45 is the burning of a group of Templars (not tonsured), and at f. 48 the burning of the Master of the Temple and another (tonsured). Their banner was of a black and white striped cloth, called _beauseant_, which word they adopted as a war-cry. The rule allowed three horses and a servant to each knight. Married knights were admitted, but there were no sisters of the order. The order was suppressed with circumstances of gross injustice and cruelty in the fourteenth century, and the bulk of their estates was given to the Hospitallers. The knight here given, from Hollar's plate, is a prior of the order, in armour of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: _A Knight Templar._] The KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM, or the Knights Hospitallers, originally were not a military order; they were founded about 1092 by the merchants of Amalfi, in Italy, for the purpose of affording hospitality to pilgrims in the Holy Land. Their chief house, which was called the Hospital, was situated at Jerusalem, over against the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and they had independent hospitals in other places in the Holy Land, which were frequented by the pilgrims. Their kindness to the sick and wounded soldiers of the first crusade made them popular, and several of the crusading princes endowed them with estates; while many of the crusaders, instead of returning home, laid down their arms, and joined the brotherhood of the Hospital. During this period of their history their habit was a plain black robe, with a linen cross upon the left breast. At length their endowments having become greater than the needs of their hospitals required, and incited by the example of the Templars, a little before established, Raymond de Puy, the then master of the hospital, offered to King Baldwin II. to reconstruct the order on the model of the Templars. From this time the two military orders formed a powerful standing army for the defence of the kingdom of Jerusalem. When Palestine was finally lost to the Christians, the Knights of St. John passed into the Isle of Cyprus, afterwards to the Isle of Rhodes, and, finally, to the Isle of Malta,[15] maintaining a constant warfare against the infidel, and doing good service in checking the westward progress of the Mohammedan arms. In the latter part of their history, and down to a recent period, they conferred great benefits by checking the ravages of the corsairs of North Africa on the commerce of the Mediterranean and the coast towns of Southern Europe. They patrolled the sea in war-galleys, rowed by galley-slaves, each of which carried a force of armed soldiers--inferior brethren of the order, officered by its knights. They are not even now extinct.