Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third EditionCutts, Edward Lewes
History
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third Edition
Cutts, Edward Lewes
Civilization, Medieval; Middle Ages -- Social life and customs
The order was first introduced into England in the reign of Henry I., at
Clerkenwell; which continued the principal house of the order in England,
and was styled the Hospital. The Hospitallers had also dependent houses,
called Commanderies, on many of their English estates, to the number of
fifty-three in all. The houses of the military knights in England were
only cells, erected on the estates with which they had been endowed, in
order to cultivate those estates for the support of the order, and to form
depôts for recruits; _i.e._ for novices, where they might be trained, not
in learning like Benedictines, or agriculture like Cistercians, or
preaching like Dominicans, but in piety and in military exercises. A plan
and elevation of the Commandery of Chabburn, Northumberland, are engraved
in Turner's "Domestic Architecture," vol. iii. p. 197. The superior of the
order in England sat in Parliament, and was accounted the first lay
baron. When on military duty the knights wore the ordinary armour of the
period, with a red surcoat marked with a white cross on the breast, and a
red mantle with a white cross on the shoulder. Some of their churches in
England possibly had circular naves, like the church of the Temple in
Jerusalem; out of the four "round churches," which remain, one belonged to
the Knights of the Hospital. The chapel at Chabburn is a rectangular
building. There were many sisters of the order, but only one house of them
in England.
One of two earlier representations of knights of the order may be noted
here. In a MS. in the Library at Ghent, of the date of our Edward IV., is
a picture of John Lonstrother, prior of the order; he wears a long
sleeveless gown over armour. It is engraved in the "Archælogia," xiii. 14.
The MS. Add. 18,143 in the British Museum is said in a note at the
beginning of the volume to have been the missal of Phillippe de Villiers
de l'Isle Adam, the famous Grand Master of the Order of St. John of
Jerusalem from 1521 to 1534. In the frontispiece is a portrait of the
Grand Master in a black robe lined with fur, and a cross patee on the
breast. On the opposite page is another portrait of him in a robe of
different fashion, with a cross rather differently shaped. The monument of
the last English Prior, Sir Thomas Tresham, in his robes as prior of the
order, still remains in Rushton Church, Northants. A fine portrait of a
Knight of Malta is in the National Gallery. The Hospitaller given on the
preceding page, from Hollar's plate, is a (not very good) representation
of one in the armour of the early part of the fourteenth century, with the
usual knight's _chapeau_, instead of the mail hood or the basinet, on his
head.
[Illustration: _A Knight Hospitaller._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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