 183 n. 153, 327–8English church 87, 90, 91 n. 23, 113,

114, 116, 213and Rome 209, 330

English crown 13, 86, 87and crusades 89–90, 117–19and order 112–225 passim; claims

founders’ rights in order 117,331, 335; demands fealty 124,335; mulcts order 122; and pryIreland 237–8, 245–7; regulatesand restricts order 96, 112–15,121, 124–5; requires service oforder 122–5, 160, 178, 335; andresponsions 113–15, 199, 225;supports order 92–3, 115–21,336; taxes order 121–2, 209

and papacy 113, 115, 119, 124, 125,142

its poverty 114records of 23–4suspicious of travel 217, 225see also under individual rulers

English merchants 161, 275–6Epirus 4episcopal temporalities 233episcopate 92, 98, 100

see also clergy, secularErskine, Sir Robert 258esgardium fratrum 47esgarts 272Essex 20, 60, 69 n. 58, 144, 146,

172 n. 74estates of the order:in England and Wales 20–1, 22–3,

34 n. 62, 123; acquisition 60,75, 102; after dissolution 327;management 63–70, 102–7,

110–11; organization 60–3;reluctance to part with 157, 173,196; seizures of 124

in Ireland 226, 228, 235–6, 256, 265;alienated 246, 248

recovery of 242, 253–4; seized 239,241

in Scotland 257, 260–1, 265Etaples, treaty of 170Euboea, see Negroponteeucharist 98Eugenius IV, pope 305 n. 264Eure family 40see also Evers, Robert

Europe, central 16Europe, eastern 12, 16Europe, northern 9Europe, western 8, 12Evers, Br Robert, pr Ireland 50, 83, 151,

173, 246, 247–9, 252Ewell, see Temple Ewellexchange operations 15, 22, 84–6, 115,

189, 198, 199, 200, 275, 286,287–8

forbidden 199in 1522: 169tax on 86, 120

exchange and mint, warden of 131exchange rates 80 n. aexchequer, court of 175exchequer, ministers of 70excommunicates 97, 98excommunication 98, 99, 100, 244execution 15, 218, 292, 320exemptions 16–17Exeter, bp of 99exile 320expectancy, grants of 51, 82, 180, 219,

251, 262, 264, 281see also ancienitas; England, pry of

expenditure 60–1, 62–3export licence, issued by Henry VIII 199extent (of 1338), see Reportextent (of 1539) 23

Fairfax family 40Fairfax, Br Nicholas 39, 44, 172, 300,

317 n. 336

402 Index

at s Rhodes 169 n. 53, 297, 298–9Fairfax, Sir William 215falcons 158Famagusta 188 n. 182family connections with order 14, 15,

33–40, 104–5, 106, 110, 254, 261,334

benefits of 26, 39, 64, 104–5, 188–93passim

crusaders with 227status 26, 40–1, 261

family papers 24family relationships between

Hospitallers 33–8farmers, see lesseesfeasts 101Feguillem, see Fitzwilliam, Br JohnFerdinand, k (II) Aragon and (V)

Castile 144, 161Fermour, John, f Quenington 132–3Ferns castle 256feuing, see leasingFicketsfield 197Field of the Cloth of Gold 171filii arnaldi 48, 274Fineux, Sir John 173First Fruits and Tenths, Act of 211,

212fishing 57, 108, 247 n. 142Fitzgerald (of Ballyshannon), BrThomas,

pr Ireland 15, 93, 239–41his brothers 239

Fitzgerald, ‘Br Maurice’, probablyidentical with Thomas 239–40

Fitzgerald, Thomas Oge, sheriff ofLimerick 239 n. 92

Fitzgerald (of Desmond), earls of 242–3Fitzgerald, James, eleventh

e Desmond 253Fitzgerald, Thomas, eighth e Desmond

(d. 1468) 242–3Fitzgerald, Thomas, twelfth

e Desmond 253–4Fitzgerald (of Kildare) family, ties with

order 172, 243Fitzgerald, Gerald, eighth e Kildare 245Fitzgerald, Gerald, ninth e Kildare 172,

249, 251, 253, 254

Fitzgerald, Gerald, later eleventhe Kildare 323

Fitzgerald, James, brother of ninthe Kildare 251, 252

Fitzgerald, Br John, brother of ninthe Kildare 172, 250, 251, 252, 253,278, 281

Fitzgerald, Richard, brother of ninthe Kildare 251, 252 n. 173

Fitzgerald, Thomas, later seconde Kildare (1316–28) 227

Fitzgerald, Thomas, seventh e Kildare(1456–78) 243

Fitzgerald, Thomas, tenth e Kildare(‘Silken Thomas’)

revolts 251–2, 255ward of Thomas Docwra 172

Fitzherbert family 40Fitzherbert, Br Richard 37Fitzherbert, Br Walter 37, 46, 296Fitzhugh, Henry ld Fitzhugh 142

n. 186Fitzmaurice, Br Richard 250, 280Fitzroy, Henry, d Richmond 180, 184FitzSimons, Walter, abp Dublin 247FitzThomas, William, see ButlerFitzwilliam, Br John 278, 280FitzWilliam, Maurice, see Fitzgerald,

MauriceFlanders 108, 149preceptor of, see Noion

fleet, Hospitaller, see navyFletchhampstead, Warws. 195Flodden, battle of 263Florentines 86 n. 124, 140, 178Fluvia, Antoni, mr hosp 27‘foolish’ woman, murdered 291Forest, Br John 302 n. 242Forster, Giles 196Fortescue, Sir Adrian 218Fortescue, Sir John 90Fort St Elmo, Malta 11fortresses, Hospitaller 3, 4, 5, 7, 11

see also Bodrum, Rhodesfoundation of order 2founders:descendants 91, 92in Ireland 226

Index 403

founders: (cont.)rights and wishes 116–17, 182–3,

331in Scotland 257

France 6, 8, 12, 25, 28, 113, 183,184–5, 221

embassies to 108, 144, 170pr/pry of 148, 206 n. 267, 258southern 169suspicion of 8, 113–15travel through 274 n. 54, 276war with 13, 163, 167–72 passim,

225, 277 n. 77, 322, 327–8;see also Hundred Years War

Francis I, k France 10, 165, 170, 178,179, 182, 183

frank-houses 227frary clerks 74, 94, 96–7see also confraternity

freehold tenure 63, 76French ambassadors 182see also Marillac

French domination of order 92, 113French forces 9, 150, 326French Hospitallers 113, 168Freville, Br Henry 291, 296friaries 91 n. 23, 231, 232friars, see mendicantsfriendship 108Fulbeck, Lincs. 57Fulbourn, Br Stephen de, pr Ireland 129

Gaelic Resurgence/Revival 229–31Gaelic septs 255Gainsborough, Lincs., r 75Galea, J. 19galley, guard 271 n. 31, 300Galley Subtill 328galleys 154, 328–9captains of the 12, 154, 219, 270,

293, 301, 316caravans on 301–3

Galliardetto, Francis 85, 105, 283,288–9

Galliardetto, George, banneret 289Gallipoli 6, 294Galway 235, 254gaol delivery, commissions of 172

Garway, Herefs., py 62 nn. 17–18, 83,99–101, 156

see also DinmoreGascoigne, Thomas 93Gattinara, Mercurino, imperial

chancellor 168Gay, Robert 304general procurator, see England, priory

of; hospitalGenoa and the Genoese 4, 5, 86 n. 124,

93, 120, 217, 276see also Lomelino, Tobia; merchants;

Vivaldi, Antoniogentlemen pensioners 160, 162, 326gentry 15, 38–41, 106, 110, 230–1, 254,

256Gerard, Br Henry 302 n. 238, 303, 321,

322 n. 14, 324, 332German Hospitallers 10Germany 12, 134, 176, 324Gervers, Michael 20–1Ghinucci, Geronimo de’,

bp Worcester 100Gibbon, Edward 87gifts 53 n. 191, 107, 161, 164, 179, 214Gigli’, Silvestro de, bp Worcester 165Gilchrist, Roberta 91Gildisburgh, Northants., r 74 n. 73Giustinianini, Sebastian 165Glanunder alias Ballymany,

Co. Dublin 234 n. 57Gloucestershire 72Golde, Henry 55Golyn, Br Thomas 169 n. 53, 301Gonson family 37Gonson, Br David 40, 276, 291–2,

322 n. 14, 324–5, 329Gonson, William 40, 186, 275–6, 324Goodwin, Br Thomas 259Gozo 10, 11, 292, 321grace, magistral 41, 202, 272, 287, 318grace, prioral 41Grafton, see Temple Graftongrain 57, 199, 237Grand Harbour, Malta 10, 11grand master, see mastergrand preceptor/commander

(conventual bailiff) 82 n. 99, 318

404 Index

Grantham family 36Grantham, Br Christopher 276Grantham, James 276great ship, the 300Great Wilbraham, Cambs. 64 n. 28,

106Greece, order in 4–5Greek, study of 55, 56, 289Greeks 3, 4, 10, 332

in England 88, 118Green family 35, 41Green, Gilbert 35 n. 67Green, Br James 44 n. 128, 275Green, Br Thomas, b Eagle 139 n. 172,

151 n. 232, 153, 294 n. 186, 295Green, Br Thomas, priest 33 n. 58Green, Thomas, of Gressingham:daughter of 35 n. 67

Greenham, Berks., py 29, 61–2, 65, 80,175

Gresham, John 275Gressingham, Lancs. 35 n. 67Grey, Henry, ld Grey of Codnor and

Ruthin 243Gross, Anthony 20Gryng, Br Thomas 301guards, see coastguardGuildford, Sir Richard 159his chaplain 289

guilds 103–4, 108Guines 324gunpowder 9, 298

habit, deprival of 127, 221, 290–2passim

Clement West discards 204, 205Haddon Rig, battle of 265Hales, Robert, pr England 116, 123,

258Halikarnassos, see BodrumHall, Br Thomas 291Halley, Br Henry 44, 151, 153,

294 n. 186, 295Halse, Soms. 167 n. 41Halston, ps 103Halston, Salops., py 20, 43 n. 122,

46–7, 49, 70, 159, 173finances 80, 212 n. 293

restored (1557) 331 n. 81Hampton Court 16, 67, 196, 214

chapel 101, 102exchanged for Stansgate 197, 199leased 106–7, 157, 173

Hannibal, Thomas 178 n. 107Harebrik, Br Oliver 253Harefield, Middlesex, r 74 n. 73,

169 n. 53Harrington, Lincs. 36Haseldon, Anthony 190, 192Haseldon, Catherine 190 n. 190Haseldon, Br William 44 n. 128, 275Hatfield, Br George, 201, 202, 297, 298Hawkes, Richard, solicitor 58, 68hawking 108, 158hay 272 n. 34, 310–12Heather, Leics. 65Henry IV, k England 114, 115as e Derby 117, 119

Henry V, k England 96, 115, 234Henry VI, k England 112–13, 117,

124–5, 130–1, 242Henry VII, k England 74 n. 72, 134,

142, 143–60, 161, 203and convent 150, 154–5, 157, 158,

159and crusade 150, 159employs brethren 160funeral 171justices of 174made order’s protector 158plots against 146–9and pry Ireland 150, 245relationship with John Kendal 144–6,

148–50, 159relationship with John Weston 143–4relationship with Thomas

Docwra 157–9and Robert Multon 136

Henry VIII, k England 8, 10, 117, 160,171

and Calais scheme 179–80, 335and Clement West 205–9and convent 161–8, 170, 174, 177,

178–84, 206–7, 209and defence of Christendom 165,

183, 186, 224

Index 405

Henry VIII, k England (cont.)dissolves order 223–5, 335divorce 203, 217favours individual brethren 166,

176 n. 107and former Hospitallers 324–5, 326gift to 185–8, 205and Hampton Court 107, 197, 214hosts L’Isle Adam 185issues export licence 199, 205and offer of Malta 178–9, 199patent/‘charter’ to order (1537) 22,

212, 220, 222prophecies concerning 218protector of order 161, 163, 179, 183rejects order of St George 256relationship with John Rawson 162,

171, 249–51relationship with Thomas

Docwra 163, 164, 168, 171–2,176, 180

relationship with WilliamWeston 185–6, 214

requires service of order 162, 163,168, 170–2, 186, 249–51

and sanctuary 174seizes prioral estates (1527) 180and s Rhodes 167–8, 185and Thomas Dingley 215, 216–19and Torphichen 162, 263–4view of order 162, 165–6, 177,

183–4, 188 n. 181, 224–5heralds 329heralds’ visitations 33–4Hereford, bishops of 83, 99–100see also Audley; Booth; Mayhew;

MillingHeresy Act 210hermitages/hermits 53, 116Heron, Essex 40Herron, Richard 140Hertfordshire 172 n. 74Hildyard/Hillyard family 38–9Hills family 41Hills, Br Edward 44, 164, 169 n. 53,

297, 298Hillyard, Br William 38historiography/historians 19, 320

history of order 1–11hobbies 150Hogshaw, Bucks., py 29, 61–2, 80,

175–6farmer, see Lane, Ralph

Holcote, Beds., r 289Holt, Br Peter, turcopolier and

pr Ireland 238Holy Innocents, Lincoln 98Holy Land 1, 25, 88, 97, 118, 119, 142,

159, 226, 264, 304Holy Sepulchre 2see also liturgy

Homedes, Br Juan de, mr hosp 183,216, 218, 219, 221–3

Homisland, Co. Wexford 234 n. 57Honfleur 131Hope, Walter 235 n. 68Horton, Br George 297, 300hospital of the order 2, 3, 5, 11prud’hommes of 317

hospitality 3, 16, 60–1, 122, 138, 183,227, 248, 255, 265, 335

in Rhodes 97, 159, 289hospitaller, the (conventual

bailiff) 306 n. 269, 308, 314Hospitaller orders, in England 115–16Scottish 109

hospitals 16, 29, 91 n. 23, 116, 196,227

see also hospitalhouseholds 60–1

preceptorial 56–7, 62prioral 58, 108

Howard, John, first d Norfolk 97Howard, Thomas e Surrey and second

d Norfolk 176 n. 107Howard, Thomas e Surrey and third

d Norfolk 168, 169, 176 n. 107,206–7, 218, 219, 250, 334

Hulles, Br William pr England 43, 115,137 n. 161

Hume, David 87Hundred Rolls 121Hundred Years War 89–90, 113, 119,

124, 231Hungary 6, 8, 165, 326hunting 108

406 Index

Huntington/Whittington, Br John 298Huntington, Sr Thomasina 33 n. 58Huntyngdon, John 66–7Hussey family 104Hussey, Br Edmund 109, 110, 213, 325,

326–7, 328Hussey, Br James 302 nn. 238 & 241,

321Hussey, John 147–9 passimHussey, Br Nicholas 39 n. 96, 297, 299Hussey, William, archdeacon of

London 146–9 passim

imperial ambassadors 171, 329, 330see also Chapuys, Eustace

imperial forces 9, 10, 88improvements, see meliormentaincome of order:conventual 8, 13in England and Wales 68–76in Ireland 235–6

indentures 190indulgences 8, 54, 75–6, 93, 94, 95,

119, 138, 227, 315industrial workers 58‘infidels’ 95, 225infirmary, see hospitalInnocent VIII, pope 6 n. 33, 143,

144–5, 315intellectual life 54–5see also education

Intercursus Magnus 145Intercursus Malus 158interdict 100inventories 67Ireland 1, 12, 14–15, 224 n. 371,

226–257 passim, 326‘English born in’ 229–31, 232, 236Hospitaller churches in 99, 336war and politics in 229–36 passim

Ireland, lordship of 228, 293administration and defence of 228–9,

237, 249magnates dominate 231, 238

Ireland, priors of 14–15, 126, 169, 180appointment of 43, 150, 237–9, 241,

246–7, 252, 255appointments by 41

English- and Irish-born,struggle 237–42

as lords of parliament 228, 331maladministration of 238, 239, 241,

246, 248military activities 229, 234–5represented in chapter-general 204retain English preceptory 181, 246royal service 228–9, 232–3, 237,

249–51 passim, 255, 256and travel to convent 250see also under individual priors

Ireland, pr of the church of, seeKilmainham

Ireland, pry 13, 14, 42, 141and auberge of England 282and convent 265dissolved 254English brethren in 238exchanged for turcopoliership 181,

245–6, 186fortifications in 233–4foundation and character 226–9,

237–9, 246, 255lieutenants of master and convent

in 129, 180, 248–9restored under Mary 256–7, 323–4,

330, 331struggle for control of 237–9visitation of 77, 240, 248see also preceptories; responsions

Irish-born brethren 43, 109act collectively 238, 240–1, 242, 255in convent 5, 6, 7, 12, 226, 242, 278,

280–1defend lordship of Ireland 233–5excluded from pry 246–7and John Rawson 249–51resist English superiors 237–9unfit to hold preceptories 162

Irish church 230–1, 232, 234Irish dress, language and law 230Irish, native (Gaelic) 229–31, 235, 236,

255, 257enter order 236–7, 247

Irving, Br James 264Isabella I, q Castile 144Isle of Wight 326

Index 407

Isma’il I, shah of Persia 163, 165Istanbul 6, 7Italian bankers 16Italian Hospitallers 32, 302 n. 239Italian language 315Italian merchants 93, 289Italian wars 8Italy 10, 12, 89, 115, 134, 145, 151, 314convent in 176, 197, 292, 300travel to 274–6 passimTurkish threat to 165 n. 24

ius formagii, see cheese

James I, k Scotland 264James III, k Scotland 264James IV, k Scotland 15, 258, 261,

262–5James V, k Scotland 265James II, k Cyprus 316janissaries 10, 178Jem, Ott. prince 6–7, 144, 146, 314,

315Jerusalem 2, 25, 142, 276, 285, 288

see also Holy Land; liturgy; MountSion; pilgrims

Jervis, Roger 296jewels and jewellery 190–2 passim,

248–9Jews 7

non-English described as 204John III, k Portugal 10, 177, 178, 187Jones, Terry 87Jubilee years 74, 135, 150judge of ordinaries 307Julius II, pope 170, 262justiciar, priors of Ireland as 229

Kavanagh family 256Kaye, John 90, 93 n. 36, 142Keating, James, pr Ireland 126, 139,

141, 147, 150, 229, 235, 237, 239,242–6, 248, 278, 280

Keele, Staffs. 70, 101, 103–4Keen, Maurice 87–8keepers of woods 56–7, 105Kells, pr of 247Kemal Beg 155Kendal, Westmoreland 36 n. 80

Kendal, Br John, turcopolier andpr England 83, 107, 132, 133, 287,316, 335

and auberge 282and brethren 151collects indulgences 76, 144death, dispropriamentum and

spolia 153 n. 241, 155–6debts 151, 152–3difficulties securing pry 144–5as diplomat 143–6 passim, 315early career 317–18excommunicated 100family 36–7, 65and Hampton Court 157and James Keating 243and Jem sultan 146, 148, 314, 315languages 55‘plots’ against Henry VII 146–50property in Rhodes 285prosecuted 99recovers Balsall 152refused pension 153–4in Rome 144–5, 146, 148, 315and s Rhodes 139 n. 172, 295ships goods 137, 139, 285–7, 314as turcopolier 43, 140, 142

Kendal, Sr Juliana 33 n. 58Kendal, ‘Br Thomas’, 99 n. 74Kent 60, 62 n. 14, 70, 72, 144Kerry, Co. 254kersey 167, 189 n. 183, 287see also cloth

Kilbarry, Co. Waterford, py 236 n. 73,254

Kilburn, monastery of 214Kilclogan, Co. Wexford, py 234,

250 n. 161, 257Kilcork, Co. Kildare, master of Templars

at 235Kildare, County 236, 237Kildare, dean of 236Kildare, earls of, see FitzgeraldKildemock, Co. Louth, vicar of 241Killerig, Br Elias of 234Killerig, Co. Carlow, py 234 n. 57,

236 n. 73, 247, 250, 253Kilkenny 235

408 Index

Killure, Co. Waterford, py 227, 254Kilmainham, pry/py 14, 162, 181, 228,

247, 255, 265barn, burnt 252bridge 233conventual church 227–8, 248, 254;

prior 228 n. 14, 241, 245 n. 130;subprior 228 n. 14, 241

defences 233hospitality at 227, 248, 252inhabitants 254prioral estate at 232ruined 248parliament at 228

Kilmainhambeg, Co. Meath, py 234n. 57, 236, 248

Kilmainhamwood, Co. Meath, 234n. 57

Kilsaran, Co. Louth, py 141, 244, 249,251

Kilteel, Co. Kildare, py 16, 227, 233–4,235, 254–5

King, Sir Edwin 294–5King’s College, Cambridge 55Kirby, Northants. 175Kirkby Kendall, Westmoreland 34knight-brethren, see knights, Hospitallerknight errantry 88, 117knightly crusaders 89–90knightly families 40knights, Hospitaller 2, 26, 27–8, 93,

223 and passimadmission and recruitment 31–3, 335family connections 33–41

Knollis, Br William 100, 109, 139, 258,261–3, 335

Knolton, Salops., r 30 n. 31Knowles, David 91Knowle, Warws., sanctuary at 194Korkud, prince 155, 314Kyrkby, John 108

La Bastide, Rhodes 285labour services 63, 69, 76, 103, 260Ladislas VI, k Hungary 154, 177Lagouardo, Antonio, turcopole 304

n. 258, 307 n. 277laity 16–17, 91–2, 99, 103–11

Lamberd, John 58Lambert, Br Nicholas 220, 221–3, 292,

320–1, 324 n. 29, 325Lambton family 40Lambton, Br John 55Lancashire 72Lancaster, duchy of 325Lancastrian regime 97, 123, 125Lancastrian readeption/restoration

130–1land use 175Lane, Ralph, f Hogshaw 106, 175–6Langford, Beds., r 74–5Lango, see CosLangstrother family 36–7, 104–5Langstrother, Br John, b Eagle and

pr England 290–1, 335agrees raised responsions 128captain of Bodrum 316–17career 127–8, 318collects indulgence 76, 127as diplomat/visitor 77, 126, 314,

315elected prior 127executed 93, 131family 36–7and Lancastrian readeption 130–1lends to convent 287preceptories and camerae 43, 45,

127property in Rhodes 284–5royal service 123, 128, 130–1secures priorate 129–30ship-owner 288ships cloth 286spolia and debts 132and turcopoliership 305

Langstrother, Fr Richard 54Langstrother, Robert 109Langstrother, Br William, b Eagle 36–7,

109Langton, Thomas, bp Winchester 147,

148, 149languages, proficiency in 55, 122langue of Aragon–Catalonia–Navarre

269, 293langue of Auvergne 269langue of Castile-Portugal 269, 318

Index 409

langue of England 12, 18, 269–70,318–19

admits brethren and inspectsproofs 32–3, 41, 264, 274,276–7

amalgamates preceptories 63appointments made or approved

by 42, 45–8, 153, 181, 318and Bodrum 303–4and caravans 300–3and ClementWest 202, 207, 221, 294divisions in 219, 220, 222, 292–3elects officers/representatives 202,

203–4, 221, 282, 305, 311and English crown 120finances 282–4inspects ancienitas and

meliormenta 42, 290and Irish brethren 162, 265meetings 177, 271mustered 299plate 282, 283post/fortifications of 150, 270,

293–4, 296, 297, 299, 300, 332proceedings/minute-book of 22, 168,

278and priors 45–8, 61, 137–8, 201and pry Ireland 237–8, 239–40, 245,

246, 251and Scottish brethren 162, 259, 264,

265, 281see also langues

langue of France 269proctors of 301

langue of Germany 180, 269, 318langue of Italy 269, 270–1langue of Provence 269, 299langues 12, 47, 269–73, 282 n. 99,

293–4, 301langues, Spanish 180, 269, 303Lardos, Rhodes 304 n. 258Lastic, Jean de, mr hosp 284, 305Lateran council (1512) 170 n. 64Latin, knowledge/study of 56, 315Latin East 3, 117, 226, 257Latins 4Laund, Alexander 35 n. 70Laund, Robert de la 109

Laund, Thomas de la 67–8, 109–10Launde, John 106Lavadeto, Rhodes 306 n. 269Lawson, Guy, donat 281 n. 90lawyers 57, 67–8, 107, 132, 174, 254Layeland, Thomas 173, 175Layton, Br Ambrose 37, 178, 192, 297,

298Layton, Brian 321Layton, Br Cuthbert 37, 39, 321, 332lead 286lease books, see provincial chaptersleases, crown 233leases, short-term 64–5, 104, 277leasing 15–16, 22–3, 63–70, 76, 103–4,

176, 214, 260in Ireland 239, 248, 253, 254–5

legal officers, see lawyerslegitimate birth 26–7, 205Leicestershire 326, 327Leighton, Br Alexander 259Leinster 227, 256, 335Leixlip, Co. Dublin 232Leo X, pope 166, 174Leo VI, k Armenia 53n. 191, 118lessees 39, 63–8, 70, 106–7, 110, 258

disputes with 67–8, 104, 156–7,173–4, 193–6, 201–2

and enclosure 176responsibilities 66–7, 74, 106social status 64, 65, 252

letters of exchange, see exchangeoperations

letters of obligation, see bondsLevant, see Mediterranean, easternLibri Bullarum 21–2, 151, 152, 273,

287Libri Conciliorum 21, 273, 284, 290,

293lieutenant chief governor, prs Ireland

as 229Lily, William 54, 147, 289Limassol 3Limerick 254Lincoln, diocese of 156Lincolnshire 35, 37 n. 81, 38, 39, 60,

62 n. 14, 72, 146, 326churches 102

410 Index

Lincolnshire rebellion, the 130–1, 132Lindos, Rhodes 268, 294Lindsay, Alexander 261Lindsay, Andrew 261Lindsay, Br Walter 23, 260, 261, 265,

281, 335Lindsey, Lincs. 146Lisle, lord, see PlantaganetL’Isle Adam, Philippe Villiers de,

mr hosp 199, 215, 292and Calais scheme 179, 180and Clement West 203, 205–8, 219death 208, 209and Docwra’s spolia 192letters of 163, 177, 178, 181, 182,

186–7and pry Ireland 251revolt against 206and s Rhodes 9, 166–7, 168, 292, 298in Rome 176and solutio formagiorum 309visits England 184–7, 189, 197visits France and Spain 178, 179, 183

Lister, Br Charles 44 n. 128, 275Liston, West Lothian 259, 260litigation 173–4, 196Little Maplestead, Essex 64 n. 28liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre16, 101livelihood 57livery 58, 147, 156livestock 57, 311Livingston, Br Henry 259, 262 n. 229loans 107, 122, 172, 244 n. 121Lollards 114Lomelino, Tobia 286London and suburbs 70, 139 n. 171,

140, 215, 287, 329Chancery Lane 197Charterhouse 31, 52–3citizens 85, 107, 143, 240, 287confraternity collection in 72, 73–4Lambeth palace 58L’Isle Adam in 185merchants 40, 107order’s property/tenants in 16, 64,

65–6, 76, 103, 107, 169 n. 53,173

relations with order 107–8

St Paul’s cathedral 156; dean of, seeArmistead, William

sheriffs of 189Temple 31, 76tower of 130, 139, 174, 217, 218,

251, 324Treaty of 170York place 58see also Clerkenwell; Ficketsfield;

Merchant TaylorsLong, Sir Richard 217longbow 299, 301Longstrother, Thomas 37 n. 81

see also Langstrother familyLouis XI, k France 138Louis XII, k France 32 n. 49, 154,

170Low Countries 167, 274, 276, 330Ludgershall, Bucks., r 30, 31, 74Ludlow, trader from 96Luiz, prince, pr Portugal 187 n. 175Lumley, Br Marmaduke 37, 40 n. 104,

133and Templecombe 44 n. 125, 126,

141and pry Ireland 141, 244, 246and s Rhodes 139 n. 172, 294 n. 186,

295Lusignan family 3Luttrell, Anthony 20, 87–8Lynde, Br Stephen 296Lyndesey, Br John 30 n. 32Lyons 169, 185

Mablestone, Br John, subprior 55, 65,199, 200, 222, 327

and Docwra’s spolia 190 n. 191, 192,193

education and career 30–1, 54, 82–3Mac Carthaigh Muscraighe,

family 236–7, 249, 253Mac Carthaigh, Diarmaid Oge 253MacCarthy family, of Muskerry, see

Mac Carthaigh MuscraigheMurchadha, Gearratt mac 237Machyn, Henry 329Madrid 178Magennis family 235

Index 411

magistral camerae 269, 272in England, see West Peckhamin Ireland, see Kilsaran

magistral elections 277–8magistral grace, see gracemagistral grants 284–5magistral palace 269magnates 15, 89, 118, 142, 175

Irish 229, 230–1, 238–9, 244, 253Magnus, Thomas 180, 184Maine, Dorset, p 108see also Baddesley

Malcolm, Gordon 20–1Malines 149Malipassi, Rhodes 284–5Malory family 33, 38 n. 90, 104, 105Malory, Br John 44 n. 125, 133, 274

n. 53Malory, Br Robert, pr England 53, 61,

137 n. 161Malta 1, 36, 54, 209, 215, 218, 221,

222, 257, 258, 320–4 passim, 325,331

acceptance of 180, 182, 183, 188,199

coastguard 312–13deficiencies of 10–11insurrection in 206, 208langue’s property in 283, 284, 285magistral elections in 216National Library 21negotiations over 177, 178–9order established on 1, 3, 9–11, 186responsions expected in 197–9routes and travel to 200, 276s of (1565) 1, 11, 88violence in 292

Maltby, Lincs., py 29, 30 n. 32, 61–2,73 n. f, 80

Maltese nobleman, assaulted 313Maltese soldiers 332Mamluks 1, 3, 5–6, 93, 162–3, 302manorial leases 65–6Mansel, Br Henry 297, 298Manuel II, Byzantine emperor 118Maplestead, see Little Maplesteadmaps 55Mar, David de 258

Maranycho, Stefano 148–9marches, Scottish 38–9deputy warden of 39, 134, 136

marches, Welsh 106Mareschal, Br John le, pr Ireland 238Maria, Guillelmo, turcopole 304 n. 258,

307 n. 277Margaret Howard, the 138Margaret (of York), duchess of

Burgundy 147, 149Margaret (Tudor) q Scotland 162,

263–4marginal land 69, 232Marienburg [Malbork] 58Marillac, Charles de 40Marnham, Notts., r 74marriage 75, 98–9, 326Marseilles 169, 221marshall, the (conventual bailiff) 306

n. 269, 308Marshall, Br John 280 n. d, 302 n. 242Mary I, q England 326, 329, 330–1marriage of 217

Mary (Tudor), q France and duchess ofSuffolk 158, 170

Martini, Br Andrea, receiver pryVenice 86, 275, 286 n. 131

Maryculter, Kincardineshire 259masses, endowed/proposed 52, 84, 107,

256‘forbidden’ 94

Massingberd family 40Massingberd, Br Oswald 48, 218,

321 n. 5, 330crimes 208, 209, 291, 292as lieutenant turcopolier 312–13plots 293, 323pr Ireland 256–7, 331remains in Malta 320, 323–4

master of the order, the 5, 113, 248governs common treasury 82 n. 99,

269household/socii of 269, 271, 299,

317–18lieutenant 311officials 270, 306, 309–12prerogatives 13, 26, 41, 202, 269,

270, 307, 317

412 Index

retains brethren 270, 294seneschal 9, 127, 309, 318; see also

Langstrother, Br John; Sheffield,Br Thomas

master (and convent), letters of 129,134, 135, 154, 161–5, 219

under Edward IV’s protection 138master-elect 215–16Matthias Corvinus, k Hungary 6 n. 33,

8Mawdesley, Br William, c Buckland 31Maximilian I, emperor 147Mayhew, Richard, bp Hereford 100,

156Mdina, Jurats of 312, 313Meath, Co. 232Mediterranean, eastern:crusading in 89order in 1–8 and passimtrade 40, 161, 187–8

Mediterranean, western 330Mehmed II, Ott. sultan 6, 8Melchbourne, Beds., py 43 n. 122,

45–6, 47, 108, 147, 201, 219as fifth camera 153, 181

Meldrum, Br Andrew 259–60, 261Meldrum, Br William 261meliormentum/meliormenta 41–2,

50–1, 202, 215, 270, 290mendicants 17, 231, 255Mercamston, Br Thomas 234mercenaries 89, 281Mercer, Robert, ld Inerpeffray 258Merchant Taylors 107–8merchants 40, 107, 148–9, 286, 288

see also exchange, tradeMessina 85, 151, 167, 198, 200, 276,

286, 287Middlemore, Br Augustine 37Middlesex 69 n. 58, 72, 107, 144, 146,

172 n. 74Middleton, Br Hugh, turcopolier and

pr Ireland 57, 203 n. 254, 240,241

Mifsud, Mgr. A. 320military academy, order as 166military orders 1, 3, 17, 90–1, 115–16,

184

see also St George; Temple; Teutonicorder

military service:in Britain and France 14, 15, 17, 123,

134, 162, 168, 170, 172in convent, see conventual servicein Ireland 229, 233–5

Militon, Br Geoffrey 44 n. 128, 275Milling, Thomas, bp Hereford 99mills 64Milly, Br Jacques de, mr hosp 285Minchin Buckland, Somersetpreceptory 29, 30, 31, 61–2, 73 n. d,

74 n.72, 80prioress 151see also Bourchier; Coffynpriory 16, 26, 29, 51, 74, 81, 92

n. 23, 94psalter from 53 n.191

Ministers’ Accounts 23mint, inquiry into 172Minwear, Pembs., r 74Mocenigo, Alvaro 316Modon 295, 302monarchs, see rulersmonasteries, see religious housesmonasticism 91Monolithos, castle of 268Monsill, Br Otho de 297Montague, Thomas e Salisbury 118Montpellier 12, 217Moors 88More, Sir Thomas 93Morea, bailiwick of 271 n. 27Mores, Anthony 252Moreton, Co. Louth 234 n. 57mortality 9, 26, 50, 300, 302Mortmain, Statute of 60, 121Mortmain licences 172, 233Morton, John, abp Canterbury and

cardinaland John Kendal 101, 144–5vicar in spiritualities 99

mortuaries 45, 77, 84legislation against 210

motivation 33, 44MountStJohn,Yorks.,pandpy 36 n.77,

43 n. 122, 49, 62 n. 17, 73, 80, 327

Index 413

Mount Sciberras, Malta 11Mount Sion, friars of 161Mounteagle, Thomas ld 176–7Mountford, Sir Simon 147 n. 214Mourne, Co. Cork, py 236–7, 249, 253Much Woolton, Lancs. 106mules 271 n. 30Multon family 33, 38 n. 90Multon, Br Robert 39, 43, 44 n. 125,

133–6 passim, 286Munster 227, 229Murad II, Ott. sultan 289 n. 155murder 174, 208, 275 n. 60, 291Muslims 4–8trade with 275

muster, commissions of, see militaryservice

Myers, Br Christopher 291–2

Naillac, Br Philibert de, mr hosp 284Naillac, tower of 294Naples 140, 189 n. 186Naples, kings and kingdom of 6, 8, 9,

144, 149, 176, 275, 314, 315viceroy of 177

Narrow Seas, see English Channelnaval operations of order 3, 4, 11, 316see also caravans; conventual service;

corsonaval service, to English crown, 123,

327–9envisaged 182, 184

navy, order’s 4, 176, 197Nazi company, of Lyons 169Negroponte 271 n. 27Negroponte, Peyrolus de 304 n. 258Nemours, d of 32nepos, usage of 34Neville family 131Neville, George, abp York 90Neville, George, ld Abergavennny 40,

166Neville, Humphrey 128Neville, Br Richard 40, 166, 169 n. 53,

297Neville, Richard e Warwick 125, 128,

130–1Neville, Sir Thomas 173

Newcastle-upon-Tyne 136New College, Oxford 55Newdigate family 37Newdigate, Br Dunstan 303, 321,

322 n. 14, 324–5, 327, 328Newland, Yorks., py 43 n.122, 46,

62 n. 17, 76, 79 n. j, 80chapel at 102confraternity collections 72 n. brestored (1557) 331 n. 81

Newport family 38Newport, Br Robert 65Newport, Br Thomas snr, turcopolier

and b Eagle 43, 44, 56 n. 219, 65,167, 288

as ambassador 154, 164, 174conventual service 159, 164, 285,

288, 296, 316, 317 n. 335, 318defends brethren 310–11displays arms 102effects 84elected turcopolier 153governs pry England 155–6pays tenths 158 n. 282as receiver 151, 156, 286royal service 155, 163, 170–1shipwreck and death 169–70travels to Rhodes 163–4, 274 n. 54,

275Newton family 41Newton, Christopher 190 n. 191Newton, Fr John 54Nice 9, 183, 184, 187Nicholas V, pope 76, 305, 311Nicopolis, crusade of 4Nicosia, abp. of 316Nisyros 6, 269 n. 14nobility 26English 125, 185proofs of 27–8, 32–3, 48–9, 181

n. 143, 272, 274, 276–7, 290Noion, Br Guillaume de 147, 148–9non-residence, legislation against 210Norfolk 37, 72Norfolk, dukes of, see Howard, John;

Howard, ThomasNorham castle 39, 321Normanton, Yorks., r 75

414 Index

Norroy Herald, see Tongenorth, see northern Englandnorth Africa 88, 89, 161

corsairs from 302, 330Iberian bases in 184

Northampton, battle of (1460) 125,242

Northampton family 236 n. 73Northamptonshire 72northern England 38–40, 74, 215Northolme-by-Wainfleet, Lincs. 36North Sea 327Northumberland 72–3Northumberland, earls of, see Dudley,

PercyNottinghamshire 34, 76 n. 91Nuca, Br Pedro Felizes de la 330, 331numbers of brethren 28–30, 32, 33in convent 164, 167, 277–81, 294–9,

318, 331nuncios, Hospr., 94, 96–7, 100

see also frary clerksnuns 39 n. 97nuns, Hospr. 16, 26, 27, 33, 51

see also Minchin BucklandNygton, Br Thomas de 296

O’Brien, see O BriainO Briain family 256O Curryn, Br Padraig 247O Duibhidhir family 236, 253O Duibhidhir, Risdeard 253O Duibhidhir, Br Thomas 236O’Dwyer family, see O DuibhidhirO hIffearnain, Br Aonghus 254O’More, Rory 233O Neill family 235O Neill (O’Neill), Niall Mor 234O’Toole, see O TuathailO Tuathail (O’Toole), family 233, 256oaths of allegiance/fealty 15, 124, 130,

131, 324, 331 n. 84obits 94, 103, 108, 117

see also chantries; massesoblations 71, 75, 84, 101, see also

charityOby, Norfolk 37 n. 81officers, see servants

officials, see servantsointment, magic 147olive oil 295, 314organist, see KilmainhamOrmond, ‘Captain’ 330Ormond, earls of, see ButlerOrsini family 177Orsini, Br Giovanbattista, mr hosp 129,

287, 294, 317Ossington,Notts., py 43n. 122, 62 n. 17

see also NewlandOswel, Griman, see Boswell, Br GermanOttoman sultans and sultanate 5–8, 11see also under individual sultans

Outlaw, Br Roger, pr Ireland 228,232–3, 238

Oxford, Cardinal’s College 179, 197n. 221

Oxfordshire 62 n. 14, 72

Padua 56Paget, Sir William 328Painswick, Glocs. 66paintings 101–2palace, magistral 10Palatio, Ottaviano Spinelli de, abp

Armagh 141, 235, 244Pale, the 233, 254Palermo 198Paniter, Patrick 262–4papacy and papalauthority 210–12, 220, 330camera 76collectors 76, 115; see also Castellessicrusade initiatives 124, 125, 150, 174curia, appeals and petitions to 46,

210, 211, 262–3election (1484) 143 n. 191fleet 5legates 7, 125, 331provisions 115, 135–6, 231, 236relationship with order 2, 7, 9, 25, 74,

114, 211, 258–9schism 258–9taxation 113, 119, 142, 165see also indulgences; privileges

Parapart, Br Robert, subprior of pryEngland 30

Index 415

Paravibilinos, Rhodes 307pardon churchyard, Islington 98pardoners, see nunciospardons, profits of 75, 209Paris 144, 147, 185, 187, 223Paris Garden, Southwark 16, 214parish churches 232see also appropriated churches

parkers 56–7parliament, English 92, 120, 122–5

passim, 130, 132, 171, 197 n. 220,332

attaints Keating 246forbids religious to trade 199petitions in 93, 114prosecutes Wolsey 195, 196remits Henry VIII’s debts 186 n. 165resists church disendowment 213and William Weston 214

parliament, Irish 228, 242, 243, 244,246–7, 257

parliament, Scottish 261, 263Parma, cardinal of 145Parr, Catharine, q England 214, 215Paschal II, pope 2, 25Patera, turcopole surnamed 304 n. 258,

307patrons 16passage, see convent, passage topassage-money 44 n. 128, 248 n. 143,

272, 277, 282Passemer family 40, 104Passemer, Br Nicholas 40 n. 104, 44

n. 125, 285, 294Passemer, Br Richard 49, 274Passemer, Richard 82–3,132–3Paston, Sir John 37 n. 81Pate, Richard 217, 218–19Paulet, Sir Richard 197 n. 220Pauncefote, John 174Pavely, John, pr England 122 n. 70payments in kind 63, 260Payne, John 212, 213peace, commissions of the 123, 131,

144, 146, 157, 171, 215, 234, 242,326–7

Peasants’ Revolt 61, 103, 116Peck family 104

Peck, Br Robert 151, 158 n. 282Peckham, see West Peckhampeculiars 16, 98, 103pedigrees 33–4, 38, 41Pemberton, Br Robert 32, 48–9, 201,

275, 282 n. 96Pemberton, Br Thomas 297, 300, 323Pembrokeshire 60pensions 7, 46, 48, 51, 62 n. 19, 65, 84,

108, 253, 254–5, 290royal 166, 223–4, 320–4, 327, 332

perceptions of order:contemporary 73, 93–101, 183–4,

207, 213, 256, 333–4, 337in England and Walesmodern 90–1royal 142–3, 265–7, 334–6

in Ireland 226, 256in Scotland 265–6, 337

Percy family 38–9Percy, Henry, first e

Northumberland 122 n. 72Percy, Henry, fourth e

Northumberland 134Percy, Henry, fifth e

Northumberland 172Peter I, k Cyprus 4Pheraclos, Rhodes 268Phileremos, pr of 285Philip the Fair, d Burgundy, archd

Austria, k Castile 145–6, 158Philip the Good, d Burgundy 8, 119Philip II, k Spain 326, 329, 330, 331Philip, Sir Thomas 83Picardy 158Pickering family 104Pickering, Br Robert 285piety, see religious lifepiliers, see conventual bailiffsPilgrimage of Grace 215, 217, 218pilgrims 2, 7, 25, 88, 97, 118, 119–20,

142, 183Pilletto, Br Mark 288Pipa, Br Carlo 179–80, 181–2piracy 4, 7, 302Pisa, pr/pry 207, 315pitancia 282 n. 99, 303Piteni, Michael 307 n. 277

416 Index

Pius II, pope 142plague 9, 231Plantaganet, Arthur viscount Lisle 214,

328Plantaganet, George d Clarence 130Plantaganet, Richard d York 125, 242plate 54, 190–1, 193, 282, 283plays 88Plumb, Sir John 87Plumpton family 37, 40, 104Plumpton, Edward 37Plumpton, Elizabeth 37Plumpton, Sir Robert 37Plumpton, Br Thomas 37, 275 n. 60,

294 n. 186, 295Plunket, Br Nicholas 250, 278, 281Plunket, Thomas, chief justice 245pluralism, legislation against 210poison plots, see Romepoll tax 116Poland, king of, see Sigismund IPole, Br Alban, b Eagle 49–51, 169

n. 53, 180, 291, 297, 298, 310–11Pole, Br Henry, see PoolePole, Reginald cardinal 56, 257, 283,

323, 330–2Poling, Sussex, py 29, 61–2Pomerolx, Br Gabriel de, grand

commander 298Ponte, Br Piero del, mr hosp 208, 209,

211–12, 215Poole family 37, 39, 40, 104

see also Pole, AlbanPoole, Br Henry 39, 68, 109, 110,

325–7 passimpoor relief, see charityPorter, Henry 190 n. 191, 193ports, Irish 232Portugal and Portuguese 9, 12, 88, 176,

184, 187pry 187 n. 175

Pot, Br Renier 132–3, 288poverty 9Power family 236 n. 73Poynings, Sir Edward 246, 256Praemunire, Statute of 174 n. 95Prat, Br Leonard du, visitor 142–3prayers 101

preaching 94, 227preceptories 14, 16, 92 n. 23, 201,

213–14administration 56–7, 76amalgamation 61–3, 228, 232, 337buildings 56–7chapels 30, 53–4, 56, 98–9, 101–2chaplains 56, 65, 66, 228estate management 63–8exchanges of 42in Ireland 233–4, 250, 251leases of 64–5, 78, 83, 169–70, 236,

275, 277number of 43wealth of 39, 80–1see also appointments; cemeteries;

councils; gatehouses; householdspreceptors 15, 28, 212, 220

administrative duties 60–3in convent 271, 277, 279 n. j, 290and dissolution 224improve houses 42, 50Irish 228, 234, 235, 238, 241to pay responsions 82reside in houses 42, 50, 62royal service of 122to support langue 282

prelates 122, 125, 229, 231Preveza, battle of 288priest-brethren, see priests, Hospitallerpriests, Hospitaller 2, 26, 27, 28in Britain and Ireland 29–31, 32, 33,

54, 101, 336in central convent 279 nn., 284

printed texts 76, 88, 90prioral camerae 43, 45, 61–2, 153, 181priories 14, 47priors 14, 52, 61, 82, 271

see also England, priors of; Ireland,priors of

Priuli, Lorenzo 274Priuli, Vincenzo 274–5privileges, papally derived 16, 30–1, 54,

94–5, 98, 100, 196abolished by parliament 209–12

privileges, temporal 93, 96, 116–17,121, 167, 185, 219

privy chamber, gentlemen of 326

Index 417

privy council, in England 321, 324–5privy seal, keeper of 123, 126proctors of langues 272, 282, 283procurations 74, 99–100, 241, 247promotion, see appointmentspromotion payments 282, 283proofs, see nobility, proofs ofpropaganda of order 5, 8, 95property of order 9, 10, 12, 14, 25, 273

see also estatesprophecies 88, 218protection money 106protector of order, see Henry VII; Henry

VIIIProtestants 9Provence 169, 276provincial chapters/assemblies in

England 29–30, 140, 151, 155,157, 169, 200, 216 n. 317, 220,259, 284

lease property 64–6, 78, 157, 173,197 n. 220, 214, 277

payments in 77 n. 96, 82, 83receptions in 48–9, 186, 272, 274records of 22–3use of common seal in 137 n. 160see also leasing

provincial chapters/assemblies inIreland 228, 238, 257, 274

Prussia 184punishment 78, 204, 209, 273 n. 42

see also discipline; habit, deprival ofthe

Purvey, John 94

quaestors 94see also frary clerks; nuncios

Quenington, Glocs., p 35py 43 n. 122, 46, 48, 63, 66, 73 n. e,

80; chantry at 71; restored(1557) 331 n. 81

Quo Warranto proceedings 121

Radyngton, John, pr England 123,274 n. 54

Rainham-Berwick, Essex 65, 108Rathmore, Co. Kildare, r 227Rawson family 38, 104, 105

Rawson, Christopher, stapler 250Rawson, Br John jnr, turcopolier and

b Eagle 53, 198, 199, 200, 209n. 283, 250, 253

after dissolution 322, 327elected turcopolier 206and s Rhodes 297, 299

Rawson, Br John snr, pr Ireland andturcopolier 40, 48, 201, 203–4,271 n. 29, 325

father’s daughter 109and langue 283, 284lieutenant of convent in

Ireland 248–9as pr Ireland 83, 169, 170, 180–1,

186, 247, 249–55as royal servant 162, 170, 186, 249,

250, 335spolia 323 n. 21made Viscount Clontarf 223, 256

Rawson, Richard, sheriff of London 40Rawson, Br Thomas 33Readeption, Lancastrian 83realm (England), defence of the 113,

123, 184Reaulx, Br Aimery de 216–17receiver, see common treasury; England,

pr ofreceiver-general of order 13, 92, 113reception, see admissionRecette d’Inghilterre 22record-keeping 124rectories, see appropriated churchesRedeman, Thomas 65Reformation parliament 196, 209–12see also parliament, English

refugees, Greek 88, 118Reggio di Calabria 276relics 9religious life 52–4, 273, 284religious orders/houses 1, 17, 39, 64,

91–2, 101, 122, 126, 199, 211, 209,230–1, 236, 264, 330–3 passim

rent:collectors 76, 103levels 64, 69–70, 71, 103, 167, 236payment and arrears 66, 67, 156repairs 57, 66–7, 200, 282, 317

418 Index

Report of 1338, the 22, 60–1, 78responsions 13, 22, 61, 62, 68, 76–84,

119, 136, 151, 167, 211, 275dispatch and delivery 163–4, 179,

197–200, 258, 285–8Irish 78, 79 n. a, 83, 226, 228, 237,

239, 241–3 passim, 246–8passim, 253

objections to 112–15, 128, 184Scottish 84, 257–60 passim, 262,

264Retainers, Statute of 156see also livery

Rhodes 3, 5–8, 13, 44, 48–50, 54, 93,105, 132–5 passim, 165, 242, 244,250, 259, 262, 268–9, 282

arms sent to 121, 150defences of 5–8, 155, 268, 293–4,

314guards, see coastguardsindulgences for 76, 138invasion fears 7, 11, 163, 278, 293–4,

308Jem sultan in 144recovery of 10, 178, 179, 185, 186,

187sieges and fall of 6, 8–9, 15, 18, 171,

183, 243, 294–300; accountsof 54, 55; ‘British’ involvementin 18, 50, 282, 294–300, 319;news of 168, 169; planningfor 164; response to 84, 86, 88,93, 101, 138–42, 166–70, 185,243, 250; town 268, 273, 285,298–9

travel and travellers to 97, 119–20,159, 163–4, 274–5, 289;restricted 112, 114, 124–5, 275

villages of 307, 308see also convent

Rhodiots 178, 268, 273, 288–9, 299,309

in England 105see also Bell, Francis; Bennett,

Constans; Galliardetto, Francis;Greeks

Rhys, Sir Gruffydd ap 50, 83, 201–2Rhys, William ap 106

Ribston, Yorks., p and py 35 n. 65,36 n. 77, 43 n. 122, 45, 80, 151,181, 252–3

chantry at 71Richard I, k England 116Richard II, k England 53 n. 191, 114,

116, 119Richard III, k England 142–3, 244Richmond, archdeacon of 244Richmond, d, see FitzroyRichmond palace 106Richmondshire 73Ripley, George 90Robert I, the Bruce, k Scotland 258, 264Roberts, Br Nicholas 55, 176 n. 107,

297, 300, 314–15robes, see liveryRoche, Br Edward 169 n. 53Roche, ‘Br John’ 295Roche, Br Michael 297, 300Rodmersham, Kent 214see also West Peckham

Rogers, Br Anthony 215–17, 218, 304,322 n. 14

Rolls, master of the 191, 214romances 88Romans, ancient 55Rome 9, 36 n. 77, 77, 114 n. 14, 115,

128, 135, 163 n. 12, 178, 180,272 n. 34, 332

bishop of, pope as 220, 221, 222correspondence with 165, 167, 176George Dundas in 262–3Hospice of St Thomas 148, 315Hospr. pr of 77, 126James Keating in 242–3John Kendal in 143, 144–9

passim, 315John Weston in 135, 140, 141,

143–4order in (1523) 176petitions to 109, 237, 238travel via 275, 276see also papacy; papal

Roper, John 173‘Rosfyndglaisse’ (Tinnahinch), Co.

Kildare, r 236Rota, the 98

Index 419

Rothley, Leics., py/camera of 43 n. 122,104, 327

see also DalbyRouen 234royal arms, English 203, 206royal council in England 14, 128, 157,

207, 256royal council in Ireland 239, 249,

251–2, 253, 256royal council in Scotland 14, 261royal councillors, priors as 112, 122–6

passim, 171, 228, 331royal family, English 256royal justices, English 174–5royal navy 327see also naval service

royal pardons 131, 132, 145, 150royal servants 106–7, 122, 254royal service 122–5, 160, 178, 325–9,

335royal vicar 220Roydon, Essex, r 64 n. 28Rule, order’s 51–2, 272rulers, western, and order 3, 6, 8–10, 15Rumelia 165Runciman, Sir Steven 87Russell family 40Russell, Br Anthony 33, 276, 302 n. 242Russell, Br Giles, turcopolier 33, 199,

219, 221, 222, 276, 285, 288, 293as p Battisford and Dingley 62 n. 18,

106proctor of common treasury 318remains in Malta 320, 323at s Rhodes 297

Russell, Br John 49, 274Russell, Sir John, later ld Russell 177–8,

222Ruthall, Thomas, king’s secretary 146Rutland 72Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warws. 175, 195

Sacce, Antonio, turcopole 304 n. 258,307 n. 277

St Andrews 328St Anthony of Vienne, order of 115St Catharine, tower of 303St German, Christopher 90

St George 53, 284proposed order of 256

S. Gilles, pr of, see BidouxSaint Jalhe, Br Didier de, mr-elect of

hosp. 215–16St John Baptist 83, 101, 227

fraternities of 107–8St John the Evangelist 102, 227St John, order of, see hospitalSt John’s College, Cambridge 55St Katharine 53St Lazarus, order of 1, 115St Margaret 53St Martin’s, Ludgate 329St Martin’s night 273 n. 42St Mary’s abbey, York 139St Michael 53St Nicholas, tower of 294, 296, 297St Omer 146St Paul 53St Paul’s cathedral, see LondonSt Peter 53St Peter, castle of, see BodrumSt Sithe 53St Thomas of Acre, order of 115–16St Ursula 53St Wulstan, kildare pry of 236saints 16, 53–4, 101–2salaries 105, 271Salem and Bizance 90Salford, Br Richard 283salmon 258Salt, Co. kildare 236Sampford, Great and Little, Essex 64 n.

28Sanchez, Miguel Hieronymo 189 n. 186sanctuary 75, 121, 174–5, 194Sandford, Oxon., py 62, 175 n. 100,

179–82 passim, 186, 196, 197Sandilands, ‘Br James jnr’ 33 n. 57Sandilands, Br James snr 260, 261, 265Sandilands, Br John James 33 n. 57,

292, 301Sands, Br George 302 n. 242Sanseverino, Roberto de 285Santa Maria Latina, Jerusalem 1Santiago, pilgrimage to 147‘Saracens’ 95, 204

420 Index

Savage, Sir John 174Savoy 9, 144, 187Sawston, Cambs. 48, 67Scandinavia 12schools 92Scilly Isles 329Scotland 21, 23, 84, 123, 150, 162see also under individual kings;

TorphichenScots 39, 40, 140, 321

ambassadors 171crusaders 88, 89

Scottish brethren 12, 109, 258–66passim, 278, 281, 287, 302

Scottish crown 24, 265–6, 335Scougal, Br Patrick 262, 281, 287

n. 138, 296Scougal, Thomas 261search, commissions of the 171–2Selim I, Ott. sultan 7–8, 163, 165seneschal, see master, seneschal ofseniority 28

see also ancienitasseptena 292 n. 174sergeants, Hospr. 2, 26, 27, 29, 279 nn.servants 33, 56–8,60–1, 64, 68,98, 100,

104–6, 273, 281, 298, 303, 334Seville 276sewers, commissions of 123, 146, 171,

326Seyman, Elizabeth 66Seyman, Thomas 66Seymour, Edward d Somerset 326Seymour, Sir Thomas 217Seys, Br Edmund 162, 249–50, 278,

280–1Shakelady, Roland 106Sheffield family 35, 40Sheffield, Br Bryan 35, 44 n. 125Sheffield, Margaret 35Sheffield, Sir Robert 35Sheffield, Br Thomas, b Eagle 9, 35, 51,

155–6, 163–4, 176, 207, 274 n. 54as ambassador and courier 154

n. 251, 164, 315captain of Bodrum 164, 317family 35–6magistral seneschal 9, 35, 176, 318

as p Shingay 48as receiver 49, 50, 156and s Rhodes 169 n. 53, 297–300

passimSheldon, Richard, auditor 132–3Shelley family 37–8Shelley, Br James 283, 332Shelley, ‘Br’ John 33 n. 57, 298Shelley, Br Richard, turcopolier and

(titular) pr England 56, 330, 332Shingay, Cambs., py 43 n. 122, 48, 70,

80, 175, 215–17, 219ship-owning 288shipwreck 9, 169–70Shrewsbury, earl of, see TalbotSicily 10, 11, 198, 199, 275, 276see also Messina

sick 1, 3brethren 29, 78

Siggiewi, Malta 313Sigismund I, k Poland 177silver 164, 288Syme 6Simnel, Lambert 245Sinai, monks of 161Sixtus IV, pope 135, 137, 140, 143

n. 192, 244 n. 118, 315Skayff, Br Miles 109, 132, 139 n. 172Skeffington, Sir William, dep

Ireland 253Skipton-in-Craven 55Skirbeck, Lincs., py 16, 61–2slaves 273, 281, 288, 291, 313Slebech, Pembs., py 20, 36n. 77, 43

n. 122, 45–6, 50, 71, 74, 80, 321 n. 5farmers and tenants of 67, 83–4, 173,

201–2, 252pilgrimage to 75restored (1557) 331 n. 81

Slemio, Rhodes 314Sloane, Barney 20–1Smith, Captain John 88Smith, John, baron of the

exchequer 214Smyrna 4soldea 272, 277solicitor 58see also lawyers

Index 421

Somerset 72, 97, 326–7Somerset, Charles e Worcester 97, 172Somerset, d of, see Seymour, EdwardSophi, see Isma’ilSoreni, Rhodes 310, 311Sothill, Br Arthur 37, 297, 298, 300Sothill, John 37Southampton 85, 139, 172, 200, 276South Cave, Yorks. 35 n. 70South Witham, Lincs., r 74 n. 73southern England 38–9Spain 9, 88, 89, 150, 221, 332

embassies to 178, 183, 187, 315Spain, post/tower of 299Spanish 328Hospitallers 10, 206, 303military orders 184

Spens, Br Adam 55 n. 208spies 325spirituality 16see also religious life

spolia 53–4, 61, 77–8, 82, 201, 202,282, 285–7 passim

see also Kendal, John; Docwra,Thomas

Stafford, Edward, third dBuckingham 172

Stafford, Francis 172Staffordshire 72Stalworth, William 107Stamford 40Stanley, Thomas, e Derby 97, 172Stansgate, Essex, suppressed priory

of 197, 216Staple, the 140Star Chamber, court of 67, 156, 171

n. 73, 174, 194, 213, 325Starkey, Br Oliver (titular) b Eagle 54,

56, 292, 330, 332statutes of order 52, 63, 198, 204–5,

272–3, 277, 279, 305 n. 264, 308Staunton, Salops. 96Stefano, Joanne turcopole 304 n. 258,

307 n. 277steel 275stewards:manorial/preceptorial 56, 58, 66,

103, 104, 105

of pr England 105of pry England 58, 105

Stewart, Alexander 33 n. 57, 263–4Stewart, Beraud, seigneur d’Aubigny 32Stewart, John d Albany 263Stewart, Robert 32, 33 n. 57Stillingfleet, Br John 54, 116stipends 84Stockerston, Leics. 37Stockhill, William 188–9stones, see jewelsstorms 276Story, John 207–8, 218, 221, 223, 276,

324Stow, John 102Strozzi, Br Leone 219Stydd, Lancs. 62 n. 17subprior, of pry England, 29, 30–1, 107

see also Mablestone; ParapartSuccession, Act of 210, 214Suffolk 72Suffolk, duke of, see BrandonSuffytur, Glocs. 66Suleiman I, Ott. sultan 167, 299,

314–15Supremacy, Henrician 210–11, 220,

325Surrey 72Surrey, earl of, see HowardSutton, Essex, 74 n. 73, 108Sutton-at-Hone, Kent 64 n. 28, 66, 70,

169 n. 53, 210Sutton family 35–6Sutton, Hamon 35Sutton, Br John 35–6, 200, 202, 206–8,

216, 223, 292, 297, 322, 325, 326,327

Sutton, Margaret 35–6Sutton, Robert 36Sutton alias Dudley, George, see DudleySwarraton, Hants., r 30 n.31Swayne, John, abp Armagh 241Swift, John, 176, 190 n. 191, 193Swingfield, Kent, py 36 n.77, 43 n.122,

65, 79 n. g, 81, 181, 252–3synodals 74Syracuse 9, 284Syria 163

422 Index

tabula 272, 277, 282Talbot family 239Talbot, John, second e Shrewsbury 242Talbot, Richard, abp Dublin 240Talbot, Br Thomas, pr Ireland 126, 236,

239–42, 244, 246Tannenberg, battle of 89Tany, Br William, pr Ireland 238taverns 273 n. 42taxation of order 17, 121–2Templars, see TempleTemple, order of the 1, 121estates 3, 4, 60, 69, 117, 228founders’ families 92, 109in Ireland 226, 228, 235in Scotland 257–8see also London, Temple

Temple Brewer, Lincs., py 43 n. 122,48, 57, 70–1, 81, 109–10, 331 n. 81

church 102Templecombe, Soms., p 37 n. 85, 75,

97, 213py 43 n. 122, 44 n. 125, 46, 81, 109,

141, 213Temple Cressing, Essex, py 53, 62, 102,

106, 214Temple Dartford, see Sutton-atte-HoneTemple Dinsley, Herts. 53, 65Temple Ewell, Kent, r 74 n. 73Temple Grafton, Warws. 66, 98, 190

n. 191, 195Templeton, Devon, chapel at 99Templeton, Co. Louth 234 n. 57tenants, scarce in Ireland 231, 232–3tenants of the order 33, 57–8, 67,

102–4, 215disputes with 212–3privileges 96, 98provide soldiers 170at Slebech 200tenths, order to pay 211–12, 220see also farmers

Teutonic order 1, 3, 58, 89, 184Tewkesbury, battle of 15, 93, 131Thame, Philip de, pr England 95,

113–14, 123Thames, river 66Thomas, companion at Bodrum 303

Thomas, Sir Rhys ap 50Thomas, William Jones ap 83Thornburgh, Br Roland 39, 108, 152,

317Thornhill, Br Thomas 292–3, 321, 324,

332Throckmorton family 196, 289Throckmorton, Sir George 194–5, 217Throckmorton, Sir Robert 152, 156Tibertis, Br Leonardo de, pr

England 123–4Tibertis, Br Leonardo de (1522?) 295Tiepolo, Vincenzo 275Timur the Lame 4tin 85, 167, 189 n. 183, 285, 287Tinteville, Br Louis de 187–8Tipperary, Co. 235Tiptoft, John ld Tiptoft and e

Worcester 118, 243, 285Tipton, Charles 20tithes 99, 100Toledo 178Toledo, Antonio de, pr Castile 330Tolle, Warws., manor and chapel 193

n. 205Toller (Fratrum), Dorset 81Tonge family 36, 38, 173Tonge, Anthony 105Tonge, Br John 36, 44, 53, 57, 65, 146,

149, 151, 155 n. 259, 291Tonge, Br Robert, turcopolier and b

Eagle 36, 132, 133, 134 n. 142,139 n. 172, 285–6, 287 n. 138,316–17

Tonge, Thomas, Norroy Herald 173Tonge, Br William 36Tonge, Fr William 54Torkington, Fr Richard 276, 289Tornay, Br William, b Eagle and

pr England 32, 38, 43, 46, 128,131–3, 286

Torphichen, p and py 14, 15, 23, 114,139, 162, 257–66

administration 258–61courts 260–1estates 260and pry England 154, 258–9, 263,

264, 265

Index 423

Torphichen, p and py (cont.)responsions 79 n. a, 84, 258, 259,

260, 264see also under individual preceptors

Touchet, James ld Audley 212Tournai 170, 274 n. 54tournament, May Day 223tower-houses, Irish 232, 233, 234trade 7, 16, 40, 85–6, 161, 199, 268,

273, 285–7Transylvania 88treasurer of England/Ireland, priors

as 123, 130, 131, 229, 250treasurer of Scotland, William Knollis

as 258, 262Trebigh, Cornwall, py, 62 n. 18see also Ansty

Tresham, Br Thomas, pr England 283,330, 331–2

Triande, Rhodes, castellan of 311tribute 6Trinity, the 101Tripoli 10, 11, 188 n. 182, 293, 304,

323triptychs, see paintingsTudor, Margaret, see MargaretTudor regime, and order 159–60Tully, Co. Kildare, py 234 n. 57, 236,

250 n. 161p, see Harebrik

Tunis 88, 302Tunstall family 40Tunstall, Br Bryan 37, 178Tunstall, Cuthbert, bp London and

Durham 37, 192Turberville, Br John 44 n. 125, 133,

139 n. 172turcopoles 304–12 passimturcopolier and turcopoliership 12,

42–3, 58, 203–9 passim, 218–22,304, 313–14, 323, 331 n. 81,332

appointment 153, 305and auberge 283and brethren 166, 305and coastguard/watch 18, 305–13

passim, 337and English crown 120

exchanged for pry Ireland 51, 170,181, 186

and langue 305lieutenant 206 n. 265, 221, 301, 324mace of office 203, 205–7other perquisites 309–12in wartime 304–5see also under individual turcopoliers

Turkey 289Turkey carpets 108, 161, 164, 179,

214Turk, murdered 146Turk, the (Ott. sultan) 184, 224Turkish emirates 4Turkish fleet 11, 139, 154, 155, 165,

294, 296, 302, 309–10Turkish shipping 288Turkish territory 276Turks 32, 88, 95, 265, 293, 330

attack Malta and Tripoli 11, 188n. 182, 323

and Bodrum 304capture Rhodes 8, 298–300negotiations with 314–15threaten Christendom 90, 118, 119,

164–5threaten Rhodes 7, 139, 158, 163,

309–10Tyerman, Christopher 87–8Tynemouth, Br John 31Tyrrell family 37, 40Tyrrell, Sir Thomas 106, 147Tyrrell, Br William 219, 221, 222,

292–3, 316, 322 n. 14, 324–5,328–9

Ulster 229, 232, 233, 235, 255annalist of 252

Underwood, Br Philip 31Upleadon, Herefs. 100Upton, Nicholas 36Upton, Br Nicholas, turcopolier 36, 54,

280 n. 278, 292, 293, 312–13, 320,323

Usances 272usury, forbidden 273Uzun Hasan 316Ux, Francino 288

424 Index

vacancy payments 45, 77, 83, 137–8,151, 153, 186, 263, 286, 287, 336

royal claims to 124, 130vacancy years 84Vale family 236 n. 73Vale, Br John 245Valor Ecclesiasticus 23, 70–1Valette, Br Jean de la, mr hosp 56Vallee, Br Louis de 206 n. 267Valletta 11, 283Vannes, Peter 179 n. 127Vaux, Sir Nicholas (later ld Vaux) 172Vegetius 54Venice and Venetians 5, 7, 13, 44 n. 128,

49, 120, 140, 178, 328, 332ambassadors of 171, 215; see also

Giustinianiniambassadors to 164and Cyprus 316galleys 127, 151, 286Garzoni bank in 286 n. 131and John Kendal 143, 144and Ottomans 97, 142, 150, 154–5,

165, 275news from 167pry of 79 n. f, 169and Rhodes 126, 141 n. 184, 275,

295shipments via 86, 286study at 56travel via 53 n. 191, 274–5see also exchange; Italians; Martini,

Br Andreavestments 53–4vicars, see clergy, secularviglocomites 306, 307, 308, 311–12Vignolles, Bertrand de 146–9Villanova, Rhodes 268, 284, 310–11Ville Franche 9, 169, 183 n. 150Villers, Br Blase 33 n. 57, 39 n. 96Villers, John the younger 106Villers, Br Ralph 33 n. 57Vincent, Martin, viglocomes 307–8violence, see convent, violence inVirgin Mary 53, 101–2visitations 52, 55, 57, 77, 126, 128,

248and Act of Dispensations 211

visitation fees 61visitors 57, 63, 240royal attitude to 114, 121, 126,

142–3, 211Viterbo 9, 177, 274 n. 54, 275 n. 60,

281, 283 n. 104chapter-general of 179, 180

Vivaldi, Antonio, Genoesemerchant 65, 84–5, 108, 169, 189,198, 200, 289

Vizzari de Sannazaro, L. 19vocation, see motivationvows 51–2

Wakelyn, Br John 294 n. 186, 295, 314Walcott, Roger 244Wales 14, 20, 60, 96, 106, 126, 212Wall family, see Valewalls and ditches, commissions of

146, 171Walton, John, abp Dublin 141, 244Warbeck, Perkin, pretender 146–50

passim, 245wardships 172, 233warfare 9, 74, 231, 234–5, 236Warham, William, abp Canterbury 98,

99–100Waring, Thomas 32–3wars of independence, Scottish 257, 258Warwick gaol 194Warwickshire 72, 144, 172 n. 74, 194Wasse, Ralph 190 n. 191watch, see coastguardWater, Edward 275Water, John 147Waterford 228 n. 14, 254Welles, Richard, ld Welles and

Willoughby 130Welles, William 239Wells, hosp St John Baptist in 31 n. 44Welsh crusaders 88, 89West, Br Clement, turcopolier 33,

169 n. 53, 214, 267, 288, 301and brethren 202, 207–8, 220–1,

282 n. 96, 292–3career 49–51, 202–3as castellan of Rhodes 203, 294, 317character 201, 203, 219, 225, 335

Index 425

West, Br Clement, turcopolier (cont.)demands Melchbourne 47, 181, 200,

219and Henry VIII 201, 203, 218, 221–2house in Birgu 283and magistral election 219receiver 84–5, 190 n. 192, 192 n.

202, 197–9, 203retirement and death 223, 320–1,

322 n. 14, 323as p Slebech 173, 201–2theft from 199–200and Thomas Dingley 216, 218, 221travels to Malta 200, 276as turcopolier 197, 198, 203–5, 208,

209, 211, 219, 221, 223West, Br William 297‘Westbrough, Br Walter’ 295West Country, see Cornish risingWest family 33West Peckham, Kent, py 70, 81, 103,

105, 198, 214, 286, 317–18Westminster 324Westmorland 34, 36, 38, 72Weston, Herts., r 74 n. 73Weston family 34–5, 38, 40Weston, Edmund (father of William

jnr) 334Weston, Br John, turcopolier and

pr England 34–5, 38, 82, 101, 144,152, 288

alleged disloyalty 126–7, 128and brethren 45–6, 137–8, 201captain of the galleys 316castellan of Rhodes 317and Celys 108, 139–40death 44, 145as diplomat/visitor 138, 140, 143–4,

315disputes priorate with Multon 133–6elected pr England 136–7financial difficulties 137–8lends money 287returns to England 141and s Rhodes 139–40ships cloth 137, 139, 285–6visits convent 140, 142, 275

Weston, Mabel 35

Weston, Sir Richard 180, 216Weston, Br Thomas 34–5Weston triptych 101Weston, Br William jnr, turcopolier and

pr England 170, 180, 197, 200,206–7

and Balsall 188, 193–6commands great ship 300and Docwra’s spolia 188–93education 55family, household, and servants 35,

38, 106, 108, 203–4, 288, 322n. 13

fifth camera 45, 47final illness and death 222–4, 325gift to langue 283in Italy 177–8, 274order’s ambassador 176p Ansty 48as proctor of the common

treasury 318property in Rhodes 285and Reformation parliament 209,

211, 213–14relationship with Henry VIII 214–15relationship with Wolsey 196secures pry England 181, 183, 185–6at s Rhodes 169 n. 53, 297, 299–300and Thomas Dingley 215–16, 217tomb 53

Weston, Br William snr 34–5, 38, 44n.125, 48, 133, 139 n. 172, 141

Weymouth 131Wigston, Roger 176White, Br Robert, pr Ireland 238White, Br Roland 181 n. 143Whitehall 331 n. 84Willis, Pamela 20Willoughby family 97Willoughby, Sir Christopher 110Willoughton, Lincs., p and py of 36

n. 77, 43 n. 122, 71, 81, 104, 106,107, 327, 331 n. 81

wills 34, 38, 41, 53, 94see also bequests

Wiltshire 72Windmills, tower of 294windows 57

426 Index

Windsor castle 142wine 150, 295, 314Winestead, Yorks. 38Winkburn, Notts., py 43 n. 122Wise family 254Wishanger, Glocs. 66Witheridge, Devon, parish church 99Wogan, Sir John 83Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas 171, 176

n. 107, 185, 251, 300, 334as chancellor 192, 194–6and funds for Bourbon 177–8and Hampton Court 107, 173, 196,

197magistral letters to 163, 165, 166,

181–2, 186–7as papal legate 196and sanctuary 174seeks Sandford 179, 180, 182, 186women and order 35–6; see also

Minchin Buckland; nunswood 57, 76, 138, 167 n. 41, 200Wood, John 106Woolhampton, Berks. 175Worcester, diocese of 76, 138sheriff of, see Savage, Sir John

Worcestershire 40, 72

Worcestre, pseudo-William 127writers 93Wyatt, Sir Thomas 217Wydeville family 128, 130Wydeville, Anthony 2nd e Rivers 118Wydeville, Richard 1st e Rivers 130Wydeville, Richard 127–9

xenodochia 25, 227see also hospitals

Yeaveley, Derbys., p and py 43 n. 122,49, 65, 73 n. c, 81, 104, 215, 327,331 n. 81

Yolton, William 58, 82–3, 100, 147,152

York 134see also St Mary’s abbey

York, duke of, see PlantaganetYorkists 125–6, 148Yorkshire 38, 39, 72, 146younger sons 39–40Yeldon, manor of 157Yseran, Br John 169

Zapplana, James 316Zapplana, Br Nicholas, draper 136

Index 427