The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue 1460-1565

The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue 1460–1565

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The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue 1460–1565 GREGORY O’MALLEY

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Great 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 Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß 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 reproduction outside 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 cover and 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, India Printed in Great Britain on 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

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Preface This book is a study of the activities of those members of the military and Hospitaller order of St John of Jerusalem born in Britain and Ireland and active in the period 1460–1565, when the order was based successively in Rhodes, Italy, and Malta. It originated in a Cambridge Ph.D. thesis completed in 1999. This dealt largely with the English Hospitallers during the same period and only touched on the order’s activities in Ireland and Scotland when they impinged on its English priory and brethren. I was able to justify this approach to my own satisfaction at the time for three reasons: first the order’s Irish and Scottish brethren rarely visited its Mediterranean convent and sent only limited funds there; secondly the order’s Scottish history had been adequately dealt with in recent scholarship; and thirdly its priory in Ireland was run by Englishmen after 1497. Since then, research into the order’s Irish affairs has broadened my awareness both of the significance of the Hospitaller priors of Ireland in the governance and development of the late medieval lordship of Ireland and of the possibility that the struggle waged by the Englishand Irish-born brethren for control of the priory might be used to cast some light on still vexed questions of communal identity in late medieval Ireland. Furthermore the order’s Scottish history, although well understood in itself, has not been fully integrated with that of the priories of England and Ireland. The title has been chosen with care: the ‘old’ British history is now viewed with suspicion in some quarters as a centralising vehicle for imposing an outmoded and anachronistic Anglocentric unity on the richly diverse political, social, and economic development of the north-west European island group on one of whose units (not to be advantaged in any particular over others such as Eigg or the Calf of Man) this work was written. Yet, given the insular location of the Hospital’s central convent, terming the work ‘the Knights Hospitaller of the Isles’, might have caused confusion, while entitling it ‘the Hospitallers of the Atlantic Archipelago’ might have suggested location in the Azores to those unaware of the stimulating work of Richard Tompson.1 Given these difficulties it seems appropriate to fall back on the order’s internal divisions in describing its members. Beginning in the late thirteenth century, the Hospital of St John began to be divided into langues, quasi-national associations into which all its members were allocated according 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).

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Britain and Ireland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, entered the English langue. A number of points of presentation should be clarified here. As far as possible, I have sought to refer to persons mentioned in the text by the modern equivalents of the names they are given in the documents. When the modern equivalent is uncertain, or where there is a clear scholarly convention to do otherwise, as in the use of ‘Wydeville’ rather than ‘Woodville’, I have followed the original spelling instead. This goes, too, for Irish names, where I have adhered to the practices laid down in the New History of Ireland. When dealing with some of the order’s continental brethren, I have generally given modern equivalents of names such as Jehan, deferring to the more modern secondary authorities in cases of uncertainty. I have adhered to the conventions used by the late K. M. Setton when dealing with Islamic names. References to documents are generally to what has appeared to be the most modern and/or comprehensive foliation. When providing references to material in the National Library of Malta, I have preferred the modern pencil foliation referred to in the recently published Catalogues of the archives to the several older systems in use. Consequently references may differ 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, Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, for his lasting friendship, inspirational enthusiasm, and many kindnesses over the years. Thanks are also due to Dr Rosemary Horrox for her support, helpful comments, and advice on further reading and to Professor Reinhold Mueller, Dr Helen Nicholson, Dr Simon Thurley, Mr Jim Bolton, Dr Gerwyn Griffiths, Dr Joseph Gribbin, and Mr Stephen de Giorgio for providing invaluable texts, assistance, information, and/or references. The examiners of my thesis—Professor Barrie Dobson and Dr Anthony Luttrell—have provided me with a great deal of helpful advice and encouragement. Dr Luttrell has also generously made available references, photocopies, and his incomparable knowledge of the Maltese archives. I would like to thank the staff of the National Library of Malta, the Cambridge University Library, the Institute of Historical Research, the British Library, the Public Record Office, and the Bodleian Library. Especial thanks are due to Miss Pamela Willis and the staff of the Museum and Library of the Venerable Order of St John for their unwearying assistance and many helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to those institutions and bodies which have provided me with financial support during the course of my research: the British Academy, the Richard III Society, and Yorkist History Trust, who provided me with a one-year Fellowship in 1997–8, and the Master and Fellows of Christ’s College, Cambridge. Further assistance towards the cost of research was afforded by the British Academy, the managers of the Prince Consort

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and Thirlwall Fund, and the managers of various funds administered by Christ’s College. My research fellowship at Emmanuel College has proved of inestimable value in completing this project, and I am grateful to successive masters and fellows of the college for their friendship and encouragement. I would also like to thank Sir John Gorman and the Irish Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, who invited me to give a talk in Downpatrick in October 2001, and in particular to John and Fiona Bellingham and the Honourable Bill and Daphne Montgomery, who treated me with great kindness during my stays with them in Ireland. John Bellingham was kind enough to sacrifice two days to driving me round Ireland looking at Hospitaller sites, and proved enthusiastic and unerring in the pursuit of some of the more obscure and unpromising. Above all, thanks are due to my family—to my brother Philip for running me backwards and forwards between Cambridge and Manchester with bags, furniture, and outsized fridges; to my wife Magda and daughter Mary, whose love and companionship have served as a reminder that man cannot live by books alone, and to my parents, who did not live to see the publication of this book, but to whose love, encouragement, and help it owes so much.

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Contents List of Maps

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Abbreviations

xiv

1

Introduction

2

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

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The Administration and Finances of the Priory of England

60

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The Hospital and Society in England and Wales

87

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The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509

112

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The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–1540

161

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The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland, 1460–1564

226

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The English Langue in Rhodes, Italy, and Malta, c.1460–1540

267

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Brethren and Conformists, 1540–1565

320

Conclusion

333

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1

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

338

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

xii VI VII VIII IX

Contents Receivers of the Common Treasury in England, 1457–1540

343

Members of the Langue, c.1460–1565

344

Hospitaller Pensioners after 1540

360

Organization and Value of the Order’s English and Welsh Estates, 1535–1540

362

Bibliography

367

Index

390

List of Maps I II

Hospitaller houses in Britain and Ireland. ß Courtesy of the Museum of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem

365

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

366

Abbreviations Ancient Deeds

AOM APC

AOSM BDVTE

Bekynton Correspondence BIHR BL CCR CDI

CFR CHR CICRE

Claudius E.vi CPCRCIr

CPL CPR CS

A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, 6 vols. (London, 1890–1915) Archives of Malta (National Library of Malta, Archives of the Knights) Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. J. Dasent, 2nd ser., vols. i–vii, AD I542– 1570 (London, 1890–3) Annales de l’Ordre souverain de Malte Book of Deliberations of the Venerable Tongue of England 1523–67, ed. H. P. Scicluna (Valletta, 1949) T. Bekynton, Official Correspondence, ed. G. Williams, 2 vols. RS (London, 1872) Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Calendar of Close Rolls Calendar of Documents, Relating to Ireland, Preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, London, ed. H. S. Sweetman and G. F. Handcock, 5 vols. (London, 1875–86) Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1272–1509, 22 vols. (London, 1911–62) Catholic Historical Review Calendar of Inquisitions formerly in the Office of the Chief Remembrancer of the Exchequer Prepared from the MSS of the Irish Record Commission, ed. M. C. Griffith (Dublin, 1991) British Library MS Cotton Claudius E.vi Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, of the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, 2 vols., ed. J. Morrin (Dublin, 1861) Calendar of Papal Registers: Papal Letters Calendar of Patent Rolls Camden Society

Abbreviations CSPV

CYS DNB EETS EHR Excavations

Extents

Foedera

HBC

Hist. Crusades Hospitallers in Cyprus

HSP JCKAS JEH Lansdowne 200 Latin Greece LPFD

LPRH

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Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs Existing in Venice and Northern Italy Canterbury and York Society Dictionary of National Biography Early English Text Society English Historical Review B. Sloane and G. Malcolm, Excavations at the Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, London (London, 2004) Extents of Irish Monastic Possessions, 1540– 1, from Manuscripts in the Public Record Office, London, ed. N. B. White (Dublin, 1943) Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujuscunque generis, acta publica inter reges angliae, et alios quosvis imperators, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates, 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) Handbook of British Chronology, ed. E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, 1986) K. M. Setton (gen. ed.), A History of the Crusades, 5 vols. (Madison, Wis., 1969–89) A. T. Luttrell, The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291–1440: Collected Studies (London, 1978) Harleian Society Publications Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society Journal of Ecclesiastical History British Library MS Lansdowne 200 A. T. Luttrell, Latin Greece, the Hospitallers and the Crusades 1291–1440 (London, 1982) Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, 22 vols. in 37 parts (London, 1864–1929) Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, 2 vols., RS (London, 1861)

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Abbreviations

Mediterranean World

A. T. Luttrell, The Hospitallers of Rhodes and their Mediterranean World (Aldershot, 1992) Melita Historica J. Sarnowsky (ed.), Mendicants, Military Orders and Regionalism in Later Medieval Europe (Aldershot, 1999) M. Barber (ed.), The Military Orders, i: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick (Aldershot, 1994) H. Nicholson (ed.), The Military Orders, ii: Welfare and Warfare (Aldershot, 1998) National Library of Malta Library Committee, Order of St. John Historical Pamphlets British Library MS Cotton Otho C.ix Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, ed. N. H. Nicholas, 7 vols. (London, 1834–7) Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England. Prima Camera, Essex, ed. M. Gervers (Oxford, 1996) Public Record Office The Knights Hospitallers in England: Being the Report of Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova, ed. L. B. Larking, with a historical introduction by J. M. Kemble, Camden Society, Original Series 65 (London, 1857) Registrum de Kilmainham: Register of Chapter Acts of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in Ireland, 1326–1339 . . . , ed. C. McNeill (Dublin, 1932) Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento, ed. J. Strachey et al., 6 vols. (London, 1767–77) Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellariae Hiberniae calendarium, ed. E. Tresham, vol. i, pt. 1, Hen. II–Hen. VII (Dublin, 1828) Rolls Series

MH MMR

MO, i

MO, ii NLM OSJHP Otho C.ix PPC

PRIA Prima Camera

PRO Report

RK

Rot. Parl.

RPCCH

RS

Abbreviations Scotland

Secunda Camera

SJG SJHSP SP SRPI

Stabilimenta Statutes TRHS Valor

VCH YASRS

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I. B. Cowan, P. H. R. Mackay, and A. Macquarrie, The Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983) The Cartulary of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England. Secunda Camera. Essex, ed. M. Gervers (London, 1982) Museum and Library of the Venerable Order of St John, St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell St John Historical Society Proceedings State Papers, King Henry the Eighth, 11 vols. (London, 1830–52) Statute Rolls of the Parliament of Ireland, John to Edward IV, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1907– 39) Caoursin, Stabilimenta rhodiorum militum, in id., Opera Statutes of the Realm, vols. i–iv (London, 1810–19) Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII auctoritate regia institutis, ed. J. Caley, with indexes by R. Lemon and introduction by J. Hunter, 6 vols. (London, 1810–34) Victoria County History Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series

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C HA P T E R O NE

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 light of their own imperatives and in the social and historical context in which they operated. In the Middle Ages, religious houses were both numerous and highly significant in the functioning of society, acting as powerhouses of prayer, schools for preachers, theologians, and biblical exegetes, retirement homes for the pious well-to-do, and dispensers of charity and hospitality to the poor, needy, and peripatetic. The military-religious orders which appeared in the twelfth century had in most places little educative or theological role, but were significant providers of prayer, hospitality, and parochial services to an often eager laity. A number were linked to the care of the sick, such as St Lazarus, which began its existence as a leper hospital, and continued its Hospitaller functions long after its military had fallen by the wayside. Yet whatever their other roles the participation of these orders in the defence of the Holy Land against the Muslim states in the near east has long been held to be their most characteristic and significant feature. Nevertheless, after 1291, when the last crusader strongholds on the Syrian coast fell to the Mamluks, all but the three largest military orders operating in the Holy Land—the Temple, the Hospital of St John, and the Teutonic Order—gradually reverted to medical and charitable functions. The Temple was dissolved in 1312 and the Teutonic Order moved to the Baltic, but the Hospital remained in the eastern Mediterranean until 1523, and continued to devote itself to an aggressive defence of the Catholic position there. After 1530, it continued its military activities from its base on Malta. Its operations were financed and its brethren derived from its estates in western Europe, which were organized into preceptories subject to priors provincial. It is with the order’s organization and character in the British Isles in the period from 1460 to 1564, and with the simultaneous activities of those of its brethren born in Britain and Ireland in the Mediterranean, that this book will be concerned. Before beginning examination of these, however, it seems appropriate to provide a brief overview of the Hospital’s history from its foundation to the siege of Malta in 1565, an event that in some ways provides a postscript to ‘British’ involvement in the order’s affairs.

2

Introduction

The Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta is now a nobiliary religious order devoted to charitable work, and specializing in the care of the sick.1 It has its origins in a hospice founded in eleventh-century Jerusalem and devoted to the care of pilgrims and later the sick, but for more than 600 years, between 1187 and 1798, it was more prominent as a military order dedicated to the defence of Christian settlements and travellers from the Islamic powers ruling the near east, Anatolia, and north Africa. In c.1070 merchants from Amalfi founded a hospice for Latin pilgrims in Jerusalem. This was initially dependent on the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Latina, but after the crusader capture of Jerusalem in 1099 it became attached to the Holy Sepulchre and the scale of its operations expanded dramatically. Although donors in western Europe at first patronized the Holy Sepulchre and the Hospital together, in 1113 Paschal II granted the Hospital its independence, confirming it in its possessions both actual and potential and granting its members, who were now considered to be religious, the right to elect their own master.2 As an extension of its care for pilgrims, the nascent order may have become involved in military operations by the 1120s but it is not until the 1160s that one can be certain that any of its brethren had taken on a military role.3 By 1206 they had been divided into three classes—priests, knights, and sergeants.4 Sergeants were further divided between sergeants-at-arms and sergeants-atoffice, the latter including a mixture of administrators, hospital staff, and menial servants. Notwithstanding the order’s military responsibilities its hospital remained the primary focus of its operations until the fall of Jerusalem 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 the order’s knights achieved precedence over the priest-brethren and by the 1270s the magistracy of the order and most of its important conventual (headquarters) offices were reserved to knight-brethren.6 The order’s military 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, Aux origines de l’Ordre de Malta: de la fondation de l’hoˆpital de Je´rusalem a` sa transformation en ordre militaire (Brussels, 1995). 3 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 52–4; Luttrell, ‘Earliest Hospitallers’, 37; A. Forey, ‘The Militarisation 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, and W. F. Ryan (London, 1988), esp. 217, 266–7, 287–8; B. Z. Kedar, ‘A Twelfth-Century Description of the Jerusalem Hospital’, MO, ii. 3–26. 6 Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 123.

Introduction

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thirteenth centuries, it had charge of important fortresses and wide territories in the Latin East, which were gradually whittled away by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt between the 1260s and 1291. After the loss of Acre in 1291, the Hospital was based successively in Cyprus, Rhodes, and Malta. Although the duties of divine service, hospitality, and caring for the sick continued to be taken very seriously, its naval and fortress-building operations gradually became the order’s most distinctive and striking features. Following its enforced withdrawal from Palestine, the order re-established its central convent,7 hospital, and administrative structures at Limassol, where it remained for a turbulent period which saw conflict with its Lusignan hosts, confusion about its role, criticism of the part of the Military Orders in the fall of Acre, and the subsequent destruction of the Templars.8 While the Temple was eliminated and the Teutonic order migrated northwards, the Hospitallers remained in the Levant, seizing the island of Rhodes from the supposedly schismatic Greeks between 1306 and 1310.9 This acquisition was extremely timely, possibly saving the Hospital from sharing the fate of the Temple, and also giving it a strong case for arguing that the latter’s property should be transferred to it to enable the continuation of the struggle in the east. This was ordered in 1312, although it was many years before the transfer was anything like complete.10 On Rhodes, too, the order took care to stress its continued concern for all three of its chief functions. These were, in descending order of rhetorical positioning, but ascending order of cost, the maintenance of divine service, care for the sick, and the defence of Christendom.11 Despite the knightly takeover of the Hospital this ranking of priorities was maintained in many internal documents issued in the later Middle Ages, although appeals to western rulers for aid concentrated rather on the military aspects of the order’s operations. 7

The term ‘convent’ will be reserved for the order’s Mediterranean headquarters. Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 198–226; M. Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 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 difficulties of the order after 1312, and the exploitation of and delays in handing over the Templar estates by their occupiers see J. Delaville le Roulx, Les Hospitaliers a` Rhodes jusqu’a` la mort de Philibert de Naillac: 1310–1421 (Paris, 1913), 53–6, 63–5, 68–70; C. L. Tipton, ‘The 1330 Chapter 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 after the fall of the Order of the Temple’, EHR 45 (1930), 285–9; id., ‘The Wealth of the Knights Templars in England and the Disposition of it after their Dissolution’, American Historical Review, 15 (1910), 252–63; E. Gooder, Temple Balsall: The Warwickshire Preceptory of the Templars and their Fate (Chichester, 1995), 137–9. 11 This is true at least of the mission statements issued by the order at the beginnings of chapters-general, whose contents were, however, often determined by the papal letters licensing it to hold such meetings. See e.g. AOM282, fos. 6r–v, 7v–9v. The latter text is transcribed in J. Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft im Johanniterorden des 15. Jahrhunderts: Verfassung und Verwaltung der Johanniter auf Rhodos (1421–1522) (Mu¨nster, 2001), 617–19. 8

4

Introduction

The conquest of Rhodes and the expenditure necessary to gain control of the Templar properties impoverished the Hospital for years to come, but by the 1330s it was relatively solvent and playing a significant part in Latin military actions against the Turkish emirates in the Aegean. Its contribution to this struggle was primarily at sea—the order had begun to build up a fleet during its sojourn on Cyprus and in Rhodes it had acquired an ideal base for attacks on Muslim shipping.12 By 1320 the Hospitaller fleet, alone or in conjunction with the Genoese, had already inflicted a series of defeats on the Turks,13 and the order continued to maintain an active war fleet until its expulsion from Malta. Its regular navy was supplemented by vessels engaged in the corso, a limited holy war in which a variety of Hospitaller, Latin, and Greek captains operating from Rhodes were authorized to attack Muslim shipping, a calling which they performed zealously across the whole eastern Mediterranean basin.14 In conjunction with its auxiliaries, the order contributed galleys to the anti-Turkish crusading leagues of the 1330s and 1340s, to the campaigns of Peter of Cyprus against the Turks and Mamluks in the 1360s and to those of western crusaders such as Marshal Boucicaut, while in more normal times its fleet kept the Dodecanese relatively free of Turkish pirates.15 On land the Hospital provided limited support for Cilician Armenia before its fall in 1375, followed by more substantial involvement in Epirus, the Morea, and the Isthmus of Corinth between the 1370s and 1404.16 It also contributed significant contingents to the Smyrna crusade of 1344, the Alexandria expedition of 1365, and the Nicopolis campaign of 1396,17 and was solely responsible for the defence of the fortress of Smyrna from 1374 until its fall to Timur in 1402.18 Having lost Smyrna and withdrawn from 12

Riley-Smith, Knights of St. John, 200. 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 and 1416’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 177–88; L. Butler, ‘The Port of Rhodes under the Knights of St John (1309–1522)’, Les Grandes Escales: Receuils de la socie´te´ Jean Bodin, 32 (Brussels, 1974), 339–45, at 343–4; N. Vatin, L’Ordre de Saint-Jean-de-Je´rusalem, l’empire ottoman et la Me´diterrane´e orientale entre les deux sie`ges 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., ‘Hospitallers at Rhodes, 1306–1421’, 302–3, 307–9. Material relating to the order’s involvement in Greece can be found in Monumenta peloponnesiaca: Documents for the History of the Peloponnese in the 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)’, Ro¨mische Quartalsschrift, 86 (1991), 215–51; 87 (1992), 47–98. 13

Introduction

5

Greece, the order’s attention shifted to its possessions in the Dodecanese in the fifteenth century. Although it built an imposing and expensive fortress, the castle of St Peter (now Bodrum), near Halikarnassos on the Turkish mainland as a demonstration of its continued determination to oppose the infidel by land, this was largely a propaganda and fund-raising exercise, as the castle’s location was without any great strategic value.19 More significant were the attention and money lavished on the fortifications on Rhodes and its subject islands after 1400 and on the construction of a new Hospital from 1440 onwards. During the fifteenth century the number of brethren at the convent greatly increased, and the masters of the order, often absent in the west before 1421, made Rhodes their usual residence.20 These developments demonstrate that the Hospitallers, who had thought of moving their headquarters to mainland Greece or Achaea in the previous century,21 had finally come to regard the Dodecanese as their home. While the order continued to participate in the activities of western crusading fleets in the fifteenth century, contributing its galleys and harbour to Aragonese flotillas in 1450–3, to papal fleets in 1456–7 and 1472,22 and to the defence of Venice’s eastern possessions in the wars of 1463–79 and 1499–1503,23 its masters and council increasingly sought peace with the great Muslim powers of the Levant, restricting piracy in the Aegean and negotiating treaties at both local and regional levels with the Ottoman and Mamluk sultans and their subordinates.24 This more defensive approach was necessitated by the growing power of the Turkish and Egyptian sultanates, which deprived the order of both easy prey and worthwhile allies in the Levant. With Cyprus weakened by strife with the Genoese and Mamluk invasion, and the Byzantine empire fighting a desperate rearguard action against the Ottomans the Hospital became, with the exception of Venice, the only Christian power in the region capable of significant independent military action, although its forces were still too weak to engage the Muslim powers on land unaided. In the 1440s Rhodes itself came under serious attack 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 its Utilization 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. KarassavaTsilingiri, ‘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. 99 n., 187–9, 317–18; Z. N. Tsirpanlis, Rhodes and the South-East Aegean Islands under the Knights of St John (14th to 16th Centuries) [in Greek] (Rhodes, 1991), art. iv, summarized in English 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.

6

Introduction

order’s islands of Castellorrizzo and Cos in 1440 and an Egyptian army laid siege to Rhodes in the late summer of 1444, doing considerable damage before it was repulsed.25 Peace with Egypt was soon restored, but after the accession of the aggressive Mehmed II to the Ottoman throne in 1451 the order 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 on Rhodes were spent in constant fear of attack. Precautionary measures were taken whenever a fleet issued from Istanbul or Gallipoli, appeals were dispatched to the west for aid against attacks that rarely materialized,27 the number of brethren at the convent was increased, and summons of those in the western priories became more frequent.28 If sometimes exaggerated, the threat was very real. Mehmed II demanded tribute from the order soon after his conquest of Constantinople and when this was refused his ships attacked Cos, Syme, and Nisyros and sacked the village of Archangelos on Rhodes.29 The sultan renewed his demands in the 1460s, and the Hospital’s intermittent refusal to pay30 and active support for his enemies led inexorably to the siege of 1480, which was only resisted with the greatest difficulty.31 Military assault was followed by earthquakes which weakened the island’s defences still further, but a respite was provided by the death of the sultan in 1481, and still more by the flight of Mehmed’s son Jem to Rhodes in 1482 following the customary fraternal struggle among the Ottoman princes over 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 and Rhodes’, 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 near contemporary history by the order’s vice-chancellor, Guillaume Caoursin of Douai, was translated into English by the poet laureate John Kaye 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 crusade soon after Jem’s flight to Rhodes were negative. By 1483, however, Matthias Corvinus was displaying a keen interest in making use of the fugitive. This was soon emulated by the king of Naples, the Mamluks, and Innocent VIII. Vatin, L’Ordre, 163; Setton, Papacy, ii. 378–9, 386–7.

Introduction

7

order contented itself with extorting a pension and a favourable peace from Bayazid II in return for the fugitive’s safe keeping.34 The latter was sent to Europe, and despite tension caused by Bayazid’s suspicions that the order would sell their captive, the treaty remained valid and pension payments to the grand master continued even after Jem was transferred into papal hands in 1489.35 Order and sultan remained on friendly terms after Jem’s death in 1495, the truce of 1482 being reproclaimed in 1497.36 During the years of peace there was considerable commercial intercourse between Rhodes and the mainland and the order cooperated with local Ottoman governors to suppress piracy within the ‘limits’ laid down in the treaty of 1482, while permitting attacks elsewhere in the Levant. In 1501, however, the Hospital was dragged against its will into involvement in the Turkish–Venetian war when its master, Pierre d’Aubusson, was named as papal legate in charge of the Christian fleet in the Orient, a privilege which, as head of a military order directly 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 after Venice had made a separate peace in August 1503.38 Although peace was renewed with the Turks on the same terms as before, the trust built up in the 1480s and 1490s had dissipated, with breaches of the truce multiplying and an increasing failure to control piracy by either side. To a considerable degree this was the Hospitallers’ own fault. While the ‘limits’ were still respected, piracy sponsored from Rhodes increased in other areas under Ottoman suzerainty, such as the western Aegean, with the result that criticism of the miscreants of the Dodecanese multiplied in Istanbul as the corso seized shipping, carried off high-profile Muslims and Mecca pilgrims into captivity, and interrupted grain shipments.39 Fear of Ottoman military preparations, considerable even while Jem was alive, dominated the convent’s policy in the first two decades of the new century.40 The threat of Turkish raids led to increasingly drastic security measures, large sums were spent on the fortifications, the number of conventual brethren was increased by a third, and supposedly suspect persons such as Jews were expelled from Rhodes.41 In 1513, 1515–17, and 1520 there were genuine invasion scares and it was said that the new sultan, Selim the Grim, was determined to erase 34

Vatin, L’Ordre, 163–72, 173–8. 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 remaining 10,000 being compensation for the damage suffered by the order and its property during the recent siege. After 1489, the greater sum was paid directly to the pope, and the lesser to the knights. Until October 1494, however, Jem remained under the control of guards appointed by the 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. 35

8

Introduction

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 the whim of rulers who expected its resistance to the infidel to be real as well as symbolic. In this respect the sieges of 1444 and 1480 proved of positive benefit, prompting the grant of lucrative papal indulgences and gifts from western rulers such as Philip of Burgundy,43 and creating an image of Rhodes as a ‘key of Christendom’.44 The order did its best to ensure maximum publicity for its achievements and was an early and enthusiastic producer of printed propaganda.45 Yet if success in 1480 almost exempted it from criticism for a generation, developments in the west during this period did not augur well for the Hospital’s continued presence in the Aegean. The extinction of Valois Burgundy in 1477 removed its most traditionally enthusiastic supporter in western Europe, the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490 diminished Hungary’s status as a viable opponent of Ottoman hegemony in the Balkans, and after 1494 the Italian wars muzzled the European response to the Turkish advance, pitting the order’s most potentially valuable supporter, France, against its traditional allies, Naples and Aragon. The victory of 1480 and the relative quiescence of the Turks under Bayazid II also lulled the west into a false sense of security, even of cynicism, as demonstrated by Henry VIII’s manipulation of newsletters from Rhodes to support his claims that the Turks constituted less of a threat to Christendom than the French.46 As appeals to the west multiplied and no attack materialized, moreover, they had less and less effect, one account of the siege of 1522 lamenting that ‘it was holden for a mocke & a by worde in many places that the turke wold go assyege Rodes’.47 Western awareness of the strength of the order’s fortifications probably also dulled the response to the siege of 1522, and may have helped give currency to persistent reports that the Turks had been driven off.48 42 LPFD, i, no. 1604; ii, nos. 1319, 3814; iii, nos. 614, 784, 791, 856–8; The Begynnynge and Foundacyon of the Holy Hospytall & of the Ordre of the Knyghtes Hospytallers of Saynt Johan Baptyst of Jerusalem (London, 1524), 7, stresses Selim’s instructions to his son to take Rhodes. For Selim’s awareness of the dishonour caused by the island’s successful resistance in 1480 see Vatin, L’Ordre, 337. 43 Setton, Papacy, ii. 263 n.; 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 the frontiers 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 on Malta’, Mediterranean World, 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 FifteenthCentury Travellers’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 24–34, at 25–7; LPFD, iii, nos. 2559, 2576, 2611, 2670, 2708, 2772.

Introduction

9

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 a heroic one, its conduct still left some room for criticism. The ‘treason and discord’ among the order’s officers during the fighting, the failure of the master, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, to procure sufficient gunpowder and provisions to prolong the siege and his departure from the island with ‘great riches’ after its surrender provoked comment in contemporary reports and subsequent criticism.49 Soon after L’Isle Adam’s arrival there, an observer in Rome 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 and threatened to appoint co-adjutors of another nation to govern it with him.50 The emperor Charles V, who was deeply suspicious of L’Isle Adam’s dependence on the French, had similar views.51 There was criticism of the master from within the order, too. The bailiff of Casp was imprisoned for speaking irreverently to him in 1524, and an English brother knight bewailed the undue influence over him of his seneschal, Thomas Sheffield.52 Although some rulers stressed their continued support, others took advantage 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 of northern Europe.53 Even its fleet had to be hidden for fear of confiscation by French or imperial forces.54 During this time the convent was itinerant, moving in turn from Rhodes to Crete, Rome, Viterbo, Corneto, Ville Franche, Nice, Syracuse, and Malta,55 and harried by shipwreck, plague, poverty, and war.56 Mortality, at least among the English brethren, was high, and discipline, too, may have suffered.57 Nonetheless, the Hospital managed to keep most of the archives, treasure, and relics brought from Rhodes,58 49

LPFD, iii, nos. 2841, 2891, 2919. 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 and March 1523, Messina in the following May and June, Puzzuoli near Naples in July, Civita Vecchia in August, and Rome from September 1523 to January 1524. Further meetings are recorded in Viterbo between February 1524 and June 1527, Corneto between 26 June and 12 August, Ville Franche between 25 September and 5 November 1527, Nice between 13 November 1527 and 14 June 1529, and Malta in September 1529, but in Syracuse between 11 October 1529 and 22 August 1530. The order took possession of Malta on 26 October 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 et ill.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 Hospitallers in 1530: Reflections and Art Historical Considerations’, Peregrinationes, 1 (2000). 50

10

Introduction

and most importantly, to preserve its administrative structure and departments and ethos intact.59 The cession of Malta, Gozo, and Tripoli to the order had been mooted as early as 1523,60 and commissioners had been sent out to view the islands and fortress in the following year.61 Their report was distinctly unfavourable, stressing the barrenness of the islands, their need to import almost every necessity and their lack of adequate fortifications or suitable dwelling places.62 Hearing this, the knights temporized in the hope of a better offer from Charles V, while at the same time plotting a return to Rhodes in conjunction with Greek clergy and disaffected janissaries.63 Support for this scheme was sought from rulers like Charles, Francis I, John III of Portugal, and Henry VIII, but its failure, the unsettled conditions in Italy, the confiscation of the order’s English property, and the insistence of the Spanish and German Hospitallers that the emperor’s proposal be answered induced the order’s legislative body, or chapter-general, to accept Charles’s offer in 1527, although final agreement on the terms was not achieved until 1530.64 Even then, the order professed reluctance to enter its new home, threatening to abandon it if Rhodes should be regained, and proposing to move to Sicily instead in 1532, while in the following year the pope and emperor suggested it transfer instead to Coron, which had recently been acquired by an imperial fleet.65 By this time, however, the convent had finally departed for Malta, where it centred operations on the Castello del’Mare, its associated settlement, Birgu, and the magnificent Grand Harbour. There a conventual enclosure, or collachium, was theoretically delineated66 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 Sanuto reported that L’Isle Adam had offered to purchase either Brindisi or Malta from Charles V, while in December the master informed Henry VIII that the pope had sent a nuncio to the emperor to ask for Malta. By 19 January 1524 the Venetian ambassador to Charles V reported that he was willing to cede the islands and fortress. V. Mallia-Malines, ‘The Birgu Phase of Hospitaller History’, 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 Clement West 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. MalliaMalines, ‘Birgu Phase’, 79–80.

Introduction

11

conventual church, infirmary, and auberges—actually appeared; and there the British-born brethren settled.67 There, too, the order resumed its naval operations in earnest, playing a significant part in the great Ottoman– Habsburg struggle for dominance of the western Mediterranean between the 1530s and 1570s.68 Yet the settlement on Malta had in some ways a rather impermanent character until the late 1560s.69 There was serious consideration of plans to transfer the convent to Tripoli, which were only quashed when it was lost in 1551, and repeated invasion scares led to proposals that Malta be abandoned or its population evacuated.70 Although a new fort, St Elmo, was built at the tip of the Grand Harbour and fortifications elsewhere either rebuilt or newly constructed the new walls were rather makeshift, the order’s conventual church and some of its auberges remained in rented accommodation, and observers prognosticated gloomily on the likely fate of the island in the event of a full-scale siege.71 The dry run of 1551, when Tripoli had fallen to and Gozo been sacked by a substantial fleet of corsairs, had not given much cause for optimism, although it did concentrate the order’s attention on the restoration and defence of what remained.72 In 1565 an Ottoman armada finally descended on Malta and was repulsed thanks to misjudgements by the Turkish commander, the heroism of the defenders, and the eventual dispatch of an imperial relief force from Sicily.73 Its successful defence prompted the order to regard the island more fondly, and plans to build a new capital on Mount Sciberras, the site of the much-battered St Elmo, were realized in the construction of Valletta, which was initiated in 1566.74

67 Luttrell, ‘Rhodian Background’, 5. Most of these structures were rented, but the construction 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 gale`res de Malte: 1530–1798’, in M.Verge´-Franceschi (ed.), Guerre et commerce en Me´diterrane´e: IXe–XXe sie`cles (Paris, 1991), 103–19; S. Bono, ‘Naval Exploits and Privateering’, in Mallia-Malines (ed.), Hospitaller Malta, 351–95, at 351–8, 377–9. 69 This interpretation is disputed by Professor Mallia-Malines, who sees increasing signs that the order was becoming reconciled to its new home from the last months of 1532. MalliaMalines, ‘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 and 1560s. 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 (Harmondsworth, 1961) provides information on English involvement in the hostilities. 74 Hoppen, Fortification, 33, 41–5, 49–71.

12 1.2

Introduction

The British and Irish Context

In order to support its military and charitable activities, the Hospital relied heavily on brethren and subventions sent out from its houses in Europe. A large majority of the brethren at headquarters were drawn from western Europe, especially from France, Aragon, and Italy, with smaller contingents from Castile and Portugal, mainland Britain, and Germany. Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and Ireland sent few brethren to headquarters. Conventual service in the east was expected of all military brethren in theory, and performed by a large proportion in practice, as the grant of livings in the west was made increasingly dependent on service at headquarters. Brethren wishing to receive preferment were supposed to serve in the east for at least three years before they were eligible for promotion, and were often called to convent in the later stages of their careers as well.75 In times of crisis all military brethren were summoned, and a large number usually responded. ‘British’ Hospitallers, although never very numerous in the east, played a significant part in conventual life.76 The English, Irish, and Scottish knightbrethren at headquarters together made up the sixth of the seven langues, quasi-national associations whose existence was formalized at the chaptergeneral held at Montpellier in 1330, their number being increased to eight in 1462.77 This gave them considerable weight on the order’s governing bodies, the council and chapter-general, which were partly composed of representatives of the langues. The turcopolier, the head or pilier of the English langue, was responsible for the coastguard on Rhodes and later Malta.78 The ‘English’ knights were also appointed to other offices in the gift of the master and convent, several serving as captains of Bodrum or of the order’s galleys, as castellans (chief judges) of Rhodes, as proctors of the common treasury or as ambassadors on the order’s behalf.79 The military activities of 75

Delaville, Rhodes, 318, citing a statute of 1410. 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 the langues see J. Sarnowsky, ‘Der Konvent auf Rhodos und die Zungen (lingue) im Johanniterorden: 1421–1476’, in Z. H. Nowak (ed.), Ritterorden und Region—Politische, soziale und wirtschaftliche Verbindungen im Mittelalter (Torun´, 1995), 43–65; id., Macht und Herrschaft, 147–69. 78 For the office of turcopolier, see A. Mifsud, Knights Hospitaller of the Venerable Tongue of England in Malta (Valletta, 1914), 87–94; L. Vizzari de Sannazaro, ‘The Venerable Langue of England: A History of the English Branch of the Order of St John of Jerusalem with a Roll of Englishmen connected with the Order, and an Appendix of Unpublished Documents’, unpublished typescript, London, SJG, 12–15 and documents 306–13; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 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. 76

Introduction

13

the order in the eastern Mediterranean were publicized in letters to monarchs and ministers, in proclamations made in parish churches in the west and 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 to 85,450 florins out of a conventual income of 97,000.80 Quite separately from the convent, the master enjoyed further, substantial, incomes derived from his possession of Rhodes. The order’s European revenues were assessed by the central convent at periodic intervals and responsions [responsiones], originally fixed at a third of the profits from produce, were levied on its houses in accordance with the estimates so obtained. The convent raised additional sums from imposts levied on the brethren themselves.81 After 1358 the monies raised in each priory were administered by a salaried receiver of the common treasury, who was responsible for their collection and dispatch to Rhodes.82 Most priories sent their responsions on to the order’s receiver-general in the west in Avignon, but because of the English crown’s intermittent disagreements with the French, from the late fourteenth century the priories of England and Ireland more commonly dispatched theirs to headquarters via Venice.83 In the period covered by this study, the order’s day-to-day affairs were run by 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 area of conventual business, and each also served as the caput or pilier of one of the langues.85 The English langue allocated benefices in Britain and Ireland on the bases of conventual service, seniority, efficiency of administration in the west, and, in the case of competition, proximity of birthplace to the house in question.86 The master acted as a supplementary fount of honour for all brethren, as he controlled most appointments on the order’s conventual islands and had the right to appoint to one house in each western priory every five years. He also possessed one estate, or camera, in each priory himself, usually leasing it out to a favoured brother of the relevant langue. Furthermore both receptions of military brethren into the order and movements to and from convent required magistral licence. The master’s authority and influence were thus very considerable but were balanced not just by the council but also by chapters-general, which met fairly regularly to draw 80

Luttrell, ‘Malta and Rhodes’, 272. 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. 81

14

Introduction

up legislation and settle important disputes. Capitular bailiffs, who included western provincial priors, other senior western brethren, and important officers like the grand preceptor of Cyprus sat on both chapters and on the council and when absent were represented in chapter by proctors. Thus when the master and council drew up policy for the western priories they could draw on the experience of western officials resident in convent, or the proctors there of those still in Europe, to inform their decisions. The order’s possessions in western Europe were administered from houses known as commanderies or preceptories.87 These were grouped into provincial priories, castellanies, and bailiwicks on approximately national lines. The order probably received its first lands in England and Wales in the 1120s, and there was a prior of the English Hospitallers by 1144.88 His headquarters and chief residence were at Clerkenwell, just to the north of London. The order’s two houses in Wales and the Scottish preceptory of 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 Kilmainham near Dublin, but the prior was often, and exclusively after 1497, an Englishman.90 Besides the contribution its houses made to the convent, the order had a distinctive role to play in western society. The Hospital’s considerable wealth was concentrated in the hands of relatively few brethren, most of them being, by the fifteenth century, laymen from lesser noble or gentle backgrounds. This wealth, and the connections and affinities of brethren enabled the order to play a significant part in political and social structures. Its provincial heads were usually resident in or near the national or regional capital and were often significant figures at court. Priors of England and preceptors of Torphichen, for example, were habitual members of royal councils, often undertook diplomatic or judicial business on behalf of their respective monarchs, and at times held important offices of state such as those of treasurer, admiral, or keeper of the privy seal.91 The prior of Ireland was still more important in Irish political affairs. Kilmainham was the richest religious house in the country according to the extents taken in 1540–1, and nearly every prior between the 1270s and 1420s served as deputy lieutenant, treasurer, or chancellor, many leading armies in defence 87 Brethren in charge of a house are usually termed preceptor rather than commander in documents 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 Hospitallers during 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.

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of the lordship.92 The Hospital’s wealth, political importance, and crusading activities sometimes prompted direct royal interference in its affairs. Usually kings of England contented themselves with approving the appointments of priors, restricting their movements outside the realm, and exacting loans and taxation, but at times their interventions were more novel and dramatic. Edward III, Edward IV, and Henry VIII proved especially vigorous in their defence and extension of royal claims over the order. Edward III extracted oaths of allegiance from priors of England, bullied the order into accepting his candidates as brethren,93 and seized responsions when the convent threatened the supremacy of the English prior over Torphichen. Edward IV, as we will see, attempted to install his own candidates in the priory, beheaded a legitimately elected prior for taking the field against him at Tewkesbury, and hindered another from proceeding to the relief of Rhodes after the Ottoman siege of 1480. Still more dramatically, Henry VIII confiscated the Hospital’s estates and proposed to divert its resources to the defence of Calais in 1527–8, executed two of its brethren for loose talk overseas, and finally dissolved it in 1540. The relations of kings of Scotland and royal lieutenants in Ireland with the order might be equally turbulent. James IV of Scotland granted Torphichen to his secretary in 1512, while James Butler Earl of Ormond imprisoned prior Thomas FitzGerald and confiscated his assets in 1440. Yet, despite the temptations to interference provided by the Hospital’s wealth and its international allegiances most rulers continued to allow its export of men and money, the latter in the form of letters of exchange, to the eastern Mediterranean. A cynic might remark that this was merely a way in which they could support a cause to which they paid lip-service at no cost to themselves, but there may be more to it than that. The defence and expansion of Christendom might increasingly be subordinated to other concerns but it remained a long-term goal of all catholic governments, which alternated between cynicism, realism, and idealism when considering crusading issues. As kings, rulers might object to their subjects leaving the realm to combat the Turks, but as knights they might be expected to approve of such activities, at least when they themselves were not at war. The Hospital also had significant ties with the wider political community. Some brethren were bound to magnates by ties of clientage or service, and most had a close relationship with members of the gentry, for whom the Hospital provided a berth for surplus sons and grants of estates and offices. Family connections with the order often extended over two or three generations and sometimes across centuries. Preceptors in mainland Britain might be significant figures in local society, maintaining ties with administrative elites and dispensing offices, lands, and liveries. Irish preceptors often played a local military role in addition. By the fifteenth century, most Hospitaller estates were leased, 92

Extents, 81–120; see below, 228–9.

93

CCR1343–6, 107.

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the beneficiaries ranging from yeomen to magnates. Around London, with the increase in the size of the Tudor court, pressure was put on the order for leases of plum estates like Hampton Court and Paris Garden. The requirements of hospitality established further ties between the order and court, and the Hospital’s shipment of monies and cloth overseas led it into relationships with Italian bankers and English merchants alike. Equally significant was the order’s spiritual and pastoral role.94 Although their primary function was to send men and money to the east, preceptories were religious houses in their own right, and shared the responsibility of all such establishments for maintaining divine service and hospitality. The order everywhere followed the liturgy of Jerusalem and its chapters-general further ordained that certain feasts and patrons were to be particularly commemorated. In addition, the order’s local houses might also erect chantries or altars in honour of saints fashionable in the regions in which they were situated. According to the wishes of their founders and patrons, some also maintained hospitals, such as those at Skirbeck in Lincolnshire and Kilteel in County Kildare, or choir schools. In parts of central and eastern Europe the order was made responsible for significant numbers of collegiate churches and concentrated its energies on these rather more than on the struggle in the east.95 A further dimension to Hospitaller spirituality was provided by its forty-odd houses of nuns, some of which, including its house at Minchin Buckland in Somerset, enjoyed considerable local support.96 But perhaps most striking of all was the order’s operation of a network of jurisdictional ‘peculiars’. Papal bulls had conveyed considerable spiritual and jurisdictional privileges and exemptions on the Hospital, including exemption from tithes and procurations, from the jurisdiction of all ordinaries and ecclesiastical authorities save the pope, and from excommunication and interdict. Exploiting these to the full, the Hospitallers had their own churches, courts, and cemeteries and were allowed to hold services in times of interdict, to bury felons and suicides, and to act as confessors for their servants and parishioners.97 Their tenants and those who made confraternity payments to the order had a right to share in many of these privileges, the extension of which to those who were neither tenants nor confratres was a recurring source of clerical complaint from the twelfth century onwards.98 Many of the laity, by contrast, evidently welcomed the 94

See below, Ch. 4. 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 brittanicae et hibernicae, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1733–7), iii. 618–9, 625–6, 724, 726. 95

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chance to be associated with the order: some thousands of persons in the British Isles must have been its confratres or consorores, while considerably smaller numbers sought burial in Hospitaller houses or left bequests to the order in their wills.99 The order had also been granted various privileges by the secular authorities. The English and Scottish crowns exempted it from most taxes and ‘feudal’ services, from local tolls, from the jurisdiction of the royal courts, and technically from military service.100 Yet some of these rights were being eroded or bypassed by the fourteenth century. In the domains of the king of England, for example, the Hospital was subjected to parliamentary taxation, while by the late thirteenth century regular military service was expected of the order’s brethren in Ireland, similar requirements being occasionally imposed on English and Scottish Hospitallers in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.101 Less clear is what significance the Hospital enjoyed in a local context by reason of its international role. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Hospital was certainly the only military-religious order whose houses in the British Isles still contributed to the defence of Christendom. Furthermore, in some senses it was also the last ‘British’ branch of the fully international orders founded in the twelfth century still to maintain full ties to its headquarters. In the domains of the English crown those houses directly subject to overseas mother-houses, the alien priories, had been nationalized or confiscated while others, such as the daughter-houses of the Cistercians, had been almost severed from their parents, becoming virtually exempt from overseas visitation and paying only nominal sums to headquarters.102 The friars largely retained their international character but, unlike the Hospital, did not send large sums of money overseas. That is not to say that the Hospital was immune to the pressures put on other international orders, or that it did not have to adapt to them. Nevertheless it retained its functions, organization, and priorities. It seems likely that its peculiar survival owed everything to its wider role. Had it not been engaged in the defence of Christendom there is no reason to think that the Hospital in the domains of the English crown would have been spared separation from its overseas mother-house, dominated as the latter was by Frenchmen until the mid-fifteenth century. But this begs a number of questions. There is considerable evidence that crusading, at least against non-Christians, was regarded by most of the late medieval population of Britain and Ireland as thoroughly respectable, but it is equally clear that fewer and fewer 99

See below, Ch. 4. Chew, ‘Priory’, 194–5. 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 of Ecclesiastical Property’, in N. Rogers (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century (Stamford, 1994), 19–41; R. Graham, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929). 100 101

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Introduction

persons born therein were personally involved in this struggle.103 In this context, it needs to be determined whether the continued residence of a contingent of ‘British’ brethren in the order’s central convent on Rhodes was merely an anachronism, a relic of earlier enthusiasms, or rather an expression of 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, of course, not merely of interest in the context of perceptions of the order’s role at home. Although not particularly numerous, the brethren of the English langue played a significant part in the order’s government and military activities. They were represented on its governing bodies, they held military, administrative, and judicial offices at headquarters, and they served in the order’s fortifications and galleys and in the household of its master. Most distinctively, the head of the langue, the turcopolier, commanded a force of locally recruited cavalry which rode around Rhodes checking on the alertness of those deputed to keep watch for enemy vessels, and most dramatically, the brethren of the langue commanded a sector of the walls where they fought and died in 1480 and 1522.104 Here, at least, the Hospital and its British-born brethren lived up to their self-representations in quite dramatic fashion. Yet at other times the order might be accused of idleness or vainglory and might have to defend its record before western princes, including kings of England and Scotland. Thus the order’s diplomacy, in which English Hospitallers played a significant role at times, also requires study as a link between its conventual and local operations. The chapters to follow will therefore deal with the activities of the British brethren both in the west and at their Mediterranean headquarters. They are broken down into three constituent areas. First, the order’s internal organization is considered. Chapter 2 looks at the Hospital’s organization and the conventual life of its brethren in England and Wales, and considers the admission and family background of brethren, the order’s career structure and the relationship between the prior of England and his brethren. It then moves on to the immediate context in which brethren operated—their conventual life, households and servants—before Chapter 3 analyses the administration of the order’s landed estates, the extent and sources of its income and the dispatch of responsions to Rhodes. Secondly, I examine the relationship between the Hospital and society in Britain and Ireland. In Chapter 4, I will discuss how the order has been seen in wider historiographical treatments of crusading, and assess its development in the light of recent scholarship on the place of the religious orders in late medieval British society. The relations between the Hospitallers and the general populace and clergy are also examined in the light of the order’s crusading role, its extension of spiritual privileges to communities and individuals, and its 103 104

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

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dealings with its tenants. It is argued in Chapters 5 to 7 that the Hospital’s relationship with the governing authorities of the British Isles was by far the most important of these interactions. I will consider the order’s place in national polities, and the tensions arising between kings and priors. Among the subjects discussed in this context are the employment of priors of England and Ireland as government servants, the role of the priory during domestic political upheavals, and the extent of government interference in prioral elections and in other appointments in the order’s gift. Thirdly, in Chapter 8, I will discuss the place of the English langue in the life of the convent, with particular attention being given to the langue as a body, to the varieties of conventual service which British members of the order performed, 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 brief final chapter looks at the careers of the remaining and former Hospitallers in Malta and England in the years after the dissolution and at the restoration of the priory in 1557–8, while appendices list dignitaries of the order, its British and Irish members active between 1460 and 1565, and its income from its English 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 over a substantial period has yet been written. A few general histories of the English or British Hospitallers exist, but most have been populist works produced by persons connected with the order in some way. Until the years after the Second World War, there was little academic interest in the order in the English-speaking world. Partly this is because there was no good general history of the Hospital covering the later Middle Ages that might have provided a framework in which to set the activities of its ‘British’ brethren. While Hospitaller history between 1310 and 1421 had been narrated by Joseph Delaville le Roulx in 1913, no reliable and comprehensive institutional history of the order in the years between 1421 and 1522 was published until 2001.105 British scholars, moreover, were discouraged from study of the order’s archives by J. M. Kemble’s statement that there were but few documents in the order’s archives on Malta which related to its English langue, its chancery registers being ‘unrewarding’ in this respect.106 By 1914 the Maltese, at least, knew better, but the researches of scholars such as Mifsud, Galea, Scicluna, and Vizzari de Sannazaro, naturally enough, 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. 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 English members of the order is preserved’. 107 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue; J. Galea ‘Henry VIII and the Order of St. John’, Journal of the Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., 12 (1949), 59–69; BDVTE; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’. 106

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the 1950s that extra-Mediterranean scholars such as Lionel Butler and Charles Tipton displayed much interest in the langue. Like some of his predecessors as librarians at St John’s Gate, Butler collected considerable material without publishing very much, but Tipton was able to complete a thesis and several articles covering the history of the langue between 1378 and 1409 before ceasing production in 1970.108 Since then useful studies of individual priors based on both English and Maltese materials have been published by Peter Field, Pamela Willis, and Anthony Gross, while Anthony Luttrell has looked at the English contributions to the construction of Bodrum and Jurgen Sarnowsky has examined the relationship between kings and priors of England between 1450 and 1500.109 If Tipton and Sarnowsky have produced competent narratives of fairly substantial periods, their failure to make substantial use of English manuscript materials has rendered their treatments less complete, than they might have been, and they concentrate, in any case, on the relationship between the order and the English crown to the neglect of its other activities in Britain and Ireland. Of these, only one—the administration of the order’s estates—has been the subject of substantial study. A number of histories of individual Hospitaller houses in Britain and Ireland have appeared, the best of them based on locally produced archival materials110 and the most wide-ranging being the works of William Rees of Michael Gervers and latterly of Barney Sloane and Gordon Malcolm. Rees’s study is essentially an examination of the commanderies of Slebech, Halston, and Dinmore, based on considerable knowledge of English and Welsh sources, but demonstrating little awareness of the order’s wider role.111 Michael Gervers’s work on the Hospitaller cartulary of 1442 is much more impressive. Besides editing the sections of the 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 Hospitallers 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 Robert Malory, 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 St John’, SJHSP 2 (1990), 30–7; A. Gross, The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue 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 in Turkey: 1407–1437’, MO ii. 163–72; J. Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors: The Hospitaller Priory of England in the Later Fifteenth Century’, MMR 83–102. 110 See in particular Hugo, Mynchin Buckland; id., The History of Eagle, in the County of Lincolnshire, a Commandery of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem (London, 1876); E. Hermitage Day, ‘The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Dinmore, Western Hereford’, OSJHP 3 (1930); E. Puddy, A Short History of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Norfolk (Dereham, 1961); E. Gooder, Temple Balsall: From Hospitallers to a Caring Community, 1322 to Modern Times (Chichester, 1999); S. Thurley, Hampton Court: A Social and Architectural History (London, 2003). 111 Rees, Wales.

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and administration of the Hospital’s landed estate, and the development of its archival organization. His work provides a great body of material against which to measure the order’s estate management in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His work is both enriched and complemented by the exceptionally thorough and highly stimulating archaeological examination of the prioral headquarters at Clerkenwell recently published by Drs Sloane and Malcolm under the auspices of the Museum of London. This volume reveals the priory to have had the character of a palace as much as that of a religious house, and makes apparent the considerable size and sophistication of the architectural elements which formerly populated the site.112 Yet only one study, the Scottish History Society’s 1982 volume on the Hospital in Scotland, attempts to synthesize both local and Maltese archival material to examine any significant proportion of the Hospitallers’ post-1409 ‘British’ history in real depth. This collection of previously unprinted sources draws together a wide range of material, prefaced by a useful study of the order’s history and administration in Scotland, and the activities of its brethren in England, Rhodes, and Malta.113 A catalogue of documents relating to the order’s Scottish brethren in the order’s archives in Malta is appended. The present volume attempts to take account of a similar range of materials. The most important sources for the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history of the order of St John in Britain and Ireland are those produced by the Hospitallers themselves. The order’s archives, housed in the National Library of Malta, are divided into seventeen classes of document, of which three have been used extensively in preparing this study. These are the Libri Conciliorum (minute books of the order’s council), Libri Bullarum (registers of magistral and conventual bulls), and proceedings of chapters-general. The Libri Conciliorum, which survive from 1459, note the elections of the chief dignitaries of the English langue, the squabbles of its brethren over seniority and appointments, the punishment of their breaches of discipline, and their tenure of conventual offices and military commands. Light is shed, too, on the prerogatives and functions of the turcopolier and on the relationships between the Scottish and Irish-born brethren and their more numerous English counterparts.114 The Libri Bullarum, which cover most of the period after 1399, are still more valuable, recording the resolution of the debates noted in the books of the council and a great many less controversial decisions 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. John in 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 foliations when referring to the documents in the Maltese archives.

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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 the order’s English revenues made out to Hospitallers and merchants, and the instructions issued to ambassadors going to Westminster and Edinburgh.115 The third great class of the order’s medieval chancery documents, the proceedings of its chapters-general, record the work of most of the meetings held between 1454 and 1565, and besides more generally applicable legislation, include decisions on many of the disputes involving British brethren referred to chapter by the master and council.116 Other pertinent material is scattered elsewhere in the archives, particularly in section I, the miscellaneous original documents comprising which include Henry VIII’s 1537 charter to the order, a collection of letters from the same monarch to grand master L’Isle Adam dating from 1524 to 1534, the accounts of the English auberge in Viterbo from 1525 to 1527, and most significantly the Ricette d’Inghilterre, the accounts presented by receivers of the common treasury in England to the chief financial officers in convent between 1520 and 1536.117 These not only provide a detailed account of the responsions paid and arrears owing from the whole of the British Isles, but also list the expenses incurred by receivers and their deputies in the exercise of their officers, and illustrate the exchange operations in which the English brethren were involved.118 The most important documents relating solely to the English langue to be found elsewhere in the archives are the 1338 extent of its possessions, income, and outgoings in England and Wales and the minute book of the proceedings of the English langue between 1523 and 1567, both of 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 of comparison against which to set later developments, but the minute book of the langue furnishes a great deal of evidence on the workings and competence of that body, on the interactions between its brethren, and on their military service. Along with the products of the order’s conventual chancery, a number of documents produced in Hospitaller houses in Britain and Ireland also survive. Of these the most substantial and important for the period covered by this study are the registers of the grants of provincial chapters held in England between 1492 and 1539.120 These provide evidence of the farming out of the order’s estates, parish churches, and confraternity collections in 115

AOM316 et seq.; discussed in Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 11–13. AOM282–8. 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. 116 117

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England and Wales,121 besides recording grants of corrodies, chaplaincies, and offices to the order’s servants and associates, manumissions of servile tenants, and short-term leases of the commanderies of those brethren resident in or on their way to convent. They thus illustrate not merely the organization of the order’s estates and the movements of its brethren but also its connections with English and Welsh society. The evidence they provide can usefully be set against the 1338 extent, the 1442 cartulary, and the surviving fifteenth- and sixteenth-century estate documents and court rolls of Hospitaller commanderies and manors, only a selection of which have been utilized in this study.122 But the lease books are not comprehensive guides to the order’s landholdings or their administration. The closest we have to such are the crown’s great survey of the church’s holdings in England and Wales, the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, the profit and loss accounts of former Hospitaller estates produced by the ministers of the English crown from 1540–1, and the crown surveys of former Irish monastic estates in Ireland of the same period.123 None of these is quite comprehensive, but the Ministers’ Accounts and crown surveys, in particular, provide a wide variety of information about the running of most of the order’s estates, and not simply those leased out by its provincial chapters. A similar, internally produced extent of the order’s estates in Scotland was commissioned by the preceptor of Torphichen, Walter Lindsay, in 1539.124 A miscellany of other documents produced by the Hospital also survives in repositories 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 its relationship with wider society in Britain and Ireland, derives from sources produced by other corporations. The most significant ‘corporate’ sources are the chancery, legal, parliamentary, and exchequer records of the English and Scottish crowns, bishops’ registers, and the materials in Venice and Rome calendared by HMSO, all of which have been used herein. Of these, the chief runs of royal grants and acts in chancery, council, and parliament have of course been calendared, but legal records have, by and large, not been, and recourse has therefore been had to the unpublished records of the English 121

For similar developments in Scotland, see Scotland, lxii–lxiv. 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, MS Rawlinson 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 Printed in 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, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1991), ii. 922–5. 122

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courts of chancery, star chamber, and requests. If estate records, particularly grants of leases, present a generally formal picture of the relationship between the order and its tenants, surviving legal documents demonstrate what might happen if this should break down, and illustrate the response the order adopted when faced with recalcitrant tenants who damaged its property or refused to vacate their leases. As might be expected, the expansion of the administrative activity of both ‘British’ crowns, particularly the English, in the period covered by this study resulted in increasingly rich and informative documentation of all the order’s activities. Most significantly, an increasing concern to retain correspondence and personal papers of interest to the state resulted in a more substantial body of diplomatic and other correspondence between both the order and its members and the English and Scottish crowns surviving from the sixteenth than from any earlier century. These illustrate some matters, such as the internal tensions and rivalries obtaining between members of the English langue in the 1530s, very fully.126 Fifteenth-century correspondence concerning the order is much less substantial, but all the main collections of family papers surviving from England, with the exception of the Armburgh papers, contain items relating to the Hospital, as of course does the surviving correspondence of the English and Scottish crowns. Taken together with bishops’ registers, proceedings of church councils, and chronicles, private correspondence provides important information about both the order’s relationship with society and its activities in the public sphere. Where correspondence is largely lacking, as in Ireland, the importance of the records of the state and of the episcopacy becomes still more crucial. These materials make possible the study of the Hospitallers of the English langue in some depth. Their individual wealth, status, and mixture of religious profession and military occupation made them exceptional among members of religious orders in late medieval Britain and Ireland. They could, moreover, be seen in various guises. Their continued commitment to their military functions was exceptional in a ‘British’ context, and the extent of their financial and institutional attachment to their overseas motherhouse was hardly less remarkable. They certainly represented themselves as active campaigners against the infidel, but they also performed a number of functions only tangentially related to their military operations, and which probably affected perceptions of them. Thus governments might see them in terms of the services they could perform on royal behalf, while to the clergy they might represent an intrusion into their pastoral care for the laity, and to the populace they were important as a reservoir of spiritual and temporal privilege, or as landowners and employers. This work will attempt to examine all of these roles, and to hold them, as the Hospitallers tried to do, in balance. 126 Of particular importance is BL MS Cotton Otho C.ix, a collection of correspondence relating chiefly to the order of St John and dating from 1510 to 1540.

CHAPT ER TWO

The Hospital in England and Wales, c.1460–1540: The Prior, his Brethren, and Conventual Life By the time Paschal II placed it under papal protection in 1113, the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem was already planning to establish or acquire subsidiary xenodochia in Italy and southern France.1 Although these establishments on the pilgrim routes to Jerusalem were to serve as an extension of the Hospital’s charitable functions, the accordance of papal protection and recognition to the nascent order prompted further grants of lands, rents, and properties throughout Latin Christendom, a process intensified by the order’s increasing prominence in the defence of the Holy Land after the second crusade. By confirming the subjugation of the Hospital’s overseas territories to the mother-house in Jerusalem, the bull of 1113 and the privileges which followed it also helped pave the way for the development of a centralized international order whose houses in western Europe were geared towards providing it with men, money, food, and clothing for the provision of hospitality to sick pilgrims and the defence of the Latin East. By the thirteenth century a network of regional, priories and subordinate local preceptories had been established to supply the convent in the Holy Land with these necessities, a function it continued to fulfil for hundreds of years to come. Yet the order’s local houses were not merely adjuncts to its central convent in the east. They were also religious houses with resident brethren and a spiritual and liturgical life of their own, with some influence on local political and ecclesiastical affairs and with a close relationship with the laity, to whom they provided spiritual services such as confession, marriage, and burial outside the constraints of the parochial system. The following chapter will examine these characteristics, concentrating first on the order’s brethren and their recruitment, families, and career structure, before looking at their conventual 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.

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The Prior and his Brethren

Brethren

The professed brethren of the Hospital were divided into knights, chaplains, and sergeants, whether sergeants-at-arms or sergeants-at-office.2 There were also Hospitaller nuns, who in the priory of England had been gathered in one house, Minchin Buckland in Somerset, since 1180, but whose activities will not be much considered here.3 Among the brethren, chaplains had originally enjoyed precedence but had been ousted from this by the knights in the 1230s.4 The ceremony for the reception of a brother of any class into the order was essentially the same as it had been in the twelfth century, although some refinements had been added. The candidate appeared before a chapter of the order shriven and wearing a white gown to show himself free and presented himself before the altar, a burning candle in his hand signifying the fire of charitable love. He then heard mass, received the eucharist, and asked the receiving brother to admit him to the company of the Hospital. The receiving brother underlined the privileges and hardships involved in membership and stressed the impediments to reception: a prior vow to another ‘religion’, a marital contract, grave debts to a third party or servile status. If the candidate professed himself free from these he then swore the three ‘substantial’ vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He further promised to be a ‘slave of our lords the sick poor’ and to uphold the Catholic faith in accordance with the order’s Hospitaller and military traditions. In return he was promised bread, water, humble clothing, and the inclusion of his parents and 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 profound changes which had occurred since the twelfth century in the order’s own ethos and those of the societies in which it operated were reflected in a host of regulations surrounding the entry of brethren, especially knight-brethren. Just as secular knighthood was increasingly conferred only on candidates of gentle family and legitimate birth, in 1262 the Hospital established that no brother was to be knighted unless he was of knightly family, a stipulation followed eight years later by the requirement that knights should be born of legitimately married parents, unless they were the sons of counts or of greater nobility.6 In the fifteenth century these regulations were interpreted 2

Stabilimenta ‘De receptione fratrum’, ii. 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 ge´ne´ral de l’ordre des hospitaliers de S. Jean de Je´rusalem, ed. J. Delaville le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906), no. 2213 (Usances) #121; Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, i, ‘consuetudo’. 6 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, iv, vii (Statutes of Hugh Revel). 3

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to mean that both parents of brother knights were to be ‘gentlemanly’ in name and arms.7 Chaplains and sergeants merely had to be legitimately and freely born, although nuns were to have gentle parents.8 Not only were entry conditions tightened: from the fourteenth century the reception of brethren was also subjected to closer central control. Originally a candidate had been able to present himself before any chapter meeting in any Hospitaller house and be received. While this arrangement may have been suitable for the provision of the large numbers of chaplains and sergeants-at-office required by the order’s charitable establishments in Palestine and for the rapid recruitment of military brethren to replace the numerous casualties suffered in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was no longer appropriate in the years after the conquest of Rhodes, when losses were less dramatic and the order suffered from severe financial difficulties. In such circumstances the appearance of large numbers of brethren from the west might be unwelcome, so it was decided that no officer or brother of the order was to receive a brother or donat without express magistral licence, unless there was a local shortage of brother chaplains or sergeants-at-office.9 The reception of brethren remained subject to magistral licence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the surviving enrolments of licences to English knights to receive brethren into the order testify. Those granted such permissions were to note the candidate’s name and date of reception and affix their seals lest more than the designated number be admitted.10 Statutes were also passed to ensure the suitability of candidates. Those who knowingly received a religious of another order, a murderer, or someone whose previous life had been ‘abominable’ were to be expelled from the Hospital and priors, preceptors, and conventual brethren who admitted an unworthy candidate into knighthood were to be deprived respectively of a prioral camera (estate), a preceptory, or prospects of promotion. The same penalties were to be inflicted on those who testified inaccurately to the worth of a candidate.11 In addition, during the mastership of Antoni Fluvia´, the system of requiring proofs of nobility from those intending to become knight-brethren was instituted. Such men were henceforth to come before the annual provincial chapter of their local priory, where information would be presented concerning their origin, gentility, manners, disposition, and 7

Ibid., iv. Ibid., i (‘consuetudo’), v (Statute of Hugh Revel). Ibid., ‘De receptione fratrum’, viiii (Statute of He´lion de Villeneuve, 1319–46). The Hospital had been passing measures to limit recruitment since 1292. A. Forey, ‘Recruitment to the Military Orders (Twelfth to Mid-Fourteenth Centuries)’, in id., Military Orders and Crusades, 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 fratrum’, 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. 8 9

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health in mind and body.12 By the 1480s, however, these provisions were indifferently enforced, a statute of Pierre d’Aubusson noting that examination of the gentility and suitability of knights was rarely made, if ever. Accordingly it was enacted that candidates for knighthood were to prove their sufficiency within two years of their reception by provincial chapter and were to present such proofs within the same term to the master and council ordinary in convent.13 For seven years thereafter these were to be subject to challenge by such brethren as might object to their legitimacy.14 Those who failed to present sufficient proofs within two years were never to rise above the grade of sergeant-at-office.15 This statute remained in force throughout the remaining period of the order’s existence in Britain and Ireland. A final requirement for reception was sufficient age. In 1433 it was laid down that no brother was to be received under the age of 14 and that those received 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 they were 18.16 In 1504 it was further ordained that brethren received in the western priories should be at least 18.17 Similarly, brother chaplains were not to be received until they had served the order for a year and were subject to the usual canonical restrictions on the age at which they could be ordained.18 In 1338 there were 113 or more professed brethren subject to the priory in England, Wales, and Scotland and one more in France.19 They lived in fifty houses, of which forty-two were bajuliae subject to a preceptor, and eight 12 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, xvi (Statute of Fluvia´); Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 198. In 1452 the langue of Italy insisted that a prospective knight provide written testimony of his suitability from the prior of Pisa, another named brother and several, more of the priory’s brethren within a year. S. Fiorini and A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Italian Hospitallers at Rhodes, 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 loco militis’ and John Baruwe, who appears ‘in loco capellani’ were corrodians rather than professed brethren, while Henry of Buckston, Alan Macy, and John de Thame, all of whom Kemble lists twice, should only appear once. It is also unclear whether Walter Launcelyn, who was described as 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 among his 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 Diluge in 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.

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were camerae governed by a custos.20 Most houses had between one and three resident brethren, the exceptions being Clerkenwell, where there were seven, Buckland, with six, and Chippenham, where four Hospitallers cared for six or seven of their sick brethren in a small hospital.21 Fifty Hospitaller nuns dwelt at the priory of Buckland in addition to the brethren at the preceptory there.22 In 1338 chaplains and sergeants played a full part in both conventual life and administration. Chaplains were about as numerous as brother knights, while sergeants outnumbered both.23 Seventeen sergeants and six chaplains held bajuliae.24 By the late fifteenth century this situation had greatly altered. Professed sergeants, although still existing in small numbers in continental Europe and on Rhodes,25 had disappeared completely in the priory of England. While an English brother was licensed to receive two brother sergeants in 1439, and an agreement of 1440–1 envisaged provision being made for professed sergeants or chaplains in the small, priorally held preceptories of Hogshaw, Greenham, Maltby, and Poling, no reference to a ‘British’ brother sergeant can be found in the order’s records between 1460 and 1560.26 Professed chaplains did not fare much better. Although there were still a number resident at Clerkenwell in the early fifteenth century and the 1460s,27 and the conventual church there continued to be under the jurisdiction of a professed subprior until the Dissolution, no English, Scottish, or Welsh preceptory was granted to a brother chaplain after 1460, except perhaps Clerkenwell, where in the 1440s the subprior held the title of preceptor but was in effect a salaried officer of the prior without control of the revenues of the 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 the preceptor of Dinmore, who may not have resided at the smaller house, and of Upleadon, under the custos Robert Cort. This was probably the same man as the preceptor of Eagle and Temple Brewer, 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 figures of 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 of sergeants, 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 Edward III, rather than supporting secular clergy and two or three professed brethren. In 1469 the subprior and two brother chaplains were among the brethren presenting John Langstrother to the 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.

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attendance lists survive between 1492 and 1529, save for an assembly of 1515, at which Robert Parapart, the subprior, and John Blome, brother chaplain, were present, probably in order to render the gathering quorate.29 References to professed chaplains are indeed so scarce that it is unlikely that there were ever more than about six or seven residing in England at any time after c.1460, the last magistral licence to admit English brother chaplains into 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 as were its preceptory chapels,32 with the possible exception of Buckland, leases of which specified that two of five chaplains to be found by the lessee were to be ‘de cruce’.33 Even at Clerkenwell, only one of the priests or chaplains appointed to serve and sing in the church of St John between 1492 and 1526 was described as ‘brother’.34 Although some of the chaplains appointed to offices at Clerkenwell were probably later professed, priests in the order’s service, denied promotion to preceptories, may generally have avoided taking vows which would no longer enhance their career prospects.35 There were exceptions. John Mablestone was clearly marked out for advancement from early in his career, and was already a brother when he was ordained priest in 1510. He received the order’s wealthy benefice of Ludgershall in 1511 and was dispatched shortly afterwards to Bologna, where he took doctorates in each law later in the same decade.36 His absence from 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 of the 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 Bekley who died as rector of the order’s benefice of Knolton in 1487, but it is uncertain whether either of these was a Hospitaller rather than a regular of another order. 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), ii, no. 119; i, no. 370. 32 The registers of the order’s provincial chapters note numerous appointments of preceptory chaplains. John Lyndesey, appointed chaplain of Maltby in 1492, was the only professed recipient 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 Hospitaller prioress of Buckland, Joan Coffyn, and a ‘Freere Thomas Coort’ witnessed the will of the farmer 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 the habit’. With the decline in population and decrease in admissions to religious houses after the Black Death, recruitment difficulties probably increased. In 1531 the order was having trouble recruiting 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 University Library Manuscript Microfilm 8271); A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford A.D.1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), 688; An Episcopal Court Book of the Diocese of Lincoln 1514–1520, ed. M. Bowker, Lincoln Record Society, 61 (Lincoln, 1967), 25.

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1448, which allowed the prior of England to retain eight chaplains in his own service.37 Yet he does not appear as ‘brother chaplain’ or ‘brother priest’ in the order’s internal documents until 1524.38 He was appointed chancellor of the priory in 1526, and was subprior by the 1530s, a position he retained until the dissolution.39 But in 1540 only four non-knights, including Mablestone, were granted a pension, and it is not certain that the master of the Temple, William Armistead, and his subordinate chaplains were also professed. A pension had also been granted to the chaplain of the nuns at Buckland, brother William Mawdesley, in 1539.40 Despite the Hospital’s general failure to attract brother chaplains, it was happy to allow members of other orders to enter its ranks, and may even have poached them. Two outstanding defectors were John Tynemouth, a Franciscan doctor of theology admitted to the Hospital without licence from his superiors in 1506,41 and Philip Underwood, who had been in charge of the finances of the Charterhouse for some years and was received as a confrater in 1514.42 Tynemouth was appointed rector of Ludgershall in 1506, and prebendary of Blewbury, perhaps the most important benefice in the order’s gift, in 1511.43 Yet if some gifted men were attracted to the order’s service, others were lost. A Hospitaller who became a suffragan bishop, William Bachelor,44 was so busy on diocesan affairs that it is unlikely that he did his order, which had presumably trained and educated him, much service. Although it was clearly important to the Hospital that its subprior and perhaps some of its chief benefice holders should be professed and educated, it is often difficult to distinguish its clerical brethren from the priests and chaplains who staffed its appropriated churches and commandery chapels.45 Far more information survives about the order’s knights, a majority among its brethren from at least the 1370s.46 Recruitment of brother knights was largely governed by the requirements of the central convent rather than requests for admittance in England. In accordance with the statutes most 37

Episcopal Court Book, ed. Bowker, 25; CPL x. 189. 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 Chichester diocese. Another supposed Hospitaller bishop, Thomas Cornish, was associated rather with the hospital of St John Baptist in Wells. HBC 286; J. A. F. Thomson, ‘Richard Tollet and Thomas Cornish: Two West Country Early Tudor Churchmen’, Southern History, 19 (1997), 61–73, at 67. 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 remainder were probably priests. Tipton, ‘English Langue’, 122–8. 38

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knight-brethren must have received the habit during a provincial chapter, following which they were dispatched to the convent. Additionally, magistral licences were occasionally granted to senior brethren to admit specified numbers of knights or chaplains into the order. Between 1460 and 1511 faculties to receive sixty-six knights and three chaplains into the priories of England and Ireland were enrolled in the Libri Bullarum.47 The reasons for their issue are rarely specified but they probably served both as rewards for prominent knights and as a means of providing manpower quickly. In December 1471, for example, a licence to William Tornay to admit six knights was issued at the request of the English brethren in convent, who were concerned at their low numbers at a time when the order was heavily committed to war against the Turks. Those received were to be dispatched to Rhodes with the first safe passage.48 At other times brethren might be admitted by request. Thus in February 1467 Robert Botill was empowered to 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 suitability of Robert Stewart, the nephew of the seigneur d’Aubigny, whose admission was being urged by his uncle and the duke of Nemours.49 Such commissions insisted that the receiving brother establish the suitability of the candidate before a provincial chapter before knighting him, conferring the habit on him and, with the licence of his superior, dispatching him to the convent. When the probationary knight reached headquarters he would be admitted into the English langue on condition that his proofs follow within two years.50 Brethren who attempted to bypass these procedures, such as Robert Pemberton in 1498 and Humphrey Bevercotes in 1505, were told to arrange to have their proofs examined before a provincial chapter like their fellows.51 Although challenges were issued to probationary brethren to prove their age, and hence their eligibility for the ancienitas (seniority) necessary to seek promotion, in 1436, 1474, and 1487,52 and one prospective brother, Thomas Waring, was rejected by the langue as physically invalid and of bad character, objections to the suitability of prospective brethren for knighthood 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 Be´raud Stewart, was serving as governor of Calabria for Louis XII. Nemours was the commander of the French forces in southern Italy, where Robert was to be received into the order. G. E. Cockayne (ed.), Complete Peerage, 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.

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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 in October 1528.54 Waring, indeed, seems to have been the only Englishman whose proofs were so irregular that he was permanently denied entry, although the turcopolier Clement West claimed that his admission had been blocked by another senior knight-brother, Giles Russell, whose cousin Anthony would have held the same ancienitas as Waring had he been admitted.55 With the possible exception of Bevercotes, who, ‘impelled by the devotion he felt for the Jerusalemite order’, arrived in Rhodes without prior admission in England,56 it is difficult to say whether probationary knights were motivated to join the order by a genuine vocation or by the rather contradictory enticements of military adventure and the subsequent attainment of a comfortable living in England. What can be stated with confidence is that many were encouraged by existing family connections with the order. Incidental references in the order’s internal documents, heralds’ visitations, and family pedigrees prove a large number of family relationships between members of the order and hint at many more. Among at least 185 knight-brethren active in the priory of England between 1460 and 1559 no less than seventy-nine shared a surname with one or other of their fellows,57 while a fair proportion of others came from families that had provided the Hospital with brethren in the relatively recent past, such as the Malorys, Multons, and Wests. Additionally, several more knights appear to have been related to a sister or professed chaplain of the order58 and close ties of kinship existed between a number of ‘Hospitaller’ families. When the order’s chief tenants and officers are thrown into the equation sympathy for Field’s statement that ‘the late medieval English Hospitallers always arouse suspicions of nepotism’ threatens to become overwhelming.59 The exact nature of the family relationships between members of the order is often unclear. Being celibate and ideally leaving no offspring, professed Hospitallers seem frequently to have been omitted from the family pedigrees given to Heralds, and being required to pass on their effects to the 53

AOM86, fos. 11r, 55r. Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 28–9. 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, who I think were one and the same, and Robert and Alexander Stewart, as it is not certain that either of them actually entered the order. Also excluded are James Sandilands junior, who I believe is identical with John James Sandilands; John Shelley and Thomas Waring. 58 Joan Babington, Thomasina Huntington, and Juliana Kendal all seem likely to have been relations of Hospitaller knights, as does the professed chaplain Thomas Green. See Appendix VII. 59 Field, ‘Robert Malory’, 258. 54

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order, they left no wills either. Where they occur in Heralds’ visitations, the evidence is sometimes in conflict with the order’s internal documents, in which nepos appears to have been used to denote any younger relative. Thus while Lancelot Docwra appears in later visitation records as the son of Robert Docwra of Kirkby Kendall, Westmorland, and the third cousin of Thomas Docwra, the prior of England, in documents emanating from Rhodes and Clerkenwell he occurs as the prior’s nepos.60 The prior’s closeness to both branches of the family may help resolve the matter, as it seems possible that Lancelot, like other Westmoreland Docwras, was brought up in Thomas’s household.61 Similar considerations arise when one examines the family relationships between the four Babington knight-brethren. The 1569 visitation of Nottinghamshire states that John I (d. 1533) was a member of the branch of the family seated at Dethick in Nottinghamshire, a contention borne out by family wills and other evidence.62 Although his younger contemporaries John (junior) and Philip are considered to be members of the Devon branch of the family in the visitation, the order’s archives have John junior as John senior’s nepos.63 Examination of the visitation and family records, however, led G. T. Clark to reject the younger knights as members of the Derbyshire branch and assign them to Devon along with the fourth knight, James.64 Despite such difficulties a number of kinship ties within and between families connected with the order can be identified with confidence. Without implying that such extended ‘Hospitaller’ families were typical, it may be instructive to discuss three groupings involving some of the order’s more prominent knights. The most significant of these was that centred on the Weston family. The Westons themselves produced four Hospitallers in the fifteenth century—Thomas (d. 1456), John (d. 1489), William senior 60 The Visitations of Hertfordshire made by Robert Cooke, Esq., Clarencieux, in 1572, and Sir Richard St. George, Kt., Clarencieux, in 1634, with Hertfordshire Pedigrees from Harleian MSS. 6147 and 1546, ed. W. C. Metcalfe, HSP, 22 (London, 1886), 139; The Visitation of Cambridgeshire made in Ao (1575), continued and enlarged wth the Vissitation of the Same County made by Henery St George, Richmond-Herald, Marshall and Deputy to Willm. Camden, 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 last source describes Lancelot as Thomas’s fraternal nephew. 61 For example, John Docwra, son and heir of Thomas Docwra of Kirkby Kendall, was granted a messuage and stable just outside the priory gatehouse in 1524 and a corrody in the same 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 Many Other Descents of the Same County, ed. G. W. Marshall, HSP, 4 (London, 1871), 152; North Country 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 the order’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.

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(d. c.1483–6), and William junior (d. 1540).65 Thomas Weston was probably the uncle of John and William senior, who were in turn uncles of William junior. All of these men were long-serving preceptors and John and William junior became turcopoliers and priors of England. Additionally the family was related to at least three other Hospitaller families. The maternal uncle of John and William Weston was the turcopolier William Dawney (d. 1468),66 who may himself have been related to the Dalison and Green families which produced six or seven Hospitallers between them after 1450, and through them to the Docwras.67 Moreover, in 1475 William Weston senior was described by the order’s chancery as the ‘germanus’ of John Botill, the preceptor of Quenington, and thus was also presumably a relative of Robert Botill, the prior of England between 1440 and 1468.68 Finally, the son of William Weston junior’s sister Mabel, Thomas Dingley, became a brother knight in 1526.69 A second network was built up between five or more families between the 1460s and 1540s. These were the Lincolnshire families of Sheffield,70 Sutton, Upton, and Coppledike, the baronial family of Sutton, Lords Dudley, and possibly the Grantham and Barnaby families. The Sheffields had produced one Hospitaller knight, Bryan, by 1463. Another, Thomas, the second son of Sir Robert Sheffield, entered the order in the 1480s or 1490s and became receiver of the priory of England, bailiff of Eagle, and magistral seneschal before his death in 1524.71 The Hospitaller impulse, if it can be so termed, then passed via Thomas Sheffield’s sister Margaret, who married Hamon Sutton of Burton-by-Lincoln, to her son John and daughter Margaret.72 John Sutton became a Hospitaller preceptor and receiver of the priory 65 Thomas Weston 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 Thomas Benolte, Clarenceux King of Arms; 1572 by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms; and 1623 by Samuel Thompson, Windsor Herald and Augustin Vincent, Rouge Croix Pursuivant, Marshals 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 described shortly after Dawney’s death as his consanguineus. However, it is not at all clear that this Green was related to the Hospitallers Thomas and James, or that either he or they were related to Thomas Docwra’s mother, a daughter of Thomas Green of Gressingham, Lancashire. The Visitation of Yorkshire in the Years 1563 and 1564, made by William Flower, Esquire, Norroy King of Arms, ed. C. Best Norcliffe, HSP, 16 (London, 1881), 94; AOM377, fo. 249r; Visitations of 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 daughter of Alexander Laund. 71 AOM374, fo. 139r–v; S. T. Bindoff, (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 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.

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like his uncle, while Margaret married first William Coppledike of Harrington and later became the second wife of Nicholas Upton of Northolme-byWainfleet.73 Both her own son Thomas Coppledike and her stepson Nicholas Upton became Hospitallers.74 It is also probable that links with the Lincolnshire Suttons prompted George Dudley alias Sutton, the son of John Lord Dudley, to join the order, as his paternal aunt had married John Sutton’s brother Robert. John Sutton, Thomas Coppledike, and Nicholas Upton were all still alive when Dudley set off for Malta in 1545, and Upton was there to receive him.75 Sisters of John Sutton also married into the Barnaby and Grantham families, although it is unclear whether these were the same branches that produced knights of the order in the 1520s.76 Similarly close relations existed between the Kendal, Tonge, and probably Langstrother families. The Tonges produced three knight-brethren in the fifteenth century, William (d. after 1446), Robert (d. 1481), and John (d. 1510), all of whom held preceptories.77 Although the relationship between the Tonges themselves has not yet been determined, John Tonge was the nephew of John Kendal, the prior of England between 1489 and 1501.78 Kendal in turn was possibly related to the Langstrother brothers, who successively held the bailiwick of Eagle for over twenty years before John Langstrother became prior in 1469. John Langstrother bequeathed certain goods to Kendal on his death in 1471,79 and the two families, who both came 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. RileySmith, 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 Willoughton by 1440, when he was granted the preceptory of Swingfield in addition. Shortly after this he swapped Willoughton for Slebech. In the 1440s he was the receiver of the priory of England, 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 his death ten years later. John Tonge was appointed preceptor of Ribston by magistral grace in 1489, of Mount St John by cabimentum in 1494 and of Carbrooke, probably by prioral grace, in 1498 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 also acted 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 the Langstrother brothers’ origin can be more certainly ascribed to Crosthwaite. A. Sutton, ‘John Kendale: 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).

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Clippesbys of Norfolk.81 A further link, although seemingly not a blood connection, existed with the Plumpton clan. Sir Robert Plumpton was John Tonge’s godfather, Edward Plumpton John Weston’s secretary, and Thomas Plumpton a Hospitaller knight and preceptor.82 Another Plumpton, Robert’s niece Elizabeth, married John Sothill of Stokerston and was the mother of the Hospitaller Arthur Sothill.83 At least one Plumpton was buried in the priory church at Clerkenwell.84 Although other connections are not quite so ramified, a number of relationships between other Hospitaller families can also be identified. John Babington of Dethick, for example, was the nephew of Richard Fitzherbert, stated to be a Hospitaller in Burke’s Landed Gentry,85 while Marmaduke Lumley and Augustine Middlemore were described as brothers ‘secundum carnem’ in 1463, and John Bothe was the nephew of an unnamed lieutenant turcopolier, probably John Boswell or Walter Fitzherbert.86 Three sixteenthcentury 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 unions taking place between the Tyrrells and Gonsons, Pooles and Caves, and Caves and Newdigates.88 In 1557 the knights received into the re-erected priory of England 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 John Clippesby of Oby as his ‘cousin’. According to a pedigree, the latter was the grandson of another John Clippesby and the daughter of a Thomas Longstrother of Cheshire. Other Langstrothers moved to Lincolnshire or Norfolk in the train of William Langstrother, the preceptor 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 taken by William Harvey, Clarencieux King of Arms, 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), 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 further light has been shed on Thomas Plumpton’s background in the new edition of the Plumpton letters, which omits Stapleton’s speculations on the Hospitallers. The Plumpton Letters and Papers, 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 a Hospitaller by 1470 and the commander of Templecombe between 1478 and 1489. The two may be identical, or Walter may have belonged to an earlier generation imperfectly recorded in the pedigree given by Burke. J. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 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 in the Year 1619, taken by William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms, ed. J. Fetherston, HSP, 2 (London, 1870), 126.

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Bellingham, the former preceptor of Dinmore.89 It seems likely that if the sources were more complete a network embracing still more families would emerge. As candidates for knighthood were commonly presented to provincial chapter by an existing brother, and as licences to admit brethren into the order very rarely stipulated who they were to be, this is hardly surprising. Within families, the number of relationships that are absolutely clear is rather limited, however. Although they were probably close kin to each other, the Hospitaller Tonges, Daniels, Dalisons, and Newports are not described as such in the order’s archives and, since they do not appear in family pedigrees either, their relationships remain conjectural. In fact less than fifty brethren can yet be placed with absolute security in a family background. Although it is possible to make plausible suggestions as to the family and geographical provenance of many of the others, their nonappearance 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 geographical origin. Of the forty-seven certain or near-certain English family seats listed for knight-brethren in Appendix VII, twelve were in Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, with a further six in Durham, Cumberland, or Westmorland. If one considers the almost certainly Yorkshire origins of the Tonges and Multons, the domination of northerners and north-east midlanders in the order’s hierarchy is apparent. Moreover, several of those families which appear to be from the south such as the Rawsons and the southern branches of the Docwras and Westons had migrated from Yorkshire or Lincolnshire only one or two generations before they produced knights of St John. William Weston junior’s father, for example, had been born in Boston, as had his Hospitaller uncles John and William. With the possible exception of William Tornay every prior of England and English prior of Ireland who held office between 1468 and 1540 can be ascribed to a northern or north midlands family. There are a number of possible reasons for this predominance. In the first place, the order may have preferred to draw upon the stronger military traditions of the northern counties as more appropriate to its activities in the Mediterranean than the less martial background of many southern gentle families.91 It is interesting, that several of the Hospitaller knights either had connections with the Percy family or saw service on the marches themselves. The Hildyards of Winestead, from whom William Hillyard was 89

Bindoff, (ed.), House of Commons, i. 414–5; iii. 308–10. See Appendix VII. I have excluded those families, such as the Malorys, Multons, Newports, 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 and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983), 162–91. 90

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probably drawn, were traditional Percy retainers, while Roland Thornburgh and Nicholas Fairfax were in the service of earls of Northumberland.92 Robert Multon, a Percy retainer, even served as deputy warden of the east march in the 1470s and late 1480s, while in a later generation Cuthbert Layton, a native of Cumberland, can be found defending Norham castle against the Scots.93 In the second place, it is at least arguable that northern England held a somewhat deeper attachment to religious houses than the south, and that the order of St John may have benefited from this. It is noteworthy that in 1537 the farmers of the order’s lands in the north were characterized as particularly eager to stir up the populace in defence of the monasteries,94 and many of these were members of families connected with the Hospital. Thirdly, the relatively sluggish economy of the north in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries95 and the lack of other opportunities there may have rendered a career in the order more attractive to younger sons96 than it might otherwise have been. Although their families were usually of conventional piety, the prospect of an austere or contemplative life may have been too much for these men.97 Advancement in the Hospital, however, offered the possibility of 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 to benefices. In certain cases a vacant commandery would be adjudged to the brother who had been born nearest to its site. As seven of the order’s twenty non-prioral commanderies were in Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, and as they were ranked respectively first, fourth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth in terms of wealth,98 it was probably easier for a Yorkshire or Lincolnshire man both to get a foot on the career ladder and to avoid a poor house when doing so. Of course not all these characteristics were exclusive 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, while some, such as Nicholas Hussey (the eighth son of nine) and Blase Villers (the tenth of ten) came very low down the pecking order indeed. 97 Although the families noted in Appendix VII produced at least ten nuns, and several clerics between them of the same or immediately preceding generations as Hospitallers, they did not give 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.

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country. But it is in the north where preceptories were relatively wealthy and numerous, where the danger from the Scots was still a real concern, and where alternative outlets for the energies of young gentlemen may have been limited that a career in the Hospital proved most attractive. It is dangerous to generalize about the wealth and status of Hospitaller families simply from the evidence of those that are known, as by definition they 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. Of those active in the order between 1460 and 1540, only Richard Neville, the son of George, Lord Abergavenny, was from a family of baronial rank.99 The rest were of quite varying pedigree. Some major gentry families were represented. The Ayscoughs, Babingtons of Dethick, Caves, Eures, Fairfaxes, Fitzherberts, Massingberds, Plumptons, Sheffields, Tunstalls, and Tyrrells of Heron were all of some importance and of knightly rank in the generations before they produced Hospitallers.100 Most were of considerable antiquity too. Others such as the Worcestershire Russells and Durham Lambtons were less prominent, but still of ancient lineage and respectable local standing.101 Although they seem to have derived from landowning families that had moved into the towns, some Hospitaller knights were the offspring of prominent merchants. David Gonson’s father William was Henry VIII’s chief naval administrator and a pioneer in the Levant trade, which may account for his son’s profession.102 Richard Rawson, the father of the Hospitaller prior of Ireland, John, was an alderman and sheriff of London, and Edward Brown was the grandson of one mayor of London and nephew of another.103 The Passemers, who may have come from London or Essex, perhaps also had mercantile antecedents,104 and the Westons lived in Boston, the Pooles in Chesterfield, and the Caves in Stamford around the time 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. Marshall, 151–2; Visitation of the County of Leicester, ed. Fetherston, 125–6; Visitation of Yorkshire, 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 the County 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 & Discoveries 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, with Northamptonshire 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 Lumley called brother Nicholas Passemer a ‘villein’. AOM371, fo. 144v. 105 DNB, lx. 377; Bindoff, (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 130; Visitation of the County of Leicester, ed. Fetherston, 125.

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Those Hospitallers who cannot be assigned to a particular family with certainty probably fall into three categories; offspring of major gentry families who were omitted from pedigrees because they left no children, scions of lesser branches of large families, and those whose families, although gentle, were not recorded as such until later, or who died out. At first sight, for example, knight-brethren such as John Bothe, William Corbet, and William Darrell would seem to have come from some of the most formidable gentry families in the country, but they do not appear in extant pedigrees of these houses, and it may be that they were either poor cousins of the main branches or simply left out of the pedigrees. Unless they appear in chance references in wills or estate and legal records others with more common 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. On reception into the order, a junior knight made his way to the Mediterranean and was received into the English langue. He was then granted ancienitas (seniority), which was reckoned from the day of his arrival in convent rather than his reception in England and was provisional until his proofs of nobility had been accepted by the langue. This was a crucial incentive in getting brethren to serve in convent, as without ancienitas no brother could be granted a preceptory at home. Nominally a brother could seek a preceptory in their home province after three years of conventual service106 but in fact it was usually necessary to wait much longer for a vacancy. Preceptories were collated to brethren under four ‘titles’: grace, cabimentum, meliormentum, and ius patronatus. When a preceptory became vacant, the master of the order, who was allowed to grant one commandery in each priory every five years, might, if he had not already utilized this faculty, grant the house to a brother of his choosing. The recipient would then hold the benefice by title of magistral grace, and would continue to be able to seek preceptories of cabimentum or meliormentum. While only one preceptory of meliormentum or cabimentum could be held at once, in theory a knight could be granted any number of preceptories of grace. Rather different in operation was prioral grace, by which the priors of England and Ireland were also allowed to grant one commandery in their respective provinces every five years, although those thus provided apparently held by cabimentum or meliormentum. Should the master or prior not claim the right to appoint, the unbeneficed conventual brethren107 of greatest seniority and those preceptors who had ‘improved’ their commanderies could compete for the house, the 106 107

Delaville, Rhodes, 318. i.e. those resident in the order’s Mediterranean headquarters.

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collation of which would be decided by a vote of the English langue. If the langue opted to confer the house on an unbeneficed brother, he would hold it by title of cabimentum, or first promotion, and should two or more brethren of equal seniority seek the same benefice, an investigation would be made at home into who had been born nearest to it, with the nearer granted the prize.108 This procedure might be avoided if the brethren involved had already made an agreement as to who should be eligible for which preceptories when they fell vacant, as sometimes happened.109 After he was ‘chevisshed’ the new preceptor was commonly licensed to return home, as the ancienitas to exchange his house for one of meliormentum now theoretically rested on his residing on his preceptory for five years and improving it.110 In practice, however, brethren were often retained in convent, or at Clerkenwell as the receiver of the conventual common treasury, or summoned to Rhodes or Malta before they had completed their residence and ‘meliorments’. In such cases the langue and council granted them ancienitas as if they were resident in the west.111 Even if they had not resided on their benefice, however, they were expected to present notarially attested evidence of the improvements made there for approval by the langue before they could be promoted.112 The situation was further complicated by the fact that preceptors could exchange benefices between themselves, provided they received the approval of the langue, the master, and the convent for this, and could also sometimes exchange the titles by which they held multiple houses.113 Ranked above preceptories were the order’s bailiwicks. These were its highest offices, carrying with them a seat on its councils and chaptersgeneral, and granted to brethren of at least fifteen years standing by vote of 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 were the turcopoliership, the priories of England and Ireland, and the bailiwick of Eagle. As a conventual rather than a capitular bailiff, the turcopolier was expected 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; Claudius E.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 for the 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, v 62 ; 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).

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the priors and bailiff of Eagle, but in practice the turcopoliership acted as a springboard for those seeking the priory of England, which was always held by a more senior knight. Both the bailiff of Eagle and the turcopolier commonly held at least two preceptories in order to support the dignities of their office, but some, notably John Langstrother, John Kendal, and Thomas Newport, accumulated as many as four or five, a formidable concentration 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 compatriots in 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 the election in England of the unsuitable Robert Multon in 1474 that the chapter-general ruled that henceforth elections were to be carried out by the council in Rhodes.119 The Irish-born brethren claimed the right to elect their prior in Ireland between 1410 and 1494, although brethren were sometimes elected prior of Ireland in Rhodes to replace rebellious incumbents during this period.120 On election priors generally relinquished their existing commanderies save for magistral camerae or houses that they had recovered from seculars or brethren who had forfeited them.121 Sometimes, however, they would retain commanderies they already held in place of a prioral camera held by the previous prior, which they would then release to the disposition of the langue. Their right to do so, however, was often contested by the langue. Excluding those in prioral or magistral hands there were only twenty preceptories open to brethren in England and Wales for most of the period between 1460 and 1540,122 and the pressure for advancement was further increased by the fact that they were often in the hands of only fourteen or fifteen men.123 As there were commonly between ten and twenty 117

See Appendix VII. CPR1416–22, 279; AOM340, fo. 116r–v; Field, ‘Robert Malory’, 251–2, 257–8; Bekynton Correspondence, i. 78–81; ‘Annales Rerum Anglicanum’, Letters and Papers Illustrative of 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 in 1470–1, while Slebech was in the hands of the prior between 1476 and 1483, with Melchbourne, 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. 118

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unbeneficed knights waiting in convent for preferment, conventual brethren might wait for ten or more years for a senior knight to die before they were granted a benefice. When this happened as many as four or five houses might become vacant. For example, Thomas Newport senior, who was serving in Rhodes by 1478, had to wait until the death of John Weston in 1489 before he could be granted a preceptory, while the same event also brought preceptories of cabimentum for Robert Daniel, Robert Dalison, and James Ayscough, of meliormentum to Henry Halley, and of magistral grace to John Tonge.124 Less drastically, the survivors of five conventual knights who had been in convent in July 1461 or earlier and of another four who were in Rhodes in July 1463 all had to wait until news of the deaths of William Dawney and Robert Botill had reached Rhodes in 1468–9 before they could be granted benefices.125 The pressure on preceptories grew with the size of the English establishment in the mediteranean, which numbered about fourteen in the 1470s, twenty-three by 1508, and thirty-eight in 1513, before falling back to between seventeen and twenty-two in the period between 1523 and the 1530s.126 Although the number of preceptors among these men rose from two or three to five or more, the remainder of the increase was accounted for by conventual knights competing for preferment.127 Of seven knights received in 1505–6 only Nicholas Fairfax and Edward Hills were ever granted preceptories, and both had to wait until the 1520s.128 In 1510 this situation occasioned a petition by the English brethren in Rhodes that ‘bearing in mind the multitude of religious brother knights of the langue living in Rhodes at this time, and the paucity of preceptories of the same langue from which the aforesaid religious expect reward for their labours, so that they might be rendered more fervent towards the said service’ the rights of the prior of England to confer preceptories should be limited.129 124

AOM283, fo. 174v; 390, fos. 129v, 129r–130r. William Weston 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 preceptories between 1468 and 1470, save for Lumley, who came to an agreement to take over Templecombe from 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 convent declined 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 cashed letters 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 Humphrey Bevercotes in March 1506. Bevercotes and Militon were still alive and in convent in 1508, as was Lyster in 1508, 1513, and 1515, but Haseldon does not appear again. It is likely most were dead before the siege of 1522. R. Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics and the Public Debt, 1200–1500 (Baltimore, 1997), 347; AOM397, fo. 147v; Bodleian MS Ashmole 1137, fo. 113r; AOM409, fo. 117r; Appendix VII. 129 AOM399, fo. 146r–v. 125

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This last was a crucial point. In the period covered by this study there were a series of disputes between priors and their brethren about the respective rights of the prior and langue to confer preceptories, and in particular the right of an incumbent prior, granted by the convent in 1367, to claim a vacant preceptory as a fifth prioral camera.130 Despite the antiquity of this provision, there was some confusion about when and in what circumstances the prior might acquire his fifth camera. In 1449, Robert Botill and his brethren in both England and Rhodes agreed that should a preceptor die within a year after the mortuary year of the previous prior, the prior might retain any of the dead preceptor’s houses as a fifth camera, remitting any others held by the deceased to the collation of the master and convent, who would 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 conferred by the prior on a conventual knight. Perhaps most importantly, the prioral choice of fifth camera was to be irrevocable.131 Although the conventual brethren of the langue complained that this agreement was prejudicial to them in 1459, their objections were overruled and the distribution of benefices in the remainder of Botill’s priorate proceeded relatively smoothly.132 Nevertheless, partly as a result of the 1449 document’s lack of comprehensiveness, there were major disputes between prior and langue in 1477–83 and 1505–17 and continued complaints after 1527 about William Weston’s acquisition of his fifth camera. Unfortunately, the agreement of 1449 had not provided priors-elect with scope to retain houses they had held before their promotion as camerae, insisting that they relinquish their existing benefices and wait until a vacancy to claim one. This ran contrary both to previous practice and to the understandable desire of priors-elect to hang on to favoured residences and estates. Thus, despite the rules laid down in 1449, in 1470 John Langstrother was able to persuade the langue to allow him to retain both Balsall and Ribston, of which he was already preceptor, rather than Melchbourne and Slebech as his fourth and fifth prioral camerae, while in the following year William Tornay was granted Melchbourne and Slebech as his fourth and fifth camerae by consent of the langue.133 On his provisional appointment to the priory in 1476, the order’s authorities came to a similar arrangement with John Weston, under which he was to have Balsall rather than Melchbourne but to keep Slebech.134 At some point before gaining possession of the priory, however, Weston agreed to relinquish Slebech to the disposition 130 Delaville, Rhodes, 162; Stabilimenta, ‘De collationibus’, vii. Priors had been granted the right 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.

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of the langue, without apparently asking for anything in return. Yet once in post Weston insisted on retaining one of his existing preceptories, Newland, in place of Slebech and also changed his mind about Melchbourne, which he wished to retain instead of Balsall. In 1477–8 complaints were made by the newly appointed preceptors of Melchbourne and Newland and the proctors of the langue that Weston was refusing to hand over Newland, Melchbourne, and Slebech.135 The langue cited both the 1449 document and Weston’s written promise to hand over Slebech in its support.136 Despite the fact that brethren were strictly forbidden from petitioning for benefices at the curia, Weston had also secured papal letters in favour of his detentions. A brief of 3 June 1476 permitted him to retain the priory in commendam with Quenington, which had already been granted to John Boswell in the previous November, and to hold Balsall and Newland for a year after he entered possession of the priory.137 In the summer and autumn of 1478 both Boswell and the newly appointed preceptor of Templecombe, Walter Fitzherbert, protested that the prior was detaining their houses as well.138 Weston, then, appears to have occupied no less than five preceptories which should have been in the possession of his brethren in 1478. He used every trick in the book to deny them their rights, launching appeals to the chapter-general, exploiting papal privileges, and keeping his proctors in Rhodes in ignorance of his claims, so that he had to be repeatedly asked to provide reasons for his actions, a process for which brethren were allowed nine months. Although he seems to have relinquished his claims to all the disputed preceptories except Slebech after the chapter-general of November 1478 had ruled against him, he managed to delay handing this last house over until 1483, when he reached agreement with the langue that it should be granted to a conventual knight for cabimentum on condition that the latter pay him a pension of £15 per annum until he should be provided with a fifth camera.139 This accord, which superseded that of 1449 insofar as it explicitly recognized the right of succeeding priors to retain one of the commanderies they had held before promotion as a fifth camera, nevertheless failed to put an end to discord between priors and their brethren. In 1505 Thomas Docwra and the langue each claimed the right to collate to the vacant preceptory of Halston, the langue according to the 1449 provision that having secured a fifth camera the prior should confer the next vacant house on a conventual knight by cabimentum, and the prior on the basis that he held his fifth camera rather by vigour of the concord of 1483, and that the 1449 agreement had bound Botill but not his successors. The order’s council referred 135 136 137 138 139

AOM75, fo. 178r–v; 385, fo. 129r–v; 386, fo. 127r–v, 129r; 75, fo. 177v. AOM75, fo. 177v; 386, fo. 129v. CPL, xiii. 61. AOM386, fo. 127r. AOM76, fos. 148v–149v.

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this case to the esguardium fratrum,140 which ruled in the langue’s favour, ordaining that Docwra should present an appropriately qualified brother resident in convent.141 But the langue then exploited this judgement to collate to Halston without reference to Docwra, who protested at this and further alleged that the langue had bribed his proctor, Guillaume d’Aubusson, to misrepresent him.142 In the meantime, he kept possession of Halston, not surrendering it until at least 1508.143 Despite capitular confirmation of the esguardium’s sentence, Docwra continued to argue that the langue had broken the concord of 1483 and seems also to have convinced himself that Slebech had reverted to his collation by the langue’s disregard for his ‘preeminence’ in the matter of Halston. When his proctor sought conciliar clarification as to the status of the agreement of 1483 in 1510, he was told to wait until Slebech became vacant and when it did so the prior detained it from the appointee of the langue and convent, Clement West, and appears to have granted it instead to Lancelot Docwra.144 In April 1516 the dispute was referred to the next chapter-general, but it had still not been resolved by November 1517, and may have dragged on still further.145 Yet if the remainder of Docwra’s priorate was free of similar disputes, in 1527 the issue was raised yet again, with Clement West demanding that Thomas Docwra’s former fifth camera, Melchbourne, be granted to him rather than be retained by the new prior, William Weston. Despite a conciliar ruling upholding Weston’s right to retain his predecessor’s houses, West continued to demand Melchbourne and to complain about the injustice done to him by Weston until well into the 1530s.146 Pettifogging though these contentions may appear to be—and the foregoing is a heavily simplified account—they at least have the virtue of illustrating the workings and limitations of the order of St John’s elaborate mechanisms for dispute settlement, and the mentalite´, in all its concern for precedent and protocol, which animated them. More, they indicate the underlying tensions in the twofold division of the order into conventual langues and provincial priories, both of which brethren belonged to simultaneously. In granting the langues, rather than provincial chapters, the right to appoint to preceptories, the order had created mechanisms by which conventual service might be encouraged and rewarded, but in doing so it had compensated priors with faculties which partly overlapped, at least in England, 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, which dealt 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.

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denied the promotions their service had merited by priors who had the advantage of running their provinces practically as corporations sole, was hardly conducive either to administrative efficiency or to a sense of fraternity. Nevertheless, the pressure on houses was somewhat alleviated by the grant of pensions to supplement the incomes of poor or favoured knights. Conventual knights holding the same seniority often agreed to pay each other a pension should they gain a preceptory. So, in 1469, William Weston senior and John Boswell concorded that should Boswell be provided with a preceptory before the other knight he should pay him half its clear value until the latter should be beneficed, while if the situation were reversed and Weston was granted the houses of Quenington, Shingay, or any other he should render Boswell 10 marks per annum until he too had been provided.147 A more equal arrangement was struck between Oswald Massingberd and John Babington junior, who each promised to pay the other 50 e´cus if he should get a commandery first.148 Additionally, pensions or small estates were set aside from preceptories of grace by the master and granted to worthy junior knights. In 1506, for example, William Weston junior, the preceptor of Ansty and magistral camerarius, was granted the member of Sawston, a pertinence of Shingay, which had just been collated by magistral grace to Thomas Sheffield. Weston agreed that he would lease the estate to Sheffield for 50 e´cus, with the latter retaining its administration.149 Four years later Weston received a pension of 400 e´cus from the preceptory of Temple Brewer, which had been granted out of magistral grace to William Darrell, the turcopolier, although he was to remit 150 e´cus of this sum to Rhodes in token of the master’s superiority. As a condition of this grant, Weston released Sawston to John Rawson senior.150 Weston’s pension from Temple Brewer was so considerable that it is doubtful that Darrell received much profit from the preceptory, and it is noteworthy that in 1525 Weston was only collated by the langue to Dinmore on condition that he remit 26 e´cus from the sum the preceptor of Temple Brewer had to pay him.151 Closer study of one particular group received into the order together may help to illustrate the operation of the order’s career structure in practice. A particularly useful sample is provided by those brethren received at a provincial chapter in 1499, they being the first large company of filii arnaldi152 within this period whose careers can be traced with hardly any gaps. The first of this group to arrive in Rhodes was Robert Pemberton in 1498, but he did so without having been received first in provincial chapter and, despite royal letters in his favour, was ordered to present his proofs in England like everybody else. Pemberton reappeared in convent in August 147 149 151

148 AOM378, fos. 148r–v. BDVTE, 47. v r 150 AOM395, fos. 146 –147 , 147r–148r. AOM399, fos. 143v–144r, 144v. 152 BDVTE, 33. i.e. brethren of the same seniority.

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1500 relating that he had been received at a provincial chapter, presumably the assembly held in the previous November, with eight other knights.153 His arithmetic seems to have been faulty, for a few months later he and five of his fellows appeared in the order’s council complaining that the two other brethren received with them, Richard Passemer and John Russell, had tarried in Venice rather than take passage to Rhodes, and asking for the ancienitas of 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 to have died soon after his arrival.155 The six knights remaining were, besides Pemberton, Clement West, Roland Baskerville, John Babington senior, Alban Pole, and Roger Boydell. The first few years of their careers were almost certainly spent on Rhodes, as it was not until some years after their reception that their seniors were all provided with preceptories and they became eligible for vacant houses. In February 1506 letters were drawn up collating Halston to whomever of Baskerville, Babington, Boydell, and Pole had been born nearest to it and on 11 March the receiver, Thomas Sheffield, was mandated to investigate the matter in England.156 The result was evidently a foregone conclusion, for Boydell, as preceptor of Halston, was licensed to go home and rule his preceptory on 15 June.157 At much the same time, Pemberton was also granted leave to return to England, although being a conventual knight he was to make his way back to convent within two years.158 As we have seen, Boydell was unable to get possession of Halston because of the prior’s refusal to accept his collation by the langue, and had returned to Rhodes by 1508 to complain about this treatment.159 The brethren received together in 1499–1500 were thus reunited, and all, save for the absentees of 1501, appear in a list of English knights resident in the convent drawn up in August 1508.160 Their situation was to change dramatically in the next few years. Pemberton and Baskerville disappeared from the scene in 1509–10,161 and Boydell again returned home to take possession of his commandery.162 In 1509–10, Babington and Pole were provided with Yeaveley and Mount St John respectively. West dropped any claim to the latter before the commissioners had reported on whether he or Pole was

153

154 AOM78, fos. 90v–91r, 131r. AOM78, fo. 147r. 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 Other Pedigrees 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. 155

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‘nearer’ to it.163 The two new preceptors now joined Boydell in England while West had to wait until 1514 before he was granted the Pembrokeshire house of Slebech, being compensated in the meantime with the castellany of Rhodes.164 As West had anticipated, the prior opposed his collation to Slebech and refused to grant his proctors possession of it, with the result that he was not able to return home until 1517 or later.165 When he did so, it was to a house oppressed by the powerful Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his son Gruffydd ap Rhys and burdened by the debts owed to the previous incumbent, Robert Evers.166 The delay was very significant, as a preceptor was expected to return home and reside on his commandery for five years after it was 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 and Boydell secured acceptance of their meliormenta in 1515–16.167 The latter’s were approved despite West’s objections, as Boydell had accomplished the required period of residence and presented adequate evidence of the improvements he had carried out.168 Meanwhile, Babington served as deputy for the receiver, Thomas Sheffield, who was in Rhodes from 1513, and as proctor of the common treasury in England and Ireland.169 He too came into conflict with West, who accused him of refusing to accept payment of his responsions. West seems to have thought that Babington was attempting to have him declared a debtor in order to block his chances of promotion, and the issue recurred ten years later, when West appeared before the council complaining that although he had paid Babington certain monies, and had a quittance to prove it, the latter had not recorded it in his books of accounts.170 By the time West returned home, Roger Boydell had completed his third term of conventual service and Alban Pole was about to embark on his second,171 being the only one of the knights received in 1500 to fight during the 1522 siege of Rhodes. Casualties during and sickness after the siege prompted a round of promotions in 1523–4, and Babington, Pole, and Boydell were all able to secure preceptories of meliormentum in May 1523, 163

Claudius E.vi, fo. 69v; AOM81, fo. 151v; 400, fo. 150v. 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 to Yeaveley’. He then returned to Rhodes before being licensed to go and rule his commandery in 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. 164

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while West’s meliormenta were not accepted until October 1524, and he had to wait till August 1526 before he was granted ancienitas to seek another house.172 The brethren received with him at the turn of the century were now ready to embark on their next stage of their careers. Alban Pole was granted the bailiwick of Eagle after the death of Thomas Sheffield in 1524, and John Babington became prior of Ireland in 1527, exchanging it with the turcopoliership a year later.173 In the meantime Boydell, who had not done as well as his fellows when he ‘meliored’ himself in 1523, was granted a pension of £20 from the fruits of Dinmore out of magistral grace.174 After Pole died in August 1530, West rather than Boydell secured the turcopoliership, while Babington became bailiff of Eagle.175 Boydell had to wait until West’s disgrace and removal from his post in March 1533 before being granted 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 brethren received in 1500 and, restored to his dignity in 1535, was granted expectancy 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 the turcopoliership in 1539.178 He returned to England after the Dissolution of 1540, 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 from episcopal visitation, interdicts, tithes, and most secular taxation, by the sixteenth century Hospitaller preceptories had lost many of the other characteristics they had shared with similar religious houses. Chief among the changes was the loss of a communal religious life. Save at Clerkenwell, no English or Welsh house is known to have had more than one brother in residence after 1460, although there were still thirteen nuns at Buckland in 1539.180 In such circumstances the observance of the Rule and of the innumerable ordinances added by successive chapters-general may have been extremely patchy. Indeed, the mass of regulations was found to be so unwieldy, anachronistic, and ambiguous181 that Pierre d’Aubusson (master, 1476–1503) obtained papal dispensation from the Rule, except the ‘three 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

AOM410, fos. 177v, 178v; 411, fo. 154v; 412, fos. 191v–192r. AOM84, fo. 41v; 412, fo. 199r; 413, fos. 23r–24r, 25r–v. AOM412, fo. 201v. AOM54, fo. 200v; 85, fo. 77v; BDVTE, 18–19. AOM54, fo. 237v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 131. AOM54, fo. 255v; PRO SP2/Q, no. 32, fos. 129b/152b; AOM85, fos. 148r, 153v. See below, 221. See below, Ch. 9. LPFD, xv, no. 1032, p. 544. Stabilimenta, ‘Exordium in stabilimenta’, ‘De regula’, ii.

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substantial vows’ of poverty, chastity, and obedience, soon after his election and launched a complete recodification of the statutes in 1482, which resulted in the printed statutes drawn up in 1489 and given papal approval in 1492.182 While it had long been ordained that the Rule itself should be read to brethren four times a year, awareness of the statutes may have been more limited, and among the new regulations of 1489 was the order that thirty of the customs and establishments contained therein should be read out too.183 Brethen, therefore, should not have been in ignorance of what was required of them. Yet although the statutes governing their conduct were still numerous, they gave very little moral guidance save to enjoin modest behaviour in church,184 and establish penalties for such lapses as concubinage, embezzlement, maladministration, and slander.185 For knights, spiritual guidance was limited to the requirements to receive communion three times a year, to observe a number of fasts and feast days and to pray for deceased brethren.186 Little more than the maintenance of hospitality and divine worship and efficient administration was expected from brethren when they were in Europe and visitation of the order’s houses, although still enjoined on its priors, was firmly directed toward these considerations rather than towards investigation of the personal conduct of individual brethren.187 In this context it is hardly surprising that most of the evidence illustrating conventual life in the provinces relates to the administration of preceptories rather than the personal characteristics of their possessors. Collectively, the Hospitallers’ religious preoccupations appear to have been thoroughly conventional. Both priors and other brethren founded chantries or endowed masses to pray for their own souls and those of other members of the order, with the order’s priest-brethren and the secular clerks ‘singing and serving’ at Clerkenwell increasingly devoted to these tasks.188 Similar services were provided by the London Charterhouse after 1430, when the Hospitallers became its confratres: one Hospitaller knight, 182 AOM283, fos. 168v–169r; Stabilimenta, ‘De regula’, i–ii, ‘Tenor bullarum apostolicarum’; 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 separate masses for priors, priors and preceptors, and all members of the order). In 1494 and 1522 corrodies were granted to clerks of the choir of Clerkenwell on condition they ‘instruct and teach 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.

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John Rawson, can be found donating literature and clothing to a London Carthusian before 1519.189 The order might also seek the prayers of the hermits to whom it granted chapels or property.190 Yet evidence of personal devotions is more difficult to come by. With the exception of generally conventional expressions of pious good wishes for divine favour and their correspondents’ safe keeping, brethren rarely displayed overt religious sentiments in their letters, while the requirement that all books among their effects save breviaries, psalters, and chronicles be sent to convent after their deaths militated against their accumulation of libraries in the west.191 Nor, save for those who died after 1540, did Hospitallers leave wills, so that this avenue of investigation, too, is closed. The few indications of personal religious devotion that remain cannot be seen as more than suggestions of what might have been usual. Thus the devotion of William Weston junior (prior, 1527–40) to the Virgin Mary, which can be attested from the inscriptions once on his tomb, is not certainly known to be replicated among the English brethren in this period, although it is most unlikely to have been unusual.192 The dedications of chantry chapels at Eagle and Clerkenwell to St Sithe and SS Katharine, Ursula, and Margaret made by Henry Crownhall and Robert Malory show awareness of contemporary devotional fashions but are scarcely less conventional, as are the paintings in the chapel supposedly 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 their right.194 John Tonge, whose custody of his property was in other ways quite unsatisfactory, left rich vestments bearing his arms to the chapel of the manor of Temple Dinsley, while Thomas Docwra gave a printed mass book 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. 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 possibly thirteenth-century Psalter from Minchin Buckland among the manuscripts of the London Society of Antiquaries. Watson’s supplement to Ker notes a late fourteenth-century Brut possibly originating in Clerkenwell and now in Trinity College, Dublin. This manuscript also contains a series of memoranda from 1385–6 recording both national events and those particular to the priory, such as the wreck of the prior’s ship, the dispatch of gifts to the king at Epiphany and the visit of Leo king of Armenia to Clerkenwell; a list of distances from Bruges via Venice to Rhodes and various short pieces, tracts, and verses. These pages were apparently inserted into the manuscript containing the Brut, it being unclear whether the latter had anything to do with the order. N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List 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 Introduction’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 37 (1993), 83–9. 194 Stabilimenta, ‘De Ecclesia’, xxi (Statute of Heredia, 1377–96). 195 Claudius E.vi, fos. 147r, 151r. 190

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sometimes provide evidence for the accumulation of modest amounts of church plate and vestments. An eight-pointed cross was among the effects of John Babington senior, Thomas Golyns left ‘vestimenti’, and Nicholas Fairfax a chalice, pyx, and cruets of silver gilt.196 The volume of secular plate somewhat exceeded these items, however. Although these material evidences of devotion may speak of display as much as personal piety, as may the improvements made to the order’s churches and chapels by wealthy brethren, in the want of more expressive evidence they are all that is available. In the general absence of records of their books that might give a clearer picture of their devotional interests it is worth noting, however, that after the dissolution both Nicholas Upton and Oliver Starkey were investigated in Malta for possession of prohibited books in English.197 The intellectual life of the brethren is also obscure. After the efforts of John Stillingfleet in the 1430s198 no ‘British’ brother is certainly known to have penned anything more adventurous than letters or administrative documents, although an account of the order’s origins in a now lost manuscript edited by Dugdale was perhaps written by a fifteenth-century Hospitaller chaplain with a grudge against the military brethren.199 The priory also made copies of its privileges and indulgences and sponsored the English translation of a history of the siege of 1522.200 Priors were certainly willing to sponsor the education of priests in the order’s service such as Richard Langstrother, William Tonge, William Armistead, and John Mablestone, even sending the last two to foreign universities to study, but the theological or legal training these men acquired does not appear to have encouraged any great educational or literary leanings.201 Two notable exceptions to this tendency were John Newton, a secular priest in the order’s service who translated Vegetius’ De re militari into English while he was in Rhodes in 1459,202 and the humanist William Lily, who travelled to Rhodes to learn Greek 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 probable taste of the English knight-brethren for militaria: reporting the events of 196

PRO SP2/Q no. 32, pp. 131/154; AOM54, fos. 94v, 95v. Mdina, Malta, Cathedral Archive, Archivum Inquisitionis Melitensis, Criminal Proceedings, 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 MS 38–1950, 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 Court Book, ed. Bowker, 25 and n. 202 Tsirpanlis, Rhodes, 354. 203 See below, 289. 197

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the 1522 siege of Rhodes, Nicholas Roberts claimed that the Turks had assembled there the most formidable besieging force seen ‘seins the tyme of the romans as far as I have red’.204 The maps of Rhodes and of the world to be found at the priory in Clerkenwell were similarly practical.205 It is also worth pointing out that both John Mablestone and William Armistead encouraged learning in others after the dissolution, Armistead refounding the grammar school at Skipton in Craven, and Mablestone leaving books ‘convenyent to their study’ to scholars at New College, Oxford, and King’s College, Cambridge.206 It can also be assumed that both knights and chaplains could read and write, at least by the sixteenth century. The exigencies of administration required them to audit accounts and make written reports of what they had discovered in investigations and visitations. The number of brethren whose letters have survived from the 1520s and 1530s is considerable, and some Hospitallers, such as priors John Kendal and William Weston, wrote in Italian or French as well as English.207 While their hands may have lacked the elegance and fluency of chancery-trained scribes such as Mablestone, their letters are long enough to suggest that they did not find the process too irksome. Where they learned to write is uncertain, but it is probable that some schooling was expected of candidates for admission, and that further training of a practical nature was provided in convent, where all brethren would 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 two knight-brethren received before 1540, John Lambton and George Dundas, are known to the author to have been university educated, although another corresponded with Henry Golde, a Fellow of St John’s, Cambridge,208 and others were charged with ambassadorial duties which by this period might have necessitated the delivery of Latin orations. Nevertheless, with the possible exception of Mablestone, no English brother appears to have had the breadth of education required for the kind of sophisticated analysis of his place in the world offered by the Italian knight Sabba da Castiglione.209 Yet had the order survived longer, it is probable that a higher degree of learning would 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, ‘Some Notes on the Order in Scotland’, AOSM 22 (1964), 59–71, at 64; LPFD, iii, no. 2840. Besides Dundas, whose learning was evidently quite formidable, another Scottish brother, Adam Spens, had achieved an MA by 1486. Spens was almost 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).

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priory in 1557 included two very highly educated men. Richard Shelley had studied Greek and Latin at Venice and lived in the household of Reginald Pole at Padua and Oliver Starkey became the Latin secretary of grand master Jean de la Valette.210 It must nonetheless be remembered that the Hospitaller vocation was primarily a practical one and that the administrative training brethren received in convent was well suited to the running of a preceptory. Their houses were increasingly indistinguishable from secular properties, except for the more prominent chapel and cemetery. Like important manors, they were walled and sometimes moated,211 and often provided with a prominent gatehouse and other machicolated structures.212 For a long time the more important buildings, like those of aristocratic and episcopal residences, had been two storeyed and built of stone.213 These were sometimes arranged around formal courtyards, but more often as dispersed groups, with the hall generally close to the chapel, and often situated on the south side of the principal courtyard or space.214 Unlike many monastic granges and manors, all preceptories and even quite minor camerae possessed chapels. Within the precinct 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 might lease properties within or just outside the preceptory enclosure. In 1494, for example, 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 gatehouse and three closes outside the precinct were let to one Henry Bolande.218 Other servants, while not residing within the preceptory precincts, would be part of the preceptor’s council.219 These included the steward, auditor, 210

Bindoff (ed.), House of Commons, iii. 308–10, 378–9. 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, ‘On Shengay 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: The Other 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 History Occasional Papers, 20 (Welwyn Garden City, 1965), 16; Woodman, ‘Chibburn’, 38; P. Ritook, ‘Templar Architecture in England’, SJHSP 4 (1992), 14–22, at 15; Gilchrist, Contemplation, 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; Claudius E.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. 211

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counsel in law and possibly the bailiffs, parkers, and keepers of woods of outlying properties. The volume of business involved in running a preceptory is illustrated by a letter written by the turcopolier Hugh Middleton to a proctor or servant in England in about 1448. Middleton, then in Rhodes or Italy, sent a long series of instructions to his agent on what was to be done to maintain and improve his properties, stock levels, and finances. He demanded to know whether new tenants had been put into certain properties and repairs made according to his instructions, and asked for details of how his farmers and tenants were conducting themselves. Unless some composition could be reached with them, those who were in arrears were to be prosecuted. Properties requiring it were to be repaired and new glass, stained with his arms and those of the order, installed in the clerestory windows at Temple Brewer. Further concern was directed towards Middleton’s stocks of malt and corn, livestock, fish, swans, and wood.220 The attention to detail is impressive throughout. At Fulbeck, for instance, Middleton instructed his agent to stock two or three hundred tench and similar numbers of roach, perch, and bream in the dam with all possible haste and to see that his properties there were repaired. One Allcock was to ‘make . . . and bind well’ the gatehouse at Fulbeck, ‘both gables to be plastered, avising . . . that the windows of the said gate-house be honestly made’.221 There are two overriding concerns throughout Middleton’s letter, the desire to know what his ‘livelihood’ was worth, and the associated requirement that it ‘chevyth’ and ‘increase’. Similar cares are expressed in the 1530s correspondence between members of the order.222 When brethren were less diligent in their charge of property, however, calling them to account could be a slow business. In 1504, for example, John Tonge was rebuked for neglecting the fabric of his third and poorest commmandery, Carbrooke, following which he set some wood aside to make repairs. Later he changed his mind, sold the timber instead, and left the preceptory and its buildings ‘in the accustomed ruin’. By 1510 the house was so dilapidated that the English brethren in convent reported that unless remedy was made promptly no brother would seek it for his cabimentum.223 In response, the chapter-general instructed the prior of England to appoint visitors to see what needed to be done and give Tonge 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 the church, chapter-house, great hall, great chamber, priests’ dorter, yeomen’s dorter, 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 and Turcopolier 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.

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court’225 and walled off from the rest of the estate, which was composed largely of gardens and tenements, but also included the lodgings of the bailiff of Eagle and other brethren.226 Access to the inner precinct was controlled, after 1504, by the imposing gatehouse built by Thomas Docwra, which still stands.227 In some ways this arrangement reflected that of the conventual enclosure or collachium in Rhodes, with the inner precinct corresponding to the magistral palace, and the outer the rest of the area of town reserved for the brethren. There are similarities, too, with the Teutonic knights’ headquarters at Marienburg, and closer to home with episcopal residences such as Lambeth palace and York place.228 Within the walls of the inner precinct dwelt the prior, subprior, probably the priests serving in the church, the turcopolier when he was in residence, and the ‘yeomen’ and other servants of the prior.229 In the outer enclosure resided the other brethren at headquarters, including the bailiff of Eagle, the chief officials of the priory, and lesser servants and tenants who included brewers, tilers, and industrial workers.230 Properties were permanently reserved for the turcopolier and bailiff of Eagle, an agreement between prior and brethren of 1440 having established that both they and other brethren residing in Clerkenwell should pay fixed amounts for their board.231 A number of corrodians held tenements in the outer part of the complex but were fed at the great hall within at tables gradated according to rank. Corrodies were sometimes granted to relatives such as Lancelot Docwra’s nephew John and the similarly named son of James Docwra of Hitchin,232 but more often to servants ranging from the likes of the chief steward Thomas Dalby233 and solicitor Richard Hawkes234 to the officials of local Hospitaller manors, butchers, tilers, carpenters, and stable boys.235 Other officials of the priory, even if they did not rent tenements or hold corrodies there, were provided with robes of its livery, as were the stewards of Hospitaller manors in the provinces.236 Both servants and tenants might also share in the spiritual benefits and exemptions enjoyed by the order and might choose burial in its churches. Quite a number, including Thomas Cotes, John Lamberd, William Yolton, and Francis Bell, did just this.237 225

Excavations, esp. 132–6, 166–9 and figs. 99, 101. 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. 226

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Surrounded by their largely lay households and officials, brethren of the Hospital in England and Wales appear not to have lived a fully regular or conventual life. Yet their failure to do so was itself a result of the order’s policy, which required little more of brethren resident in the west than conventional piety, the maintenance of divine service, hospitality and property, and the forwarding of responsions to headquarters. These were unheroic, but not entirely unworthy goals, and it is perhaps on their diligence and effectiveness in pursuing them, rather than on their production of saints or scholars, that we should judge the order’s members. Crucial to doing so is to understand the order’s administrative system and how far and in what degree this was geared towards the dispatch of men and monies to the east. It is to this subject that we now turn.

CHAPTER THREE

The Administration and Finances of the Priory of England The Hospital steadily acquired lands and rents in England and Wales between the 1140s and the enactment of the Statute of Mortmain, which made grants to religious houses subject to royal licence in 1279.1 A renewed process of acquisition began in 1312, when the order was granted the former properties of the Templars. Getting hold of these was to involve the expenditure of much time and treasure and was still not complete in 1338, when a survey of the properties subject to the priory of England listed Templar estates worth a supposed 1,145 marks per annum that were still in the hands of lay possessors.2 Most of these were never to be acquired and the extent of the order’s landed estate underwent only minor variations thereafter, the most significant after 1460 being the exchanges of 1480–1 and 1527–32.3 The order possessed properties in every county in England, but the largest concentrations were on its eastern side, in and around London, and in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Kent, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. Between them these areas accounted for about half the income from land of the priory and its dependent preceptories. In Wales, where Anglo-Norman settlers were the 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. Its properties were grouped into bajuliae, large houses administered by a preceptor, and smaller camerae either administered by resident brother-custodes or lay bailiffs or let to farm. Those brothers who had charge of houses were responsible for managing their estates, maintaining divine service in their chapels and appropriated churches, dispensing hospitality, and authorizing expenditure.4 Having collected the revenues of the bailiwick or camera, they then paid their own expenses and others such as for the wages, victuals, and robes of their administrative officials, household servants, 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.

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provision of hospitality. The remainder was then submitted to the treasury in Clerkenwell. A further round of expenses, including those of the prior and his household, were met there before the remainder was set aside for dispatch to Rhodes. Despite the 1303 statute allowing each prior four prioral camerae for his upkeep,5 the prior was not presented as holding any of the properties mentioned in the Report in his own name, but instead drew a personal allowance of 20 shillings per day, payable by the treasury when he was at headquarters and by the bajuliae when on visitation.6 It is probable that some estates not mentioned in the Report were set aside for the prior, however,7 and the exceptionally heavy charges incumbent on the bajulia of Clerkenwell indicate some overlap between prioral and preceptorial households and expenses. The corrodies or stipends of officials such as the order’s general procurator in the courts, and the expenses involved in the provision of hospitality were met from the revenues of Clerkenwell in 1338,8 and were probably a charge on the prior in later days. Other corporate expenses were met 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 greatly altered. Although the camerae and lands let to farm in 1338 may well have been under some kind of prioral supervision, the prior appears not to have derived any income from them himself. A papal confirmation of the lands held by Robert Malory (prior, 1432–39/40) in 1438, however, shows that the prior now had control not only of four or five prioral camerae,9 but also seven membra formerly classed as bajuliae or camerae, nine other estates, and a further five parish churches.10 The papal letter, which reflects Malory’s petition, suggests that his predecessors had held these for some time, while his own lack of title to the lands was perhaps the result of the combustion of some of the priory buildings in 1381.11 One of Malory’s preceptories, that of Buckland and Bothmiscombe, had been transferred to the 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 of prioral rights to the spolia of deceased brethren.12 In 1440, after Malory had excluded his brethren from a number of their estates, the new prior, Robert Botill, and the preceptors came to a concord under which Botill 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. Report, 211 and passim. 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. 6 7

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preceptors and promising to maintain non-knightly brethren in the ceded houses.13 Subsequent priors retained these grants. By the 1470s the prior was specifically and personally in control of about 40 per cent of the order’s estates14 which, although often leased by the prior and preceptors in provincial chapter, paid their profits to the prior’s receiver-general rather than the receiver of the common treasury. Four former bajuliae, Clerkenwell, Cressing, Sandford, and usually Balsall, were set aside for his maintenance as prioral camerae and subject to payment of a responsion set at £70 after 1501,15 while he was entitled to claim a fifth on or after his election. The fifth camera and the five other preceptories held by the prior—Buckland, Greenham, Hogshaw, Maltby-cum-Skirbeck and Poling—were taxed by the order at the rate paid by other preceptors.16 The other scattered properties which were accounted for under the priory in 1535 and 1540 had a net income of perhaps £1,000. On these the prior paid no responsions at all. The bajuliae had been subjected to a similar process of amalgamation and consolidation. Those that had not been absorbed by the priory had largely been united with preceptories in the same or neighbouring counties.17 Preceptors of the paired houses probably kept some kind of household at both sites, however.18 Like the prior, rather than simply administer their estates and send their profits on to the treasury preceptors were now taxed at a rate individually assessed on the value of their houses by the common treasury. After paying responsions and sums towards the expenses of provincial chapters and of the English auberge in Rhodes, and providing for the maintenance of hospitality, chaplains, and of such servants as were necessary to run their estates, preceptors were free to do what they liked with their money until they died, when their possessions reverted to the order.19 They were bound to maintain the fabric of their houses by the order’s statutes and 13

AOM354, fo. 215r. With the exception of two commanderies in Kent, virtually all the order’s properties in the Home Counties 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 of Chibburn, and the former Templar preceptory of Garway in Herefordshire had been joined to the commandery of Dinmore in the same county. 18 Except when a preceptor was in or on his way to the Mediterranean, in which case paired houses 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 to Ansty, 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 Dingley at 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 in 1527, when each brother holding a benefice in the priory was permitted to grant one pension of up to 10 ducats. AOM286, fo. 15v. 14

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were sometimes expected to perform expensive conventual service, but brethren with long careers and multiple preceptories could accumulate considerable personal wealth. The administration of wide estates by a small number of financially independent brother knights was the result of gradual change. In part, this was a response to complex economic and social pressures, but it is also clear that it was encouraged by the order, whose statutes made provision for the absorption of smaller houses by greater.20 The convent placed demands on both finances and manpower that could not be met by smaller houses unless they were held in plurality. As rents fell after the Black Death and the cost of military service increased, the necessity for the amalgamation of houses became more acute, and the smaller preceptories were gradually absorbed.21 Thus, in 1414, the conventually appointed visitors of the priory agreed, for the utility of the common treasury and convent, and by the consent of ‘many’ preceptors and brethren, to unite the Oxfordshire house of Clanfield with Quenington, while in 1454 the langue in Rhodes voted to attach Dingley to Battisford when it should next vacate.22 The new structure was made possible by a more devolved system of administration, with greater reliance on lay farmers as intermediaries between the order and its tenants. Although a large proportion of peripheral estates had already been rented out in 1338, demesnes, although given a cash value in the Report, had probably been kept in hand,23 and labour services had still been significant.24 By the late fifteenth century nearly all properties were rented, although some labour services or payments in kind were still exacted on leased estates.25 Particularly noticeable was the practice of granting out lands on long lease under the conventual seal. This was especially marked among the prioral estates, over 80 per cent of which were leased by 1540.26 On preceptorial estates, the tendency was for appropriated churches, mills, and the confraria to be leased while smaller tenants held their lands by copy or freehold. This process had been going on for some time. Nearly 10 per cent of the Hospital’s properties had already been let under the common seal in 1338, and the order had received papal licence to rent 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). 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 and Fifteenth 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. 21

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the act books of provincial chapters after 1492, and the movement towards leasing is further corroborated by other sources28 and by the practice of other religious houses, although some of these appear to have begun granting substantial numbers of leases for terms of years, rather than for life, only in the 1530s, when their dissolution was imminent. Such grants were often made after receipt of heavy entry fines, but set rents at a low level in return, a practice the Hospital was also following by the end.29 The movement towards leasing was still continuing in the sixteenth century. On several occasions between 1503 and 1526 copyhold rents were leased out by provincial chapter or numbers of small rents were bundled up together and let to farm for a fixed sum.30 Leases were granted by provincial chapters or assemblies of the order under the conventual seal, and terms were relatively long. Evidence from other religious houses suggests that they increased 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 for life or in survivorship, abound in the order’s registers even in the 1490s. Lessees were usually local men. Naturally enough, knights and gentry tended to be granted the larger manorial or ecclesiastical properties, yeomen and priests the smaller, while husbandmen were given tenements and messuages. In the capital and its environs, citizens, guildsmen, and brewers predominated, with royal officials also on the lookout for grants of strategically placed properties. In and around the priory precincts in Clerkenwell numerous properties were leased, or granted as part-corrodies, to servants and relatives of brethren. This was mirrored by the situation in the provinces, where family members of preceptors or their servants and associates were often granted the leases of preceptory demesnes or outlying estates. Probably for reasons of trust, the three-year leases of preceptory estates granted to enable brethren to go to or maintain themselves at the convent 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 Wilbraham drawn 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); A Kentish Cartulary of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, ed. C. Cotton, Kent Archaeological Society, Records Branch: Kent Records, 11 (Ashford, 1930), 132 (thirty-eight-year lease of Temple 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.

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of the preceptor concerned, and leading servants of the order.32 Occasionally leases were made out to the brethren themselves. In 1498 John Tonge received the Hertfordshire manor of Temple Dinsley from his uncle, John Kendal, and the provincial chapter, while Robert Newport was granted the Leicestershire manor of Heather, which Thomas Newport had recovered from the hands of seculars, in 1505.33 An examination of the leases granted in the chapter held in May 1526 may illustrate some of these points. This meeting provides a fairly large and diffuse sample of grants:34 it made seventy-six in all, of which eight were of the advowson of churches in the order’s gift, one was of a pension, four were of offices, and thirteen were of corrodies, some with an office or chaplaincy attached. The fifty remaining grants were leases, of which some twenty-five pertained to the prioral preceptories, camerae, and estates, and the rest to the other preceptories. They ranged across the whole spectrum of property types and values. Excluding three-year leases of the preceptories of Swingfield, Dalby and Rothley, and Yeaveley and Barrow, and that of a pertinence of Beverley of which the farmer was to pay the accustomed and unspecified farm to the auditor there, the total annual value of the properties granted was £535 7s. 5d. The most important of these was the large prioral camera 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, was granted a close in the Essex manor of Rainham-Berwick.36 Nineteen of the lessees 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 a tiler. Virtually all resided in the same township or county as the property they were leasing and several had previous connections with the Hospital. The three preceptories leased were granted to the usual recipients.38 The Genoese merchant Antonio Vivaldo was co-lessee of all three, the prioral chancellor John Mablestone was co-lessee of Swingfield and Dalby, and John Babington, preceptor of Dalby, was co-lessee of Swingfield and Yeaveley despite being himself on his way to Italy. Two London gentlemen, William Bowes and Thomas Redeman, were among the farmers of Swingfield and Yeaveley respectively, and Babington’s brother Humphrey was joint farmer of Dalby. With the exception of the preceptories, the properties let ranged in value 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, 98 –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. v

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‘courses’ of confraternity payments, eight manors, six rectories, and one combination of the two. Several of the smaller grants were of properties in London or within the priory precincts.39 That it leased out its property did not mean that the order was without concern for its state. Leases laid down the responsibilities of farmers in some detail. Rent was to be paid on time on pain of financial penalties usually amounting to about twice the annual farm. When a manor had been granted, the farmers were usually bound to pay the salary of the manorial chaplain, and the expenses of ministers and stewards coming to survey the property or to hold courts. They were also typically expected to maintain the buildings ‘in coopertura, daubatura et straminis’ and to repair hedges, ditches, mill-workings, river banks, and flood defences when necessary. In 1496, for example, Thomas and Elizabeth Seyman promised to repair all the walls and buildings then in existence at Temple Grafton40 and to maintain any new edifices they might construct. The prior and his successors were only to pay for the rebuilding of the chancel of the manorial chapel, an expense incumbent upon them as its appropriators.41 Often there was a division of responsibility according to the scale and type of maintenance to be carried out. Leases of the Kentish camera of Sutton-at-Hone in 1493 and 1499 specified that while the farmers were to maintain houses, walls, hedges, ditches, and the banks of the Thames, as well as, in 1499, stock levels 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 of those taking on dilapidated properties, major repairs or rebuilding were sometimes stipulated. Thus in 1506, Thomas Bassett of Painswick obliged himself to build at the Gloucestershire manor of Wishanger a chamber in the hall of the mansion, besides a storeroom, a pantry with a solar above, a stable for six horses, a bakehouse, and a malthouse.43 When the property was granted to new farmers in 1514 they were required to construct a stone barn roofed in slate within seven years.44 At the same time, the farmer of the capital tenement of Suffytur, also a dependency of Quenington, promised to spend £40 on rebuilding the property, which was ‘now in great ruin’.45 To encourage him to do so, a very low rent was set. Similarly, in 1519 John Huntyngdon promised to provide a new roof, floor, wattle walls, and doors 39

e.g. ibid., fos. 272r–v, 273r–v, 273v, 273v–274r. 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 a dovecote. 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. 40

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for the order’s tithe barn at Sawston, in return for which his rent was reduced by £10 in his first two years of occupation.46 Occasionally the order promised to do the building itself.47 Apart from this obvious concern for the fabric of its properties, the order also drew up inventories of the stock and utensiliae belonging to some major properties before leasing them, copies of which were kept in the house or camera belonging to the common treasury at Clerkenwell.48 To ensure compliance with the provisions of leases, the order’s officials visited its estates, and those who failed to maintain their properties or who fell heavily into arrears could be evicted.49 It was not always easy to remove recalcitrant tenants or to recover debts, however, and much of the order’s time 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 incorporated in the common law, although expenses seem to have been born at least in part by the preceptor who held the property.50 In 1338, the order paid fees to a host of legal officers both at court and in the provinces, and while the burden may have lessened somewhat by the fifteenth century, the records of chancery and Star Chamber often show the order prosecuting high-profile actions against its tenants. The most significant of these were the disputes over Balsall in 1496, 1501–4, and 1527–36, but other attempts to recover properties, monies, and documents from tenants occurred in relation to the order’s estates at Slebech, Dalby, and Dinmore.51 Often suits were unsuccessful. The prosecution for debt of ex-farmers of the estates of Slebech after 1514 had been abandoned by 1520, while the order eventually lost its long action against Martin Docwra for the recovery of Balsall, despite a clause in his lease by which the latter had promised to vacate the property on a year’s notice.52 Even when the courts ruled in the order’s favour it might be years before the desired goods or property could be recovered.53 Often the order was on the defensive, sometimes against descendants of former benefactors who claimed that the grants made by their ancestors had been invalid. These disputes could be lengthy and a cause of lasting bitterness. In the 1520s Thomas 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 repairs can 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; PRO LR2/62, 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.

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such as himself suing a corporation such as the order, ‘for that they do dryve such as do sew the law wyth them, for lyke theyr Ryght, to an extreme Cost of Labor & that all they of theyr Religion bere theyr Charges of Sute in common; & that they have so meny of the best lerned men retayned of theyr Councell & Parte’.54 While the order demonstrated some aggression in maintaining its rights, the leasing of so many estates probably made their defence more difficult by weakening formerly robust links with the localities. Prioral officials visiting once or twice a year were no substitute for the presence of a resident preceptor who might enjoy real clout in his ‘country’. The ease with which even the upstart Martin Docwra was able to defy the order and its officers at Balsall revealed the dangers of the order’s land-management policies, particularly in cases where important estates had been granted to relatives of brethren. Both at Balsall and at Dalby, where Henry Poole attempted to evict Humphrey Babington from a lease of the manorial demesne granted him by his brother John, it proved difficult for a new incumbent to revoke a grant manifestly 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 to find the provincial chapter of 1522 granting a corrody to the order’s ‘solicitor of business and causes’, Richard Hawkes, who was to engross all processes and pleas pertaining to temporal actions, or that another such grant was 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 and Wales brought in £6,839 9s. 9d., of which, the expenses of preceptorial households having been deducted, £3,826 4s. 6d. reached the treasury in Clerkenwell.56 After the payment of expenses, pensions, and corrodies the treasury was left with £2,303 15s. 2d. for submission as responsions to Rhodes.57 As the responsion was set at a third-annate at the time, this sum corresponded fairly neatly with a third of the sum submitted gathered in the order’s estates. In fact the figures are not entirely convincing, and their presentation seems to have been influenced by a desire to show that the order was submitting a third of the value of its estates to headquarters rather than by a strict desire for accuracy. Nevertheless they prove clearly that the priory had a clear income comparable to that of the very greatest lay magnates or richest bishops in the mid-fourteenth century. Moreover, 54 55 56 57

BL MS Additional 4937, fos. 80r, 78v–79r, 86r. Claudius E.vi, fos. 229v, 253v. Report, 213, 202. Ibid. 211.

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when it is borne in mind that in return for the acquisition of the Templar estates the Hospital had had to grant many of their holders life tenure rent free, and to advance lands and pensions to courtiers, lawyers, and creditors, it is clear that its potential wealth was considerably underestimated by the report. Michael Gervers has even suggested that it only records a third of the order’s real wealth, but his conclusions may only hold true for properties in prioral hands.58 Whatever its real dimensions, it is unlikely that this wealth could ever be concentrated and exploited with complete effectiveness. The Black Death and the sustained fall in population which occurred thereafter eventually reduced the revenues of most landowners, and may have hit the order particularly hard, as much of its land was marginal59 and may have been abandoned by its tenants. The fifteenth century saw continued decline in the population of some of the order’s estates, so much so that one of its two parish churches in the Norfolk village of Carbrooke was closed for lack of parishioners in 1424, and when the buildings and tenements pertaining to another, the Cambridgeshire bajulia of Chippenham, were destroyed by fire in 1446 many of them were never rebuilt and reoccupied.60 The number of households in Chippenham fell from 143 in 1279 to fewer than eighty in 1377 and only sixty in 1544.61 Although conditions varied according to time and place, in general the fall in population led to increased wages and perquisites for labourers, the widespread commutation of labour services, and, especially in the fifteenth century, a considerable decline in rents.62 The order’s resort to the farming out of many estates on long lease needs to be seen as an attempt to ensure itself a stable income in this context of falling agricultural revenues and population decline, the latter possibly affecting the recruitment of brethren as well as numbers of tenants. A number of smaller properties had, admittedly, been leased out by 1338,63 but the more substantial estates had still been kept in hand. By the 1490s as many as half its properties may have been leased. Although this certainly saved on the 58 Prima Camera, p. xxxix. Some estates in Essex and Middlesex were heavily undervalued in 1338, but it is much harder to argue this with respect to properties elsewhere which, although certainly valued more highly in the inquests into Templar property in 1307–9 than in 1338, do not show such massive discrepancies in valuation as in the cases he highlights, as can be seen, for instance, from a comparison of the values Perkins gives for churches appropriated to the Temple with 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 by the 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.

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expense of maintaining a large number of independent households, the gain was partially offset by the low level at which leases were set. The value of the order’s estates may have continued to fall until the last quarter of the fifteenth century. At Sutton-at-Hone/Dartford, for example, the annual payment for the lease of the manor was twice reduced in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, first from £63 to £50, and secondly from £50 to £46 13s. 4d. Recent farmers of the property had clearly been unable or unwilling to pay and still owed over £160 to the prior in the mid-1470s. The lessees of the 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 estates appear to have stabilized. The registers of the acts of the order’s provincial chapters contain serial leases of many of the order’s properties and appropriated churches, and the value of these did not vary greatly between 1492 and 1539. If anything there was an upward trend after about 1510: the farm of 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 the rent of the former camera of Keele was raised from £16 13s. 4d. to £18 in 1519.65 Rents of estates around London were particularly likely to increase, a development that can probably be associated with the contemporary rise in grain prices in the capital.66 Many of the increases were also associated with improvements to the fabric of the properties in question. In London especially a number of tenements were rebuilt and then let at significantly higher rents. It needs to be stressed, however, that most properties were leased for the 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 onset of the anti-ecclesiastical measures of 1529–36, which severely reduced the order’s revenues.67 Yet some of its spiritual perquisites were still in place to be noticed in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, which provides brief summaries of the sources and extent of the income of its houses, and of expenditure on servants, chaplains, and sometimes on responsions. Rather more detailed are the Minister’s Accounts of the Hospitaller estates after their expropriation by the crown in 1540, which give complete lists of the tenants of many properties. Yet both the Valor and the Accounts have deficiencies as guides to the nature and extent of the order’s income. The survey of 1535 varied in thoroughness according to the peculiarities of the local commissioners, so that the income of some preceptories was listed manor by manor and source by source, while the entries for others are much more abbreviated. 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.

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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 annual allowance of £23 10s. to pay the stipends of servants and chaplains. More seriously, the entry for Dinmore is missing and that for Battisford and Dingley is heavily damaged and can give no indication of the complete value of the house. However, the Valor does provide a partial idea of the order’s income from confraternity payments and the oblations made in its churches, both of which are unmentioned in the Ministers’ Accounts. The net values given in the Valor are noted in Appendix IX, although all should be reduced because the commissioners refused to allow some expenses against the value of preceptories when they estimated their worth. These included £12 paid to maintain six poor boys at Carbrooke, oblations to the poor at Willoughton, and the salaries of chaplains celebrating in chantries at Ribston and Quenington.68 Claims that responsions should be allowed against the taxable value were universally refuted. Moreover, even when these charges are taken into consideration, the expenses listed in the Valor do not include those of the brethren themselves. If these, especially those of the prior’s household, were added the clear value of the order’s estates might well be lower than that given in 1338. The Ministers’ Accounts are also incomplete. Most of the earliest surviving 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 dissolution, probably represent a fall on the figures that could have been expected even a year earlier. Moreover, the 1540–1 accounts for the preceptories of Slebech and Ansty show that they had already been let by the crown at relatively low rents,69 the commanderies formerly held by the attainted Thomas Dingley paid only a tenth based on their 1535 assessment to the crown, otherwise submitting no account, and several houses were farmed out shortly before or after the dissolution for rather low considerations. Nevertheless, the sums given in the Accounts do provide a corrective to the Valor because, despite the loss of spiritual revenues, those given for 1539–40 are considerably higher than the figures for 1535 and are based on actual receipts rather than assessed income.70 The overall picture provided by these sources, both of which show a net income of well over £5,000, is illustrated in Appendix IX. Breakdown of this income into its constituent elements is difficult, especially 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 did accept 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 of the Social and Economic Position of the Tudor Episcopate (Cambridge, 1980), 55–8.

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is difficult to assess the relative value of temporalities and spiritualities accurately. Similarly ‘courses’ of the confraria, although often leased on their 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’s income. The most characteristic source of revenue, the confraria, had been worth £888 4s. 3d. in 1338, apparently a considerable decline from the days of old.71 Although total revenue from this source is impossible to calculate in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, comparison can be made between the revenues of certain collecting areas in 1338 and in the period between 1492 and 1526. It should be stressed that the collection of confraternity payments was generally farmed out by county or diocese after 1492, while in 1338 the geographical area covered by the ‘frary clerks’ of each bajulia was rarely specified. Some of the identifications given in Table 3.1 are therefore conjectural. For example, confraternity payments made to Chibburn and Table 3.1. Confraternity payments, 1338 and 1492–1535 (£ s. d.) Area

Value 1338

Value 1492–1526/1535

Berkshirea Cumberland save Copeland, Westmorland, South Yorks, North Lancsb Derbyshire, Staff, Cheshire, South Lancsc Devon, Somersetd Gloucestershire, Oxfordshiree Lincolnshiref London, Middlesex, Surreyg Norfolkh Northamptonshire, Rutlandi Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Durhamj Suffolkk Warwickshire, Worcestershirel Wiltshirem

10

4/6/8

total

20 20/10/0

23/6/8 n 27/10/0 (1514–26)

82/13/4 40 53/6/8 26/13/4 86/13/4 37/6/8

21/10/0 (1535) 92 24/8/0 or 28/2/8 35 12/6/8 53/6/8 26

21/13/4 50 16 (Warws only?) 30

22/6/8 27/6/8 13/13/8 20 (1495) 24 (1496)

494/16/8

Maximum: 389/6/4 Minimum: 381/11/8

a

Report, 4; Claudius E.vi, fos. 181r–v, 270v. Figures are those for Newland in 1338, and for the four courses of the fraria in the counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, and Westmorland pertaining to Newland let in 1524, along with a course pertaining to Beverley in Copeland. The Valor Ecclesiasticus gives the value of b

71

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

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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 and 1526, 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 be worth 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; Claudius E.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 Quenington in 1414. The smaller figure for 1492–1526 has been arrived at by adding the farm of the payments 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; Claudius E.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 for Cleveland 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 the receipts there included only Warwickshire or both counties. Report, 41; Lansdowne 200, fo. 12r; Claudius E.vi, fos. 21v–22r, 145r. m Report, 7; Lansdowne 200, fos. 27r, 32r.

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

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London clearly demonstrates that a fall in population was not wholly to blame for the decline, although the seeming rise in parts of the north may be partly due to economic recovery after the Anglo-Scottish wars. Even a decline of 20 per cent would still have made the payments worth about £700 in the sixteenth century, however, and it should also be remembered that by farming out the confraria the order no longer had to pay the wages of the frary clerks who collected it. It is consequently hardly surprising that the langue’s brethren objected to the papal suspension of the order’s confraternity collections and indulgences during the Jubilee year of 1500.72 The most significant proportion of the Hospital’s income from spiritualities was that derived from the tithes and glebe lands of its appropriated churches, to which should be added limited revenues derived from pensions from those churches where it possessed the advowson but not the appropriation, such as Blewbury and Ludgershall. Excluding the churches appropriated to Minchin Buckland, these sources were probably worth at least £1,600 in 1338.73 Although the farming out of a great number of manors and rectories together makes a similar assessment more difficult in the sixteenth century, it is likely that gross revenue from spiritualities suffered a decline in the period between Thame’s report and the dissolution. After allowance has been made for the farmer paying the stipend of the vicar, and for wine, candles, oil, procurations, and synodals the drop in net revenue may not have been very pronounced. Nevertheless, fluctuations in the values of appropriated churches could have a drastic effect on the revenues of individual commanderies. The value of the rectories at Carbrooke had collapsed from £40 in 1338 to £4 4s. 2d. in 1535,74 while the value of Cardington in Shropshire had fallen from £20 to £6 13s. 4d. by 1505,75 and that of Marnham in Nottinghamshire from £20 to £11 6s. 8d. by 1526.76 With the exception of Minwear, the value of the numerous churches appropriated to Slebech had also suffered a considerable decline.77 This tendency was 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 the pope and cardinals to rescind the suspension, as it was merely a temporary measure, and insisted that 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 to obtain such (revocation)’. Leases of Buckland granted after 1500 specified that should confraternity 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 lands or manors, the sum of the values of appropriated churches and ecclesiastical pensions listed in the Report is £1,465 15s. 1d. The churches or chapels of Aslackby, Blakesley, Ewell, Gildisburgh, Harefield, South Witham, Sutton (Essex), and Weston were let along with various lands and rents of unspecified value, for a total of £245 13s. 4d. It is likely that most of this sum was accounted 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.

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worth £13 6s. 8d. in the fourteenth century and leased at £16 in the sixteenth,78 and a similar improvement, from £46 13s. 4d. to £55, occurred at Ellesmere in Shropshire.79 The overall fall in spiritual revenues was partly compensated for, moreover, by the transfer of several benefices to the order in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, notably the moiety of Darfield in 1357, and the whole rectories of Gainsborough, Normanton, and Boston in 1399, 1413, and 1480 respectively.80 Other occasional income may have been derived from the sale of the advowsons of the order’s appropriated churches. Although no cash sums were mentioned in grants of advowsons, the increasing number of such documents in the lease books after c.1510 probably indicates some pecuniary advantage in the transaction. In 1455 the vicar of Darfield had petitioned for absolution from any simony he might have been involved in paying 120 florins to ‘a certain knight’ for presentation to it.81 The revenue the order derived from the provision of extra-parochial spiritual services, oblations, and indulgences is very difficult to quantify, but could be considerable. The profits from the provision of burial, marriage, and sanctuary to non-Hospitallers varied between houses, but were significant enough to irritate the secular clergy, and to prompt the protests of preceptors and lessees when the value of ‘pardons’ collapsed in the 1530s.82 The overall income from oblations is also unknown, although some specific examples can be given. Oblations at the priory church at Clerkenwell were boosted 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 generations.84 The order’s church at Slebech was a relatively important pilgrimage centre and oblations at the former Templar church in Dunwich had been worth £4 beyond the maintenance of a chaplain in 1338.85 Yet in most Hospitaller churches, the oblations seem to have been allowed to the vicar or chaplain along with the lesser tithes as part of his ‘portion’.86 An interesting exception is provided by the church of Temple Holy Cross in Bristol, where the farmer and the preceptor of Templecombe were to share monies deposited 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. 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. 79

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to the order. Those collected in 1454–5 and 1479–82 produced considerable revenues. 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 Jubilee owing to the Religion’, while the papal camera received nearly £3,000 for Nicholas V’s ‘half’ of sums collected in England after expenses were deducted.88 The later collection was entrusted to the turcopolier, John Kendal, who was able to make use of printed indulgences produced by Caxton’s press. Although its total proceeds are unknown, at least £150 was paid to Kendal by the papal collector in England from monies received, and voluntary contributions towards the defence of Rhodes in Worcester diocese amounted to over £60. It is likely that total donations, while less than in the 1450s, amounted to a few thousand pounds.89 As court profits and the sale of woods were no longer very valuable by the sixteenth century and profits from labour services were rarely mentioned, the remainder of the order’s temporal income was chiefly comprised of farms and rents of its landed estate. It probably amounted to over £3,000 in the sixteenth century, and was contributed by manors, mills, messuages, or tenements let at farm on long lease by provincial chapter, and free, ad voluntatem and copyhold rents of smaller properties. In London collection was probably the responsibility of two collectors of rents, one for originally Templar properties and one for those that had always belonged to the Hospital.90 Elsewhere, the rents from the various classes of property were collected in bailiwicks usually covering a number of parishes, and sometimes more than twenty. A preceptory with very scattered estates, such as Newland, might be divided into as many as sixteen bailiwicks.91 3.2

The Receiver of the Common Treasury and the Submission of Responsions

The Hospital’s conventual common treasury derived most of its revenue from four ancient dues levied on its properties or brethren: responsions; mortuaries; vacancies; and spolia. The most significant and regular of these were responsions, payments of a specific proportion of their net value levied on 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 England 1327–1534, 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 several receivers 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 Harleian Charters 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 Nottinghamshire, which was also accounted for under Newland, but which was organized into manors.

Administration and Finances

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a quarter earlier in the fifteenth century, between 1467 and 1540 they were always set at a third or a half, and an ‘augmentation’ was often added to the responsion proper. The level of payment was set by chapter-general for the period until the next such meeting, and was renewable by the council complete in the event that no chapter was held.92 At irregular intervals general or local surveys of the order’s properties were conducted in order to update the assessments according to which responsions were calculated. Registers of visitations were kept by the receiver, perhaps partly so that he could allocate responsions between the various preceptories.93 Although few of their findings survive, general visitations of the order’s European property were ordered in 1449, 1493–5, and 1539–40, resulting in ‘new’ assessments on which subsequent ‘partitions’ of responsions were made. In 1495 visitors were instructed to make an average of good and bad years as the basis for their assessment.94 A visitation of the priories of England and Ireland by John Langstrother and the prior of Rome in the early 1460s may have resulted in the onerous assessment for the half-annate imposed by the Rome chapter-general of 1466–7.95 The responsions imposed on the priory of England from 1498 onwards were probably based on the visitation ordered in 1495, although the slightly differing proportions of their income paid by different preceptories as ‘augmentations’ in the 1520s and 1530s may indicate a continuous process of reassessment linked to prioral visitations. The other three categories of payment were all incidental, arising from the death of a prior or preceptor. Mortuaries seem to have been levied from the day of death of the incumbent until the following 24 June, while vacancies were payable for the twelve months after this.96 Both were supposed to comprise the whole net revenue of the vacant benefice(s) over the period of their operation, although the vacancy years of preceptories in the master’s gift were often leased for rather less than the assessed net value. Finally, with some 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, 271 nn. 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 was specifically based on the ‘new estimate’ arrived at in the chapter of 1466–7. The assessment laid down by the chapter of 1498 was also adhered to for a number of years, still being the benchmark 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 following financial year. As provincial chapters were usually held as close to 24 June as possible, it is possible that payments of mortuaries and vacancies had become fixed on that date in the same way that responsions had. Luttrell, ‘Western Accounts’, 4–5.

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also earmarked for the conventual common treasury. Their recovery was facilitated by the requirement that sick brethren draw up a dispropriamentum of their effects whenever they were seriously ill and by the threat that anyone found to have embezzled them was to lose the habit.97 Although the records of the common treasury from the Rhodian and early Maltese periods are almost all lost, numerous other documents having a bearing on the finances of the order in the British Isles survive among the convent’s chancery registers. The total responsion payable by the priories of England and Ireland was specified in the chapters-general held between 1466–7 and 1478, and was again referred to in 1493. Furthermore, many references to the responsion or vacancy payments of individual preceptories survive, often in the form of orders for or agreements about the payment of arrears issued on behalf of the officers of the common treasury. Preceptory leases granted by provincial chapters in England often mention the responsion owed by the benefice, although not always accurately, as lessees were sometimes 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 records enable an assessment of the overall level of responsion payable by the priory of England for most of the period covered by this survey, as can be seen in Table 3.2. Two things are striking about these figures. First, it is clear that despite the consolidation of the order’s estates in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the value of the responsions submitted to the convent had declined considerably, so that a third-annate, which had been worth £2,303 or £2,280 in 1338, now brought in scarcely half that sum, even with an ‘augmentation’ added. Second, the prior was paying a much smaller fraction of the value of his estates than his brethren of theirs. The overall decline in responsions clearly owed a great deal to the exemption of many of the prior’s estates from payment, but the exact changes in assessment are elusive, not least because it is not entirely clear how responsions were calculated in the fourteenth century. The Report does not make it clear whether the priory was simply expected to submit all of its net income to the convent, or a third of the gross value of its estates, as figures are given for both, and both are declared to be the sum remaining for responsions. Neither is it entirely certain whether assessments in the 1520s and 1530s were based on gross or net values. The values given in the Valor and Ministers’ Accounts must differ considerably from those calculated by the order. However, if one compares the responsion payable by the preceptories of England and Wales in 1535 with the Valor and with a third source, a list of values of the order’s properties in east and west of circa 1478,98 one can see that in most cases a half-annate in 1520 or 1535 amounted to about 40 per cent of 97 98

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

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

Date

Level of responsion

1467–72

Half-annateb

1473–82

Half-annated

1483–9 1490–1501

Half-annatee Third-annateg

1502–4 1505–16 1517–20

Half-annatei Third-annatej Half-annate þ additional levyl Third-annate þ additional levy of 15,000 e´cusn Half-annate þ 15,000 e´cusp

1521–6

1527–35

Total annual contribution of priory of Englanda £1,560 þ clothc (8,500 e´cus) £1,416/12/0 (7,083 e´cus)f £944/12/0h (4,723 e´cus)

Contribution of prior of England Unknown Unknown

Unknown

(£1,109/19/6¼ less £7/6/8)?k £1,521/3/9 þ £92/13/8 less £7/6/8m £1,109/19/6¼ þ £350/11/7 less £7/6/8o

£313/3/5 þ £15/18/10 less £7/6/8 £242/14/10½ þ £59/1/9 less £7/6/8

£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 e´cus 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 und Herrschaft, 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 the later 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, and Newland 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 progressively extended 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 council complete 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.

Table 3.3. Responsions compared with assessed income House Prioral camerae Fifth camerab Prioral preceptories Buckland Prioris Greenham Hogshaw Maltby Poling Other houses Ansty & Trebigh Baddesley & Maine Battisford & Dingley Beverley Carbrooke Dalby & Rothley Dinmore & Garway Eagle Halston Mount St John Newland & Ossington Quenington Ribston Shingay Slebech

Gross value 1535 (£/s. d.)

90/1/9½ 131/14/1 Entry incomplete Not given 76/5/3½ 274/11/2 n/a 137/2/0 137/2/0 202/3/8 146/17/1½ 224/9/7 206/9/10½

Net value 1535 (£/s. d.)

81/8/5½ 118/16/7 Entry incomplete 164/9/10 65/2/9½ 231/7/8 n/a 124/2/0 160/14/10 102/13/9 129/14/11½ 137/7/1½ 207/9/7 175/4/6 184/10/11½

Assessed value 1478 (£)a

Responsion 1520, 1531–5 (£/s. d.)

Responsion 1521–6 (£/s. d.)

None (210)

70 89/16/7 þ 5/14/0

70 63/13/8½ þ 12/2/4

120 69 11 100 31

51/4/11 þ 3/5/11½ 29/8/6 þ 1/16/0 17/2/1 þ 1/4/0 42/6/8 þ 3/0/11 13/4/8 þ 0/18/0¼

36/7/3 20/16/4 12/4/3¼ 30/5/03⁄4 9/8/5½

86 (32þ54) 89 (54þ35) 112 (60þ52)

37/0/10 þ 2/0/4 42/16/7½ þ 2/15/6½ 48/8/2½ þ 3/5/11½

26/6/103⁄4 þ 8/18/3 29/14/9 þ 10/2/4 34/9/53⁄4 þ 11/14/9

158 67 193 154 101 150 103 194 (110þ84) None 2? (180?) 166 181

67/9/4½ þ 4/11/6 28/8/2 þ 1/17/6 80/18/1 þ 5/8/0 65/10/0 þ 4/4/0 43/0/13 þ 2/16/63⁄4 64/0/2½ þ4/5/5½ 44/5/7 þ 2/15/6 83/0/0 þ5/9/6 49/16/2½ þ 3/6/0 76/19/2 þ 5/2/0¼ 69/16/2 þ 4/11/6½ 77/12/6 þ 5/2/0

48/0/7 þ 16/9/0 20/4/5½ þ 4/18/3 57/10/83⁄4 þ 19/11/5 46/9/4 þ 15/6/2 30/11/03⁄4 þ 10/9/4 45/10/5½ þ 15/9/10 31/7/43⁄4 þ 10/13/4 58/19/8 þ 20/1/4 35/8/1½ þ 12/2/4 54/14/1½ þ 18/12/10 49/11/9½ þ 16/17/4 55/3/0 þ 18/15/4

Swingfield Temple Brewer Templecombe Torphichen Willoughton Yeaveley & Barrow Magistral camera (Peckham) Chilcombe & Toller (Nuns) total a

104/0/2½ (207/16/8) 120/10/3½

87/3/3½ 184/6/8 107/16/11½

195/3/0½ 107/3/8½ N/A

174/11/1½ 93/3/4½ 60 þ 3/6/8

80 141 110 None 160 149 None None

38/8/8½ þ 2/8/7½ 61/19/7½ þ 3/17/11½ 47/0/4 þ 3/1/6 33/6/8 68/12/4 þ 4/11/6 36/14/11½ þ 2/9/5½ None 42/15/6 þ 2/14/0 1521/3/9 þ 92/13/8¼

27/4/73⁄4 þ 9/5/4 43/18/5 þ 14/18/9 33/7/10½ þ 11/6/9 33/6/8 48/15/103⁄4 þ 16/12/4 26/2/11½ þ 8/18/4 30/6/4 þ 10/6/6

BL Add. MS 17319, fo.37r–v. Values were given in this document in e´cus de soleil of the kingdom of France and aspers reckoned at 62 aspers to an e´cu, although totals were reckoned in florins of Rhodes. E´cus were worth 4 shillings sterling according to the order’s usual assessment, but might cost as much as 4s. 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.

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the assessed value of the house given in 1478, which seems to have corresponded more nearly to the net values of the order’s estates given in 1535 than the gross. The officer responsible for the collection and dispatch of responsions was the receiver of the common treasury, who was usually a junior preceptor and was appointed in convent and directly answerable to the treasury officials there.99 Receivers had been established in each of the western priories in 1358 in an effort to check prioral misuse of funds, and had considerable independence and wide powers.100 Their duties were essentially to collect and dispatch all the dues and arrears owed to the central convent in the Mediterranean. In pursuance of this aim they were empowered to seek payment from debtors; to issue quittances to those who had paid; to go before kings, princes, corporations, lords, and the courts to prosecute or defend actions and to exhort and compel the prior and preceptors to proceed against 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 arrears and debts in provincial chapter or elsewhere, to seek justice against nonpayers and to collect the spolia of deceased brethren in cooperation with the receiver.102 The receiver was further supplemented by the clerk and nuncio of the common treasury, who were salaried and were usually laymen. The clerk, or scribe, was appointed by the prior with the consent of provincial chapter, and held office for life. He was responsible for issuing quittances and setting down the accounts submitted to the convent. The clerkship was held successively by Richard Passemer (1459–1500), William Yolton (1500– 1516/22), Francis Bell (1516/22–1526), and Mablestone (1526–40).103 Both Bell and Mablestone were chancellors of the priory as well as clerk of the treasury, and Mablestone, at least, had the responsibility of writing to preceptors informing them of what had been decreed in convent concerning payments and urging them to pay their responsions.104 The right to appoint the clerk was jealously guarded by successive priors; a grant of the expectancy 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 had been granted to masters of the order since 1429, giving them the right to levy all the arrears and revenues 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 until the next chapter after he arrived, the order’s finances were administered by the grand preceptor and the two proctors of the common treasury. These continued to exercise their offices while the master 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 und Herrschaft, 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.

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request of John Kendal in 1493, and Thomas Docwra importuned the order both for the right to grant it on Yolton’s resignation or death and for the confirmation of this grant by chapter.105 The scribe of the treasury was in fact far more than a mere clerk. Both Passemer and Yolton held property in the outer precinct of the priory, and were described as gentlemen.106 Passemer was controller of the Petty Customs during the Readeption government of 1470–1, and was involved in various financial dealings on the order’s behalf, while Yolton conducted the negotiations over the procuration fees supposedly owed to the bishop of Hereford from Garway, appearing before the archbishop’s court of Audience in 1506–8.107 Bell spent a great deal of time shuttling forth between England and the convent with letters of exchange and consignments of cloth, tin, and silver.108 Mablestone and Yolton, as we have seen, advanced money to preceptors leaving the country in return for leases of their estates.109 The most routine of the receiver’s business was the collection of responsions, which were supposed to be paid on the feast of St John Baptist or in provincial chapters. Although late payment was common, as the accounts of 1520–36 and admonitions to debtors in the Libri Bullarum demonstrate, before 1530 English brethren were rarely in arrears for more than a year, and those who did fall into debt were mostly newly appointed priors or preceptors struggling to complete their vacancy payments. More serious and long-term debts arose in connection with estates in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and in England after 1533. The priory of Ireland almost never submitted responsions between 1466 and the 1490s and Robert Evers, the prior appointed in 1497, paid only about half of his.110 Except for the first few years after John Rawson had gained definite control of the priory in about 1520, payments from Ireland continued to be erratic until the dissolution.111 Considerable debts owed to Evers from Slebech also had to be written off after his death. In 1520 Sir John Wogan, Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys, Sir Thomas Philip, and William Jones ap Thomas owed over £112 between them for farms of the commandery, or portions thereof, held between 1507 and 1515. Although the vice-receiver, John Babington began proceedings against them at the common law in about 1516, these had proved to be drawn out and wasteful by 1520, and were dropped.112 With the exception 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. 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; Registrum Mayew, 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. 106

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1524113 the debts were never recovered.114 The Scottish house of Torphichen also fell into arrears after the exclusion of the legitimate preceptor, George Dundas, from possession between 1510 and 1518. In accordance with the order’s statutes, which required incoming preceptors to pay the debts of their predecessors, the proctors and auditors of the common treasury insisted that Dundas satisfy the responsions for these years, only dropping their demands in 1525. Rather spitefully, they also demanded that Dundas pay the expenses of the servant sent to Scotland to negotiate this settlement.115 The collection of the other levies due to the treasury called for rather more activity. The receiver was responsible for collecting the rents and leasing the estates of deceased brethren, for the payment of their servants and for the defence of the lands and rights of the preceptory in the courts. Although this was sometimes delegated to the proctor, the receiver was also supposed to go to the preceptory in question and collect the deceased’s effects in company with another brother or a notary.116 Inventories of these were to be drawn up and witnessed by a notary. Responsions continued to be paid by the houses of the deceased during their mortuary and vacancy years, and were extracted from the total receipts and accounted for separately. The remainder of the income, after expenses, was also reserved for the common treasury. Out of the sums collected from these levies, the receiver was responsible for the payment of long-standing pensions amounting to just over £35, his own stipend (£24) and those of the scribe and nuncio of the common treasury.117 A further payment of 13s. 4d. was made to the priests celebrating 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 More occasional payments such as those for recovering Thomas Newport’s effects after his ill-fated voyage to relieve Rhodes in 1522/3 might also be necessary.119 Once these sums had been paid the receiver was bound to satisfy letters of exchange drawn on the order’s revenues in England and to send the remainder to the convent. In fact the submission of monies to headquarters was rather irregular and the receiver was often several thousand pounds in arrears. The erratic nature of payments is illustrated in Table 3.4. The great majority of these monies were submitted as letters of exchange rather than as cash or goods. On 18 September 1532, for example, Clement West paid the Genoese merchant Antonio Vivaldi £2,592 5s. 10d., which the latter was to pay to the use of the common treasury in ducats on the following 1 March, as appeared ‘per chirographum et litteras excambii quas idem Anthonius de dat’ presencium fecit’.120 This was by far the largest 113 114 116 117 119

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

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Receiptsa

Payments

Arrearsb

1520 1521 1522 1523 1524 1525 1526 1531 1532 1533 1534 1535 1536

1,858/10/11½ 1,913/4/5¼ 1,362/9/23⁄4 1,870/1/1½ 1,517/4/11¼ 1,517/5/8¼ 1,655/18/3 976/15/2½ 1,601/13/53⁄4 906/11/9½ 2,550/15/5½ 1,800/1/1½ 1,137/8/1½

688/14/6 121/16/1 6,212/19/8 261/4/113⁄4 2,079/17/0 1,408/2/8 1,236/19/2 2,864/14/2½ 1,610/7/3½ 996/17/93⁄4 2,201/17/5 1,869/3/5 1,167/6/8

2,992/14/5¼ 4,784/1/9½ Credit of 66/9/33⁄4 1,599/16/23⁄4 1,037/4/2½ 1,146/7/23⁄4 1,565/6/33⁄4 0 91/6/2¼ 1/0/0 348/18/1½ 279/15/10 249/17/33⁄4

a

Receipts have been calculated by subtracting the arrears of the previous year’s account from the 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.

payment accounted for in the turcopolier’s accounts for 1531, although £201 0s. 13d. was paid to the London citizen Edward Browne for cloth provided for the use of the common treasury.121 Similar patterns occur in other years. The accounts for 1535 show Vivaldi and Francis Galliardetto being paid over £1,900 in London in accordance with letters of exchange under which they were obliged to pay similar sums in Messina for the use of the convent.122 Unlike the situation which can be seen in many of the mandates to receivers of the priory to satisfy letters of exchange recorded in the Libri Bullarum of the Rhodian period, Vivaldi and Galliardetto had not yet paid the convent the monies which they had promised it. They were thus acting as factors carrying monies to the convent rather than as creditors lending to it on the basis of repayment from its English revenues. Although relatively substantial quantities of cloth and tin were shipped from Southampton for the use of brethren at headquarters or in satisfaction of responsions or vacancy payments,123 letters of exchange were the order’s preferred way of collecting money from England. Both exchange operations 121

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

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and commodity shipments were usually conducted through Venice or using Venetian shipping rather than through Avignon, where the order’s receivergeneral in the west had his headquarters.124 In 1503 it was ordered that all responsions and other dues of the common treasury should be submitted to the receiver of Venice, Andrea Martini.125 Although the Hospital undoubtedly lost considerable sums by its reliance on exchange operations, it was at least able to anticipate the issues of its ‘British’ estates by this device, and as exchanges were taxed at a penny a ducat in England, the crown made a small profit on the transactions too.126 Both the mechanisms by which the estates of the priory of England were administered and defended, and the evidence for its dispatch of substantial sums to its Mediterranean convent, indicate that its brethren took their duties to maintain the order’s property and to support the struggle in the east seriously. Particularly telling is the dispatch of more than £6,000 overseas in 1522, after news that Rhodes was under siege had reached England. Yet the activities of unprofessed officials, tenants, confratres, donors, and merchants were clearly indispensable to its success, or otherwise, in administering its properties and supporting the convent. The next chapter will consider 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 Venetian shipping 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 Money Market, 347; AOM54, fo. 52r. A Florentine merchant was used to send money by exchange in 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.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Hospital and Society in England and Wales Christ’s College, Cambridge, has the laudable custom of inviting graduate students, in rotation, to dinner with members of the Fellowship. At one such gathering I attended those present included Sir John Plumb, the notable eighteenth-century historian, who came to sit next to me when the Fellows changed places after dessert. Having asked what I was studying he followed up 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 find some takers. It was not, perhaps, based solely on a desire to provoke, but it was characteristic of a British view of the crusades and of the military orders shaped by those, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Runciman, who wrote within an enlightened and broadly ‘Whiggish’ tradition which saw history as an uneven progress towards a secular society freed from the mental and physical shackles imposed by the medieval Church.1 In essence, they contended that the crusades were exercises in folly, barbarism, and cupidity directed by fanatics and perpetrated by unlettered thugs considerably inferior to the cultured sybarites they assaulted. In a specifically English context, historians tended to play down the significance of crusading to illustrate the habitual resistance of their homeland to the dangerous currents of fanaticism perpetually springing anew from the continental waters where they originated. Although remaining popular with an educated public highly suspicious of religious fundamentalism, such views are now given little credence in academic circles. Recent works by Simon Lloyd and Christopher Tyerman have demonstrated that crusading was a thoroughly respectable and carefully planned activity sponsored and organized by the English crown and Church and supported and participated in by wide sections of English society.2 Steamrollering the objections of Terry Jones, Anthony Luttrell and Maurice Keen have convincingly extended the era of active and 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.

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century, while Drs Tyerman and Macquarrie have pointed out that small numbers of English, Welsh, and Scots volunteers continued to serve in Spain and the east in the fifteenth.3 As late as 1511 a considerable force of English crusaders was dispatched to assist a projected Spanish campaign in north Africa. If this expedition showed itself more concerned to grapple with the bottle than with the infidel, later in the century gentlemen volunteers from Britain and Ireland took part with apparent sobriety in the defences of Rhodes in 1522 and Malta in 1565, the assault on Tunis in 1535, and the Portuguese crusade in north Africa in 1578.4 Crusading resonances, along with an active knight errantry, can even be found in the autobiographies of Elizabethan and Jacobean adventurers like Captain John Smith, who was captured by the Turks in 1602 while fighting alongside Habsburg soldiers in Transylvania.5 Well into the sixteenth century, moreover, crusading rhetoric remained important in diplomatic exchanges, and the public was kept aware of events on the front lines of Christendom through preaching, the publication of indulgences and newsletters, the money-raising tours of Greek refugees, the reports of pilgrims returned from the Holy Land, and the continued appearance of Moors and Turks as stock villains in romances and plays.6 If some despaired of the Holy Land ever being recovered, prophecies, romances, and newly printed editions and translations of histories of the early crusades encouraged optimism in many others.7 Nevertheless, even those writers who have located crusading firmly within the mainstream of the religious, cultural, and political development of the British Isles have admitted that active participation in crusading was becoming an increasingly marginal feature of lay devotional activity even in the fifteenth century.8 Such a gulf between sentiment and action was not unique to this region, but it nevertheless requires explanation in a ‘British’ context. If there was such a healthy interest in the defence of Christendom why 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 the Mediterranean’, Library of Mediterranean History, 1 (1994), 127–60; A. Macquarrie, Scotland and 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 with Christendom, 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 in Later Medieval England (York, 2000), passim. 8 Tyerman, England, 265–6, 288, 302, 324. Macquarrie’s chapters on Scottish involvement in crusading after 1410 are entitled ‘The Long Decline’ and ‘Castles in the Air’. Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades, 92–121.

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First it must be admitted that for most of the fifteenth century crusading opportunities were rather limited. The main theatres of anglophone participation in the previous century had been Spain, north Africa, and the Baltic region.9 The crusade in the Baltic, however, effectively ended for the English, Scots, and French with the Teutonic knights’ calamitous defeat at Tannenberg in 1410 and the belated realization in the west that the latest Lithuanian conversion to Christianity was genuine.10 The Spanish front was dormant rather than moribund and would revive in 1482, as to some extent would the participation 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 in which there had been some fourteenth-century ‘British’ involvement was the eastern Mediterranean.12 Crusading warfare here was largely waged by sea, and continued to be so in the fifteenth and later centuries, but while a few English, Welsh, and Scots crusaders and mercenaries fought in the Balkans and Asia Minor during the fifteenth century, there is little evidence of ‘British’ participation in naval crusading operations save for limited involvement in the Burgundian expeditions of 1443–4 and 1463–4 and the service of some stipendiary soldiers and volunteers with the Hospitallers.13 Besides the difficulties posed by distance and the expense of fighting in the eastern Mediterranean, the reasons for this failure may include unfamiliarity with galley warfare and Levantine waters and the fact that such expeditions were not always well publicized in north-western Europe. It is also surely significant that the partly English mercenary companies operating in Italy that had contributed so many men to the campaigns of the 1360s had largely been replaced by native condottieri by the fifteenth century, and so were no longer on the spot when crusading expeditions set out from the peninsula.14 Most important of all, crusading energies were increasingly directed elsewhere, into royal service. From the thirteenth century onwards, but particularly during the Hundred Years War and later, kings claimed an enhanced authority over their leading subjects, forcing them to advantage patriotic over confessional military activity. Although lesser lights made their way to the east in small numbers well into the fifteenth century, magnates and knights were more or less compelled to organize their crusading 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 the Crusades, 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.

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1390s.15 Even after the end of the war, strained foreign relations and domestic dynastic conflicts continued to leave the government unenthusiastic 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 of royal interest.16 Nevertheless, even in mid-century, writers as diverse as George Neville, Sir John Fortescue, and the alchemist George Ripley were all keen to promote crusading as a way to heal the divisions in society and launch it on a common and glorious enterprise.17 Thereafter such arguments were taken up with especial force by Caxton, whose publications included John Kaye’s account of the 1480 siege of Rhodes and several older texts with a crusading or chivalric theme, and who took care to stress the relevance of these as a spur to contemporary action.18 Anti-clericalism was certainly no bar to crusading plans: the possibly noble author(s) of a 1529 scheme arguing for the partial disendowment of the English Church proposed to devote the proceeds to war against the Turks while shortly afterwards the lawyer Christopher St Germain incorporated a call for a crusade in his radical reformist tract, ‘Salem and Bizance’.19 One way in which both crown and society should have been able to support devotional violence was by assisting the order of St John, which maintained a small body of ‘British’ and Irish brethren in the eastern Mediterranean. But the ability of its English langue to meet these aspirations has never been examined in any depth. If the long-established opinion that the crusades were of only marginal significance in the medieval political and social history of the British Isles has been largely overturned, the view that the ‘British’ knights of St John were decadent in the fifteenth century has remained 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 be added, in a specifically British context, the charge that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Hospital’s houses were ‘little more than rent-collecting agencies’, their estates leased out to provide a comfortable life for their few remaining brethren.21 There have certainly been writers who have challenged this view, mostly by emphasizing the order’s military exploits in the Mediterranean, but few of them have been professional historians and 15

Tyerman, England, 266, 268–9, 284, 308–9. 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, ‘Thomas More and Christopher St German: The Battle of 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 (Cambridge, 1994), 316. 21 DNB, xl. 360 (William Archbold’s biography of Thomas Newport [d.1523]). 16

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their opinions have had little influence on academic perceptions of the order. Scholars such as David Knowles and Claire Cross have appeared more comfortable with the monastic and mendicant orders than with the military, both maintaining an almost complete silence on the subject.22 In discussions of the dissolution of the monasteries, the order is largely ignored, some scholars appearing to be completely unaware of its existence.23 Roberta Gilchrist, who has examined the archaeology of the military orders in the British Isles in some detail, has nevertheless minimized the significance of the Hospital’s activities after 1291, suggesting that the order never recovered the prosperity it had enjoyed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.24 Moreover, Knowles’s depiction of late medieval monasticism was generally unenthusiastic, and recently some scholars have gone further than he in presenting a picture of religious houses as unfashionable institutions under assault by both the laity and secular churchmen, who attempted to refashion them into chantries and educational or charitable facilities in line with more utilitarian conceptions of their role and functions. Those institutions which could not be proved to be useful might be suppressed, particularly if their founders had no living descendants,25 while even larger monasteries which escaped such conversion were increasingly subject to lay takeover of their outlying estates and of monastic offices. At its boldest, such writing suggests that all the older-established religious orders were suffering from the same malaise, compounded of lack of zeal, lack of relevance, and laicization, and comes close to claiming that the laity had lost sympathy with monasticism to such an extent that those holding monastic leases and offices were only waiting for their moment to turn possession into legal title.26 Yet this line of argument has rarely been extended to cover those forms of religious 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 and the Yorkshire Church in the Sixteenth Century’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000–1700 (Stroud, 1997), 159–71. 23 Cross, for example, includes friaries but not Hospitaller preceptories among the religious houses she lists as dissolved, her assertion that ‘monasticism in Yorkshire was at an end’ by January 1540 suggesting indifference towards both the order and those hospitals which maintained a regular regime thereafter. J. H. Bettey not only ignores the order’s west country preceptories but also transforms its nunnery at Buckland into a house of Augustinian canonesses. Joyce Youings mentions the hospital’s inclusion in the 1534 proposals to disendow the church 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 at Foundation 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.

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hardly universal, lay support.27 Nor have critics of late medieval monasticism paid much attention to the contrary evidence of vitality provided by the Bridgettines and Carthusians,28 or given credit to the continuing attraction of the larger and older houses for some of the laity, their major role in charitable and chantry provision, and their vigorous justification of their activities.29 Despite these caveats, however, it is clear that there were strong external pressures both on religious houses and their estates in the later Middle Ages, and that smaller and poorer houses were particularly affected by these. Most vulnerable of all to lay takeover were those ‘alien’ priories owing allegiance to an overseas mother-house, especially those among them which were poor, not fully conventual, or whose heads were not formally inducted.30 On the face of it, the order of St John might appear to have been vulnerable to a similar remodelling of its houses. Its fourteenth-century masters were overwhelmingly French speakers, its receivers-general based in Avignon, 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 as religious communities according to the criteria laid down by parliament. After 1312, moreover, several of the families which had endowed the Templars demanded that their endowments be restored to them rather than pass to the Hospital, and mounted physical and legal challenges even after the latter had gained possession. Nonetheless, once legally acquired, the order managed to avoid surrendering any of its estates permanently, save by exchange, and its amalgamations of houses, while resulting in occupancy by lay farmers, appear to have been encouraged by economic considerations and conventual policy rather than lay pressure.31 Partly the Hospital’s defence of its possessions was successful because all its houses were considered to be legally incorporated under its head,32 who was thus enabled to throw the whole weight of its resources behind their defence, just as the great cathedral-monasteries were able to do with their dependent cells and granges. The fact that the order was under direct papal protection also probably helped it to escape the conversion of its houses into schools and hospitals by the episcopate. Still more significant was the support of the crown, which 27

Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society’, esp. 132, 135–6, 140–1. An exception is Phillips, ‘Recycling’, 58–9. 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 England’, 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. 28 29

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was usually willing to confirm the order’s privileges and which protected its estates, customary rights, and dispatch of responsions from rebels, tenants, and the commons in parliament during difficult times such as the last quarter of the fourteenth century. In any case, Hospitaller military brethren had always been laymen, and knight-brethren had dominated the order since the mid-thirteenth century, so that the order had always been, in a sense, laicized. Nor, although its members were accused of arrogance and luxurious living on occasion, does the Hospital appear to have been as vulnerable to imputations of inaction, redundancy, or evil living as many other orders were. Was this because the order managed to meet the expectations of a military class whose aspirations it embodied, or was it simply because the order and its abuses were not as visible as those of larger and better-known establishments? These questions are difficult to answer for the period after 1400. As a corporation, the order of St John was virtually ignored by fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century writers and chroniclers. Dramatic events involving Hospitallers, such as prior John Langstrother’s execution after the battle of Tewkesbury and prior Thomas FitzGerald’s proposed duel with the earl of Ormond, were sometimes noticed, but few conclusions were drawn from them about either the characters of those involved or the nature of their order.33 The Hospital’s activities in the east, similarly, went virtually unremarked. A parliamentary petition demanding the Genoese be treated as enemies of Christendom for assisting the Mamluks in attacking Rhodes in 1442 was probably motivated by hostility to Italian merchants rather than crusading zeal34 and even the siege of 1480 provoked notice only in a solitary chronicle, although the curmudgeonly Thomas Gascoigne, who followed the confessional struggle in the Balkans with some interest, was aware of both the Hospital’s military and charitable responsibilities, and concerned to make sure that its brethren continued to resist those ‘pagans’ who wished to enter Christian territories.35 In part the general lack of comment can be attributed to the English priory’s inability to produce a history 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 had fallen, however, writers such as Thomas More showed an increased awareness 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’s unpopularity 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 Henry VI’, 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 of the English langue do not appear to have been consulted in its preparation. T. M. Vann, ‘John Kay, the Dread Turk and the Siege of Rhodes’, forthcoming in W. Zajac (ed.), The Military

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Other evidence by which one might gauge the order’s popularity or otherwise is not entirely lacking, but needs to be used with care. Wills perhaps present the most unambiguous picture, showing that the Hospital, with the partial exception of the nunnery at Buckland, was not a particularly attractive repository for bequests,37 although a few substantial donations were made, usually in conjunction with the provision of obits or chantries.38 By contrast, the plenary indulgences granted the order by the papacy were taken up with enthusiasm and produced fairly substantial returns.39 Such material, however, does not provide unchallengeable evidence of the order’s popularity or that of its mission. Indulgences were generally popular in late medieval England, plenary indulgences especially so, and although those connected with the defence of the faith may have been seen as particularly worthwhile, this cannot be proved and clerical commentators, at least, were concerned by the abuses which followed from the grants of indulgences to the Hospital in 1445 and 1454.40 Echoing clerical complaints from the 1360s and 1370s, the Lollard John Purvey even accused the order’s quaestors of ‘forbidding’ masses and preaching until they had announced the order’s papally derived privileges and elicited alms.41 When considering the most usual manner in which the laity supported the order, by becoming confratres and consorores, still greater discrimination is needed. It is impossible to say whether many confratres vowed their goods or bodies to the order and were formally received in local chapters, as had been the case during the order’s early history, but it seems unlikely.42 Most seem rather to have purchased letters of confraternity from the order’s agents, known as nuncios or ‘frary clerks’, to whom the collection of the confraria was leased in ‘courses’, and to have then been bound, like more formally admitted confratres, to contribute annually to the order. Some of those who acquired such letters are also known to have been members of other, similar associations, which suggests that the Hospital’s confraternity, while successful, was only one among a number of competing ‘good causes’.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 Complete Works of St Thomas More (New Haven, 1963), xii. 8. 37 I have based this conclusion mainly on printed material and those wills (of associates of the order) 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, ‘The Records of Slebech’, National Library of Wales 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.

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large proportion of the order’s income in England, probably exceeding £700 in the early sixteenth century, and as many payments were small it is likely that some thousands of persons contributed annually.44 So what motivated them to do so? Like those of other military orders, the order’s representatives were permitted to visit parish churches once a year to solicit alms,45 an activity difficult to distinguish from the recruitment of confratres in this period. When doing so they appear to have drawn attention to two areas: the Hospital’s continued efforts on behalf of the faith, and the indulgences attached to confraternity. A proclamation produced by the order in English in the fifteenth century stressed the readiness of brethren ‘to spende ther blode and lyf ayenst turks sarazins and other Infidelis’ and claimed that the Hospital’s ‘defence and augmentation of cristen faith’ at Rhodes was ‘a gret cause to moue all cristen people to help the sayd noble religion and knyghtes of throdys’ by becoming ‘bredern and sustern of the frary of Saint John’ and giving ‘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 the world and the ‘gret Indulgence and pardon’ granted to confratres by various popes, and summarized in the text, would be made available to them. Priests were especially encouraged to exhort their parishioners to become confratres.46 A similar document, designed to be read out by the order’s ‘proctor’ in church, and datable to the mid-fifteenth century, ignores the order’s military role and instead lays exclusive stress on the papally derived privileges granted to confratres.47 As these sources imply, and as Prior Philip de Thame pointed out in 1338 when justifying a fall in contributions, gifts in return for confraternity were technically voluntary, but other evidence suggests that the confraria also comprised numerous fixed annual payments owed by particular properties or families48 which had presumably been donated in perpetuity by previous holders or ancestors. Sometimes distraint might even be used to secure payment: a sixteenth-century account of the second ‘course’ of the confraria in Essex stipulated that if the vicar of Boreham failed to pay 40 shillings to the frary clerk ‘for his dewtie’ the latter might go to Dunmow priory and take the chalice, mass book, or any other ornament in recompense.49 Many contributors, moreover, must have been motivated to become confratres as much to claim the privileges which association with the order might bring in 44

See above, Table 3.1 and Ch. 3.1. 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. 45

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this world as to enjoy its more enduring spiritual benefits. In return for gifts to the Hospital, and sometimes with its active encouragement, propertyholders put up its cross on their dwellings and claimed to be its tenants, seeking access to some of the considerable spiritual and temporal exemptions to which they might thus be entitled.50 These included freedom from all aids and tallages, pontage and pavage, army service and defensive works pertaining to castles and towns, and freedom from amercement in the royal courts.51 In 1284 tenants of other lords affiliated to the Hospital in Wales in this way were liable for only half the customary payments of their fellows elsewhere, while in 1381 a trader from Ludlow staying in Staunton claimed to be free of scot and lot because he paid 13d. per annum to be a Hospitaller confrater.52 From very early days, however, the crown and other authorities were concerned to limit the persons and properties enjoying the rights of confraternity or tenure with the Hospital. These might be limited to a particular 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 become confratres, and some superiors were prepared to remove its cross from the houses of tenants they claimed as their own.54 By a statute of Edward I’s reign the crown ordered the seizure of any property on which Hospitaller or Templar crosses had been erected illegally, and this measure was still being enforced in the fifteenth century. A Warwickshire man who put the Hospital’s cross up over his dwelling at Balsall without authorization had his house confiscated in the reign of Henry V, while in the early 1490s a pasture which had been similarly adorned in Suffolk was also seized until it could be proved that the tenant held of the order.55 Hard though the Hospital tried to raise awareness of the struggle in the east, it is also the case that many seem to have identified the order as a whole with its ‘frary clerks’ and their activities rather than with the distant adventures of its few dozen military brethren. By the early fifteenth century, indeed, the order was popularly known as the ‘frary’.56 This is not entirely surprising. 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 Edward the 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 in its 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.

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its livery and perhaps accompanied by ‘pardon crosses’, must have been a notable feature of the liturgical year. Its provision of burial for executed felons 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 comparison Hospitaller military brethren must by the fifteenth century have been a relatively rare sight outside the immediate localities of their estates and of the court. But if many were only partially aware of the order’s wider activities, at least some of those who became confratres must have been inspired by its achievements in the east, perhaps related to them by Hospitaller brethren whom they knew. Among those admitted into confraternity with the order were James Butler, earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, and several Somerset gentlemen in 1458, the earls of Derby and Somerset in 1517, the Willoughbys of Nottinghamshire in 1522, and possibly the duke of Norfolk before 1481.58 Some of these persons received formal grants of confraternity on the lines of that usual in the thirteenth century, and registered by the order’s chancery on Rhodes.59 The grants made in 1458 and 1517 appear to have been prompted by personal ties between leading Hospitallers and the recipients. William Dawney, the preceptor of the Somerset house of Templecombe and a man with ties to the Lancastrian government, encouraged Butler and the other west country landowners to become confratres, while Somerset had served on diplomatic commissions with Thomas Docwra before 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 those Lancastrian notables who apparently contributed to the construction of the Hospitaller castle of St Peter at Bodrum had enjoyed the order’s hospitality in Rhodes.60 Even though the number of prominent personages travelling to the Holy Land via Rhodes appears to have fallen after the onset of the Veneto-Ottoman war of 1463–79, the kindness of the English Hospitallers 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’s leading servants and associates to seek burial in its houses. Only privileged or 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. 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 precinct of the priory. Excavations, 184–6. 58

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repositories such as the churchyard of Holy Innocents in Lincoln or the specially purchased ‘pardon churchyard’ in Islington.63 Thus, just as the Hospital’s confraternity was bound up with its relationship with its tenants, so too it was closely tied to its administration of a network of peculiars extending over most areas of the British Isles. Its appropriated churches were generally subject to episcopal oversight, but its preceptories and their dependent chapels were not, and tenants of the Hospital wherever located had certain exemptions from ecclesiastical sanctions. At least in theory, the order’s chapels provided spiritual services chiefly to its brethren, their household servants, and the tenants of their dependent manors, but in practice these were extended to a great many other persons, as repeated clerical complaints make clear. Besides its burial of executed felons,64 a practice which appears to have been generally accepted by the fifteenth century, the order also, and more controversially, saw fit to extend confession, marriage, and burial not only to confratres and tenants, but even to those with no previous connection to the order or outside the Church. Its sanction for doing so appears to have been an argument that those papal privileges allowing it to offer spiritual services to its confratres might be extended to any who provided alms.65 Such activities both undermined the authority of the clergy over their parishioners and hit them in the pocket, which naturally prompted complaints. Thus, in 1460, convocation objected to the order’s usurpation of the administration of the Eucharist and matrimony from other ordinaries and attacked its practice of burying excommunicates and suicides, while in 1489 the same body complained not only that marriages had been solemnized in the order’s chapels without banns but that its chaplains were pretending the right to absolve persons excommunicated by their ordinary.66 Marriages made without the consent of parish priests were a particular bone of contention. Sometime before 1530, for instance, a wedding was conducted in the Hospitaller chapel at Temple Grafton in Warwickshire without the licence of the couple’s parish priest or the publication of any banns or dispensation and despite letters inhibitorial issued by the archbishop of Canterbury. When the case went to the Rota the marriage was nevertheless upheld, although it was later ruled invalid in England when the 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 for absolution from excommunication incurred by his marrying two couples without the publication of banns.68 Yet the order’s marriage of members of 63 64 65 66 67 68

Pugh, ‘Undertakers’, passim. Ibid. 572. Ibid. 570–1; Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 494. Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 577–80; Register Morton, ed. Harper-Bill, i, no. 107. LPFD, iv, no. 6127. Episcopal Court Book, ed. Bowker, 112–13.

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other parishes was so common that in 1529 convocation prohibited such ceremonies save by licence of the ordinary and under pain of the excommunication of those who acted otherwise. Further complaints about abuses in the 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 the order’s practice of asking no questions. Often they were a convenient place of 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 at Templeton in Devon, where it had recently brought in a friar-bishop to consecrate the church and cemetery and started offering baptisms and burials in defiance of the rights of the parish church of Witheridge. Despite his efforts, Templeton had achieved parochial status by 1535.70 Other clerical grievances against the order concerned its occasional failure to maintain the chancels of its appropriated churches, to remunerate its vicars adequately, or to pay procurations. The laity might also sometimes accuse it of failing to maintain chantries in its churches and chapels. Although neither was unknown in England,71 the order was more frequently accused of neglecting its responsibilities to buildings and vicars in Ireland, where the archbishops of Armagh sequestrated the fruits of Hospitaller benefices in their archdiocese on several occasions in the fifteenth century as a result.72 Disputes over tithes and procurations, and whether they were owed by particular churches, also cropped up from time to time both in mainland Britain and in Ireland.73 The best documented is the order’s longrunning spat with successive bishops of Hereford over the former Templar church of Garway. At some stage during his episcopacy (1474–92), Thomas Milling had had difficulty securing these, and after his death the archbishop of Canterbury’s vicar in spiritualities had begun legal action against the order before John Kendal had agreed to pay up.74 In c.1501, during Thomas 69

Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 724, 726. 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 early sixteenth-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 Ireland 1418–1439, ed. D. A. Chart (Belfast, 1935), 118–19; 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), 254–5; Registrum Octaviani, alias Liber Niger: The Register of Octavian de Palatio 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 pay procurations in order to halt the incipient legal proceedings, although it seems likely either that he meant John Kendal, or that Thomas Kendal, who is otherwise unknown, was acting on his namesake’s behalf. Ibid. 32. 70

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Docwra’s absence in Rhodes, the farmer of Garway had agreed to pay half the sum requested because he wished to avoid bishop Audley’s displeasure but after his return the prior instructed his officers to refuse payment. Three years of expensive legal action followed. In 1508 Docwra’s servants, including the farmer of Garway and the scribe of the common treasury, were summoned before the archbishop’s court of audience, where evidence was presented that procurations had been paid regularly in the period from 1492 to 1504.75 The dispute was renewed in 1521, when the prior asserted that the order had no responsibility to pay the bishop anything for Garway and would donate only the sum which had been agreed in the time of bishop Booth’s predecessor for the tithes of its other Herefordshire estate at Upleadon. If the bishop insisted on any more, said Docwra, he would pay nothing at all. Booth responded by placing Garway under interdict in 1524, and the dispute was still unresolved in 1529, when it was raised in convocation.76 It was no wonder that in 1511 Bishop Mayew had convocation’s protest against the order’s misuse of its privileges copied into his register, and that in 1532 Bishop Ghinucci of Worcester made sure he had a look at the privileges recently granted the order by Clement VII.77 As this case demonstrates, the Hospital maintained an active defence of its privileges, real or imagined, against the secular clergy throughout the later Middle Ages. In order to do so, it maintained a proctor in the court of Arches, and appointed conservators of its privileges to defend it before both church and lay courts and indeed remove cases from them into its own jurisdiction where applicable.78 Despite these precautions, and despite their exemption from episcopal authority, members of the order and their personal servants might at times be excommunicated by irate diocesans. William Knollis, preceptor of Torphichen, was excommunicated for his failure to pay tithes in 1506, while the turcopolier, John Kendal, and two members of his household were similarly dealt with in 1484.79 Despite the animus felt by the clergy against some of the Hospital’s claims and practices, the clerical estate was generally supportive of its fund-raising activities. Although the clergy were often irked by the sales techniques employed by Hospitaller nuncii, quaestores, or pardoners, the order was among a very few major institutions routinely licensed to collect alms on a provincial rather than local basis by the episcopate, which was concerned to limit those institutions offering pardons.80 The clergy might also be urged to 75

Registrum Mayhew, ed. Bannister, pp. iii, 33, 19–34. Registrum Caroli Bothe Episcopi Herefordensis A.D.MDXVI–MDXXXV, ed. A. T. Bannister, 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. 76

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contribute themselves. In 1480, for example, the archbishop of Canterbury ordered 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 to members of the order. John Kendal, for instance, was associated with several expatriate clergymen during his residence in Rome in the late 1470s and 1480s, including Cardinal Morton, who intervened on his behalf with the king in 1490.82 Possessing about a hundred appropriated churches in England and Wales, and the advowson of a number of others, the order also provided a great deal of employment for members of the clerical estate. If some of these livings were relatively poor and suffered from a high turnover of incumbents,83 others were sufficiently desirable for the order to be placed under pressure to dispose of their presentments, presumably for some consideration, 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’s appropriated churches and preceptory chapels in the British Isles, and the order did its best to ensure that its churches reflected its particular devotional concerns. In common with several other orders founded in the Holy Land, the liturgy used in Hospitaller houses was based on that of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.84 In addition, feast days and practices observed in Rhodes or Malta were followed in all the order’s European churches, 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’s commandery chapels were commonly dedicated to its patron and depictions of him were common therein. An image of the Baptist is mentioned in the inventories of the chapel of Hampton Court drawn up in 1495, 1505, and 1515.86 Similarly, oblations ‘ad ymaginem Sancti Johannis’ are recorded at Garway, as is the bequest of a cow to maintain ‘Seynt Johnis light’ at Yeaveley in 1503 and 1509 and a bell with the inscription ‘Ora pro nobis Sancte Iohannes Baptista’ at Keele.87 The Weston triptych, a late fifteenthcentury Flemish work probably commissioned or purchased by John Weston (prior of England, 1476–89), depicts the Baptist and the Presentation of Christ on one side, and the Trinity and the Presentation of the Virgin on the 81

Ibid. ii. 593. See below, Ch. 5.3. 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) and passim. 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. 82 83

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other. Other saints were honoured too.88 A triptych of the Virgin, the Crucifixion, and St John the Evangelist is mentioned in an inventory of the chapel of Temple Cressing, and images of Our Lady and St Nicholas, as well as a depiction of Christ, at Hampton Court.89 In general the order took good care of its churches and chapels and many brethren seem to have made improvements to them. At least at Clerkenwell, these were of considerable architectural sophistication and of advanced design, the most notable examples in this period being the erection of an exceptionally finely crafted chantry chapel in or after 1501 and the remarkable hipped bell tower rebuilt or erected after 1484,90 which John Stow remembered as ‘a most curious peece of workemanshippe, grauen, guilt and inameled to the great beautifying of the Cittie, and passing all other that I have seene’.91 A wealthy preceptor like Thomas Newport, too, could rebuild the commandery chapel at Newland in 1519 and have his arms placed in the windows of at least three Lincolnshire churches, including Temple Brewer.92 The arms of other preceptors are recorded at others of the order’s appropriated churches or preceptory chapels.93 As has been suggested, the order’s tenants are not always easy to distinguish from servants, confratres, and the parishioners of its appropriated churches, between which categories there might be considerable overlap. In addition to enjoying peculiar rights and exemptions, it is clear that many Hospitaller tenants held their properties on distinctive terms determined by a mixture of contingency and conventual policy. As Michael Gervers has shown, the Hospital’s landed estate was built out of a very large number of individual donations, a great many of them of modest rents or small parcels of land.94 While the order pursued a policy of acquisition and exchange to round out these territories, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries its brethren were too few to farm more than their more important estates directly.95 From the very beginning, therefore, smaller holdings were rented out, although on manorial estates, and particularly those with resident brethren, demesnes were kept in hand until well into the fourteenth century.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 Church Notes’, 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 to A.D.1642, ed. R. E. G. Cole, Lincoln Record Society, 1 (Lincoln, 1911), 237 n., 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.

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terrain, the Hospital offered a combination of inexcessive rents and relatively light labour services to prospective tenants, who were further attracted by the fiscal and jurisdictional freedoms associated with the order, prompting 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 a tenant98 and by the 1390s this imposition had become resented enough to provoke a campaign of resistance by the bondsmen of the Warwickshire preceptory of Balsall, where the obit was a half.99 Similar grievances perhaps encouraged the sack of the order’s manors in south-eastern and eastern England during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the burning of the magistral camera of West Peckham during the Cade rising of 1450.100 The Peasants’ Revolt has inspired some to suggest that the Hospital was a harsh landlord, but the truth of this is doubtful.101 The order’s relationship with its tenants had certainly changed since the thirteenth century, the practices of letting many manors out to farm on long lease and of appointing laymen as collectors of confraternity payments and stewards of the order’s manorial courts removing the tenants of many holdings from frequent contact with their landlords. By the late fifteenth century, at least, manors, rectories, and mills pertaining to the prioral estate were almost always let on long lease by provincial chapter, as were a great many other properties in London and Clerkenwell. London had its own dedicated rent collectors, who traversed the city fulfilling their functions, but otherwise those granted prioral estates on long lease were expected to render the farm at Clerkenwell. This brought more significant tenants into the Hospital’s headquarters, but also left those holding long leases as effectively the order’s intermediaries with large numbers of its subordinates. Similar arrangements obtained between preceptories and their dependent estates, which were commonly divided into bailiwicks whose bailiffs accounted for their jurisdictions at the chief mansion of the preceptory. The order’s increasing detachment from direct administration might have mixed results. The former Templar house of Keele in Shropshire, which had a resident brother custos in 1338, was thereafter transferred to the jurisdiction of the preceptors of Halston, who let it to farm from the 1370s onwards, but these changes had little effect on the actual running of the estate, which was largely managed by its tenants, a self-assured group who initiated major changes in the agricultural organization of the manor themselves and took advantage of Keele’s status as a jurisdictional peculiar to found 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. Secunda Camera, pp. xli, lxxvii–lxxviii. 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. 98 99

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regulated.102 Yet, here as elsewhere, the order’s relationship with the lay farmer was sometimes problematic, a suit by the order against Nicholas Coleman, the lessee of Keele between 1404 and 1409, maintaining that he had destroyed the conventual buildings on the site.103 Disputes between the order and its farmers were especially common following the death or resignation of a prior or preceptor, or during the latter’s absence: in such periods tenants might fall behind in their rent, mislay estate documents, dilapidate buildings or refuse to vacate their leases; while newly appointed priors or preceptors might wish to evict tenants in order to bestow the holding on their own nominees.104 Nevertheless, the relationship between the order and its chief tenants generally appears to have been amicable, not least because many were persons already associated with the order by blood, marriage, or service. This is particularly true of those who were granted short-term leases of 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 1492–1539 we 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 have predated the admission of their relatives as Hospitallers. The Derbyshire knight Sir Thomas Babington of Dethick, for instance, was granted the life stewardship of the nearby preceptory of Yeaveley in 1493, six years before his third son, John, entered the order. Over the next thirty years, John’s connections and offices were exploited so that the family held the preceptories of Willoughton, Yeaveley, and Dalby at farm for short periods, retained the stewardship of Yeaveley after Sir Thomas’s death, and was granted a twenty-nine-year lease of Rothley in 1529.106 More often, the entry of a family into service or tenancy appears to have been coeval with or post-dated the profession of relatives in the order. The Chetwoods, Dalisons, Docwras, Dorset Husseys, Langstrothers, Malorys, Passemers, Pecks, Pickerings, Plumptons, Pooles, Rawsons, and Tonges107 who were granted offices, corrodies, preceptory leases, manors, rectories, and collectorships of confraternity payments all benefited from the profession of relatives who had become, as preceptors, significant landholders. Such rewards and connections might significantly enhance a family’s existing local prestige and position, as has been argued in the case of the Malorys of Newbold Revel,108 or lead to branches of a family establishing themselves in a new location associated with the hospital. Besides the Langstrothers in Lincolnshire and 102

Studd, ‘Keele’, passim. 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. 103

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Norfolk, for example, one can also find several Rawsons in Ireland and an Anthony Tonge in Rhodes.109 Although some such families, most notably both branches of the Docwras, might lose offices or influence after the death of a professed relative, such an event need not herald the end of the order’s generosity. Grants were made to members of the Malory family for at least fifteen years after the death of the last Malory preceptor in 1481,110 while the Hertfordshire gentleman George Dalison of Clothall, a servant of the order since the 1480s, continued to receive grants and offices after the death of his presumed relatives, the Hospitallers Richard and Robert, in 1498 and 1504.111 His importance must have helped to keep the family connection alive in following years, so that John Dalison became a Hospitaller before 1519, and Robert (II) in 1524.112 Those of the order’s leading servants who appear not to have had pre-existing family connections with brethren were often also rewarded for their pains with corrodies, properties within the prioral precinct, and grants elsewhere. The latter might include manors, rectories, and, in the case of Francis Bell, who was granted the farm of the magistral camera of Peckham, even whole preceptories.113 Most such grants were of properties within striking distance of the priory, but some were considerably more far-flung, and must have been made over to assigns. The order provided accommodation and employment throughout England and Wales. The Hospital seems to have been a good employer, and looked after its own. The number of men whose careers in its service can be traced for twenty years or more is considerable. Its chief officers—the auditor, chief steward, prioral steward, prioral receiver, and scribe of the common treasury—held their posts for life and were rewarded with small salaries, corrodies, tenements within the priory complex, and leases of land on which they might make considerable profit. Officers such as chaplains, bailiffs, keepers of woods, and stewards of courts also customarily had life tenure and were provided with their salaries, robes, and other perquisites even if they should be infirm. Details of the recruitment of such officers are practically impossible to come by, but it seems likely that many had served the order in its preceptories or in Rhodes before they took up residence in Clerkenwell. This is suggested by the fact that their number included several Rhodiots, of whom three in particular—Francis Bell, Constans Bennett, and Francis Galliardetto—became both prominent and prosperous in prioral service. Hospitaller brethren could sometimes demonstrate a quite touching 109

Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 69–71; CICRE, 89–90; AOM404, fo. 230v. 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. 110

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paternalism towards their subordinates. Having thought to reward William ap Rhys’s long service by appointing him his chief auditor, for example, William Weston was aghast at Thomas Cromwell’s attempt to pressure him into appointing the monastic visitor, William Cavendish, instead. Weston also intervened with Giles Russell, preceptor of Battisford, on behalf of John Launde, an old servant of the former preceptor, Adam Chetwood, and whose rent Russell was trying to increase.114 Just as with relatives and servants, the hospital did its best to bring those other persons to whom it leased its estates into close and long-lasting affinity. Gentlemen granted leases of former preceptories and camerae would be expected to find chaplains to celebrate there and to receive the order’s officials when they came to survey the property or hold court. In return they were often granted robes of the order’s livery, might act as its attorneys in local business and might rarely be granted corrodies as was the farmer of Hogshaw, Ralph Lane, at Clerkenwell in 1508.115 The most prestigious of the order’s local offices, the stewardships of its courts were, like its major estates, granted largely to local notables, such as Sir Thomas Burgh at Willoughton in 1493, Sir Thomas Tyrrell at Cressing in 1495, and John Villers the younger at Dalby in 1498.116 Tyrrell, at least, was appointed because of the ‘good favour and special love’ he had demonstrated to the order in the past. That these men were all from families who supplied the hospital with brethren is also telling. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to suggest that the order was always able to distribute estates and offices as it wished. In Wales and the Welsh Marches, for instance, some gentlemen were effectively paid protection money.117 The large number of grants made to various categories of royal servant across this period also indicates that the hospital felt it necessary to acquire influence at court and suggests that pressure was put upon it to make grants. In 1518, for example, Henry VIII’s intimate Sir Thomas Boleyn was granted the order’s Cambridgeshire estate of Great Wilbraham, while in the same year the Lancashire gentleman James Anderton vacated his newly granted lease of Much Woolton in favour of Roland Shakelady, a royal clerk 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 royal palaces such as Richmond were particularly attractive to courtiers and royal officers, and with the expansion in the activities and personnel of the crown under the Tudors considerable pressure was brought to bear on the order for grants. The important estate of Hampton Court, for example, was held by successively grander personages between the 1470s and 1530s: John Wood, 114 115 116 117 118

LPFD, xi, no. 419; v, no. 901. Claudius E.vi, fo. 60r. Lansdowne 200, fos. 13r, 23r, 50v. AOM54, fo. 42r; Claudius E.vi, fo. 257v. Claudius E.vi, fos. 176v–177r; 185r–v.

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Sir Giles Daubeney, Cardinal Wolsey, and finally the king himself. Both Daubeney and Wolsey sought a permanent grant of the manor, which the order was reluctant to allow, and got the crown to intervene on their behalf with the central convent.119 Yet the order might also find it politic to grant the requests of even relatively minor officials, or their connections. Writing to the preceptor of Baddesley in 1533, the order’s subprior asked him to grant a property held by copy to a London merchant whose brother was a clerk of the crown and ‘could do the order some good’.120 But what might this good consist of? Above all, the order sought the continuance and extension of royal favour. While its priors, as lords of parliament and royal councillors, were important public figures they did not reside at court, and were rarely close intimates of the king. In attempting to gain licence to leave the realm, to acquire benefits for their order, to defend their estates and to pursue their own private interests professed Hospitallers directed begging letters, gifts, and pensions to royal councillors and courtiers. Thus when prior John Kendal wanted to go to Rhodes in c.1500 he made a present of kirtles ‘adorned with crystal gold and silver’ to the chancellor, Morton, while in the following reign Wolsey and Cromwell were offered Turkey carpets and pensions for their uncertain favours.121 Yet for all the attractions of exotic manufactures, property was what many courtiers 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 were not just competing with the order’s relatives and servants, but with the citizens and other inhabitants of the capital. The prior of St John, whose properties 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 Its tenants included the lawyers of the Temple area, the clerks of Chancery Lane, and numerous citizens and guildsmen. London merchants sold cloth and lent money to the order and its brethren, and their presence as co-lessees of the estates of those preceptors travelling to convent indicates their importance in providing the capital to finance such journeys. In 1506, for instance, the draper William Stalworth, was among those granted the farm of the Lincolnshire preceptory of Willoughton.123 Such ties begat a certain amount of affection and intimacy in some. Both the liverymen and yeomen of the Merchant Taylors belonging to their twin fraternities of St John Baptist were confratres of the Hospital, and attended an annual mass in the priory, where at least one prominent liveryman was buried. A few 119 120 121 122 123

See below, 157, 173 and Thurley, Hampton Court, ch. 1. LPFD, vi, II, no. 166. AOM79, fo. 116v; see below, Ch. 6. PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402, mm. 1–13d; CSPV, iv, no. 380. Claudius E.vi, fos. 44v–45r.

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Londoners also left the order money in their wills, the most notable bequest after 1400 being the £100 bequeathed in 1511 by the Merchant Taylor John Kyrkby towards the bell tower rebuilt after 1484, in return for which the order promised to keep an obit in his honour.124 Relations were not always amicable, however. The corporate cohesion of the order and its servants and their exemption from secular jurisdiction and penalties prompted some resentment among the citizens of the capital, so that in 1453 a wrestling match between champions of the priory and the city degenerated into a battle in which several people were killed or injured.125 There were occasional 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 and associations outside the order. While travelling round his favoured estates, for instance, John Weston went hawking with and provided ‘gode chere’ to his friends, and visited the houses of lay persons such as Richard Cely the elder. Richard the younger, a close companion of the prior, accompanied him both on his local travels and his embassy to France in 1480 and was the ‘Bedfelow’ of the younger Hospitaller Roland Thornburgh, while his brother George provided the prior with news, gowncloth, rich saddles, and hawks from the marts of Calais and Flanders.126 Similarly, the letters of relatives and servants provide news about members of William Weston’s household 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 to take two bucks and two does from the park at Berwick annually as well as to take out the prior’s boats and fish.128 The order’s preceptors indulged in similar pursuits. Leases of East Stafford mill in Dorset granted in 1512 and 1526 specified that the commander of Maine and his friends were to have the right to fish there when they should visit.129 Besides such frivolous interactions, preceptors were well enough integrated into local society to act as feoffees 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 St John the Baptist, London (London, 1888), 111–12, 63; The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: 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 Chronicles of 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 Illustrative Documents, Containing some Account of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Canterbury, without Micklegate Bar, in the Suburbs of the City, ed. R. H. Skaife, Surtees Society, 57 (Durham, 1872), 45, 189.

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largely secular environment in which they operated and the necessity of defending their estates, it is not surprising that both priors and preceptors could sometimes be accused either of personal immorality or of abusing their positions in favour of themselves and their relatives. According to the hostile Thomas de la Laund, brother John Boswell kept not only the customary household at Temple Brewer but also adopted John Amwyk ‘as his Fole and Ydyot’, besides keeping a mistress and having a son to whom he gave Amwyk’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 the Docwras with whom prior Thomas surrounded himself, especially Martin of Balsall, were more closely related to him than was canonically licit.133 Whether before or after the dissolution, brother Henry Poole is also known to have fathered a bastard.134 Concubinage may have been rife among the Hospitallers of Scotland and Ireland, where brethren were virtually unsupervised. William Knollis, preceptor of Torphichen, had an illegitimate son,135 and a number of Irish priests claimed to be sons of Hospitallers in petitions to Rome.136 The English prior of Ireland, John Rawson, emulated the native-born brethren in fathering a daughter.137 Some such relationships might involve coercion. In 1534 Edmund Hussey was accused of having borne off a Bristol servant girl into captivity at Templecombe,138 while William Langstrother, the bailiff of Eagle, colluded in his lay relative Robert’s pursuit of Jane Boys, which ended up in her abduction to Lincolnshire and rape in 1452.139 At least among male heads of families, legal cases probably caused longerlasting resentments than any sexual misdemeanours. Successive preceptors of the Lincolnshire house of Temple Brewer had a dispute with the de la Laundes of nearby Ashby which had its origins in the latter’s objections to the transfer of their donations to the Temple to the Hospital after 1312. The last round of litigation between the family and the order began in 1470–1 and dragged on until the 1520s, the pretext for action being Ashby church, which Robert de la Laund claimed had been granted to the Temple illegally by an ancestor. Although Robert’s suit against brother Miles Skayff collapsed because of his death it may have prompted the next preceptor, John Boswell, to attempt to deprive Thomas of his rights as lord of the manor of Ashby by seizing deeds and forging a will giving him title to a messuage 131

BL Add. MS 4937, fos. 78r–79r. 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. 132

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there. Laund’s determination to pursue this suit before the common law courts and Margaret Beaufort also led Thomas Newport, who became preceptor on Boswell’s death in 1495, to adopt strong-arm tactics. Laund complained that in 1502 or 1503 Newport had withheld land in Ashby from him and instructed his tenants not to pay him joysment. Relations had deteriorated to such an extent by the time that John Babington (I) was farmer of the commandery in 1519–20 that he allegedly caused his servants to bait and make off with Laund’s sheep, destroy his corn, and usurp his jurisdiction over the Ashby leet courts. When Laund complained about these latest outrages to the courts, Babington supposedly suborned his counsel so that the latter passed him documents and ensured the exclusion of Laund’s patron Sir Christopher Willoughby from the Assizes at which the case was to be determined.140 Besides his order’s legal clout, a Hospitaller able to secure a preceptory near his family estates would also be able to call on physical muscle, as Edmund Hussey apparently did during his confrontation with the corporation of Bristol in 1534.141 Yet the family interests of one preceptor could sometimes complicate matters for the next incumbent. After Thomas Docwra installed his relative Martin in the important prioral preceptory of Balsall shortly before his death, the latter became the subject of eviction proceedings by the next prior, while in the 1530s Henry Poole attempted to evict the Babingtons, relatives of the former preceptor John, from their interests in Dalby.142 As these examples suggest, the tendency of the Hospital’s family and personal connections to perpetuate themselves rarely led to the establishment of prolonged family interests in particular preceptories, although more peripheral estates might become the preserve of a family over several generations. The order’s promotion system, by which brethren would move between houses and usually had no say in the appointment of their successors, worked against any such developments, as did the fact that preceptors could choose their own officers and tenants without reference to provincial chapter. The order was in any case too significant and far-flung a corporation, and too dependent on lay service, support, and counsel to become a closed shop. Its landed administration was partly dependent on the good will of the gentlemen who leased its manors, acted as stewards of its courts, and who also served the crown in shire government. Its shipment of men and monies to the Mediterranean required the goods and credit of English merchants and the expertise of Italian. Priests, legal officers, bailiffs, receivers, scribes, frary clerks, parkers, and menial servants all had to be recruited 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 a great 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.

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families and friends of the few dozen professed brethren. In granting tenancies and appointing to at least some offices, the order showed itself susceptible to pressure from influential persons, especially those connected with the court. In doing so, it sought to secure the approval of those about the king for its activities, the perpetuation of which complemented some traditional elements of royal policy, but contradicted other, often more pressing, considerations.

CHAPT ER FI VE

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1460–1509 Royal support had always been necessary to the order of St John’s operations in England and Wales. Yet there had also always existed potential conflicts of interest between crown and order. From the thirteenth century, kings of England had emphasized their right to control the movements of their subjects overseas, had limited transfers of bullion out of the country, and had clamped down on corporations which had allegiances to bodies or persons outside the realm. Monarchical claims and nationalist rhetoric became more wide-ranging and explicit as a result of the Hundred Years War and the ‘state building’ of the late Middle Ages, and were sometimes employed to justify limiting, impeding, or even halting contacts between the Hospitaller priory of England and its Mediterranean convent. Usually, however, the crown fell well short of submitting the order to any comprehensive system of restrictive legislation, and acted only when it considered its members to have slighted the royal dignity or breached royal prerogatives in some way. In this chapter I will attempt to establish what the crown’s usual attitude to the Hospital was, what theoretical and practical bases underlay royal perceptions, and what the normal patterns of interaction were between the two. I will then trace the development of the relationship between individual kings and priors of England on a reign-by-reign basis, paying particular attention to the conflicts which occasionally arose between crown and 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 attend the forthcoming chapter-general of the order. His grounds for doing so were Botill’s age and sickness and the belief that his presence in England was ‘to us full necessarie for many causes’. Informing the English brethren in Rhodes of his decision, he proceeded to instruct them that ‘as ye wol we shal take you for our trewe subgittes’ they must ‘in noowise suffre as ferre as ye may and in esp(ec)iall yeve noo consent to any g(ra)unts imposicons or charges that may

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be thought or taken p(re)judiciall or hurte to the lawes of this o(u)r reaume’.1 Henry’s instructions to his Hospitaller subjects reflect two perennial elements in royal policy: a dislike of the imposition of taxes on the realm by foreign authorities, and a desire to limit the movement and activities of subjects overseas.2 From the fourteenth century such considerations had led to the restriction of papal authority to tax the English Church, to the diversion of ecclesiastical taxation to fund the war effort against France, and to occasional prohibitions on people leaving the country on business other than the king’s.3 Suspicion of all things French had further led to the seizure or Anglicization of those ‘alien’ priories and cells which owed allegiance to foreign mothers and were run and staffed by French monks,4 and to bans on their sending payments (apportum) overseas.5 Although the brethren of the Hospitaller priory of England were overwhelmingly anglophone, their allegiance to an institution whose masters were usually French, whose French provincial priors supported the enemy war effort,6 and whose receiver-general was based in Avignon left them potentially vulnerable to punitive legislation or even suppression. Preceptories, which were barely conventual 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 Hundred Years War and during the papal schism. In 1337 Edward III lumped the dispatch of responsions to Rhodes together with the apporti paid by the alien priories to their overseas mothers, and forbade it, while also requiring military service and loans from the prior of England, Philip de Thame.8 In 1339 he reproved Thame for sending responsions in contempt of this order, alleging that by sending monies abroad he had destroyed the goods of the Hospital, which ought rather to be employed ‘in defence of the realm’.9 The 1

PPC, vi. 301. M. J. Barber, ‘The Englishman Abroad in the Fifteenth Century’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 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, Society and Politics, Studies in Church History, 12 (1975), 133–41; B. J. Thompson, ‘The Statute of Carlisle, 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 rarely applied to the Hospital before Edward III’s insistence in 1335 that no religious man carry sterling out of the realm. Statutes, i. 151, 263, 273. For a pre-1335 enforcement of the statute see CCR1330–3, 323. In 1335 the prior of England, Philip de Thame, paid his responsions at a chapter-general of the order. H. Nicholson, ‘The Hospitallers in England, the Kings of England and Relations with Rhodes in the Fourteenth Century’, Sacra Militia, 2 (2001), 25–45, at 27 n. 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. 2

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confrontation reached its height in 1341, when the prior’s compliance was again investigated, the confiscation of the priory threatened under the legislation against alien houses, and the arrest of the hospital’s visitors as ‘adherents of the king’s enemies beyond the seas’ ordered because they had exported bullion, urged their brethren to leave the realm, and caused its secrets to be discovered by conducting visitations.10 Thereafter licences for Hospitallers to depart continued to insist that they take no apportum, Edward attempting to justify the detention of responsions in October 1342 as necessary for the defence of the Hospital.11 By the late 1350s, however, the order appears to have convinced the king that it should be treated differently from the alien priories, with responsions being submitted once more.12 Thereafter, while individual Hospitallers were sometimes subject to restrictions or outright prohibitions on travelling or sending responsions abroad, there was no attempt to put a stop to the order’s activities until Edward’s adverse but short-lived reaction to the convent’s attempt to detach the preceptory of Scotland from English allegiance in 1374–5.13 The crown even continued to support the order during the papal schism, when the allegiance of its convent to the Avignonese lines of popes provided the perfect pretext to confiscate its estates.14 Despite a parliamentary petition in 1383/4 that responsions be put to the ease of the ‘poor commons’ of the realm, despite the order’s inclusion in a 1410 ‘Lollard’ proposal to disendow the Church, and despite increasing royal impecunity under Richard II and Henry IV, the order continued to be allowed to transmit men and money to Rhodes as before.15 To some extent, the crown probably left the Hospital alone because it was not 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, after all, English, and the master of the order was supposed to reside in the eastern Mediterranean. Such difficulties as occurred arose primarily from its shipment 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 has recently modified Tipton’s thesis, arguing convincingly that in the mid-1380s, at the height of anti-Avignon feeling in England, the priory entered into dialogue with the anti-master Caracciolo in Rome, but she nevertheless accepts that the English Hospitallers remained loyal to Rhodes 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 the Hospital rather than, as Dr Hudson has stated, to the nunnery there. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), 135 and index. 16 McHardy, ‘Alien Priories’, passim; Thompson, ‘Laity’, esp. 23–4, 37.

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of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries17 and a source of anxiety to those who feared that funds dispatched to Avignon might end up in French royal coffers.18 To satisfy public opinion, it might not only be necessary for Clerkenwell to prove it was not funding the French, but also that it was actively employing its monies in defence of the faith. Thus in 1411 it was reported in convent that Henry IV had insisted that responsions be employed solely in Rhodes, while more generally the order evaded suspicion by submitting its dues as letters of exchange to be cashed in Italy or, less usually, in the form of goods such as cloth and tin.19 Even in the form of letters of exchange, however, the size of the sums involved might cause concern, particularly if the convent ordered a significant increase in payments or attempted to impose any new forms of taxation. In the fifteenth century, responsions often amounted to more than £1,000 per annum, a sum considerably greater than that sent to Rome by the papal collector in usual years and which dwarfed the amounts sent to overseas mother-houses by other English religious orders.20 A second irritant was the possibility that Hospitaller brethren might be provided to benefices by the pope. Such eventualities were covered by the statutes of Provisors, but the crown sometimes saw fit to remind brethren not to seek preferment in Rome or to punish those who had.21 Only one piece of English evidence certainly indicates that any pressure was placed on the order to conform to the conditions by which some of the alien priories escaped confiscation. The legislation against alien houses exempted ‘conventual priories’ from action, and given this context it is interesting that at some point between 1417 and 1422 Henry V ordered prior William Hulles to transform the order’s chief church in Clerkenwell, which was largely served by secular priests, into a fully conventual establishment, as it had been until the reign of Edward III.22 Nevertheless, the crown’s refusal to act against the Hospital even during the schism perhaps requires further explanation, especially in view of the fact that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the English houses of military or hospitaller orders such as St Thomas of Acre, St Lazarus, and St Anthony of Vienne became autonomous, acquiring the right to elect their own masters without reference to their headquarters, ceasing to support their 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 the Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340–1478 (Toronto, 1972); J. L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy 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 collectively sent a princely £76 to Cıˆteaux. Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 75; Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 31–2. 21 CCR1381–5, 75; CPR1441–6, 134. 22 Thompson, ‘Alien Priories’, esp. 26–8, 35–8; Monasticon, vi, II, 839.

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devotional and charitable activities.23 The Hospital might easily have followed a similar path. That it did not can partly be explained by royal pronouncements in its favour. Although these tended to be somewhat unimaginative and conventional, they nevertheless reveal first monarchs’ apparently sincere belief that their predecessors had been among the founders of the order, whose houses had been established for the defence of the faith, and secondly a continued commitment to the defence of Christendom, one perhaps ultimately grounded in their responsibility, enshrined in the coronation oath, to protect the Church.24 Judged by the materialistic criteria of foundations, endowments, and donations the order of St John had never been an especial favourite of any English monarch.25 Yet when Brother John Stillingfleet drew up his list of donations to it in the mid-fifteenth century he drew attention to royal grants, singling out Richard I and Richard II in particular for their love of the Hospital.26 Richard I, he said, had the order in special affection because its master and brethren had conferred ‘plurima beneficia ac commoda’ on him and his entourage during his crusade, as appeared from his confirmation of the Hospital’s liberties. Yet the Lionheart’s territorial benefactions to the order were modest, amounting to the grant of two small hospitals and a hermitage, a fact which suggests that despite or perhaps indeed because of his dealings with the order in the Latin east he still saw it primarily in the context of its medical rather than its military work.27 Two centuries later Cœur de Lion’s less impressive namesake had apparently also shown especial favour in increasing the order’s liberties at the request of prior Robert Hales (1371–81) and protecting it in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt, when its properties had been destroyed and its brethren fled incognito to hide amongst laymen.28 Given that it was Hales’s implementation of the poll tax on the crown’s behalf that prompted much of the animus against him and his order, and that Hales was himself murdered during the rising, it might, however, have been churlish for Richard II to have done otherwise.29 In fact there had been a steady if unspectacular stream of royal donations to the order from the reigns of Henry II until that of Edward I, but these had most characteristically taken the 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. The London house of St Thomas had earlier resisted moves made by its Acre convent to amalgamate with 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 Thirteenth Centuries’, in A. Murray (ed.), From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500 (Turnhout, 1998), 203–18, at 204. 26 Monasticon, vi, II, 831–9. Stillingfleet’s writing(s) are discussed in Gervers, Hospitaller Cartulary, 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.

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the right to hold markets and fairs and grants of free warren.30 The flow had tailed off towards the end of the thirteenth century, and some of the order’s claimed privileges had begun to be questioned by the 1250s, but the milk of kingly kindness did not entirely curdle until well into the reign of Henry VIII, the Hospital’s most remarkable, if reluctant, royal benefactor before then being that unlikely holy warrior, Edward II, who granted it the former Templar properties in November 1313.31 Many Hospitaller properties had originally been granted to the Temple by the crown, which had effectively founded several Templar houses, and the Hospital took care to remember the masters and patrons of its defunct sister order.32 It also made sure that kings were aware of the chantries and obits it maintained in remembrance of past royal benefactors, hence Henry VI’s claim in July 1453 that his progenitors 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 to provide for the quiet of its brethren and to act to the best of his power to prevent their being offended in any way.33 More potent, perhaps, was the order’s continued role in the defence of the Latin East. It is true that few English monarchs, the last being Henry IV, had first-hand experience of the Hospital’s activities in the east, and that English enthusiasm for crusading appears to have declined somewhat in the fifteenth century, if chiefly through lack of accessible outlets.34 Nevertheless, if the crusading adventures of its subjects accorded ill with the crown’s increasing desire to control movements of persons and bullion out of the realm, and its insistence that the place of leading subjects was by the king’s side, they fitted perfectly well with rulers’ strivings, as chief chivalric warlords, to promote and celebrate the pursuit of honourable deeds of arms.35 Naturally, kings expected that knightly excursions should be performed in their own service, but there were long periods when they were not engaged in military activity themselves. When Edward III and Richard II were at war with France they therefore demanded the service of their leading subjects in the field, but during periods of truce, especially the 1390s, crusading activity might be actively promoted.36 If the ideals of Christian brotherhood in arms and of knight errantry were being eroded during the fifteenth century and replaced 30

These are conveniently listed and summarized in Monasticon, vi, II, 831–9. CPR1313–7, 52; Monasticon, vi, II, 809; Statutes, i. 194–6. On Edward’s transfer of former Templar properties to the Hospital see now Nicholson, ‘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’, in M. Jones (ed.), New Cambridge Medieval History, 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. 31

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by ‘national chivalries’ they had not yet been entirely eclipsed and some of their force can still be glimpsed in the careers of noble gadabouts such as Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick.37 Nor can the effect on royal sensibilities of the monarch’s responsibility to uphold and defend the faith be entirely discounted. Crusading tracts, mirrors for princes, romances, sermons, papal envoys and letters, and prophecies reminded kings of their duties in this sphere, and of the increasing Turkish danger to Christendom.38 Their effectiveness can only have been enhanced by the appearance at court of eastern dignitaries such as Leo of Armenia and the emperor Manuel II.39 Such exalted visitors were rare, but Byzantine envoys made their way to England relatively frequently and the numbers of Greek refugees in the west increased dramatically after the fall of Constantinople.40 Those who made their way to the English court and attempted to raise money for the ransoms of their enslaved families presented at least an incitement to pity, if not necessarily to action, and rulers sometimes responded generously.41 The French war, the mutual suspicion between England, France, and Burgundy which was its legacy, and subsequent upheavals in the English polity meant that there were formidable obstacles in the way of direct royal participation in holy war in the fifteenth century, and few monarchs made serious moves towards such an enterprise.42 And while the crown was willing to allow men of less than baronial rank to fight in Spain, the Balkans, and the eastern Mediterranean, it would not easily countenance the involvement of magnates in crusading warfare. The fifteenth-century nobility were expected to be on hand to serve the king in war and offer him counsel in peace, even if in practice the royal council was often largely composed of non-noble experts. Leading nobles who did attempt to set out overseas as crusaders or to the Holy Land as pilgrims might find themselves forbidden to depart, like Salisbury in the 1420s, impeded and criticized like Rivers in 1471, or summoned home from their travels, like Tiptoft in 1461.43 The very chivalric lustre which crusading could add to a noble reputation might even 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 and J. 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. Manuel II’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 e´migre´s 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.

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undertake them, as Richard II seems to have done with Henry earl of Derby in 1390.44 For both ideological and practical reasons, the crown was also reluctant to allow the imposition of papal crusading levies on the English Church. Having wrested control over taxation of the Church from the papacy in the fourteenth century, kings of England had no intention of relinquishing it again in the fifteenth.45 Moreover, the Lancastrians in particular badly needed the fruits of clerical tenths to swell their own coffers, and despite the papacy’s return to Rome there was a lingering suspicion that sums sent there would not be used properly.46 It was only grudgingly, therefore, that kings sometimes asked the clerical estate for grants in response to papal attempts to impose crusading tenths, although the clergy’s response to these appeals was often still more niggardly than rulers would have liked it to be.47 Monarchs were rather more willing to sanction the proclamation of crusade indulgences, but even these could be objected to on bullionist grounds. Thus, when asked to agree the levy of a crusading tenth in 1481, Edward IV refused, complaining that ‘an infinite amount of money’ had already departed the realm as a result of the recent grant of indulgences to the Hospitallers.48 National and self-interest, as well as dislike of sending money out of the realm, therefore militated against a really effective English royal response to the threat posed by the Turks. Yet other fifteenth-century rulers were active in funding and planning crusades and some, such as Philip the Good of Burgundy and Alfonso V of Aragon, even sent small fleets to the eastern Mediterranean.49 In the face of such activity it behoved the crown to offer at least some assistance to the defence of Christendom. One of the more effective ways of doing so was to support the order of St John. Once the problem of its receiver-general residing in Avignon had been circumvented, one could at least be reasonably sure that monies sent to Rhodes were being expended in the defence of the faith,50 and the order did its best to demonstrate that this was so by building substantial fortifications designed as much to impress western visitors as to deter the Turks.51 Periodically, royal envoys were sent to the eastern Mediterranean, partly perhaps to check that there was substance to the order’s claims. Formal embassies were supplemented by the visits of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Such travellers 44

Tyerman, England, 279–80. Lunt, Financial Relations, ii, esp. 117–18, 123–4. 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 Pontificana, 28 (1979), 7–25. 50 For English attempts to ensure this, see Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, 166. 51 Luttrell, ‘Maussolleion’, 145; id., ‘Military Orders’, 341. 45 46

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often had connections with the royal household, and from the earliest days of the order’s sojourn on Rhodes many had stopped there.52 They, and their masters, appear to have been satisfied, for many royal letters to the order or to other rulers on its behalf commented approvingly on its military activities.53 A corollary of this approval, however, was the danger that should the order become or appear to become inactive its possessions might come under threat.54 Moreover, monarchs could appear to support the Hospital without any undue effort or expense. Simply by confirming the order’s privileges and allowing its brethren and their responsions to travel to Rhodes, the crown could pose as a facilitator of its work, making a small profit into the bargain from the tax levied on exchange operations. At minimal extra cost kings could go further in writing stern letters supporting the order in its clashes with the Venetians and Genoese, an activity which could also be calculated to please the anti-Italian lobby in parliament.55 Additionally, in supporting the English langue, the government was explicitly upholding the honour of the English ‘nation’ and ensuring that its subjects had some say in the government and honours of an ancient, distinguished, and noble corporation which embodied the very highest ideals of chivalry, far though these were from the spirit of its rule.56 In particular, doubtless prompted by the langue, the crown was encouraged to see the turcopoliership as an office anciently vested in the English, the preservation of the prerogatives of which might merit repeated royal intervention, as a royal letter of 1440 demonstrates.57 The langue also constituted the only permanent English community east of Italy, and its presence in Rhodes was much cherished by English pilgrims who visited the island.58 For all these reasons, it made sense for rulers to continue to offer the Hospital their support. In fact they went somewhat beyond the strictly necessary in doing so. The English 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 the Exchequer, 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, 3rd ser., 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 the turcopoliership in c.1421–2 and 1435. Bekynton Correspondence, i. 81–3. In letters written home in 1561 and 1575, brother Richard Shelley laid explicit stress on the turcopoliership’s importance as a ‘goodly. . . preheminence’ whose loss would constitute an ‘abasinge of our nation’. R. Shelley, Letters of Sir Richard Shelley. . . (n.p., 1774), 2, 10. 58 See below, ch. 8.1.

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adorned with the royal arms among those of the leading English contributors to its construction, provides impressive testimony for the fashionability of support for the order in the first half of the fifteenth century, and direct royal grants to it, whether of lands, churches, equipment or cash, were not unknown.59 On occasion, the crown was also prepared to permit brethren and 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 also provides powerful support for arguing that the crown actively approved of the Hospital’s work. The assessments on which the convent based its imposition of responsions were, moreover, based on visitations usually conducted by 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 other international orders to free themselves from the jurisdiction of their motherhouses, the active welcome extended to foreign knights of St John provides a real indication that the Hospital’s overseas links were felt to be worth preserving.62 Royal support, however, came at the price of stricter regulation and increasing financial impositions. Like other religious corporations, after 1279 the order was forbidden to acquire more land without royal licence.63 At about the same time Hundred Roll and Quo Warranto investigations began to examine the extent of its claims to jurisdiction and exemption, while from the fifteenth century onwards, judges challenged its claims to provide sanctuary.64 Despite royal grants of exemption from tallages and tolls, which enshrined at least the principle that the order should not be taxed, it was also subjected to the payment of parliamentary taxation from 1290 onwards, although for some years both Hospital and Temple compounded for this rather than have their property investigated by laymen.65 Some concessions were made. As its brethren were both laymen and exempt from ecclesiastical taxation they were usually asked to pay fifteenths on their moveable, non-ecclesiastical goods, while they only paid the tenths imposed in convocation on their appropriated churches.66 The prior’s own estates also appear to have been exempt from taxation until 1474.67 Taken across 59

Luttrell, ‘English Contributions’, passim. 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 Public Records (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. 60

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the whole period it was levied on the order, the burden of parliamentary taxation was not particularly onerous, but it nevertheless constituted a much greater charge than the order had hitherto been accustomed to bear, and at times a very substantial one. Besides direct taxation, the Hospital was also encouraged to make gifts and loans to the crown. Edward III, in the early years of the Hundred Years War, and the financially embarrassed Lancastrian kings were particularly heavy users of its credit facilities.68 On occasion, it was also expected to provide hospitality to the king and his entourage or to visiting foreign dignitaries. With the exception of Edward V, whose residence the Hospital nearly became, it is probable that every reigning monarch between Henry IV and Henry VII either visited the prioral headquarters at Clerkenwell, or spent time on other Hospitaller preceptories and estates.69 Besides the occasional sojourns of kings, princes, and diplomats, the Hospital was also expected, like other religious houses, to provide a corrody for retired royal servants, and even caps to the ministers of the exchequer and receipt, an obligation 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 for grants of leases, particularly of properties in and around London.71 Most importantly of all, the crown expected the service of Hospitaller priors and, to a lesser degree, preceptors resident in England and Wales. This was understandable. Although not always particularly well educated, by the time they became priors brethren of the Hospital were widely travelled, had considerable naval and administrative experience, and might well be proficient in French and Italian. If the extent of their duties did not rival that of the more important administrator-bishops and—abbots of the later Middle Ages, most priors nevertheless served the crown in a number of different capacities. In the first place, although originally summoned as an ecclesiastical lord, by 1389 the prior of England was evidently considered to be a temporal 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 of the 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 the Grey Friars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 1st ser., 52 (London, 1852), 13; PPC, iii. 71; The Crowland 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 of St. 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 of the 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 temporal lord. Priors can often be found attending the council in the surviving records dating from after 1386. PPC, i. 12, 17, 105–6, and passim.

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As such, he might occasionally hold important offices of state. Three priors—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 held the post of admiral of the western fleet.73 More usual, however, were service on the council, in parliament as a trier of petitions, on commissions of the peace and of sewers in counties where the prioral estates were concentrated, and in particular on diplomatic business, whether at home or abroad.74 At times Robert Botill came close to becoming a professional diplomat on behalf of the crown, and Thomas Docwra (prior, 1501–27) was even more notable in this capacity in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.75 Preceptors and simple brethren, too, were occasionally employed on local commissions and on diplomatic work, although they were more likely to be used as envoys, couriers, and escorts to dignitaries on their way to court than to be fully constituted ambassadors with power to treat.76 Despite their military experience and the order’s reluctant concessions that brethren might fight either in self-defence (1235) or (1367) on behalf of a ‘natural lord’, English brethren, unlike their Irish counterparts, appear to have avoided military 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 serve in Scotland at royal request in 1337 he was careful to stress that this should not serve as a precedent78 and in 1346, summoned to assist in the siege of Calais, he preferred to bribe his way out of involvement.79 Otherwise the military contribution the order was expected to make to the war consisted of arraying troops to defend the realm against invasion or garrisoning vulnerable coastal towns.80 It is clear that competing royal and conventual claims to prioral loyalties might lead to conflicts of interest. The appointment of a foreigner, Leonardo de 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, 423 n., 429, 443–4, 498–9, 504, 517; PPC, passim; ‘Calendar of French Rolls, 1–10 Henry 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 somewhat 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 to provide men for the king’s wars. PPC, i. 105–6.

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opportunity to demand fealty as a condition of allowing him seisin, and kings then proceeded to extract an oath of fealty, which they always swore under protest, from Tibertis’s successors.81 Vassalic status, however contested, brought the further danger that it enabled royal officials to argue that the order’s temporalities, like those of bishops’, should be taken into the king’s hand during vacancies. On Tibertis’s death, therefore, royal escheators seized the order’s estates and it was only when the new prior protested that the Hospital had been granted them in free alms and that the seizure was unprecedented that their actions were halted.82 No further attempt to argue that the prior held his lands by fealty appears to have occurred until 1468–70, but subsequent royal claims to supervise prioral elections and the administration of the priory during vacancies, although vague, may have derived from those advanced by Edward III. The order, indeed, took care to record both its protest against the oath of fealty and Edward’s letter ordering his escheators to remove their hand from the priory in the cartulary it assembled in 1442.83 By Henry VI’s reign a compromise had been reached and the oath was more clearly linked to the prior’s standing and functions in the English polity. Particularly pertinent in this regard was his status as a ‘lord of parliament’. In 1440 Henry VI claimed that as such he was first and foremost a royal councillor, and, while elected by his brethren, should be chosen for those qualities that suited him for royal service.84 It is perhaps significant that it was during the same monarch’s reign that prioral visits to Rhodes, frequent until the 1440s, began regularly to be impeded. Prior Botill was refused licence to go to Rhodes when summoned in the wake of the fall of Constantinople, and was again forbidden to proceed there in 1459, as we have seen.85 The king and council’s reluctance to allow the prior out of the country should be seen in the context of the end of the Hundred Years War and growing political tensions within the realm. Particularly after the losses of 1449–53, continued hostilities with France and pique at Philip of Burgundy’s ‘betrayal’ of the king in 1435 led Henry’s government to refuse to cooperate in papal and Burgundian crusading projects until it achieved satisfaction of its continental claims, and keeping the prior of St 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 in England’, 35. Despite the order’s assertions to the contrary, it is nevertheless worth noting that the king’s representatives claimed in September 1330 that Tibertis’s predecessors had done fealty for 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 Aegean Islands 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.

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home.86 Furthermore, in 1459 the crown was determined to associate the whole body of the nobility with its parliamentary denunciation of the Yorkist lords,87 and might even have been afraid that if Botill were allowed to leave he would join them, which indeed he did in 1460. If the last of the Lancastrians, or his governing clique, kept the prior away from Rhodes for particular reasons rather than out of principle, Edward IV, who had little sympathy for the overseas excursions of his magnates, seems to have taken this practice as a welcome precedent. Despite the close regulation of priors of the order, and occasional restrictions on the export of brethren and responsions, most monarchs supported and appeared to approve of the hospital’s activities. Given that its defiance of the Turks appealed to the most respectable religious and chivalric sensibilities of the age, this is hardly surprising. Nevertheless, it is clear that there were potential tensions between the English Hospitallers’ temporal and spiritual allegiances. On several occasions during the period between 1460 and 1540 these were to rise to the fore and force both monarchs and Hospitallers 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 was expounding the royal will to convocation.88 He was one of Henry VI’s longest-serving and most trusted councillors, of whom he had been among the first admitted to witness the king’s recovery of his wits in December 1454, a restoration at which, not inappropriately, Botill burst into tears.89 Nevertheless, past service, old affection, and oaths of allegiance did not prevent the prior, along with several other prelates, from throwing in his lot with the Yorkists and accompanying them towards Northampton, where Warwick defeated the royal army and captured the royal person.90 Botill’s reasons for this volte-face can only be conjectured, but royal refusals to permit 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 crusading enthusiast Coppini, and the overwhelming facts of Henry VI’s incapacity to rule and subjection to a partial and vindictive governing clique must all have conspired to provide the prior with powerful incentives to support Richard duke of York and his allies. J. T. Ferguson, English Diplomacy 1422–61 (Oxford, 1972), 32. R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (repr. Stroud, 1998), 825. 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. 86 87 88

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Botill’s active involvement in regime change appears to have been without parallel among his predecessors, and was potentially dangerous for his person and his order, but at first it appeared to have been vindicated. The Yorkists, impressively personified by Edward IV, were victorious, and their opponents forced into exile, with resistance continuing only in the northeast and north Wales.91 After his accession, Edward IV continued to trust the ageing prior, who was treated, as before, primarily as a royal servant. Botill briefly had custody of the privy seal in the early 1460s and served on the council and on commissions of array and of the peace until his death.92 He also continued to be employed on diplomatic business, although he was now largely confined to treating with foreign ambassadors within the realm.93 During these years, moreover, the king expressed his support for the Hospital in a number of ways: by licensing the prior of Rome and the castellan of Rhodes, John Langstrother, to conduct a visitation of England, by reproving the Venetians for their attack on Rhodes in 1464, and probably by supporting the removal of Thomas Talbot as prior of Ireland and his replacement with James Keating.94 Although support for the order sat well with Edward’s attempt to rule in accord with chivalric expectations of royal conduct in his first years as king,95 such expressions of approval required little exertion and were quite conventional. And there is other, contrasting, evidence which suggests that the king had a distinct and unsentimental vision of the order barely compatible with its priorities and purposes. Convinced though he was of Botill’s reliability, Edward appears to have been less sure of the loyalties of some of the other brethren. In 1463 he had supported, and perhaps even proposed an arrangement by which the turcopolier, William Dawney, a former associate of the fervently Lancastrian James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, was to surrender his preceptory to a conventual knight, Marmaduke Lumley.96 Moreover, in the following year, Dawney’s lieutenant as turcopolier, John Weston, who had complained to the order’s council about Lumley’s conduct in this matter, was summoned home from Rhodes on a charge of disloyalty.97 Evidence against him had perhaps been provided by a conventual knight, John Boswell, who had gone to Crete on the service of John Langstrother in March 1464 and while there 91

C. Ross, Edward IV (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 22–63. Baldwin, King’s Council, 422, 423 n., 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, Arthurian Myths, passim. 96 AOM374, fo. 139r–v. 97 AOM73, fo. 158r; mentioned in Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 194–5. 92

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had absconded on a Venetian galley travelling to England.98 There is no direct evidence as to what might have motivated Boswell’s flight, for which he was deprived of the habit, but it is suggestive that he was pardoned and readmitted into the order at the specific request of the king in December 1466.99 No further action appears to have been taken against Weston, but the suspicion that the king saw the langue as unsound is intensified by a licence granted to Botill in 1467 to admit five brother knights at royal request.100 Might this have been an attempt to ensure the loyalty of future Hospitallers to the Yorkist dynasty? On Botill’s death in September 1468 the king’s distrust and desire to reduce the order to his will became fully apparent. According to the proNeville pseudo-William Worcestre, ‘the very greatest disturbance’ occurred when Edward ‘suddenly’ attempted to impose his wife’s brother, Richard Wydeville, on the order as prior, the brethren at once electing John Langstrother in response.101 The dramatic and unprecedented nature of this intervention should be emphasized. No previous king of England had interfered so directly in a prioral election, and Wydeville, a youth of about 20 who was not even professed, was hardly a suitable candidate to govern a militaryreligious order whose promotion system was accustomed to reward conventual service, seniority, and experience rather more than birth and royal favour. Langstrother, by contrast, was everything that Wydeville was not. He had been received into the Hospital as a brother knight by 1435 and had enormous diplomatic and administrative experience in its service. Most of his career had been spent in the east, where he held at various times the important conventual offices of castellan of Rhodes, captain of Bodrum, proctor of the common treasury, magistral seneschal, and grand preceptor of Cyprus.102 He had also served as a diplomat, visitor, and collector of the Jubilee indulgence in various western priories, and receiver of the priories of England and Ireland.103 By 1468, moreover, he held no less than six of the twenty-one English preceptories not in prioral hands, including the bailiwick of Eagle.104 His collection of benefices brought him considerable wealth, much of which he disbursed to the order’s hungry creditors, which

98

AOM374, fos. 141v, 141v–142r; 73, fos. 133v–134r, 135v–136r. AOM374, fos. 141v–142r; 376, fo. 155r. 100 AOM376, fo. 157v. 101 ‘Annales rerum anglicarum’, ed. Stevenson, 791; Ross, Edward IV, 96 n. 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, Anekdota, 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, and Yeaveley. Grants in AOM73, fo. 128r; 374, fo. 141r; 357, fo. 150r; 358, fos. 226v–227v; 361, fo. v 243 ; 365, fos. 117v–118r; 366, fos. 115v–116r, 117r. 99

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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 to allow him to conduct a visitation in 1461–2, and in the following year he had been appointed to a commission to arrest Humphrey Neville and bring him before the council.106 But, leaving aside the possibility that he had been implicated in the charges against John Weston, a conjecture for which there is no supporting evidence, there were two reasons in particular why Edward might have changed his mind about the bailiff of Eagle. Most importantly, Langstrother had been associated with Warwick in the 1450s and by 1468 the king was quite determined not to improve the earl’s position any further.107 Instituting Wydeville instead both strengthened the king’s own hand, and also fitted neatly with the policy of providing for his wife’s relatives which was so marked a feature of the period after 1464. A primary condition for their advancement seems to have been that it should not be at the crown’s expense, hence the Wydeville stranglehold on the aristocratic marriage market in the late 1460s, and the advancement of young Richard to one of the richest benefices in England fulfilled this criterion admirably.108 Secondly, there are indications that the king opposed the decision of the Rome chapter-general to increase responsions from a third-to a half-annate in February 1467. Langstrother had had an important part in deciding this, for he had sat on the committee that drafted the 1467 statutes, and was elected 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 of England between 1461 and 1471, drew attention to discrepancies among his accounts for the years following this meeting and the English representatives at the next chapter, held in 1471, promised to pay the half-annate then reimposed themselves but refused to bind their fellows in England to do the same.110 Reluctance to consent to the imposition of a half-annate probably increased the king’s determination to reduce the order more closely to his will. Existing accounts have accepted that Langstrother was in England at the time 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 to various 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.

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England, and the custom that the priory be governed by its ‘president and convent’ during vacancy years gave the order breathing space in which to devise a strategy by which Wydeville’s appointment could be overturned. Although an unnamed ‘prior’ of the order, presumably Wydeville, was present in the royal council on 15 November 1468, six days later the ‘president and convent’ of the vacant priory were recorded presenting to a benefice, which may indicate that they had persuaded the king to delay instituting Wydeville as prior until the representations of the convent should be heard.112 The response to these events in Rhodes was distinctly cautious. Although news of Botill’s death had arrived by January 1469, nothing was done about the disputed succession to the priory until 5 April.113 Langstrother was then appointed lieutenant and vicegerent of the master and convent in England and Ireland and instructed to examine the knights of the English priory and institute a ‘worthy and sufficient’ brother into possession.114 Given charge of the priory’s finances on 14 April, on the 16th he was licensed to leave Rhodes 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 dispatched to order its affairs and to supplicate that it should be provided to an appropriate knight-brother, instituted according to its statutes and customs. These, he was to point out, had been violated by the king, whose institution of Wydeville both breached the promises of his predecessors and would set a bad example to other princes. Langstrother, therefore, was to request that the collation to the priory be remitted to the order.115 The convent’s reaction to the disputed election was thus both firm and flexible: the master and council insisted that the priory should be in the order’s gift rather than the king’s but were probably willing to countenance the election of someone other than Langstrother as long as the correct form was upheld.116 The latter was even, on 2 August 1469, given power to admit Wydeville as a professed knight.117 It was only on 5 April 1470, by which time the convent must have been certified of Langstrother’s acceptability by the king, that bulls were issued appointing him prior.118

112 CPR1467–77, 131–2; Registrum Bourgchier, ed. Du Boulay, 294. The patent roll does not 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 and March 1470 makes it difficult to determine the intentions behind the orders issued in April 1469, but from the analogous case of Weston versus Multon in 1474–7 it appears that the convent, while anxious that undeserving candidates should not be raised to the priorate, refused to give explicit support to their more worthy rivals until these should be acceptable to the king. 117 AOM378, fos. 149v–150r. 118 AOM379, fos. 140r–141v.

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How the king might have responded to Langstrother’s mission in the absence of any more urgent business cannot now be known, as the latter arrived in England at a time of acute political turmoil. On 12 July 1469 Warwick issued a manifesto from Calais condemning various aspects of government policy for which he blamed those around the king. It is not known whether Langstrother returned home via Calais, and still less if he had reached it by this time, but among the manifesto articles was one criticizing Edward’s advisers for the king’s seizure of crusading levies for his own purposes, which might perhaps indicate Hospitaller influence.119 In any case Langstrother and Warwick were soon as thick as thieves. They later shared a place on the list of those accused of responsibility for the murder of the Wydevilles at the end of July, and with the king then effectively Warwick’s captive Langstrother prospered, being summoned to parliament as prior on 10 August and appointed treasurer of England in place of the executed Rivers six days later.120 After his recovery of power in midSeptember, Edward showed his distrust by removing Langstrother from the 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 not followed since the reign of Richard II, and may even have laid claim to the fruits of the priory’s vacancy year, for which Langstrother was required to answer on 21 February 1470.122 This was not only virtually unprecedented, but it must have also have imposed a very heavy financial burden on the prior, who was also expected to make mortuary and vacancy payments to Rhodes. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that Langstrother remained one 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 in the north of England, Clarence, Welles, Langstrother, and others ‘kept theire counseill secretly at Saynt Johannez’ before Clarence left the capital to rendezvous with Warwick.123 On Edward’s return to the capital at the end of the month, with the other conspirators dead or exiled, Langstrother was ‘arestyd and yood a seson undyr suyrte’ of the archbishop of Canterbury. Yet in view of the rebels’ escape overseas the prior was too dangerous to remain under clerical oversight and was moved to the tower, where he remained until Henry VI’s restoration at the beginning of October.124 A further dimension to Langstrother’s involvement in the Lincolnshire rising is pro119 J. Warkworth, A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of the Reign of King Edward the Fourth, 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.

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vided by the pardon issued to William Tornay, the bailiff of Eagle and receiver of the common treasury, on 28 July 1470 for all offences committed before the eleventh of that month.125 Although as receiver Tornay probably resided in London, the farmer of Eagle, John Barton, was also granted a general pardon in January 1472, as again was Tornay in February.126 While these pardons were granted in connection with the events of 1471 it seems highly likely that Barton or Tornay acted as a link between Langstrother and the Lincolnshire rebels in the previous year. On his release from prison, the prior committed himself fully to the restored Lancastrian regime. On 20 October 1470 he was reappointed treasurer—the only main office of state that did not go to a Neville—and on 24 February 1471 joint warden of the exchange and mint, while he also served on the commissions of the peace appointed in January. The prior was trusted enough by both the old Lancastrian nobility and Warwick himself to be asked to accompany Queen Margaret and Prince Edward home from France in February, and it was in two of his own ships that the Lancastrian party sailed from Honfleur on 13 April, landing at Weymouth on Easter Sunday. Langstrother then remained with the queen during the march to Tewkesbury. He shared command of the Lancastrian centre during the battle and took refuge after the defeat in the abbey. Neither this sanctuary nor his regular status could save him from being dragged out and executed on 6 May.127 Langstrother had compromised himself hopelessly by his support for Warwick in 1469–71, yet it was surely Edward’s treatment of him and his order which had driven him to such defiance. The king had attempted to deprive him of the office which his seniority and distinguished service merited, had forced him to swear fealty and to account for the revenues of the Hospital, and had caused these humiliations to be enrolled in the official records, something he resented enough to procure their cancellation during the Readeption.128 Finally, the prior had been incarcerated in the tower for several months before Henry VI’s restoration. It is scarcely surprising that he took the field at Tewkesbury. Nevertheless, from the convent’s point of view, Langstrother’s actions had scarcely been wise, and might have prompted Edward to take more stringent action against the order than in fact followed. That is not to say that he gave the Hospital an easy ride. Langstrother’s successor, William Tornay, appears to have succeeded him with little difficulty. He was ‘elected’ by the council on Rhodes on 28 August 1471 but this merely confirmed a previous vote in England, for Tornay, as prior, had sworn fealty to Edward prince of Wales on 125

CPR1467–77, 217. 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. 126

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3 July.129 Tornay, a member of the order since the 1440s, had been receiver of the common treasury since 1461 and bailiff of Eagle since Langstrother’s promotion to the priorate, and might have been considered a safe pair of hands 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 ‘very grave discrepancies’ had been found. Large sums had been expended on gifts for obtaining graces, payments to lawyers and envoys at times when the priory had been void, on the liquidation of Langstrother’s debts, and on ‘excessive and exorbitant’ payments made at Clerkenwell when the priory was vacant and its expenses should have been less. Until Tornay had made proper satisfaction Renier Pot, preceptor of Chalons, was appointed proctor of the Hospital in England, with power to seize those camerae pertaining to the priory itself and all Tornay’s other assets. Their rule was to be committed to the bailiff of Eagle, Robert Tonge, and Tornay’s successor as receiver of the priory, Miles Skayff, was also to be removed from his post.130 Discrepancies in Langstrother’s spolia also resulted in proceedings being instituted against John Kendal by the officers of the common treasury in January 1473.131 Tornay’s summons to Rhodes and the threatened sequestration of his assets were a significant vote of conventual no confidence in the administration of the priory of England. But it seems likely that the priory’s relations with the crown, rather than mismanagement, were at the heart of the dispute. Tornay, indeed, had such a reputation for probity and competence that in 1472 parliament had appointed him an overseer of the collection of the fifteenth and tenth designated for war with France, which the commons were suspicious the king would appropriate for other ends.132 Moreover, the heavy expenditure on bribes, and payments to lawyers and messengers and the fact that as wealthy a knight as Langstrother had left significant debts would all seem to reflect royal pressure both during the disputed vacancy and afterwards. Royal acceptance of his position may have cost Langstrother heavily in 1469–70, and his incarceration in the tower not three weeks after he had been granted its revenues cannot have helped him collect them. They may even have been seized by the crown. Additionally, Langstrother may have been fined for his part in the Lincolnshire risings, as also may Tornay, who secured a second royal pardon on 18 February 1472 and was put under a bond of £300 at the same time as those implicated in the Bastard of Fauconberg’s attack on London. Three prominent prioral servants, Richard Passemer, John Fermour, and Richard Sheldon, were pardoned at the 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 on 29 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.

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particularly heavily involved in the events of 1469–71, having served as controller of the petty custom and of tunnage and poundage in London and adjacent ports during both Langstrother’s terms as treasurer.133 Despite the dramatic tone of the convent’s letters of 1472, Tornay was able to reach agreement with Pot over his disputed accounts, for on 20 April 1474 news of a concord between the prior and the proctors of the common treasury was signified to the order’s council.134 Certainly there is no evidence that Tornay went to Rhodes to defend himself, for on 2 December 1473 and 24 May 1474 he is to be found in England, presenting to benefices in the priory’s gift. This would also suggest that Pot had not been allowed to sequester Tornay’s assets and preceptories.135 Yet financial problems continued to dog the prior’s relationship with the convent. On 19 April 1474, a new receiver, William Weston, was appointed, with the usual instructions to collect revenues and compel debtors to payment. More pointedly, Robert Multon was commissioned on the 14th of the same month to require payment of the substantial arrears owed for the financial years ending June 1473 and 1474 so that creditors granted assignments on the priory’s revenues might be reimbursed.136 Tornay’s death, probably in early August 1474, occasioned another serious split between Edward IV and the Hospital. On 21 August Robert Multon, having been elected by its brethren in England, was presented to the king as prior and swore fealty.137 Although he was put forward by several preceptors—John Malory, Marmaduke Lumley, John Turberville, and John Kendal—the new prior was unacceptable to the convent on Rhodes. Multon seems to have been marked out for advancement, as the commission of April 1474 and his service as a representative of the English langue on the council complete between 1470 and 1473 demonstrate, but he lacked the seniority and experience appropriate to the dignity of prior, and had only been a preceptor since April 1470.138 Knights like Robert Tonge and John Weston, who had served since before 1450 and held significant administrative posts, were unquestionably more qualified. Weston’s vigorous conventual service as turcopolier and the past service of his family to the order 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 and Fermour, on his demise c.1489, the farmer of the preceptory of Quenington, while Sheldon was 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 twelve other 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.

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Yet Multon was eminently agreeable to the king. Langstrother, Tornay, and, at least initially, John Weston were kept at arm’s length as far as employment on government business was concerned and none was ever employed on an important domestic commission by Edward. By contrast, within a year of his appointment Multon was commissioned to take muster of soldiers proceeding to France and was appointed temporary warden of the east and middle marches towards Scotland until the earl of Northumberland should return from France.140 Multon’s activities on behalf of the crown and his relative obscurity before his election suggest that he was a ‘royal’ candidate promoted over the heads of his fellows. In particular, he appears to have had close ties to the earl of Northumberland. In addition to serving as his deputy in 1475, Multon was at the head of Northumberland’s feed-men when Henry VII made his entry into York in 1485.141 Royal and aristocratic approval alone did not make Multon any more acceptable in Rhodes than it had Wydeville. Yet the response to his appointment, perhaps understandably given recent events, was still more cautious than that to the disputed election of 1468. On 27 February 1475, John Weston, the turcopolier, and Multon’s proctors appeared in Rhodes to press their claims to the priory.142 It was decided that neither should be issued with title to it until the king’s will was known, but this did not mean that the convent had assumed a neutral stance. At the same meeting it was decided that for the ‘honour and favour’ of the turcopolier, he should be made lieutenant of the order in Italy, Germany, and England, and that letters of commendation should be drawn up for him so that he, or anyone he should appoint to lobby for him, might obtain the priory.143 Yet, perhaps because the order was waiting for news from England, it was some time before these recommendations were implemented. Weston’s procuration in the west was not formally issued until 21 March, and he was not licensed to leave the convent until 17 June.144 In the meantime, Multon continued to occupy the priory undisturbed, as the evidence of bishops’ registers demonstrates.145 Protected no doubt by conventual fear of incurring Edward IV’s displeasure, he was neither ordered to remove himself from the priory nor cited to Rhodes. Active measures 140

CPR1467–77, 526, 545. Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Stapleton, p. xcvi; J. Leland, De rebus brittanicis collectanea, 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 his prejudice, 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 and Wells 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. 141

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against him commenced only in June 1475, as Weston prepared to travel to England. On 14 June all licences to English brethren to receive knights into the order were cancelled, while six days later Multon’s commission as proctor of the common treasury in England was revoked, depriving him of his only conventually derived claim to any form of authority over his brethren.146 Moreover, with one exception, in which he was styled ‘preceptor’, assignments made on the order’s English revenues by a hopeful convent between May 1475 and January 1476 were addressed to an unnamed prior and receiver rather than to Multon. These may not have been honoured, for no more were issued until September 1477, by which time a new prior and receiver had been appointed.147 While Multon was being snubbed, his rival was accorded every mark of respect and favour. Weston’s debts to the convent were remitted to a later date, he was assured that when he was granted a commandery ‘of grace’ he could hold it in conjunction with the priory, and he was provided with letters in his favour addressed to Edward IV and requesting that collation to the priory should be remitted to the convent on Rhodes.148 The turcopolier seems to have returned to England by way of Rome. He had been instructed to seek papal dispensation for leaving the convent when licensed to depart in 1475, as the order’s brethren at headquarters had been ordered to remain there during the Jubilee Year, and on 18 September Sixtus IV granted him membership of the papal household, with a safe conduct whenever he should be on papal business.149 By the time he reached England, probably in early 1476, Sixtus had also appointed him prior. Given the traditional English hostility to papal provisions, Weston’s acquisition of papal letters was foolish, but the king appears to have blamed the issuer rather than the recipient. On 25 February 1476 he wrote to Rome complaining that Weston’s import of letters recommending him as prior was an infringement of the rights of the crown. The usual procedure, he stated, was for the prior to be elected in England, presented to and confirmed by the king, and then confirmed at Rhodes by magistral bull.150 The letters the turcopolier was carrying from the master and convent appear to have been of more value to him. Although Multon continued to exercise the office of prior until at least November 1476, after he had received their letters the king seems to have accepted the principal that the collation to the priory should ultimately be in the hands of the master and convent. On 27 May 1476 Weston’s proctors appeared in Rhodes and reported that Edward had written that he was content to grant the turcopolier possession should he obtain bulls providing him with the priory. The 146 147 148 149 150

AOM382, fos. 138v, 139r–v. Ibid., fos. 177v, 172v–173r, 177r–v, 175v–176r, 176r; 385, fo. 162r. AOM382, fos. 139v–140r, 138v–139r; AOM75, fo. 117r. AOM75, fo. 83v; CPL, xiii. 281. CSPV, i, no. 452.

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order’s council, however, was suspicious, considering that Edward had taken so long to reply to the letters dispatched with Weston, and it was decided that no further action should be taken until the king’s response was certainly known.151 Thus, despite Weston’s claim to have royal approval and the issue of further papal letters confirming his collation on 1 June, he was not elected and confirmed as prior until 24 July 1476.152 His preferral was, moreover, hedged about with conditions. In case the king raised further objections, no provision was to be made of the turcopolier’s bailiwick or preceptories until the convent was certified of his having taken possession of the priory. Furthermore, rather than send the bulls collating him directly to the new prior, they were to be entrusted to an ambassador who would show them first to the king and assure him that they would not be consigned to the turcopolier without royal assent.153 The ambassador, the draper Nicholas Zapplana, appointed on 8 August, was further instructed to arrange for payment of the 9,000 e´cus owed for Tornay’s mortuaries and vacancies before Weston was given possession.154 In the event of the king refusing to accept Weston, Multon was to be collated on condition he promised to satisfy the mortuary and vacancy payments.155 By October 1477 Weston was in post and fulfilling his prioral functions.156 No further action was taken against Multon, who retained his preceptory until his death in 1493, but was not granted any further dignities or offices in the order and was not summoned to Rhodes during the crisis of 1479–81.157 He may have been too busy to leave the realm. His career in the royal service revived in the reign of Henry VII; he was appointed surveyor of the port of Newcastle in August 1487; granted £20 by privy seal in the following year; and made deputy lieutenant of the east and middle marches towards Scotland in December 1490. Multon was styled variously ‘our trusty and well beloved knight and counsellor’ and ‘oon of the knightes of Sainct Johns of Jerusalem’ in these documents.158 His royal service perhaps shielded him from the actions of his religious superiors again, for he had been summoned to convent to account for arrears in his responsions in October 1489, and appears not to have obeyed.159 151

Registrum Myllyng, ed. Bannister, 187; AOM75, fo. 117r. AOM383, fos. 142r–143v; CPL, xiii. 62. 153 AOM75, fos. 131r–132v. An (imperfect) transcript of this document made by H. Fincham, 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 the English brethren threw up Multon and Weston as opposing candidates. The election of Weston referred to in the original text is that by the master and council of the order on Rhodes. He may have 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 bailiff of 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. 152

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The reasons behind Edward IV’s initial support for Multon and procrastination over Weston’s appointment must remain conjectural, but Multon’s military service and the charges of disobedience laid against Weston in 1465 certainly suggest royal involvement in the affair, a conjecture corroborated by the decision of the chapter of 1478 to hold subsequent elections to all the order’s European priories in Rhodes.160 The election of the prior in England per se does not seem to have been the problem. Whatever the order’s statutes said to the contrary, all priors of England were elected there and (probably) presented to the monarch before confirmation in Rhodes in the period between 1417 and 1471, and in this case, too, the convent did not formally appoint Weston until it had made sure of royal approval.161 Sixtus IV was not so concerned to uphold the royal prerogative, and may have contributed to the delay in Weston’s acceptance by the king. Besides suspicion of Weston, and a desire to demonstrate his authority over the order, the king perhaps also opposed the dispatch of the fruits of the vacancy of the priory overseas, as he seems to have done in 1468–9. By mid-1476 Multon had paid no part of Tornay’s mortuaries and vacancies, which might indicate royal refusal to allow these out of the country, although licences to John Kendal in 1475 and John Weston in 1477 to ship cloth to the Mediterranean at least demonstrate that some dues were being sent to Rhodes.162 After his initial suspicion the king appears to have become quite trusting of the new prior. In many ways, his was a model priorate. Despite the political upheavals of the time Weston maintained cordial relations with Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII without apparent difficulty, although his absence from the country in 1483 must have facilitated this. He also retained the favour of Sixtus IV, and between 1481 and 1484 travelled to Italy and Rhodes, the last visit to the convent by an incumbent prior before the dissolution. Yet there is evidence that he suffered financial difficulties throughout his priorate, possibly as a result of the burden imposed on him in 1476, which his exclusion from the prioral dignity cannot have helped him to meet. Thus Weston’s occupation of virtually every English preceptory which 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 . . . quod baiulivi aut priores seu Castellanus Emposte in prioratibus vel castellania Emposte In Capitulis provincialibus vel extra nullo pacto elegi possint sed tantum dictes electiones per Magistrum et consilium ordinarium fieri debeant’. AOM283, fo. 183r. A further adverse comment on Multon’s administration was provided by an enactment that the common seal of the prior and brethren of the order in England was not to be used except in provincial chapters at which at least four brethren, besides the prior, should be present. Ibid., fos. 183r–v. 161 Thus William Hulles, appointed in Constance in July 1417, appears in England as prior in the preceding month; Robert Mallory, appointed in Rhodes in May 1433, appears in England as prior in July 1432, and Robert Botill, elected by his brethren in England in April 1440, was formally provided in Rhodes on 29 Nov. AOM340, fos. 116r–v; CPR1416–22, 279; Field, Sir Thomas Malory, 70; Bekynton Correspondence, i. 80–1; AOM354, fos. 207v–208r. 162 AOM383, fos. 184r–185r; CPR1467–77, 506; CPR 1477–85; 58.

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occasioned by his disagreement with the langue over their respective rights to allocate houses, probably also served a useful financial purpose in allowing him to exploit the occupied estates. His determination to maximize income and minimize expenditure is further evidenced by the issue in December 1479 of papal letters rebuking him for failing to maintain proper hospitality and for felling timber belonging to the priory. Additionally, he continued to withhold preceptories from his brethren until his arrival in Rhodes in 1482, and ignored letters obligatory under which he was bound to pay £223 to the Catalan merchants Lluis and Guillem Badorch.163 As late as October 1483, Weston was in dispute with the common treasury over sums still owed for Tornay’s vacancies.164 Had he not been excluded from the priory and its fruits for so long, it is doubtful whether he would have faced such difficulties. Nevertheless, his relations with Edward IV became relatively cordial. On 24 August 1480 Weston was substituted onto an embassy sent to Louis XI to demand the solemnization of the union of the dauphin and the lady Elizabeth, presumably because he would then also have the opportunity to lobby the French king on behalf of the beleaguered island of Rhodes. Returning to the royal presence in mid-November, Weston held the spice plate during the christening of the king’s daughter Bridget.165 Despite this new-found confidence, however, the king’s reaction to the siege of Rhodes was, if not ungenerous, rather ambivalent. Certainly, the turcopolier John Kendal was allowed to publish indulgences and collect indulgence money for the relief of the island throughout the crown’s dominions, and some printed indulgences survive as evidence of his activity.166 Furthermore, on 30 April 1480, the master and convent of Rhodes were taken under the king’s protection, given the right to display the royal arms, and assured that should they be attacked by Christian pirates the king would issue letters of marque against their assailants.167 Practical material assistance was also afforded towards the defence. Edward wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury in August 1480 to inform him that he was contributing an 800-ton ship, the Margaret Howard, to the order and lending another. He urged the archbishop and clergy to contribute too, and more than £60 was raised in the diocese of Worcester alone.168 Although there is no indication in the records that the vessels ever reached Rhodes, which suggests that they were detained when news came to 163

CPL, xiii. 253; AOM76, fo. 80v; AOM387, fo. 117r. 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’s indulgences, granted to Dame Joan Plumpton on 22 April 1480, is given in Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Stapleton, 118–19. I am grateful to Dr Joseph Gribbin for providing details of the indulgence issued to Hawardyne. 167 CPR1477–85, 193–4 (my italics). 168 Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 592–3. 164

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England of the raising of the siege at the end of the year,169 the king also granted the order the parish church of Boston on 5 May, for which he recompensed the abbey of St Mary’s, York, the former impropriators, with 80 marks per annum from the fee-farm of the duchy of Lancaster. In return for this benefaction the Hospital was expected to hand over its rather less valuable estate at Beaumont Leys in Leicestershire to the crown.170 Finally, on 1 November 1480, the king licensed Weston and Kendal to export 320 grainless cloths from Southampton without payment of subsidy.171 Nevertheless, the king was unsympathetic to the urgent requests from the convent for Weston’s presence there. On 24 July 1479 the prior and four named preceptors were summoned to Rhodes and required to present themselves by April 1480. Another order, to Weston and nine of his fellows, followed in November, and on 28 May 1480, shortly after the appearance of a substantial Turkish fleet before the island, all the order’s brethren were instructed to come to the relief of the beleaguered convent with munitions and victuals. A further mandate of 23 September 1480, promulgated in the belief that a second siege was imminent, required the presence of Weston, eight English preceptors and the preceptor of Torphichen, the prior of Ireland, James Keating, and six commanders whom he should deem worthy.172 The response of Weston and his brethren to the earlier of these summons is difficult to gauge but the news from Rhodes was certainly taken seriously. Richard Cely the Younger, writing to his brother George in Calais in June 1480, asked for more news for Weston, who sent to him each week for tidings. And whilst government business kept the prior from obeying the summons between August and October, he attempted to comply with the mandate of that September, for a letter of January 1481 reported that he had been summoned by the master of Rhodes but refused permission to leave by the king, and was instead engaged in examining the royal ordinance in the tower.173 It is grimly ironic that, as the convent of his order lay half ruined and bereft of munitions after a savage siege and subsequent earthquake, the prior of St John of Jerusalem was prevented from going to the aid of his brethren because he had to assess the mate´riels in the Tower of London to 169 The records of the order’s council note the arrival in Rhodes of vessels of several nationalities 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 taken by cart to Southampton. Ibid., nos. 282–7, 314–15. 172 Besides Weston, Thomas Green, Marmaduke Lumley, William Weston, and the preceptor of Torphichen, William Knollis, were summoned in July 1479. In November were added the prior 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 on the 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.

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make sure that they were adequate to the conduct of war against the Christian Scots. Doubtless the king intended this to be an instructive demonstration of priorities. Frustrated of his purpose, Weston requested that George Cely, who was on his way to Bruges, report any ‘tydyngys of the Rodys’ 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 arrange for the administration of the priory while he was away, he left the capital on 3 August, in the company of John Kendal and other brethren.175 Although the prior was only issued with letters of passage for himself and one companion, he travelled with a considerable fellowship, and he certainly made substantial financial provision for his journey, amounting to £800 to £1,000 in cash and letters of exchange. So magnificent was his entourage, indeed, that Weston, writing to Richard Cely from Rome in October, boasted that he and his fellows were ‘ryt welcome, wyth euer nobleman saying that thay sawe not thys C yer so lequelly a felychyppe for so manny and in Þat aray come howte of Ynglonde’.176 Weston’s mission was partially hijacked by both the crown and the pope, for before proceeding to Rhodes he visited Rome and Naples rather than taking the quicker route via Venice, which seems to have been his intention earlier on. He was greeted in some state when he reached Rome on 15 October. Sixtus IV, he reported, ‘made me gret cher’ and would have absolved him of any obligation to the contrary had he not insisted on continuing his journey to Rhodes. Instead, he was to proceed there as the pope’s ambassador, entrusted ‘wyth materis of gret inportansse’. It was presumably in this capacity that he enjoyed a ‘ryall ressevyng and . . . grett presentys’ in the following month in Naples. While in Rome he had also assisted the king’s proctor in his attempt to resolve the ancient dispute between Richard Herron and the Staple.177 Weston did not arrive in Rhodes until June 1482, when he presented Edward IV’s letters and for the honour of the Apostolic See and of the king was admitted onto the order’s council with precedence over all members save the master and his lieutenant. The prior remained at the convent until sometime after 9 June 1484178 and in the interim served on a variety of commissions and prosecuted or defended various actions on his own behalf, as is discussed elsewhere.179 Unusually, all three English bailiffs of the order were present in convent in 1482–3, which must have given them considerable clout on the council and at the chapter-general of 1483. 174 175 176 177 178 179

Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, no. 114. Claudius E.vi, fos. 299r–300r; Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, nos. 117–18, 121–3. Ibid., nos. 118–19, 121–2, 129. Ibid., nos. 118, 129, 178. AOM76, fos. 103r, 170r. See above, Ch. 2.2.

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The administration of the priory during Weston’s absence was entrusted to his brother William,180 who presided over a tranquil period in its affairs, although the English brethren were the driving force behind the conventual attempt to unseat the prior of Ireland, James Keating.181 On 18 December 1482 Keating was formally deprived, and Marmaduke Lumley, who had failed to secure permanent possession of Templecombe, was granted the priory and the magistral camera of Kilsaran.182 Yet despite the support of the archbishops of Dublin and Armagh, Lumley was unable to dislodge Keating, who resorted to armed force to deny his rival. The crown’s preoccupation with other matters in 1483–5, and Keating’s alliance with the earl of Kildare were probably crucial to Lumley’s failure to secure possession. In contrast to the turmoil in Ireland, the Hospitaller brethren in England managed to avoid significant involvement in the political upheavals of 1483–7, their prior and turcopolier were internationally respected servants of crown, curia, and convent, the priory’s finances appear to have been sound, and disputes over promotions were infrequent and amicably resolved. Attacks on the abuse of Hospitaller privileges by the clergy, and the continued defiance of Keating, appear to have been the sole clouds on the horizon. By the time Weston reached England, after tarrying in Rome over Christmas 1484,183 Edward IV had been dead for nearly two years. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that he had been at the least doubtful of the order of St John, which lurched from one crisis to another as a result of his heavyhanded interventions between 1468 and 1481. Despite his actions on its behalf in 1465 and 1480 his attitude to the Hospital was often unsympathetic and overbearing.184 He had attempted to foist an unsuitable candidate on the order as prior in 1468, defended brethren considered incompetent or inappropriate by the convent against the legitimate actions of their superiors, and refused licence for the prior of England to go to the defence of Rhodes. The king was probably responsible for the financial trouble which dogged the priory throughout the 1470s, ensuring that Langstrother had debts when he died, that Tornay was summoned to Rhodes for maladministration, and that John Weston saw fit to extract every last penny out of his brethren and his own resources in the first years of his priorate. His snubs to the 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 twentyfive 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 the Venetian fleet on Rhodes in the previous year; CSPV, i, nos. 397–8.

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the interference of foreign agencies in English affairs and have to be seen against his sceptical attitude to crusading and foreign adventure. The king, like his Lancastrian predecessors, was firmly opposed to the levy of papal crusade tenths, and although he permitted the clergy to make a grant of sixpence in the pound for Pius II’s crusade in 1464, some of this seems to have found its way into the royal coffers, while in 1466 and 1481–2 he actively opposed any grant.185 He may have regarded the Hospitallers’ responsions, especially the increased levy decided on by the advice of a papally appointed committee in the chapter of 1466–7, as papal taxation by the back door. Edward’s jaundiced view of the foreign jaunts of his nobility, and the collapse of the number of licences to noble pilgrims to visit the Holy Places during his reign, may also shed light on his dealings with the Hospitallers.186 Nevertheless, Edward IV’s distrust of the order was neither complete nor immutable. While clearly wishing to remind his Hospitaller subjects that their first duty was to him, he was willing to offer significant assistance to the defence of Rhodes in 1480, and seems to have appreciated the order’s success in resisting the infidel. John Kaye’s dedication of his translation of Caoursin’s account of the siege to Edward indicates at the least that he believed that the king might be interested in the subject,187 and if the decoration of a substantial chamber in the royal apartments at Windsor with scenes of the siege can be attributed to the same monarch, it surely indicates that his earlier scepticism had become real enthusiasm.188 It is arguable, indeed, that the order’s success in 1480 greatly reduced criticism of its activities for a generation, and that the relatively placid relationship priors of England enjoyed with successive kings after the siege bears witness to the effects of the victory on royal perceptions of the Hospital. Certainly, Richard III’s attitude to the order was not as bullying and interfering as his predecessor’s. Admittedly, the new king was unsure of his support, especially in southern England, and the Hospitallers must have been worthwhile potential allies both at home and abroad, which made it sensible to maintain good relations with them, especially when both the turcopolier, John Kendal, and Weston were out of the country and in potential contact with Henry Tudor. The king wrote an enthusiastic letter of welcome to Le´onard du Prat, the conventual visitor, in December 1484, stressing in it his ‘affection, zeal and devotion’ for ‘so great 185

Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 145–51, 153. 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 predecessors. Whether this was due to royal disapproval or the Veneto-Turkish war of 1463–79 is unclear, 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 the Fifteenth 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. 186

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an order’.189 He further recalled Prat’s ‘sincere affection and great love’ for Edward IV.190 Richard’s relationship with John Kendal was also cordial. On 16 December 1484, the turcopolier and the bishop of Durham were appointed to give the king’s allegiance to the new pope, Innocent VIII, although Kendal’s residence in Italy at the time makes the appointment a matter as much of convenience as of trust.191 More telling evidence is provided by a Venetian letter of April 1485, which reported that when papal bulls of interdict against the Republic had been taken to England, Kendal had exerted himself in such wise that the king tore them up.192 Furthermore, Richard not only visited the priory himself, but also used it to stage one of the more important public events of his reign when he held an assembly of London worthies in its Great Hall to refute rumours that he was planning to marry his niece Elizabeth. He must 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 so heavily identified with the Yorkist regime that he was unable to serve the Tudor. Within a couple of years of his accession Henry VII was employing Weston on as much government business as any of his predecessors. It is a feature of the relationship between the order and the Tudor monarchs that the priors of England, always subordinate to the crown, now became little more than public servants, albeit valued and respected ones. This process began in the very early days of Henry VII’s reign. The prior appeared to testify to the degree of the king’s blood relationship with his bride-to-be the lady Elizabeth in 1486, stating that he had known the latter for ten years and the 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 in February 1484. A letter written from Rome by him and the prior of Champagne was read out in convent on 4 May, and Kendal was appointed to present the order’s allegiance to Innocent VIII on 18 October. He had already played a prominent part in the ceremonies surrounding the papal election in August and September. AOM76, fos. 167r–v, 177r; CSPV, i, nos. 489, 493; J. Burckardi, Liber notarum ab anno MCCCCLXXXIII usque ad annum MDVI, 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. Hammond 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 either hurried north to proffer his allegiance to the new king or had been in the vicinity at the time of the battle.

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having been sent by Henry to do homage to the pope and, being delayed at Calais on his return journey in January 1488, can hardly have had time to return to Clerkenwell before he was placed at the head of a commission to treat for peace with Isabella and Ferdinand of Castile-Aragon.195 Although clearly valued as a diplomat, Weston was equally prominent in the government’s service at home, serving on commissions of the peace in Essex, Kent, Middlesex, and Warwickshire between 20 September 1485 and 10 November 1488.196 Elected prior of England in Rhodes on 22 June 1489,197 John Kendal was the outstanding English knight of his generation. Already an immensely experienced diplomat, who had served as the convent’s procurator-general at the curia since 1478, and lieutenant general of the order in the west to collect the indulgence of 1479–81, he had conducted negotiations with the rulers of England, France, Naples, Burgundy, Venice, and Savoy on the order’s behalf in the 1480s, chiefly on the difficult matter of the custody of Jem Sultan, the Turkish prince who had fled to Rhodes in 1482.198 His passage between Venice, Rome, and Paris at various times between 1485 and 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, the Venetian ambassador in France reported that Kendal, who had arrived in Paris as the representative of the convent and curia, was now retained there on the business of Henry VII.199 The Venetians valued his friendship so highly that they ordered public receptions to be provided for him in the towns of the contado when he left the city on his way to Rome in May 1485.200 From the point of view of both order and crown, Kendal would thus appear to have been an ideal candidate for the priory of England. Yet Henry VII, despite his evidently friendly relationship with John Weston, was no less concerned to uphold his prerogatives in the appointment of a new prior than Edward IV had been, as the turcopolier found out to his cost between 1489 and 1491. On 21 July 1489 the archbishop of Canterbury, John Morton, wrote to Innocent VIII reporting the arrival of the papal collector, Adriano Castellessi, in England and saying that he would do his best for John Kendal, whose merits he well knew, but that the king nevertheless resented the turcopolier having usurped the name and title of his priory without having asked his advice or tendered allegiance to him. Clearly, the new prior had followed neither the traditional procedure of election in England, presenta195

Burckardi, Liber notarum, i. 195; Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, no. 240; Foedera, v, III, 189. 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. 196

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tion to the king, and confirmation in Rhodes, nor waited for election in Rhodes in accordance with the statute of 1478. He had probably assumed the title in Rome on learning of Weston’s death. Henry VII could hardly have objected to his appointment as early as July 1489 if it had taken place in Rhodes the previous month, so Kendal must have either arrogated the priory to himself without formal appointment by the order, or been provided by the pope.201 It is conceivable that he had already been granted the expectancy of the priory in Rhodes, but there is no record of this. Morton assured Innocent that the king would ‘bear all tranquilly’ in the matter because of his devotion to the pope, but a year later Kendal was probably still in bad odour at court, for Castellessi, returning to Rome in July 1490, was instructed to acquaint his master with Henry’s opinions on the priory of St John.202 In the following month, Kendal was granted licence to leave Rome for his ‘urgent causes’ by d’Aubusson, and the prior of Auvergne was appointed to various commissions in Italy in his place. Despite getting permission to go home, the prior was still in Italy in the early months of 1491, for he was commissioned to admit an Italian prote´ge´ of the cardinal of Parma into the order and a preceptory on 23 February 1491, and was granted membership of the papal house of Cibo on 1 March.203 Although Kendal’s name appears as patron of an English benefice in the Hospitallers’ gift in May, which may indicate a brief visit home, in August and October Robert Eaglesfield was acting as his lieutenant while he was ‘in remotis’, as he had done in 1490.204 It seems unlikely that he took up permanent residence in the priory before the last months of 1491. It was not until the following January that he was pardoned for bringing magistral bulls preferring him to the priory into England without royal licence or election by his fellows in England.205 If Kendal, like his predecessor, had some difficulty getting possession of his priory, like Weston he nevertheless became a valued public servant and dealt with a considerable range of government business. In June 1492 he was appointed a commissioner to treat for peace with Charles VIII; in February 1496 he was among those deputed to arrange a treaty with the Archduke Philip—the so-called Intercursus Magnus; and in May 1500 he was with the king 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, having employed 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.

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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 been seen In tyme passid’, and rode on either side of the archduke in procession through the town.207 It was, however, on government business in England that Kendal was more frequently employed. Traditionally, priors of St John sat on commissions of the peace in Essex, Middlesex, and sometimes Lincolnshire, counties where there was a heavy concentration of Hospitaller properties. Both John Weston and his successor served in these shires and in 1493, at a time of administrative experiment, Kendal was appointed JP in no less than twenty jurisdictions, including all the administrative divisions of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Subsequently, following a reversion to the practices of Henry VI’s reign, Kendal sat only on commissions of the peace in Essex and Middlesex.208 Other government service was more occasional: commissions of walls and ditches in Lindsey in 1497, of sewers in Essex and Middlesex, and of inquiry into the recent insurrection in the West Country in June 1497.209 A bare list of the employment of the prior on royal business does not tell us much about relations between crown and order but it serves to demonstrate that Kendal was a trusted government servant. His appointment to inquire into recent rebellions, and the reception at St Omer, are particularly telling of the esteem and confidence in which he was held. It is all the more extraordinary then that on 14 March 1496 a French servant of the prior, Bertrand de Vignolles, made a public deposition accusing Kendal of masterminding a series of bizarre and convoluted plots to murder Henry VII and, more recently, of complicity in Perkin Warbeck’s activities in the Low Countries.210 According to Vignolles’s statement, Kendal, together with his Hospitaller nephew John Tonge and William Hussey, the archdeacon of London, had conspired over a period of several years to kill the king, his children, and others about his person. The plot had been hatched in Rome, where the conspirators, said Vignolles, hired a Spanish astrologer, a Master John Disant, to accomplish their design. Although Disant demonstrated his credentials by eliminating a Turk of the household of Jem Sultan, Kendal returned home without providing the astrologer with enough money to ensure his continued service. Nevertheless, after two years the prior sent Vignolles to Rome to urge Disant to carry out his task and to murder another astrologer, whom Kendal had also approached to arrange 207

Great Chronicle of London, ed. Thomas and Thornley, 292–3. 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 Perkin Warbeck’, at 205–9, and by Gairdner in LPRH, ii. 318–23. Gairdner also appends letters from Kendal to some of the parties involved, notably Noion and Vignolles. The most sensible recent discussion of Kendal’s part in the Warbeck conspiracy is I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491–1499 (Stroud, 1994) rather than A. Wroe’s [otherwise interesting] Perkin: A Story of Deception (London, 2003). 208

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the king’s death and who was now beginning to talk. Disant was to come to England dressed as a friar, under pretext of a pilgrimage to Santiago, but again the prior failed to furnish him with sufficient funds for the task. Instead, the astrologer supplied Vignolles with a box of ointment which, if smeared on a doorway through which the king was to pass, would cause Henry’s friends and relations to turn against him and murder him. Returning home, Vignolles threw this away and replaced it with a harmless mixture purchased from a Parisian apothecary. He gave this to Kendal, telling him that it was dangerous to handle, and the prior instructed him to get rid of it.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 the Continent. Warbeck was given the code name of the ‘Merchant of Ruby’ in the letters and as such, Vignolles reported, attempted to sell ‘stones’ at the courts of Margaret of Burgundy and Maximilian. Noion was also the agent for Kendal in his attempts to raise money for Warbeck by bills of exchange drawn up between the prior and a prominent merchant of Bruges, Daniel Beauvivre. The prior had also, it was alleged, had advance warning of Warbeck’s descent on England in July 1495, in which James Keating took part, and prepared jackets of his livery at Melchbourne, to which Yorkist emblems he had prepared might be sown as occasion demanded. He also shared his intelligence of the landing, and of the imposter’s other doings, with the bishop of Winchester, Thomas Langton, and his fellow conspirators, Hussey’s nephew John, and Sir Thomas Tyrrell, another member of the 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 the treason were Kendal’s secretary, William Yolton, and two servants of the archdeacon’s, William Lily and John Water, who had both been in Rome at the time of the original plot.214 By this stage, Vignolles claimed, he had been determined to unmask the conspirators, but was unfortunately taken ill for six months. On his recovery, he asked Kendal’s permission to visit his brother in Dieppe, so that he could reveal the plot without fear of bodily injury from ‘ceulx qui ont conpille´ ceste traison’.215

211

‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. Madden, 205–7. 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. r 114 –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 Mountford. 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. 212

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Despite its wealth of detail and allegations, it would be simple to dismiss this statement as an elaborate fantasy—the malicious gossip of an embittered servant, or perhaps a French plot to destabilize Henry VII. Vignolles was vague about dates, and had to go to considerable lengths to explain why the conspirators had failed to make an actual attempt on the king’s life. Yet there is circumstantial evidence that might suggest to the suspicious mind that Kendal had been intriguing in Rome at some time between 1485 and 1491, and more substantial material suggesting that he was at the very least involved in treasonable correspondence with Warbeck’s ‘court’ in the Low Countries. The rather nebulous poison plot which Vignolles alleged that the prior had masterminded against Henry can presumably, if it existed, be dated to c.1489 to c.1492, as Kendal returned home during its course. As this was precisely the period when the king was hindering his promotion to the priorate, he may well have been disgruntled and might conceivably have plotted to kill his monarch. He had, after all, loyally served the Yorkist crown for years and may not have ever met the Tudor king. He was, moreover, in an environment where people could more safely speak their mind about the new dynasty than at home. Several of the other alleged plotters, including William Hussey, were with him in Rome in the 1480s and early 1490s, and Kendal, the two Husseys, and Thomas Langton were all 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, and Kendal was certainly in a position to procure the murder of members of prince Jem’s household, as he had been appointed the captain and prefect of his guard in 1488.217 Rumours that Jem had been poisoned in 1495 can only have helped strengthen the case against him.218 Yet despite this attractive mixture of fact, supposition, and common prejudice, Vignolles produced precious little evidence to support his claims of an attempt to poison Henry VII, which even he had to admit did not actually take place. The prior’s involvement in the Warbeck conspiracy is more plausibly attested. Shortly after Vignolles’s deposition was made, letters of the English prior’s to the prior of France, to Noion, and to Stefano Maranycho, a Sardinian servant of Kendal’s, were seized by the crown, possibly along with Kendal himself.219 At first sight the correspondence seems innocuous enough. Kendal wrote to Noion and the prior of France in April 1496 recommending Vignolles, who had left England two months before to find his brother. While awaiting the arrival of his absent relative he had met two of Kendal’s friends, who had something to sell. Vignolles was instructed to meet the two merchants, who were wont to sell ‘stones’ at Rome, and who wished to know whether Kendal wanted any of their merchandise. He was to take them to Noion, 216 218

217 Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 76, 232 n. 54. AOM389, fos. 209v–10r. 219 Setton, Papacy, ii. 482. LPRH, ii. 323–6.

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who was in Artois, and would assess the quality of the jewels, and then return to England bearing his response. One of the ‘merchants’ was probably Maranycho, also accused of complicity in the poison plot, for another letter of Kendal’s was addressed to him, instructing him to trust Vignolles and suggesting he sell his ‘good things’ at the fair of Antwerp, where he would also find Noion.220 The language of the letters is deliberately obscure, and would seem to suggest financial dealings rather than treason were it not for the fact that Noion and Maranycho had already been mentioned in Vignolles’s accusations, and that the references to gems are clearly reminiscent of the code allegedly used for Warbeck. The letter to Maranycho is particularly suspicious. 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 his goods in Flanders rather than bring them to England. Arthurson even suggests that ‘good things’ may have been code for poison, and ‘Antwerp’ for Margaret of Burgundy. Kendal’s reluctance to buy such wares would fit with his instruction to Vignolles to throw away the poison he had brought from Italy.221 The key link in the supposed plot, however, is Noion. It is not difficult to demonstrate his closeness to the prior: the letters seized in April 1496 alone do that. In addition, three English knights, including Kendal’s nephew Tonge, had stood surety for Noion when he was granted the farm of the preceptory of Flanders, and when he fell into debt in 1492 he was able to set payments he had made to Kendal against his arrears.222 Yet, besides Vignolles’s testimony, no further proof of any link between Noion and Warbeck has been 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 December 1494, would surely have brought down the prior, Tonge, the Husseys, and Langton. Although Kendal may have been under suspicion, and was put under a bond of £100 in March 1495, he was certainly not tried either at this time or in 1496. Indeed, his appointment to negotiate with Burgundy in February 1496, which Arthurson describes as ‘splendid cover for his other activities’ could hardly have been possible if he had been mistrusted, unless he was some kind of double agent.223 The king, in any case, was suspicious of uncorroborated testimony,224 and may have decided that Vignolles’s accusations, delivered in public before representatives of the French crown, had been engineered to cause trouble. The letters seized by the crown are suspiciously opaque, but correspondence between business partners was often unspecific, treasonable talk was 220 221 222 223 224

‘Documents relating to Perkin Warbeck’, ed. Madden, 205; LPRH, ii. 323–6. LPRH, ii. 323–6; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 137. AOM391, fos. 102r–103r, 159r–v. CCR1485–94, no. 792; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 83–6, 137. Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 77.

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common, and Kendal did not make the mistake either of mentioning the ‘Merchant of Ruby’, or of referring to Scotland, where Warbeck was then staying. Although the prior was pardoned on 1 July 1496 of all offences committed before 17 June, the king cannot have believed he was guilty of all the charges against him or he would not have trusted him with sensitive business again.225 As it was, Kendal continued to serve on commissions of the peace, on diplomatic missions, and on the royal council. He even investigated the Cornish rising of 1497, an affair which Arthurson considers to have been linked with the Warbeck conspiracy.226 Besides these formal activities on behalf of the crown, there is evidence that Kendal was personally favoured by the king both before and after 1496. He was licensed to hold a market and fairs at Baldock and to import Gascon wines in 1492, and was cleared of his and the priory’s debts to the crown. King and prior actively cooperated in the removal of the traitor and rebel James Keating from the priory of Ireland, and Henry did not punish the Hospitallers for Keating’s treason.227 Henceforth, priors of Ireland were to be English preceptors, something which suited both the langue and the crown, to whose ‘better service’ the act forbidding the priory to the Irish brethren drew specific attention. And if Henry’s intervention in Ireland was largely a result of self-interest, a clearer mark of genuine favour was provided by his dispatch of hobbies and artillery, the latter to be placed on the ante-mural or bouleverde defended by the English langue, to Rhodes in 1499. The gift represents the most significant of a number of diplomatic exchanges between Rhodes and Westminster concerning the priory of Ireland, the proposed exchange of lands between the order and Giles Lord Daubeney, and the Jubilee Indulgence of 1500.228 The Veneto-Turkish war which began in 1499, and which the order entered in 1501, prompted considerable crusade enthusiasm in the West: a French fleet was dispatched to the Levant in 1499, the Spanish were also considering military involvement in the area, and Henry VII, besides his support for the Hospitallers, contributed 20,000 crowns of his own revenues to the crusade fund in Rome, to the astonishment of the curia. The king’s support for the order needs to be seen in this context.229 The internal history of the priory during Kendal’s incumbency is less dramatic than the prior’s personal vicissitudes, but is not without interest. There is little sign in the Maltese archives that the problems surrounding his appointment caused any great concern in convent, yet there are indications that his exclusion from his dignity may have disrupted the functioning of the 225

CPR1494–1509, 49. 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. 226

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priory during his absence. No provincial chapters seem to have been held in Kendal’s name during his continued residence in Italy230 and neither are any orders to Hospitaller brethren enrolled in the Libri Bullarum between November 1489 and February 1492. In August 1490 there was even worry in Rhodes that the prioral seal might be misused ‘during the dissension concerning the priory’ and a letter was dispatched to the receiver on the subject.231 Moreover, when the convent did begin to issue orders to Kendal to act in England, in October 1492, he was instructed to compel his brethren to pay substantial arrears owed to the common treasury: John Boswell, Robert Peck, Robert Evers, and Robert Dalison owed over £600 between them. By the same February, Henry Halley had still not paid any part of the responsions of the preceptory he had been granted in 1489.232 In April 1493, the receiver, Thomas Newport, was ordered to collect, besides the 4,723 e´cus owed by prior and brethren for that year’s responsion, a total of 5,679 e´cus owed by the prior, eight English preceptors, and the prioress of Buckland, of which 2,785 e´cus was still owed for the prioral vacancy year of 1489 to 1490.233 Although Evers had by now apparently paid his debts, Boswell, Peck, and Dalison were still in considerable arrears, as was John Tonge, who owed £170 for the vacancy year of Ribston.234 Newport was to collect the monies, buy cloth with them, and ship it on the Venetian galleys which would be travelling between England and Messina in 1494. The type and quality of textiles he was to purchase were rigidly defined.235 Although it was common for at least some English brethren to owe money to the common treasury, the debts accumulated by 1493 were unusually large, and would have been far greater had the convent not, ‘usant de moderance et non pas de severite et Rigueur’, agreed to limit the vacancies of the priory to 4,000 e´cus, a sum considerably lower than its net annual income.236 The fact that of the men granted preceptories during the round of promotion which accompanied Kendal’s accession to the priorate in 1489 only the receiver had paid his vacancies in full by April 1493 probably indicates administrative disruption during the period before Kendal gained possession. The convent’s leniency on the question of the prior’s debts suggests genuine difficulties in collection, partly, perhaps, caused by his earlier exclusion from the priorate. Kendal’s absence certainly cannot have 230 The first chapter recorded in the lease book of the English Hospitallers dating from Kendal’s priorate was held in June 1492, after his return from Italy. The first chapter recorded in 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.

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helped him regain control of the Warwickshire preceptory of Balsall, a prioral camera and favourite residence of John Weston which between 1489 and 1496/7 was in the hands of a secular usurper, Robert Bellingham of Kenilworth. In 1487 Bellingham had abducted the daughter and heir of the farmer of Balsall, John Beaufitz, from her parental home by force, but despite a considerable scandal eventually acquired Beaufitz’s consent to marry her.237 On Beaufitz’s death in 1489, Bellingham entered into possession 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 able to remove him shortly afterwards, but significantly Kendal then granted the lease to Robert Throckmorton, the head of one of the most substantial gentry families in the county. It is interesting to note that Beaufitz, Bellingham, and Throckmorton all held significant posts in the administration of Warwickshire, and it might be speculated that it was only with the assistance of such notables that the order’s more desirable properties could be retained in its grasp. Such recoveries were not only difficult and time-consuming; they were expensive too, so that it is not surprising that both Kendal and his successor, Thomas Docwra, asked to be allowed a pension against their responsions on account of the heavy legal costs incurred in defence of the priory. Kendal remained in arrears throughout his priorate. In October 1495, in the presence of the grand master, the turcopolier, the prior’s secretary, and others a declaration was made touching his accounts. He was quit of seven items amounting to 4,990 Venetian ducats which the chapter of 1493 had remitted to magistral judgement, but a further twenty-three payments, amounting to perhaps £360, which the prior had made in Italy were not allowed against his arrears, as he had claimed, but were to be submitted to the next chapter for arbitration, as were 1,000 e´cus (£200) which he claimed should be subtracted from his vacancy payments. A further claim for £300 over which Kendal pretended he was prejudiced by an error in Thornburgh’s accounts, which he said he had not seen, was disallowed because he had signed the documents in question in London in the presence of a notary. The prior remained 1,567 e´cus in debt.239 Although the Libri Bullarum for 1497–1500 are missing, Kendal had not paid his debts by September 1498, for Richard Boswell then appeared before the council in Rhodes protesting that he should not be granted the preceptory of Carbrooke, as he owed the common treasury 1,500 e´cus. Although the proctors of the treasury said they were 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 the Abduction Act of 1487’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht, and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor England (London, 1978), at 26–9. 238 PRO/STAC2/33/40. 239 AOM392, fos. 104v–107r.

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the prior, Kendal was still in debt when he died,240 probably in early February 1501.241 Kendal’s demise was reported to the council on Rhodes on 12 June.242 The turcopolier, Thomas Docwra, who was in Rhodes, seems to have been the only candidate for the priory, despite the greater seniority of Thomas Green, the aged bailiff of Eagle.243 Although the order’s council initially deferred the election of a new prior ‘because of certain legitimate respects concerning the utility and honour of the whole religion’, on hearing of Kendal’s death it granted immediate licence to the English langue to meet so that the prioral fifth camera, Melchbourne, could be granted to Thomas Docwra, who gave up his preceptory of cabimentum, Dinmore, in return. The election to the priorate was suspended until the chapter-general should meet, for on the day after its inception, 6 August, Docwra appeared before the council to petition for the priory, having first been granted the right to exchange it for the turcopoliership by the English langue. Despite a protest by the proctors of the common treasury,244 he was duly elected prior, retaining Melchbourne as his fifth camera.245 The provision to the turcopoliership, claimed by Henry Halley, Robert Dalison, Thomas Newport, and Robert Daniel, was remitted to the sixteen capitulars, who on 26 August allocated it to Newport.246 There is little remarkable in the bull providing Docwra to the priory, although the farm of his four prioral camerae was, unusually, specified at 350 e´cus until such time as commissioners should be appointed to revalue them.247 A later confirmation of the terms of his appointment set the farm of the priory’s vacancy year at 4,000 e´cus, and that of Melchbourne, the fifth camera, at 950.248 Although these sums considerably undervalued all his estates save Melchbourne, the new prior was eager to reduce his burdens and 240

AOM78, fos. 93r–v; 79, fos. 89r–v. The editors of Dugdale’s Monasticon 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 death seems to have been sudden. He had presided over a provincial chapter held on 20 January and was apparently planning to visit Rhodes shortly before his demise, hardly the intention of a sick man. 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 a conventual 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 to uphold the ordinance made in the 1498 chapter concerning the dues owed to the treasury from England. Docwra replied that the statute had ruled that the prior should be given time to prove his right to certain of these monies, and petitioned that the matter should be examined by the 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. 241

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renewed Kendal’s claim for a pension of 630 e´cus, averring that this was necessary to support the heavy burden of litigation on the English priory, and also demanding a smaller sum from the preceptory of Scotland. Not only were these demands rejected, the prior and the more senior English knights were later forced to swear to uphold the capitular ordinance on the matter, to seek no pension from the common treasury in lieu of the sums claimed, and not to impede responsions from Scotland.249 What is perhaps most interesting about Docwra’s appointment was that it proceeded without any apparent hitch and that it was neither preceded by election in England nor accompanied by the issue of papal letters in his favour. These facts seem to indicate that the statute of 1478 insisting that priors should henceforth be elected in Rhodes was now uncontroversial and that the order and the crown had come to a working arrangement which respected the rights and claims of each. Docwra appears to have been unopposed as prior and there is no sign either that Henry VII found him unacceptable, or that the king was unhappy at his absence in Rhodes, which extended until 1504. Docwra had an impressive record of service in the east, having been, while turcopolier, visitor of Cos, captain of Bodrum, and captain of the order’s galleys. With the order’s entry into the Veneto-Turkish war in 1501, practised commanders such as he became indispensable, and accordingly he was twice appointed the captain of one of the order’s galleys patrolling the Aegean in 1501, although on the first of these occasions his vessel was among two defeated off Syme by a Turkish squadron. The master of the order, the still formidable Pierre d’Aubusson, conducted the war vigorously, and called on other Christian powers to contribute ships or money should they not be able to enter the lists themselves. If the main targets of his appeals were the rulers of Hungary and Venice, more distant potentates like Henry VIII were not forgotten. Writing to Ladislas VI of Hungary in January 1502 the master professed himself hopeful of securing naval aid from England, the pope, and the king of France.250 Duplicates of a letter informing Louis XII of events in the east had been dispatched to Henry VII in the previous December.251 A further letter was sent to the king of England in October 1502, reporting a Turkish naval build-up in the Hellespont and requesting some of the money which the order had heard he had set aside for the faith. This would, it was promised, be used to arm galleys or barques which would be marked with Henry’s royal insignia and maintained in his honour until the subsidy ceased. The letter, together with general supplications for the royal favour, was to be presented at court by Thomas Newport.252 There is no record that Henry VII responded to this plea with 249

AOM284, fo. 9r–11r; 79, fos. 117v, 118r. 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. 250

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material assistance but the order’s later flattery might indicate that he sent some help.253 Although the prior of England does not seem to have played any great part in the naval operations of 1502–3, he could not be spared to return home until after the arrival of the new master, Aimery d’Amboise, in September 1504.254 In the meantime he served on the council and was employed on a number of commissions, especially after the death of d’Aubusson in July 1503. Some of these were of considerable delicacy and importance. In late July, for example, Docwra was one of three commissioners appointed to draw up letters announcing the death of the former master to Korkud, the governor of southern Anatolia.255 In the following month he was given the task of reporting on the state of the harbour defences at Rhodes, and in February 1504 he was among four senior brethren deputed to treat with the captors of one of Korkud’s chief servants, Kemal Beg, who had been taken prisoner in the Aegean.256 Despite the significance of these activities, the new prior was keenly aware of his responsibilities to the king. In April 1503 he wrote to inform Sir Reginald Bray that he had sought licence to leave Rhodes but had been refused because the Turks were preparing a fleet and army against the order now that the Venetians had pulled out of the war. He asked Bray to approach the king, excuse his absence, and stress his fidelity. He also asked Bray to favour the priory’s affairs while he was away.257 During his absence the priory 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 uphold the prior’s prerogatives in the case of Kendal’s dispropriamentum,259 Newport exercised a relatively vigorous lieutenancy. He held provincial assemblies in Docwra’s name, presented to benefices in prioral gift, served on royal commissions and in April 1502 presided with Thomas Sheffield over the 253

See below, 158. 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. Docwra was granted licences to depart on 11 and 20 September 1504, but was still in convent on 24 September. 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, Piety and 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 de Castello Bishop of Bath and Wells 1503–1518, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, Somerset Record Society, 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 his up in an irregular manner in conjunction with his nephew, John Tonge, erring further by making several bequests and endowing a chantry to pray for his soul even though he remained a debtor. AOM79, fos. 114v–117v. 254

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re-examination of Kendal’s spolia.260 Combining the duties of lieutenant prior and receiver may have been too much of a strain, however, and on 14 July 1503 Sheffield was appointed receiver in Newport’s place.261 Certainly Newport had plenty to keep him occupied. There are signs that the prior’s absence may have hampered the order’s defence of its property and privileges. In 1501 the order was in dispute with Charles Booth, the vicar-general of Lincoln diocese, over its encroachment on episcopal jurisdiction. Booth met prioral representatives to discuss the matter at St Paul’s, but without reaching any definite resolution.262 A more serious dispute concerned Balsall. In November 1495 it had been leased to Sir Robert Throckmorton for a three-year term, renewable on its expiry. This arrangement was to continue for twenty years, or until the prior died, when the order had the option to buy out Throckmorton’s interest, but on Kendal’s death the farmer refused to vacate the property. Although the lease had not been renewed in 1498–9 he was still in possession in 1503, when the order agreed to regrant it for the year to that midsummer on condition that he pay his arrears and render up the property to Lancelot Docwra on his return from Rhodes. But when the latter and Thomas Sheffield came to make Balsall ready for the prior they found that the Throckmortons had fortified it and that they were refused admission.263 By the time the case was brought to Star Chamber, the Throckmortons had put a chaplain and other persons into the manor, sold its hay, done other damage, and run up arrears of more than £150.264 In their defence the family alleged that the knights had breached the Statute of Retainers 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 less dramatically,266 and the absence of the prior may have weakened attempts to 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’s church at Garway,267 and only proceeding against Throckmorton when there appeared to be no other option. On his return the prior initially seems to have been unsure how to restore Balsall to his authority, for a lease of the manor of Chilvercoton dated June 1505 and stating that its farm 260

AOM79, fos. 89r–v. 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 in 1503 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, Selden Society, 75 (London, 1958), p. cxxiii; Statutes, ii. 658–60. 266 PRO STAC 2/33/40. 267 Registrum Mayew, ed. Bannister, pp. iii, 19–34. 261

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should be paid to Docwra at Balsall, implies that he had decided to take the preceptory in hand, while another Warwickshire lease granted in the same chapter 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 to restore Balsall to the hands of his fellow religious, on account of the dilapidation caused by the exploitation of successive farmers since the days of Robert Botill.269 In June 1505 Docwra held his first provincial chapter. There was much business to transact. The three assemblies held by Newport in 1503 and 1504 had only granted short-term leases of those preceptories whose incumbents were in or on their way to Rhodes,270 and had not let any prioral properties. As opposed to only nine leases granted in the meetings of 1503– 4, at Docwra’s first chapter in 1505 thirty-five separate properties were leased.271 The most important grant was the renewal of a lease of the manor 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 long ago as 1495, and secured royal and prioral letters in his favour at that time.272 The authorities on Rhodes had appeared to cooperate, appointing commissioners to view both properties to ensure that the exchange was in the order’s favour, as the statutes required, but the chapter-general alone could authorize the alienation of Hospitaller estates and there was considerable institutional reluctance to do so.273 While Kendal was waiting for a decision on the permanent grant of the property, he had done the next best thing and granted an eighty-year renewable lease, which was now exchanged for one with a ninety-nine-year term, also renewable.274 This was hardly in keeping with the order’s policy, which was to discourage attempts to gain permanent possession of its property, and the terms of the grant were to cause some embarrassment later.275 Once in England, Docwra became more a servant of the crown than of his order and was involved in a heavy volume of government business from shortly after his arrival. Initially Docwra served in traditional ways, on commissions of the peace or on the royal council,276 although the scope and variety of his employment began to increase after the death of Henry VII. The most characteristic manifestation of his royal service was 268

Claudius E.vi, fos. 22r–v, 21v–22r. 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. 269

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diplomatic business. On 4 March 1506 he was among those appointed to treat with Philip the Fair of Burgundy-Castile, a parley which resulted in the Intercursus Malus, a one-sided agreement which collapsed after Philip’s death.277 The experience was not wasted, however, for in October 1507 the prior travelled to Picardy to treat for the marriage of the lady Mary and the young duke of Burgundy, the future Charles V.278 When the Burgundian ambassadors paid a return visit to England in December Docwra was among the noblemen who met them at Dartford and he entertained the Burgundians ‘splendidly and festively’ to a banquet at Clerkenwell in the following February.279 Even before Docwra’s building programme was completed, the priory seems to have been a desirable stopping place. The king himself had visited in 1486, and the Scottish ambassadors were lodged there in 1501. An even more pointed display of the royal favour was Henry’s stay ‘in the country in the buildings of St. John’s’, where he received the French ambassador in the summer of 1508. Henry may even have gone hawking with the prior, for in 1506 the common treasury had accepted Docwra’s claim that two falcons purchased 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 to deploy the birds.280 Relations between crown and order had apparently never been friendlier. On 27 May 1506 the convent bestowed the title of protector of the order on Henry VII.281 Whether this honour was granted in recognition of favours already received or in anticipation of more it is difficult to say. The letter is general in tone, stressing the order’s constant struggle against the Turks, the precariousness of its position in the east, and, perhaps significantly, bemoaning the difficulty the Hospital had in collecting its rents in the west and stressing its need for protectors there. This may have been a veiled plea for royal support in matters such as the Balsall case, or for a reconsideration of the king’s insistence on levying taxes on Hospitaller properties.282 277 Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England 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 Henry VII 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 or property. Furthermore, in 1503, Thomas Newport asked to be excused £32 of his responsions for Dalby and Rotheley because tenths granted to the crown in convocation were being levied on Boston church, which had been appropriated to the preceptory since 1482. AOM397, fos. 143r, 145r.

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Although the king’s sojourn in the order’s estates in the summer of 1508 speaks highly of the good relations between Henry and the prior, Docwra, having been summoned to attend the chapter-general to be held in August 1508, should really have been in the eastern Mediterranean instead.283 When the king died in April 1509, Docwra was still in England. Henry may have felt that with two of the three English bailiffs of the langue already in 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 while simultaneously quarrelling with the English langue and the convent over the collation of Halston, may himself have felt disinclined to travel. Henry VII died on 22 April 1509. His relationship with all three priors of England during his reign had been relatively fruitful. All had performed the customary service of priors on royal commissions, the king’s council, and particularly on the diplomatic business for which they were so well suited. In return, although he had been determined to uphold the royal prerogative with regard to John Kendal’s appointment, Henry took little or no action against Kendal when he was accused of treason in 1496, sent artillery to Rhodes, and may conceivably have been prepared to allow the prior to go there at the turn of the century.285 The new prior, Thomas Docwra, was refused permission to perform conventual service but the king may have felt that as he had only arrived in England in late 1504, the order for him to return by 1508 was rather precipitous. In the meantime, the king was heavily involved in crusade schemes, and donated funds from his own pocket towards them. His interest in the order is perhaps further indicated by his disgraced councillor Sir Richard Guildford’s journey to the Holy Land in 1506. Besides making expiation for his financial misdeeds, Guildford may have been asked to make contact with the English langue in Rhodes: his chaplain was certainly impressed by the warmth of the English brothers’ hospitality there.286 The order’s nomination of the king as its protector can be seen both as a culmination of these contacts and an encouragement to more. Nevertheless, if Thomas Docwra’s priorate in some respect represents the most active period of cooperation between crown and order since the 1430s, the fervent royal embrace in which the more prominent English Hospitallers found themselves after about 1500 proved at times to be stifling, and certainly 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. 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 (to 1508) and William Darrell 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. 284

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underpinnings, administrative personnel, and institutions of the early Tudor state may not have been all that different from those of its Yorkist predecessor, but the new regime did preside over a larger and more lavish court, a more intrusive and interventionist government, and a growing insistence on the duties of subjects to the crown.287 These developments had a more noticeable impact on the Hospital in the reign of Henry VIII, but some of them are foreshadowed in the reign of his father, whose addiction to diplomatic intrigue kept Weston, Kendal, and Docwra extremely busy on his service, and whose decisive intervention in the order’s Irish affairs began the transformation of the notoriously independent priory of Ireland into an arm of the state. Closer ties to court appear to have enhanced the prestige bestowed on the order by its defence of Rhodes, but also led to some brethren, particularly those from families prominent in royal service such as the Westons, being singled out for favour and even attached to the court as gentlemen pensioners. The physical growth of the court, too, led to increased competition for grants of the order’s property, such as Daubeney’s for Hampton Court. It is certainly true that earlier priors had been prominent as diplomats, that kings had sometimes pressed the order to admit or favour particular brethren, and that courtiers had often sought leases of its property. The difference is more of degree than of kind, of tone than of substance, but there are indications that all of these pressures were intensifying from the 1490s onward. During the next reign they were to become very pronounced indeed. 287 Recent views of Henry VII’s regime include M. C. Carpenter, ‘Henry VII and the English Polity’, 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; and S. J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government 1485–1558 (Basingstoke, 1995).

C HA P T E R S I X

The Hospital and the English Crown, 1509–1540 With hindsight it is readily apparent that Henry VIII was no great friend of the order of St John, whose English, Welsh, and Irish houses he dissolved in 1540. Nevertheless, in his first fifteen or so years on the throne, during which he posed on occasion as the champion of papal foreign policy against the French and of Catholic orthodoxy against Luther, relations between the crown and the Hospital were generally friendly, following the pattern established during the reign of his father. The son, indeed, showed a positive and gratifying interest in Levantine and crusading matters in the first years of his reign. He rewarded a hermit who had visited the Holy Sepulchre, patronized the friars of Sion and monks of Sinai, and even dispatched a body of English crusaders to assist Ferdinand of Aragon in north Africa.1 It was during this reign, too, that the tentative English mercantile contacts with the eastern Mediterranean begun in the reigns of Edward IV and Henry VII became an ‘ordinarie and usuall trade’.2 The permanent community of Hospitaller brethren in Rhodes was an important component in the embryonic English ‘network’ in the region and from the start Henry kept himself informed both of the order’s affairs as a whole and of the langue’s in particular. His keenness to do so is indicated by a collection of Hospitaller and other Levantine letters in the British Library which allows us to trace the correspondence between crown and convent in unprecedented detail.3 In recognition of this interest, and hope that he would emulate his father’s active support, Henry was appointed protector of the convent two years after his accession to the throne.4 Fulsome letters were exchanged between England and Rhodes, gifts of balsam and Turkey carpets dispatched to Henry and Wolsey, and the wealthy prior of England, Thomas Docwra, allowed in return to send large consignments of goods to convent in advance of his responsions. 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 (Jerusalem, 1952), 96; Tyerman, England, 351–2. 2 A. A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton 1270–1600 (Southampton, 1951), 218–19, 231; Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, v. 62–4. 3 Otho C.ix. 4 LPFD, i, no. 767.

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elected grand master in 1521, which would have constituted a considerable coup for both langue and crown.5 Nevertheless, the new king could sometimes be cynical about the reports of Turkish advances in the letters reaching him from Rhodes, and his primary concerns when dealing with the English brethren of the order appear to have been to remind them of their responsibilities as subjects and to make them useful in his service. From the beginning the priors of England and Ireland were treated as government servants and habitually refused licence to go to the convent, while their brethren were sometimes required to fight in France, and the order as a whole to contribute contingents to royal armies. Some brethren were actively groomed for service, being appointed gentlemen pensioners and recommended to the authorities on Rhodes, but a corollary of such favour was that the king demanded his prote´ge´s receive early preferment, which might cause disruption in the langue. Above all, there was an insistence, reminiscent of Edward IV’s, that when the crown’s priorities conflicted with those of the order in any respect the latter must give way. Accordingly royal interventions on behalf of the English brethren in their struggle to subject the order’s houses in Scotland and Ireland to the authority of the langue ceased when the order’s interests no longer coincided with Henry’s own. John Rawson, for instance, was helped to secure possession of Kilmainham because a strong priory of Ireland was a useful adjunct to the crown’s authority there, but Henry’s insistence that those born in Ireland were ipso facto unfit to hold any dignity at all in the priory possibly contributed to Edmund Seys’s rebellion against his superior. Moreover, when Rawson tried to go to Rhodes to prosecute his case against his brothers and to perform his conventual service, he was denied permission to leave Ireland. Henry’s withdrawal of support from George Dundas, the favoured candidate of langue and convent for promotion to Torphichen, in the hope of a slight strengthening of Margaret Tudor’s position in Scotland provides an even more telling insight into royal priorities.6 Yet the king’s reservations about the Hospital had not become apparent in the first days of his reign and the order evidently held out hope of his assistance in its struggles. In late September 15107 Amboise wrote to the king congratulating him on his accession, encouraging him to work towards the ‘expedition’ planned by his father, and reporting the order’s destruction of 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.

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new dangers, for it had brought the Turkish and Mamluk rulers together in determination to avenge the insult. It was therefore necessary for the order to summon its brethren to Rhodes to meet the threat and the king was requested to release Thomas Docwra for conventual service. In the following May, the order petitioned Henry, like his father, to act as the order’s protector, a title he retained until the dissolution.8 This letter is the first of a series of bulletins on Levantine affairs directed to the king, to Wolsey, and later to Thomas Cromwell. Although their content and tone altered with events, the conclusion—that prompt and substantial help should be sent to combat the Turkish menace—remained the same throughout the period before 1522. In the first few years of the reign the order was fairly bullish, reporting the victories of Shah Isma’il (the ‘Sophi’) in Anatolia in 1511 and 1514–15 with some hope that these could provide a platform for the overthrow of Turkish power in conjunction with western crusading armies and Christian revolts.9 But when these dreams were shattered by Ismai’l’s defeat at Chaldiran in 1515, the need for action against the Turks became more pressing, particularly after Selim I’s seizure of Egypt and Syria in 1516–17. The Hospital spent the last six or seven years of its sojourn on Rhodes in a state of invasion phobia, and the letters of masters Carretto and L’Isle Adam to Henry VIII and Wolsey document the evolution of its fears. Besides stressing the danger to the Christian east and consequently the whole of Europe, the letters naturally emphasized the specific threat to Rhodes, and the need for the presence of Hospitaller brethren, and especially Docwra, at the convent, where his experience and prudence would be invaluable.10 At the same time, the prior was requested or ordered to appear in time for the chapters-general held in 1510, 1514, 1517, and 1520, and at other times as well.11 Although Henry VIII refused to let Docwra leave the realm, he was not completely insensitive to the order’s needs. In 1513, in response to a major invasion scare,12 the bailiff of Eagle, Thomas Newport, the receiver, Thomas Sheffield, and a large contingent of conventual knights were permitted to go to Rhodes.13 Having served in the royal army in France in 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. 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 to Rhodes. 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 army paraded before Bodrum. In fear of imminent attack the convent instructed its English brethren to 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 Sheffield be dispatched to headquarters. LPFD, i, no. 1765. 9

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on 3 September Newport and Sheffield were being received in Venice as Henry’s ambassadors.14 On 15 November the lieutenant master and council wrote acknowledging the king’s wish to keep Docwra with him and requesting that he should be sent when he could be spared. Newport and Sheffield would be kept in Rhodes in the meantime.15 Although the prior had been retained, the two younger knights had at least been allowed to proceed to the convent with a considerable company and large sums of cash, although this was probably provided by exchange rather than bullion export.16 Both were retained on conventual service until 1518, when they were sent to the west as ambassadors.17 Newport served as a proctor of the common treasury and as an active naval commander, and sent several reports on eastern affairs to England, while Sheffield was captain of Bodrum castle between 1514 and 1517.18 Judging by the variety and volume of the business they were asked to undertake, the English contingent in Rhodes exercised an unusual degree of influence during these years. Besides keeping the king appraised of events in the east the order also, at Newport’s suggestion, dispatched gifts of balsam and carpets to Henry by Edward Hills in January and further luxuries by the merchant Hugh Ball in July 1515.19 These tokens may have been intended to encourage Henry to allow Newport and Sheffield, who were refused permission to depart in July, to stay in Rhodes, and to permit Docwra to travel thither. While not permitting his departure, the king nevertheless allowed Docwra to make a remarkable donation to the order in late 1515. On 7 December Lancelot Docwra and the prior’s Rhodiot servant Francis Bell handed over 20,000 ducats in unworked silver and cash to the common treasury as a gift from their master, with instructions that it should only be spent if the Turks laid siege to the order’s possessions. Should the prior need to, he was also to be permitted to set the donation against his responsions, although there is no sign this was ever done.20 Moved by this generosity, in 1517 the order sent Hills back to England with gifts of carpets and camlet for king and prior.21 14

See below, 170; LPFD, i, nos. 2234, 2254, 2263. LPFD, i, no. 2447. There were thirty-eight ‘English’ knights present at the assembly held to elect a new master on 15 December 1513, whereas only sixteen were at a similar gathering on 22 November 1512. Newport, at least, brought plenty of ready money with him, and paid the responsions of his four preceptories 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. 15 16

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Evidence for a close relationship between Rhodes and England in this period is, however, mostly provided by letters written in convent, which were naturally, given the order’s need of his support, rather fulsome in their praise of the king. The lack of surviving correspondence from England makes it difficult to ascertain exactly how the Hospitallers were viewed at court but other evidence hints of a certain cynicism towards news from Rhodes, and that views of the order current at Westminster or Greenwich were quite different from its perception of itself. Despite Henry’s early enthusiasm for eastern Mediterranean affairs, by the late 1510s the prospect of Turkish attacks on the Christian east and calls for a crusade were sometimes treated with amusement at court. When Sebastian Giustinianini informed the king about Turkish military preparations in March 1518 Henry replied that he had had news from Rhodes that there was nothing to fear from the sultan in the current year, and, laughing, said that Venice was on such good terms with the Turks that she had little cause for alarm anyway. The real threat to Christian peace, he said, was provided by Francis I.22 In fact, Carretto’s recent letters had reported that, although Selim was delayed in Egypt by an uprising, he was building fleets in Egypt and Rumelia, and that his dispatch of an ambassador to Rhodes to make peace was probably a ruse before attack. Carretto was alarmed enough to request that all brethren be sent to Rhodes to cope with this ‘emergency’.23 News from Rhodes was similarly misrepresented in December 1515, when Wolsey wrote to the bishop of Worcester, then in Rome, to justify the king’s refusal to allow the collection of a half-tenth to support Hungary. Carretto’s last letters, he asserted, had mentioned nothing of any threat to Hungary and had stated that the Turk was afraid of the ‘Sophi’, so Christendom had nothing to fear.24 The order’s belief that Ismai’l’s advances in Asia Minor represented a rare opportunity for an offensive crusade had evidently produced only complacency in England. As late as May 1521, the Venetian ambassador reported that the king and his courtiers had a quite different perception of the way eastern affairs were progressing from Thomas Docwra, who based his views on letters from Rhodes.25 A similarly cynical view was taken of the Hospitallers’ internal organization. In common with other European rulers Henry VIII appears to have regarded 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, Religious Warfare, 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 that although the issue was still in doubt, Selim would turn against Italy and Rhodes if he was victorious, and that therefore Newport and Sheffield had been refused licence to depart. LPFD, ii, nos. 17, 23, 194, 715. 25 CSPV, iii, no. 206.

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bypassed rather than an essential component of its discipline and organization. The king took a personal interest in the careers of English brethren such as Richard Neville, Lancelot Docwra, and William Weston, and requested their advancement by the master and council on Rhodes.26 He was particularly insistent in the case of Neville, who was the brother of George Lord Abergavenny, and a royal annuitant.27 Although Amboise wrote to the king in October 1510 stating that he had received the young man as a novice of his chamber, this failed to satisfy Henry, who requested that Neville be provided with a preceptory forthwith.28 Frustrated of these wishes, the king went over Carretto’s head in July 1515, writing to Leo X. The letter provides a real insight into the king’s attitude, and early evidence for the Hospital’s role as a ‘finishing school’ for naval officers and ambassadors.29 Complaining that he had written to three successive masters on the subject and been ignored, Henry requested that since Neville had now finished his military education at Rhodes, he should be provided to the first vacant preceptory in the order’s gift.30 The king’s appreciation of the order’s military utility but lack of understanding of or regard for its internal dynamic were to receive further illustration as the reign progressed. His viewpoint was apparently shared by Neville, who pleaded sickness so he could return to England in late 1514,31 used the opportunity to make a complaint about the 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 of Rhodes in 1522. Unfortunately it is difficult to gauge what, if any, support Henry VIII’s government gave to the Hospitallers in their hour of need. Although it had been urging available brethren to come to the convent for years, the order had less immediate warning of the sultan’s intentions than had been the case in 1480, when a general citation had been issued nine months before the siege began.34 Only on 19 March 1522, following the return of spies from Constantinople, did L’Isle Adam write to Henry VIII and Wolsey pleading for the dispatch of the remainder of the English knights to the convent, and stressing rather disingenuously that the order’s ‘chief hope’ was in the king. Even then, the master admitted that he could not absolutely verify that the assault was directed against Rhodes, although he pointed out 26

LPFD, i, no. 591; ii, no. 1138. 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 Reformation 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 lettersv to the king and council upheld Darrell’s actions. Ibid., nos. 1139–40; Otho C.ix, fos. 27r–v/34r– . 33 Neville eventually returned to Rhodes in 1516 and was provided to Willoughton in 1519. He fought in the siege of Rhodes in 1522. AOM405, fo. 130v; 408,fos. 135v–136r; 410, fo. 177r–v. 34 See above, Ch 5.2. 27

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that precautions had been taken on that basis and members of the order in the west cited to come to Rhodes with ships.35 Further letters followed on 17 June, reporting that the Turkish fleet was in sight, sending a French translation of Suleiman’s letter demanding the order’s surrender, and requesting that Docwra and Newport be allowed to export the coin they had collected to Rhodes.36 This last point was significant. Docwra, more aware of the danger than the king and Wolsey, bought up large quantities of cloth and tin in 1521, doubtless because he could not obtain licence to send cash, and sent it to Rhodes. On 30 October Francis Bell agreed a composition with the proctors of the treasury for 20,000 ducats’ worth of kersey and unworked tin that Docwra had sent over and above his responsions to Rhodes. This consignment was effectively an interest-free loan to the order to tide it over any forthcoming siege.37 As the prior was not to be repaid until 1527, 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’Isle Adam explained that due to the restrictions on the export of bullion from England the prior and receiver of England had been commissioned to buy cloth and tin for the use of the convent, the latter for both domestic use and for the order’s artillery. The responsions for 1521 had, they understood, just reached Sicily in this form and they therefore requested that they be sent to Rhodes without payment of duty, as the order’s privileges required.38 It is difficult to say whether there was any overlap between Docwra’s ‘loan’ and this other consignment of goods, but the commodities involved were much the same, even if the quantities specified were not. Whether they were of as much 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 more crucial in determining the effectiveness of the English ‘response’ to the siege than any measures that could have been taken after news of it was received in England. The English Hospitallers had been preparing for this event for years, paying the increased responsions ordered by the convent in 1517,39 increasing the rents of selected estates,40 selling reserved assets,41 and supporting an English contingent in Rhodes in 1522 that was more numerous than it had been forty years before, and was also equipped with Henry VII’s artillery.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. 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. 36

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demonstrate that the government was kept abreast of every report and rumour about the progress of the siege, there is no prima-facie evidence that anything was done to help. Admittedly, Henry VIII had just renewed the war with France when L’Isle Adam’s letters reached England, and in such circumstances it was difficult to prepare a military response yet there is no evidence even that indulgences were offered for the order, and no royal grants were issued to it. Indeed, far from helping financially, in 1522 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 involvement in the English war effort too. The first, a draft in the hand of the earl of Surrey listing the ships which were to compose the navy to be sent against France, includes the ship of the ‘lord of St John’s’ in its number.44 The second, the Dover harbour accounts, record that between 8 August and 2 September more than a hundred men of the ‘lord of St. John’s’ were shipped over to France at precisely the time when Surrey was building up his troops for the operations which he undertook in September and October.45 Although both the prior’s inclusion in the loan and the troop movements may have been set in motion before certain news of the siege reached England in late August,46 the king did not show himself helpful in other respects, as he refused to allow the export of bullion to aid the island’s defence despite L’Isle Adam’s plea that he do so.47 The only indication that the king intended to send help to the convent himself is provided by a letter of 14 January 1523 written by Henry’s ambassadors with the emperor to their master. They thanked him for his promise of aid to Rhodes but told him that the emperor’s chancellor, Gattinara, had said that there was no need of it as the siege had been lifted.48 Conflicting and often erroneous rumours of the succour or premature fall of Rhodes bedevilled the Christian response to the siege throughout and gave the governments of western Europe ample excuse for not sending aid thither, but the king’s lack of sympathy for the master’s requests that any monies sent to its aid should be submitted as cash is very telling. The order’s response to the crisis was naturally rather more vigorous. On 10 September the prior’s men were followed across the Channel by the horses of the receiver, John Babington, and a French Hospitaller.49 Although there is no record of the receiver’s presence at the siege of Rhodes and he does not appear in the minutes of the English langue from meetings in Italy 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

LPFD, iii, no. 2483. Ibid., no. 2480. LPFD, iv, Appendix no. 87, p. 3108; Chronicle of Calais, ed. Nichols, 31–2. AOM54, fo. 67r. AOM54, fos. 70r, 68r, 70v. LPFD, iii, no. 2772. LPFD, iv, Appendix no. 87, p.3109.

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in 1523 it is most probable that he was involved in financial transactions on the order’s behalf rather than royal service on this occasion, as by midOctober he seems to have been in southern France to pick up monies he had exchanged for bankers’ drafts in London. These sums were mostly handed over to deputies appointed to receive them by the master.50 News of the siege, and a magistral letter of 17 June addressed to Babington, had reached Clerkenwell on 28 August, and couriers had immediately been dispatched to summon the English preceptors and prior of Ireland to a provincial chapter,51 which was held on 18 September.52 With Babington still absent, the gathering was composed of the prior and the five other preceptors resident in England and Wales.53 In accordance with the master’s instructions, they prepared to go to Rhodes, and leased their commanderies.54 The order also managed to let other estates worth nearly £400, some of them for higher rents than before.55 On 10 November a quittance was issued for £1,766 13s. 4d. (8,000 e´cus) which Babington had paid the Genoese merchant Antonio Vivaldi, who sent the equivalent sum to the receiver of the priory of Auvergne in Lyons. A further 13,000 e´cus (£2,925) was transferred to Babington, again using Vivaldi’s offices, when he reached Lyons later in the year and was then handed over to the commander of Ville Franche.56 The Nazi company of Lyons were also given 6,000 ducats (£1,400) which they sent by exchange to the receivers of the priories of Barletta and Venice,57 and Babington consigned 1,649 e´cus to Fr. Jean Yseran in Marseilles for the use of individual English brethren in Rhodes and of Thomas Newport when he should reach Provence.58 But this descent was never to occur. The order finally managed to dispatch a ship in December 1522 or January 1523, possibly the one in which Surrey had been ferrying troops over to France in the summer. Commanded by Newport, it emulated the considerable misfortunes of earlier attempts to relieve Rhodes by 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, Thomas Sheffield, William Weston, Alban Pole, Nicholas Fairfax, Edward Hills, and Richard Neville. As several preceptories were vacant due to the recent deaths of Lancelot Docwra and William Corbet this left only the prior of Ireland and John Babington as holders of English preceptories absent 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 £9 6s. 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.

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its captain and most of its contingent.59 The other preceptors, despite farming their estates, may not have set off for the convent by the time that news of 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 on an impressive scale it was also rather ponderous, and it seems probable that some of their resources were diverted into the French war at exactly the time when they should have been used to aid the beleaguered convent. Certainly it would not have been the first time Henry VIII had required the order to provide a contingent in the royal army. The two Docwras, Newport, Sheffield, and William Weston had been appointed to raise and lead a force of 300 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 been expressly requested to fight by Julius II.60 While there are no other certain instances of English Hospitallers serving in a military capacity for the crown until the 1540s, save in Ireland, the cost of providing contingents for the royal army in 1513 and 1522 appears to have prompted the order to require some of its tenants to provide armed men at their own expense in the event of further expeditions.61 Henry VIII’s government also found plenty of other occasions to employ the priors of England and Ireland, and occasionally other brethren as well. John Rawson was kept in Ireland almost continuously between 1511 and 1525, and consistently refused licence to go and perform his conventual service. Moreover when he did go to Italy, and in 1527 exchanged the priorate for the turcopoliership held by John Babington, the king, cutting off his incipient career as a conventual bailiff, ordered him to reassume his former dignity.62 Thomas Docwra was in a similar position. The prior of England became a career diplomat after 1509 and was abroad on diplomatic business in 1510, 1511, 1514, and every year from 1517 to 1521. He served on commissions to ratify the renewal of the treaty of E´taples and receive Louis XII’s oath to pay the arrears of the French pension to the English crown in 1510,63 to congratulate the pope on his accession in early 1514,64 to convey the lady Mary to France and witness her marriage to Louis XII in the same year,65 and to witness Francis I’s signature to the Treaty of London and surrender Tournai to the French in the winter of 1518–19.66 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 la mer 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.

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June 1520 and played a prominent part in the festivities which accompanied their meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, acting as a judge of the jousts and other competitions which enlivened the proceedings.67 The prior also attended on the king and Wolsey when they met Charles V in the following month68 and in October and November 1521 he headed his first embassy, to the emperor at Courtrai, in a last-ditch English attempt to restore the peace agreed in 1518. He must have been cruelly aware that his failure to get Charles to agree to the French peace terms might doom Rhodes to fall, as arguably it did.69 Even when Docwra was in England, much of his time was taken up with diplomatic and ceremonial business. He attended important public occasions such as Henry VII’s funeral, his son’s coronation, Wolsey’s procession to celebrate his promotion to cardinal in 1515, and Charles V’s landing at Dover in May 1522.70 He was sometimes in the company of foreign ambassadors. During May 1516, for example, Docwra was one of three ecclesiasts who accompanied the Scots ambassadors to dinner at Wolsey’s, while in the same month he acted as an interpreter between the duke of Suffolk and the Venetian ambassador.71 More formal diplomatic employment was provided in May 1524 when he was commissioned to treat with the imperial ambassadors for a joint invasion of France.72 None of this was new, and nor was the prior’s attendance at parliament and on the council, which seems to have been fairly assiduous.73 But the sheer weight of diplomatic and judicial business laid on Thomas Docwra’s shoulders was without recent precedent, reflecting an appreciation of his worth as a talented homme d’affaires, as well as the expansion of the Tudor state. Besides the usual commissions of the peace, of sewers, and of walls and ditches, the prior was placed in charge of conducting searches for suspicious persons in the Islington ward of London in 1519 and 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: Original Documents 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 a court 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.

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to them.74 More occasional employment was also offered to Docwra on commissions of gaol delivery in 1511, to muster soldiers at Southampton in May 1512, to inquire into the extortions of the late masters of the mint in the same year and as an assessor of loans and collector of the subsidy for the recovery of France in 1522 and 1523, a similar demonstration of priorities to that offered by Edward IV in 1480.75 The prior was employed on judicial business, too, being appointed to hear various suits in 1519 and 1524 and to determine disputes between English and French merchants in 1517.76 He was also among the peers who passed judgement against the duke of Buckingham in 1521.77 Royal service was not entirely without its rewards. The prior was able to obtain small grants and mortmain licences from the crown in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign and was made guardian of Kildare’s heir, Thomas Fitzgerald, when the latter remained in England as a hostage for his father’s good behaviour.78 Although it is not known when he joined the order, the fact that Thomas’s uncle, John Fitzgerald, had become a Hospitaller by 1527 might indicate some family affection for the order.79 At any rate Buckingham, who purchased Fitzgerald’s wardship from the crown in 1519, was sufficiently impressed with Docwra’s care of the boy to consign his illegitimate 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 bring him closer to the peers and gentlemen serving the crown and there are signs that Docwra did his best to turn this to his advantage. In 1517 the convent on Rhodes confirmed grants of confraternity made by an English provincial chapter in the previous year to Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby, and to the prior’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 and Docwra also had dealings with the earl of Northumberland, who was related to the Hospitaller knight Nicholas Fairfax, and to whom the prior lent 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, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire, and Bedfordshire. LPFD, passim. His service as a commissioner of the search 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 1523 Northumberland acted as the executor of his spolia. LPFD, Addenda, no. 312 (i); AOM54, fo. 95r.

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to attract the unwelcome attention of those seeking grants of the order’s property or the offices in its gift. The Hospitaller estates in and around London were particularly attractive to land-hungry crown servants in Henry VIII’s reign, as the court expanded. Thus an orchard and gardens belonging to the priory in Fleet street, which had been demised to Richard Empson for a term of ninety-nine years, were regranted to Thomas Wolsey by the first provincial chapter held after Empson’s execution.84 Similar alacrity was demonstrated by the cardinal when another of the order’s houses fell vacant by the death of Thomas Layeland in 1523. Wolsey asked it should be given to Thomas Tonge, Norroy Herald, in recompense for the services of his brother, father, and ancestors to the ‘religion’.85 In the same year the cardinal sent a rather stronger letter on the subject of the order’s house at Bridewell, which the king had asked should be allocated to the justices Sir John Fineux and John Roper, who needed a convenient house to keep their records in. Docwra’s reply that a reversion of the property had already been granted to Sir Thomas Neville under capitular seal, and could not be revoked, brought a sharp response. Neville, said Wolsey, had remitted all interest in the matter to the king, with the tenor of whose letters the prior should comply without excuse or delay.86 Further requests for property were initiated by Richard Lord Darcy and others.87 The most blatant pressure from court for a grant of Hospitaller property in fact came from the cardinal himself. Although Hampton Court had been leased to him on much the same terms as Daubeney had held it in 1514, the cardinal sought a permanent grant of the property. In return he proposed to give the order enough to be able to purchase a replacement estate of equal value, but when his proposal was put to the chapter-general in 1517, it replied sternly that the original grant of 1495 was in breach of the statutes and refused to countenance anything as unseemly as exchanging estates for cash. Instead it was ordained that the cardinal should only have a permanent grant of the manor if he could supply in exchange a property free from litigation and worth a third more than Hampton Court.88 Although some of his business was doubtless nominal, there remains the impression that Docwra’s workload in the royal service was exceptional, and must have affected the running of the priory. It seems likely that the prior found it difficult to discharge his duties, particularly with respect to his defence of the order’s rights in the courts. After 1516 the vice-receiver, John Babington, and Clement West were prosecuting the farmers of Slebech for over £90 which had been owing on Robert Evers’ death,89 and the Hospital was also defending its rights over Halston,90 and against the earl of Devon in the courts.91 Despite his claims to be allowed a pension against his legal 84 87 89

85 86 LPFD, i, no. 357 (43). LPFD, iii, no. 3679. Ibid., no. 3678. 88 LPFD, Addenda, no. 211; iii, no. 1669. AOM406, fos. 162v–164r. v 90 91 AOM54, fo. 13 . PRO REQ2/4/212. LPFD, iv, no. 771 (p. 341).

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costs, the prior’s liberal distribution of loans and gifts to the convent in the 1510s and 1520s show that the difficulty in prosecuting such actions was not lack of money to execute them. Yet the order’s legal business was evidently being neglected. On 27 March 1517 the convent complained to the prior that it had learned that much business touching the ‘religion’ was in great peril in England because of a lack of solicitors and promoters in the king’s courts and that it expected the prior to act in these matters.92 Furthermore, when Thomas Newport was appointed the order’s ambassador to Henry VIII in June 1518 he was instructed not only to ask for the king’s help in furthering the crusade planned by Leo X, but also his aid in conserving the Hospital’s liberty and property in its ‘many and various actions’ in England.93 Whether Docwra was too busy to attend to affairs properly or was neglecting those actions that did not directly concern the prioral estates because of pique at the convent’s refusal to grant him a pension to uphold his legal costs is unclear. In addition to legal actions against the farmers of its estates, in 1518–19 the 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 of Edward IV and Henry VII, but an important test case begun in 1516 was to destroy the Hospitallers’ claims in this field.94 The affair was triggered by the murder of John Pauncefote, a Gloucestershire justice shot and mutilated on his way to the sessions in 1516. One of the murderers, Sir John Savage, sheriff of Worcester, took sanctuary at Clerkenwell after the killing but was seized a month later and taken to the Tower. He recited the priory’s title to sanctuary by prescription, papal bull, royal confirmation, and allowance in the reigns of Henrys VII and VIII in his defence.95 Although by the following year Savage had waived his plea, the prior was nevertheless summoned to justify the claims of his house. On 10 November 1519, in a session of the Inner Star Chamber at which the king himself presided, Wolsey and the two chief justices argued over the priory’s rights. Henry, who seems to have taken a personal interest in this matter, stated that sanctuary had never been intended to serve for voluntary murder and vowed that he would reduce the privilege to the original plan intended by its founders.96 Other rulings 92

AOM406, fos. 155v–156r. 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 Reports d’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 of pardoning felony, although those who already held such rights by prescription supported by allowance in eyre might legitimately continue to exercise them. By the time of Henry VIII ‘no sanctuary could be maintained in law, unless the owner could show a royal grant as the basis of the privilege, supported by usage and by allowance in eyre’. The pleading of papal bulls was not only useless but dangerous, as it left those resorting to such expedients liable to the penalties of praemunire. Thornley, ‘Sanctuary’, 197–8. 96 Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. Baker, ii. 343–4; Thornley, ‘Sanctuary’, 200–1. 93

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against felons who took sanctuary on the order’s property followed and by 1520 its privileges had effectively been lost, an important factor in Docwra’s defeat being his failure to produce sufficient evidence of a royal grant of sanctuary rights to the order.97 Another important challenge to the order was, like the attack on sanctuary, not aimed chiefly at the Hospital but a matter which nevertheless came to involve it. The 1517 inquisition into rural depopulation and enclosure laid down that where houses had decayed or been destroyed and agricultural land converted into pasture since the statutes passed against enclosure in 1489, 1514, and 1515 the tenant would be required to pay half the value of the same houses and lands to the king or lord of the fee until they were rebuilt or restored to their original usage.98 A substantial number of magnates 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 in Cambridgeshire, Greenham and Woolhampton in Berkshire, at Hogshaw and Addington in Buckinghamshire, Kirby in Northamptonshire, and Ryton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire, an impressive showing considering that returns only survive for eleven counties and are not always complete.100 Subsequent proceedings against Docwra in chancery and the Exchequer survive in the cases of Greenham, Woolhampton, and Hogshaw. The prior’s servant Thomas Layeland appeared in chancery to answer for the enclosures at Greenham and Woolhampton in 1518. Although Layeland pleaded that land use there alternated between tillage and pasture, the prior was nevertheless put under a bond of £100 to rebuild the devastated messuages in each.101 The case against the farmer of Hogshaw, Ralph Lane, was rather stronger. Eight messuages belonging to the Hospital had been allowed to decay 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 Lane failed to repair the damage to the decayed houses, the moiety of their profits fell to the crown. Accordingly, the moieties of certain messuages, worth 97

LPFD, Addenda, no. 208; Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. Baker, 344. 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 Common 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 and Evictions, Part III, London and Suburbs’, TRHS, 2nd ser., 8 (1894), 253–331, at 304; The Domesday 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 least some 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. Scarisbrick says Melchbourne here, citing Kerridge, but it seems clear that Kerridge is referring to Greenham and Woolhampton, as he states that the enclosed lands amounted to 46 acres and two messuages in two Berkshire villages, which is equivalent to the returns for the latter settlements given by the inquisition of 1517. Domesday of Inclosures, ed. Leadam, 117–18, 150. 102 Domesday of Inclosures, ed. Leadam, 192–5. 98

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69s. 4d. per annum, were granted to one of the enclosure commissioners, Roger Wigston, in May 1527.103 Moreover, the grant was backdated to November 1515, and in 1531 the prior ordered to pay all that was thus owing from the previous fifteen years.104 This was a considerable sum, and if the 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 his estates. Half the profits of other Hospitaller estates under investigation in 1517 may also have been seized, although placing the offending landlord under a bond to repair decayed properties was a more common penalty. Even if the sequestration was not repeated elsewhere, it illustrated the potential dangers of the order’s allowing or even encouraging its tenants to enclose their lands. Clauses allowing enclosure were common in leases granted in provincial chapter, and Ralph Lane had been so licensed in two leases granted to him since the relevant statutes had passed.105 In the aftermath of the fall of Rhodes, the extent of the prior’s involvement in English affairs almost certainly militated against his visiting Italy and participating in conventual business there. Yet his closeness to the court must also have helped him advocate the order’s interests there at an uncertain time during which the convent migrated around Italy without a permanent home, harried by war, ravaged by plague, and threatened with the confiscation of its fleet and, worse still, its lands in Portugal, Naples, and Germany.106 Initially, the order’s existence was not threatened in England, despite reports from English agents in Rome that the master, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, was held in contempt by Adrian VI and that Thomas Sheffield, the master’s seneschal, and bailiff of Eagle, had disregarded the royal will.107 Although the evidence is uncertain, Henry may even have allowed Docwra a brief visit to the convent in 1523. On 22 September L’Isle Adam wrote to the king saying that he had sent ‘our prior’ and the turcopolier, William Weston, to England the previous month, but that they had been delayed by the order’s entry into Rome.108 It seems unlikely, however, that the dignitary in question was Thomas Docwra rather than another prior of the order. In July 1523 Docwra was reported 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. 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 the magistral election of 1521 and in other things. On the same date a junior knight, Nicholas Roberts, wrote to the earl of Surrey complaining that despite having presented the letters of the king, Wolsey, and Norfolk in his favour to the master, and another such letter of recommendation to Sheffield, the bailiff of Eagle had persuaded L’Isle Adam to confer the vacant preceptory of Dinmore on him instead, and had said that neither the cardinal nor ‘my lord’s grace’ should think to rule the master. Ibid., no. 3026. 108 LPFD, iii, nos. 3356–7. 104

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Mounteagle,109 and he was not present at meetings of the English langue held in July and August.110 Further letters from the master in December reported Clement VII’s election and eagerness to restore the Hospital, narrated that the pope had asked the emperor for the grant of Malta and other necessities, 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 of Hungary and Poland in January 1524, and reported to L’Isle Adam that he was impressed by the ‘care and love’ with which his emissaries had outlined its needs, and had written to Charles V on behalf of its request for Malta.112 At a time when the viceroy of Naples and the king of Portugal had sequestrated various of the order’s lands, and when the priory of Castile was being disputed between two ducal bastards, the support of Henry VIII must have come as a welcome relief.113 But it came, as ever, at a price. In August 1524 the turcopolier, William Weston, set off to Italy with fourteen novices to replenish the numbers of English knights in convent. Travelling incognito as ‘Christopher Barber’ he was entrusted with 50,000 crowns (e´cus), which were to be delivered to Henry’s agents in Rome, who would then keep it ready to be passed on to the ultimate beneficiary, the renegade duke of Bourbon. The party travelled via Antwerp and had reached the convent at Viterbo by 3 October.114 There are conflicting reports of what then happened to the money. John Clerk wrote to Wolsey from Rome on 10 October saying that Sir John Russell had arrived on the 8th with the funds sent with the turcopolier, yet on the same day Russell reported that he had met Weston at Viterbo, but, having heard news of the break-up of Bourbon’s army, had left the cash with him and returned to Rome.115 The money seems to have remained with William Weston until December, by which time the cardinal had advised that it should be transferred home by exchange.116 Carrying so much cash around, especially in the turbulent conditions then prevailing in Italy, may have put Weston in some danger. The pope advised him not to stay in Viterbo with it for fear of the pro-French Orsini, but he remained there nonetheless, so ill with gout that when Wolsey’s will became known he was unable 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. BL MS 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 in Poland 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.

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The Hospitallers again proved useful when the English government sought the return of its funds. In early December Russell, seeking to avoid the exorbitant fees of the Rome bankers, entrusted 10,000 crowns to Docwra’s servant Francis Bell, who had a commission from his master to receive the money for the order. Docwra would repay the sum in like money or sterling in six months time.118 By the time Wolsey changed his mind early in the following year, and ordered that the money be entrusted to the imperialists, the turcopolier and Bell had returned to England along with 18,000 crowns.119 The frenzied diplomacy of the 1520s continued to provide service for the English Hospitallers as couriers for both crown and order. When L’Isle Adam visited Spain in 1525 to try to arrange a peace between the emperor and the then captive Francis I the junior knight Bryan Tunstall was sent to the English ambassadors in Toledo with letters.120 Early in the following year L’Isle Adam, still in Madrid, dispatched Ambrose Layton, the commander of Yeaveley, to the king with instructions to seek help in reestablishing the order, and the same messenger carried Henry VIII’s replies to the master’s letters in August.121 Another Hospitaller, Antonio Bosio, also visited England in 1525/6. Although the instructions given to Layton and Bosio do not survive, it is clear that their missions to England were chiefly connected with the order’s projected recapture of Rhodes, in which Bosio was the leading actor. A letter written by a Rhodiot priest to the master in 1525 reporting the willingness of the janissaries and Rhodiots on the island to hand it over survives among the Hospitaller correspondence in the British Library, while in the following year John III of Portugal wrote to Henry VIII thanking him for his letters on the ‘affair of Rhodes’, which had been carried to 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 of the pope, emperor, king of Portugal, and master in the order’s favour, and stressing that the matter was not to be mentioned to the Venetians or Florentines, also survives.123 Relations between crown and order thus appear to have been quite constructive after the siege of Rhodes. Yet there are hints that by 1526 king and cardinal were losing patience with the order. Henry VIII took more than six months to reply to the letters sent with Layton in late January 1526 and when he did so expressed disappointment at the order’s failure to 118

LPFD, nos. 923–4. Ibid., nos. 1085–6. Bell had been given a safe conduct by the order on 5 December, and on 4 January John Babington was ordered to pay Weston 442 ducats for his stipend in going on the order’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). 119

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decide on the offer of Malta, but hoped that the forthcoming chapter-general would come to a decision about it and asked to be informed as soon as it did so.124 Although the king promised continued support for the Hospital in this letter, relations between crown and convent had come to a very poor pass by the first months of 1527. The cause of the breakdown is unclear, but seems to have been made up of several elements. There may have been genuine irritation in England that despite the king’s approval of the cession of Malta, and his letters to other monarchs in the order’s favour, it had still failed to find a home. Until it should do so, it could hardly fulfil its functions efficiently and its endowments and responsions might be seen as being wasted. Additionally, there are hints that Henry, always touchy where matters of honour were concerned, was piqued that the master of the order had seen fit to visit the emperor and Francis I but failed to pay his respects to him. He was after all the order’s ‘protector’, a title constantly stressed in the convent’s correspondence, yet his protection was evidently not as worthwhile as that of his rivals. L’Isle Adam wrote to Henry in February 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 prioral preceptory of Sandford to Wolsey for his projected college at Oxford, a decision which had been held over until the chapter-general which was to be held at Viterbo in May. Despite a conciliatory gift of carpets by Thomas Docwra, there must be a suspicion that the cardinal, irked at this obstruction of his plans, played on the king’s sense of injury to bring about what occurred in early 1527.126 On 25 February 1527 L’Isle Adam wrote to the king apologizing for his failure to visit England, narrating his return journey to the convent and recounting that on arriving in Viterbo he had been shocked to learn that Henry had forbidden the goods of the order to be taken out of England and ordered the English knights to serve at Calais. He begged the king to desist from this scheme, which would serve as an evil example to other Christian princes.127 A flurry of orders demonstrates how seriously the convent took this threat. An envoy, Carlo Pipa, was dispatched to England and the prior was given power to hand Sandford over to the cardinal in advance of the decision of chapter. In return, Wolsey was asked to induce the king to revoke his letter forbidding the export of responsions and ordering its brethren to repair to Calais.128 Docwra, however, was probably already sick, the 124

AOM57, c. 9 (originally 5). 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, Peter Vannes. AOM57, c. 10 (originally 6); Galea, ‘Henry VIII’, 62–3. 128 AOM412, fos. 193r–v, 249r–v; LPFD, iv, no. 2909. 125

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vultures were hovering over the priory, and the king apparently refused to see Pipa. The prior’s death on 17 April129 could not have come at a worse time. Not only had Pipa’s mission failed to secure the abandonment of the Calais scheme, but as the prior lay dying the king expressed his wish to grant the prioral lands and those of other Hospitaller brethren to courtiers as they fell vacant. Thus Thomas Magnus wrote to Wolsey on 12 April requesting that provision should be made for Henry’s illegitimate son the duke of Richmond out of the order’s estates.130 The threat was serious enough for the courtier Sir Richard Weston, brother of the turcopolier William, to write to the cardinal begging that his sibling’s rights be upheld and he be promoted to the dignity should Docwra die.131 Despite this appeal, the king made good his threats on the prior’s death, for both the prioral estates and Docwra’s personal possessions were seized by the crown.132 The chapter-general which met in Viterbo on 20 May 1527133 was still unaware of these developments, although steps were taken to remedy the issues which L’Isle Adam evidently believed lay behind the Calais scheme, namely the delay in granting the Oxfordshire preceptory of Sandford to Wolsey 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 was ratified in chapter on 31 May and, under pressure from the Spanish and German langues to decide on the emperor’s offer of Malta, the chapter voted on 20 May to accept the island.134 Whether because there had been no news from Pipa, or because of the upheavals attendant upon the convent’s relocation to Corneto in early June to escape the imperial troops who had sacked Rome,135 nothing more was done about the English situation in convent until the master and council had been appraised of Docwra’s death, although John Rawson’s appointments as prior and magistral lieutenant in Ireland were confirmed, probably because he had been summoned home.136 Headquarters was probably aware of the prior’s illness before this, however, for on 4 June Rawson was also granted expectancy to the priory of England and other dignities of the langue after William Weston.137 129 A later suit in chancery, the manuscript recording which is damaged, gives the date of death as 17 Ma[rch], but the date of another event in Docwra’s last illness, also in March, is crossed 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.

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News of the prior’s demise apparently arrived in late June, possibly by the 23rd and certainly by the 26th, when Clement West protested before the council that a future prior of England, the dignity now being vacant, should not be given the fifth camera which Docwra had held, since it pertained instead to him. West’s protest was overruled and it was decreed that the priory and all its appropriated preceptories should be reallocated according to the custom of the langue.138 On 27 June Weston was duly elected prior by the council ordinary on the same terms as Docwra, with Melchbourne again serving as the prioral fifth camera.139 On the same day John Rawson exchanged the priory of Ireland for the turcopoliership, and John Babington was elected to Kilmainham, despite a rival claim by West.140 In accordance with the practice followed since Thomas Docwra had been granted the priory of Ireland, and which had recently been the subject of a protest by West, Babington was allowed to retain his English preceptory, Dalby and Rothley.141 Weston’s former preceptories, meanwhile, were both granted to Rawson, Ribston by meliormentum in exchange for Swingfield, and Dinmore by magistral grace.142 Despite also having petitioned for Swingfield Clement West received nothing, a snub which may have rankled later.143 The convent does not seem to have been informed of the seizure of the priory and of Docwra’s goods much before 4 July, when the well-oiled machinery 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 was sending Rawson home to explain the present state of the order’s affairs, and announcing Weston’s collation to the priory of England. The royal sequestration of the priory was seemingly not mentioned.144 Changing news 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 were granted licence to go home and assume their dignities, although Rawson was also granted leave to proceed to Ireland.145 At the same time Carlo Pipa was instructed to return to England to be followed by a more formal embassy headed by Jean Pre´gent de Bidoux, the prior of S. Gilles, and letters were dispatched to the king and cardinal.

138

AOM85, fos. 28v–29r. 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 the order 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’s lieutenant in the priory of England, with the usual powers. AOM412, fos. 202r–203r. 139

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Pipa’s instructions were brief and left him considerable scope for manoeuvre.146 Passing into England he was to find the receiver (and now prior of Ireland) John Babington, and Roger Boydell, and inform them of their promotions. Associating with them and others, he was to decide on the best way of proceeding with respect to Docwra’s spolia, and was to present the letters of the master and convent to Wolsey, the French ambassadors in England and others, so that they could use their influence in that regard. As soon as he had executed his instructions he was to return to headquarters. Bidoux was given more specific orders, which explain the events of 1527 more fully than earlier sources. King Henry, he was informed, had commanded that none of the order’s goods should be allowed out of the country and had proposed to find employment for those knights who were his subjects in Calais ‘until we should have some stable and convenient place for our exercitio’, a course of action which would prevent the order’s brethren from fulfilling their duty and would cause their ships ‘to give offence rather than to be useful to Christians’. Bidoux was further informed that although both Clement VII and the master had written to the king about this no resolution had yet been achieved, and that following the death of Docwra Henry had not only caused his goods to be sequestrated, but had also expressed his wish to give the priory to a secular person, ‘which would be the total ruin of our religion’. To remedy this situation Bidoux was to go to France and summon Jacques de Bourbon, another prominent French Hospitaller, to his side. The two were to ask Francis I to write to Henry VIII and Wolsey in the order’s favour, and then proceed to England where they should discuss what should be done with the English brethren. They were to go before Wolsey, thank him for his past assistance, and entreat him to approach the king on their behalf, informing Henry of the perils facing the religion, of its acceptance of Malta, of news from the Levant and of any other matters they considered appropriate. The appeal for the cardinal’s assistance was bolstered by a magistral letter promising to hold a chaptergeneral at which the exchange of Sandford would be proposed shortly. Once more it was stressed that the handover could not be effected without the consent of chapter, and, L’Isle Adam now added, the presence of the English knights. This was perhaps a hint that if the refusal to let members of the order leave the country were not lifted the exchange would remain stillborn.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 and convent, as his predecessors had done, so as not to increase the difficulties under which it laboured in this time of affliction, or provide encouragement to others to invade and usurp the benefactions of past generations of the 146 147

AOM412, fo. 252v. Ibid., fos. 254r–v (Partial text in Valentini, ‘I Cavalieri’, 194–6); LPFD, iv, no. 3242.

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faithful. They were to tell the king of Weston’s election, and were to beg that Henry uphold his collation, making the king understand that to bestow the priory outside the order would lead to its ‘total ruin’, and would encourage other princes to do the same. They were further to inform the king that the order had accepted Malta on condition that the emperor donate it freely, and that ambassadors had been sent to the king of France and Charles to effect this.148 The accompanying letter to the king more or less duplicated the verbal message to be conveyed by the order’s ambassadors. Henry was entreated to lift the sequestration, to recognize Weston’s election, and to relinquish the order’s ‘possessions, business and faculties’ to its care. He was assured that the past bequests of the faithful, formerly employed in the east, would be honoured with continued service in works of hospitality, and the defence of pilgrims and all Christians sailing in infidel-infested waters. By always undertaking such works the order would avoid arrogance and thus not incur jealousy. To achieve these ends the Hospital had accepted Malta for its dwelling and for the exercise of its functions, as Bidoux and Bourbon would more fully explain. Finally, the king was humbly requested to approve the order’s decision and labour along with Charles V for its establishment on Malta in accordance with his heroic virtues and merits and his titles of protector (of the order) and Defender of the Faith.149 These appeals, eloquent though they were, appear never to have been delivered. 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 been slighted by the order by having not been appraised of the fall of Rhodes or the proposal to acquire Malta, and that the grand master’s failure to visit England was strictly a secondary issue.151 In fact Henry’s own letters show that he had been fully informed on both matters, although L’Isle Adam’s visit to Spain and France in 1525–7 may have left him with the impression that negotiations of which he was not aware were going on behind his back and that he was being excluded from involvement in the order’s choice of a new home. The reasons for the sequestration of the priory on Docwra’s death are surely 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’ and inactivity. Certainly the royal proposal to have the English knights serve in Calais until they should find a home suggests a genuine belief that the 148

AOM412, fo. 254r–v; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 53. 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 Record Office or British Library. 149

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Hospitallers were not fulfilling their responsibilities, although this, as well as Henry’s irritation at not having been properly consulted, was probably whipped up by courtiers eager to get their hands on the order’s property. It is interesting that Magnus’s letter requesting that the duke of Richmond should be a beneficiary of any confiscation also suggested that some of the proceeds should be devoted to the upkeep of Berwick. Both the Calais project and Magnus’s idea suggest a perception that if the Hospitallers were no longer useful to Christendom as a whole their resources and military traditions would be better employed in the defence of the English commonweal.152 The king was certainly aware of the order’s military capabilities, and particularly its naval prowess,153 and seems to have envisaged a naval role for the order at Calais, as suggested by the convent’s worries that the scheme might cause its ships to ‘offend’ against other Christians.154 Although there were recent parallels in the secularization of the Teutonic order in Prussia and the attempts to devote the Spanish military orders to the defence of the Portuguese and Castilian crowns’ north African bases, Henry’s ideas also had similarities with Edward III’s wartime insistence that responsions should be devoted to the defence of the realm and underlined the fact that unless the Hospitallers were seen to be useful, they might become extinct.155 Having stressed its defence of Christendom and defiance of the Turk in its propaganda for so many years, it is not surprising that when it seemed to be failing to fulfil this role, the order came under attack. The master’s response to the failure of his emissaries was appropriately decisive. On 5 December 1527 he proposed in council that as business was occurring in England and France which could not be dealt with without his presence he would proceed there, notwithstanding his age or the perils and colds of winter. The bailiff of Casp, Juan de Homedes, and a number of other brethren were elected to accompany him.156 L’Isle Adam’s mission to England is one of the most interesting episodes in the order’s sixteenth-century history, and was celebrated appropriately by Giacomo Bosio, but his visit virtually escaped notice in contemporary English sources, evidence being chiefly provided by the order’s archives and Bosio, who was evidently furnished with information which does not appear among the order’s registers, perhaps from family tradition passed down by his relatives Antonio and Tommaso. The former was often used as an envoy by the order in the 1520s 152

Hoyle, ‘Origins’, 282–3. He had perhaps been alerted to this by the exploits of the Hospitaller Jean Pre´gent 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. 153

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and 1530s, and was sent on ahead of the master in 1528, while the latter was also 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 Travelling across France in a rather leisurely fashion, he had reached Avignon by 13 January, Lyons by 27 January, and Paris by 24 February. He remained in the French capital until at least 13 March but had arrived in Clerkenwell by 26 April.159 His way was prepared by Antonio Bosio, who according to his nephew 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 of Rhodes, and letters from the king and cardinal confirming this.160 Bosio records that L’Isle Adam was received into London with much pomp by Henry, Wolsey, and the nobility and lodged at ‘the royal palace’. The king apparently took a personal interest in the master’s account of the siege of Rhodes, and professed himself enthusiastic at the prospect of the island’s recovery, which was still being plotted. He confirmed the order’s privileges, reiterated his commitment to make a donation to the cause, eventually contributing artillery rather than cash, and both released Docwra’s spolia and remitted an annual levy of £4,000 which he had supposedly imposed on William Weston.161 Bosio’s account of the last of these events seems to be based on a misreading of L’Isle Adam’s travel-bullarium. As this document demonstrates, the royal threat to seize the priory had been lifted by Weston before the master reached England.162 An instrument drawn up at Clerkenwell on 19 May 1528 explains that the prior, having been prevented from assuming his dignity for a long time, and acting on the advice of bailiffs and preceptors of the order, had given Henry £4,000 out of the responsions and other monies belonging to the common treasury, and by means of this payment, and a promise to pay ‘other sums’ annually, had obtained possession. There is no indication that these annual payments amounted to £4,000 or anything like it. Although L’Isle Adam may have managed to get the king to drop his demands for an annual payment from the order, he had to secure repayment of the large lump sum from Weston himself. On arriving in England the master complained that the latter should not have mortgaged the order’s property so lightly, and demanded restitution. Weston had no cash in hand and was unable to refund the money at once, so that L’Isle Adam was forced to 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. 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 transcribes this document at 76–8. 158

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Thus a dispute apparently provoked by profound questions about the royal honour and the Hospital’s utility to the Christian commonweal was settled by simple bribery.164 The king had asserted his authority over the order, exacted a heavy entry fine from the new prior, and now ostentatiously regranted almost exactly the same sum to the Hospitallers as a gift towards either their ‘holy expedition’ to recover Rhodes, or their establishment on Malta. The original extortion from Weston being concealed, Henry could parade as the champion of Christendom and exhort other princes to contribute to the cause.165 Admittedly this also suited the propaganda purposes of the order. It was always useful to turn the attentions of secular rulers to the benefactions of their princely colleagues on its behalf, even if these were imaginary. The only real loser from the affair was Weston, who had been denied his advancement for a number of months and was now saddled with annual pension payments to the convent and possibly the crown. The master also attended to other important business during his visit to England. Fifteen knights were received into the order by the provincial chapter over which L’Isle Adam presided,166 the grant of Sandford to Wolsey was re-authorized,167 and in early June Rawson and Babington reexchanged the dignities of prior of Ireland and turcopolier.168 This last measure will receive further comment elsewhere, but it is noteworthy that the 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 to recover the goods of Docwra’s vacancy year and spolia, from which ‘multa bona . . . furto subtracta sunt’. Rawson and Babington consented to the permutation ‘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 the benefit of the crown, obedience and service to whom the master and langue cited respectively as reasons for the exchange.169 It seems clear that the king and cardinal wanted Rawson back in Ireland where he could be useful, and that 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 William Gonson.171 L’Isle Adam reached Boulogne on 6 June and wrote to Wolsey 164

Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 56. 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 the equation when in 1529 he asked parliament (successfully) to remit his debts. Many of these went back to 1522–3, when Thomas Docwra had ‘lent’ him money. S. E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 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. 165

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thanking him for his and the king’s letters on his behalf and recommending the order to their protection.172 After a stay of some weeks in Paris he returned to Nice,173 having again written thanking Wolsey for his intervention with Henry and Francis I, and informing him that he had presented the letters of king and cardinal to representatives of Francis, who had been unable to see him personally.174 The magistral visit to England had apparently been a great success, having prompted the king to offer generous aid towards the recovery 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 promised to add 25,000 ducats towards the fighting fund, while the king of Portugal was prompted to donate a further 15,000 ducats.175 Yet for all its propaganda value, Henry’s gift was slow to reach the convent and impediments continued to be put in the way of the submission of responsions to Nice.176 On 18 November 1528 Clement VII wrote to Wolsey professing himself pleased at the honour shown to the master and the liberal aid proffered the ‘holy expedition’, but reminding the cardinal that he had promised to send a member of the order with the promised aid after the king had received replies to his letters from the emperor and the king of Portugal, which he understood had now been answered.177 In the following January Antonio Bosio was dispatched to England with letters from L’Isle Adam, the emperor, the king of Portugal, and the pope on the order’s behalf and instructed to present them to the king, Wolsey, and Cardinal Campeggio. The aid of Henry and the legates was to be requested in the order’s ‘great enterprise’, which it had insufficient strength to perform itself.178 The accompanying letter to the king states that Bosio, recently returned from Spain and Portugal, would inform Henry of the state of the order’s affairs in those countries and in ‘the lands of the east’, in accordance with his professed willingness to assist.179 Henry’s donation had still not reached the convent in early March, although the order’s envoy to Savoy, Louis de Tinteville, was instructed to report that Bosio had been sent to collect it and that his arrival was expected daily.180 172

Ibid., no. 4339. 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 of Portugal. 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 accompanying letter to Henry to the ‘lands of the east’, that the order’s ‘great enterprise’ was still conceived 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. 173

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As the months went by the order’s ‘enterprise’, defined in the instructions issued to Tinteville as ‘Reconnoir lieu pour loger et asseoir la Religion’, became, if only by default, more solidly identified with the imperial donation of Malta. It may not have been until after November 1530, when Henry wrote to L’Isle Adam congratulating him on the order’s final agreement with the emperor on the matter,181 that his aid finally reached the convent, having by then been converted from cash into cannon and other ordinance.182 Welcome as the king’s gift may have been when it arrived, its utility was surely outweighed by the disruption caused to the order’s affairs in England in 1527–8. This was not confined to the threatened implementation of the Calais scheme and the quite real sequestration of the priory and Docwra’s goods. Although the latter were restored, at a price, when he gained possession of the priory Weston was confronted with a chaotic state of affairs which if not directly attributable to the royal pressure on the order must have been worsened both by the uncertainty over the priory’s future occasioned by Henry’s threats and by the exclusion of the prior from his dignity for so long. Shortly after his accession to the priorate, Weston began legal actions against several relatives and former servants of Thomas Docwra who had, he claimed, made off with cash, jewellery, goods, and muniments belonging to the priory during and immediately after his predecessor’s last illness. Proceedings were instituted against William Stockhill, the former prior’s factor in the Mediterranean, Thomas Chicheley, a relative of Docwra’s by marriage, and John Docwra, the defunct prior’s nephew, for withholding his goods, while action was taken against another Docwra, Martin, for detaining possession of the prioral camera of Balsall. The cases concerning the late prior’s goods bear out the necessity of keeping John Babington, who had witnessed some of the events reported in Weston’s complaints, in England. All three involved considerable sums, testifying once more to Thomas Docwra’s wealth and providing further evidence that Henry VIII’s proceedings and threats against the order in 1527–8 were motivated more by profit than principle. The Stockhill case, for which evidence survives in a counter complaint by the defendant against the prior in chancery, was perhaps the least serious of the four, although significant sums were nevertheless involved. In his plea against Weston, Stockhill explained that he had been retained by Docwra and his Rhodiot servant Francis Bell as their factor in 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 expressed his joy at the move and determination to protect the order in letters to Clement VII and Francis I. LPFD, iv, nos. 6731, 6732. 182 The cannon were placed on the walls of Tripoli and captured by the Turks when they took the town in 1551. They were subsequently re-employed in the Turkish siege of Famagusta in 1570. Exhibition notes, SJG.

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Docwra’s death.183 During the grand master’s visit to England, he added, Antonio Bosio and the Genoese merchant Antonio Vivaldi had been appointed auditors to determine his account, by which it had appeared that he had £172 worth of Docwra’s and Bell’s goods in his possession, but was owed £180 salary for the nine years that he had been their factor. This considered, it had been agreed that he would keep £100 of the goods and would hand over the residue when paid £80 in cash by John Babington. Despite this agreement, Babington had commenced a plea of debt before the sheriffs of London in Weston’s name against Stockhill for the sum of £72 and for a further £2,000 in cash and goods that Docwra had allegedly delivered to Stockhill during his life, but which he had never received. Consequently he had been arrested and committed to prison. Stockhill complained that not only did he know nothing of the larger amounts alleged by Babington, but he was also unable to produce the earlier account as it was in the hands of the magistrally appointed auditors. He asked that a writ of Corpus cum causa be directed to the sheriffs and the case be removed into chancery.184 Although there seems to be no further evidence on the proceedings of this case, it is likely that it was settled relatively amicably, with Babington agreeing to drop the more substantial charge in return for Stockhill’s admitting liability in the smaller matter. On 20 July 1534 Stockhill paid £20 towards the £72 he owed the common treasury, with no mention of the larger sums at all.185 The £2,000 alleged against Stockhill may conceivably be identical with the 8,000 or 9,000 ducats the order believed it was owed by Antonio Vivaldi, Bell’s executor, in respect of his will, 7,000 of which Vivaldi promised to pay in late 1528.186 It is possible that Vivaldi was waiting for the profits from those of Bell’s and the prior’s goods which had been in the hands of Stockhill before he could satisfy the convent. Vivaldi himself, however, seems not to have been proceeded against in the courts, and settled matters with the order amicably, continuing to conduct exchange operations on its behalf well into the 1530s.187 Evidence for the case against Chicheley survives in a counter-plea against Weston 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 he left for Italy with Weston in August 1524, and proved in April 1526. Bell left the prior all his kersey 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 to Docwra. 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 order to instruct its ambassador to the pope and emperor to find out where it had got to, although by March 1532, when John Babington was instructed to arrange for the payment of the remainder of 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.

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he had been a servant of Docwra for ten years before his death and had married 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 had appeared before Docwra on 11 April 1527 and the prior had then ordered John 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 further amounts189 given to him, to his nephew John Docwra, and to Anthony Haseldon, another relative of the prior by marriage.190 Finally, claimed Chicheley, the prior had commanded the recipients of his largesse to take it home with them to their own use whether he lived or died. This Chicheley had done. On gaining possession of the priory Weston sued a bill of trespass before the king alleging that Chicheley and others had wrongfully carried off plate to the value of £3,000. Chicheley denied having had more than 100 marks to his own use, and prayed that the members of the prioral household present at the time of the prior’s alleged gift should be summoned to testify so that he could prove his version of events.191 Although further proceedings of the Chicheley case do not survive among chancery records,192 the prior’s complaint against John Docwra corroborates many of its details. The proceedings against Docwra, the former prior’s ‘nye kynsman’, survive almost in full, and provide considerable detail on Weston’s accusations against his predecessor’s associates. Two bills of complaint by the prior, two answers by Docwra, and Weston’s replication to these survive, although the final judgement on the case is wanting.193 The new prior presented that as Thomas Docwra had lain ‘sore sick in his dethe bedde’ John Docwra had borne away bonds wherein several parties stood bound to the late prior, other writings and indentures concerning the priory’s right title and interest with a face value of 3,000 marks, and great sums of money, plate, jewels, and goods worth another 3,000. Docwra’s failure to deliver these upon demand, and the prior’s consequent ignorance of the contents of the documents and of the form, weight, fashion, and value of the bullion and plate left him unable to prove his right according to the common law, hence the appeal into chan189

These were specified in a schedule attached to Chicheley’s plea, which does not survive. 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 Newton, gentleman, Thomas Cork, Ralph Wasse yeoman, Henry Porter, gentleman, and one Swift, gentleman, presumably the same man for whom Docwra had been seeking the Mounteagle lands in 1523, and probably to be identified with John Swifte, gentleman, who was granted the farm of the order’s Warwickshire manor of Temple Grafton in 1533. PRO C1/392/57; see above, 176–7; PRO SC6/Henry VIII/2402, m. 22d. 192 The case may have been settled informally. On 1 June 1532 Clement West reported that Weston and he had concluded business with ‘Schechle’. Chicheley paid £20 to the common treasury in 1536. LPFD, v, no. 1069; AOM54, fo. 299r. 193 PRO C1/598/7–11. 190

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cery. Both this bill and a second, almost identical, requested that Docwra should be subpoenaed to appear before the chancellor (Wolsey) bringing the writings and muniments in question, as well as written declaration of the value and other details of the other goods.194 The cardinal took these charges seriously. On 29 May 1528195 Docwra was bound in £4,000 to do as Weston had requested, and duly delivered a schedule listing the letters of obligations and ‘specialties’ in question, all of which save two he claimed had been made out jointly to the prior and himself, 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 had likewise been granted to his nephew before his death and the other, an obligation by the master of the Rolls in £40, had not been made over to John at all. The defendant admitted that he kept all other ‘specialities’ not delivered into chancery according to the recent gift.196 He did, however, deny that the value of the goods and monies taken amounted to 6,000 marks and asserted that as the values of the money and goods he was supposed to have taken had not been individually specified, the allegations lacked legal sufficiency and proceedings should be dropped.197 By this time, however, Weston had evidently procured more specific information about the goods and muniments carried off by Docwra, for in his replication he listed many of them. He claimed that yet more had been removed in the eight days immediately before the late prior’s death, and that Docwra had since conveyed even more muniments, plate, and jewels secretly out of the said ‘monastery’, specific details of which he lacked. Although incomplete, the list provided by Weston is nevertheless impressive. He alleged that Docwra had received £4,000 in gold besides goods, plate, and jewellery worth over £285 and bonds worth £1,245. Indeed, Docwra had admitted in his schedule to having received £3,100 in gold and cash and most 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 any of the items mentioned or that he had had any intention to make any such gift. He further denied his predecessor’s right to make such a donation and alleged that the defendant had forfeited his recognizance of £4,000 by his failure to deliver up everything he had had from the priory or to appear daily in chancery as was required.198

194

PRO C1/598/7–8. The date given is 29 May 19 Henry VIII, which should indicate 1527 given that the regnal year began on 22 April, but Weston could hardly have launched an action against his predecessor’s nephew when he was in Italy and had not even yet been appointed prior. 1528 therefore seems much more plausible. 196 PRO C1/598/9 197 PRO C1/598/10. 198 PRO C1/598/11. 195

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Although the judgement on the case is missing, it seems to have been settled at least partly in Weston’s favour, for in 1532 one of John Docwra’s executors submitted £260 to the receiver towards the 800 marks which they owed.199 Further payments were made by various creditors, including Docwra’s executors, in subsequent years.200 The evident, if gradual, success of the prior’s legal proceedings against those who had embezzled his predecessor’s spolia must owe something to the good offices of Wolsey. The cardinal took a personal interest in the speedy expedition of justice, often hearing several cases a day and doing his best to ensure that his judgements were carried out. It was partly for this reason that so many property disputes were removed into chancery during his tenure there. Moreover, it is surely significant that proceedings against John Docwra were initiated in chancery while L’Isle Adam was still in England. After his return to the convent he continued to take an interest in the case, and when Antonio Bosio was dispatched to England in January 1529 he was instructed to approach the cardinal and request that he see to it that ‘the dispute we have with the nephew of the former prior’ should be expedited quickly.201 More generally, Bosio was to get what help he could from Wolsey so that the order could get hold of all the monies due to it from England. He was also to approach the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, and inform him of the appointment of his nephew Ambrose Layton as receiver of the common treasury, presenting him with the letters of master and convent and asking his favour.202 Despite the usefulness of the cardinal’s offices in bringing the cases involving Docwra’s spolia to some kind of conclusion, it may have been the threatened sequestration of the order’s assets in 1527 which prompted Thomas Docwra to alienate gold, plate, jewellery, and letters of obligation, which were of considerable importance to the priory’s running, to his relatives. The same cause may also account for the complicity of John Babington and long-standing prioral servants such as John Mablestone in the handover, although it is also possible that their dying master made it worth their while to turn a blind eye. Docwra may have reasoned that if the crown was going to seize the order’s lands and goods he might as well set up his family and servants with as many of them as he could get away with. The three chief recipients of his largesse, John Docwra, Thomas Chicheley, and Anthony Haseldon, were all related to him by blood or marriage, and the prior had been conspicuously generous to his family throughout his incumbency.203 Nevertheless the sums involved were enormous and it is difficult to 199

AOM54, fo. 221r. 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, 200

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believe that the prior, who had always been so conscientious about sending as much as possible to the convent, would have wilfully alienated so much to those surrounding him had he not been convinced that the order would not benefit if he bequeathed his goods to it. Even if Docwra had no such desire to save his possessions from the grasping hands of the crown and was simply motivated by family loyalty, the delay in Weston’s being granted the priory and the royal sequestration of its assets cannot have aided him in his pursuit of his predecessor’s goods. The insistence that Babington give up the priory of Ireland in June 1528, made specifically so that he could aid the prior in prosecuting the matter, demonstrates that the convent was concerned that without Babington’s help the trail, already cold, would fade beyond hope of recovery. An alternative explanation for the prior’s actions, and one that was advanced by William Weston, is that he was bullied into them by Docwra and Chicheley while he was dying. Yet Chicheley’s assertion that that there were several witnesses to the gift, and especially Babington’s readiness to fetch his master’s plate from the treasury, suggests that the prior’s faculties were unimpaired, and that he was not under any undue pressure, unless it was from all of those present at the time, which seems unlikely in view of the continued favour shown to Mablestone, Porter, and Swift by William Weston after 1527. Despite the crown’s partial responsibility for the mess, the help of the courts was instrumental in securing what help was possible against Docwra’s relatives. A further suit was launched in chancery soon after Weston’s accession against Martin Docwra, who had been granted a twenty-six-year lease of Balsall in May 1526.204 Unfortunately for the recipient, the grant bound him, on being served with a year’s notice, to remove himself and return the estate to the prior or commander of Balsall should he be so required. On gaining possession of the priory, Weston had duly given Docwra the requisite notice and the latter had promised to vacate possession. This he failed to do, retaining possession of the commandery buildings and refusing to surrender any estate documents, so that the prior was unable to hold courts or discover the value of his rents, a state of affairs by 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 to establish the exact nature of his relationship to the prior. His will does not mention any members of the family save his three daughters and a cousin, Thomas, who resided in London. Claudius E.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’s answer not to Weston’s original bill of complaint, but to his replication, which evidently accused the lessee of detaining the manor of Tolle and removing the altar cloths from its chapel. Docwra denied that Tolle had anything to do with Balsall, or that it had been let to him by the last prior. PRO C1/598/12.

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Although Wolsey’s decree on the matter does not survive it can be reconstructed from later proceedings. Sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 1529 the cardinal ordained that possession of the disputed commandery should be committed to the keeping of Sir George Throckmorton206 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 retinue arrived to take charge of Balsall on 7 October 1529 chaotic scenes ensued as Docwra’s wife and servants, allegedly supported by ruffians from a nearby sanctuary, refused entry to them. In the weeks following this incident Docwra went on the offensive against the chancellor and Throckmorton. Among the articles advanced against Wolsey in Parliament on 1 December 1529 was one alleging that he had issued an injunction forbidding possession of Balsall to the lessee without the latter ever having been called to make answer in chancery.208 Some weeks before Docwra had appeared in Star Chamber complaining that the descent of Throckmorton and his retinue on Balsall had amounted to a riot and claiming that they had entered the manor forcibly, hauling his servants out of the house there and threatening to kill his 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 surviving documentation, comprising the answer of Throckmorton’s co-defendants to Docwra’s bill, further questions put to them, their replies thereto, and the complainant’s replication, dates from after the cardinal’s death in November 1530. In their answer to Docwra’s complaint Throckmorton’s co-defendants210 explained that the late cardinal had commanded both parties to avoid possession because he had been warned that the dispute between Weston and Docwra would lead to ‘grete bessenez and unquytnez’ among the king’s subjects in Warwickshire. Accordingly Throckmorton had been directed to enter the commandery and keep indifferent possession thereof, levying its rents and issues until the matter should be decided by the king in chancery. The prior had obeyed the order, but Docwra had not only demurred but had fortified the manor-house and gathered sixteen or more criminals from the sanctuary at Knowle to keep it. Save for breaking down the door of the chamber in which Docwra’s wife and various thieves and misdoers were holding out by force, they denied the charge of forcible entry, and asserted moreover that two of the criminals found in the room had 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 been in dispute over Balsall in the early 1500s, but whose relations with the Hospital had evidently improved thereafter. In the 1530s he was close to Weston and his nephew Thomas Dingley, with whom 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 Throckmorton’s retinue had comprised at least twenty persons at the time of the incident at Balsall.

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and servants had been removed from the premises and that they had taken possession in accordance with the writ.211 Questioned on the threat to kill Docwra’s wife all but one of the defendants denied that any such utterance had been made while the last remembered hearing something similar from a servant of Throckmorton whose name he could not recall.212 Questions were also asked about Wolsey’s writ of injunction, although not necessarily in accordance with Docwra’s agenda, as Throckmorton’s associates were asked whether it had been purchased at Docwra’s suit or if he had been privy to it, despite his earlier protest that he had been wholly unaware of the order. Docwra also refuted the other allegations of Throckmorton and his servants concerning the circumstances of their entry into the manor. He denied fortifying the manor house or placing felons therein, and refuted allegations that these had held out by force of arms. He attacked the basis of the prior’s claims to the property, claiming that Balsall was not currently a commandery and that Weston had not been made its commander, as Throckmorton had alleged. Additionally he denied that he had been warned to vacate the property 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 evident that there had been some negotiation between the two parties, for Docwra did admit that he had written to the prior offering to allow him to occupy the manor, farm, and park of Balsall whenever he should wish to stay there. He had not, he said, promised to give up any other part of Balsall’s estates. Unfortunately, no further information survives on the case in Star Chamber, although it seems unlikely that Docwra’s flimsy charges, which were possibly advanced to bolster the attack on Wolsey in parliament, were upheld. The suit in chancery over the actual possession of the commandery, however, dragged on for years. Sir Thomas More, who followed Wolsey as chancellor, adjudged Balsall to Weston at some point between 1530 and 1532,213 but in 1535 Martin Docwra’s widow Isabella, now married to Giles Forster, reappeared to contest the case. On 28 June 1535 judgement was given in the couple’s favour and the continued validity of the lease made in 1526 was confirmed.214 Weston eventually reconciled himself to having Balsall as a source of revenue rather than a residence, for in 1539, after Isabella’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’s patronage.215 211

PRO STAC2/17/401/2. PRO STAC2/17/401/4–5. More was appointed chancellor on 26 October 1529, and resigned in May 1532. 214 LPFD, viii, no. 936. 215 The lease was dated 24 April 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. 212 213

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The Balsall case provides an example of the conflict that could arise between the wish of priors to provide for their families and the interests of their successors. Although it had the authority of the provincial chapter behind it, Thomas Docwra’s desire to grant such an important property to a relative on long lease when his own days were numbered was rather irresponsible considering the trouble he had himself had in removing the Throckmortons at the beginning of his priorate, and his own request that he might reserve Balsall to the hands of his fellow-religious. His neglect of this principle involved his successor in years of expensive litigation which ultimately failed to return the commandery to prioral control, and if Weston’s petitions against Martin Docwra’s dilapidation of the property are to be believed, did considerable material damage as well.216 The conflicting judgements of successive chancellors, and especially Wolsey’s high-handed decision to suspend the right of both parties to the property and interpose a third party with an old family interest in it, did not help matters, especially when the case became entangled in the charges laid against the cardinal in parliament. Although Wolsey gave judgement, in this matter as in others, largely in the order’s interest, his influence was already declining when L’Isle Adam visited in 1528, and by the autumn of 1529 it had collapsed.217 His protection of the Hospitallers apparently did not extend to ensuring the dispatch of their responsions to the convent in June 1529, although those due in 1528 were probably remitted. Awareness of such help as he did offer, moreover, must be qualified by the haughty and condescending manner in which he had treated the 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 him to stir Henry up against the order in 1527, and he may also have used his position as papal legate to bully it into submission for in c.1528 he confirmed its papally bestowed privileges and the patronage of its hospitals on the basis that the latter might have pertained to him by virtue of his legatine authority.218 Such heavy-handedness evidently caused bitterness, for William Weston was among the signatories of the articles against the cardinal in the first session of the Reformation Parliament, and after the cardinal’s attainder, which detained in the hands of the crown those of the order’s goods which had been granted to him, the prior protested to Cromwell that the lease of Sandford had passed ‘without free assent . . . to the perpetual loss of my religion’.219 But without his protection the order was for the moment without a powerful intermediary, and the arrest of its responsions and pursuit of its property by the court continued unchecked. 216 217 218 219

See above, 156–7; PRO C1/925/35; C1/598/12. J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Harmondsworth, 1968), 307–8. LPFD, iv, no. 5093. LPFD, v, no. 335. Dated 12 July 1531.

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The king’s decision to appropriate Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court left the order in a difficult position. Henry would not be content with a lease of the property, no matter how long the term or generous the conditions. The order was thus prevailed upon to substitute Hampton Court, the advowson of the prebend of Blewbury, its plum ecclesiastical appointment, and a messuage in Chancery Lane for Sandford in an exchange in which it received the lands of the former monastery of Stansgate in Essex, a foundation which had been suppressed by the cardinal.220 Sandford, the order’s ‘great messuage’ in Chancery Lane, and the nearby Ficketsfield were returned to the order in late 1531 or 1532, the crown having enjoyed usufruct since Wolsey’s attainder.221 Both the release of Sandford and the dispatch of the order’s responsions to Malta may have been conditional on the grant of Hampton Court. While the prior was attempting to recover the order’s property in England, L’Isle Adam was struggling to maintain its integrity, discipline, and selfconfidence in the central Mediterranean. The maintenance of the itinerant convent in temporary accommodation in central Italy, the upkeep of a fleet when the order no longer had its own port facilities, and the complicated diplomacy associated with its search for a home and a role were expensive as well as debilitating, and the 1527 chapter-general had imposed a three-year half-annate on the order’s property which was extended year by year thereafter.222 The English contribution to this levy is impossible to quantify, as no receiver’s accounts survive for the financial years ending June 1527 to June 1530 but it does not seem to have been particularly impressive, and the very lack of accounts may indicate, as it surely does in 1527, that no responsions were being dispatched at all. Although L’Isle Adam may have collected those due in 1528 when he was in England, as no mention was made of arrears for that year when the order later brought the matter up, a letter sent to Weston and his brethren in early March 1532 complained that ‘for three years the responsions and dues of our common treasury have not been sent to us’ and that Clement West, the turcopolier, who ought to have converted them into goods and brought them to Malta, had so far failed to appear. Accordingly John Babington, now bailiff of Eagle, was sent to England to procure all money, goods, and writings pertaining to the common treasury which might still 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 chapter granted Hampton Court and the other properties to Sir Richard Paulet et al., to be held to the king’s use, on 5 June. It was not until 19 December that letters patent were drawn up granting Stansgate to the prior and brethren of the Hospital in mortmain, however. The swap was ratified by 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.

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receiver, John Rawson junior, so that the latter could arrange for the dispatch of the outstanding responsions.223 Although allowance was made for the fact that West may have been detained ‘by sickness or some peril . . . or by other impediments’ the missive was, as Sannazaro pointed out, ‘saturated with distrust’. Weston and his brethren were instructed to implement the order’s statutes against disobedience and invoke the aid of the secular arm against the turcopolier should he prove difficult, and he was in any case summoned to appear in Malta within six months of the letter reaching England. Babington, who had been licensed to leave Malta on 16 February,224 was ordered on 5 March to proceed to England by way of Messina and Palermo, arranging some way by which the order’s monies might be exchanged ‘with whatever advantage possible’. If it should not be possible to send the money by exchange, Babington, Rawson, and Weston were to collaborate in purchasing such merchandise as they thought appropriate, and dispatch it at the first opportunity to Sicily, making sure that it was not taxed on the way. Babington was also to secure the remainder of the sums owed by Antonio Vivaldi, and to investigate the government of the magistral camera in England.225 There are two questions that need to be answered here. First, we need to know who was responsible for impeding the dispatch of the English responsions, and secondly why it took the order so long to complain about the situation. The evidence that can be gleaned from the order’s archives on these matters is extremely limited, the instructions given to Babington in February 1532 providing the first direct evidence that monies were not reaching Malta. Since his appointment in 1529, Clement West’s administration of the receivership had provoked only routine interference from headquarters. Ambrose Cave was appointed proctor of the common treasury in England to supplement West in February 1530 but this was quite usual, and so too was the summons issued to the receiver in the following November to attend the next chapter-general.226 Even West’s removal from the receivership in early March 1531 does not necessarily suggest that anything was amiss. Although it was unusual for a receiver to be removed so soon after his appointment, West had been elected turcopolier in the preceding January and was clearly expected to come to Malta to assume his conventual dignity.227 The fact that no responsions or other dues were submitted to Malta during this 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 were addressed to the English brethren to act until 1532. It seems to have been only after John Rawson took over from West that the latter’s administration 223 224 227

AOM415, fos. 163v–164r. Transcribed in Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 85–7. 225 226 AOM415, fo. 163v. Ibid., fos. 229v–230r. AOM414, fo. 219v, 193r, 8v–9v. Ibid., fos. 240r, 194r.

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was put under the spotlight. There are two likely explanations for the convent’s failure to act against West beforehand, the first being that the crown had decided to hold back the order’s responsions until it should be assured of a home. Charles V had ceded Malta in March 1530, but, partly because of the order’s insistence that it should be assured of tax-free grain supplies 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 November 1530, there may still have been doubts in England, as indeed there were in the convent, as to whether the order would actually take up its new home. It may only have been when these were laid to rest, and when the king had managed to bully the Hospital into a permanent alienation of Hampton Court, that its responsions were freed. A second possible cause of the delay was the legislation forbidding religious persons from engaging in trade passed by Parliament in late 1529.229 This could certainly have been interpreted as prohibiting the order’s export of commodities and possibly even its exchange operations. Such a supposition is supported by the fact that on 26 May 1531 royal letters patent were granted to the prior and his successors licensing them to purchase clothing and other goods for the use of their brethren and to convey the same overseas. The convent’s instructions to Babington in 1532, which stated that West should have come to Malta with goods bought in England, and admitted it might not be possible for the money to be exchanged for letters of credit, provide evidence that it may still have been difficult for the order to engage in financial operations at this time.230 On 18 September 1532, however, West remitted nearly £2,600 in letters of exchange to the convent.231 It seems likely that before this he had been collecting cash as receiver and stockpiling the surplus rather than dispatch it to the convent. When he was required to convert the monies into goods and bring these with him to Malta,232 however, he balked at doing so and seems to have refused to hand over the written evidence pertaining to his office to his successor. He did not have any legitimate reason to do either, and it is also suspicious that in March 1532, just as proceedings were being instituted against him in Malta, his casket, £200 in cash, and other ‘matters of importance’ were stolen from Clerkenwell by one of his servants.233 Although John Mablestone, who wrote to Giles Russell on the day of the theft, evidently believed that it was genuine, West’s dismay at his losses may well have been mitigated by the fact that his accounts with the 228

Ibid., fo. 278r. 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 convent was anticipating the imminent release of its monies, and further support the suspicion that this was contingent upon the order’s establishment in its new home. 233 LPFD, vi, no. 253 (misdated to 1533). 229

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order were among them.234 It is worth reiterating that the instructions to Babington to ensure the handover of all the goods pertaining to the receivership to John Rawson junior suggest that West had been reluctant to do so and in such circumstances the loss of his accounts may be regarded as at best a fortuitous coincidence and at worst something which had been arranged. Another succeeding receiver, John Sutton, petitioned the order’s council some years later to get West to deliver goods and monies that were owed to him.235 There is further evidence that the turcopolier turned the theft of his muniments to his advantage in the months to come. Towards the end of September he wrote to an unknown associate, enclosing the copy of a lease granted under the common seal, the original of which, also enclosed, had been thrown into water by the thief and was now illegible. West more or less admitted altering the text of the lease to favour the lessee, for he urged his correspondent to present both documents for confirmation at the next provincial chapter before handing over any old leases. West explained that no one was aware of the specifics of the lease save he and that once the new lease had been registered it could not be overturned. This at the least was sharp practice, and may even point to the possibility that the turcopolier was gifted with an uncanny foresight into the theft of his casket.236 Some days after he wrote this letter West left for Malta, departing from Southampton on a vessel prepared by Antonio Vivaldi.237 Before his departure he emptied the order’s treasury to buy letters of exchange and cloth to take to the convent,238 and wrote another letter, asking the recipient to sign and seal a box he had left behind and send it on to him at Southampton. He praised Vivaldi’s friendship and bemoaned the loss of his accounts, the consequences of which might yet be amended by ‘a good king and duke’.239 His correspondent was probably the subprior, John Mablestone, to whom he had remitted his business while he was away. The turcopolier left England on 15 October 1532, travelling via Calais and Alicante to Messina and thence to Malta.240 On reaching the convent he presented his accounts for 1531 to the common treasury, which diffused criticism sufficiently for him to escape without being further proceeded against over the lack of similar documents for 1529–30.241 He then threw himself into litigation, protesting before the council on 4 February that Melchbourne rightly pertained to him rather than to Weston. A commission was appointed to consider this242 but had not reported when, five days later, the order’s chapter-general began, and the extraordinary events which ensued therein obviated the need for further discussion of the issue. 234 236 238 240

235 LPFD, Addenda, no. 790. AOM85, fo. 116r. 237 LPFD, Addenda, no. 789. Ibid., nos. 789–90. 239 LPFD, v, no. 1588; AOM54, fo. 186r. LPFD, Addenda, no. 790. 242 241 LPFD, v, no. 1626. AOM54, fo. 173r. AOM85, fo. 109v.

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Without going into too much detail, it seems appropriate to draw attention to some of the salient features of West’s career up to this point to provide a background to what followed. Three characteristics in particular stand out: the turcopolier’s litigiousness, his highly developed sense of his own rightness, and his rather dubious record when in positions of responsibility. West’s zeal for litigation had really begun to manifest itself in the 1510s, when he had conducted a vigorous campaign against Thomas Docwra’s claim to have the right to appoint to preceptories in England under the agreement of 1483 between John Weston and the English langue. Although his fear that the prior would use his claims to retain the patronage of the rich Welsh preceptory of Slebech, to which he was next in line, proved well founded, West’s aggressive manipulation of an existing dispute 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 determination was apparent in West’s struggles against Roger Boydell, to whose meliormenta he made objection, and in other appeals against the rest of the langue over the grant of a preceptory to George Hatfield in 1524, against John Rawson senior over the langue’s concession that he might exchange his English preceptory for a better one, against William Weston over Melchbourne, and even against the master, whom he opposed in 1509 over Robert Pemberton’s spolia.243 On reaching England in 1518 or 1519244 he began further litigation against Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys. The latter had been granted a lease of Slebech by West’s proctors but, together with accomplices, had failed to maintain the charges on the house, taken money for repairs which had not been carried out, cut down woods, extorted money from tenants, made off with household goods and muniments, taken the profits of courts held in the preceptor’s name after the expiry of the lease, and sent servants to intimidate the preceptor and hunt in his woods.245 Repeated royal 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 the dispute over Slebech when he should leave Rhodes. However, he was represented by proctors in the presentation to a Welsh benefice in his gift on 20 April 1518, and was not present at the provincial chapter held in that year. His proctors probably also leased his preceptory to Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys at about the same time. West had evidently been at Slebech for some time before 16 August 1519, when Sir Gruffydd’s associate Harry Cadarn of Prendergast and thirty compansions allegedly broke into the preceptory and assaulted him. AOM406, fo. 166v; The Episcopal 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 his Family (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 but these actions had proved unsuccessful and had been abandoned by 1520. In March 1527 West complained that Babington was holding him responsible for the old debts. AOM54, fo. 13v; 85, fo. 23r.

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the physical and legal pressure exerted by Rhys in response to his allegations.246 Unquestionably West was hard done by. Although Slebech was a rich benefice, his long exclusion from it and the circumstances he was forced to confront on his arrival in Wales left him at a disadvantage when it came to ‘improving’ the preceptory, so that his contemporaries had all been granted promotions by the time his meliormenta were accepted in 1524.247 It was not until 1526 that West was granted ancienitas to seek another commandery, and when this was forthcoming he was passed over for promotion in 1527, when the death of Docwra occasioned the usual turnover of offices, and in 1531, when the much more junior John Sutton was granted an additional preceptory by magistral grace, which was usually exercised on behalf of the turcopolier if he was not possessed of a second commandery.248 Although his bitterness was understandable, his insistence on objecting to the promotion of his brethren and on making an issue of questions such as the master’s right to dispose of the spolia of brethren who had died in convent when he was himself so junior cannot have endeared him to the English knights or the order’s council, which spent much of its time considering his petitions. It is noteworthy that he prosecuted most of these actions on his own behalf rather than that of the langue and that when he challenged the langue’s decisions he was usually the sole objector. It is also worth noting that, with the exception of his provision to Slebech, which was upheld, he lost all of these actions, despite frequent appeals. In particular his objection to the grant of Dinmore to George Hatfield after the latter was dead may have rankled with those younger brethren who had fought alongside Hatfield in 1522 and may not have appreciated West’s long conventual service, for several junior knights objected to the grant of ancienitas to him in 1526, although they were unable to give grounds for doing so to the council.249 That he was not universally popular received further illustration at the chapter in 1533, when the langue which he headed voted for two representatives to serve among the sixteen capitulars responsible for the formulation of new statutes. Three brethren, including West, shared the votes equally.250 The convent’s evident failure to promote West to the dignities he felt were his due may have had other causes than the excessive zeal he showed in their pursuit. In addition to his possibly dubious record as receiver, West had already been investigated in 1515 for his conduct as castellan of Rhodes, an 246

71–2. 247 248 249 250

PRO REQ 2/10/76. Text in Jones, ‘Rhys ap Thomas’, 71–3; Griffiths, Rhys ap Thomas, AOM410, fos. 178v, 177v, 178v; 411, fo. 154v. BDVTE, 8; AOM414, fos. 194v–195r. AOM84, fos. 46v, 95r. AOM286, fo. 32v.

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office to which he had been appointed in December 1512.251 Although no action had been taken against him at this time, he never held a commission or office again in Rhodes, and was only appointed to commissions in the priory of England infrequently after his return home. The grant of the receivership was the first important Hospitaller business on which he had been employed since 1514. The reluctance to make use of him may also have reflected doubts about his loyalties. In 1508 the order’s council appointed a commission to examine the contents of a letter sent by West to Henry VII and, although again no action was taken, his rabid nationalism and readiness to identify his personal grievances with the national interest and appeal over the heads of his religious superiors to the authorities in England, characteristics which were so marked during the 1530s, surely did not spring fully formed out of the Henrician breach with Rome.252 The twin catalysts by which the turcopolier’s keen sense of injustice and rampant xenophobia were awakened seem to have been a magistral prohibition of his parading around Malta with his mace of office and the appointment of foreign proctors by the dignitaries of the English langue to represent them in the chapter-general held in February 1533. According to West, it was the mace that was at issue.253 The privilege of having a mace bearing the royal arms carried before him while in convent had been granted the turcopolier in 1448, and probably exercised ever since.254 In the circumstances of 1533, however, when Henry VIII’s assaults on the church were becoming ever more strident and he had just divorced the emperor’s niece, it may have been seen as provocative to accord his arms such conspicuous honour in Malta. It has also been asserted that a further contribution to West’s behaviour in chapter was made by the ‘theft’ of the mace in the wake of the master’s ban on its display, but no complaint was made about this until 29 March255 so that it seems more likely that it vanished in conjunction with or after 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 certainly make no mention of the mace, and give wholly different reasons for the turcopolier’s conduct. The appearance of foreign proctors in chapter to represent Weston, Rawson, and Babington, against each of whom West had a grievance, prompted him to complain that these should not be reckoned as members of the English langue and should neither be given a vote in 251

AOM82, fos. 137r–v, 51r. AOM81, fo. 110r. 253 LPFD, vi, no. 370. 254 CPL, x. 25. The grant had been made to Hugh Middleton, 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. 252

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the election of the capitular committee which drew up statutes nor in any other decision to be made by the chapter as a whole. Although it was conceded that the proctors, not being members of the langue, should not be involved in electing its representatives, their right to vote in chapter was upheld and the election of the capitulars took place.257 West’s subsequent behaviour was quite extraordinary and deserves to be recounted in detail. After breakfast, as the chapter sat down to begin proceedings, the turcopolier ‘not wishing to accept the . . . sentence of the chapter general that the proctors of the priors of England and Ireland and the bailiff of Eagle should have votes in chapter, leapt up with unjust accusations, no less rashly than impudently, (and) without good reason before his reverend lordship and chapter, and blaspheming God, he named the said proctors Saracens, Jews and bastards.’ Having heard this charge, from which West ‘would not desist, asserting that he did not know whether they were Jews since they were not English’, the master and chapter, ‘although the same turcopolier ought to have been punished by grave penalties according to capitular statutes and constitutions, not wishing that the business of the chapter be perturbed or deferred, sentenced him to ask grace from his reverend lordship for those things he had uttered before everyone so irreverently, injuriously and with such great clamour, in excess of all modesty.’ West was then called before the master and chapter again and the sentence against him read out, but he ‘not only refused to obey and ask grace but, blaspheming furiously, tore, threw off and cast to the ground the habit or mantle and vest in which he was attired with many indecent and shameful words, especially saying that if he was disobedient he ought to be deprived of the habit and, drawing his dagger, that he deserved death. And thus like a madman without mantle and habit, since neither by words nor force nor by the persuasions of either friends or honest men could he be restrained, he left the chapter.’258 Lest such ‘nefarious and unheard of disobedience and temerity’ go unpunished, master and chapter at once ordered that West should be imprisoned and proceeded against in accordance with the statutes.259 On 25 February he was deprived of the turcopoliership, and the office was provided to Roger Boydell a week later.260 Every aspect of West’s tirade was offensive both to the order’s regulations and to the sensibilities of the men gathered in chapter. He had broken the statutes so comprehensively in word and deed that it seems unnecessary to draw attention to individual breaches here, but one item in particular deserves comment. West’s initial accusations against the foreign proctors were not only the ‘gravest insult that could ever be inflicted on a knight of 257

AOM286, fos. 31v–32r. 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. 258

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St John’261 since the order technically excluded the illegitimate and the descendants of infidels from its ranks, but they were also in contravention of the statutes, which laid down severe penalties for those who made malicious accusations against their fellows. By extending the charge to all the non-English knights in chapter the turcopolier was further implying that none of the order’s chief dignitaries, save he, was fit to wear its habit. It is a tribute to the patience of those present that he was allowed a chance to apologize at all. His other chief offences were blasphemy, the drawing of his dagger, and the casting off of his habit, the effects of which were exacerbated by the fact that they happened in front of the master and the order’s supreme legislative body.262 Given its delicate relationship with the crown, the turcopolier’s behaviour left the convent in a difficult position, a fact of which West took full advantage when he reported these events to Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. His first such letter, written to Cromwell between 25 and 28 February,263 represented that he had been deprived of office solely for having the mace borne before him, and that L’Isle Adam had refused to suffer this and had accused him of disobedience in consequence. West had replied that he had taken leave of his prince to enter the order and reminded the master that Henry was a good king who had done much for the religion, citing his gift of artillery and the export licence of 1531 as evidence of his largesse. When again refused permission to bear the mace he had told the master to ‘take yowre abite’ and removed it, whereupon he was put in prison. He begged Cromwell to put his cause before the king, so that the latter could intervene with the pope to procure his restoration, as L’Isle Adam would not do it. Although West’s account clearly misrepresented the events of 12 February, the record of which makes no mention of the mace at all, it seems unlikely that the appointment of foreign proctors by the other English dignitaries of the order provided sufficient reason in itself for his pronouncements in chapter, even given his existing grievances and the aggressive nationalism displayed in this and later correspondence. A perceived snub to the dignity of his office and his nation seems a better explanation for his behaviour, although there can be no doubt that he was deprived of the turcopoliership for his extraordinary conduct before chapter rather than for the matter of the mace itself. The letter to Cromwell was followed on 22 April by a dispatch to the king264 rehearsing West’s version of events and adding an account of what had happened since, by which he sought to discredit the master further by 261

Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 62. These were the issues which particularly grieved the commissioners appointed to investigate 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). 262

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presenting him as vindictive and at odds with the order’s council. He recounted his deprival of office, imprisonment, and replacement by Boydell and the latter’s subsequent death, following which the council had requested that he be freed from prison, as there was no reason to keep him there without a conciliar order. The master had not only ignored this petition but when the council had elected a lieutenant turcopolier to exercise the office until Henry’s pleasure should be known he had caused the decision to be overturned and had appointed John Rawson (junior) full turcopolier, although 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 had been advised that if the master were to take his habit and commandery from him he should appeal to the king for restoration. He also reported the insurrection which had occurred in Malta on 17 April, saying that 300 brethren had rebelled against L’Isle Adam, calling into question the justice of his suppression of the revolt and saying that he was now at loggerheads with the Spanish brethren, who were demanding that he appoint a Spanish lieutenant, ‘to the wych he must consent or aventyr all’. Having painted this picture of misgovernment and injustice, he begged the king to ‘delyver us owght off thys thraldom’, stressing once more that he had only been deprived of his dignity for bearing the royal arms.266 As West’s letters arrived in England before the convent’s explanations of the affair, they were highly successful in shaping the court’s view of the circumstances behind his removal from office.267 A letter which Cromwell was 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 and early November William Weston, the duke of Norfolk, and the king sent letters to Malta by John Sutton, who presented them to the council in February 1534.268 Norfolk urged that West be released and reinstated without delay so that he might return to England ‘for otherwise things may turn unpleasant and be of considerable prejudice to the whole order in the near future’. Weston’s letter provided rather more substantial evidence 265 Otho C.ix. The Liber Conciliorum records that Bellingham was elected lieutenant turcopolier on 17 April, and Rawson on the 19th. Bulls appointing Rawson were also drawn up on 19 April, 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 and AOM85, fos. 112v, 113v, 115r. 267 Otho C.ix, fos. 170r–v. Carlo Capello, writing to Venice from London on 12 July 1533 reported that an envoy had arrived from the ‘prior’ of Rhodes asking the king’s help in succouring Coron, which Charles V was proposing to hand over to the order. This may have been the prior of France, with whom Louis de Valle´e had been sent to consult on 17 March, with instructions to ‘adresser celles dangleterre’ as he saw fit. It seems possible that the proceedings against West were explained in conjunction with these orders. A note among Cromwell’s memoranda dated 2 July indicates that a letter to L’Isle Adam was already being drawn up then, 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.

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on the nature of this threat, reporting that some days before the letter had been written he and the other peers gathered to transact the king’s business had discussed West and the reasons for his imprisonment. Nearly all had opined that this had been a punishment for the Englishman’s pretension in having the mace bearing the royal arms carried before him even in the master’s palace and in public functions, which, as had been reported to the king 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 . . . to honour his king . . . So they all irately declaimed, uttering hard words against you’.269 Sutton added verbally that all this was known at court through West’s letters and a messenger he had sent. Since appeals by brethren to secular rulers or indeed the pope were forbidden270 Sutton’s testimony resulted in West being brought before the council and interrogated. He denied writing to the king, and affirmed that he believed he owed his degradation solely to the matter of the mace. L’Isle Adam refuted this claim and deputed the draper,271 the prior of Pisa, and Edward Bellingham to investigate the events of the previous year.272 Shortly afterwards, on 13 April, a majority of the English langue instructed its proctor to complain against West on the subject of the mace and request that his appeals to England should be judged according to conventual law.273 West responded by writing to England again, although he was careful to address subsequent letters, until L’Isle Adam had died, to Cromwell rather than to the king. On 14 March he thanked the secretary for his help but protested that the letters of Henry and Norfolk had done little good because of Weston’s letter, without which he would have been restored. He reported that proceedings had been instituted against him by the master and claimed, truly enough, that pressure was being brought on him and his supporters to deny that L’Isle Adam had ever made an issue of the honour of the English nation or of the matter of the mace. Moreover, he claimed to be sick and unable to get representation and asked that the case be heard in England and the English knights summoned home, as the master’s control of patronage made the younger knights forget the honour of their sovereign and nation. In particular he singled out John Sutton for criticism, asserting that he was the tool of L’Isle Adam, whom Sutton’s uncle Thomas Sheffield had made master, and who in return had provided Sutton with the commandery of grace which ought to have gone to West as turcopolier. For further information he referred Cromwell to John Story, who was probably the messenger mentioned by Sutton and later entered the royal service. West claimed that 269 270 271 272 273

Quotations after Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 64–5. Stabilimenta, ‘De fratribus’, xliiii (Statute of Jean de Lastic, 1437–54). The draper, or drapier, was the conventual bailiff of the langue of Aragon. AOM85, fos. 125v–126r; transcript in Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 181. AOM85, fo. 128r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 170.

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Story had been refused audience by the master and (subsequent) licence to leave Malta with Sutton.274 On 12 May this letter was followed by another giving West’s version of the proceedings of the chapter-general against him. He asserted that the assembly 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 knights be summoned home and heard together. He also drew attention to the plight of Oswald Massingberd, a junior knight who had been investigated in March for brawling with three other brethren, for having praised the murder of four men in one of the order’s galleys during the previous year’s insurrection, and for having repeatedly said out loud that L’Isle Adam should be killed.276 By the time West wrote his letter Massingberd had been put on trial for the murder himself, as well as for duelling, sedition, and le`semajeste´.277 West glossed over these indiscretions, saying that Massingberd’s only crime had been to accuse Sutton of being untrue to his prince and country.278 The impact of West’s allegations on the order’s affairs in England was less than it might have been. The master’s secretary was dispatched thither in the last months of 1533 and after the commission appointed to investigate the former turcopolier’s claims of having been dismissed for bearing the mace had reported in the following February John Sutton was sent home to explain its findings.279 Sutton probably carried an extract of the proceedings of the chapter of 1533, now bound up with the Hospitaller correspondence in the British Library and endorsed by nine English brethren, to England at the same time.280 In the short term the order’s damage limitation exercise appears to have been a success. Despite the continued imprisonment of the two English knights, no action was taken against the order in England in response to West’s reports in 1534. In any case, after the death of L’Isle Adam in August 1534 the situation of the prisoners improved. On 26 August an Italian, Piero del 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 attack on the former master and asked Cromwell and the king to write to Malta 274

LPFD, vii, no. 326. Ibid., no. 651. 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. 275 276

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asking for his and Massingberd’s release.281 This was effected shortly afterwards, despite L’Isle Adam’s deathbed refusal to pardon Massingberd, for the latter was in more trouble in November for fighting with John Babington junior in the English auberge in Malta.282 West was also freed and, after a civil exchange of letters between Henry VIII and Cromwell and the new master, was re-elected turcopolier in April 1535.283 Although the events following West’s outburst in chapter were resolved quite amicably, this may only have been because of L’Isle Adam’s demise, and it is noteworthy that whatever the friendship between Del Ponte and West, the order had been pressurized into relaxing sentences against two aggressive and disruptive brethren who had, according to the statutes, merited deprival of the habit and perpetual imprisonment or death. Moreover, West’s accusations, although they did no immediate damage to the order’s operations in England, certainly increased suspicion of the Hospitallers at court at a time when the order’s international status and privileges, if not yet its very existence in England, were being challenged in the courts and in parliament. Over the next few years the order was to find itself in an increasingly untenable position as the king sought clarification of where its loyalties lay. While the order’s position had partly been safeguarded by the letters patent of 1531, the anti-clerical and anti-papal legislation passed in parliament and convocation from 1529 onwards was potentially extremely damaging to its independence, privileges, and finances. The ‘Reformation’ parliament, which met intermittently between November 1529 and April 1536, processed a vast corpus of legislation which gradually destroyed the ties the English Church had with Rome.284 Inherent in the process was a challenge to the status of those religious orders which had active international roles, among them the Hospital, the brethren of which were particularly vulnerable because their service in and submission of funds to the convent on Malta provided their raison d’eˆtre and their sense of corporate identity. At the same time as the king and parliament were abolishing the Church’s links with Rome, moreover, they were questioning ecclesiastical privileges and taxing the clergy, including the Hospitallers, to an unprecedented extent. Appropriately enough, given his past dealings with the king, it was 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. 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 the ship’, 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. 282

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parliament already constituted a challenge to certain of the order’s privileges. The act laying down heavy fines on clergy guilty of non-residence or pluralism and on those holding land at farm was not applicable to knightbrethren, who were, after all, laymen, but were a potential check on the disposal of the order’s appropriated churches and effectively abolished the papal privilege which had permitted eight clergy in the prior’s service to be non-resident. Although exceptions were made, offenders against the act came before the courts in large numbers.285 Besides the restrictions on clerical non-residence there was also an attack on the payment of mortuaries, which were only to be levied from the goods of those who possessed moveable property worth 10 marks or more, and were limited to a maximum of 10 shillings. They were not to be paid at all by women, people keeping the house, or travellers. All three categories probably comprehended many of those who had paid mortuaries to the Hospitallers, one of whose most cherished privileges was the right to bury people outside their home parishes.286 Although other, more serious attacks on the order’s revenueproducing privileges were to follow, even in 1533 Thomas Cromwell was seeking a more favourable lease of Sutton-at-Hone, as its ‘pardon’ was utterly decayed.287 The following years saw more anti-clerical legislation and increased royal demands on the clerical estate. In 1532 convocation was forced to submit to the review of existing, and royal approval of all new canon law, and the papal pocket was threatened by the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates, which came into effect in the following year. In 1533 the Act of Succession imposed an oath to be administered throughout the kingdom acknowledging the king’s second marriage and its offspring, and all appeals to, and procurements of licences, faculties, and dispensations from, Rome were forbidden by the Acts of Appeals and Dispensations.288 The following year papal authority over the English Church was definitively suppressed by the Acts 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 to Rome and the investigation of canon law had a potential rather than an immediate effect on the order, the attack on papal supremacy and the dispensations and licenses which flowed from Rome did call into question its exemptions and privileges, which, although traditionally confirmed by English monarchs on their accession or that of new priors, were now at the will 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, Reformation Parliament, 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).

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privileges. The Hospital’s status as an ‘exempt’ order of the church under papal protection was not unique in England, but its links with its overseas convent were unusually concrete, and its international activities were, in the last analysis, an expression of papal policy. Moreover, the Acts of Dispensations and Appeals, which struck at the recourse of Englishmen to the curia as a fount of justice and privilege, also forbade any resort to other foreign authorities. Although the order was able to secure a proviso that Dispensations should not extend to those privileges it had been granted before March 1532, its brethren were, at least technically, prohibited in future from obtaining licences, faculties, and dispensations not merely from Rome but from any other foreign source. Nor was the Hospital exempted from the clauses forbidding the visitation of exempt monasteries by foreign visitors and prohibiting members of English houses from acting as visitors or attending chapters or assemblies abroad. Visitations, Dispensations declared, were henceforth to be by commission from the king, although when these were ordered the Hospitallers were not listed among those orders whose houses were to be visited.290 The order probably managed to avoid these provisions by pleading its past exemptions, but these were to be allowed only insofar as they were in accordance with English law and it seems probable that appointments from Malta and the participation of English brethren in decision-making processes there were now technically illegal, a possibility that lends a certain irony to Clement West’s protest against the use of foreign proctors in the chapter of 1533. Perhaps most importantly, by abolishing the title and authority of the pope within the realm, the Act of Supremacy made it impossible for the Hospital to plead past papal privileges when soliciting confraternity payments, effectively curtailing their collection. Coupled with the restrictions on mortuary payments, this had a crippling effect on the profitability of Hospitaller ‘pardons’. The indirect assaults on the order’s revenues, moreover, were complemented by the imposition of direct taxation, for Weston was unable to procure exemption from the Act of First Fruits and Tenths which reserved the profits of the vacancy year of all ecclesiastical benefices and possessions and a tenth of their annual value thereafter to the crown from 1 January 1535.291 This was a major setback. The order’s revenues had already declined considerably because of the attacks of convocation and parliament, and it was now subjected to the payment of a tenth of its net income in addition to the responsions and other dues demanded by the convent. In 1534 the council complete had already permitted the brethren of the English langue to pay a third-annate for their responsions rather than the half levied by the last chapter and this new imposition provoked Del Ponte to ask Cromwell for the Hospital to be exempted in April 1535, 290 291

Ibid., 464–71, clauses 19, 14; Concilia, ed. Wilkins, iii. 829–30. Clause 21 of the act specifically included the order in the levy. Statutes, iii. 493–9, at 498.

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but his appeal was fruitless and the measure remained in force until the Dissolution.292 As a result of parliamentary prohibitions and impositions, payments to the convent declined drastically. Having deducted a tenth from the responsions they were prepared to pay as a result of First Fruits, the preceptors of the order’s houses in England and Wales then sought rebates of up to threequarters of the remaining sum as a result of their loss of confraternity payments and oblations.293 Even given these reductions, most fell rapidly and heavily into arrears. The suspension of the confraria, in particular, was a serious blow to the order’s revenues, although there was some initial confusion about whether its collection had been forbidden or not. Although values were given for the confraria in many of the Valor Ecclesiasticus returns, their farmer in south-west Wales had collected nothing in 1534 or 1535 because the king’s will on the matter was not yet fully understood. Despite the order’s exemption from Dispensations, he was clearly afraid of punishment should he proceed to collection.294 By 1536 the order was finding confraternity payments impossible to collect anywhere. Accordingly it lobbied the crown for redress, with the remarkable result that the privilege granted to the Hospitallers by Henry in 1537 conceded that they might be levied henceforth ‘in vim Regiorum diplomatum’ rather than in accordance with papal letters.295 In 1539 we find the chancellor, Audley, reporting to Cromwell that William Weston had requested he be granted ‘commissions to gather the frary’ under the ‘great book’ granted by the king to the grand master, and asking the king’s pleasure on the matter.296 Some brethren appear to have reacted aggressively to the erosion of their privileges and revenues. The impecunious preceptor of Carbrooke, Thomas Coppledike, who spent much of the 1530s either petitioning for a reduction in his responsions or seeking to augment his estate,297 was provoked to fury in 1534 by the attempt of his tenant John Payne to serve a writ against some local adversaries in Great Carbrooke. Pronouncing that ‘by goddes soule ther shal be no warraunts servyd withyn my Town for I am lord and kynge ther myselffe’, Coppledike gathered a band of armed men, who tore down Payne’s hedge while singing verse to commemorate the deed. Although 292

Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 47; AOM286, fo. 85v; LPFD, viii, no. 547. 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, a ninth from Beverley and Dinmore, a seventh from Halston and Quenington, a fifth from Mount St John and Slebech, a quarter from Dalby, Swingfield, Yeaveley, a third from Ansty and Battisford, and three-quarters from Carbrooke. The preceptors of the former Templar houses of Eagle, Ribston, Temple Brewer, Templecombe, and Willoughton, which were not centres for the 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. 293

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allegations of riot were often made in order to transfer business into Star Chamber, and Payne does seem to have enclosed land on which Coppledike had right of common for his cattle, the words attributed to the Hospitaller, even if exaggerated, probably demonstrate that the order was perceived to be vulnerable to accusations of arrogance and disloyalty to the crown. Further complaints that the preceptor had threatened to evict Payne and leave him destitute, and that an attempt had been made to murder him by one of Coppledike’s associates, cannot have improved the order’s reputation.298 A case more directly connected with the order’s defence of its privileges occurred in Bristol in the same year. It began with the abduction of the female servant of a Bristol merchant by the commander of Templecombe, Edmund Hussey, and escalated into a major clash between the corporation and the order over the district of Temple Fee, a jurisdictional peculiar in which 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 jurisdiction of its officers in Temple Fee. His defiance had culminated in an armed march by Hussey, his friends, and tenants into the centre of Bristol, where he had dared the civic officials to arrest him and assaulted the sergeant sent to do so with a dagger. Again there are the same intimations that the order considered itself above the law and supported its pretensions with violence and intimidation. The town’s real reason for reporting these matters was probably the separate jurisdiction of Temple Fee, which Hussey and the prior claimed was exempt from visitation or correction by Bristol officials and in which, the mayor alleged, the order gave sanctuary to a host of criminals and operated a string of unlawful brewhouses and other unsavoury establishments. The issue of sanctuary was decided in favour of the corporation and the mayor’s officers given the right to serve processes in Temple Fee without resistance from prior or preceptor. Any decisions taken on the more specific allegations against Hussey appear not to have survived.299 The particular accusations surrounding the Hospitallers in 1534 may conceivably have encouraged their inclusion in a contemporary plan for the disendowment of the Church, which probably originated in government circles but evidently failed to meet with parliamentary approval.300 But this general scheme having failed, the crown did not involve the order in its attack on the smaller monasteries in 1535–6. Thus, despite mostly being valued under £200 and staffed by but one knight-brother, the order’s preceptories were not investigated by Cromwell’s visitors in 1535–6. While the 298

PRO STAC2/29/134; 2/29/65. 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. 299

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priory’s incorporation as a single entity in common law, and perhaps opposition raised against the order’s dissolution in parliament may have something to do with this, part of the credit must also go to William Weston, who had handled the king skilfully in 1528, and who took care to demonstrate his loyalty during the early 1530s, professing his support for the annulment of the royal marriage in July 1530, attending parliament and taking the oath of succession there, serving on royal commissions and providing sweeteners of cash, cloth, and carpets to Thomas Cromwell, the master of the Rolls, and the king respectively.301 It is noticeable that he confined his opposition to religious change to the impositions and grants which specifically affected the order’s functioning and finances rather than making an issue of its subjection to the papacy. The restoration of the flow of responsions to the convent in 1531 must have owed much to his prudence. The crown’s continued complaisance in the order’s activities was doubtless also assisted by the grant of Hampton Court, although this did not entirely sate the king, as the prior was induced to alienate more property in 1536, when his manor of Paris Garden was exchanged for the lands of the suppressed monastery of Kilburn and granted to the queen.302 Pressure from other court luminaries for grants of leases and offices also continued. The provincial chapter of 1529 had granted the major Essex estate of Cressing-Witham to a baron of the exchequer, John Smith, and in 1535 Lord Lisle was petitioning for the farm of Rodmersham, a part of the magistral camera, which was still in the hands of Francis Bell’s widow.303 Two years later the magistral camera was granted to Cromwell in its entirety.304 In 1536, as we have seen, Cromwell also attempted to procure the auditorship of the priory for an adherent, pressing the matter despite Weston’s protest that he had already granted the office and could not revoke it without appearing weak.305 The prior was so upset by the demands for leases that he delayed holding a provincial chapter in 1533,306 while the peril of association with courtiers was demonstrated, as it had been on Wolsey’s death, when the order’s lands in the tenure of William Brereton were seized on his attainder in May 1536. In 1537 Clement West was still petitioning for the recovery of goods that had been in Brereton’s keeping.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.

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Yet although Weston did his best to allay royal suspicions, he was no longer fully trusted. He was not named to commissions of the peace between February 1532 and October 1537 and was conspicuously absent from those ordered north against the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, being instructed to remain behind and guard the queen instead. Nor was he employed on the diplomatic business for which his predecessor had been so remarkable. Although he was among the English notables who welcomed the Venetian ambassador to London in December 1528,308 the prior was never sent on an embassy 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 its course, in the longer term the effects of the Pilgrimage of Grace probably intensified royal distrust of the order and helped to ensure its suppression. Although Sir William Fairfax wrote to Cromwell in January 1537 stating that the northern religious houses were still patronizing the poor to get their support and that none were so busy in stirring up the people as the Hospitallers’ chief tenants, the Pilgrimage and its associated risings did not prompt any royal attack on the order’s brethren or properties.310 Nor did Weston suffer any contemporary loss of favour at court, where he was seeking royal confirmation of the grant of Shingay to his nephew Thomas Dingley by Didier de Saint Jalhe, who had been elected master after the death of Piero Del Ponte in November 1535.311 The king had written to either L’Isle Adam or Del Ponte in 1534/5 asking the (unnamed) master to present Dingley to the next vacant preceptory in England and had written again to the next master asking for Dingley’s promotion to be remembered.312 His wishes were upheld when the prior’s nephew was provided to Shingay on 25 April 1536.313 The order’s statutes, however, laid down that masters-elect had no power to confer benefices until they should reach the convent and be ‘sworn in’, and pleading this Ambrose Cave was able to have Saint Jalhe’s decision overturned by the lieutenant master and council on Malta, who granted him the preceptory for his meliormentum on 14 June 1536.314 Cave’s existing preceptory, Yeaveley, was conferred on Anthony Rogers.315 By the time the dispute came to the notice of the English court, matters had been further complicated by the death at Montpellier in October 1536 of Saint Jalhe, who had never reached Malta after his election.316 In the following January Cave wrote to Cromwell asking for his rights to Shingay 308 311 312 313 314 315 316

309 310 CSPV, iv, no. 380. LPFD, x, no. 339. LPFD, xii, I, no. 192. AOM86, fo. 19v. The letters are undated exempla lacking addresses. LPFD, x, no. 391. LPFD, x, no. 731. AOM86, fo. 40r; 416, fo. 157v. AOM416, fos. 158r, 158v. AOM86, fos. 47r, 47r–48r.

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to be upheld, and protesting that Dingley already held another preceptory and had also been granted a pension of 100 crowns together with, subsequently, the member of Stansgate, which was worth another £40 per annum. No man, he said, was so rewarded having served so little time.317 His complaints were supported by Clement West, who confirmed that masters of the order could only confer its dignities after they had sworn in convent to maintain its customs and statutes. None of the masters he had seen, five of whom had been elected overseas, had done otherwise.318 To further undermine Dingley’s credentials the turcopolier also sent Cromwell an old letter from Sir Richard Weston to his brother William concerning their nephew’s youthful misdemeanours, which had been serious enough to prompt his expulsion from Richard’s household. The prior’s brother had warned at the time that if the king should get hold of Dingley £10,000 would not save his life.319 Although the lieutenant master and council on Malta did not, as yet, write to the king about Shingay, the prior was told that Saint Jalhe’s actions had been illegal and ordered to put Cave into possession, an instruction he actively disobeyed.320 A royal commission had by now been established to determine the truth of the opposing claims, but the prior’s influence at court was still strong enough to ensure Dingley’s confirmation as preceptor of Shingay on 19 April 1537, before the commissioners had reported.321 But his rivals continued to press their claims. The new grand master, Juan de Homedes, had been elected in Malta in November 1536 and had dispatched Aimery de Reaulx to announce his election to the king.322 Although Reaulx had no written orders to intervene in the Shingay case, the prior wrote on 7 September 1537 to warn Dingley that Reaulx, John Sutton, and Ambrose Cave had persuaded Cromwell that the death of Saint Jalhe before he had reached Malta had invalidated the gift of Shingay. The king now apparently believed that the matter should be ‘put to justice’.323 Anthony Rogers had been petitioning Cromwell for some time before this, initially with little success, but had threatened that he would ‘have his pennyworth’ of Dingley, and eventually had been sent to court by the minister, where he waited for an audience for several weeks. The king had still not seen him by 5 September.324 317 Weston had granted Dingley’s pension in 1526 and Stansgate in the provincial chapter of 1533, the latter being confirmed in convent in 1535. Dingley had been received into the order only 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).

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Whether as a result of Rogers’s interview with the king, or for other reasons, within a fortnight of Reaulx’s meeting with Cromwell Dingley had 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 Robert Branceter, a London merchant in the imperial service, to Richard Pate written in May 1538, and either intercepted by the crown or sent by Pate as evidence. Branceter reported that Dingley had said openly at table in Pate’s house in Genoa that ‘if bad fortune should happen to the king in this matter (the Pilgrimage)’ then the lady Mary could marry the Marquis of Exeter’s son and the two enjoy the realm together.326 The act of attainder by which Branceter and Dingley were condemned in 1539 accused them both of complicity in the rising and of stirring foreign princes to war against the king.327 What is unclear is the identity of the original informant against the prior’s nephew. In October 1537, shortly after his arrest, Thomas Cromwell instructed Sir Thomas Wyatt, then at the imperial court, to deliver an intercepted letter from Pate to an Englishman there, possibly Branceter, as the king ‘much desired to try out the matter of Dingley’. Ten days later another dispatch requested information on the business ‘touching Dingley’, which the king, Cromwell said, had ‘specially to heart’.328 While Henry VIII was seeking proof of Dingley’s guilt he remained in the tower and under interrogation admitted to conversing with Sir George Throckmorton about the Act of Appeals and the king’s remarriage some years earlier. Throckmorton was pulled in and confessed that he had expressed disapproval of the latter when speaking with Dingley in the garden of St John’s, prompting his interrogators to ask pointedly whether he had known that the prior’s nephew ‘was a man sometime travelling in far countries, whereby he might the rather spread abroad the said infamy’.329 Although Throckmorton was later released, Dingley was already past saving, and by 3 November his preceptories had been bestowed upon the courtiers Sir Thomas Seymour and Sir Richard Long.330 Shortly afterwards the prior was forced to surrender to the crown the monies he was ‘detaining’ from Dingley’s estates for responsions and, as a further punishment, the £200 which 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 his nephew’s preceptories.331 325

Dingley was incarcerated on 18 September. LPFD, xiii, I, no. 627. 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. 326

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Although his fate might have been sealed by Branceter’s letter of May 1538 anyway, Dingley’s cause cannot have been helped by Clement West’s letters 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 to report the arrival of Juan de Homedes in Malta. He added that Homedes had been accompanied by Oswald Massingberd and John Story, who evidently informed West that Dingley had been executed following his imprisonment. The turcopolier saw this as an opportunity to further blacken the younger knight’s reputation, opining that he had deserved to die, and reporting that the hospitaller,332 Robert Dache, had recently informed him of a conversation which he had had with Dingley in France, during which the latter had told him that the king ‘sought avanys moreskys to put men to death’. West also mentioned the currency in Malta of prophecies forecasting woe for the king, Norfolk, and Cromwell.333 Although he may have been misled in the matter of Dingley’s supposed death, the turcopolier’s letter probably helped doom 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 July alongside 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 more difficult to substantiate of the charges levelled against him in the act of attainder, for the only reference to it before the act is provided by Branceter’s letter, which only hinted that he approved of the revolt, not that he was involved in it, which could hardly have been possible if he was abroad. Taken in conjunction with the accusation that Dingley had stirred foreign princes to war against the king, however, the former charge may refer to the Hospitaller urging the emperor to become involved in the rising. Certainly Dingley had made no secret of his opposition to royal policies while he was abroad, and although direct evidence that he had conversed with any foreign potentates is lacking his position as a Hospitaller would have provided him with relatively easy access to them. It is difficult to be sure of the source of the initial accusation against Dingley. Possible candidates are Rogers, Cave, West, the interception of one 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. LPFD, xiii, I, nos. 230, 234. 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, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns 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 was connected with the order of St John. R. Rex, ‘Blessed Adrian Fortescue: A Martyr without a Cause?’, Analecta Bollandiana, 115 (1997), 307–52, esp. 339–49. I am grateful to him for making a copy of this article available. 333 334

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crown by one of these two. Whether Dingley was condemned by his own brethren or not, the Shingay case demonstrated the bitterness of the divisions within the English langue, which had developed to such an extent by 1539 that there were then two fairly distinct factions among the English brethren on Malta, one composed of convinced royalists and the other of moderates seeking to balance their conflicting obligations to crown and convent. The order soon realized that Dingley was doomed, but continued to appeal for the confiscation of his commanderies to be rescinded. Homedes and the council wrote to the king in May 1538 reiterating the invalidity of Dingley’s collation to Shingay and asking that Cave be granted it. Clement West dispatched letters to the king, Norfolk, and Cromwell on the same theme in the following July and as late as March 1540, when the order drew up instructions for its visitors and ambassadors to England, they included a mandate to seek the restoration of the confiscated estates.335 By this time, however, the order’s credibility in England had been comprehensively undermined, largely by the turcopolier. Despite his restoration to office in 1535, a subsequent grant of ancienitas to the other chief dignities of the langue, and an appointment to act as the ‘regent’ of the magistral election of October 1535, which he reported with some enthusiasm to Cromwell, West’s tendency to complain whenever he was denied any appointment which might pertain to him soon reasserted itself.336 He continued to petition for the grant of Melchbourne, which had been denied him by the ‘maintenance’ of the ‘cruel’ L’Isle Adam, and attempted to appeal against the election of proctors of the common treasury in January 1536 and the appointment of a younger Italian knight, Leone Strozzi, as captain of the order’s galleys a year later.337 In both cases the council refused him licence even to mount an appeal, prompting him to complain to Cromwell that Englishmen were allowed little chance to participate in the honours of the order, and that no Englishman had been given a naval command since the siege of Rhodes.338 His attempt to turn a personal grievance into a matter of national honour was intentionally undermined when William Tyrrell and Giles Russell were given important positions of responsibility later in the same year.339 Despite their appointments, West repeated his complaints in a letter to the king in September 1537, adding gloomily that the little power the English knights had would be further reduced when Homedes arrived.340 His complaints seem to have affected the order’s attempts to get some clarification of its privileges from the crown in the face of the attacks on them. Certainly West reported in early 1538 that some in the convent 335 336 337 338 339 340

LPFD, xiii, I, nos. 1358, 1397–8; AOM286, fos. 130v–131r. AOM416, fos. 155r–v; 86, fos. 18r–19v; LPFD, ix, no. 920. LPFD, xi, no. 917; AOM86, fos. 27r, 51v. LPFD, xii, I, nos. 347, 365. AOM86, fos. 54r, 54v. LPFD, xii, II, no. 792.

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believed that the confirmation of the order’s privileges which had occurred in the previous year would not have been so ‘strait’ had it not been for his letters home. Despite the king’s ignorance of Thomas Dingley’s treason at the time, the letters patent issued on the order’s behalf in July 1537 had both exposed his distrust of his Hospitaller subjects and, in restoring confraternity payments and permitting travel to Malta, confirmed his belief in the continued validity of their enterprise. The letters were aimed at forcing the brethren to choose between their national and ecclesiastical allegiances.341 They not only named the king Supreme Head of the English Church, but also required that henceforth candidates received into the order should acknowledge his supremacy by oath. Furthermore they established that those promoted to the order’s preceptories were not only to pay annates to both crown and convent and tenths to the king, but were also to take an oath to the king and be instituted by him. The order’s brethren were additionally forbidden to support or promote the jurisdiction, authority, or title of the bishop of Rome, and were to collect confraternity payments in accordance with royal licence rather than papal privileges. Finally it was laid down that the order should hold annual provincial chapters, those feeling wronged by their decisions appealing to the king’s ‘vicar’ for remedy. Historians of the order have generally misdated the grant of 1537 to 1539 and presented it as an ultimatum rejected by the convent without further ado, resulting in the dissolution of the Hospitallers in England, Wales, and Ireland.342 In fact while Henry’s letters were not officially recognized in Malta, neither were they actively repudiated, and the order conducted its affairs in England in accordance with them for two and a half years before it was dissolved.343 The specific causes of the dissolution of 1540 have rather to be sought in the after-effects of Dingley’s treason and in the divisions of the English langue in Malta, to which Clement West was naturally central. It was only when a junior knight, Nicholas Lambert, made an issue of Henry VIII’s letters that they became a significant bone of contention. In September 1537 the turcopolier was in trouble with the order’s council again. His problems were chiefly self-inflicted, but he sought as usual to depict them as having serious national and international implications. The first serious matter of which he was charged was provocation to duel in the council, 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]. 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. It is in fact dated 7 July 29 Henry VIII, i.e. 1537. Catalogue of the Records of the Order of St. John of 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. 342

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continued to portray the order in an unflattering light.344 In addition to his letters of February, which condemned Dingley and reported prophecies against the king, in July 1538 West reported words spoken in the king’s despite in Marseilles while Tyrrell had been there as captain of the order’s galleon, and in the following month he sent a sycophantic missive to the king in which he asserted that a ‘strength’ was to be made against Henry, that Spain and France bore him no favour, and that in Malta there was objection to the king’s naming the pope ‘bishop of Rome’, with people saying that Henry had created martyrs and held rude opinions.345 It was only in early 1539, however, that the turcopolier passed the point of no return, being confined to his chamber for three months for having insulted Homedes in council ‘without any reverence and respect’.346 As a chapter-general was to be held shortly, Giles Russell was elected lieutenant turcopolier to represent the langue during its proceedings347 before West’s confinement was extended for another four months on 20 May.348 Not only had the order’s council finally lost patience with him but so, it seems, had the langue, for on 16 May certain English brethren appeared before the council complete and complained that West’s earlier restoration by the council ordinary had been invalid, as he had been deprived of office by the council complete, whose decisions had the force of those of chapter.349 On 3 September their petition was upheld, West was stripped of the grand cross and of his habit and was sent back to the tower where he had been imprisoned in 1533. On 5 September he and his proctor, Nicholas Lambert, were ordered to be confined indefinitely for having appealed to ‘another tribunal’.350 The turcopolier’s reaction to his travails was predictable. On 25 March 1539 he wrote to Cromwell to request that he be recalled to the royal presence for the safeguard of the king’s person. There he would tell Henry what no other man could, which he would rather do than have any goods in the 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 royal reaction to West’s cryptic threats is unknown but according to Nicholas Lambert Homedes opened the letters that had come from England in response in early September. West sent Lambert’s report of this on to Cromwell, and followed it on 24 November with his version of the events behind his deprival of the habit.352 Ignoring his public insults to the master and the constitutional inadequacy of his restoration four years earlier, he depicted 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352

AOM86, fo. 62r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 183. LPFD, xiii, I, no. 1397; II, no. 103. AOM86, fo. 82v; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 183. AOM86, fo. 82v. Ibid., fo. 86r; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 184. AOM286, fo. 119r. Ibid, fos. 120r–v; 86, fo. 92v; LPFD, xiv, II, no. 135. LPFD, xiv, I, no. 605. Ibid., II, nos. 578–9.

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the whole affair as having arisen from his attachment to the king. The master, he said, had called him to his presence some time before, told him that Weston was sick and likely to die and called upon him to ‘leve yowr kyng and all his ill works’ if he would be prior. West had asked how the king had ever injured Homedes, and when the latter replied that Henry had taken his privileges and his commanderies, the turcopolier had said that the law had given him Dingley’s possessions because he was a traitor. The argument had moved on to the injuries done by the king to the pope and when West had asked what the bishop of Rome had to do with England the master had risen and said ‘Call you him beschop of Rome? . . . Ye be accorsyd and owght not to syt yn counsell’. It was after this exchange that West had been confined to his room for three months, and, because of his appeal to the king, 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 the king, the turcopoliership had been bestowed on Giles Russell on 10 November.353 According to a letter written by the imprisoned Lambert to Cromwell on the same day, Russell’s election had not been without controversy, as several members of the langue had wished to wait for royal approval before conducting it, and had stayed away. Lambert expressed himself unsurprised that the foreign lords in Malta were unwilling to accept the king’s patent when so many English brethren had ‘gone clear against it’.354 The order’s official line on these events was upheld by Russell and William Tyrrell in letters to England at about the same time. The new turcopolier wrote to Lord Russell on 1 December reporting that West’s deprivation had been due not only to the inadequacy of his restoration by the council ordinary, but also to his misbehaviour towards the lieutenant master, ‘most of the lords of the religion’, and Homedes since he had recovered the turcopoliership. Russell added that he himself was now heir to the dignities of the langue and asked his powerful namesake’s favour in securing the priory of England when the time should come.355 Tyrrell’s letters to the prior and subprior are rather less naive, and show awareness of how West was likely to react to his deprivation. Besides reiterating the constitutional reasons for West’s deprivation, Tyrrell supposed that West would respond by alleging that he and the master had quarrelled over the king’s patent, which would be ‘but his excuse’, as the order had petitioned for its grant 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 being raised by Lambert rather than West, his insight into the latter’s modus operandi is striking.356 353

AOM86, fo. 96r. 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). 354

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West’s appeal had a powerful effect at home, especially as the envoys of the order who were supposed to depart for England in October 1539 did not leave until March 1540, with the result that West’s version of events went unchallenged for several months.357 By then royal letters ordering West’s release from confinement had arrived in Malta. This Homedes refused to effect, saying that he would send an explanation back by John Story, but Story was reluctant to carry Homedes’ letters, which denied the king the title of Supreme Head. Homedes would not allow Story to return until he agreed to take the letters and consequently it was two months before he was released to go home.358 Writing to Cromwell from Paris on 1 June, he reported that West and Lambert were still in confinement.359 By the time the master’s envoys, who had instructions to explain the arrests and the events leading up to them, had reached the Channel, the decision to dissolve the order had already been taken, and they were denied entry to the realm. Subsequent appeals for Henry to reconsider were equally fruitless, and by the time the first of them had been launched in September the king had already alienated a large proportion of the order’s estates, 600 marks’ worth being given to contenders in the May Day tournament, before the act dissolving the order was yet law.360 The act dissolving the order of St John was sent down from the Lords on 1 May 1540, and passed in the Commons within the week.361 The order’s houses in England, Wales, and Ireland were to be dissolved, its brethren were to give up their habit and were no longer to meet, and those overseas were to appear home within a year if they were to receive their pensions and avoid the royal displeasure. Although their mobile goods were to be confiscated, relatively generous pensions, amounting to about half the revenue they had enjoyed as knights, were allocated to twenty-eight brethren, and to the master and chaplains of the Temple.362 Weston was to receive £1,000 per annum, 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 a seat in the Irish lords. Maurice Denis was appointed receiver of all the order’s lands and made responsible for the payment of the former Hospitallers’ pensions from the local issues of its estates. The prior, however, received not a single payment for, according to Wriothesley’s chronicle, he expired on 357

AOM286, fos. 121v–122r, 130v–131r. 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 7 May, while Hall, Chronicle, 838, and R. Holinshed, The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, 2 vols. (London, 1577), ii. 1578, have William Weston’s death following the dissolution on ‘the Assencion daie, being the fifth daie of Maie’. In fact the Ascension fell on 6 May in 1540. 362 Statutes, iii. 779–81. Hospitaller pensioners are listed in Appendix VIII below. 358

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the very day of the dissolution ‘of pure grief’.363 He was accorded an appropriately dignified funeral and the clear value of his remaining goods at 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 not live to see the priory used as a storehouse, its church partially demolished and its remarkable bell tower blown up for building stone.365 The process of dissolution took some time. The order’s preceptors were formally permitted to retain possession until Michaelmas, and in practice might remain for another month or two, although any rents they might collect during this additional period were reserved to the crown.366 It was not until late December that they were granted their pensions.367 In the meantime, surveys of their property were carried out and plate and other valuables carried away. Doubtless to encourage cooperation, the preceptor was allowed a sixth of the profits of these.368 Even after their removal from their former houses there was some continuity—several knights saw shared service to the crown in the 1540s, others lived on portions of their former estates, and four rejoined the order in 1557. But, save among those brethren who remained behind in Malta, the bonds of conventual life, cooperation, and competition which had united them before 1540 ceased to exist thereafter.369 It is difficult to believe that the Hospital could have survived long in an England 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 in supporting its activities, the order’s allegiance to the pope rendered it vulnerable to accusations of disloyalty, and its wealth made confiscation an attractive prospect.370 The 1534 scheme to disendow the Church proposed that 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 be trusted to expend its revenues on appropriate objectives, and perhaps even that it feared Hospitaller involvement in imperial military action against England. Yet after these proposals were dropped, the government proceeded much more circumspectly towards the religious orders, and particularly with 363

Wriothesley, Chronicle of England, 119. 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. 364

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regard to the Hospital, coming up in 1537 with regulations which would allow it to continue its operations. The accusation at the dissolution that the order’s brethren had failed to hazard their lives and goods against the infidel,372 while demonstrably untrue, shows an awareness even at this stage that dissolving the order left the government open to criticism. Even then, the fact that the Hospital’s properties were not absorbed into the Court of Augmentations suggests that Henry may have been prepared either to reerect it at a later date, or to use the endowment for some other, perhaps military, purpose. Had the petulance, misrepresentation, and scaremongering of West not made the order’s divided allegiances so starkly apparent, the king might well have decided that it was useful enough to tolerate for a few years longer, perhaps until the renewal of war with France necessitated massively increased government expenditure in the mid-1540s.373 Two issues dominated the relationship between the order of St John and the crown during William Weston’s priorate: the Hospital’s continued search for a home after the fall of Rhodes, and the royal breach with Rome. The second made by far the most significant contribution to the order’s dissolution, although Clement West probably hastened its end. Nevertheless, the problems which Henry’s squabble with the Holy See had forced into the open—namely the order’s allegiance to a ‘foreign’ power, its submission of monies overseas, and the long and frequent absences of its brethren in an environment where they could not be effectively supervised—had always been inherent to relations between the hospital and the crown. Successive monarchs had never let the English Hospitallers forget whose subjects they were, instructing them not to agree to higher impositions of responsions, directing how these should be spent, punishing brethren who imported papal bulls into the country and refusing them permission to proceed to headquarters. The order had been tolerated because its activities were seen as meritorious and because the crown had genuinely believed in the unity of Christendom, but it had never been entirely trusted. To a suspicious, beleaguered, and cupiditous monarch like Henry VIII, it was a luxury he could not afford. 372

Statutes, iii. 779; CSPV, v, no. 228. The link between the timing of Henrician dissolutions and royal financial needs is noticed in Youings, Dissolution, 78; Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 122. 373

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Hospitallers in Ireland and Scotland, 1460–1564 7.1

The Priory of Ireland

Many commentators have seen the history of the Hospital of St John in Ireland as that of a fundamentally alien military institution implanted to defend and expand the Anglo-French colony there.1 There is some evidence to support this view. The Hospital may have received anticipatory grants of land 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 donation there are also suggest that most of the order’s properties in Ireland were granted it by the settlers.3 Nevertheless, the Hospital was still seen essentially in the context of its charitable and military work in the Holy Land in this period, so the foundation of its houses in Ireland should be explained as a manifestation of the enthusiasm of the colonists for the defence of the Latin East rather than as a consequence of any military or colonial role it might have been expected to play in the lordship.4 Certainly, there is every sign that, until at least the fourteenth century, the priory of Ireland was fairly fully integrated into the order’s wider network. It was expected to contribute relatively healthy responsions of 300 marks or so to headquarters and both comparison with the Templars and fourteenth-century evidence suggest that a number of Hospitallers based or born in Ireland performed conventual service in the east.5 Legacies for the Holy Land were left in the care of the Irish Hospitallers for some years after the fall of Acre and fourteenth-century donations 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. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (London, 1970), 332–3; J. Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland, 2nd edn. (Dublin, 1998), 49. 2 Falkiner, ‘Hospital’, 283; E. St J. Brooks, Knights’ Fees in Counties Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny (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.

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There were probably family ties between Irish crusaders and Hospitallers as well.7 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the order’s wider role continued to be publicized in Ireland. The indulgences granted the Hospital in 1409–14, 1454–5, and 1479–81 were collected in the island, and in 1467 large numbers from Munster, Leinster, and Connacht came to the preceptory of Any to benefit from a plenary indulgence which had been proclaimed there, although the Munster and Connacht horsemen failed to enter into the spirit of the occasion and exchanged blows after a sermon had been preached, with fatal results.8 The confraria, too, was evidently collected throughout Ireland, an early sixteenth-century letter signed by its receiveror collector-general surviving among the Dowdall deeds.9 The priory of Ireland was also associated with Hospitaller work. There was probably an almshouse and hospital at Kilmainham, the prioral headquarters near Dublin, until 1312, and place-name evidence suggests that other sites, such as Killure (‘Lepers’ Church’), were concerned with the care of the sick.10 Although some such establishments had ceased to function well before the dissolution, others were probably still active. In 1319 the earl of Kildare, with the blessing of the archbishop of Dublin, granted the church of Rathmore to the Hospital for the sustenance of pilgrims and the necessities of the poor. This grant was probably linked to the establishment of a xenodochium at nearby Kilteel, which was still well known in the 1530s, when the archbishop of Dublin however commented that the order’s Irish branch might more appropriately have St John the Evangelist as a patron than the Baptist.11 Care was also taken to maintain hospitality. The order possessed a network of frank-houses in the towns, and while some of these were established as places where travelling brethren could stay, and were reserved to them, substantial facilities for travellers and pilgrims appear to have been maintained at Kilmainham, Kilteel, Cork, and perhaps elsewhere.12 In the fourteenth century the order’s record in upholding its other chief responsibility—the performance of divine service—was also relatively 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; ´ Cuiv, Celtica, 14 (1981), 83–104, CPR1475–85, 194; ‘A Fragment of Irish Annals’, ed. B. O at 93/97 (item 17). 9 Dowdall Deeds, ed. C. McNeill and A. J. Otway-Ruthven (Dublin, 1960), no. 516. For its collection 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 in Ireland 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.

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the conventual church there possessing its own endowment,14 and chaplains were appointed to preceptories and impropriated churches.15 Under Roger Outlaw, prior between 1316 and 1341, the Hospital still had enough of a reputation for competence in this field to be granted churches on condition that it maintained chantries therein.16 By the early thirteenth century the Hospital’s holdings were sufficiently extensive to be erected into a prioral province and a hundred years later, after the acquisition of a large proportion of the Templars’ estates, there were at least seventeen functioning preceptories.17 All were then situated in lands subject to English lordship and English law. The surviving register of Irish provincial chapters, which contains deeds dating from 1321 to 1349, shows that chapters were held regularly, that they were attended by most preceptors, and that care was taken to ensure that properties were kept in good condition and divine service maintained. Preceptors were sometimes appointed in provincial chapter to the custody of two or three houses together, but there seems as yet to have been no decision to unite any of these permanently. What evidence there is for the payment of responsions indicates that some preceptories were expected to contribute fairly healthy sums.18 In the first half of the fourteenth century, then, the priory of Ireland was probably still a productive branch of the Hospital’s international network, managing to fulfil both its military and charitable responsibilities. Nevertheless, it could hardly cut itself off from the society in which it operated. Its headquarters occupied a strategic site on the approaches to Dublin and the vast 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, it was expected to play its part in defence and administration. Indeed, Irishborn Hospitallers were generally more prominent in a local political and administrative context than their English or Scots counterparts. The prior of Ireland was a major figure in the lordship. Like the prior of England he frequently served as a royal councillor and was a lord of parliament, which was sometimes held at Kilmainham.19 In addition he was also very likely to hold 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 of Waterford, traditionally reserved for the upkeep of the ‘prior, sub-prior and chaplains of the church and convent of Kilmainham’, should be resumed into their hands. SRPI, 12/13–21/22 Edward 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 and W. 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.

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Irish Hospitallers for their financial expertise, and the first Hospitaller to hold a major office of state there—the Englishman Stephen de Fulbourn— served initially as treasurer.20 Thereafter, however, Hospitallers in Ireland more usually served as chancellor, chief governor, or lieutenant or deputy chief governor. Prior James Keating (1461–94) boasted in 1463 that several of his predecessors as prior had ‘borne the state of the king and government of this . . . land, to the great ease, honour and profit of all liege people of our. . . Sovereign lord’ and he was substantially right: between the 1270s and 1420s seven priors had served as chancellor and nine as deputy lieutenant or justiciar.21 Priors thus appear to have been considered trustworthy stand-ins who might serve as deputy justiciar on a temporary basis rather than natural choices for the office, but several served relatively long terms as chancellor, often more than once. The crown, in fact, appears to have realized that the Hospitallers made ideal soldier-administrators of a type always needed in Ireland. Here they perhaps scored over other prelates who, although quite often expected to lead bodies of men into battle or defend fortresses, could not bear arms themselves. Both priors and preceptors of the Hospital were able to perform all of these functions, and did so.22 At other times, brethren might be employed to treat with Irish lords, or as translators in parleys with them.23 Even if Hospitaller houses had not been founded primarily with the military and administrative contribution they might make in mind, by the 1270s the Hospital had assumed major and practically continuous responsibilities in these areas. This was not merely because of the suitability of its personnel for such service but also because the Anglo-Irish colony was faced by growing external threats and internal difficulties. Until quite recently these have been viewed as driven by a Gaelic Revival or Resurgence having both cultural and political components.24 From this standpoint late medieval Irish history is chiefly characterized by a bitter struggle for supremacy between two nations, the native Irish and the English born in Ireland, in which the former gradually gained the upper hand. In the course of this conflict the native Irish were gradually able to drive out or Gaelicize the colonists in Connacht, in all but the south-eastern corner of Ulster and in much of Munster. In other areas septs subdued in the early days of the conquest resumed open struggle, so that formerly secure areas of the

20

Nicholson, Knights Hospitaller, 108–9. 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 and Bullen, 378, 380. 24 The debate is summarized in A. Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland, ii: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1993), 302–5. 21

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lordship, ‘lands of peace’, became marcher lands subject to native Irish raids and 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 marcher lordships between absentee heirs,28 and by the mortality, flight, or Gaelicization of large numbers of colonists.29 Confronted by these difficulties, the English born in Ireland attempted to force landholders and tenants to reside on or defend their estates,30 to ban the adoption of Irish dress, language, and law by the colonists, and to exclude the native Irish from lay or ecclesiastical office.31 In formulating these policies, they supposedly developed a clear sense of their own identity as a ‘middle nation’, opposed not merely to Gaelicization but also to interference by English-born officials, and to breaches of their legislative and other privileges.32 Such behaviour was not confined to the Irish estates. The Irish branches of religious orders owing allegiance to English provincial heads, such as the Dominican and Austin friars, also demonstrated a growing spirit of independence, resisting visitations from and neglecting to pay taxes to their superiors in England and appealing to their masters-general over the heads of their English provincials.33 In general, however, the effects of the sundering of the Irish between two ‘nations’ were held to have been disastrous for the Church, leading to its division into segments inter Hibernicos and inter Anglicos, to the seizure of ecclesiastical estates and the Church’s consequent impoverishment, and to a low level of clerical education and morals.34 The older established religious orders, especially the Augustinian canons and Cistercians, were depicted as moribund and riven by interracial strife and their houses as increasingly subject to takeover by both Irish and Anglo-Irish magnate and gentle fam25 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 gens with a clear sense both of their Englishness and of their distinctness from the English of England. R. Frame, ‘ ‘‘Les Engleys Ne´es 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.), Medieval Ireland, 589. 34 J. Watt, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 1970), esp. chs. 9–10.

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ilies. Eventually they acquired ‘the racial and cultural colouring of the areas in which they lay’, local pressure and papal provisions producing the appointment of ‘ever more secular individuals as commendatory abbots and priors’. The last generation of these before the dissolution were ‘little better than laymen, local lords or men of war’.35 The sole bright point was provided by the vigour of the mendicants and particularly by the foundation of new houses of friars, many of strict observance, in Gaelic-speaking areas.36 Over the past quarter of a century interpretations centred on the struggle of the two nations have been partially replaced by those emphasizing the fragmentation and localization of society in Ireland. Scholars have argued that cultural accommodation could be a two-way process,37 that the struggle for power in the localities was carried on without much regard for ethnicity,38 and that political changes in late medieval Ireland should be seen in the context of wider European developments. Plague, warfare, and depopulation were, after all, hardly problems exclusive to Ireland and if landlords were faced with a lack of tenants and falling agricultural profitability they might compensate for these difficulties in various ways. Thus, in return for propping up the ailing government, which they effectively took over, the magnates and greater gentry were able to usurp the royal prerogatives of lordship and justice and to conduct private war and quarter soldiers on and levy comestibles from the populace.39 The tempting parallel here with some French nobles’ exploitation of conflict and monarchical weakness during the Hundred Years War as a cover to return to forms of ‘pure lordship’ should perhaps not be pursued too far: the proliferation of tower houses in late medieval Ireland has recently been interpreted as usually betokening not the insecurity of the populace but the growing self-confidence of servile tenants turned freemen, 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 of England and Papal Provisions in Fifteenth-Century Ireland’, in Watt et al. (eds.), Medieval Studies, 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. Cosgrove and 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 ‘one was 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.

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acknowledging the decline in agriculture and the conversion of marginal areas into pasture, revisionists have also pointed out that the Anglo-Irish continued to hold nearly all the significant ports and could thus partially control exports from the hinterland.41 Citing the construction of tower houses, friaries, and parish churches after a comparative lack of such activity in the fourteenth, they have posited a period of economic recovery in the fifteenth century.42 It is nevertheless apparent that the late medieval Irish Church was faced with considerable challenges. Recently Henry Jefferies has argued that the secular clergy of the province of Armagh coped with these fairly well.43 Despite the loss of their primatial seat to the O’Neills, the archbishops retained their moral authority and were able to instruct and discipline their clergy effectively and to supervise areas inter Hibernicos in conjunction with local officials. But no similar attempts have yet been made to counter the prevailing picture of decline among the traditional religious orders, so that here the older orthodoxy remains largely unchallenged. Even so, it is clear that the religious did not meekly accept their fate. Houses that suffered from Irish raids might reinvest in property in more sheltered areas, while others fortified their church towers and sat tight. Some, particularly those lucky enough to find powerful patrons or sited in sheltered locales, were able to rebuild their monastery churches substantially.44 Even in their decay, the Cistercians made some efforts to reform.45 The Hospitallers were in some ways better placed than the monastic orders to cope with new challenges. As active religious, they were not bound by a vow of stability, and were flexible when it came to abandoning or amalgamating houses which proved unviable. Priors of Ireland were also able to use their position in government to secure favourable leases and grants from the crown. The most important of these were successive leases of the royal manors of Leixlip and Chapel Izod, the latter adjoining the prioral estate at Kilmainham, from the mid-thirteenth century onwards.46 Other grants might be linked to the specific circumstances in which the order found itself. Thus, in compensation for damage to the order’s lands in Ulster, Meath, and County Dublin during the Bruce invasion, Roger Outlaw was able to secure grants of land and forfeited estates, appointment as an executor 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. Ibid. 490, 597. 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. 42 43

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replace those who had fled.47 At various times, he was also granted or permitted to obtain a number of rights and properties, particularly churches, and had the sums he owed to the crown reduced.48 Most of his acquisitions were in relatively sheltered locations, and so went some way towards compensating the order for its losses in Ulster and Connacht. None of Outlaw’s successors were quite so successful in exploiting their position in this way, but several were able to extract some compensation for their service to the crown in the form of life grants, mortmain licences, leases, and wardships.49 On occasion even individual preceptors might be granted the custody of castles or episcopal temporalities in royal gift.50 Nor was the order militarily defenceless. In the first half of the fourteenth century it already possessed what were described as castles at its houses at Kilmainham and Kilteel, and was planning the fortification of other sites.51 In 1360 its brethren in Ireland were described collectively as holding ‘a good position for the repulse of the king’s Irish enemies’.52 Sixteenth-century documents and surviving remains provide evidence that by the time of the dissolution many commanderies were fortified. Most fortified structures appear to have been five-storey tower-houses typical of late medieval Ireland, although some might have been built by tenants rather than the order itself.53 Nevertheless, with one or two exceptions, those listed in 1540 were erected on estates that were still in the order’s grasp and provide testimony of its determination to defend itself. The most substantial was Kilmainham itself, with its walls, four towers, fortified gatehouse, and fortified bridge over the Liffey.54 A fifteenth-century order by the great council that the bridge should be fortified demonstrates that the prioral complex was regarded as holding a key position in the defence of Dublin.55 The substantial tower with attached gatehouse which survives at Kilteel, overlooking the Kildare plain, is also rather more than a mere gentleman’s tower-house. The fields surrounding it are littered with the remains of substantial stone buildings probably hospitaller rather than military in function, but the late fifteenth-century Pale ditch incorporated the preceptorial enceinte and the 1543 patent granting the property to the Alens stressed the necessity of the site for resistance to the O’Tooles. Significantly, the tower-house resisted destruction by Rory O’More in the 1570s, although the church 47

Nicholson, ‘Frontiers’, 53; CPR1317–21, 197; RPCCH, 21b, 37b; CCR1333–7, 63. 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. 48

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was probably destroyed.56 Less impressive fortifications are known to have existed at nine or more other sites, and fine fifteenth-century tower-houses survive at Kilclogan and Ballyhack.57 Kilclogan, like Kilteel, was described as an important defensive position in the 1540s.58 Nevertheless, although other orders tended to fortify their church towers rather than construct purpose-built tower-houses, incastellation was a common response of religious houses to the disorders of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.59 Where the Hospital’s reaction to the military threat posed by ‘Irish enemies and English rebels’ really differed from those of the Cistercians and the Augustinian canons was in the personal engagement of its members in military action. From the 1270s onwards, priors of Kilmainham commanded armies or contingents in them or defended fortresses on behalf 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 the siege of Rouen.61 Furthermore, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the masters of many of the order’s local houses served on the commission of the peace, at least two being killed in battle with ‘Irish enemies’.62 Preceptors might be granted commands over castles, too. In 1388 Thomas Mercamston, probably already preceptor of nearby Castleboy, was appointed castellan of Carrickfergus, which had recently been attacked by ´ Ne´ill.63 These, however, were public responsibilities undertaken on Niall O behalf of the lordship or comitatus. There is less direct evidence for the order taking military action on its own account, but there are indications that it was both willing and able to do so. As early as 1262 we find brother Elias of Killerig donning mail and leading an ‘armed multitude’ to resist the archbishop 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 (Templeton and Moreton, Louth), 111 (Kilmainhamwood); RK, 161 (Crook), 166 (Kilmainhambeg); CICRE, 93 (Glanunder alias Ballymany, Dublin); Gwynn and Hadcock, Ireland, 336 (County Limerick, in 1604, citing RK). Some of these structures (Glanunder, Moreton, Templeton) were already 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 the Exchequer, 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 Carew Manuscripts, Miscellaneous, 157, 471. 63 CPR1385–9, 438; Nicholson, ‘Frontiers’, 54; T. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: The History and Archaeology of an Irish Barony, 1177–1400 (Edinburgh, 1980), 119. 64 Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s Register, ed. McNeil, 93/95.

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was using bases in Kilkenny and Tipperary to wage private war against Walter Burke in 1417 and his successor-but-four James Keating summoned an army to chastise the archbishop of Armagh for supporting a rival to the priorate in the mid-1480s.65 Members of the order were clearly more than ready to take up arms in pursuit of private quarrels within the lordship and it can probably be assumed that they maintained some kind of armed force at their houses. This is certainly suggested by the fact that in 1297 the master of the Templars of Kilcork was reproved for his failure to keep armed horsemen at his preceptory and that in 1356 the government ordered that Kilteel be adequately guarded.66 The dichotomy between the order’s defence of its own property and that of the wider Anglo-Irish community is in any case probably a false one. Although there are instances which suggest the contrary, it is unlikely that the order was often targeted specifically by raiders, and the participation of its brethren in communal defence must have served both their own interests and those of the locality they were acting to defend. Equally often, however, brethren appear to have used force in pursuit of their own family and personal interests. Despite the order’s vigorous protection of its possessions, its estates and interests suffered significant damage during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 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 midfifteenth century so many of its estates had been lost to the native Irish that it became unviable as a residence for brethren and was abandoned to lay farmers. At the dissolution it was reported that it lay in the hands of the Magennises and O’Neills, where the king’s writ did not run, and could not be extended. The Magennises paid a nominal rent of 66s. 8d. for the property.67 The Hospital’s estates in the west, which appear to have included fairly substantial properties, suffered a similar fate, and barely feature even in the chapter acts of 1321–49. In 1529 a leading Galway merchant was given 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, but none of these was mentioned in the extents made in 1540–1, although their omission may indicate deliberate concealment on the part of the order or its lessee rather than their occupation by lay usurpers.68 Many of the estates the 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, Analecta 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 them as a reward. ‘Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland, 1556–1571’, ed. J. T. Gilbert, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fifteenth Report, Appendix, Part III (London, 1897), 113.

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profitability, often as a result of warfare. In 1446, for example, Thomas Talbot successfully petitioned that his prioral camera of Kilmainhambeg and a number of other estates should be exempted from non-parliamentary taxation because they had been ‘destroyed and wasted by Irish enemies’,69 while in 1470 the prior and convent of St Wulstan, who leased estates in County Kildare from the order and the manor of Salt from the crown, sought relief of the due rent, complaining that these possessions were destroyed by Irish enemies and English rebels. The prior of St John was, however, able to have the payments due from his leases of royal manors in County Dublin reduced to make good the loss.70 Faced with agricultural depression, declining membership, and Irish raids the order increasingly resorted to leasing its estates, 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 before 1472.71 Although the position of the English born in Ireland began to improve in the later fifteenth century, at the dissolution a large proportion of Hospitaller properties were still let out for sums much lower than their potential value and many buildings were described as ruined and estates as waste.72 The challenge was not merely military. In the fifteenth century, delation at the curia became a popular strategy by which religious houses and individual churches could be taken over and held as family sinecures, primarily by the native Irish.73 The order was certainly not immune to this process. In 1430 the preceptor of Tully was accused of detaining the rectory of Rosfyndglaisse without 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 challenged by an native Irish delator.74 In the likely event that they could convince the Curia and local judges delegate that they would make apt members of the order, native Irishmen might also be able to force their way into its ranks and gain control of its preceptories in some areas. While the Hospital appears to have enforced the legislation forbidding the native Irish entry into religious houses throughout the fourteenth century during the course of the fifteenth the important preceptories of Clonoulty (Co. Tipperary) and Mourne (Co. Cork) were taken over by the O’Dwyers and the MacCarthys of Muskerry ´ Duibhidhir (O’Dwyer), preceptor of Clonoulty in the respectively. Thomas O 1440s, at least attended provincial chapters, but the MacCarthy occupation 69

SRPI, Henry VI, 90/1–92/3. SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 678/9–680/1. SRPI, 12/13–21/22 Edward IV, 78/9–80/1. 72 Extents, passim. 73 The English born in Ireland might employ their existing local influence to achieve similar, if less permanent, dominance. For example, the Vales or Walls held the preceptory of Killerig in 1327 and 1406; the Northamptons Ballyhack in 1355–65 and 1382, and the Powers Kilbarry in 1449 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. 70 71

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of Mourne in the 1490s, although legitimized by appeals to Rome, was conducted 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 of more than £80 from lands and churches in 1308, and in the 1490s Mourne’s value was estimated at between 80 and 140 marks.76 The effects of military action and lay occupation were exacerbated by the prolonged agricultural depression common to much of western Europe in the later Middle Ages. Even in the absence of the Gaelic challenge the Hospital, like other major landowners, might have found it difficult to cope with economic and social upheaval. Its potential adaptability, moreover, was undermined both by the nature and interests of its own brethren and by the involvement of the English langue and the convent in prioral affairs. The convent was not entirely unsympathetic to the difficulties involved in running its western priories, hence, for example, its willingness to permit the amalgamation of smaller preceptories.77 Nevertheless, given its responsibilities in the east and its perennial shortage of money, its primary concern was to ensure the continued flow of responsions to Rhodes. Increasingly, these were expected to take the form of cash, a commodity late medieval Irish landlords often had difficulty obtaining. In 1471, for example, prior James Keating was licensed to take wheat and malt into England to satisfy his responsions because his tenants had insufficient cash with which to pay him.78 Such difficulties must have been exacerbated by priors’ responsibilities within the lordship, which frequently required them to hire troops or perform other functions for which reimbursement might be difficult to obtain.79 In 1422, for example, William FitzThomas, prior and justiciar, had to pay 160 marks out of his own pocket to Gearatt Mac Murchadha 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 headquarters, the English langue was always ready to send an Englishman to step into the breach. In this it was supported by successive kings of England, who often preferred to employ Englishmen to administer Ireland in the fourteenth century and remained doubtful of their Irish-born subjects thereafter. As a result, from the mid-fourteenth century a struggle developed between the 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.

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maintaining that priors of Ireland should be appointed in convent, where the English always outnumbered other ‘British’ brethren, and the Irish that they should be elected at home.81 On Roger Outlaw’s death in 1341, a year in which Irish-born ministers were removed from office and royal grants in Ireland revoked, he was replaced by the English-born John le Archer, despite the Irish brethren’s preceding election of John le Mareschal as prior.82 Most of the priors appointed in the next forty years were Englishmen and some of them displaced Irish-born incumbents elected in provincial chapter after the death of the previous prior. At least two English brethren were also appointed to Irish preceptories in the same period.83 Although the Irish-born brethren apparently accepted these superiors, in 1384 they took advantage of the death of their English-born prior, William Tany, to throw off their allegiance to Rhodes and transfer it to the anti-grand master supported by the Roman pontiff. This allowed them to elect their own priors without reference to either langue or convent.84 Despite the conventual 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 gain possession of the priory against Irish opposition.85 The need to resist his claims, however, appears to have induced the Irish-born prior, Robert White, to resign in favour of an illegitimate son of the earl of Ormond, Thomas Butler, in about 1407.86 By 1410 Butler had seen off the challenge from Holt and was able to extract the privilege that priors should henceforth be elected in Ireland from the chapter-general as a condition of the priory’s return to obedience. The Irish-born brethren continued to cite this concession for many years to come, while the English langue sought equally strenuously to overturn it.87 By 1410 the priory of Ireland was thus a very different institution than thirty years previously. A generation of successful resistance to authority had taught it self-reliance and solidarity, as manifested in the joint petitions the Irish preceptors made to Rome in 1400 and 1421, and to the convent in 1449.88 It had also left the priory in the hands of the first of a series of scions or clients of the great ‘Anglo-Irish’ magnate families at just the moment when these began to compete seriously for control of the government of the lordship. The priory was a valuable prize in the struggle for dominance, and priors’ political involvements might have unfortunate consequences for 81

Tipton, ‘Irish Hospitallers’, 38–9. 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. 82

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themselves and their order. By the first half of the fifteenth century, the responsion expected from Ireland had fallen to £40 Irish, while successive priors were accused of alienating estates, misusing the conventual seal to grant long leases at minimal rents, admitting unfit persons into the order, engaging in wars waged without conventual authority, and neglecting to repair their appropriated churches or pay their vicars properly. In order for the Hospital to reintegrate the priory into its structures and restore its efficiency, it was obviously necessary to reduce these lordly priors to obedience, but this was more easily said than done. Time and again threats and cajolery proved insufficient and the convent ordered an incumbent prior removed. Its preferred alternatives were usually Englishmen, but when these failed to establish themselves, as they invariably did, the order was willing to turn to Irish-born brethren who promised to pay their responsions. It was not until 1494 that the repeated insubordination of James Keating towards both his religious and secular superiors prompted more drastic action to be taken and the priory was forbidden to Irish-born brethren by act of parliament. Thereafter, Englishmen served as priors until the dissolution, although the resistance of the Irish-born brethren was not broken until almost the very end. An indication of the extent to which the turmoil surrounding the prioral office and the accusations of maladministration and improper conduct directed at priors were tied to the politics of the lordship is provided by the career of Thomas FitzGerald (prior, 1436/8–44). FitzGerald was closely involved, as an ally of the Talbots, in their feud with the Butler earls of Ormond, which repeatedly disrupted Irish politics in the first half of the fifteenth century.89 In 1440 the Irish council ordered all the Hospital’s estates to be confiscated in response to FitzGerald’s brothers’ ambush and kidnap of the deputy lieutenant, William Welles.90 When the prior escaped from prison some time later all offices and fees belonging to the priory were again seized.91 The convent, meanwhile, had determined to revoke the privilege of 1410 on the grounds of the maladministration and non-payment of 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 Thomas Butler 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; Maurice FitzGerald, who appears in an Armagh archiepiscopal register as prior in September 1436, and perhaps died on 19 October 1438, and Thomas FitzGerald, the third son of Thomas Oge sheriff of Limerick, who became prior immediately afterwards. It is more probable, however, that the 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

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told he could not hold an English preceptory with it in commendam hurriedly stepped down.93 Its next choice, Hugh Middleton, was appointed visitor and governor as well as prior, with instructions to conduct a thorough reform and administer the priory until further notice. Presumably to forestall revolt, the Irish brethren were instructed to obey him as visitor but were not informed that he had been granted the prioral dignity.94 Conventual interventions, however, sometimes had results neither anticipated nor welcome. The earl of Ormond took advantage of the visitor’s arrival in 1444 to eject FitzGerald from the prioral office and have Thomas Talbot, with whose family he had recently settled his feud, appointed instead.95 Despite his commission, Middleton contented himself with Ormond’s promise that responsions would be paid and a down payment towards the same and quickly returned to England, having first instituted Talbot, an illegitimate son of the archbishop of Dublin, as prior.96 FitzGerald, however, did not take his removal lying down, and broke into the priory by force, removing the conventual seal and granting leases and quittances to his supporters before making his way to London, where he accused Ormond of treason and challenged him to a duel.97 The combat was only cancelled after lists had been erected and the erstwhile prior of a military order instructed in points of arms by a London fishmonger apparently more expert than him.98 Despite securing support for his restoration from the Irish-born brethren, the crown, the pope, and eventually even the convent, FitzGerald remained unable to recover possession.99 The degree of the convent’s miscalculation is made more painfully apparent by a letter of 1449, in which the Irish-born brethren protested the removal of their prior in the strongest terms and provided an interpretation remember only FitzThomas and Thomas FitzGerald as having been prior between 1420 and 1444 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, Translated from 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. 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 complained 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 foliation 122v–123v]) is in Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors’, 100–2. 94

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of recent prioral history which shows the extent of their attachment to the superiors they had elected. The prior of the conventual church of Kilmainham, the subprior, eight preceptors, and a conventual brother wrote to the master and convent in support of royal letters asking for FitzGerald’s restoration. In doing so they looked back on the priorates of William FitzThomas (1420–36) and FitzGerald as a golden age. They recalled that FitzThomas had been elected in Ireland and received magistral confirmation according to the privilege of 1410 and had ‘worthily and laudibly’ ruled the priory for sixteen years, faithfully paying his responsions.100 Exercising himself in strenuous acts of virtue he had grown old and, desiring to fill a lesser and quieter office, retired. In his place, the brethren had elected Thomas FitzGerald, apparently a living exemplar of every knightly and lordly virtue; strenuous in arms, learned and practised in each law, mature in council and decorated with many virtues. His fall, after seven years in which he had patiently withstood adversity, had come about solely due to the enmity of the earl of Ormond. Ormond had captured and chained the prior without cause and seized the tithes and rents of both the prioral camerae and other preceptories into the king’s hand. Being liberated, FitzGerald had gone to England, where he had been honourably received and maintained for four years and granted the officer of chancellor of Ireland. For these reasons, and most especially because of the inexperience and maladministration of Thomas Talbot, they begged that FitzGerald be restored to his dignity.101 It is not necessary to take the Irish-born Hospitallers’ account of these events entirely seriously. FitzThomas appears to have been a competent and uncontroversial public servant, serving as both chancellor and justiciar, but he 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 his failure to pay procurations or adequately remunerate the vicar of Kildemock.102 FitzGerald was certainly not the paragon he was claimed to be in 1449, but in removing him and appointing Talbot, Middleton had alienated the Irish-born brethren without ensuring that the priory would be any more efficiently administered. It is not surprising that they reacted angrily to the intrusion of an outside party into an already complicated situation, and their resistance to conventual interference would be demonstrated again. Although initially confirming Talbot as administrator of the priory, the order’s government was clearly unhappy at the manner of his appointment and the new prior’s failure to pay responsions and other lapses only served to substantiate 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.

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to replace him with another Englishman but reappointed FitzGerald in 1450, accepted Talbot as prior in the following year, and in 1459, on the latter’s renewed failure to reform himself, provided an Irish-born knight who had performed several years’ service in Rhodes, James Keating.104 Its decision to choose an Irishman for the post may have been prompted not just by the reluctance of English brethren to reside there, but perhaps also by the solidarity displayed by the Irish-born in 1449. At first Keating’s enterprise appeared as unlikely to succeed as its predecessors. Talbot’s cousin, the second earl of Shrewsbury, was by now a leading royal councillor and it is most unlikely that Henry VI’s government would have removed him had it remained in power. As it was, however, Shrewsbury was killed at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. His Hospitaller cousin had already been in trouble for opposing the duke of York’s rule in Ireland earlier in the year and with the Yorkist victory in 1461 his removal became desirable to the crown as well as the order.105 Although the erstwhile prior was appointed to head a commission of the peace in County Dublin in June 1461, three months after Edward IV’s accession to the throne, the conventual renewal of Keating’s appointment as prior in early July suggests that word had been had from England that the new king would approve an election in Rhodes and the removal of the previous incumbent.106 In any case, Keating was soon in situ, and remained prior until the 1490s. Considering his past service the convent must have had high expectations of his future good conduct. For a few years these were not disappointed. The new prior submitted responsions,107 attempted to recover alienated lands through parliament with at least some success, and attended the Rome chapter-general of 1466–7.108 Yet in spite of these encouraging signs, Keating was from the start involved in the factional politics of the lordship and soon proved to have an anti-authoritarian streak. Within a year of taking up his post he had been attainted by the Irish parliament for attacking the chief justice of the Common Bench, Robert Dowdall, while the latter was on pilgrimage.109 After an appeal to the king, however, the attainder was quickly removed,110 the ease with which Keating managed this perhaps owing something to his political connections. His family were probably clients of the FitzGerald earls of 104 105

204.

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AOM362, fos. 124v–125v, 126r; 363, fo. 156v; 369, fos. 179r–1780v. SRPI, Henry VI, 648/9–652/3, 752/3–754/5; Richardson and Sayles, Irish Parliament,

Frame, ‘Commissions of the Peace’, 13; AOM73, fo. 107r; 371, fos. 142r–144r, 144v. 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 with Talbot. ‘Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus’, ed. Lawlor, 13. Despite this, Thomas Dowdall 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. 107

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Desmond, and after their eclipse he remained close to the distantly related earls of Kildare until the 1490s. Yet two events in 1467 appear to have led him to distrust both his religious and his royal superiors. First, he may have been irked that the convent rewarded his attendance at the Rome chaptergeneral by increasing his responsions from £40 to about £96 Irish.111 After his visit to Italy he fell rapidly and heavily into arrears with the common treasury and largely ignored repeated attempts to compel him to pay. In 1471, 1473, and 1474 priors of England or visitors were instructed to secure payment and to remove him if he failed to comply, but he presumably had the support of Kildare and Edward IV did nothing to support the convent’s demands.112 Secondly, in October 1467, after Keating’s return from Rome, John Tiptoft earl of Worcester was appointed deputy of Ireland. He arrived with a considerable retinue and, for reasons that remain unclear, had Kildare and Desmond attainted. Kildare managed to escape but to general consternation Desmond was executed. Presumably because of his association with the earls, Tiptoft also had Keating imprisoned and extorted a fine of £40 from him, an exaction which he later claimed had prevented him from paying his responsions.113 After Tiptoft’s departure, the Irish council elected Kildare justiciar in his place and the earl held a parliament to have his attainder reversed. Further attempts to assert royal authority in Ireland were actively resisted by his followers, including Keating. In 1478 the prior, by then constable of Dublin castle, broke down its drawbridge rather than admit Henry Lord Grey of Ruthin, the newly appointed royal deputy.114 While insisting that Keating repair the damage he had caused, the king was not yet prepared to remove him or to enforce conventual demands that he satisfy his debts. Indeed, in 1479 he and the other malcontents were invited to London to discuss Irish affairs with the king, a meeting which went so well that the prior was soon reappointed constable.115 In the same year the convent ordered the turcopolier, John Kendal, to secure payment of Keating’s arrears.116 Neglecting this opportunity to redeem relations with his superiors, the prior finally put himself beyond the Pale, or rather did not put himself beyond the Pale, when he failed to come to the defence of Rhodes when summoned in 1480.117 In December 1482, by which time it was clear that he was not coming, the convent decided that enough was enough. 111 112

92–5.

AOM283, fo. 31r. AOM380, fo. 136r–v; 381, fo. 161r–v; 382, fo. 148r–v; Sarnowsky, ‘Kings and Priors’,

Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 591–618, at 600–1; SRPI, 1–12 Edward IV, 722/3. 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. 113 114

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Keating was formally deprived of office and an English knight, Marmaduke Lumley, 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 rather pathetically to the disgraced prior of Ireland, Thomas Talbot, and ordered him to put the new one into possession.119 When Lumley landed in Ireland in the following year, Keating met him at Clontarf with an armed force, seized him, and kept him prisoner until, afraid for his life, he surrendered his papal and magistral bulls.120 In return for renouncing his documents and claims, Lumley was then released and allowed possession of Kilsaran.121 He used his freedom to seek support from ‘gentyles and certain portownes’, from the king and from the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin.122 The primate of Ireland, Octavian de Palatio, who had recently been summoned before King’s Bench at Keating’s behest over his refusal to attend parliament, was particularly sympathetic.123 After his release, Lumley came before Palatio at Drogheda and persuaded him to write to Rhodes on his behalf and to order Keating not to hinder his possession of the priory. Lumley was then formally inducted by the archdeacon of Richmond, and when Keating continued to deny him possession, Palatio and the archbishop of Dublin, John Walton, excommunicated him. In June 1484 the Primate wrote to Richard III, invoking his aid in securing possession for Lumley and asking for Keating to be excluded from parliaments, councils, and the royal courts.124 As ever, Keating responded vigorously to the challenge, occupying Kilsaran in September, seizing its fruits and expelling its tenants. Moreover, hearing that Palatio was bringing an army to Kilsaran in Lumley’s support, the old prior gathered a force to confront 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 report these events to Rhodes later on in the same year, but at some stage was again taken into custody by Keating. This time he was not released and died in prison, probably before October 1489.126 118 AOM76, fos. 132r–v; 388, fos. 134v–137r. The pope confirmed his appointment in the following 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 the same name was preceptor of Kilsaran. SRPI, Ireland, 1–12 Edward IV, 72/3; Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 19. 120 Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, nos. 185, 218a, 520. Walter Harris’s copy of Lumley’s letter 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 Irish per annum out of Kilsaran until the 325 marks 4s. 8d. he had advanced towards the order’s expenses should be repaid. This deed was signed by Keating and other Hospitallers and had the explicit consent of Lumley. Dublin, National Archives, RC13/8, c.17 (pp. 23–5). 122 Registrum Octaviani, ed. Sughi, no. 185. The letter ‘to our king’ can probably be dated to mid-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.

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This affair, still more than previous attempts to appoint Englishmen as priors of Ireland, demonstrated that without active royal support backed up at the very least by a plausible threat of force an outsider stood very little chance of unseating an Irish-born incumbent. Luckily from the convent’s point of view, however, Keating soon manoeuvred himself into a position where he represented a danger to the crown. He played so prominent a role in the support of the Pretender Lambert Simnel, who was crowned king in Ireland as Edward VI, that in 1488 Henry VII’s deputy, Sir Richard Edgecombe opined that Keating and Justice Plunket ‘were specially noted amongst all others chef causes of the seyd Rebellion’.127 Alone of the rebels, Edgecombe refused to pardon the prior, instead removing him from Dublin castle and sending him to court to ask the king’s forgiveness. Other erstwhile dissidents, including Kildare, also came to see Henry VII, who feasted them but had Simnel wait on them at table.128 Despite his record, Keating was pardoned in January 1489, but one condition of his restoration to grace may have been that he settle his debts with the order, which he indicated his willingness to do later in the year.129 Keating’s pardon secured him against further action by the convent for several years. Archdall’s assertion that he was replaced by James Wall in 1491 appears to be mistaken.130 Even if he was removed Keating probably recovered possession, for he continued to have the protection of Kildare and remained influential enough to provide support for a second pretender to the throne, Perkin Warbeck. It was this that finally brought about his downfall. Although Kildare and several leading gentry gave surety for Keating’s good behaviour in May 1494, the king and convent seem already to have been planning coordinated action against him.131 In October 1494 the preceptor of Dinmore, Thomas Docwra, was appointed prior of Ireland and Keating again declared deposed.132 Despite the statutes to the contrary, Docwra was to be permitted to retain with the priory both Dinmore and, should he procure either, the bailiwick of Eagle or the turcopoliership. The brethren of the English langue even conceded him ancienitas to be promoted to another English preceptory in addition to Dinmore and the Irish priory.133 Such generosity probably reflected limited expectations of success and it is noteworthy 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. Registrum Octaviani, 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.

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Docwra exchanged it for title to the priory.134 It was not until September 1497 that the convent was able to persuade another English knight, Robert Evers, to accept the poisoned chalice.135 Despite Docwra’s personal reluctance, within months of his appointment as prior a parliament held by Sir Edward Poynings had taken steps to ensure that the priory would be brought permanently under English control. It was explained that ‘where as the hedde house & priorate of Seint 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 was to be a man of English blood, ‘sad, wise and discreet’, and ‘haveing lyvelod by 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 king before taking possession of the priory. The alienations and grants of annuities and leases made by James Keating and Thomas Talbot were also revoked and a succeeding prior given authority to re-enter such possessions, while those received into the order by Keating were to appear before his successor and show by what authority they had been professed and given preceptories.136 Irish-born brethren continued to hold individual preceptories, but Irishmen were not henceforth to be allowed to claim the priory. This was an important victory for the langue. Since 1384 the priory of Ireland had effectively been denied to the (English) majority of its brethren, and the order in Ireland had been virtually independent of both Clerkenwell and Rhodes. Marmaduke Lumley’s had been only the latest in a series of humiliating failures to reverse this situation. The statute of 1494 and Keating’s conviction for treason by the English parliament in 1495 helped pave the way for the restoration of the payment of responsions to Rhodes and provided a new source of patronage for the English brethren.137 Yet the triumph was entirely dependent on the support of the crown. Requests for royal assistance in reducing the priory of Ireland to obedience had repeatedly failed to secure effective intervention and it was only James Keating’s manifest and dangerous treason that made the events of 1494 possible. Had he been more careful the Irish-born might have remained in control of the priory until the dissolution. The measures taken by the parliament of 1494–5 were clearly a major turning point in the priory’s history. Some have also asserted that they had the effect of transforming it into an ‘instrument of royal rule’ and that the feeble resistance in Ireland to the dissolution is explicable in the light of the 134

AOM77, fo. 147r. 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. 135

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disenfranchisement of the Irish brethren.138 There is some truth in these contentions. The act had indeed been passed with the king’s ‘better service’ as its specific intention and John Rawson, who was appointed administrator in 1511 and prior in 1514, was certainly a capable and committed royal servant, who upheld rather than opposed the Henrician Supremacy. Nevertheless, in 1494 and for twenty-odd years thereafter, things might not have seemed so clear-cut. In the past a number of priors had repudiated the actions of their predecessors without managing to do any better themselves, and the sorry record of previous attempts to appoint Englishmen to Kilmainham must have been fresh in the minds of all concerned. Robert Evers, who was in possession by 1499,139 seems not to have been greatly disturbed by the Irish-born brethren, but this was probably precisely because he made no serious attempt to reform them. There is certainly no evidence that he investigated the titles of those who held preceptories, or that the convent had any more control over the appointments of Irish preceptors during his priorate than before. The growing strength of the native Irish presence in the order in the first decade of the sixteenth century may also be a sign of weakening prioral control, with the preceptory of Killerig falling into the ´ Curryn, who appears to have taken the side of his family hands of Padraig O against that of the order in a dispute between the Hospital and the prior of Kells.140 Nor was Evers’s administration of his own estates much of a success. While he was able to submit about half of the responsions due from Ireland during the course of his priorate, which was a considerable improvement on Keating’s performance,141 this perhaps caused him financial difficulties, for in 1504 he owed the archbishop of Dublin seven years’ worth of procurations. He earned further opprobrium in the capital in 1506 when, during the course of a dispute over the possession of a meadow, he seized hay belonging to the Dublin Dominicans, prompting the mayor and citizens to come forth and drove him back into the prioral complex at Kilmainham.142 Still more seriously, as gradually became apparent, his management techniques were just as flawed as those of his predecessors. Although understanding about his failure to attend the 1504 chaptergeneral, by 1506 the convent had begun to show signs of worry about Evers’s activities, and commissioned Thomas Docwra to compel his Irish 138

Sire, Knights of Malta, 182. 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 due to 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’Sullivan, ‘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 (over fishing rights). 139

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counterpart and all benefice-holders in Ireland to pay their dues to the common treasury.143 Besides his evident failure to submit responsions in full, Evers also neglected to send the results of a visitation ordered in 1504 to the convent. In February 1510 he was ordered to dispatch these and prohibited from conferring the order’s habit on anyone else without express licence.144 The following October, seemingly aware that matters were badly awry, the grand master appointed an English knight, John Bothe, to solicit Evers to pay his debts to the common treasury; to inform himself continually on the business of the priory ‘lest it fall into greater ruin’ and to prevent the prior from making grants or alienations without authorization from Rhodes. Bothe was to petition the relevant authorities for assistance in implementing his instructions and to proceed against anyone who obstructed him.145 The visitors’ report, which finally reached Rhodes in May 1511, was damning. The priory had been reduced to a state of almost ‘total and miserable ruin’ by the ‘wicked and damnable’ administration of Evers, who had not only imitated the errors of his predecessors but augmented them. He had alienated goods to seculars and failed to redeem the ecclesiastical ornaments and jewels distributed by Keating. Worse still, he had exposed the prioral church to ruin, removed its stipendiary priest, and failed to maintain hospitality. Furthermore, the principal house of the order was so demolished that man could not live in such vile conditions. Besides his evident failure to maintain the prioral estate, Evers had also conferred the habit on seculars and preceptories and benefices on unsuitable persons by his own authority, and had sealed instruments using the common seal when no chapter had been held, farming out a great proportion of the priory’s estates in this way.146 Supporting evidence for some of these claims can be gleaned from such details of Evers’s leases as survive. His grant of the prioral preceptory of Kilmainhambeg to the Barnwells at the low rent of 50 marks at a time when the lordship’s fortunes were relatively secure is particularly striking.147 Perhaps mindful of the successful resistance of previous priors to removal, and the prospect that he might make grants to his followers before his replacement, the convent did not strip Evers of his dignity, but encouraged him to give it up by promising him a pension and allowing him to retire to his preceptory in Wales. These concessions, however, were dependent on his handing over the priory and its appurtenances in full and without delay to the newly appointed proctor and lieutenant in Ireland, John Rawson. All administrative documents, the common seal, and the prioral jewels were 143 In addition they were to pay passage monies, which may indicate that there were Irishborn 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.

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also to be surrendered before he crossed the Irish Sea. He was prompted to give title to the priory back to the order, and Rawson permitted to assume it on his surrender, but in fact the latter was not formally appointed prior until March 1514, after Evers had died.148 Rawson proved a rather more successful administrator than his predecessor. As lieutenant and visitor he was given extensive powers to investigate and remedy the priory’s affairs and the life of its brethren. The manner in which brethren had assumed the habit and obtained their preceptories was to be investigated, but those who appeared worthy in their status and benefices were to be confirmed in them subject to conventual approval. Unfit and disobedient brethren were to be removed from their positions and any who resisted correction were to be sent to Rhodes for punishment.149 To some extent Rawson was successful. By 1514 he had made the convent aware of the names and appointments of its Irish brethren, a situation probably without recent precedent, and he had also won the confidence of Henry VIII, who made frequent interventions in Irish affairs almost from the beginning of his reign.150 It was in the royal interest to have a strong English-run priory, particularly in 1511, when the king was making his first attempts to impose English ministers on the Irish government. He insisted that Rawson be placed onto the Irish council in the same year, and Rawson’s ease in gaining control of the priory surely owed something to royal support. By the spring of 1515, when he came over to England with the new earl of Kildare and dined with the king, Rawson had become an important figure in Ireland.151 Nevertheless, Henry clearly saw the new prior primarily as a royal servant and repeatedly caused him to sacrifice the interests of his career in order that he might serve the crown. Nor were royal interventions in the priory always wise. In 1514 Rawson’s appointment had been vigorously opposed by an Irish-born conventual knight, Edmund Seys, who had asserted quite justifiably that the exclusion of the Irish from the prioral dignity ran contrary to the whole tenor of the order’s statutes.152 As a reward for his conventual service, and in compensation for his exclusion, Seys was awarded the preceptory of Mourne, the magistral camera of Kilsaran, and the expectancy to the next house to become vacant.153 But Mourne was still occupied by the MacCarthys and in c. 1515 Henry wrote to the grand master recommending that Rawson be provided to Kilsaran instead of Seys, who, being an Irishman, was unfit for preferment.154 It is unclear whether he did so at Rawson’s prompting. The prior 148 149 150 151 152 153 154

AOM81, fos. 105v–106r; 400, fo. 150r; 402, fos. 137r–138v. AOM400, fos. 188v, 190r–193v, 195r–v. AOM403, fo. 162r. Cosgrove (ed.), Medieval Ireland, 655, 658. AOM81, fos. 205r–206r. AOM402, fos. 136v, 139r–v; 401, fo. 160v; 403, fos. 163v–164r, 167r–168r. LPFD, ii, no. 1359.

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had left Seys in charge of the preceptory of Killerig when he travelled to England to meet the king, and so clearly had not subscribed to Henry’s views on his appropriateness for office at that stage. Nevertheless, on Rawson’s return Seys refused either to render account for Killerig or to hand over its responsions. His defiance soon escalated into a full-scale rebellion in the course of which the Irish-born brethren, led by Seys and Richard FitzMaurice, threw the prior into prison in chains and allegedly committed an assault on him that he scarcely survived.155 Rawson escaped confinement fairly quickly, perhaps due to royal intervention, but the rebellion rumbled on for some years. The prior, Seys, and FitzMaurice were summoned to Rhodes, ostensibly to serve against the Turks, in January 1517, and Thomas Docwra was given authority to invoke royal 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 provincial chapter in England that Seys, who had effectively expelled himself from the order by continually machinating his superior’s death, was ‘persevering in his malignancy’ and refusing to obey conventual orders.156 In the following year, having been summoned by the convent, which proposed that his cousin, John Rawson junior, should act as his lieutenant during his absence, the prior received royal permission to leave Ireland for three years so that he could pursue his case against the rebels in Rome and Rhodes.157 At the last minute, however, and after he had leased several properties to Kildare to pay for his journey, Henry revoked Rawson’s licence and forced him to return to Ireland with the new deputy, the earl of Surrey.158 The prior had been made royal treasurer in 1517 and his financial skills were evidently too valuable for him to be allowed to leave. He was refused licence to answer repeated summons to Rhodes and his reappointment as treasurer in February 1522 meant that he was denied any chance to join the English relief force sent to the convent at the end of the year.159 He was not permitted to depart until April 1525 and probably proceeded to the convent in Italy only in the following year, taking two Irish-born brethren, John FitzGerald and Nicholas Plunket, with him.160 This visit appears to have marked a partial rapprochement between Rawson and his brethren and the success of the order’s attempts to secure obedience and conventual service from the Irish Hospitallers. In return, five Irish preceptories were reserved to the Irish-born brethren in perpetuity and their holders confirmed in their appointments at the prior’s supplication.161 In reward for Rawson’s labours and expenses in 155

AOM405, fo. 132r–v. 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. 156

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Ireland, the latter having amounted to 4,000 ducats, all other Irish houses were explicitly reserved to him, he was awarded Kilsaran for life, and he was granted ancienitas after William Weston to the other dignities of the langue.162 Even at this stage, however, Rawson may still have been having trouble with brethren who were ‘wandering’ in defiance of their superiors, as L’Isle Adam reported to Henry VIII in June 1527.163 Despite the convent’s attempts to strengthen his position, later in the same month Rawson was elected turcopolier, releasing the priory of Ireland to John Babington.164 But the renewal of his conventual career was not to last. Dispatched almost immediately afterwards to plead for the removal of the king’s hand from the order’s property in England, he was persuaded to exchange his dignity for the priory of Ireland once again in the following year. The bull regranting the priory to Rawson drew attention to his long years of rule there and the many expenses, labours, and perils which he had undergone in the process. As he was aware of its customs and would be more easily able to administer it than would Babington it was more useful and convenient for the Religion if he remained in Ireland.165 His return there was also to the benefit of the king, to whose wishes the master drew specific attention 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 and Wolsey. The langue too noted the ‘service’ that might thereby be done ‘to the invincible king of England’ when it confirmed the exchange at royal request.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, who had detained his father in the Tower. For several months he ravaged the lordship of Ireland, twice assaulting Dublin. Hospitallers were in the thick of the action from the outset, for Thomas had been fostered by Thomas Docwra and his paternal uncles, including the Hospitaller John, were involved as well.168 Although James and Richard FitzGerald defected to the king’s deputy in November 1534, John FitzGerald remained committed to the rebels to the very end.169 Rawson had an equally critical role to play. The animus of the rebels was particularly directed against the English-born 162

Ibid., fos. 193v–194v, 195r–v, 196r–v. 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. 163

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members of the council, especially Archbishop Alen, with whose family the prior had close ties, and Rawson himself. In late July Alen was caught trying to escape and killed by James FitzGerald; fear of suffering a similar fate probably prompted Rawson to flee Ireland a few days later.170 Despite this display of pusillanimity, which the Ulster annalist took great delight in reporting, Rawson must soon have returned, as Eustace Chapuys wrote at the end of August that the prior and the earl of Ossory had been the only two lords to oppose the rebellion.171 Over the following months they continued to resist the rebels, Rawson lending many of his servants to the defence of Dublin castle, where they did good service over a period of twelve weeks. One, Anthony Mores, was singled out for praise for his bravery during the rebel assault on the city gates, when he sallied forth and slew several of FitzGerald’s best foot. In revenge, the rebels burnt the prior’s great barn at Kilmainham, destroying his corn.172 Even after the immediate threat to Dublin had passed, Rawson and the rest of the council were busy for several more months putting down the rebellion. The prior’s most important contribution at this stage of the affair was to invite the earl’s brothers, including John, to dinner at Kilmainham, where they were arrested before being dispatched to England and, eventually, executed.173 John Rawson’s career, and particularly the events of 1534, thus demonstrate the potential usefulness to the crown of having a ‘sad, wise and discreet’ English Hospitaller in charge of the priory. The English priors of Ireland were not a great success from the conventual point of view, however. Although Rawson was eventually able to reduce his recalcitrant brethren to obedience, he did so at enormous expense and at the price of reducing the priory to a rump of half a dozen brethren, including himself.174 Moreover, while both Evers and Rawson were able to submit rather higher responsions than their immediate predecessors, they managed this by neglecting or exploiting the preceptories they held in the priory of England. A resident preceptor was particularly needed at Evers’s house of Slebech: his absence left it in the hands of farmers who ran up considerable arrears which they refused to repay when their leases had expired.175 Although Rawson’s English houses, Swingfield and later Ribston, were run rather 170

PRO LR2/62, fos. 2v–3r; LPFD, vii, no. 1045. 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, that James Fitzgerald of Leixlip was also a Hospitaller, the attainder of the earl’s brothers states only John 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 of ´ Canann, Henry VII, Edward VI, Philip and Mary, and Elizabeth I, ed. K. Nicholls and T. G. O 4 vols. (Dublin, 1994), i. Henry VIII, nos. 212, 221, 226, 230, 253. 175 AOM54, fo. 13v. 171

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more competently by relatives and English prioral officials, from the late 1520s he fell behind with his responsions, arrears of which continued to increase until at least 1536.176 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the responsions expected from Ireland were in any case so tiny compared to those from England that the restoration of their payment was a moral rather than a financial victory. Other hoped-for results of the priory’s reduction to obedience had barely begun to materialize by 1540. At a time of partial economic and territorial recovery, Robert Evers failed to regain either Mourne or Clonoulty, possibly lost control of Killerig, and farmed the Hospital’s estates elsewhere for greatly less than they were worth to lords and gentry. John Rawson appears to have been more successful in gaining recognition of the order’s rights, but he failed to wring much benefit from his recoveries, if such they were. In defending property on the marches and further afield, he was forced to rely on local interests, notably the great Anglo-Irish magnates. Particularly during his first term as prior, he had close contacts with the ninth earl of Kildare, to whom he paid a retainer and leased a substantial portion of the prioral estates rather cheaply.177 His reliance on Kildare is further underlined by the fact that at least two Hospitaller preceptors, the earl’s brother John, and the preceptor of Tully, Oliver Harebrik, were closely tied to the FitzGerald interest.178 As late as 1532, Rawson and other members of the council came to England to defend the earl from the accusations laid against him by Sir William Skeffington, the royal deputy.179 In the south, Rawson entered into alliance with the new earl of Desmond. Abandoning the pretence that Clonaulty was still a religious house, which competing O’Dwyers had still maintained in 1503, he leased it in 1535 to Desmond ´ Duibhidhir (Richard O’Dwyer) for £12 per annum, a and to Risdeard O fraction of its real worth.180 Without Desmond’s support it might not have been possible to exert any authority over the house at all. His cousin John being granted Mourne in 1523, the prior probably also came to an agreement with Desmond whereby the latter was to recover and administer the house and pay rent to him as prior. The defeat of the earl’s father by the MacCarthys in a battle fought at Mourne in 1521 may conceivably indicate an earlier attempt to regain the house. Desmond had not been able to reverse this verdict 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.

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´ hIffearna´in, became preceptor of Any, the a Desmond client, Aonghus O ´ hIffearna´in’s commitment vicarage of which was also in the earl’s gift.182 O to the religious life seems not to have run very deep, for in 1541 he and his comital patron were commissioned to suppress religious houses in Limerick, Cork, and Kerry.183 Rawson’s association with Desmond may thus have brought some recognition of his authority and limited financial benefits, but hardly bespeaks a determination to restore the order’s religious life where this had lapsed. In the west, as we have seen, the prior entered an agreement with a Galway merchant to lease out the order’s lands in Connacht in 1529 and in the south-east, where the order still had a substantial presence, he again leased properties to local interests.184 Rawson can hardly be claimed to have infused the order with new vigour or 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 divine service at Kilmainham, which appears to have still been a functioning preceptory and the residence of four or more brethren and a college of priests, some perhaps Hospitallers, before 1494,185 but which was apparently inhabited only by Rawson, the subprior, and some servants and corrodians in 1540. Details for his administration are hard to come by before 1534, and relate mostly to his relations with Kildare, but after the overthrow of the Geraldines the prior turned instead to a small clique among whom Englishborn government servants, Pale lawyers and gentry, and his own relatives were especially prominent. Even before he was told that the priory would be dissolved in November 1538, the prior’s distribution of pensions and leases had demonstrated a desire to profit his family and associates.186 After this date, the number of grants multiplied, and several were reissued on more favourable terms. In 1539, for example, anticipatory leases of the preceptories of Crook, Killure, and Kilbarry, which had been granted to the Cahells of Waterford for a twelve-year term in 1535, were issued to another local family, 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 In February 1540 Kilteel and its substantial possessions were leased to the Alens 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. B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII ´ Canann, i: Henry VIII, no. 251. (Cambridge, 1974), 165–6; Irish Fiants, ed. Nicholls and O 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. 183

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fifty-one years, but left the Alens in occupation.190 In addition to the overgenerous leases granted by the prior, after its surrender in November 1540 the crown found that the priory was more encumbered with pensions and annuities than any other house.191 Even had convent and crown not insisted in 1494 that only an Englishman should hold the priory it is unlikely that the order would have survived its suppression. Those of its houses in the hands of Gaelic septs were hardly vigorous and popular beacons of spirituality in the way that some of the mendicant houses in Ulster and Connacht were. Nevertheless, the order’s repeated interventions in the priory’s affairs, although prompted by a laudable concern to ensure that the priory paid its responsions and upheld its other responsibilities, appear to have been counter-productive. Certainly the Hospital had had a difficult time in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Estates had been laid waste or occupied, houses amalgamated, numbers of brethren had declined, and conventual service and the payment of responsions had largely fallen by the wayside. Although the Irish-born brethren had sometimes striven to remedy these problems, their public duties and family interests proved at best mixed blessings and at worst positive distractions. Yet whatever their failings, the Irish-born brethren clearly enjoyed considerable solidarity and managed both to maintain some sort of conventual establishment at Kilmainham and to offer hospitality and perhaps medical care at other sites. Compared to the size of the order’s endowment, these achievements were unimpressive but even they appear to have been placed under threat by the administration of Evers and Rawson, outsiders who, without connections of their own in Ireland, were even more reliant on the Anglo-Irish magnates which dominated the lordship to maintain their hold. The English-born priors did manage to bring some of the Irish-born brethren to heel and restore the payment of responsions, but in doing so they dissipated the resources of their English preceptories to such a degree that the convent would have done better, at least from a financial point of view, to leave James Keating in charge. This, of course, was not an option. To headquarters the recalcitrance and lack of cooperation of the Irish brethren was a matter not merely of money but also of discipline. This at least the convent had managed to restore, but the priory’s very reduction to order left it in the hands of a man who was primarily a royal servant and who at a critical juncture in the fortunes of the lordship of Ireland was prepared to sacrifice his brethren and to support a government which had already broken with Rome. Had a relative or supporter of Silken Thomas been prior in 1534, it might not have made much difference to the overall course of the rebellion and might well have precipitated an earlier suppression than that which occurred, but at least the Hospital would have disappeared with a bang rather than a whimper. 190

Bradshaw, Dissolution, 90.

191

Ibid. 89–90; Extents, 117.

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Yet the dissolution, from which Rawson was able to secure a substantial pension and the title of Viscount Clontarf, has nevertheless an extraordinary coda. In November 1540, the very month in which the order’s houses were being surrendered, the council of Ireland, attended by both the former prior and his ally John Alen, advanced proposals to devote the proceeds of the suppression to the establishment of a new military order to be based at the castle of Ferns and to have as its object the reduction of Leinster to tranquillity by a mixture of military action and judicial inquiry. Composed of a Great Master and twelve pensioners each commanding a small body of horse, the members of this association were to be celibate knights wearing a distinctive habit, and promoted according to ‘auncyentie and goode behaveour’. 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 the order 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 a mass in honour of the king and the royal family, in other respects, not least its celibacy and the proposed status of the master as premier baron of Ireland, the new order was strikingly reminiscent of the Hospital.192 Despite the fact that none of the proposed members were Hospitallers, the royal council in England ‘myslyked’ the whole scheme as an ‘institucon of a new Saint Johns Ordre’, an attitude shared by their master, who dismissed it as an ‘erection of . . . fantasies’ of which he ‘in noo wyse’ approved.193 Nevertheless, and whatever Rawson’s contribution to the proposal, it is clear that the Irish council were convinced of the utility of such an establishment, which would, they claimed, save the king £10,000 which might otherwise be spent in reducing Leinster to order.194 Along with the pronouncements of Poynings in 1494, and Henry’s own scheme to devote the order to the defence of Calais, the Irish council’s ‘devises’ of 1540 is a striking monument to the Tudor political establishment’s regard for the military utility of the hospital of St John, and to the intermittent conviction that its organization and discipline might more usefully be harnessed to the service of the state. In 1557, the priory of Ireland was restored by the crown in essentially the same form as it had existed in the 1530s, albeit with fewer estates.195 It was placed once more under an English prior, Oswald Massingberd who, like his predecessors, served the crown as a commissioner of the peace and a royal councillor.196 Notwithstanding King’s assertion that ‘no separate Commanderies’ were re-established in Ireland, at least two Irish-born brethren were received into the reconstituted priory, and inducted into the 192

193 194 SP, iii. 271, 272–6. PPC, vii. 92; SP, iii. 293. SP, iii. 271. ‘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 ´ Canann, i: Philip and Mary, no. 222; CPCRIr, i. 380, 396, Irish Fiants, ed. Nicholls and O 397; ‘Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland’, ed. Gilbert, 50, 53, 55, 68, 71. 195

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preceptories of Kilclogan and Crook, and at least one provincial chapter was held during the priory’s brief swansong.197 As can be seen elsewhere, Massingberd’s career hitherto had been rather turbulent, encompassing amongst other extravagances a scheme, hatched in conjunction with Cardinal Pole, to overturn Tudor government in Ireland.198 Although he was the last of the English brethren who had remained in Malta after the dissolution to survive, Massingberd was perhaps not an appropriate candidate for promotion to even so unglamorous a priorate as Ireland, so that Pole’s influence may well have played a part in securing his appointment. It is perhaps in keeping with his career thus far that the last we certainly hear of him he was in trouble again, being summoned to go before the Irish parliament on pain of treason because he was suspected of ‘raising and fomenting insurrections’ in conjunction with the native Irish. Faced with this tribunal, Massingberd, records Archdall, ‘privately withdrew from the kingdom and died in obscurity’.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 house there had been the preceptory of Torphichen, situated to the west of Edinburgh. 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-royal donors.200 Before the wars of independence, the Scottish establishments of both the Temple and Hospital were fully integrated with those in England and Wales. Most brethren whose names survive were probably English-born and the Templars arrested in Scotland in 1307 had had careers in both England and Scotland as well as, in some cases, the Latin East.201 Both orders held extensive properties, although, as in England, the Temple was more favoured than the Hospital until well into the thirteenth century. In 1338 it was claimed that before 1296 the Templar possessions had paid responsions of £200 sterling, and the Hospitaller 200 marks, while in 1345 it was said that the fruits of the two combined should have been worth more than £420 sterling 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 by the fact that Cardinal Pole’s letters specifically incorporated all the order’s preceptories in Ireland 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. ´ Canann, ii: 1558–1586, no. 6784; CPR1558–60, 29; T. Leland, The History of Nicholls and O Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II with a Preliminary Discourse on the Antient State of that Kingdom, 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.

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responsions expected from Torphichen were fixed at no more than 50 marks sterling. Some causes of this decline can be suggested, but they do not account for it entirely. Both the Hospital and Temple supported the English crown during the first stages of the wars of independence and their estates appear to have been occupied or devastated and their brethren expelled for long periods as a result. While Robert the Bruce was willing to confirm the Hospital in its possessions and privileges in 1314, these were left unspecified, and towards the end of his reign the Hospital’s estates were granted to lay administrators from whom it was impossible to extract any revenue until the 1340s. Thereafter the order slowly recovered control of its properties and returned to some sort of solvency: nothing reached Clerkenwell in 1338 or in the years before 1345, but David de Mar and later farmers were occasionally able to pay responsions of 200 florins in the 1370s and 1380s, while in 1418 the sum owed by Scotland was set at 400 e´cus and in 1445 at 500 Venetian ducats.203 The latter figure, however, seems to have been rather too high, and had not been paid for years. By 1489 it had again been reduced to c.200 florins, a sum probably equivalent to the 50 marks sterling payable between 1506 and at least the 1530s.204 Between the 1480s and 1509, responsions were partly dispatched in the form of lasts of salmon, from the payment of custom on which the preceptor was released by a royal grant made during James IV’s minority, when the preceptor of Torphichen, William Knollis, was royal treasurer. This concession was revived between 1518 and c.1523, but discontinued thereafter.205 After the dissolution of the order in England, responsions were transmitted to Malta via the priory of France.206 Although some brethren—probably brother priests—evidently continued to reside in Scotland between the 1320s and 1380s its estates were administered by unprofessed lessees with Scottish surnames.207 Nevertheless it remained subject to the priory of England. In 1374 the convent attempted to remove two farmers, the papal chaplain David de Mar and Sir Robert Erskine, and replace them with Robert Mercer, lord of Inerpeffray, but it did so without consulting the prior of England, Robert Hales, who objected to the removal of Torphichen from his purview and persuaded Edward III to intervene. In response, Edward arrested the order’s English responsions until the convent backed down.208 The administration of the Scottish preceptory during the papal schism is rather 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 sterling are £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.

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to Rhodes, and hence Avignon, there seems to have been no fundamental conflict of interest between Torphichen and Clerkenwell, and there are some signs of continued intercourse between the two,209 which was only significantly disrupted when the order transferred its allegiance to the Pisan pope Alexander V in 1409, while Scotland remained attached to Benedict XIII. Thereafter, there was open competition for control of the preceptory between brethren loyal to each of these pontiffs in which Benedict XIII’s appointee, Alexander Leighton, eventually triumphed. After Leighton was accepted by the order as preceptor in 1418, he followed up his victory by attempting to remove Torphichen from subjection to the priory of England, but his efforts in this direction were resisted by the langue and did not meet with conventual approval.210 Despite such tensions, the struggle of 1409–18 was the last serious rupture between the priory and the preceptory until the sixteenth century. In the meantime a modus vivendi was established which worked relatively well. As had generally been the case in the fourteenth century, Scots alone were promoted to Torphichen, but they were appointed by the convent after a majority vote of the langue, which insisted that they should not seek preferment in the priory of England as a condition of their appointment.211 Whatever its disadvantages, this arrangement seems at least to have encouraged the Scots to travel to the Mediterranean to perform conventual service, for between the 1430s and 1560s there was very often one Scottish brother in convent, and occasionally two.212 During hostilities with England, Scottish responsions might be sent to Rhodes via Bruges rather than Clerkenwell, but Scottish preceptors evidently continued to attend provincial chapters in England.213 While Torphichen was always considered to be the order’s chief house in Scotland, and usually its only preceptory, the order’s estates were sometimes split between different brethren or lay administrators, each being held responsible for the submission of a portion of responsions. Thus in 1418 most of the order’s estates in Scotland were assigned to Alexander de Leighton, with John Binning being allotted the church of Torphichen and its appurtenances and Thomas Goodwin the church of Balantrodoch. Goodwin and Binning together were to contribute 110 e´cus of the 400-e´cu farm. Similarly, in 1449, the conventual visitor granted Torphichen to Henry Livingston and allotted Maryculter and Liston to Andrew Meldrum as a 209 Tipton, ‘English and Scottish Hospitallers’, 242–5. Dr Macquarrie’s account of these events proceeds from the incorrect assumption that Tipton erred in stating that the priory of England remained attached to Rhodes during the schism and that therefore the movements between England and Scotland of brother John de Binning in 1388 provided ‘no evidence of contact’ between priory and preceptory. He does, however, accept that the preceptory continued to 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.

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preceptory. Such arrangements were often compromises reached after periods of conflict between rival candidates for the preceptory, and rarely precluded further disagreement over the division of spoils, so that they were dispensed with after 1460 or so.214 Thereafter the preceptory remained undivided and, except for a hiatus in 1510–18, its holders managed to pay their responsions faithfully until at least 1536, performing rather better than most of their English counterparts in this respect. Between them, the Temple and Hospital possessed property in at least 800 places in Scotland. These were scattered across large areas of the country, but most were in the south, centre, and east, their distribution largely following the activity of Anglo-Norman settlers in the country.215 After the acquisition of the Templar estates the Hospital possessed six baronies, and a host of smaller properties. From the very beginning most of these must have been rented out, short-term leases apparently being prevalent until a nineteen-year lease became common in the fifteenth century. In common with other religious houses, from at least the early sixteenth century the Hospital resorted to feuing its estates for fixed sums, a practice which had short-term advantages but drawbacks should rents or prices increase. Despite the potentially negative consequences, the convent gave explicit consent for Walter Lindsay to let outlying estates to farm either at term or in perpetuity in 1533, and he soon availed himself of this concession to let out even the baronial estates which had formerly been kept in hand. By 1559 the convent had decided that this process had gone too far, and instructed the next preceptor, James Sandilands, to recover these properties.216 The 1539–40 rental shows that cash revenue produced from rents was supplemented by more extensive payments in kind than was probably the case in England and Wales by then. These were predominantly made up of cereal crops, legumes, and poultry, although there were also quantities of dairy products, fish, and livestock.217 On some estates a significant number of tenants continued to owe labour services, of which carriage appears to have been the most common. The order’s tenants at Liston, for example, were expected to carry produce to Torphichen.218 From the mid-fifteenth century, the order’s estates were being organized into bailiwicks based on the territorial divisions of the kingdom. Its bailies, who were assisted by deputies, took an oath of fidelity, and their duties consisted chiefly of holding courts, delivering sasine, collecting rents, and delivering evidence of the order’s holdings to its Scottish chancery.219 The first of these was perhaps the most important. The bailies not only administered royal justice within the six baronies, but also held jurisdiction on behalf of the preceptor over all the order’s members and tenants, who 214 216 219

215 Scotland, pp. xxxix–xl, 162, xliv, 165–6, 197–8. Ibid., pp. lviii, 1–40, 202–32. 217 218 Ibid., pp. lxii–lxiv, lxxvi–lxxviii. Ibid., lxvi–lxviii. Ibid., pp. lxiv–lxv Ibid., pp. lxxii, lxxv–lxxvi.

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could be repledged were they arraigned before another tribunal. They had the right to judge in all cases not involving treason, a significantly wider competence than that enjoyed by the order’s courts in England by this period. Outside the baronies, courts were usually held in the order’s house in the head burgh within the sherrifdom.220 Fines levied on tenants of the order by other courts were payable to the preceptor, and must have constituted a useful additional source of income.221 The order’s bailies were often members of families both ‘long associated with the order’ and involved in local administration on behalf of the crown. Some were relatives of contemporary brethren: Thomas Scougal appears in 1494 as the temple bailie in the sheriffdom of Angus and Gowrie, for instance.222 Relatives of brethren also appear as administrators of its estates and jurisdictions, as vicars of its churches, and as members of the preceptorial household.223 Walter Lindsay’s brothers Andrew and Alexander were each entrusted with one of its baronies, for example.224 Several preceptors attempted to secure the succession to Torphichen for a member of their family. Andrew Meldrum was unable to pass the house on to his namesake William in the 1450s, but George Dundas was succeeded by his nephew Walter Lindsay in 1533, and another Dundas, Alexander, was admitted into the order in 1538, while between the 1540s and 1560s the Hospital was dominated by members of the Sandilands family.225 Most of these families were significant landowners of long standing, indicating that the order attracted high-status recruits in this period, and the prominence of preceptors of Torphichen in Scottish life is further demonstrated by their activities on behalf of the state. William Knollis, preceptor between 1466 and 1510, sat as a secular baron in parliament and on the royal council, was treasurer of Scotland during the minority of James IV, and saw service on various embassies and royal commissions.226 His designated successor, George Dundas, was a member of the royal household by 1508 and might have become more prominent in the royal service had events not intervened, while Walter Lindsay sat on various royal commissions and commanded a detachment of the royal army with some success in 1542.227 In 1560 the last preceptor, James Sandilands, was sent by the Lords of the Congregation to the French court, where he was snubbed on account of both his Protestantism and his marriage.228 Nevertheless, the close ties the preceptor enjoyed with the crown were not always to the order’s advantage. Although William Knollis attended the chapter-general of 1466–7 in Rome, where he was appointed preceptor, he 220

221 Ibid., p. lxxii. Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, i. 592; vii. 5. 223 224 Scotland, pp. lxx–lxxi, lxviii. Ibid., passim. Ibid., pp. lxxvii–lxviii. 225 226 Ibid., pp. xlii, xliv, l–li. 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. 222

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seems not to have performed any previous conventual service and may have been a royal candidate parachuted in over the head of Patrick Scougal, an associate of the last preceptor who had been in Rhodes in the early 1460s and had probably administered the preceptory since 1463.229 Perhaps because of Knollis’s political associations,230 Scougal found it impossible to act against his rival in Scotland and in about 1471 returned to Rhodes to seek justice, a quest in which he was unsuccessful.231 Yet if royal connections perhaps secured Knollis in possession of the preceptory and allowed him to dispatch responsions and brethren to Rhodes without hindrance, his partial disgrace in 1492 nevertheless led to his being frozen out of royal service and pursued for monies he had allegedly received as treasurer for some years to come.232 More significantly, Knollis’s very prominence in secular affairs, and his probable wealth, may have encouraged other parties to turn their gaze towards the preceptory after his death. This was not through any fault of the preceptor, who did his best to ensure that he should be succeeded by an appropriate candidate, George Dundas, who was appointed his coadjutor and granted the expectancy to Torphichen in Rhodes in 1504.233 At first there was every sign of royal support for Dundas’s promotion. He was admitted to Torphichen’s temporalities on 30 November 1508, and in July 1510, after Knollis’s death, he was issued with a safe conduct to travel to Rome and Rhodes as ‘lord of St Johns’.234 Yet while Dundas was travelling to Rome with royal letters recommending his provision, James IV’s secretary, Patrick Paniter, set about using his influence with king and Curia to obtain the preceptory for himself, securing a letter in his favour from Julius II as early as 30 January 1511.235 Paniter’s hold over the king was so considerable that James wrote to the pope in February with the extraordinary request that no royal letters from Scotland nominating to vacant benefices should be accepted as genuine unless countersigned by his secretary.236 By the 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 in November 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 was granted the preceptory, supposedly detained without title by Dundas, on 29 July 1510. Cortesius’ claim was pressed seriously, and in June 1512 the Scottish proctor in Rome reported to James IV that the case had been decided in his favour. Whether because of a decline in his influence 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.

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preceptory at Rome. Paniter and the king replied with letters to those entrusted with their affairs at the Curia, alleging spuriously that Knollis’s resignation in favour of Dundas as coadjutor had been invalid and that he had died without having legally resigned the preceptory.237 With Paniter’s specific claim to the preceptory so weak, the issue of the English overlordship of Torphichen was dragged into the case to bolster the argument against Dundas. Writing to the master, Guy de Blanchefort, in June 1513, James IV asserted that the provision of Dundas with the consent of the English langue in 1508 was an insult to Scotland and that no one, even a Scot, who recognized the prior of England as his superior could be granted the preceptory. He also objected to the payment of the vacancy monies of Torphichen through Clerkenwell and the past referral of legal disputes involving the Hospital in Scotland to England. The tone of outraged surprise at the discovery of these practices, which were all of respectable antiquity, may ring hollow but ‘the spectre of English ecclesiastical overlordship’ had long been a source of irritation and worry to James, and the growing tension between England and Scotland in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign turned the Torphichen affair into a matter of national pride.238 Although Paniter promised to revive the order’s affairs in Scotland, his primary qualification for provision to Torphichen was his status as ‘an anti-English councillor of James IV’.239 None of the orders to the langue’s brethren enrolled in the order’s chancery 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 the provision of Dundas. Thomas Docwra supported Dundas’s expenses during the four years he spent in Rome,240 while Henry’s chief representative at Rome, the Scot-hating cardinal Bainbridge, was instrumental in securing a definitive sentence in Dundas’s favour in early 1513.241 Despite winning his case Dundas would probably have remained excluded from his preceptory had James IV not been killed at Flodden on 9 September 1513.242 Even so, it was still several years before he could secure possession. For some months after the battle Paniter continued to petition for the preceptory, with the support of James’s widow, Margaret Tudor. As the queen mother and the regent, the duke of Albany, jockeyed for position, Albany’s half-brother, Alexander Stewart, took over Torphichen’s temporalities,243 perhaps to deny Paniter the preceptor’s customary place in Parliament. With James no 237

LPFD, i, nos. 843, 1077–8; ii, nos. 87–9. LPFD, i, no. 1263; Macdougall, James IV, 209. Macdougall, James IV, 210. 240 Scotland, l, 112–13. 241 LPFD, i, nos. 1566, 2911; Macdougall, James IV, 263; D. S. Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge 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, 275 243 Scotland, p. xlix. 238 239

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longer a threat, and his sister in need of his support, Henry VIII performed a volte-face and wrote to the pope supporting Margaret’s recommendation that Paniter be provided.244 This cynical manoeuvre did nothing to shake the regent’s ascendancy, however, and Stewart excluded both Paniter and Dundas until 1517 or 1518, pleading the unacceptability of the latter’s English links as a justification for his exclusion. Dundas was unable to pay any responsions until 1 October 1521, although he then paid for those of the financial years from 1518/19 to 1520/1.245 His arrears for the years he was excluded from the preceptory were not remitted until 1526.246 Although the dispute of 1510–18 illustrates the difficulties the Scottish Hospitallers might face because of their membership of the English langue and allegiance to the prior of England, it is a considerable testament to the Hospital’s attraction for successive Scots kings that these links had not been severed long before and that, after 1518, they were restored.247 This is all the more remarkable given the general indifference to monasticism in Scotland, which found expression in the widespread appointment of unsuitable and unprofessed commendators, often connected with the royal house, to run the major abbeys. This practice, while not unknown elsewhere, was particularly rife in Scotland, especially after 1487, when James III had secured a papal indult which allowed the crown eight months to nominate a successor when a vacancy occurred in any benefice or abbey valued at more than 200 florins.248 Both Paniter and Stewart presumably made use of this provision, but what is striking is that after 1518 it was not used again, all the men appointed to Torphichen thereafter having performed conventual service during which they secured the anticipation to the preceptory. In addition, both Dundas and his successor continued to send their responsions to Clerkenwell until the dissolution of the order in England, while at least one Scot, James Irving, made his way to Malta and was received into the English langue after the conversion of the order’s estates in Scotland into a hereditary barony in 1564.249 As in England, the reasons for continued royal support of the order must largely be conjectured. Scots kings, like other Christian monarchs, were committed to the defence of the Church, an obligation which incorporated crusading, and which led to demonstrations such as the dispatch of the hearts of Robert I and James I to the Holy Land,250 and the schemes 244

LPFD, ii, no. 90. 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 English Monks on Scottish Soil: The Severance of Coldingham Priory from the Monastery of Durham, 1461–78’ in id., Church and Society in the Medieval North of England (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. 245

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for pilgrimage and crusade of James IV, on the planning and preparation of which he expended much time and effort.251 The literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also suggests, more clearly than in England, that the Hospital’s continued activity in the defence of Christendom struck a chord in Scots which appears also to have resonated with their kings. The Black Book of Taymouth celebrated the service at Rhodes of Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, while a notice of Walter Lindsay’s service in the Scots army in 1542 asserted that he had ‘fouchtin oft tymeis against the Turkis witht the lord of the Rodis’, who made him a knight for his ‘walleiand acts’ before he ‘seruit our king and had great credit witht him’.252 In 1542 James V ordered his commander, the earl of Huntley, to do nothing without Lindsay’s advice, his confidence being well rewarded when Lindsay defeated the English in the same August at Haddon Rig.253 Both Lindsay and James Sandilands were also referred to favourably in contemporary ballads.254 Given this relatively high profile, it is not entirely surprising that Scottish Hospitallers continued to serve their kings and have ‘great credit’ 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 Brandenburg. Neither the Scottish nor Irish Hospitallers made a particularly impressive contribution to the material or human resources of the Hospital’s central convent. Nevertheless, the survival of the order in both countries suggests that its brethren there had a role to play both in local affairs and in the order’s wider activities. The central convent might more profitably have sold its estates in Ireland and perhaps even Scotland, or have instead satisfied the stirrings of the Scots and Irish towards self-organization without reference to England. But a reluctance to part with land and an awareness that its western houses were responsible for maintaining divine service and hospitality held it back from doing the first, while pressure from the English-dominated langue and the manifest misgovernment of the priory of Ireland caused it to retreat from the latter. Instead, urged on by the langue, it upheld the links between Clerkenwell, Torphichen, and Kilmainham. In doing so, it was assisted not merely by kings of England, who did little to prevent the organization of separate Irish provinces of Augustinians and Dominican friars, but belatedly came to the realization that the Hospital should not be allowed to develop in the same way, but also by kings of Scots, most of whom managed to restrain their own irritation at this last survival of a Scottish house with ties to an English mother. Like the refusal of English monarchs to count the hospital as an 251

Ibid. 209–13. 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. 252

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alien priory, the grudging cooperation of the two crowns on this issue is surely a demonstration of the Hospital’s assured place in the ordering of Christendom, a place that could only be overturned after each crown had broken with Rome.

CHAP TER EI GHT

The English Langue in Rhodes, Italy, and Malta, c.1460–1540 Writing to Henry VIII in 1537, Clement West begged the king’s continued protection for the order, of which it was worthy because it was resisting the Turk.1 We have seen that some Hospitaller brethren, not least West himself, might be distracted from this duty both by their squabbles with each other and by the requirements imposed by allegiance to their natural lords in Britain, while others, like James Keating, might avoid service altogether. It has also become apparent that the order’s attempts to exploit the resources of its western houses so that it could better defend Christendom might lead to friction with rulers who were often suspicious of their subjects’ exports of cash, goods, and themselves to the Mediterranean. Yet if the supply of men and money from the priories of England and Ireland was never as reliable as the convent would have liked, brethren from Britain and Ireland served there in significant numbers until 1540–1. Even thereafter subjects of the Tudors and Stuarts occasionally came to Malta to join the English langue until well into the seventeenth century.2 The leading brethren of the langue played a significant part in the order’s governing bodies, its chapter-general and council, and were also likely to be appointed to conventual offices or to execute conciliar commissions. But all the British-born brethren had a part to play in the life of the convent and in the island societies governed by the order. They garrisoned its fortresses and served in its galleys, assisted the turcopolier in his supervision of the coastguard, and, despite the formal separation of conventual collachium and secular borgo in Rhodes and Malta, lived cheek-by-jowl with the populations of both islands. In order to understand their participation in both conventual and island life, it is necessary to glance briefly at the administrative, geographical, social, and economic contexts in which these were carried on. In 1460, with the exception of various lost properties in Latin Greece and Cilician Armenia, the extent of the order’s possessions in the east was essentially the same as it had been in c.1340.3 They comprised the 1 2 3

LPFD, xii, I, no. 207. See Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, chs. 4–7; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 209–28. Cos was not definitively conquered until c.1337. Luttrell, ‘Hospitallers at Rhodes’, 293.

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The English Langue

Dodecanese islands of Rhodes, Cos (or Lango), Nisyros, Simi, Alimnia, Halki, Tilos, Kalimnos and Leros, the castle of St Peter on the Turkish mainland,4 large estates on Cyprus,5 and a few smaller properties in Latin Greece and Euboea. In 150 years, however, the order had not stood still, and if its territories were of similar extent they were more economically developed and populous and far better defended than they had been under the Byzantines.6 Besides Rhodes, the most important of the order’s possessions were Cos and the castle of St Peter, both of which had considerable garrisons, but the entire Dodecanese was littered with fortifications of various sizes and sophistication.7 On Rhodes, the chief strongpoints were the town itself, and the castles of Pheraclos, Lindos, Villanova, Monolithos, and Archangelos. In times of danger the inhabitants of neighbouring villages repaired to these for safety.8 Considerable sums were spent on the fortification and provisioning of these structures, and of those on the other islands too. The jewel in the crown was Rhodes itself, the seat of the order’s convent and focus of its Europe-wide operations. Although not entirely self-sufficient, the island was large and fertile enough to support a considerable part of its population, and sustain a lively entrepoˆt in Rhodes town, where trade was carried on with much of the Mediterranean, most notably in local produce, sugar, spices, carpets, and slaves.9 The prosperity of Rhodes was supported and ensured by the presence of the Hospitallers and the flow of responsions from the west, which contributed far more of the order’s income than did its eastern possessions.10 The order provided employment for dockyard workers, sailors, soldiers, builders, and ancillary staff, while its fleet and fortifications afforded a level of protection unknown elsewhere in the Aegean. While their well-being was its constant concern, the order’s chief purpose was not to provide for the material prosperity of its subjects. As we have seen, the Hospitallers had three primary functions—to perform divine service, to care for the sick poor, and to defend the people and faith of Christ against the infidel. The organization of the convent reflected all these duties. Rhodes town itself was heavily fortified both on landward and seaward sides, a stone testament to the defence of the populace and the Christian faith, and within its walls justice was dispensed, commerce regulated, divine service 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 are described 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. See also 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.

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chief conventual buildings each reflected one of its chief purposes, the conventual church signifying its continued determination to render due praise to God, the Infirmary providing care for ‘our lords the sick’, and the magistral palace, built into the city walls, serving as the administrative and military headquarters of the struggle against the infidel. Although the Religion’s conventual brethren were mostly of military nature, and served accordingly, its other functions were neither forgotten nor neglected. By 1462 Hospitaller administrative structure had largely assumed the form 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 its council, had wide prerogatives both on Rhodes and in the west. Rhodes and its profits were reserved to the master, who thus controlled a considerable reservoir of largesse to dispense to brethren in the form of administrative posts, estates, and rents.12 He controlled the movement of brethren to and from headquarters, and appointed to both the magistral camerae and to preceptories in each priory every five years. As a result, the order’s councils were often dominated by brethren who owed some form of preferment to past or present masters. Moreover, most masters in the period covered by this study were granted the administration of the order’s treasury13 and the consequent right to appoint to a wide range of conventual offices14 by successive chapters-general, concentrating even more power in their hands. The master and his household resided in his palace inside the collachium, the walled conventual enclosure comprising the northern portion of Rhodes town. The palace also served as the usual seat of the order’s council, chapters-general, and chancery, and as the repository of its treasury and records.15 The conventual brethren, whose number increased from about 250 to 550 or more between 1446 and 1522,16 were divided into langues to which they were 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 1462 when 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. 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 of Cyprus. The master was given power to hold them or confer them for life as he saw fit, a grant repeated 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. 13

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The English Langue

convent, he presented the documents authenticating his reception into the order to the langue, which voted whether to accept him or not. During his conventual service he lived, ate, and worshipped along with others of his nation, prayed in the langue’s chapel,18 and manned the post of the langue on the city walls in times of emergency. Even while on ‘caravan’—mandatory military service at sea or in the castles of St Peter and Cos—a brother usually lived with other members of his ‘nation’.19 The langue also decided if a brother had fulfilled the requirements to be granted a preceptory in the west or not, and determined whether the ‘meliorments’ brethren had made to their commanderies were of sufficient quality to merit their promotion to another house.20 Although the grant of preceptories by magistral 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 the langues’ decisions somewhat mitigated the dependence of the conventual brethren on them, their importance to their lives and careers is unquestionable. 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’s vice-chancellor, and sometimes magistral and treasury officials, while two further representatives of each langue sat on the council complete.21 Two of the sixteen ‘capitulars’ who framed the order’s statutes at chapters-general were also chosen from among each langue.22 The order’s chief officers and among its highest-ranking dignitaries were the conventual bailiffs, the eight (after 1462) piliers of the langues. These were elected from among the most senior brethren in the langue by the order’s council and each was theoretically responsible for one area of conventual activity, although in practice a great deal of business was done by appointees of the master or council rather than the appropriate conventual bailiff or his subordinates. Thus, while the admiral, the pilier of Italy, was nominally in charge of the order’s fleet, in practice captains were appointed from every ‘nation’ represented at the convent to command the galley tours, including the English. When a nonItalian 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 council complete is rendered untenable by examination of the council registers, which regularly list attendees. In fact the master, the conventual bailiffs or their lieutenants, and those capitular bailiffs in convent attended meetings of both councils, while two representatives of each langue sat 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.

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that this should not be to its prejudice.23 In addition to their responsibility for one area of conventual business, and their automatic seat on councils and chapters-general, piliers were also responsible for running their national auberges, presiding over the meetings of the langue held there, and ensuring that their younger brethren followed regulations.24 In return for their duties they received a salary25 and a chamber of their own in the auberge.26 Below conventual bailiffs were ranked successively those priors, capitular bailiffs, and preceptors resident in convent and, finally, conventual brethren. Priors and capitular bailiffs, whose dignities, with the exception of the preceptory of Cyprus, were essentially western,27 were not allocated specific duties pertaining to their office, but were nevertheless kept busy at headquarters, to which they were theoretically summoned in rotation,28 and where they had a number of privileges and responsibilities.29 They sat, for instance, on meetings of the council and of chapters general and were frequently appointed to ad hoc commissions and fixed-term posts such as the captaincy of St Peter. Senior brethren also enjoyed certain privileges denied to their juniors.30 Unbeneficed conventual brethren probably outnumbered their seniors by three or four to one.31 They were overwhelmingly, and almost exclusively in the langue of England, professed knights, received into the order by the chapters of their home provinces and dispatched to the convent.32 Within 23

See e.g. AOM83, fo. 37v; 84, fo. 41v. 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 lieutenants 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 at least two years after their arrival. In practice, however, it was usually only French, Italian, and Aragonese priors who visited the convent regularly thereafter. AOM283, fo. 38v. 29 Summoning John Rawson senior to Rhodes in 1516, the grand master, Fabrizio del Carretto, explained that the order’s statutes required that each prior had a duty to reside in convent ‘for some years’ after the adoption of their dignity, ‘ut tamquam vir consiliarius et unus ex proceribus religionis nostre magistro assistat consulturus super statu ordinis et rebus occurrentibus’. 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 be permitted to ride mules, a privilege extended to indisposed brethren over 50 in 1475 and confirmed in 1504, while in the last chapter before the fall of Rhodes it was ordained that brethren 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 (bailiffs and priors) produced a total of 311. Up to 150 more brethren, mostly conventual knights, may have been at Bodrum and Cos or on the guard galley, while the total number of brethren in the east was probably between 550 and 600. Sire, Knights of Malta, 36; below. 32 Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, no. xvi (Statute of Fluvia´). 24

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The English Langue

two years of arrival they were to pay their ‘passage’ money and to produce proofs of their nobility authenticated by provincial chapter.33 In return the order provided small stipends, the soldea and tabula, to pay for their upkeep.34 After 1467 the soldea was paid in cloth to most of the brethren and officers eligible for it.35 A brother was expected to remain at the convent for at least three years,36 and perform military service before he was eligible for the grant of a western commandery. His seniority was measured from the day of his reception in convent rather than that which had taken place in provincial chapter. Although some knights broke up their conventual service by returning home for a while, most remained in convent until granted a commandery, which might take ten or more years.37 Brethren served in the order’s fortifications, galleys, and hospital and in various other capacities. Promising ones, even if quite junior, were often retained among the master’s socii and subsequently appointed to offices or commissions by the order’s council. Effectively there was a ‘fast track’ for such men, who could expect to be granted a commandery of grace or the farm of a magistral camera, often before they had received provision from the langue. Even those not so favoured, however, might be appointed to offices in the gift of the master or council, and serve as proctors and auditors of their langues. Always aware of the overriding importance of western resources to its functioning, the order was as keen to encourage the development of administrative skills as it was military. While they were in convent, the behaviour of brethren was laid down in some detail. Although the order managed to secure papal dispensation from its Rule in the 1470s,38 large portions of the Rule, the Usances, and the Esgarts, as well as a mass of statutes of varying vintage, were incorporated into the recodified statutes drawn up in 1489, and added to thereafter.39 This body of legislation established strict codes of conduct for the brethren at headquarters. Their worship, military service and combat training,40 33

Stabilimenta, ‘De receptione fratrum’, no. xx (Statute of d’Aubusson). 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 He´lion 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 und Herrschaft, 37–42. 40 AOM1649, fos. 331v–332r; Stabilimenta, ‘De fratribus’, no. xlvi (Statute of 1433). 34

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dress,41 movements,42 and means of transport43 were regulated. They were forbidden 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 to poverty, chastity, obedience, and modest conversation.47 Although in practice some of these requirements, especially that of poverty, were bypassed, other lapses came before the order’s council continually, and were punished in various ways. It is very difficult to assess the actual quality of the communal, conventual life of the order’s brethren from its statutes, since these clearly represented ideals of behaviour. However, the Libri Conciliorum and Libri Bullarum, and other sources such as pilgrim accounts illuminate certain aspects of conventual life in practice. While they tell us little about such matters as the living conditions, personal piety, and intellectual interests of the brethren, and their day-to-day relationship with each other, they demonstrate that if conventual life was heavily regimented it was nonetheless permissive of a wide variety of experience and activity. The knights might live with members of their own ‘nation’ inside a walled enclosure in a small town on the very edge of Latin Christendom, but their isolation was far from complete. Members of one langue had many opportunities to mix with their fellows in the others, being thrown together by communal worship and ceremonial, shared military service, conventual commissions or offices, and a great variety of less formal intercourse. Moreover, while the collachium was theoretically reserved for the order’s brethren, in practice numerous slaves and servants resided within its walls, and the cosmopolitan residents of Rhodes town, visiting merchants and pilgrims, and the Hospitallers themselves came and went freely during the day. Some Rhodiots, both Greeks and Latins, even owned property within the conventual enclosure48 while brethren too might own ships, houses, and land, and lend or otherwise dispose of property while they were alive. The associations they built up in the convent were often strong enough to endure after their return home. The particular experiences of the brethren of the English langue are discussed below.

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 those breaching it were to suffer the quarantaine. In 1504 brethren were forbidden to frequent taverns where 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.

274 8.1

The English Langue The Conventual Brethren, Auberge, and Langue of England

English and Irish members of the langue were usually received into the order at the provincial chapters of their respective priories, while Scots seem to have been received in both Scotland and England. Brothers received simultaneously were known as filii arnaldi and usually agreed to hold the same seniority should they reach the convent within a certain time of each other and prove their nobility to the satisfaction of the langue.49 They then set off for headquarters. Travel to the convent was expensive, potentially dangerous, and sometimes daunting. Although many newly professed brethren, like those conducted to Italy by William Weston in 1524, must have left home in groups under the tutelage of senior brethren soon after their reception, a significant number arrived at headquarters later or not at all. Of a group of fifteen received at a provincial chapter held in England in 1528 on condition that they reach the convent within six months of the first of their number to do so if they wished to enjoy the same seniority, seven were received into the English langue in late July, while another five had appeared within six months of these.50 The remaining three—Hugh Croft, Roger Chingleton, and John Cheyney—seem never to have reached headquarters at all. Similar reluctance was displayed by William Alterward, who failed to arrive from England in 1532 or thereafter51 and in 1500 by Richard Passemer and John Russell, who remained in Venice for months despite having numerous opportunities to take passage to Rhodes, even breaking an express compact they had made to travel there on a Hospitaller vessel.52 Although most brethren received in England must have reached the convent eventually, for there are no other such complaints, the journey was a long and potentially dangerous one. Most English brethren seem to have travelled to Rhodes via Venice,53 which they may have reached overland from Calais or the Low Countries.54 The journals of Vincenzo and Lorenzo Priuli 49

e.g. BDVTE, 44–5. 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 in December 1469, was granted express permission to return again on the Venetian galleys which made regular journeys from London and Bruges to Beirut, although these were not necessarily via 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 up with papers relating to the priory of England in the 1380s gives a route from Bruges to Venice and thence to Rhodes, while John Radyngton, prior of England, travelled from Dover to Calais and thence through the territories of Charles VI of France on his way to Rhodes in 1386. Colker, Descriptive Catalogue, citing Trinity College, Dublin MS 500, 2, 3. Thomas Newport and Thomas Sheffield probably travelled overland from Tournai 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. 50

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preserved in Venice show Vincenzo drawing up bills of exchange in London for Hospitaller brethren who then cashed them at the family bank in Venice.55 The conventual knights Charles Lyster, William Haseldon, and James Green cashed bills for the equivalent of £20 each in Venice in 1505–6 and a further 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 than merely passage money.56 Newport’s travel from England to Rhodes in 1505–6 can be traced in detail. He let his preceptories to farm in late June 1505, reached Venice by 16 September, and remained there until at least 19 January 1506, when he cashed a bill of exchange drawn up for him in December by Vincenzo Priuli. Newport then departed the Lagoon on a vessel captained by Vincenzo Tiepolo, and was responsible for the safe arrival in Rhodes, which he had reached by 6 May, of a hundred loads of steel belonging to another Venetian.57 The order’s English responsions had frequently been submitted by means of letters of exchange payable in Venice in the past, and it was natural that the bearers of these should be brethren on their way to headquarters.58 While the route outlined above may have been the most common way to Rhodes, it was not taken by all brethren. This was, indeed, not always possible. In 1480 and 1522 the Venetians forbade their subjects from landing at Rhodes for fear of upsetting the Turks and there were other occasions when Venetian captains refused to go near Rhodes lest they encounter Turkish forces.59 Some Hospitallers visited Rome on their way to headquarters and once there it was easier to take passage from the kingdom of Naples than to return north. John Weston’s party probably did this in 1481–2 and Robert Pemberton, who arrived in Rhodes in August 1498, had come by way of Rome, having been robbed on the way.60 Others perhaps reached the Aegean on the vessels of English merchants like William Gonson, Edward Water, 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. 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 that an English Hospitaller carrying a great deal of money had been robbed and killed along with his company near Viterbo. It seems likely that the victim was Thomas Plumpton, the commander of Carbrooke, news of whose death had reached Rhodes by September, and that Pemberton had been travelling with him. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Existing in the Archives and 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 are noted in contemporary records in 1514, 1519, 1521, and 1522. P. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios by the Genoese, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1958), iii. 838, 866, 876, 882. 56

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The English Langue

conceivable that Gonson or one of his captains delivered his son David to Malta 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 dangerous too. The order’s various residences in Italy and Provence were presumably reached overland, but after the move to Malta it is possible that brethren used the established sea route to Sicily, where there had been an English mercantile presence since 1463.63 One such trader, James Grantham, was involved in financial dealings with the order in the 1530s and may have been related to the Hospitaller Christopher Grantham,64 while Clement West waited in vain for Giles Russell’s cousin Anthony at Messina on his way to Malta in December 1532, having sailed from Southampton to Calais, Alicante, Seville, and Sicily in turn.65 John Story, who carried letters back and forth between Clement West and Thomas Cromwell during the 1530s, also passed through Messina.66 Other English brethren, however, are to be found in Genoa, the Low Countries, and France during the same period, sometimes performing errands for the order while returning home overland.67 Although references to English brethren in transit between Rhodes and England are few, travel home must often have been more difficult than the outward journey, especially in winter. The experience of Richard Torkington, an English chaplain taken ill at Rhodes on his way home from Jerusalem in 1517, provides an illustration of the difficulties involved. Torkington took passage on a Rhodiot vessel on which there were nine Hospitaller knights on 12 November 1517 and suffered an extraordinarily unpleasant and protracted voyage through the equinoctial gales, not reaching Cephalonia until 7 January and remaining there until the 31st. The ship then tried to go up the Adriatic but was thrice driven back to Corfu by contrary winds, finally leaving only on 5 March and reaching the Calabrian coast three days later. From there Torkington and at least some of the ship’s company rode to Reggio, took ship to Messina, returned to Calabria, and rode up to Rome.68 The storms through which they had passed had been so severe that at several times during the journey both crew and passengers had been afraid that their vessel would sink or be driven ashore on Turkish territory.69 On arrival in convent a probationary brother appeared before the langue with his proofs or a promise to produce them within the requisite term, and 62

BDVTE, 3. 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. 63

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was then admitted.70 Reservations of equal seniority for brethren who had not yet arrived were made at the same time. The probationary knight then paid small sums for his ‘passage and dinners’ to the auberge, although often not for several months after his reception, and was presumably fed there in return.71 His soldea and tabula were fixed at 50 or 60 and 20 florins of Rhodes per annum respectively, and were paid by the order’s common treasury.72 Presumably because of the difficulty of exporting money from England and the fact that English brethren sometimes brought cloth with them to headquarters in lieu of responsions, they were paid in cash rather than cloth, unlike the brethren of other langues.73 Preceptors or bailiffs coming to convent did not receive the soldea, being expected to support themselves from the fruits of their preceptories.74 Although brethren were expected to secure the licence of their provincial superior before coming to convent, it is unlikely that this was often refused,75 and judging by the evidence of the order’s lease books, they were usually conscientious in setting off as soon as they learned they had been summoned. Ad hoc assemblies of brethren were often held solely so that preceptors on their way to the east could lease them quickly 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, preceptors were permitted to farm their estates for up to three years and to receive the first two years’ payments in advance.77 After the fall of Rhodes, a number of licences for leases of one or two years were granted, reflecting the reduced journey time from England.78 Similarly, after 1522 those summoned to convent were allowed six months to get there rather than nine.79 Evidence for the total number of brethren at headquarters, and for the numerical strength of the English langue comes mainly from two sources, statutes laying down the theoretical strength of the order’s establishment in the east, and censuses of brethren present at magistral elections. Both have imperfections. The statutory figures represent an ideal which balanced what the order could afford with what was thought necessary for the defence of its possessions, 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. Payments in BDVTE, 66–8. 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 Rhodes in accordance with a magistral bull of February 1510 was cancelled because the prior appointed him 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 estates as 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. 71 72

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actual numbers, but they do at least represent a working total of all the brethren in the convent and on caravan. By contrast, the totals of those present at magistral elections probably do not include brethren serving on caravan, and may not even include those who held military posts on the order’s islands, but they nevertheless provide ‘snapshots’ of the actual number of brethren resident in the order’s capitals at various times in its development, as can be seen from Table 8.1. It is interesting that despite the modesty of the numerical contribution laid down for the English langue, in practice it proved impossible to fulfil. Although the number of brethren present at magistral elections was usually below the statutory requirement the proportion of ‘Englishmen’ was even lower than that envisaged in legislation, at between 4 and 6 per cent rather than 7 or 8 per cent. Only in 1513, when a large company was sent from England in response to the invasion scare of January, was the ‘English’ contingent at full strength. The figures may hide brothers who were on caravan or on other service in the east, but these would probably not add more than about six to the total.80 After 1523 the survival of the langue’s minute book allows us to trace almost exactly which brethren were in convent and which absent at any one time, something only possible with preceptors before. Many of its meetings list those present, and if these lists are compared carefully with the records of knights going on caravan, they allow a more accurate assessment of the size of the ‘English’ contingent than is possible before. Judging by the figures given below, the langue seems to have been understandably short of manpower after the siege of 1522, but after its reinforcement by fourteen probationary knights in 1524, twelve in 1528, and a trickle of ones and twos in other years, numbers hovered between about 15 and 22 between 1524 and 1533, before falling back somewhat later in the decade.81 It is noticeable that many of the probationary knights disappear from view after two or three years of service and do not resurface in the records thereafter. The number of Scots and Irish knights in convent was very small. As we have seen, the Irish brethren often acted without much reference to the dictates of the convent, or, on occasion, of their prior. Very few came to headquarters to perform conventual service, probably because there was little chance of reward at the end of it, especially after 1494. Only five Irish knights certainly appear in the order’s records in this context between 1460 and 1560: James Keating, who was at headquarters in 1459, 1461, and at the Rome chapter-general of 1466–7; John Feguillem (Fitzwilliam?) between 1465 and 1467; Edmund Seys, between 1512 and 1514; and Nicholas Plunket and John Fitzgerald in 1527.82 Others summoned included five 80

See Table 8.2. 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. 81

279

The English Langue Table 8.1. Numbers of brethren in convent, 1445–1536a Date

Total brethren

English langue

Source

1445 1446 1449 1459 1461 (Aug.) 1463 (July) 1467 1471 1475 1476 (June) 1501, 1504, 1510 1510 1503 (July) 1508 (Aug.)

n/a 250 n/a 335 286 n/a 350 450 450 259 400

10 þ 3 absent pro rata 16 þ 3 absent Unspecified 13 13 28 28þ 28þ 14 Unspecified

Meeting of langue Statuteb Meeting of langue Statutec Election Meeting of langue Statuted Statutee Statutef Election Statutes

377

19 23

1512 (Nov.) 1513 (Dec.) 1514 1522 (June) 1535 (Nov.) 1536 (Dec.)

410 (368) 551 550 311 300 c.360

(16) 38 Unspecified 11 Unspecified Unspecified

Electiong List of English brethren in Rhodes Electionh Election Statutei Incomplete Censusj Election 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 brethren were 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.

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Table 8.2. The numerical strength of the langue, 1523–1537 Date

Present at meeting

10 July 1523 14 Aug. 1523 23 Mar. 1524 10 Apr. 1525 26 Aug. 1525 21 Aug. 1526 13 Jan. 1527 14 Feb. 1528(–9?) 16 Oct. 1528 19 Feb. 1529 4 Nov. 1529 16 June 1530 7 Dec. 1530 25 Feb. 1531(–2?) 4 Mar. 1531(–2?) 13 July 1531 4 Aug. 1531 12 Feb. 1532 8 Apr. 1532 28 Jan. 1533 18 Apr. 1533 20 Oct. 1533 13 Apr. 1534 1 Feb. 1535 29 May 1535 8 Mar. 1536 14 July 1536 8 Mar. 1537

11 9 8 14 12 11 14 9 14 13a 16 12 7 14/15 14 13 15 9 14 18 10 11 7 7 13 10 14 12

On caravan None? None? Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown 6b 3? 5?c

2 2 3? 5 (caravan of 1 Mar. 1532) 0 or 1?d 6 (caravan of 1 Apr. 1533) 6 (caravan of 1 Apr. 1533) 4 (caravan of 24 Mar. 1534) 3 (caravan of 29 Aug. 1534) 0 3 (caravan of 24 Jan. 1536) 0 3 (caravan of 11 Oct. 1536)e

a

For meetings referred to between 1523 and February 1529, see BDVTE, 4–11, 44, 13. 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 the meeting 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. b

named preceptors in 1516 and Seys and Fitzmaurice in 1517.83 Although Keating certainly did well out of his conventual service, Feguillem disappears from view after licensed to leave Rhodes in 1467, Seys was denied 83

AOM404, fos. 147v–148r; 405, fos. 132r–133v, 134v.

The English Langue

281

advancement, and Plunket and Fitzgerald probably came to Viterbo for a very brief visit to receive grants of their preceptories.84 The order’s Scottish brethren did not see much conventual service either. Chiefly this was because there was only one commandery available to them, and although conventual service was sometimes necessary to secure it, once the goal was achieved there was little incentive to return. Given the often troubled state of Scottish affairs and the frequent need to defend the order’s possessions there, it was neither in the commander’s nor the order’s interest for him to do so. The attempts of Scottish brethren to secure English commanderies were constantly frustrated by the langue, which would only appoint them to Torphichen.85 Thus, although a number of Scottish brethren performed conventual service in the century after 1460, most left once they had obtained approval of their ancienitas or better still expectancy to or an outright grant of Torphichen.86 The only exceptions were Patrick Scougal, who served at the convent over a period of at least sixteen years on and off, and may have fought at the siege of 1480, and John Chamber or Chalmers, who had fought as a secular at the siege of 1522, and remained in convent until at least 1533, supported initially by the convent and later by a pension from Walter Lindsay.87 To these should be added other unprofessed volunteers or mercenaries.88 Soldiers and servants from Britain and Ireland may indeed have outnumbered their professed compatriots in convent. The retinues that priors were licensed to take to Rhodes were often considerable, and when the English government licensed Hospitallers to leave the realm in the mid1530s junior preceptors were allowed three servants apiece, and conventual knights one.89 Although on both Rhodes and Malta many brethren must have owned or rented rooms or houses, and it is likely that only some conventual knights, as well 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. On Rhodes it has been identified with a modestly sized and heavily restored edifice sited towards the seaward defences of the collachium very close to the 84

See above, Ch. 7. 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. 85

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The English Langue

order’s Hospital.92 The auberge was the site of communal meals and of assemblies of the langue.93 Although under the authority of the turcopolier, it was actually run by two proctors elected annually by the nation. These had charge of its monies and plate, and rendered accounts to similarly chosen auditors at the end of their term of office.94 The auberge drew its revenue from the passage and dinner payments of conventual knights, from levies on those promoted to preceptories or bailiwicks,95 from the spolia of deceased brethren96 and from the common treasury, which apparently paid the tabulae of some brethren through the auberges.97 Although these payments should have been enough to cover ordinary expenses they were often slow to come in, and difficulties arose during times of crisis or when unforeseen expenses occurred. In these situations extraordinary levies could be imposed, or the master and council asked to compel non-payers to satisfy their dues. In May 1484, for example, John Kendal secured a papal grant of the first fruits of all Hospitaller churches in the priory of England, which were to be applied to the fortifications in the care of the langue and to its auberge, which had been damaged during the recent siege and earthquakes. The langue was responsible for repairing these, but no revenues had been set aside for the purpose.98 The sums raised by this expedient were evidently insufficient, for five years later the auberge was described as being in ‘no small ruin’ and a levy of £80 was imposed on preceptories in the priory of England so that it might be rendered more habitable.99 Repairs had again become necessary by 1504, when the order’s houses in Britain and Ireland were 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 conventual 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 items of his spolia, followed by the other langues in turn. This was apparently an extension of a general principle to the specific circumstances of a brother’s decease on caravan. In September 1509 Clement West complained unsuccessfully that a licence granted to Robert Pemberton to bequeath 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 set aside ‘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 financed at first by the master, possibly in his capacity of administrator of the common treasury, for an inscribed marble noticed by Rottiers at the foot of the towers of the Arsenal, which would seem likely to have been originally placed on the auberge or post of England, read ‘Lingue Anglie edes ac 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 payments, or pitancia, to support their conventual brethren. Fiorini and Luttrell, ‘Italian Hospitallers’, 210, 214, 220–2, 230; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 160–1, 625. 100 AOM395, fos. 144r–145r.

The English Langue

283

Rather different problems arose during the convent’s migrations after the fall of Rhodes to the Turks. Although the langue saved at least some of its plate from the Ottomans,101 it probably lost its household goods during the siege or at some stage during the convent’s subsequent itinerations, for in July 1527 Thomas Docwra’s Rhodiot servant Francis Galliardetto brought napery and cutlery to Corneto for the use of the auberge.102 In 1534, similarly, a gift of a pewter dinner service was made to the langue by William Weston.103 Between 1523 and 1535 the langue was housed in rented accommodation and although the rents were not excessive their payment, and the cost of providing domestic utensils, chapel ornaments and military hardware, apparently taxed the langue’s finances to their limit.104 Matters were not helped by the failure of brethren to pay their dues to the auberge. There were a number of protests about its poverty in the 1530s, and in 1533 and 1536, following complaints by the proctors of the langue and the turcopolier respectively, prior Weston was instructed to compel the debtors to payment.105 Among the latter was John Rawson, who in 1533 still owed 100 florins for his readeption of the priory of Ireland five years earlier.106 Despite these difficulties, the langue managed to stay afloat, aided by prioral gifts, and the payment of the auberge’s rent by successive turcopoliers out of their own pockets.107 The English conventual brethren must have acquired rented property soon after the move to Malta, for in September 1530 commissioners, among them Richard Salford, had been appointed to go 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 was ordained to create a fit chamber for the turcopolier and his lieutenant at one end of the ‘palace of the auberge’.109 This property evidently failed to meet all the langue’s needs, however, for in October 1534 Clement West paid 30 ounces of silver for a house in Birgu which he bestowed on the langue some months later. This building may have served as an auberge or lodging house thereafter. In 1559 Cardinal Pole, through Tresham, provided a considerable sum of money for the purchase and furnishing of an auberge, but financial difficulties forced the langue to sell what property it already possessed, and Pole’s bequest had not been used by 1564.110 While James Shelley then bought a house in Valletta, no purpose-built auberge was ever 101

BDVTE, 76. Ibid. 75. 103 Ibid. 25. 104 The rent of the langue’s house in Viterbo was 18 e´cus per annum, while in 1532 the turcopolier was paying 13 ducats, also presumably per annum, for a house in Malta. AOM53, v fo. 49 /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. 102

284

The English Langue

constructed for the langue.111 Some idea of the expense of the upkeep of the auberge can be derived from the fact that in 1546 the council voted 20 e´cus per annum towards it, even though there were only two English brethren in convent by this time.112 The recorded proceedings of the langue provide little evidence about the quality of its communal life, which has to be sought in the three main classes of chancery documents, particularly in the Libri Conciliorum. We know little about the brothers’ living conditions, intellectual interests or, until the 1530s, relationships with each other. Their religious life is particularly opaque. Although the langue possibly possessed a vaulted chapel on Rhodes, decorated with frescos of St George and the arms of England and of Hospitaller brethren,113 the names of the chaplains who served there are unknown. The statutes did not require English chaplains to live in convent, and although the non-Hospitaller chaplains of some of the wealthier brethren came to headquarters with them and presumably served the langue while they were there it is likely that divine worship and the administration of the sacraments were often conducted by foreigners.114 In 1529 the provincial chapter in England decided that the absence of English priests in convent was a scandal, especially because the younger knights knew no language but English and could not easily make their confessions. Accordingly, the revenues of a number of the order’s churches in England and Wales were set aside for the purpose of providing for one or two brother priests of the order to 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 was never implemented, although it is also possible that secular priests rather than Hospitaller brethren were used, and that they have escaped mention in the surviving documents. Evidence for the commercial interests and property holdings of the British brethren is easier to come by. Besides the auberge, the langue also owned a vineyard in the castellany of Villanova, which had been granted to a prior of England by Philibert de Naillac (master, 1398–1421) and regranted by the prior to the English conventual brethren some time later. In 1504–5 the langue was in dispute with John Rawson senior, to whom it had granted the property, but who had failed to give an account of its fruits to the conventual brethren.116 Some individual English brethren, too, owned or held property elsewhere on Rhodes or Malta, usually by magistral grant. John Langstrother, who was castellan of Rhodes for most of the 1450s, had a life grant of a substantial garden at Malipassi along with its fountain, houses, rents, and other appurtenances from Jean de Lastic. In 1459 he 111 113 114 115 116

112 Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 101–4. Ibid. 97. Belabre, Rhodes, 88–92; Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 121. AOM75, fo. 79r; 405, fo. 134r. BDVTE, 14–16. AOM80, fo. 122v; 284, fo. 91v.

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secured a regrant of it from chapter-general in consideration of improvements he had made to its fabric. It was probably here that Langstrother had the Milanese nobleman Roberto da Sanseverino and John Lord Tiptoft to dinner while they were staying in Rhodes on their way to Jerusalem in 1458.117 Langstrother also possessed houses adjoining the castellany buildings in the ‘lower’ collachium in Rhodes town, which he had acquired by licence of Jacques de Milly (master, 1454–61) and in 1459 was confirmed in his possession of a domunculum which he had been improving there.118 Other prominent English knights were also able to acquire houses and estates, probably also by magistral grant. John Kendal still held lands in the countryside of Phileremos and La Bastide some years after he had left Rhodes for the last time, and in 1491 his proctor was involved in litigation with the prior of Phileremos over them.119 In 1521 William Weston, who already resided in an adjoining or nearby house (domo . . . contigua), was granted a ‘place’ outside the curtilage (ex corsilio) belonging to the castellany which had been allocated for the ‘houses of the langue’,120 and there are records of other senior knights dwelling in their own houses. Thomas Newport lived in a house in Rhodes town during at least one of his visits as 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 property, also presumably in Birgu, in 1539.121 As well as owning property, some brethren engaged in commercial or financial activities while in the Mediterranean. Typically these were confined to providing cloth and tin to the convent and lending money to the common treasury. These activities were closely linked to the payment of responsions, for if a knight was in arrears with the common treasury any payments he made to it in Rhodes would be deducted, and if in credit the receiver of the common treasury in England would be instructed to reduce the sums due from him there accordingly. The import of cloth into the convent by brethren of the English langue can be seen in every decade between 1460 and 1540. John Weston, for example, sold cloth to the common treasury in 1465, while the Rome chapter-general of 1466–7 established that the arrears of the prior and preceptors of England should be submitted to headquarters either in cash or in cloth to be shipped to Rhodes by Weston and Robert Pickering.122 Cloth was also sent from England to the lieutenant master to pay the spolia of Nicholas Passemer in about 1471.123 In the 1470s the volume of trade increased. In 1471 John Kendal and Robert Tonge promised to pay the 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

AOM369, fo. 178v; Mitchell, Spring Voyage, 80–1. AOM369, fo. 175v. AOM77, fo. 45r. AOM83, fos. 14v–15r. AOM81, fo. 107r; 86, fo. 87r; Luttrell, ‘Birgu’, 134. AOM73, fo. 183v; 283, fo. 30v. AOM283, fo. 54v.

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master in cloth in lieu of the pension they owed for the magistral camera in England and before 1477 Kendal also contracted to supply the convent with cloth and corn, the latter presumably to be brought from Italy.124 Several sources show Weston and Kendal shipping cloth to the Mediterranean during the 1470s and 1480s.125 Cloth was also consigned to the common treasury by Robert Multon in 1474 in part payment of responsions owed for the two previous years.126 Considerable sums were involved in this traffic. In September 1477 the order’s receiver in England was ordered to repay over 8,000 florins of Rhodes which Kendal was owed by the treasury by reason of his contract. At the same time the turcopolier and the treasury agreed to deduct 6,000 florins he owed for his responsions and for the spolia owed by the magistral camera in England from the greater worth of cloth and corn for which he was its creditor.127 Still larger quantities were brought from England to Rhodes by Catalan and Genoese merchants. Letters of exchange payable in 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, which might again be brought to Rhodes.128 Even when English brethren handed over cloth to the convent themselves it is probable that they used foreign vessels to carry it rather than their own. Thus, when the common treasury ratified the accord between Renier Pot and William Tornay regarding the payment of the latter’s arrears it ordained that he should dispatch the 800 canes of cloth which John Langstrother had been accustomed to send when he was alive, the first 400 on the vessel of the Genoese Tobia Lomelino and the 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 vacancy monies of the priory and some of the arrears owed by the other English preceptors to be sent to Rhodes in the form of cloth and lead, which were to be carried on Venetian galleys by way of Messina.130 After this date the involvement of English brethren and foreign merchants in the shipment of cloth to Rhodes is more difficult to trace, probably because most payments to 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. 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 e´cus in 1475 and 9725 e´cus in 1479. AOM382, fos. 177r–v, 177v; 387, fos. 142r–v. 129 AOM382, fo. 136r. 130 AOM391, fo. 199v. 131 In 1493 Newport 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 England should be submitted to the receiver of Venice, Andrea de Martini. AOM394, fos. 177r–178r. 125

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cloths worth £48 10s. from a London mercer to send to Rhodes.132 From the 1510s onwards there was something of a revival in the traffic. Consignments of kersey and tin were sent in lieu of responsions by the prior and receiver to the order’s representative in Messina in 1519 and 1521, and in October 1521 Francis Bell handed over to the convent Thomas Docwra’s ‘loan’ of 126 ‘rocks’ of unworked tin and 880 pieces of kersey worth 6,444 and 8,800 ducats respectively.133 This sum, and a further 4,000 ducats worth of kersey expected from the prior before June 1522, was to be repaid, along with 756 ducats owed to the prior by various debtors, only in 1527, although Docwra was to be allowed to keep the responsions due from him between 1525 and 1527 as security for the repayment.134 Brethren of the langue also made cash payments to the convent. Generally those mentioned in the records were loans to the common treasury, payments of arrears, and sums owed to the master either for the preceptory of Dalby and Rotheley, which had been granted to him by chapter in 1493 and 1501,135 or for the vacancy years of preceptories held by magistral grace.136 Ordinary submissions of responsions and other dues owed to the common treasury are not recorded in the Libri Bullarum, as they were paid to the receiver of the common treasury in England and submitted by him to Rhodes in bulk. Although most of these payments were routine, some brethren loaned sums considerably in excess of their annual responsions to the order. In 1468 alone letters of exchange worth a total of 10,600 e´cus and 2,000 florins of Rhodes were issued to John Langstrother in recompense for sums he had paid the order or its creditors in the same year, while in 1469 Langstrother and John Weston between them advanced a further 1,945 1⁄3 ducats, 3,952 e´cus, and £21 13s. 4d.137 In 1471 and 1475 headquarters issued urgent appeals to the conventual brethren for ready cash and although the numbers of English and Scots brethren who contributed were limited, the sums they advanced were relatively generous.138 John Weston also lent money to Giovanbattista Orsini, the master, in the 1470s and was repaid from his spolia in 1478.139 Although the slow improvement in the order’s finances after the 1470s may have obviated the necessity for 132

AOM79, fo. 115v. 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 1475 Weston and Richard Sandford contributed 100 florins each, John Boswell 200, Patrick Scougal 15, John Bourgh 50, and George Badstret, a possible English knight, 50. AOM371, fo. 180v; 74, 60v–61v; 75, fo. 62r–v. 139 AOM382, fo. 140v; 386, fos. 127v–128r. 133

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The English Langue

emergency subventions, substantial advance payments were made by a number of knights afterwards. Thomas Newport, who raised £1,000 before leaving England in 1513, paid his responsions in advance and in cash when he reached Rhodes in November.140 Most spectacular, of course, was Thomas Docwra’s gift of 20,000 ducats’ worth of unworked silver and cash, which was brought to Rhodes by Francis Bell and Lancelot Docwra in 1515.141 It is not always clear how these sums were raised, or if the brethren who made them benefited materially from their largesse, but nearly all those knights who lent significant sums to the order in the 1460s and 1470s advanced in the hierarchy later and Thomas Docwra’s near-election as master in 1521 probably owed much to his earlier generosity.142 In addition to advancing money and importing cloth while they were at headquarters, brethren of the langue sometimes had other business interests in the Aegean. Both John Langstrother and John Weston owned ships and were involved in the corso.143 Thomas Newport, who captured several Turkish transports in 1516, may also have indulged in piracy on his own account, although he did have a formal naval command at about the same time.144 Newport also imported goods into Rhodes on behalf of a Venetian merchant in 1506 and in the following year entered into partnership with the Rhodiot Francino Ux to trade with Egypt, although their goods were to be sent on another merchant’s vessel.145 Even unbeneficed conventual knights might import goods on their own account.146 Brethren had other commercial and personal interests too. Giles Russell and Oswald Massingberd, for example, owned, or claimed to own, slaves while a correspondent of Clement West expressed disappointment at not having been able to procure the latter ‘some little Turk’ as a prize at the battle of Preveza.147 Other knights had ties of service or friendship with Rhodiots. Several came to England with their masters and were granted corrodies or properties by provincial chapters there, and one, Mark Pilletto, even became a knight of the English langue.148 The Rhodiots Francis Bell and Francis Galliardetto were among the most prominent servants of Thomas Docwra and William Weston during their priorates,149 and when the order sought the restoration of its lands in the 1550s it instructed its ambassadors to England to consult with Galliardetto, who had 140

Claudius E.vi, fos. 113r–114v; AOM402, fo. 164r–v. 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. 141

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‘administered the priory for many years’.150 Galliardetto shared a surname with a banneret of the 1470s, George, perhaps an indication that there were traditions of family service to the langue.151 The brethren also built up associations with Catalan and Italian merchants involved in exchange and trade between England and the convent, such as the Genoese Antonio Vivaldi, who was prominent in the order’s affairs in the 1520s and 1530s and was granted corrodies and leases by provincial chapters in England.152 Another facet of the langue’s operations was the provision of hospitality and care to ‘British’ pilgrims passing through Rhodes on their way to or from Jerusalem, and to other travellers too.153 Richard Guildford’s chaplain in 1506 and Richard Torkington in 1517 mentioned the ‘cher(e) and well entre(a)tyng(e)’ they enjoyed from the English knights there and singled out several of their hosts for praise. Torkington further remarked on ‘what comfort was Don to us, and speciall that was sek and desesyd’.154 As well as hospitality, travellers could get information on local political conditions and advice on further progress in Rhodes. Anonymous advice issued to a prospective 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 well as of alle other landes cristen’.155 There he could take counsel as to where the sultan might be and make further arrangements accordingly. In the case of the humanist William Lily, who learnt Greek in Rhodes at some time before the 1490s, an association probably begun in the convent was continued after the traveller’s return home, as Lily was granted a benefice in the order’s gift, Holcote in Bedfordshire, on coming back.156 The order’s links with others of its associates in England, such as the Throckmortons of Warwickshire, 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 those concerned 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. 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 construction of which began in c. 1407. BL MS Cotton Appendix VIII, fos. 108v–112v. Text in ‘Rathschla¨ge fu¨r 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. 151

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the promotion of brethren was based on the display of adequate proofs of nobility, on seniority, and on conventual service. This manner of proceeding created something of a rat race, as it was in the interest of brethren to discredit the nobility and challenge the ancienitas of their contemporaries should either be in doubt. Inadequate proofs of nobility, failures to reach the convent on time, and the reversal of losses of seniority inflicted as a punishment all provided occasion for protest. The worst effects of the system were mitigated by private compositions between individuals or groups of Hospitallers agreeing a time limit within which they were to reach headquarters if they were to enjoy the same seniority and by agreements between brethren that one should pay a pension to another should he be provided to a preceptory first, or to divide up which benefices each would seek in advance.157 Knights came into chancery to have such accords registered, and into council to complain if they were broken. A great proportion of the langue’s proceedings were also concerned with seniority. Ancienitas was granted to brethen to ‘cabish’ or to ‘melior’ themselves of their first and subsequent preceptories and to seek bailiwicks, and sometimes it was bestowed on those conventual knights who had performed the longest service and wished to go home.158 Preceptors at convent were greatly concerned with the state of their preceptories, writing anxious letters home to make sure that they were being administered properly, that visitations were carried out without undue expense, and that their meliorments were drawn up correctly. Time was of the essence in this process, for until meliorments had been approved there was no possibility of promotion. Accordingly brethren often sought the grant of chancery commissions to brethren in England to view the meliorments they had made rather than wait for the provincial chapter to deliberate on them.159 Having secured reports from the commissaries they then presented them to the langue for approval. Should the grant of seniority to ‘melior’ oneself of another commandery be denied, or should another brother feel aggrieved that the meliorments had been accepted, an appeal might be made to the order’s council. It was inevitable that in an institution filled with young noblemen competing for advancement arguments, brawls, and even duels would sometimes occur. The Libri Conciliorum provide considerable evidence relating to such misdemeanours as it was the council which appointed those who investigated them and which pronounced sentence after these had reported. It was the council, too, which ordered the formal deprivation of serious criminals from the habit. Between 1460 and 1522 only three serious crimes or disciplinary breaches involving brethren of the langue are recorded. The first was the flight of John Boswell from the convent after he had been sent to Crete by 157 159

AOM378, fo. 148r–v; 383, fo. 144v; 388, fo. 134r. e.g. LPFD, xiv, II, nos. 62, 405.

158

BDVTE, 44.

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John Langstrother.160 Following the intervention of Edward IV, Boswell returned to convent, did formal penance, and was restored to his ancienitas,161 going on to enjoy a successful career in the order. Another serious incident occurred in September 1482, when it was reported that Henry Freville, who had already been in trouble for a crime committed against a secular two years earlier,162 and Henry Battersby had struck each other with swords ‘with wounds and effusion of blood from the head’, with the result that the surgeons feared the death of both combatants. Although it was ordered that justice be done according to the statutes, no further proceedings are recorded against either of the men, both of whom survived for some years.163 Perhaps reflecting the discipline instilled in the convent by the austere Pierre d’Aubusson, no further serious charges were laid against ‘English’ brethren, save in connection with events at home, until 1504. In that year ‘Griman Oswell’, probably one of the Boswell clan and an English conventual knight, came into council complaining that John Tonge, the late prior’s nephew, was ‘touched by the crime of sodomy’ and had stolen from the spolia of his uncle. Tonge alleged in response that Boswell had lain in ambush for him before the door of his chamber with intent to injure him.164 Although no further proceedings were taken against either man, Tonge returned to council soon afterwards alleging that he was suffering from severe dysentery and asked to be allowed to go home to recover his health. While he may genuinely have been ill his departure may also have been a face-saving arrangement designed to spare all parties further embarrassment.165 Unless one counts the offences of Thomas Boydell and Alban Pole in 1507,166 no more serious disciplinary charges were laid against English brethren until 1528. From this date onwards, however, and especially after 1533, incidents multiplied. Seven separate instances of violent conduct and various accusations of immoderate and disrespectful behaviour and blasphemy were recorded between 1528 and 1540, several of them of the utmost gravity. Three knights—Philip Carew, Oswald Massingberd, and Christopher Myers—were deprived of the habit for murder in this period. Although Carew at least had the excuse of having killed his victim, Thomas Hall, in a duel, Massingberd’s murder of four fettered slaves and Myers’s ‘base and miserable’ slaughter of a certain ‘foolish’ woman in her own bedchamber rank as the most unpleasant crimes committed by any member of the langue between c.1460 and 1565.167 Both Massingberd and Myers were involved in other violent incidents too. The latter was imprisoned for a fight with David Gonson and Philip Babington in 1535 which was so serious that Myers and 160 162 165 167

161 AOM73, fos. 133v–134r, 135v–136r; 282, fo. 21r. AOM376, fo. 155r. v 163 r r–v 164 AOM76, fo. 56 . Ibid., fo. 121 ; 77, fos. 37 . AOM80, fo. 112v. 166 Ibid., fo. 115r. See below, Ch. 8.4. AOM85, fos. 44r, 45v; 85, fos. 126v, 128r, 130r; 86, fos. 46v–47r.

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Gonson, who had ‘shed much blood’, had merited deprival of the habit.168 Gonson, too, had something of a temper, for in 1536 he was sent to prison on Gozo for beating three seculars and in October 1539 was sentenced to another year there for striking one of his brethren in the face with a dagger.169 It is tempting to assume that this was, once again, Babington, for the latter accused Gonson of treason after his flight from Malta in 1540.170 Even after 1540, when the langue was reduced to a rump of a few brethren, Oswald Massingberd and the Scot John James Sandilands managed to get themselves into serious trouble, the latter being twice imprisoned for brawling in 1557 and 1558, deprived of the habit for mistreating Oliver Starkey in 1564, and subsequently executed for theft from a church.171 The reasons for this upsurge in violence are not entirely clear but there are several possibilities. One is a general weakening of discipline after the fall of Rhodes. L’Isle Adam never enjoyed the full confidence of the Spanish and Italian brethren after his execution of the Portuguese chancellor, Andrea d’Amaral, during the siege, and some English brethren, too, had little respect for his judgement. The disrespect which was shown the master on several occasions after 1522 may have extended to his placemen. The lack of a separate collachium for the brethren, too, perhaps made it easier for them to break curfew, arrange duels, and plot against their superiors in relative safety. In the event of serious crime, moreover, both Italy and Malta were easier to escape than Rhodes and both Carew and Myers managed to get clear of the convent before they could be tried for their crimes.172 Most striking, however, are the divisions within the langue and the lack of respect of its brethren for their own and the order’s officers. John Babington complained about the injurious deeds and sayings of certain English brothers in 1530, and Clement West, who was hardly in a position to criticize such failings, went to the council to request action against members of the langue for blasphemy and disrespectful conduct in 1536.173 Indeed, West’s conduct in the chapter of 1533 and his appeals behind his fellows’ backs to England must have helped to polarize opinion within the langue. As has been suggested, by the late 1530s there appears to have been a division between an ultra-Henrician faction composed of Clement West, Oswald Massingberd, Nicholas Lambert, and Philip Babington, and a ‘Catholic’ party composed of men such as John Sutton, his step-nephew Nicholas Upton, David Gonson, and Thomas Dingley.174 Other conservatives probably included Thomas Thornhill and William Tyrell, both of whom were investigated by 168

169 170 AOM86, fo. 12v. Ibid., fos. 31v, 95r. See below, Ch. 9. Scotland, liii–lv, 184, 186–7, 189–90. For Massingberd, see Ch. 8.4. 172 v v 173 r AOM85, fo. 45 ; 86, fo. 46 . AOM85, fo. 65 ; 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 having exchanged insults in 1539. AOM86, fo. 88v. 171

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the royal council in 1541, and Giles Russell.175 Yet one should not make these divisions too sharp. Despite his earlier association with West and repeated disciplinary breaches, after 1540 Oswald Massingberd remained in Malta in apparent harmony with Nicholas Upton and later in the decade was even involved in plans to raise rebellion against Edward VI’s government in Ireland.176 West himself related the order’s campaigns against the Turks with apparent pride in his letters home and might have been able to stay on as turcopolier had he not been afraid to sue for papal confirmation of his restoration to his dignity.177

8.3

Military Service

For all their other activities, the ‘British’ brethren in convent were there primarily to perform service, chiefly military service. This was done in a number of contexts and locations. Those resident in convent manned the post of England on the walls of Rhodes town and occasionally one of the three port towers as well. Others, especially the turcopolier or his lieutenant, whose usual duty this was, would tour Rhodes, and later Malta, checking the alertness of those appointed to keep watch. A third category consisted of those knights allocated to the caravans at sea, on Cos, in the castle of St Peter or, later, at the fortress of Tripoli. Evidence of the particulars of such activity referring specifically to the ‘English’ is hard to come by before 1529, but much general information is available. The overall dimensions of the order’s professed manpower at headquarters are known as are the numbers deputed to the garrison duty of various places on certain occasions. Almost complete lists of the captains of the order’s galley squadron, of St Peter, of Cos, and of Tripoli can be obtained and frequent notices of military actions involving Hospitaller forces occur in the Libri Conciliorum and in letters sent to the west. 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 England extended between the towers of Spain and St Mary, including the former but not the latter, which was held by the Aragonese langue. Also included in the zone of English responsibility were the boulevard of England and the walls, barbicans, and magazine between the two towers.178 The usual manning levels of the posts are not known; few brethren probably served on the walls in usual circumstances, but numbers were increased during emergencies. On 30 March 1475, for example, the langues were convoked in order to allocate posts to their brethren in response to the news of the construction of a 175

176 177 See below, Ch. 9. See Chs. 8.4, 9. LPFD, xiv, II, no. 579. r r AOM73, fos. 159 –160 . The location of the posts of the langues, which altered somewhat 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. 178

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Turkish fleet at Gallipoli.179 The commanders of the English post are, save in 1522, unknown. During those times when the master did not have charge of the common treasury the port towers of Naillac, St Nicholas, and the Windmills, and various other posts were allocated ‘per turnum linguarum’ and were thus sometimes held by the English.180 Accordingly, the English langue accepted the tower of Naillac, the least exposed to attack, as its responsibility for a three-year term on 11 March 1521 although it is unclear whether it still had charge of it during the siege of the following year.181 Additionally those brethren retained on the master’s service were at his disposal whether in war or peace. One of Giovanbattista Orsini’s socii, Nicholas Passemer, was castellan of Lindos in the 1460s.182 Given their various responsibilities, and the absence of some brethren on caravan, it is not surprising that sometimes there were too few English brethren to perform their duties adequately. In February 1513, for example, when guards had been increased for fear of Turkish attack183 the langue protested that Clement West, then castellan of Rhodes, should not be allowed to exempt two brethren from guarding the city because there were too few of their fellows. The council ordained that the master of the castellan’s house should be exempt but that any other brother in his service was to perform guard duty.184 Many authorities have commented enthusiastically on the English langue’s contribution to the sieges of 1480 and 1522. Their writings need to be treated with caution. The first conflict has been particularly ill served, largely due to a general adherence to Bosio’s highly inaccurate list of those he thought had participated and those he believed had been killed in the hostilities. As the author himself admitted, his figures were compiled by looking at the order’s registers for the years before and after the siege, and noticing 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 of Sir Edwin King, with who actually fought in 1480 may be instructive.186 179

AOM75, fos. 72v et seq. 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 February 1474 the council ruled that the captaincy of the sea-gate and the gates of the city were to be allocated in similar manner. In November 1478, however, these dispositions were overturned when the master was granted liberty to appoint the captains of the port towers and gates at pleasure. 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 other asserted combatants appear to have been the order’s archives and Taaffe. 180

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King lists the following as killed during the siege: Thomas Green, bailiff of Eagle, John Waquelin (Wakelyn), commander of Carbrooke, Henry Halley, commander of Battisford, Thomas Plumpton, Adam Tedbond (recte Chetwood), Henry Battersby, and Henry Anlaby; and says that John Kendal, the turcopolier, Marmaduke Lumley, John Boswell, Thomas Docwra, Leonard de Tibertis, Walter Westbrough, and John Roche survived.187 There is some error in nearly every one of his attributions. Anlaby, Tibertis, Westbrough, and Roche do not appear in any of the order’s fifteenth-century records as knights of the English langue, and save for Tibertis, who had been dead for over a century, can probably be discounted as ever having been members of it. None of the bailiffs or preceptors he mentions save Halley was at the siege, and Halley was still a conventual knight until late September, after it had ended.188 Green, Lumley, and Boswell were in England, and although summoned to Rhodes in July and November 1479, had not reached it by September 1480, when they were summoned again.189 Similarly, John Wakelyn, who was replaced as preceptor of Carbrooke by Halley in 1480, had probably died in England, for he had been appointed receiver of the common treasury there in 1477, and been issued with several orders as such.190 His exercise of this office would itself be sufficient reason for the failure to summon him in 1479–80, and the grant of his preceptory just after the siege may simply indicate that the convent had known of his death earlier but had not done anything about it because of the suspension of conventual business during the hostilities. John Kendal, who certainly attempted to get to Rhodes during the siege, was delayed at Modon with a cargo of olive oil and wine he was bringing to the relief of the garrison by a Venetian port official.191 He then seems to have returned to England via Italy and did not reach Rhodes until 1482.192 Of the other knights mentioned by King, Chetwood and Battersby also reached the convent in 1482.193 The only relatively safe attributions King makes are those of Halley, Plumpton, and Thomas Docwra, 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 licensed to leave may well have still been alive and at headquarters in 1480. Docwra 187

King, British Realm, 88–9. 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). Summons to 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. 188

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himself falls into this category. Three knights who occur in the mid-1470s but not again—Robert Danby, William Beaufitz, and Thomas de Nygton— were perhaps killed in the fighting.195 Somewhat more likely combatants are Robert and Richard Dalison and Thomas Newport, who are to be found in convent in the 1470s and 1480s and the Scot Patrick Scougal, who last occurs in December 1478 and was not licensed to leave thereafter.196 More likely still are Walter Fitzherbert, who was licensed to leave headquarters in 1479, but whose permission may have been revoked,197 and John Bourgh, whose leave to depart certainly was overturned and who was in Rhodes in early 1482.198 Almost certain combatants are Steven Lynde, who was granted his first preceptory in January 1483, and Henry Freville, who was in Rhodes in November 1480.199 If all these brethren were in convent the ‘British’ contingent at the siege would have amounted to fourteen knights, besides servants and mercenary soldiers, a figure identical with that given for the strength of the langue in 1476.200 Others not recorded anywhere may also have fought. It is striking that Fitzherbert and Bourgh were the only preceptors among these brethren and that if they were not at the siege the post of England must have been commanded by a conventual knight, probably Scougal. As accounts of the siege, even the English translation presented to Edward IV, make little mention of the participation of the ‘English’ brethren or the post of England in the fighting,201 it is extremely difficult to say what part the langue played, although an English sailor, Roger Jervis, was reportedly responsible for severing the rope linking a bridge of Turkish ships to the tower of Saint Nicholas during a heavy assault on 19 June, an action for which he was rewarded by the master.202 Subsequent reports of heavy damage to the boulevard, walls, and post of England, and of the expenditure or loss of all its munitions and war machinery during the fighting make it clear that the langue played a full part in the hostilities, however.203 Both Bosio and the narrative sources provide surer and fuller information on the siege of 1522, and lists of those who participated in the fighting are correspondingly more accurate. Bosio had access to a roll-call taken of 195

AOM382, fo. 136v; 383, fos. 142r, 144r–v. 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 22 March. In early July it was decided that all necessary brethren would be retained. Although there is no evidence that Fitzherbert’s licence to leave was revoked he was not 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 Je´rusalem, 5 vols. (Paris, 1726), iii. 112–3; King, British Realm, 86–7. 203 AOM76, fo. 66r; CPL, xiii. 177–9. 196

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knights and sergeants in convent just before the start of the siege which is now lost and which recorded the names of eleven English conventual knights, and also refers to a number of brethren in other contexts.204 Based on examination of Bosio, King lists twenty English brethren who participated, reproduced below:205 John Buck (recte Bothe) Nicholas Hussey William Weston Thomas Sheffield Henry Mansel Nicholas Fairfax John Rawson (junior) Giles Russell John Baron Francis Buet William West Thomas Pemberton George Askew John Sutton George Aylmer Michael Roche Nicholas Usel Otho de Monsill Richard Neville Nicholas Roberts Several adjustments need to be made to this contingent. Most significantly, 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 the fighting,206 were English, save for their vaguely English sounding names. Secondly Nicholas Usel, who was listed among the conventual knights on the 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 are on 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 was certainly killed during the fighting, and it is tempting to assume that the other three were too. Another probable casualty was Arthur Sothill, who was in Rhodes as a conventual knight in 1521, but is not mentioned thereafter.207 The participation of those who survived was noted in grants of preceptories after 1522, which specifically refer to their service ‘in the many fierce conflicts of the siege’, or a variant thereof, a citation which occurs in bulls 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 combatants.208 A further knight, George Horton, was licensed to go home in July 1523, and may also have fought.209 George Aylmer, who was probably in Rhodes during the siege, was not thanked for his service during the fighting when granted a preceptory in November 1523, a detail that fits with his later reputation for cowardice.210 A number of gentlemen volunteers seeking entry into the order also participated. In 1525 the Scot John Chalmers was 204

Bosio, Dell’Istoria, ii. 639–43, 642, 645–6, 666, 675. 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. 205

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received into the order and granted a pension of 80 ducats in consideration of his services during the siege, and Edward Bellingham and John Whittington 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’s uncle, John Shelley, had been involved in trade with the order in 1513, and was 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 brethren involved in the fighting, to which should be added gentlemen and stipendiary soldiers and servants who had come from Britain or Ireland with their masters.213 The langue’s profile during the events of 1522 was much higher than in 1480. A number of its knights had been prominent in conventual service for years and several of them held important administrative and military posts before and during the hostilities. Most important were John Bothe, the turcopolier, and Thomas Sheffield, the master’s seneschal, both members of the order since the 1480s. Besides his conventual bailiwick, which gave him responsibility for the coastguard, Bothe had been appointed a proctor of the common treasury in March 1521 along with the chancellor, Andrea d’Amaral.214 These two, together with the grand commander and lieutenant master, Gabriel de Pomerolx, had charge of the order’s finances until the siege began, and thus controlled the provisioning of the convent in the crucial months before it. Their failure to perform this task adequately is stressed in accounts of the fighting, which say that when the master took council for the provisioning of the town in the weeks before the Turkish assault he was told to ‘take no thought to it’ by the three, who averred that it contained enough stores of victuals and ordnance to last for a year.215 Although in discrediting Amaral and absolving L’Isle Adam from responsibility for the fall of Rhodes this detail served the dramatic purpose of the French knight who wrote this account of the siege, it is certainly true that the order’s store of gunpowder ran out after four months.216 As the same author admitted, however, this was due more to the unprecedented intensity of the artillery exchanges during the fighting than to any lack of forethought.217 Other English brethren too, were involved in preparing for the siege. Nicholas Fairfax was among those appointed to arrange accommodation for

211

AOM411, fo. 158r–v; 410, fo. 176v. 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). 212

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country people coming to shelter in Rhodes town in February 1522, while in the previous August John Rawson junior and George Aylmer had been commissioned to visit the fortifications to establish what repairs needed to be made.218 On 7 May the brethren of the langue, bearing longbows rather than the arbalest more usual to the order’s knights, were mustered and showed their arms in their auberge before the turcopolier and a foreign knight. William Weston, meanwhile, was examining the arms of the langue of Provence.219 By mid-June the Hospitallers had received Sultan Suleiman’s letter ordering them to surrender their islands and Turkish troops began to disembark on 26 June.220 In the subsequent siege, several Englishmen held important commands. Bothe was the captain of one of four reserve companies and was in charge of succouring the posts of Spain and England; Thomas Sheffield, the master’s seneschal, was responsible for the artillery and defence of the master’s palace and its surrounding area; the post and boulevard of England were commanded by William Weston and Nicholas Hussey respectively, and Nicholas 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 of massive assaults in the following month. Particularly serious were those of 4 September, when a mine exploded under the English bastion and the Turks captured the breach before being driven back by a combination of the English knights and the grand master’s household and guard and 17 September, when an assault was launched on the repaired walls of the English bulwark by a Turkish host of 5,000 men, under five banners. Having captured one of these standards, Bothe, ‘a valyaunt man and hardy’, ‘was slayne with the stroke of a handgonne’.222 It may have been his demise which prompted a grieving Rhodiot woman to slay her children, array herself in armour, and hurl herself against the Turkish lines.223 A general assault on 24 September did further damage, although the English distinguished themselves again by pouring onto the Turks attacking the adjoining post of Spain a flanking fire so lethal that the ground could not be seen for 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. 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 supposed valour. Bourbon, Oppugnation, 56–7. 223 The woman was supposedly the mistress of an English commander. As Bothe was the only English Hospitaller of this rank killed, it seems likely that if the tale relates to a professed Hospitaller, it must have been him. Vertot, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers, iii. 342–3. 219

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arquebusier.224 On 17 October the Turks got into the barbican at the foot of the bulwark of England and could not be dislodged, and on 10 December surrender negotiations began.225 At some stage in the fighting Thomas Pemberton 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 knight was put in charge of the English post.227 After surrender terms were agreed in December the order left Rhodes on 1 January 1523, its great ship under the command of William Weston.228 For all the savagery of the fighting they had been involved in, the convent’s perambulations around Italy seem to have been equally lethal. A correspondent of Wolsey reported from Rome on 1 May 1523 that Nicholas Fairfax had just died so poor that ‘he had scantly (enough) to bring him to the earth at his departing’ and was ‘stark mad; insomuch that nother his confessor nor none other could tell what his mind was’.229 Within the next three years he was followed to the grave by George Askew, Nicholas Roberts, Thomas Sheffield, and George Horton. All, save Sheffield, were relatively young men. Whether the effects of the siege played any part in the madness and death of Fairfax, the demise of his confre`res, and the reputation for cowardice and later madness of George Aylmer remains an open question. Not all the order’s military adventures were quite so dramatic, but regular service in the order’s fortresses and voyages in its galleys helped to form the esprit de corps which was so evident at moments of crisis such as the sieges of 1480 and 1522. The total number of brethren expected to serve on caravan had been laid down in 1459 as forty on the guard galley which patrolled the waters around Rhodes, twenty-five on Cos, and fifty at the castle of St Peter.230 These contingents were increased in subsequent years, especially on the galleys, but the total number of brethren expected to be on caravan at any one time is not always clear. Except on rare occasions, the distribution of brethren of the individual langues between various forms of caravan service is not known either. Save for brethren retained on magistral or conciliar service, participation in the caravans was an essential prerequisite of promotion, however, and it can be assumed that at any one time some British brethren were thus engaged. Judging by evidence from the minute 224

Begynnynge and Foundacyon, 28. LPFD, iii, no. 2841; Vatin, L’Ordre, 358. 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’e´volution de la flotte des Hospitaliers au XVIe sie`cle’, 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. 225 226

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book of the langue, between two and seven brethren usually served together. It was typically conventual knights who went on caravan—save as officers under conciliar commission no English preceptors are mentioned in this context before 1529 and only four between then and 1540. Younger knights may indeed have had first refusal on caravan places, for in 1559 the Scot John James Sandelands insisted that he rather than the older George Dudley should so serve.231 Caravaners were supposed to be twenty years old, however, and the langue was required to pay their stipends while they were on service if they were under age, a rule which occasioned a protest by the proctors of the langue in 1487 that if John Bothe, who had secured a place 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 also possible to serve by proxy. When the proctors of the langue of France complained that Pierre Clovet had not performed his caravan in 1491, he asserted 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 a substitute.234 In this period, the langue’s brethren seem to have served mainly on the galleys and at St Peter, for none is mentioned on Cos.235 Although before 1522 there is only one specific mention of ‘English’ brethren performing caravans on the galleys, a number of pieces of evidence suggest that naval service was quite usual for the English brethren. An illustration of an engagement of c.1460 between the order’s galleys and the Turks quite clearly depicts a brother bearing a longbow, an exclusive privilege of the English langue, and a list of sixty Hospitallers who participated in the action includes the names of three English knight-brethren.236 In addition, a number of Englishmen captained the order’s galley fleet or ‘great ship’ between 1460 and 1540, which assumes prior experience at sea, and a council minute of 1524, which records that rolls were to be made of all brethren of the eight langues ‘for the arming of the triremes’, suggests that naval service was common to all the nationes which made up the order.237 Two letters sent by an ‘English’ knight on one of the galleys to Clement West towards the end of 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 rather than 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.

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1540 and 1541 provide more concrete evidence of English caravans at sea.238 Galley tours were of variable duration, although six months’ service may have been enough to complete a caravan at sea.239 Little is known about life and conditions on Hospitaller galleys in this period, although comparisons with contemporary navies and evidence from later sources can provide some of what is lacking. Naval service was probably not particularly strenuous during most of the Rhodian period. Although privateers operating from Rhodes ranged all over the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, the order’s fleet did not usually go far outside its home waters, save sometimes to Negroponte, Cyprus, or the Syrian coast. Even during the hostilities of the 1470s and 1501–4 casualties appear to have been moderate, although constant minor engagements and sickness must both have taken their toll. The only major naval battle involving the order between 1460 and 1522, the victory over the Mamluk fleet off Alexandretta in 1510, was certainly hard fought240 and may have cost the lives of brethren of the langue but it is impossible to be certain of this. After 1530, when the order was confronting the Turkish navy and the formidable north African corsairs head on, naval service probably became more dangerous.241 Of the thirty English and Scots brethren who promised to perform caravan service between 1529 and 1541, at least six do not reappear in the records after their last such undertaking and may have perished during their tours of duty.242 The seriousness of caravan service is underlined by a decision of the langue in March 1530 that George Aylmer, ‘who it is thought by the hole tonge is not hable to make his carvan beinge not a man of curage’, should appoint a deputy to perform it for him.243 At times during this period the brethren on caravan on the galleys were joined by almost the entire convent. The order contributed hundreds 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, sixtyeight 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 Scot Alexander 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 undertake 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 gale`res 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 in April 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.

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made more than the three periods of service later enjoined in the statutes. Henry Gerard, with six, Philip Babington, with five, and Dunstan Newdigate and Anthony Bentham, with four apiece, all exceeded their quota. To undertake three caravans appears to have been normal for conventual brethren, however, although the few preceptors who performed such service after 1529 did not repeat the experience. Caravans in the order’s fortifications were probably less dangerous than their maritime equivalents, at least before 1530. Although it is impossible to give any idea of the number of brethren of the langue serving at the castle of St Peter, English knights are mentioned there in 1470, 1480, 1482, 1491, 1505, and 1507–8 and English brethren were elected to its captaincy in 1459, 1498, and 1514.246 They resided in the tower of St Catharine, an impressive edifice constructed by the langue in the 1420s or 1430s, but squabbled over this habitation and the servants therein with the Hispanic brethren who came to share it with them.247 In February 1480 the proctors of all three ‘nations’, who were in dispute over whether the English or Spanish should appoint a companion to the tower, agreed to remit the choice to the master,248 while in 1505 the English complained that a companion there had been deprived of his pitancia by the castle’s captain for his refusal to perform certain services for the brethren who resided in the tower.249 The issue resurfaced in 1507, when a commission was appointed to consider the langue’s contention that the companion should not have to perform service outside the tower’s camera, but should only have to clean this room and make the beds there. The master and council ruled that the camera should be understood to comprise not merely the sleeping quarters of the brethren but the whole interior of the tower and that both the companions must not only polish the bedchamber and make the beds, but also take water to the brethren, sweep the tower, and light the lamp at night. They were, however, exempted from service outside the building and from more menial work such as washing underwear.250 It seems likely that the English brethren made an issue out of this because they thought that they and the Spanish should each have one companion for their exclusive service rather than hold them in common. It is possible that the man disciplined in 1505 was one Thomas, an English companion of the castle who had been arrested by its captain on 13 April 1501 and restored to his position by the council eight weeks later, and that it was this man’s objection 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.

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least one other English and one Irish layman are also known to have served at St Peter after 1460. Some such residents may have been companions in the tower, but most were probably gentlemen volunteers or soldiers performing military service rather than household servants.252 Although there were sometimes skirmishes between the castle’s garrison and local Turks and occasional demonstrations by Turkish armies before the castle walls, caravan duty there was often uneventful, to such an extent that Robert Gay, who was commended in 1474 for having performed several months’ service in pursuance of a vow to fight the Turks had been unable to find any who would agree to do so.253 Such was emphatically not the case at Tripoli after 1530, where almost daily battles took place between the garrison and the infidel.254 Service there was so unpleasant that in 1536 Anthony Rogers was imprisoned 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 the langue’s brethren was that particular to the turcopolier, its pilier. His was an office dating back to the order’s days in the Holy Land, when the holder had commanded the turcopoles, light cavalry apparently of mixed Latin, Muslim, and eastern Christian stock.256 The turcopoliership was not then important enough to rank as a conventual bailiwick, and it was only from 1330, well after the move to Rhodes, that it is known to have been associated with the English langue.257 On Rhodes, the turcopolier was the sixthranked conventual bailiff, just as the English langue was sixth in precedence. He had command of turcopoles who appear to have been a mixture of native Greeks and Latin settlers.258 In wartime these, and their officers, might 252

AOM382, fo. 138r–v; 387, fo. 202r. 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 Venetian raid 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 the Frankish Turcopoles: A Reassessment’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 12 (1997), 75–116. 257 The custom by which each conventual bailiwick was reserved to a particular langue seems to have been established during the early fourteenth century, and can be clearly seen for the first time in the proceedings of the chapter-general of 1330, which provide the first definite reference to 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 surnames Patera, Cassari, Sacce, Maria, Lagouardo, and Stefano. AOM78, fos. 31v–32r. Anthony Luttrell has noted a Greek turcopole, Leo Cycandilli, on Kos in 1415, and turcopoles called Peyrolus de Negroponte and Bussottus at the casali of Diaskoros and Lardos on Rhodes in 1347 and 1382 respectively. A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Military and Naval Organisation of the Hospitallers at Rhodes: 1310–1444’, Mediterranean World, art. xix, 133–53, at p. 138 and nn. 30–1. 253

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continue to fight as light cavalry,259 but their most usual and characteristic responsibility was to visit the guard posts of the island. In common with the other conventual bailiffs the turcopolier was ‘elected’, or rather confirmed in office, by vote of the master and council ordinary, having first been chosen from among its ‘most ancient and worthy’ members by the langue.260 Like other piliers, he presided over meetings of his langue and had an automatic seat on councils and chapters-general. He was allowed a relatively generous stipend to support the burdens of office,261 and was usually granted a preceptory ‘of grace’ in addition to his existing benefice when one became available.262 By office, the turcopolier was also the most senior English brother in the order, outranking, at least in convent, the priors of England and Ireland, and being in a good position to claim the rich English priory when it fell vacant.263 The turcopolier’s more characteristic duties and privileges had been defined in an agreement drawn up in 1445/6 by the lieutenant turcopolier, John Langstrother, and the English brethren and Jean de Lastic, the master,264 and confirmed by Nicholas V on 31 May 1448.265 By it, the parties agreed that the turcopolier or his lieutenant had authority over the chief 259

Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 87 and n. Quotation from BDVTE, 22–3. 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 March 1446 but is undated, and it is possible that it was copied from a statute drawn up in the Rome chapter-general of February 1446. This assembly, which Lastic did not attend, was held under the auspices of Eugenius IV and presided over by three papally appointed ‘presidents’, among them the prior of England, Robert Botill. These officers directed a major codification of the order’s statutes, and further provided for the establishment of a committee of seven brethren, headed by the turcopolier, to be ‘protectors of the convent’. These were to protect the statutes enacted in Rome, with power to admonish the master and council should they breach them, and appeal over their heads to a chapter-general should such warnings be ignored. Although these reforms proved stillborn, the clauses of the agreement enrolled in the Liber Bullarum of 1445 defining the turcopolier’s government of the watch were appended to the section of the capitular proceedings appointing the turcopolier chief ‘Protector’ of the convent, with the exception of the clause referring to Langstrother and Lastic. The date of composition of the Liber Bullarum makes it likely that the agreement was a proposal submitted to Rome which was subsequently modified in chapter, but it is also possible that it was an edited version 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 and discussed 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 1 Oct. 1481, together with a translation into Italian. AOM76, fos. 76v–78r, 78r–80r. Both these versions are transcribed in Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 309–13, and discussed at 15, although the author seems to have been unaware of the enrolment of the Langstrother–Lastic concord in the bullarium of 1445. 260 261

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officers—the banneret266 and the viglocomites267—of his command so far as the exercise of his duties required, and that he and his deputies were not to be molested in their persons, animals, or goods by the castellans and other officials of the island, save by express magistral mandate or in a matter involving the master’s personal service. No one was to be dispensed from guard duty save for one servant of the castellan in each castellany, and the turcopolier and his deputies were to visit the guard posts, punishing those failing in their duty. Once a year, the turcopolier was to gather all those bound to the watch to discuss how and where it could best be performed. In time of war, or the threat of it, the castellans could visit the watch and punish the negligent in the absence of the turcopolier or his deputies. Unfortunately this document does not make clear how many watch stations 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 the exact duties of his deputies, or of the banneret and viglocomites. The turcopoles themselves are not mentioned specifically, although it can be safely assumed that they were the ‘deputies’ referred to. However, the enrolment of the papal bull confirming the agreement in the council minutes in October 1481, and a number of subsequent cases in the council referring to the ‘bulla turcopelieratus’ demonstrate that the concord of 1445/6 was upheld well into the sixteenth century, and also help to shed further light on the nature of the turcopolier’s office.268 The picture is made more complete by capitular ordinances, which laid down the number and salary of the turcopoles, and various records that provide more information on the bannerets. Considering the constant danger of Turkish landings, visiting the watch was a task of considerable importance, which needed to be performed diligently. Essentially, as council records make clear, the job of the turcopolier was to set the guards in the first place269 and then to ride around the island at night and ensure that those deputed to the watch were on duty and awake.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 the Rome statute of 1446. AOM1649, fo. 518v; Sannazaro, ‘Venerable Langue’, 309 says that the vexillifer/banneret acted as the ‘Ensign’ of the ‘corps’ of turcopoles. 267 Sannazaro calls these officials the ‘Chief Wardens’ of the guard. They were to be presented to 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 the order’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 the master or the turcopolier. In 1471 it was decided in chapter-general that the turcopolier could appoint one or two custodes for the guard of the villages of Cathagro and Lavadeto. This concession was given the express consent of the master’s proctor, suggesting that the master had some say in such appointments. However, a council decree of 1503 upheld the turcopolier’s right to appoint viglocomiti who would give orders to the guards in the villages under the control of the 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.

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banneret,271 viglocomites and a body of turcopoles forty-four in number in 1504,272 who seem to have been of peasant stock273 and were paid by the common treasury.274 Although this was straightforward enough in theory, in practice there was considerable scope for conflict between the turcopolier, his subordinates and other authorities, most notably the master, whose subjects the villagers and hence the guards of Rhodes were, but also including those castellans and senior brethren who held authority over the islands’ villages. Essentially disputes arose from three causes: the dismissal or disciplining of turcopoles or viglocomites by their superior; alleged failures of the turcopoliers or their deputies to perform their duties properly; and jurisdictional conflicts between the turcopolier, the master and his officers, and other dignitaries. Three cases in the council records concern appeals against the suspension or dismissal of turcopoles from office, while another pertains to the removal of a viglocomes. Thus in March 1460, the council ordered the restoration of a turcopole removed from office by the lieutenant turcopolier in a manner not in accordance with the statutes,275 while some sixteen years later the master and council ruled that the lieutenant turcopolier had wrongly removed a turcopole of Paravibilinos whose horse had damaged vines and other possessions. As his offence had nothing to do with the performance of his office, the latter was committed instead to the justice of the castellan of Rhodes and judge of ordinaries.276 A further appeal of 1495 sheds rather more light on the functions of the turcopoles. A turcopole, one Patera of the castellany of Catania, had been suspended from office by the lieutenant turcopolier for failings in his duty and on his appeal the council ordered the local castellan to examine witnesses. Five turcopoles and two other men came forward.277 Their evidence suggests that Patera had failed to visit the merovigli (coastguard) because he was accustomed to do this with a dignitary called the diantrecari who had been absent when he had called. Both the turcopoles and other witnesses agreed that whether the diantrecari could be found or not the turcopole should visit the merovigli. Patera was accordingly declared deprived, and the turcopolier instructed to replace 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 18 aspers 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 of nine years’ service, Nicolao Cardeli, and Michael Piteni, who had been at the guard ‘del Trolli’. 278 AOM78, fos. 31v–32r.

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Vincent, viglocomes of Archangelos, against the turcopolier, Robert Daniel. Vincent felt aggrieved because he had been deprived of office de facto instead of suspended first according to custom. Daniel responded that Vincent, along with a number of turcopoles, had manifestly failed to perform his duty, so breaking his oath of fidelitas and meriting immediate removal from office. The council upheld the pilier’s actions, but also ordered him to remove Vincent’s replacement, who had been disqualified from further preferment after deprivation from another office. As it was unfitting that an ‘infamous and condemned’ man should hold the dignity, Daniel was to nominate another viglocomes of good name. Moreover, since the testimony the turcopoles of Archangelos had given in the case had unwittingly provided evidence of their failings in their duty, their depositions were presented to Daniel so that he could take action against them.279 Although none of these cases is especially informative on the nature of the turcopolier and his officers, they do make some things clear. They prove that the turcopoles fulfilled the functions of the turcopolier’s deputies as laid down in the agreement, that they were mounted, and that they could be suspended by their superior only for failure to do their job, and removed only by consent of the master and council, limitations which were based on statutes of 1410 and 1440, the latter repeated in the statutes of 1489.280 The remaining disputes recorded in the archives are more complex, involving a variety of disciplinary and jurisdictional issues, but they too illustrate the primacy of the agreement of 1445/6. The most serious conflicts arose in the tense conditions obtaining after the war of 1499–1503. In such circumstances it was essential that the watch be kept diligently and that exceptions to it be curtailed. In November 1501 a council meeting to provide for the defence of Rhodes in the absence of the order’s fleet laid down that the lieutenant turcopolier and his deputies should visit the guards with extreme diligence every night, and that if turcopoles were lacking they should be supplemented by the castellans and their officials. Considering that the master’s subjects and officials were not exempted from guard duty, moreover, it was ruled that the lieutenant turcopolier should not release his officials or servitors either and that the inhabitants of the casali of the marshal and admiral should similarly be constrained to the watch without exception.281 The inclusion of their villages in this measure irked the other conventual bailiffs, and in September 1503, following a protest by the marshal, Hospitaller, and admiral, the council ruled that although the inhabitants of their villages were to perform guard duty on the coast as the turcopolier should order, he was not to punish them for any failings to keep watch himself, but to report faults to the castellans appointed by the conventual bailiffs.282 279 280 281

AOM81, fos. 100v–101r, 101v–102r. AOM1649, fos. 266r, 347r; Stabilimenta, ‘De baiulivis’, no. xxvi. 282 AOM80, fo. 35v. Ibid., fos. 49r–50r.

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Despite this ordinance, the turcopolier’s responsibility for the watch and his associated rights and privileges continued to be at issue over the next five years, during which a struggle developed between the turcopolier, Robert Daniel, and the new master, Aimery d’Amboise. This was perhaps natural. The removal of Pierre d’Aubusson’s guiding hand after twenty-seven years of rule during which there had been little jurisdictional dispute between turcopoliers and master appears to have created some confusion about the respective rights of each which both Daniel and d’Amboise’s lieutenant seneschal, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, were too inexperienced to dispel. In such a situation both parties attempted to exploit what they felt were traditional rights to their fullest extent. On 2 May 1504 Daniel complained that L’Isle Adam had ordered the inhabitants of the island not to make the accustomed solutio formagiorum to the turcopolier and his officials. L’Isle Adam replied that the payment was a new imposition, a great burden on the populace, and something that he, as proctor of the absent master, could not allow. He added the charge that not only did Daniel pretend the right to free one man from the guard in every castellany, but so did his lieutenant and banneret, with the result that three were released in each.283 Although the council ruled that nothing further was to be innovated until d’Amboise’s arrival, each party evidently regarded this as an excuse to carry on as before, for eighteen days later Daniel again complained that L’Isle Adam had forbidden him the ius formagii. While admitting that the levy was voluntary, he claimed that those wishing to donate cheese were now prohibited from doing so by the lieutenant seneschal’s order. L’Isle Adam again defended himself stoutly, saying that he now understood that a cheese was taken from every man who stood guard by not only the turcopolier but his lieutenant, the banneret, and the local turcopole and viglocomes too, and that it was because of this unacceptable and burdensome imposition that he had written to the island’s officials.284 Unfortunately the conclusion of this affair is unrecorded, presumably because Amboise dealt with it after his arrival from the west,285 but the more serious claim, that the turcopolier released excessive numbers from the watch, was repeated by the inhabitants of the island in the following months and soon became the subject of real concern.286 In April 1506 news reached Rhodes that a fleet of Turkish fusts had just issued from the Dardanelles. The usual order that the watch should be kept diligently was made, but the master added a protest that Daniel and his chief officers had released more than seventy men from guard duty, which, seeing that it was the turcopolier’s responsibility to improve its efficiency rather than diminish it, was intolerable. He called upon the papal bull recognizing the agreement of 1445/6 as evidence, saying quite correctly that it allowed only castellans to exempt 283 285

284 Ibid., fos. 90r–v. Ibid., fos. 92v–93r. Amboise arrived on 1 September 1504. AOM80, fo. 110v.

286

AOM284, fo. 90v.

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people from guard duty, and that even they needed express magistral licence for this. Requesting that such relaxations cease forthwith, d’Amboise also requested a thorough overhaul of the visitation, based on the clause of the same bull providing for its joint conduct by the turcopoles and castellans in times when the Turkish fleet was at large. Henceforth, he proposed, castellans and deputies appointed by himself should visit the guard stations in company with the turcopoles. This would be more secure than allowing the turcopoles to do it alone, as they were ‘rustici’, intent on agriculture by day and too tired to visit the guards on horseback by night as a result. The master claimed that many scandals had arisen from their lack of vigilance and cited the success of the recent Turkish attack on Archangelos, which had borne off 120 Christian souls into slavery, as an instance.287 Daniel, however, refused to consent, claiming that his release of men from guard duty had the sanction of custom, and that allowing castellans to visit the guards would prejudice his pre-eminence. His obstinacy exasperated the council, who exhorted him to compel everyone to guard duty and to consent to turcopoles and brethren visiting the guard posts together. He would have command of the brethren so deputed, which would enhance the dignity of his office rather than detract from it. The honour and utility of the Religion should move him to this even if they could not. When Daniel refused to listen to their urgings, Amboise publicly excused himself from any scandal that might occur.288 Although the turcopolier seems to have fought off this attempt to co-opt magistral officers onto the visitation of the watch, spiteful clashes in the following year indicate that Amboise’s castellans were still performing this function, and that the master’s other officers were denying the turcopoles hay for their horses and thus the means of doing their job. The English knights launched vigorous countermeasures against this threat. On 5 August 1507 Amboise came before the council complaining that Thomas Boydell and Alban Pole had broken the seal of the castellan of Villanova, which had been placed on the door of a certain villager, and had come into the casale of Soreni by night, broken into the master’s storeroom, and removed the hay therein.289 Robert Daniel and the bailiff of Eagle, Thomas Newport, defended the culprits, saying that Boydell had been seeking to uphold the turcopolier’s right to take hay from the villagers of Rhodes, which Jean Aubin, the master’s cavallaritus (master of horse), had annulled.290 They added 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 been mentioned 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 is made of the turcopoles themselves having such rights. AOM1649, fo. 347r–v; Stabilimenta, ‘De baiulivis’, no. xxvii; Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft, 286.

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which they detailed later, when the commissioners appointed to examine witnesses at Villanova and Soreni came into council to report their findings. To the master’s demand that those brethren involved in the incidents be punished, Newport and Daniel responded with a string of accusations. They complained 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 they had no food for their horses and could not perform their duties. They also asserted that certain brethren in magistral service had wounded and imprisoned turcopoles and viglocomites and taken hens, she-goats, and other animals belonging to the turcopoles which they had given to their own men. The council, however, considering that these matters had been newly introduced, postponed deliberation on them until the following day, and sentenced Boydell and Pole to three months’ imprisonment.291 Representatives of the langue appeared in council the next day to insist that their complaints be considered and after the interested parties had departed, the lieutenant and council discussed them. They exonerated the castellan of Soreni from blame, since he had had every right to retain the hay until given orders to do otherwise and had warned the Englishmen not to take it without licence. Although not upholding the seizure of hay by Aubin, Amboise claimed the right to purchase any excess fodder produced by the turcopoles and not needed for the exercise of their office as well as any hay possessed by those of the viglocomites who were unmounted. He also defended his cavallaritus from an accusation, previously unrecorded, that he had wounded a guard, alleging that Aubin had found the latter asleep far from his station, and had struck him ‘cum lancee hasta’ only to wake him. The more serious charge that turcopoles and viglocomites had been imprisoned and assaulted was not discussed, while the seizure of animals was remitted 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 who breached the terms of the 1448 bull thereby incurred excommunication and should be judged by the ecclesiastical authorities, in general unvigilant guards, who were also beaten by the English brethren, should be punished by the master because they were his subjects.293 Amboise had clearly got the better of these exchanges, and the English knights, probably realizing that the council would give them short shrift if they again appealed, but convinced that the sentence of 25 August had broken the terms of the bull of Nicholas V, suggested that mediators be appointed to determine the disputed matters.294 By 3 February 1508 concord had been reached.295 The exemption of the turcopolier’s deputies from molestation in their 291 294

AOM81, fos. 78v–80r. AOM81, fos. 82r–83r.

292 295

Ibid., fos. 80r–82r. Ibid., fos. 91v–93r.

293

Ibid.

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persons and goods was reiterated, and it was laid down that the turcopoles and viglocomites were to provide Daniel and themselves with hay for their cavalcatura first, although should there be any excess fodder the master would have the right of pre-emption. Hay was not to be removed from the storehouses without the licence of the master or his seneschal. The visitation of the guards was also considered. It was agreed that the bull 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 turcopolier’s deputies were to be permitted to strike sleeping guards moderately and without causing effusion of blood, broken limbs, or enormous lesions. Furthermore, the master’s right to take comestibles and revenues from the turcopoles was upheld, but nothing further was to be levied from them by his officers without his express mandate, as laid down in 1448. Additionally an order of the previous August that the turcopoles and viglocomites sleep within the castles on nights when they were not visiting the guards was overturned, although it was ruled that in troubled times their families must. Finally, because the master claimed that the bull was still not being followed properly, both parties swore to uphold it. While further mention was made of the turcopoles’ failings in June 1508 the agreement of February seems to have put an end to the jurisdictional quarrels between Daniel and Amboise. Indeed, no further disputes concerning the turcopolier’s office, rights, or deputies reached the council until the 1530s, a fact which suggests that the squabbles of 1503–8 were occasioned by a clash of personalities as much as by the importance of the issues involved. After the fall of Rhodes the turcopolier’s regular duties probably remained in abeyance for a time, for no mention is made of his office in connection with the watch between 1522 and 1530. On moving to Malta, however, responsibility for the coastguard was again deputed to the head of the English brethren. This caused some ill feeling among the Maltese. The Jurats of the island’s ancient capital, Mdina, had been accustomed to organizing this duty before the order’s arrival, and the Hospitallers had sworn to uphold their privileges on taking over the island. Intermittent clashes occurred over the watch into the 1550s. Commissioners were appointed to investigate who was responsible for it in November 1533, but there seems to have been no further serious disagreement until April 1547, when the Jurats complained of injuries they had suffered from the lieutenant turcopolier, Oswald Massingberd, and the order’s council appointed a commission to investigate these and to inquire whether certain men who claimed to be too old to keep watch should be dispensed from doing so.296 Further disputes with the Maltese were avoided while Nicholas Upton held the office between 1547 296

AOM85, fo. 121r; 87, fo. 113r.

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and 1551297 and only recurred when Massingberd was reappointed to the lieutenancy in February 1552.298 Between 1552 and 1554 Massingberd was in constant trouble with the council for abusing his office and throwing his weight around. In August 1552 the Jurats of Mdina once more complained of injuries they had suffered at his hands, and on the same day he was ordered confined to his house for two months for having carried off a slave girl and her daughter from the house of a Maltese nobleman, whom he had beaten in the process.299 By the following April Massingberd was asking the master and council to restore his rights over the watch, which he claimed had been removed.300 Although it was ruled that he should exercise these according to the bull of 1448, this did not help matters, for on 5 June 1553 the council appointed commissioners to investigate a fight which had occurred between certain men and Massingberd and to commit any laymen found guilty to prison for the time being.301 Two weeks later the Jurats again complained of Massingberd and in early October a commission was appointed to ensure that guard duty was being performed diligently in terms that strongly suggest that it was not.302 Over the autumn and winter of 1553–4 the order repeatedly resisted Massingberd’s demands that he be raised to the dignity of turcopolier, an issue over which he made such a nuisance of himself that in February he was imprisoned for a month, yet soon after his release he was again quarrelling with the captains of Mdina and the parishes of the island over the coastguard and in June was investigated for having accused the captain of the parish of Siggiewi of having exempted the inhabitants of the countryside therefrom in return for money.303 Shortly afterwards he left Malta and it is remarkable that despite his behaviour and a supplication from the Jurats of Mdina in 1556 that the privileges and customs of the city with regard to the night-watch and coastguard be upheld, the chapter of 1558 again upheld the validity of the papal 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 on 5 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.

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appointed to many more conventual commissions, offices, and commands than were their lesser fellows. In practice, however, it is difficult to separate the service of turcopoliers or bailiffs on conventual commissions from that of other brethren. Many commissions were routine investigations of disputes between brethren over their seniority or possessions in the west,305 of brawls, thefts, disturbances, and duels in and around the convent,306 or of unlicensed piracy.307 But some were rather more significant, concerning diplomatic business, conventual finances, or the security and provisioning of the order’s possessions. English brethren, for example, were sometimes sent to examine the state of the fortifications on Rhodes, a task that fitted neatly with their responsibility for the watch. Thus on 16 March 1471 the turcopolier and the hospitaller were appointed to traverse the island and consider which places they believed were worth defending against the Turks,308 while three years later John Weston and two other brethren were sent to assess the defences of the castle of Slemio.309 In later years former turcopoliers or lieutenant turcopoliers such as John Boswell, John Weston, and Thomas Docwra and younger knights like John Rawson junior undertook similar operations.310 Although English involvement in provisioning the convent was relatively unusual, John Weston was among commissioners appointed to negotiate with patroni whom the order wished to bring corn to Rhodes in 1474 and John Kendal was appointed to send oil and wine from Italy to the convent in 1479 and corn from the kingdom of Naples in 1484.311 Similarly rare was the employment of Englishmen on Hospitaller diplomatic business in the east. John Wakelyn, who was dispatched to Cyprus in 1477, was the only English brother sent on a diplomatic mission in the region after 1460, although John Langstrother treated with Cypriot ambassadors in Rhodes in 1467, John Weston and John Kendal helped to arrange the arrival and business of Jem Sultan in 1482, and Thomas Docwra was involved in negotiations with an envoy of the Ottoman Prince Korkud in 1503.312 Those English knights who were captains or lieutenants at St Peter must also have dealt with local Turks fairly regularly through interpreters. A junior knight, Nicholas Roberts, was among the ambassadors to the Turkish sultan during the surrender negotiations of 1522 and left a description 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.

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a meeting with an Ottoman sultan.313 Rather less groundbreaking was the employment of English knights such as John Langstrother and John Weston on conventual business in Italy and Germany while they were returning to England.314 Thomas Sheffield was even sent to Spain as the order’s visitor and ambassador in 1518 before he returned home.315 The only ‘British’ brother who came close to being a permanent diplomat on the convent’s service was John Kendal, who as procurator-general of the order in the Roman Curia316 from November 1478 spent most of the next twelve years in Italy.317 Kendal negotiated successfully with Sixtus IV for the relaxation of the order’s Rule and the grant of indulgences for the relief of Rhodes,318 and was heavily involved in the diplomacy surrounding Jem Sultan, who was sent to the order’s keeping in France in 1482, and whose custody several powers sought to wrest from the Hospitallers. In 1488, shortly before Jem’s transfer to Rome, Kendal was appointed captain of his guard.319 He was also appointed proctor of the common treasury in several Italian priories in 1478, and to various commissions in and around Rome and in the kingdom of Naples over following years.320 In return for this 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 was also appointed a member of the family of Innocent VIII and chamberlain of the English hospice in Rome.322 He both wrote and received letters in Italian and, judging by his later diplomatic employment, was probably at home with Latin and French too.323 The sheer variety of his contacts—with cardinals, nobles, Hospitallers, and messengers—is attested by his accounts from 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 diplomacy as Kendal, several achieved considerable distinction in conventual affairs. At 313 Otho C.ix, fos. 39r–41r. Partial transcripts of this text are provided in LPFD, 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.

316

The English Langue

least six held naval commands between 1460 and 1540, all except one being turcopoliers or lieutenant turcopoliers when they did so. John Weston was captain of the order’s galley squadron twice, in 1461 and 1473, as was Thomas Docwra in 1495, and Robert Daniel in 1504.325 Docwra also commanded a single galley in 1501, as did John Kendal in 1477 and 1478, and Thomas Newport in 1516, while William Weston had charge of the order’s ‘great ship’ in 1523, and William Tyrrell of its ‘great galleon’ in 1537–9.326 John Weston’s activities in 1472–3 are particularly well documented. His squadron was supposed to be assisting the Venetian fleet combat the Turks in conjunction with Uzun Hasan, but when news of the death of King James of Cyprus reached the Republic’s captain general, Alvaro Mocenigo, in July 1473, the latter dispatched his entire force there to forestall any attempt by the former queen, Charlotte, then exiled in Rhodes, to recover her throne. This placed the order in an embarrassing position and Weston withdrew his galleys to Rhodes, claiming they needed refitting.327 He was then sent, without his ships, to Mocenigo with the excuse that the order’s sailors had refused to rejoin their vessels because they were involved in the vintage, that the Hospital was poor, and that honour prevented it from assisting Charlotte’s adversaries.328 In the following January, Weston was again appointed to negotiate with Mocenigo when the latter put in at Rhodes to demand the delivery of two Cypriot fugitives, the archbishop of Nicosia and the Catalan James Zapplana.329 The record of Thomas Docwra’s unsuccessful action against Turkish fusts off Syme in 1501 and the instructions given to Tyrrell in 1537 and 1538 detailing where he was to go and what to do also provide some flesh for the bare records of English naval service.330 Moreover, the appointments of former English brethren as captains in the royal navy in the 1540s suggest they had served as naval officers in the 1530s. The other important military command held by brethren of the langue was the captaincy of St Peter’s castle, which was garrisoned by fifty knightbrethren in 1459 and seventy or more in 1475, and was a source of unceasing concern to the order’s council, which sent out a stream of orders relating to its safe keeping, repair, and garrison.331 Four English knights were apparently elected to the captaincy between 1459 and 1522, although the captaincies of the first two, John Langstrother and Robert Tong, are somewhat uncertain. Langstrother was elected to the post in 1459 after promising to spend considerable sums on repairs to the castle, but his term as captain 325 326 327

599.

328 329 330 331

AOM73, fo. 99r; 75, fos. 18v–19r; 78, fo. 28v; 80, fo. 98r; 395, fos. 142r–143r. AOM79, fo. 17r–v; 75, fos. 168v, 176v; 84, fo. 19r; 86, fo. 54r. AOM75, fos. 18v–19r; G. Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1940–52), iii. AOM75, fos. 20r–21r, 24v–26r; Hill, Cyprus, iii. 599–600. AOM75, fos. 41r–42r. See above, Ch. 5.3; AOM416, fos. 220v–221r; 417, fo. 255r–v. AOM282, fo. 76v; 75, fo. 68r.

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was not to commence until 1463, at which date he was in England, and by the 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 on surer ground with the captaincies of Thomas Docwra between March 1499 and March 1501 and Thomas Sheffield between March 1514 and March 1517.334 Both Docwra and Sheffield made repairs to the castle, the latter’s costing nearly 6,000 florins of Rhodes, and willingness to pay for these before awaiting repayment by the common treasury may have been crucial to their provision to the post in the first place.335 Both employed other English 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-day finances of the Infirmary, a post to which English knights were elected seven times between 1467 and 1539, and which gave them some, admittedly managerial, involvement in the order’s Hospitaller activities.337 Others were appointed to distribute alms to the order’s dependants after the fall of Rhodes.338 After 1460, two knights—John Weston in 1470 and Clement West between 1512 and 1514—held the post of castellan of Rhodes, an office in which they had charge of the administration of justice in Rhodes town and the surrounding area.339 Another English brother, Roland Thornburgh, held the sister office of bailiff of merchants in 1475.340 Both these posts were generally in the gift of the master as administrator of the common treasury, 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 seat on the chapter-general.341 Brethren in the master’s household, such as Thornburgh,342 were not only more likely to be employed by the council as a result, but had considerable opportunities to benefit from magistral patronage. Most of the brethren who went on to further advancement in the order’s English and conventual affairs had been retained in the master’s socius first. John Kendal, for example, was the chamberlain of Giovanbattista 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 any archival 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. r 118 . 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.

318

The English Langue

England and a commandery of magistral grace in the same decade, well before he was granted a preceptory of cabimentum by the langue. A further commandery of grace, Melchbourne, followed in 1477.343 Other examples of such favour are provided by John Langstrother, who was granted the rich commandery of Cyprus while the master’s seneschal in 1468, and Thomas Sheffield, who was appointed magistral seneschal in 1518 and was granted Dinmore by magistral grace in 1523.344 The most powerful conventual offices usually in the master’s gift were arguably the two proctorships of the common treasury. The proctors, acting together with the grand commander, scrutinized conventual income and expenditure, prosecuted debtors before the council, and judged pleas for the remission of debts. They usually served for a two-year term, although this was often renewed. A number of English brethren, usually senior and rich, held one of the proctorships at various times in the century after 1460. John Weston and John Langstrother were successively elected at a time of acute financial crisis in the mid-1460s, John Kendal was similarly appointed in 1478, and served as such on his return to the convent in 1482–4, Thomas Newport held the office in 1506–8 and 1518, John Bothe, as we have seen, during the early 1520s, and William Weston in 1526–7. Even after the dissolution, Giles Russell was appointed proctor in July 1542.345 The proctorship was perhaps the one important conventual office in which the English punched their weight, and it is surely significant that the dignity was a financial one and that the priory of England was among the richest in the order. Despite this litany of employment, it would be a mistake to overemphasize the prominence of the ‘English’ brethren in convent. Numerically they were a small minority at headquarters and if this imbalance was modified because the langues elected equal numbers of representatives to the order’s governing bodies the balance swung against them again because the bailiffs who sat on the council or in chapters-general were generally French, Spanish, or Italian and the conventual officers who also attended were magistrally appointed and thus usually drawn from the three largest nations at the convent. No English knight was elected or appointed master or lieutenant master in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Nor was there any area of conventual operations, except those duties particular to the turcopolier, in which the English ‘nation’ was pre-eminent among, or even on an equal footing with, the other langues, except perhaps those of Germany and Castile. The English contributions to the order’s diplomacy, religious and intellectual life, and medical activities were very limited, and even in those areas in which they were 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. 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. 344

The English Langue

319

by the more numerous French, Italians, and Catalans. Although their military contribution to the sieges of 1480 and 1522 was significant, the English sector being about as long as those of the other langues, it was artificially enhanced by a more or less equal distribution of stipendiary soldiers to each post, and when the order was engaged in offensive operations at sea or on land, the English forces involved were largely nominal, between three and seven knights being typical, although these would have been accompanied by servants and sometimes volunteers from the British Isles. Yet the order’s constitutional structure and almost obsessive respect for precedent coupled with fear of the confiscation of its ‘British’ estates ensured that the English langue was never marginalized, and if the langue’s brethren did not get an eighth of the conventual appointments on offer, they did get a rather 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 council were granted to English brethren and some Englishmen became major figures in the order’s politics in both east and west. The future priors Langstrother, Kendal, Docwra, the two Westons, and the bailiffs of Eagle Newport and Sheffield stand out in particular as men influential in the order’s councils and involved in a wide range of conventual activity, lending sums sometimes running into thousands of pounds, commanding naval expeditions, holding administrative and military posts in convent, and serving on various commissions. Other brethren, even mere conventual knights, could gain a wide variety of experience during their service at headquarters and by doing so stand in good stead for future preferment if they performed well. In this respect the small size of the English langue did its members a favour, allowing those with ability to stand out in a way that the scramble for preferment in the other nations may not have permitted. A study of the English langue thus serves to underscore the mutual interdependence of all the order’s activities, whether in the Mediterranean or in western Europe. Conventual service was the essential first rung of the career ladder for a Hospitaller, but repeated visits to headquarters were essential if one was ambitious and wanted to get on, and were sometimes required on pain of loss of benefices even if one did not. Although the most prominent knights had often been marked out for advancement from their first years in the order and accumulated benefices and offices with ease, some, like Thomas Docwra, were slower starters who made the grade by dint 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 regarded what they were doing as valuable, they were prepared to invest time and effort and to risk their lives in conventual service. It was this ability to harness the ambition and self-belief of individuals that made the order of St John so formidable an organization and which ensured that its English priory did not escape from its control but remained a flourishing survivor of the international religious orders of the High Middle Ages.

C HA P T E R N I N E

Brethren and Conformists, 1540–1565 Historians of the order of St John have traditionally exaggerated the heroism of the English Hospitallers’ resistance to Henry VIII. Concentrating on those of their number, real or supposed, who died for the Catholic faith, and on those English knights who remained in Malta after 1540, they have generally created the impression that a majority of the English brethren of the order were martyred, remained in Malta, or fled to the Continent rather than submit to the Henrician supremacy and the dissolution of their ‘religion’.1 Mifsud’s treatment of the subject usefully embodies the mass of supposition and wishful thinking that had built up over the years. Commenting, accurately enough, that ten English knight-brethren were still to be found in Malta several months after the suppression, and assuming that the five knights readmitted into the order on the Marian restoration in 1557, besides others, ‘must have’ spent the intervening seventeen years in conscientious exile on the continent, the monsignor ignored the possibility of apostasy entirely, except in the cases of Clement West and Nicholas Lambert, who he assumed died in prison on Malta. Such solidarity, had it existed, would have made the Hospitallers more remarkable than the Carthusians in steadfastness. This chapter will explore the truth of these statements, and examine the careers of the former English Hospitallers between the dissolution of 1540 and the re-establishment of the order in England in 1557, with a brief discussion of the latter event. Although twenty-seven English knights and between one and four professed chaplains were provisionally granted pensions by the statute of suppression of 1540, examination of the Maltese archives quickly establishes that by 1542 only three knight-brethren—Giles Russell, Nicholas Upton, and Oswald Massingberd—remained in Malta as active members of the English langue.2 West and Lambert, who had been sentenced to be confined at pleasure by the council of the order in 1539, were not, as Mifsud assumed, unable to return home because of their imprisonment.3 Warrants 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.

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for the payment of their pensions in England in October 1541, ten months after their delivery to those brethren who had been there when the Hospital was dissolved.4 Additionally, Augmentations records show West regularly receiving his pension in England in the mid-1540s.5 Given the damage his activities had done to the order’s standing with Henry VIII, and the fact that he 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’s dispatch 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 on caravan at the time of the dissolution and who were traditionally assumed to have remained in Malta, is less clear-cut as no similar orders for the grant of their pensions have been enrolled in the public records.7 As the act for the suppression laid down that, unless constrained to do otherwise, members of the order were to return to England by Pentecost 1541 if they were to receive their pensions, they may well have had difficulty in claiming them. Nevertheless, the records of the Privy Council and of pension payments demonstrate 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 or Malta after he agreed to go on caravan in April 1540. He may have been among the Hospitallers killed at Algiers in 1541, but may equally well, given the 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 preceptor of Ansty, was in temporary command of the castle of Norham in 1545, following the death of the previous captain, his brother Brian, in battle with the Scots.10 The whereabouts of the other, George Aylmer, are more obscure. Aylmer, who in 1535 had been confined to Gozo for deeds committed by reason of his insanity, does not reappear until his readmission into the order in Mary’s reign.11 It seems unlikely that he would have been restored to a preceptory if he had been shut away for twenty-two years, however.

4

LPFD, xvi, nos. 379 (57), 1308 (15). 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 commander of 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 May 1541. 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. 5

322

Brethren and Conformists

It seems probable, then, that the great majority of the Hospitallers pensioned off in 1540, whether then resident at home or overseas, acquiesced in their new status as royal pensioners. Indeed they had little realistic alternative. The convent on Malta, while willing to grant pensions to the three knights who remained there,12 could not easily have afforded to finance a larger body of English brethren permanently, and the dissolution of the English priory cut the English knights in Malta off from their only sources of income. It is one thing to establish that most of the English Hospitallers were in England shortly after the dissolution, but it is quite another to trace their subsequent careers. Records of the payment of their pensions are lacking in most cases. At first, only William Armistead, the master of the London Temple, and his underlings, and Philip Babington, a junior knight, were regularly paid by the treasurer of Augmentations, rather than by the receiver of the Hospital’s lands in England and Wales, Maurice Denis.13 Yet nine former knights, beside Babington, appear in occasional receipt of pensions or annuities paid out of Augmentations between 1540 and 1547, and such payments become more common after the massive alienations of monastic lands occasioned by the French war in 1544 and 1545, which probably made it more difficult for Denis to pay the pensioners himself.14 John Sutton, for example, was paid his pension for the first half of 1545–6 out of Augmentations, the entry of the payment cancelled with a note that this had been repaid by the receiver of the hospital.15 Further information may be gleaned from the inquests into monastic pensioners carried out in the 1550s. Unfortunately, only about half of these survive and some returns are more thorough than others, but they nevertheless rescue some pensioners from obscurity. For example, John Rawson junior, the former bailiff of Eagle, seems to be unmentioned in any other source after 1542. The Gloucestershire return to the inquest of 1552, however, tells us that he had died in the same May.16

12

AOM86, fo. 118v. 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 the crown 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, Dunstan Newdigate, Anthony Rogers, John Sutton, William Tyrell, and Clement West. References to pension 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. 13

Brethren and Conformists

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Evidence from pension records can provide little information save whether a particular pensioner was alive or dead, and whether payments were up to date or not. Yet, with the possible exception of wills or parish registers, Exchequer or Augmentations records of pension payments are the only notice of a number of the former Hospitallers after 1540. Although several former Hospitallers became prominent in royal service, two of the most senior—Clement West and Edward Brown—appear only in the context of pension payments, while George Aylmer, Thomas Pemberton, and Thomas Coppledike do not appear in any published public records at all. All of these men were granted relatively generous pensions and all, except Brown and Coppledike, had been received into the order before the siege of Rhodes. They may have considered that their long service merited a leisurely retirement, but their absence from muster rolls and local government commissions is surprising nonetheless. The subsequent obscurity of some 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 for public appointments which would make them stand out enough to be noticed. Of the ten ex-Hospitallers provisionally allocated pensions of £10 at the time of the dissolution, Nicholas Upton and Oswald Massingberd remained in Malta, and enjoyed careers of some prominence and incident there alongside Giles Russell, the turcopolier. Before his death in 1543, Russell sat on several commissions and served as a procurator of the common treasury.17 Upton, appointed turcopolier in 1548 and castellan of Birgu in 1549 ended his life leading the order’s cavalry to victory over a large force of Turkish raiders devastating Malta in July 1551. He expired in the moment of triumph, overcome by his corpulence and the strain of fighting in the summer heat.18 Massingberd, despite his serial misdeeds, was appointed titular prior of Ireland in August 1547, and in May 1548 was in Italy plotting a rising in Ireland with Cardinal Pole and the dispossessed heir to the Kildare earldom, Gerald Fitzgerald.19 The latter had spent several months in Malta and Tripoli prior to this, and was entertained by Nicholas Upton while in convent.20 Massingberd seems to have been occupied in these schemes for some time, for he was absent from convent between 1547 and the 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. 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 e´cus from the spoils of John Rawson. AOM421, fo. 173r–v. 18

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but was unable to take possession of his dignity until the priory was restored in 1557.22 Between 1545 and 1547 Upton and Massingberd were joined in Malta by George Dudley, the seventh son of Lord Dudley of Sutton, but after being licensed to visit Germany in 1547 the younger knight-brother did not return to Malta until 1557, when he confessed to having apostatized and taken a wife and was restored to grace.23 Of the other junior knights, Henry Gerard and Thomas Thornhill were granted 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 of Augmentations in Dorset in 1544.25 In 1558, he returned to Malta—the only one of the pensioners of 1540 to do so—and was elected lieutenant turcopolier.26 The rest, with the exception of Philip Babington, David Gonson (or Gunstone), and Dunstan Newdigate, are still more obscure. Between 1540 and 1542, Thornhill, Babington, Gonson, Newdigate, and the junior preceptor William Tyrrell, all appear in the records of the Privy Council.27 The statute of dissolution had laid down that on arrival in England Hospitallers were to present themselves before two senior royal officials and take an oath of allegiance to the king.28 It may be in this context that Thornhill was sent for to appear at Westminster in July 1541, having just arrived home from Malta, but the summons may have been of less innocent character.29 David Gonson, the son of the naval administrator William, was executed for treason later in the same month, and it appears that he was only one of several knights under suspicion.30 John Story, the royal servant who had been carrying letters to and from the captive Clement West, put in articles of treason against Gonson ‘which seemed to depend upon the sayings of Philip Babington’ in or before October 1540.31 By July 1541 William Tyrrell was also confined in the tower under suspicion of treason. He was ordered to be reprieved on the 7 July, ‘in order to know his name and confront him with some accomplices’,32 but was later attainted and pardoned only in March 1543.33 In December 1541, moreover, Dunstan Newdigate and another,

22

AOM424, fo. 162r; CPR1557–8, 43–6. 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 at Guines, were also sent for on the same date. They may have been the former Hospitallers of the 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). 23

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unnamed, ‘of the order of Rhodes’ were discharged of a bond to appear daily in Star Chamber, but remained bound to appear upon warning.34 Both Gonson and Tyrrell were probably attainted for treasonable talk overseas, the offence for which Thomas Dingley had suffered two years earlier. Babington had accused Gonson of having ‘at Malta and elsewhere publicly denied and opposed’ the royal supremacy, and of having called the king a traitor.35 Tyrrell was pardoned in March 1543 ‘for diverse daily treasons’ committed between July 1536 and August 1539. To these were added three specific offences, probably treasonable talk of some kind, committed in Malta during the same period.36 It is possible that Gonson’s nemesis, Philip Babington, was a spy in royal service. He had absconded from Malta without leave in early 1540, and while he was granted his pension in December 1540 at the same time as ten other knights, he had already received a payment from Augmentations in February, before the act for the suppression of the priory was passed.37 Considering that the Hospitallers were riddled with informers in the years before the dissolution, with Nicholas Lambert and Clement West also reporting the loose words of their fellows, 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 Tudor England, and after the suspicion and bullying with which they were faced in 1540 and 1541, the crown found considerable use for the talents of the former knights of St John, including Tyrrell and Newdigate. This is not altogether surprising. Senior knight-brethren had often served as diplomats and couriers for the English government, and the priors of England and Ireland had practically become professional royal servants. While William Weston died in 1540 and John Rawson senior was too old and sick to be of much use thereafter,38 a number of mostly middle-ranking brethren forged new careers for themselves in the crown’s service in the 1540s and 1550s. The most successful were Ambrose Cave and Edward Bellingham, who rose to be chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and deputy of Ireland respectively,39 but William Tyrrell, Richard Broke, Dunstan Newdigate, Henry Poole, John Sutton, and Edmund Hussey also found employment on government commissions and in the navy.40 To these may be added the former 34 35

PPC, vii. 278. M. Elvins, Bl. Adrian Fortescue: Englishman, Knight of Malta, Martyr (London, 1993),

20.

36

LPFD, xviii, no. 346 (9). LPFD, xv, no. 522; xvi, no. 745, fo. 13. 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 of Parliament. 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. 37 38

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master of the Temple, William Armistead, who, as Dean of St Paul’s, served on a number of important commissions during the reign of Philip and Mary.41 It is difficult to establish exactly when or how these men entered royal service. The closest to court initially was Edward Bellingham, who was employed almost continuously on crown business from 1542 until his death in 1550. It may have been he who suggested that some of his former brethren should also be employed, and who secured the statute of 1545 permitting members of the order to marry, a concession not made to any other former religious by Henry VIII.42 The extent and variety of Bellingham’s work on behalf of the crown is impressive. He was sent to the Habsburg court in Austria and Hungary in 1542, served in various capacities in Dover, Calais, and Boulogne between 1543 and 1545, being at one stage taken prisoner by the French, and was in charge of the defence of the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1545.43 By the same year, Bellingham was a gentleman of the privy chamber.44 His service and position at court saw him rewarded with a number of handsome royal grants, including the manor and lordship of Bradford in Wiltshire, worth £142 odd per annum, and he was left 200 marks in Henry VIII’s will.45 Under the government of Somerset Bellingham continued to flourish. He was dispatched to the imperial court in February 1547 to announce Edward VI’s accession, to Ireland the same May to put down a rebellion, was knighted in September, and was appointed deputy of Ireland in April 1548.46 The service of Bellingham’s former confre`res was rarely as adventurous as his. None of them appears to have served in a diplomatic capacity after 1540, but the former Hospitallers were quite active in local government and military matters. In both areas, their employment on behalf of the crown owed much to their former occupation. The pensioners were sometimes appointed to government commissions in the shires where they had held preceptories. Henry Poole, for example, served as a JP, MP, and sheriff in Leicestershire, where he had been preceptor of Dalby.47 John Sutton, late preceptor of Willoughton, served on commissions of the peace and of sewers in Lincolnshire.48 Others, like Ambrose Cave who removed from Derbyshire to Leicestershire, and Edmund Hussey who returned to Dorset from 41

CPR1553–4, 73–4, 74–5, 76. LPFD, xx, II, no. 850 (c. 31). 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. 42 43

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Somerset, moved back to estates nearer their families, and served on government business in these counties.49 The pensioners’ employment on such work is a testament to their previous standing as landholders, a position that was partly maintained by the relatively generous pensions granted them in 1540. A further element of continuity was provided by the fact that several former brethren continued to live on property that had previously belonged to the order. John Mablestone, the subprior, was allowed to keep his house within the priory precincts by the statute of 1540, and still lived there in 1546.50 Richard Broke, by then a member 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 At about the same time John Rawson, junior, still held properties that had belonged to the bailiwick of Eagle, and John Sutton remained a tenant at Willoughton until his death in 1555.52 Ambrose Cave, who departed Yeaveley after the dissolution, nevertheless purchased the former camera of Rothley in Leicestershire in 1544.53 The former preceptor of Dalby and Rothley, Henry Poole sat on commissions with Cave in the same shire, married his sister, and left him a mourning ring in his will.54 There was even more continuity among the order’s servants, many of whom administered the order’s estates and lived in its properties as they had done before 1540. The employment of several former Hospitallers in military service in the 1540s and 1550s also demonstrates contintuity with their former careers. The mobilization of men and ships for the war with France between 1544 and 1546 was probably the largest since Edward III’s siege of Calais in 1346–7, and the former gentlemen ‘of the Roodes’ naturally came to the fore because of their military experience. Ambrose Cave, Henry Poole, and Edmund Hussey were all appointed to take contingents to France in 1544, and to raise troops and escort them to Dover in 1546, and Edward Bellingham was responsible for seeing victuals across the Channel in 1543.55 The most striking use of the former Hospitallers’ expertise, however, was in naval operations. By mid-1543 Dunstan Newdigate and Richard Broke had already seen active 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 of State 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 raising more 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.

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In May 1544, Broke was commanding a small fleet in Scotland with some success, and in the following November he was created vice-admiral of the ships appointed to keep the Narrow Seas and harass French shipping.57 Newdigate, and William Tyrrell, now forgiven and in receipt of a royal annuity,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 a particularly valuable asset to the royal navy.60 Lists of ships appointed to serve in the king’s wars drawn up in 1544 and 1545 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 of these for their positions. He wrote to Paget in August 1545 praising ‘Anthony’ (recte Edmund) Hussey, ‘gentleman of the Roodes’, as ‘a very hardy man and one that hath been brought up in the feat of the sea’. In the same letter Lisle proposed that William Tyrrell be appointed to command the galley wing of the fleet as the fittest man in the army, ‘for he is a man that hath seen the feat of the galleys and is a sure man and a diligent in anything that he is committed unto’.62 Lisle’s recommendation was upheld, and Tyrrell put in command of the galley squadron. In the previous year, Richard Broke had commanded the Galley Subtill, which had been specially commissioned 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, as Oppenheim suggests, ‘the English captain of the preceding year had not been found efficient’.63 The government was short of naval officers in 154564 but the nomination of no less than five former Hospitallers as captains remains a considerable tribute to their training and experience in the order’s service. Although Hussey 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 in late 1546,65 and in 1549 he and Broke were commanding galleys in the 57

LPFD, xix, I, nos. 472, 813; II, no. 600. 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 Introduction Treating of the Preceding Period (London, 1896), 51 and n. A contemporary illustration of the Galley Subtill is reproduced in N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of 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). 58

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Channel. On this occasion the admiral was told to take special heed of the advice of the former Hospitallers.66 At the end of the same year Tyrrell was also sent to survey the Scilly Isles.67 Broke, who was in charge of seven ships appointed by Northumberland to defend the east coast was, according to the imperial ambassadors in London, among the first significant government servants to desert to Queen Mary in the succession crisis of 1553, taking his ships, arms, and artillery over to her at the most crucial moment in her fortunes.68 He last appears in March 1554, reporting with Tyrrell on the state of the defences of Alderney,69 while Tyrrell continued to receive commissions until just before he died, a particular honour being his appointment to receive the king in the barque of Boulogne in 1555.70 On 16 November 1557, according to the Diary of Henry Machyn, ‘was buried at St. Martin’s at Ludgatt, master Terrell, captayn of the galee, and knyght of the Rodes sum-tyme was; with a cote, penon and ii baners of emages, and iii haroldes of armes, and ii whyt branches, and xii torches, and iiii gret tapurs’.71 At his demise, Tyrrell’s former career as a Hospitaller was thus recalled with honour alongside his naval service to the crown. Nevertheless, it might not have been remembered at all had he not served the crown so diligently and skilfully after the dissolution. Not all the former Hospitallers showed themselves as enterprising as Bellingham, Broke, Cave, or Tyrrell, yet after the dissolution a large proportion adjusted to secular life with little difficulty. Their profession had always been a practical one, accustoming them to the rigours of military action and the needs of administration in equal measure, and after 1540 these capabilities were deployed in the service of their crown rather than their order. This may not have been a particularly drastic adjustment to make, for it is arguable that the allegiance of members of the order had always, if only by necessity, been given as much to Westminster as to the convent. The employment of senior Hospitallers resident in England on government business was traditional, and it is likely that many of the pensioners of 1540 would have seen royal service even had the order not been dissolved. Yet the executions of Thomas Dingley and David Gonson, the near miss suffered by William Tyrrell, and the exile undergone by Russell, Massingberd, and Upton demonstrate that there was considerable disillusion among the brethren with the policies of the Henrician government in the 1530s, and that some were not afraid to express their misgivings. Their boldness was perhaps unwise, but it was in 66

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, ed. Knighton, 221, 224. 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. 67

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keeping with the self-confidence and corporate awareness that made the order of St John such a formidable organization that not all its members could be tamed by Henry VIII. Often relegated to the status of an unimportant aside in the brief accounts of 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 been variously interpreted by more interested commentators as a natural manifestation of the queen’s piety,72 as an aspect of Philip II’s Mediterranean strategy,73 or as a personal project of Reginald Pole.74 There is something to be said for each of these theories, but all three actors played a part in the order’s recovery of its position, and all three were almost certainly well disposed towards it in 1553. The queen’s own interest in restoring the hospital is not immediately apparent, but she was determined to re-establish both the English Church’s obedience to Rome and the position of the religious orders within it, and the order of St John served as a useful emblem of each. Moreover, both the support of Richard Broke in her own restoration and her contacts with successive imperial ambassadors since her mother’s divorce probably encouraged her to advance the order’s cause as an institution both significant in the defence of the faith and potentially loyal in her support.75 It may have been with such considerations in mind that she sent an envoy to Malta, one ‘Captain Ormond’, soon after her accession.76 Philip II’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 the western Mediterranean against Turks and Barbary corsairs, and the restoration of its English estates would boost the convent’s finances and marginally increase its manpower. Philip’s sustained interest in the matter is shown by the fact that it was an Aragonese knight-brother who was chosen to reply to the queen’s overtures in 1555, that his adviser Antonio de Toledo, prior of Castile, was heavily involved in the restoration, and that when the priory was revived in 1557 a Spaniard, Pedro Felizes de la Nuc¸a, was chosen to be bailiff of Eagle.77 Pole, too, probably had some say in the choice of the men who were received as brethren in 1557. His links with Oswald Massingberd and Richard Shelley went back to the 1530s or 1540s, he may have met Oliver Starkey while he was in the Low Countries waiting to be admitted into England, and the new prior of England, Thomas Tresham, was employing one of his former chaplains.78 72

King, British Realm, 109–10. T. F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000), 285, inclines (guardedly) 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. 73

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Despite the goodwill of the relevant authorities, jurisdictional, procedural, and financial difficulties put back the re-establishment of any religious houses in England until 1556,79 so that it was not until March and April 1557 that royal letters patent authorized Pole, as papal legate, to restore the order.80 This was set in motion at the beginning of May, when Pole issued decrees confirming the priory of England in its dignities and in possession of nine commanderies still in crown hands,81 and instructing members of the Irish episcopate to place Oswald Massingberd in possession of the order’s estates in Ireland.82 It was not, however, until 1 December 1557 that the new prior of England, Thomas Tresham, a religious conservative who had been prominent in the queen’s service since the first days of her reign,83 was formally inducted at Clerkenwell, together with Massingberd and the English commanders.84 Several had not been previously professed, and appear to have been chosen for the capabilities they had already demonstrated in the service of Mary, Philip, and Pole. These ‘new’ knight-brethren, moreover, dominated the revived order, being appointed to all the bailiwicks of the langue save the priory of Ireland. But several former brethren also received preferment, George Dudley being the only man who rejoined not to be so rewarded. By the end of 1558 six ‘English’ knight-brethren (including de la Nuc¸a) were in Malta,85 while Tresham and Massingberd were occupied in their duties as royal councillors and lords of parliament, a sign that the division of responsibilities between priors and preceptors obtaining since the fourteenth century was expected to continue. Indeed, the order’s subordination to the crown was more pronounced than at any time before 1537: the restoration of 1557 was specifically stated to be a new foundation in which the crown was sole founder and patron, notwithstanding the constitutions of former legates, the English Church, or the order’s convent and its English priory.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. They were distributed among eight knight-brethren, the turcopolier Richard Shelley receiving Halston 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. This occasion 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.

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effect was to give the crown, acting through Pole, carte blanche to appoint whom it saw fit to the langue’s dignities.87 The revived order was, of course, short-lived. In Elizabeth’s first parliament the properties and revenues of the religious houses restored in the previous reign were vested in the crown, although no formal decree dissolving the hospital was issued, a fact which excited the nineteenth-century enthusiasts 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 and an uncertain future in Malta, brethren such as Henry Gerard, Cuthbert Layton, and Thomas Thornhill again plumped for a royal pension.89 Yet some of the newly admitted brethren were rather more zealous. Oliver Starkey remained in Malta, where he held the posts of bailiff of Eagle and lieutenant turcopolier, until his death in the 1580s, and commanded a mixture of Greeks and Maltese soldiers on the post of England during the siege of 1565.90 Richard Shelley, the turcopolier and later titular prior of England, dwelt in uneasy exile in Spain, Rome, and Venice, but did reside in convent between 1566 and 1570, while his brother James, despite being granted a royal pension in 1563, also returned to Malta. The priory’s restoration, the exile of Starkey and the Shelleys, and the obvious pride Richard Shelley showed in his dignity and his order in letters home are powerful arguments against any assumption that the order of St John was universally considered redundant in mid-Tudor England.91 87

‘Six Documents’, ed. King, 8–9. Cf. for Ireland ibid. 18–19. Mifsud, Venerable Tongue, 211. 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. 88 89

CHAPTER TEN

Conclusion It is easy to see why the Hospital of St John’s British and Irish houses and personnel have not attracted much scholarly attention. They have left only a limited number of scattered architectural remains, amounting usually to one or two modest buildings at any particular site. The order’s members were few, 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 and frequent air travel, moreover, few scholars ventured to Malta, and those who might have wished to do so were informed that there was practically no useful ‘British’ material to look at there. The common perception that post1291 crusading thought was composed of unrealistic and anachronistic daydreaming rather than serious planning, and particularly so in a ‘British’ context, and that the order had become reduced to a rent-collecting agency providing comfortable lives for a few gentlemanly brethren, also conspired to limit interest in the order among historians. Consequently, writers on the religious orders have tended to ignore it, and their neglect has chimed well with the tendency of some scholars working on the Later Middle Ages to dismiss religious orders as generally unable to fulfil the ritual and spiritual aspirations of the laity. Yet in contrast a few literary and other scholars writing with chivalric, prophetic, or alchemical literature in mind have stressed that the order’s activities accorded with the highest ideals of at least some contemporaries. As a historian keen to establish the importance of one’s own subject it is tempting to side with the latter. Yet it is impossible to do so without some reservations. There is very little contemporary comment in English sources about the international activities of the order of St John, which appears therein to have been as renowned for operating a confraternity and administering peculiars as for expending its livelihood and the blood of its members in the east. While the order certainly tried to draw attention to its struggle in its liturgy and fund-raising, and succeeded in attracting substantial support when it offered papally derived plenary indulgences, it attracted relatively few testamentary bequests at other times, and even its confratres appear as likely to have been attracted by the spiritual and temporal privileges of membership as by thoughts of contributing to the war against the Turks. While confraternity was technically voluntary, moreover, many

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payments were evidently owed in perpetuity, and sanctions might be deployed against some non-payers. Nevertheless, the order’s provision of confraternity and extra-parochial services to the laity clearly elicited a response in many, as the complaints of the clergy make clear, and may provide indirect evidence of support for its participation in sacred violence. The ties of tenancy, service, and friendship which bound the order’s brethren to wider society can also be interpreted in differing ways. That many families contributed brethren to the order across generations or even centuries is easily demonstrated, and the fact that enthusiasm for it might be transmitted through wives and mothers to their marital relations and offspring is suggestive of its appeal, or at least of the attraction that weatherbeaten uncles’ tales of daring-do held for their nephews. As we might expect, familial fascination with the order was rarely selfless. Those who contributed brethren to it might reasonably suppose that should they survive to become preceptors, lucrative leases and offices would follow, and, useful as relatives’ service might be, their determination to hang on to grants after the decease of their Hospitaller relatives sometimes involved the order in expensive litigation. Nevertheless, whether related to brethren or not, many of the order’s officials served loyally for life, some making the dangerous journey to the convent in the train of their masters, and others choosing burial in its houses. In return for such commitment, the order attempted to promote existing servants to vacancies, and rewarded them with properties, corrodies, benefices, and administrative offices. Those who sought rented property from the Hospital, such as the Babingtons of Dethick, might also be drawn into relations of confraternity or service with it which could last for generations. Yet others’ relationships with the order appear to have been more 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 as any other, as its dealings with Daubeney, Bray, Wolsey, Norfolk, and Cromwell demonstrate. If the Hospital avoided the indignities suffered by some other houses, its priors and preceptors nevertheless felt it necessary to distribute gifts, pensions, and, sometimes after principled opposition, favourable leases to ministers or their intimates. The favour such personages extended in return could be temporary and of dubious worth, and the pressure they exerted to obtain it became more obvious and oppressive during the reigns of the early Tudors, especially in the 1520s and 1530s. Indeed, all the activities of the British and Irish Hospitallers hinged on their relationship with the governing authorities of those islands, and with their leading servants. It seems likely that kings protected the order because of their responsibilities to defend Christendom and the Church as evinced in coronation oaths and sermons, and reinforced by papal letters and other literary productions. But in return, as ‘founders’, protectors, and natural lords, they made certain claims on the order’s houses and brethren which

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undoubtedly affected the contribution they made to its headquarters. First, priors of England and Ireland, as ‘lords of parliament’ and natural councillors of the king, were increasingly expected to remain in his service, so that from the 1450s licences for them to travel to convent practically ceased. The weight of government business placed on their shoulders also increased, especially after 1485, with John Kendal, Thomas Docwra, and John Rawson being particularly heavily burdened. Similar developments obtained in Scotland, where William Knollis and Walter Lindsay became important royal servants, neither visiting the convent after becoming preceptor. Secondly, the crowns were determined to uphold their respective rights in the matter of prioral elections and promotions to Torphichen. It had long been the custom in England that priors should be presented to and take an oath of allegiance to 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 own candidate, a struggle might develop between crown and order which usually took years to resolve, and during which the order would suffer severe administrative disruption. In addition, English kings and royal officials also appear to have held vague notions that the monarch, as ‘founder’ and perhaps as protector of the order, was entitled to the fruits of prioral vacancy years, a claim which was vigorously contested, and which contributed to the upheavals of 1468–71 and 1527–8. In the third place, monarchs clearly expected the order to actively pursue its defence of Christendom. Such considerations lay behind the insistence that responsions should not pass through Avignon but should proceed directly to Rhodes, and also contributed to Henry VIII’s attempt to divert the order’s English revenues and personnel into the defence of Calais. Lay persons who suggested the Hospital, or an organization like it, defend Berwick or subjugate Leinster probably had a similarly high regard for its military worth and took a similarly utilitarian view of its activities, evidently seeing the defence of Christendom and of the realm as comparably worthy objectives. It is noteworthy that Henry VIII chose to present a primarily utilitarian justification when he dissolved the order, although his accusations that it was not doing its job are unconvincing. This, of course, is not to deny that personalities and circumstances played a part in shaping the Hospital’s development, but rather is to state that the framework of interaction between rulers and the order tended to determine the areas in which disagreement was likely to arise in moments of crisis. Edward IV’s usual lack of crusading fervour, Henry VIII’s cupidity and determination to be obeyed, John Langstrother’s bold miscalculation, and Clement West’s personal persecution complex and aggressive nationalism all played 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 a Scottish context, of 1509–18. In less sensitive times, however, the tensions between the order and each crown generally remained below the surface,

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and a cooperative relationship was usual. The essentiality of such cooperation to the order’s functioning is shown not merely by the disruptive effects of its occasional disputes with rulers, but also by its usual reliance on royal licences to carry on its international activities, and on the royal courts to protect its properties. Where this support was lacking, as in much of Ireland, the order’s ability to mobilize its resources suffered and its houses became the plaything of local dynastic interests. Bolstered, or at least relatively unhindered, by royal protection, the order was able to pursue those policies by which it might best support both its local and international responsibilities. In the first place, it was concerned that its brethren should be of the right calibre. Accordingly, entry into the order at the rank of knight-brother was restricted to persons of proven gentility who were expected to possess the qualities necessary for both military service and efficient administration. With possible exceptions such as that of George Aylmer, the signs are that this was largely achieved, and that sending brethren off to headquarters provided them with a useful apprenticeship in both arms and business. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly in an ‘English’ context, the convent wished to maximize the productivity of its houses in the west. Its most pressing concern in this regard, at least judged by the volume of correspondence devoted to it, was to ensure that responsions and other dues were paid on time and in full. The order’s insistence that brethren make notarially attested ‘improvements’ to their houses and be free of debt if they were to achieve promotion encouraged responsible administration in most preceptors. But the hospital was also sensible of its reputation and responsibilities as a provider of divine service and hospitality in the west, a concern to which its Irish correspondence bears substantial, if excitable, witness. It was not particularly concerned, either at the global or the local level, to ensure that its cures be served by professed brethren, who were very few in the British Isles, but it was clearly important that benefices should be filled in some manner. Moreover, the evidence generally suggests that the statutes relating to these matters were taken seriously, with priors and preceptors patronizing graduates, erecting or repairing ecclesiastical structures, and expending large sums on hospitality. In Ireland, too, despite probably higher incidences of dilapidation and failure to pay vicars, an establishment which could be termed collegiate 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 the latter regards than its English equivalent. Nevertheless, conventual policy might lead to difficulties for brethren ultra maris. The obvious potential tension between home improvement and service overseas surfaced on occasion, and the convent’s insistence on levying annates from newly promoted brethren left many in debt for some years after acquiring a benefice, although until the 1530s most appear to have managed to submit responsions and improve properties. Furthermore,

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the process of amalgamating houses, leaving many to be let on long lease, turned many into little more than gentle residences, and even where there was a resident preceptor he was usually alone and practically unsupervised, a condition which might result in scandal. Set against these deficiencies must be the undoubted success of the order’s policy of insisting on conventual service before promoting brethren to benefices. Although the remaining powers of priors to appoint to preceptories were ill-defined, and often led to 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 the Mediterranean probably helped to ensure that the order’s houses in mainland Britain did not escape from overseas conventual control, as so many of their counterparts in other institutions did. Conversely, the failure to enforce this requirement in the case of the Irish-born may have enabled the Hospital to develop more independently in Ireland. The convent’s success in motivating the order’s English brethren to return to the Mediterranean for repeated tours of duty, particularly when it was increasing its strength in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, both demonstrates the depth of the commitment it was able to inspire and gives the lie to the perception that its houses were merely ‘rent-collecting agencies’ providing a comfortable life for their brethren. Moreover, while the English langue was not one of the more important in the order, its brethren participated relatively fully in conventual life, holding military and naval commands, filling administrative posts, and dwelling among and engaging in various forms of intercourse with the mixed populations they encountered. Some of them emerged from the conventual chrysalis as diplomats and captains of international standing, and even the most humble might ship cloth to or own property in the conventual islands. Most distinctively, of course, the langue assiduously protected its right to inspect the coastguard of both Rhodes and Malta, and despite the clear distaste of the convent’s officers for the excesses of turcopoliers and their lieutenants, its conservatism and its respect for the pope and English crown prevented the reassignment of this duty until long after the dissolution. Moreover, the letters of kings of England, the reports of pilgrims, and the writings of Scottish poets and chroniclers demonstrate that the langue’s presence in the convent could be seen as upholding the honour of the nations from which its brethren were derived. Its creditable performance 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 that British and Irish Hospitallers would not have continued to perform conventual service for centuries to come.

Appendix I. (Grand) Mastersa of the Order of St John, 1461–1568 Name

Langue

Elected

Died

Pere Ramon Zacosta Giovanbattista Orsini Pierre d’Aubusson Aimery d’Amboise Guy de Blanchefort Fabrizio Carretto Philippe Villiers de l’Isle Adam Piero del Ponte Didier de St Jailhe Juan de Homedes Claude de la Sengle Jean Parisot de la Valette

Spain Italy Auvergne France Auvergne Italy France Italy Provence Aragon France Provence

24.8.1461