THE ORIGINS OF THE MOST VENERABLE ORDER
OF SAINT JOHN
The
foundation of a new Order of Saint John by a handful of Anglican knights, whose
appointment as such had been made by some members of the by then defunct French
Capitular Commission, is a matter of considerable controversy. The loss of Malta
and the destruction of all the institutions of the ancien régime that
resulted from Napoleon's march across Europe, however, happened in exceptional
times. The Order's government at Catania was functioning but had not been able
to convoke a complete Chapter-General and it was headed by a Lieutenant with
more limited powers than a Grand Master. The appointments of members of the
Russian Orthodox faith by Paul I had never received Papal sanction and had been
discontinued after 1811. The Johanniter knights who had recognized the authority
of the Grand Magistery before the loss of Malta had been incorporated into a new
Order by the Prussian King and no longer made any attempt to sustain their
connection with the Grand Magistery. With the restoration of the Bourbons in
1815 the surviving French knights formed the French “Commission” to regulate
the Order’s affairs in France. This body, under the Presidency of the Bailiff
Prince de Rohan,[1]
functioned without the explicit approval of the Lieutenant of the Grand
Magistery and Sacred Council. At first the Lieutenant was disposed to confirm
concessions of the Cross of Devotion made by the French Commission (since these
appointments were inserted into the Gazette by the Crown). As the demands for
the restoration of the Order’s property in France became more strident,
however, the French government distanced itself further from the Commission.
Rohan’s death in 1816 came at a sensitive moment and his successor as
President, Grand Prior of Auvergne Bailiff de Lasteyrie did not have his
influence or prestige. By 1817 the Sacred Council was refusing to confirm the
conferrals of the Cross of Devotion made by the Commission, which therefore
ceased to have any legality.
The
admission to membership into the Order of non-Roman Catholics was clearly in
contravention of the statutes and juridically impossible under Canon Law. The
Lieutenant, increasingly alarmed at the independent course taken by the French
Commission determined to limit its powers The Holy See had acknowledged the
authority of the Lieutenancy over the Order and, in 1824, recognition of this
authority by the French Crown had led to the dissolution of the Commission. The
precise legal status of the Capitular Commission has been expertly examined by
Bailiff Geraud Count Michel de Pierredon.[2]
He has established that the Commission continued to function de facto, if not de jure,
after Lieutenant Busca's abrogation of its powers, and that although the Grand
Chancellor of the Legion of Honor had refused to recognize its authority after
1824 and its suppression was ordered by the Lieutenant, it still claimed
authority over the Order's affairs in France where the majority of surviving
knights still lived. Indeed, it would appear that as many as two thousand de
facto concessions of the Cross of Malta were made by the Commission between
1814 and 1830. As only a handful of these were recognized by the Lieutenant,
most of their recipients were unable to wear the decoration in France - indeed,
despite the award of the Grand Cross to the Empress Eugènie, the French
government did not finally permit conferrals of the Order of Malta until the
1920s.
The
Chancellor of the Commission from 1821, whose appointment was revoked by the
Lieutenant's decree of 1824, was the mysterious "Pierre-Hippolyte, Marquis
de Sainte-Croix-Molay", sometimes styled Marquis de Santa Croce, whose
title was certainly false and whose real name and origin remains unknown. It is
not improbable that the name "Molay" was intended to make some
reference to the last Grand Master of the Temple and that the
"Marquis" had been connected with the Masonic Templars, recently
revived in France. It is not known how such a person was admitted without
presenting formal proofs. Following the failure of the French Commission's
attempt to raise funds on the London bond market, to finance an attempt to help
the Greeks achieve independence, Molay persuaded Lasteyrie’s successor as
President, the aged Commander Jean-Louis de Dienne who had played an important
part in the siege of Malta, to authorize two emissaries to go to London and
negotiate the refoundation of the English Langue.
Both Dienne and Molay apparently hoped that their disastrous English foray into
the English financial markets to pay for their aborted Greek adventure might
this time yield fruit. First contact was made with a Mr Donald Currie, who had
persuaded an associate of Molay, "Count" Philippe de Chastelain, that
he was a gentleman of means with a substantial Scottish estate - both were
charlatans, however, who failed to recognize the other as such.
The
French hopes to raise funds for their projects in the eastern Mediterranean were
disappointed, and Currie failed to produce any significant portion of the ₤240,000 he
had been empowered to raise, although his recruits provided a nucleus for the
formation of the English branch. De Molay's plan to revive the English Langue was explained in a letter of September 14, 1827 to Currie, in
which he proposed that Anglican candidates for admission might be received
according to the same form as had pertained in the separated (and abeyant)
Bailiwick of Brandenburg, while Irish candidates must be Roman Catholics and
would be admitted according to the statutory form. A committee was appointed to
effect this in 1830 by the proponents of the British revival and, on January 29,
1831, in the presence of the "Delegate of the Capitular Commission",
Chastelain, the Reverend (Sir) Robert Peat (a former Chaplain to George IV) was
appointed Prior ad interim of the
"Venerable Tongue of England".[3]
Unfortunately,
the new institution seems to have immediately attracted some unsavory
characters, among whom was a self-styled "Count" Alexander Mortara,
who addressed correspondence on the purported "hospital" of Saint John
from the "Auberge of St John, St John's Gate, St John's Square,
Clerkenwell", actually the public house which was then housed in the
ancient Gatehouse.[4]
Peat nonetheless successfully recruited a handful of knights, allegedly
obtaining ratification of their diplomas by the French Capitular Commission. It
did not take long for Peat and his associate, John Philippart, a War Office
clerk, to recognize that they had better dispense with Mortara, who was accused
of selling knighthoods. Mortara was dismissed but nonetheless continued his
activities, even obtaining the support of Molay who was somehow persuaded of
Mortara's good intentions, although Peat's group proved more successful in
attracting persons of note. Peat's branch, which claimed legitimacy through the
connection with the historic Order, albeit unconstitutional, now found itself
cut off from its source and supplanted by a completely disreputable body headed
by a crook. Molay seems to have realized this because by 1835, now settled in
England, he had attached himself to Peat. The French commission itself had
simply faded away to be succeeded by an informal association of knights whose
members were nominated by the Lieutenant, but without the French governmental
sanction necessary for the Order to be worn in France.
On
24 February 1834 Peat took the oath de
fideli administratione before the Lord Chief Justice, in the hope of
reviving the 1557 Letters Patent of King Philip and Queen Mary.[5]
Whether these were still valid was never questioned; Elizabeth I had only
confiscated the Order's estates and had not repealed Mary's law. For the new
knights of Saint John this was sufficient evidence of the legitimacy of Peat's
group even though there was no justification for believing that such a procedure
could effectively revive the Order in England.
When
Peat died in 1837 Sir Henry Dymoke, Bt, succeeded him as Prior while the
administration of the new Langue was
executed by Mr Richard Broun, who had been admitted as a knight in 1835. Broun
continued to hold office until his death in 1858 and, although genuinely
interested in the advancement of the romantic idea of establishing the Order in
Great Britain, his public reputation proved to be fatal to achieving recognition
from Rome.[6]
It was no longer possible to obtain the approval of admissions by the Commission
and, in the hope of being recognized in some kind of association with the
knights of the Catholic and Protestant Orders, two delegates, William Crawford
and Robert Lucas Pearsall, were sent to France and Germany to investigate.[7]
Molay, back in France again, affirmed incorrectly that the Langue's
foundation by the Commission had been legal, although the news that he had been
indicted for fraud should have caused some suspicions; soon after the British
were told that Molay had been relieved of his offices. Although none of the
French knights had any authority to act on behalf of the Grand Magistery,
somehow the British were persuaded that legitimacy rested in France. They were
informed of a scale of fees for admission - which gave rise to the response that
the British were too impoverished to pay the sums demanded - and that contact
with the Lieutenant must be made through the French as only the Lieutenant could
authorize the admission of Protestant members. Nonetheless, the possibility
having been raised that the permission of the Lieutenant was necessary, doubts
arose in the minds of the members of the newly established British Langue
as to their legitimacy.[8]
As Prof Riley-Smith has demonstrated, the expectations of the British knights
were founded on so many misconceptions about the Order, its rules, government
and state following the loss of Malta that it was impossible to accede to any of
their requests.
Arrogantly
the British knights proceeded nonetheless, demanding that the Lieutenant
recognize their revival, their admissions of knights and their governing body.
They decided that the
new Langue was to be "strictly Protestant",
soon abandoned for ecumenicalism,
and that they would
erect a "Hospitallarium", for which funds were never found.[9] By
1840 it was already clear that the knights were not going to be recognized as
part of the Order of Malta by the Lieutenant and, with the recognition of the
latter's authority by the French, Italian and German Langues,
they were not going to be accepted by any of these groups. An attempt was made
to persuade a younger son of George III, the Duke of Sussex, a notorious
freemason, to accept the position of Turcopilier - the ancient title of the head
of the English Langue - but the Duke
refused. Robert Pearsall, who seems to have been the most pragmatic of the
members, was horrified at the suggestion made by some knights that they should
approach Prince Albert who, in his view, came from such a disreputable family
that he would only bring discredit to the organization! Pearsall realized that
there was no possibility of achieving recognition from the Lieutenant as long as
the Langue was exclusively Protestant
and proposed recruiting three or four important and influential Catholics, but
this sensible proposal seems not to have been pursued.[10]
In 1841 another knight, Sir Warwick Tonkin, managed to obtain the signature of
the new secretary of the French council of knights to the Instrument of
Convention of 1827 which had established the Langue
in the first place. Although this was not the recognition it was portrayed as
and it did not in any way bind the Lieutenant, it was the first document
affirming a connection with the French knights signed by a serving officer. Two
years later, when a senior member of the Grand Magistery, the Grand Bailiff Fra'
Cristoforo Ferretti, came to London, he met with Tonkin and Broun and promised
to carry their proposals to the Lieutenant. The British demand that they be
treated as equals with what they referred to as the "Italian Langue", when it was actually the legitimate Grand Magistery,
was an extraordinary presumption, aggravated by their demand for total autonomy
with the freedom to admit whom they pleased. Furthermore they were only prepared
to adhere to those parts of the statutes which suited them and which did not
conflict with the "habits and feelings" of British society![11]
The
Lieutenant's courteous but firm reply that he could not recognize the admission
of Protestants to a Catholic Order was met with indignation by Broun. He
believed that as Catholics had been emancipated in Great Britain and could now
sit in Parliament, they should not in turn exclude Protestants from their
organizations. Unfortunately, he failed to understand that the Sovereign
Military Order was and still is a Religious Order of the Church, subject to
Canon Law. Broun’s history of the new foundation, Hospitallaria, listed Colloredo as the Grand Master,[12]
as if the Sovereign Order recognized the English Langue.
Acting
regardless of the Lieutenant’s disapproval, Broun also named Sir Henry Dymoke, Peat's successor as Grand Prior
as the holder of the title of Turcopilier, a post Dymoke held until 1847, "the Honourable" Sir Charles
Lamb, Baronet, Grand Prior of England as Lieutenant-Turcopolier, and Ewen Macpherson of Cluny,
Chief of the Macphersons, as Lieutenant-Preceptor of Scotland. He identified the other principal
officers as the Lieutenant-Bailiff of "l'Aigle" (Aquila or Egle), the
Chancellor, the Seneschal
and the Referendary.
According to Broun there were between eighty
and ninety British subjects, both Protestant
and Catholic (their exclusion
was apparently abandoned early on), enrolled as knights between 1831 and 1856.
The English Priory may be regarded at this time as a private, autonomous
organization, claiming obedience to the Lieutenant, which did not enjoy the
support of either the Sovereign Order itself nor the British Crown. Nonetheless,
its tenuous links with the French Langue
and the moderate understanding on the part of the British members of the Order's
history and status go some way to justify their belief that they were a revival
of the ancient Langue.
A
final attempt was made to gain the recognition of the Lieutenant when a Catholic
knight, John James Watts, who had been admitted to the Langue in 1832 but living in Malta, was appointed by Broun as
"commissioner" to the Langues
of Italy and Spain to inform these two groups of the Order's activities in Great
Britain. They were perhaps unaware that the two Spanish Langues
had actually been united under the Spanish King and were themselves separated
from the Grand Magistery. Still dreaming of extravagant schemes such as the
reoccupation of Rhodes, and the construction of a Hospital in the Holy Land
(achieved some twenty five years later), Watts' commission was ambitious. On
reaching Rome, where the Grand Magistery had been established since 1834, he
soon learnt that they regarded the British as having no proper connection with
the Sovereign Military Order and, as a Catholic, was received into the Order
himself with the Cross of Devotion. The Sacred Council now proposed to Watts
that the first step should be the establishment of a Catholic Grand Priory, with
himself as Grand Prior, in association with two other knights of Malta, the
wealthy convert George Bowyer,[13]
and Edmund Waterton. The Catholic knights would then "inform" the
Grand Magistery of the formation of a Protestant branch that would be dependent
on the Grand Priory. In his written proposal, the secretary of the Grand
Magistery, Count Gozze, stated that "the branch of the Order of St John
which has been formed in England (is) a branch irregular in truth up to the
present moment, but in which we recognize with pleasure the germs of the most
noble and most legitimate aspirations".[14]
Although
the Catholic Grand Prior was to be considered the inheritor of the Letters
Patent of 1557, the English Langue
welcomed the possible regularization of their position and their connection with
the Sovereign Order. The British knights affirmed their willingness to recognize
the authority of the Grand Magistery, expecting that their members would have a
similar status to the Johanniter knights before 1798. British anti-Catholicism
was viewed as a major obstacle to the subjection of the Protestant knights to a
Catholic Grand Priory, requiring great secrecy, but it was Bowyer and Waterton's
objections that defeated the project. Bowyer, then heir to a Baronetcy, a lawyer
and Member of Parliament, was evidently keen to distance himself from the
members of the English Langue and so set out to portray them to the Grand
Magistery as being unsuitable for admission to any kind of association,
attacking them in harsh terms. While some of his criticisms may have been
justified he was mistaken in attacking the legitimacy of Broun's Baronetcy and
exceedingly unfair to some others of the principal members. [15]
One must assume that Bowyer wanted the Grand Magistery to abandon the whole idea
of any kind of association with the protestant Langue.
The most salient point made by Bowyer was that as there was no continuity from
1557 the Langue could not claim to be the direct successor of the ancient Grand
Priory; for the rest we must assume that Bowyer was forgetting his training as a
lawyer, preferring to repeat unsubstantiated gossip to defeat a project to which
he was opposed. Both he and Waterton, who styled himself "27th Lord of
Walton", a wholly invented title as he was no more than Lord of a Manor of
that name, evidently wished to insure that whatever organization would be
established in England would have no connection with Protestants. They succeeded
as they had hoped, the Grand Magistery broke off discussions after a cold and
recriminatory exchange with Broun and relations were not re-established until
after the Second World War. In 1875 Bowyer founded the British Association of
the Sovereign Military Order, of which he became the first President.
On
April 16, 1862, the nascent Priory proclaimed new Statutes, declaring itself to
be the Sovereign and Illustrious Order of Saint John of Jerusalem: Anglia under
a "Master" - although no such officer was elected - and a
"Capitular Commission" to administer its affairs. These statutes
welcomed "the honourable families of the British Empire and their
descendants", listing three Capitular bailiffs (the Grand Prior of England,
the Grand Prior of Ireland and the Bailiff of Aquila) and fifteen bailiffs
"ad honores".[16]
Dymoke had been succeeded in 1847 by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles Lamb, 2nd
Baronet, who was in turn succeeded in 1860 by Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander
Arbuthnott who only enjoyed the post for one year. Thanks to the generosity of
the Order's then Secretary-General, Sir Edward Lechmere, the ancient Priory
Church and gatehouse at Clerkenwell were acquired and established there in 1874.
In 1875 Arbuthnott's successor as Grand Prior, the 7th Duke of Manchester,
instituted a new Constitution as the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in England
and the Order attained a much higher profile. The badge (an eight-pointed white
enameled cross with the lion and unicorn between the arms and ensigned by a
Crown), was amended and the Crown removed. The Order's future role as a major
humanitarian organization was established with the formation of an ambulance
brigade in the coal mines of the midlands, the precursor of the Saint John
Ambulance Brigade, now the principal hospitaller arm of the Order.
TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE MODERN
ORDER
[1]
The rights of the Commission were at first recognized by the French Crown
and the awards of the Cross of Devotion were initially granted permission to
be worn.
[2]
Histoire Politique de l'Ordre
Souverain de Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem (Ordre de Malte), 2nd edition Paris 1956 and 1963, vol.2.
[3]
It
is unclear by whose authority Chastelain was appointed since Molay's
nomination as Chancellor had certainly been revoked and there is no
surviving documentary evidence to support the claim that he was nominated by
the Commission, which does not seem to have met in formal session after
1828. Peat's title of "Sir" was used by him without license by
virtue of his membership of the Polish Order of Saint Stanislas. Holders of
foreign Orders ceased to be granted licenses to use the title
"Sir" after 1815.
[4]
See Jonathan Riley-Smith, The
Order of Saint John in England 1827-1858, in The
Military Orders, edited by Malcolm Barber, 1994, pp.124-125.
[5]
King/Luke
(Op.cit. p.142) states that Peat took this oath; however,
this has been disputed.
Nonetheless, Riley-Smith accepts this Op.
cit., 1994, p.126.
[6]
Richard Broun was a
young eccentric (born 1801)
who, after successfully proving his father's right to the baronetcy of Broun
[Scotland, 1686] in 1826, demanded unsuccessfully of the Lord Chancellor his
inauguration as a knight, as a baronet's eldest son, and described himself
as such in the Baronetage he published in 1844. Unfortunately, the
ridiculous claims he made for the rights of Baronets and his involvement in
numerous failed business projects earned him the disregard of respectable
society. Despite the denunciation of him in 1858 by George Bowyer, he was
indeed the heir male of the Baronetcy of Broun, of Coulston, created Feb 16,
1685/86, which had wrongly been believed to have been extinguished in 1776
on the death of the 5th holder of the title. When the Globe newspaper
challenged his right, he sued unsuccessfully for defamation. Nonetheless, on
his death in 1858 his brother succeeded him and the Baronetcy today is held
by his eventual successor, Sir Lionel Broun, 11th baronet. On
his father's death in 1844 Richard Broun claimed the Baronetcy as 8th
Baronet and died in 1858. He
was an author of a history of the Langue, "Hospitallaria,
or A Synopsis of the Rise, Exploits, Privileges, Insignia, etc, of the
Venerable and Sovereign Order of Knights Hospitallers of Saint John of
Jerusalem", published in London in 1837. He republished this work, describing
himself as the Honourable Sir Richard Broun, Kt (sic) and Baronet, GCJJ, and
(Feudal) Baron of Colstoun in 1856.
[7] See Riley-Smith, Op. cit., 1994, p.126.
[9]
See Broun, Op. cit., 1837.
[10]
See Riley-Smith, Op. cit. 1994, p.130.
[12] Although Bailiff Candida was Lieutenant at the time (1834-1845) and Bailiff Colloredo was not elected until 1845, dying in 1864.
[13]
Sir George Bowyer, Bt (heir of two baronetcies created in 1660 and 1794),
1811-1883, who succeeded to his father's baronetcy in 1860 and the family
estate of Radley House, near Abingdon, Berks. He converted to Roman
Catholicism in 1850 and two years later was elected Liberal MP for Dundalk
(until 1868) and Wexford in 1874 (until 1880). He financed the construction
of the first Church of the Association, the Church of St John of Jerusalem
in Great Ormond Street, was appointed an Extra-Numerary Chamberlain of the
Cape and Sword by Pius IX, becoming a Professed Knight of Justice of the
Order of Malta, Bailiff Grand Cross of Justice with Collar of the
Constantinian Order (1862), and Grand Cross of the Papal Order of Saint
Gregory the Great.
[14]
Riley-Smith, Op. cit., 1994, p. 133-134. Count Gozze's letter began "A protestant branch of the English Langue would have to be considered as possessing a distinct interior
organization, although bound to the Order by the same chivalric forms, the
same exterior symbols, sharing the same illustrious history ... sympathizing
in full reciprocity in respect to all the noble, chivalric, philanthropic
and charitable tendencies .... This species of union already exists in the
Order with the Protestant branch which represents the ancient Grand
Bailiwick of Brandenburg in the German Langue".
[15]
Bowyer immoderately denounced one of the English Knights, Henry Bliss, as
being the "son of Aldridge the Omnibus manufacturer and
horse-dealer" for changing his name and assuming the title of Baron de
Bliss. But Mr Bliss had legally changed his name by royal license in 1845 on
succeeding to the substantial estates of his uncle, the late Henry Bliss,
after whom he had been named, Brandon Park, Suffolk, Sledale Park,
Westmoreland, and Berkeley House, Hyde Park. He had received confirmation of
the Portuguese title of Baron de Alreyo, being the heir of the title and
estates of his cousin the previous Baron, with the title of Baron de Bliss,
from King Ferdinand of Portugal on June 6, 1855. This change of the title's
designation was permitted precisely because by the terms of his uncle's will
he could not inherit unless he kept the name Bliss. On later succeeding to
the estates of another uncle, Colonel Carlo Barreto, he was permitted to
assume by a further royal license in 1867 the additional name of Barreto
and, by a further Portuguese royal decree of July 3, 1873, was permitted to
change the name of his title to Baron de Barreto. See Marquis de Ruvigny, The Nobilities of Europe, London 1909, pp. 21 and 52. His father,
likewise stigmatized by Bowyer, was both a JP and Deputy Lieutenant in
Hampshire. Another victim of
Bowyer's venom, the Rev John Bellew, had changed his name by royal license
from Higgins on succession to a part of the estate of an uncle, a
Major-General Bellew and, far
from having been expelled from Cambridge for an unpaid bill as claimed by
Bowyer, had graduated from Oxford and was a well-known London cleric.
Indeed, in 1868, he converted to Catholicism. See Riley-Smith, Op. cit.
1994, pp. 136-137. Bowyer’s
denunciations of these men, which substantially influenced the Lieutenant
and the attitude of his successors to the Venerable Order, can thus be shown
to be based on false rumor and misrepresentation.
For a fuller history of this period in the Order's history, see Jonathan Riley-Smith, "The Order of Saint John in England 1827-1858", in The Military Orders, edited by Malcolm Barber, 1994, pp. 124-137.