Warrior Monks E-Book

Rory MacLellan

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 455

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

1298: Alexander of Wells watches William Wallace's army across the field at Falkirk. Hours later, he is dead, cut down by the Scots. 1381: Hated collector of the Poll Tax, Robert Hales, is dragged from the Tower of London and executed, his head paraded through the streets before being placed on a spike on London Bridge. 1490s: John Kendal sends coded letters to Perkin Warbeck's supporters and hires an astrologer to murder Henry VII. These men were not scheming lords: they were Knights Hospitaller. Commonly known as warrior monks, they were a religious and military order that fought to defend the Holy Land, supposedly above war and petty politics. But in Europe they became entangled in local government, taking up positions as royal commanders, administrators and politicians. They led armies, attended Parliaments, and joined court intrigues and civil wars. While the Knights Templar have long captured the public imagination, the Hospitallers were just as influential, yet their story has been left largely untold – until now. From the English invasion of Ireland through to Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and beyond, the Hospitallers' story in Britain and Ireland sees the brethren drawn into civil wars, violent feuds, duels, assassinations and witchcraft. Employing the latest research, Warrior Monks reveals the fascinating account of medieval Britain through the eyes of the Knights Hospitaller: a powerful order that made kings, toppled regimes and shaped history.

Leseprobe

WARRIORMONKS

WARRIORMONKS

POLITICS AND POWERIN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN

RORY MACLELLAN

First published 2025

The History Press

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© Rory MacLellan, 2025

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Map of Hospitaller preceptories in Britain

Map of Hospitaller preceptories in Ireland

Timeline

Part I

1 From Palestine to Britain

2 Brethren and Neighbours

3 Crusade, Politics, and Civil war

4 On His Majesty’s Service

5 War in Britain

Part II

6 A Poison Chalice and a Royal Godson

7 War and Revolt

8 Witches and Guardians

9 Schism and the Fall of France

10 The Wars of the Roses

Part III

11 The Knights Tudor

12 The English Reformation

13 Revival in Scotland

14 The Scottish Reformation

15 Afterlives of the Hospitallers

Appendices

Structure of the English langue

Priors of England, 1185–

Priors of Ireland, c. 1180–

Preceptors of Torphichen, c. 1211–

Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the product of eleven years’ researching, reading about, and writing about the Knights Hospitaller, from my time as an undergraduate student through to my PhD and beyond. I am indebted to the great many people who have helped me through their advice, support, and friendship at various stages on this journey. My former PhD supervisor, Dr Rory Cox, and Dr Katie Stevenson, who oversaw that project’s initial stages, and whose guidance and support were invaluable during my first major research work on the Hospitallers. Professor Helen Nicholson and Dr Gregory O’Malley, whose books on the Hospitallers first drew me into the subject. Helena MacLellan, Dr Maria Sofia Merino Jaso, Dr Steve Tibble, and Dr Jill Scarfe for their comments on the manuscript, assistance with illustrations, and proofreading. Claire Hartley and the rest of the team at The History Press for all their work guiding this book to publication. The staff of countless libraries and archives whose manuscript collections were essential to the research underpinning this book, especially those of the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the National Library of Malta, the National Library of Scotland, and the library of the Venerable Order of St John in Scotland. My family, who first instilled in me a love of the Middle Ages, and Neus, who has supported me at every step.

PREFACE

In September 2011, my father took me to visit Torphichen, a small Scottish village a few miles south of his hometown of Linlithgow. We soon arrived at the local church – a typical eighteenth-century design but built on to tall medieval transepts, it had the strange name of ‘preceptory’. Above, a blocked-up doorway on one of the transepts was topped by the stone carving of a sword. My father announced that ‘all the tourists go to Rosslyn Chapel when they could see the real thing right here’. He was not talking about the Holy Grail, linked with Rosslyn in books like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, but rather about the chapel’s supposed Templar ties. There is no basis to either of these stories about Rosslyn, but in Torphichen Preceptory, just over 20 miles away, there stands the remains of a genuine far-flung outpost of an order of monkish warriors: the Knights Hospitaller.

Lying in the shadow of the neolithic henge and Bronze Age barrows of Cairnpapple Hill, for five centuries Torphichen Church and the preceptory built around it were the headquarters of the Hospitallers in Scotland. Though quiet and peaceful today, Torphichen’s master, the preceptor, would help depose monarchs and fight both for and against Scotland on the battlefield. In March 1298, Torphichen was occupied by William Wallace and his army. A few months later, in July, the preceptor was in the English army which faced Wallace on the battlefield of Falkirk, avenging the loss of his home by defeating the Scots but losing his life in the process. His successors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries served at the height of government and joined rebellions and religious revolutions. All the while, men and money passed from Torphichen, via London, to the Hospitaller leadership on the frontline of the crusades in far-off Palestine, Rhodes, and Malta, connecting the sleepy Scottish village with the distant Mediterranean.

Two years after this visit to Torphichen, I began studying the Hospitallers as an undergraduate, a topic that has continued to follow me ever since, as I grew as a historian through my master’s and doctorate, both of which I took at the University of St Andrews’ Department of Mediaeval History, itself based in St John’s House, a former Hospitaller property that retains its medieval core. A small Hospitaller shield is proudly displayed in the stairwell in memory of this history.

I soon realised that the Hospitallers are not a group that is very well known to the general public. They occasionally appear in films or videogames, but always in the Templars’ shadow. It doesn’t help that the Hospitallers have been known by a number of names throughout history – the Knights of St John, Knights of Rhodes, Knights of Malta, the Order of St John – or by their formal medieval title, the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. Even the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, the modern Catholic descendant of the Hospitallers, seems a little unsure of what to settle on, opting to incorporate as many of these names as possible.

The term ‘military-religious order’ is not always a familiar one either. What is familiar, however, is the Templars, the most famous of the military orders and one of the best-known stories of the medieval period. A multitude of books, documentaries, films, and videogames have been produced about the Knights Templar or contain groups modelled upon them. Their film appearances include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, National Treasure, and Kingdom of Heaven. Videogame series like Assassin’s Creed, Crusader Kings, and Dragon Age each feature Templars or groups based upon them. In comics, Azrael, a Batman villain, is part of the Order of St Dumas, a fictional Templar splinter group. Even science fiction has taken inspiration from them. The Jedi of Star Wars are a group of warrior-monks whose headquarters is called a temple and who are wiped out in an overnight coup by a corrupt government, much like the story of the Templars.

Unfortunately, the Templars’ fame overshadows the fascinating real history of the Hospitallers. How many people have heard the conspiracy theories about the Templars and Rosslyn Chapel peddled by authors like Dan Brown, compared with how many know about the Hospitallers? Yet, the Hospitallers were much more successful than the Templars and had a greater historical impact. They kept fighting for almost 500 years after the Templars were suppressed, and they are still around today in various forms. The Hospitallers built their own independent state in the Mediterranean, something that the Templars failed to do, thus sealing their fate. From Rhodes, and then Malta, the Hospitallers fought a successful naval war against the Turks and curbed the piracy of the Barbary Corsairs, slowing the advance of the Ottoman Empire.

In Britain and Ireland, the Hospitallers became a key part of medieval history, playing a major role in many of the most famous historical events of these islands from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. While they came to Britain to raise men and money for the crusade, as they gained more land and power, the brethren became drawn further into politics and away from crusading. The Scottish Wars of Independence, the Hundred Years’ War, and the Wars of the Roses each saw the Hospitallers involved, commanding royal armies, captaining warships, and serving at the highest levels of government. There was a price for this involvement. Prior Robert Hales, who, as treasurer of England, was responsible for collecting the hated poll tax, was captured and executed during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. Prior John Langstrother’s decision to support Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses brought him the office of treasurer as well as joint command of the Lancastrian army at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, but it also cost him his head when Edward IV defeated his forces.

Some of the brethren departed even further from the behaviour one might expect of a religious order that preached charity and Christian love. Through bribery, nepotism, and threats, the Hospitaller priest Stephen of Fulbourn managed to seize control of the English government in Ireland, hiring hitmen to remove threats and installing a secret trapdoor in his office to pilfer the royal treasury as and when he pleased. Two centuries later, Prior John Kendal hired a Spanish astrologer to help him kill Henry VII, while his Scottish counterpart Preceptor William Knollis helped overthrow James III.

Though the order’s leaders in Britain and Ireland were often drawn away from the crusade, their involvement in politics saw them play an important but often overlooked role in the traditional narrative of medieval Britain. Hospitallers fought in Edward I’s wars in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, were involved in one of the earliest witch trials, joined the conspiracies to place the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck on the English throne, helped Henry VIII invade France, and joined the rebels that began the Scottish Reformation. Here I will reveal why sites like Torphichen, not Rosslyn Chapel, are where you can find the real history of crusading warrior-monks in Britain and Ireland, and show the key role the Knights Hospitaller played in the plots, rebellions, and wars you thought you knew.

MAP OF HOSPITALLERPRECEPTORIESIN BRITAIN

MAP OF HOSPITALLERPRECEPTORIESIN IRELAND

TIMELINE

c. 1070

Foundation of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem

1096–99

The First Crusade

1113

The Hospital of St John is recognised by the pope

By 1128

The Hospitallers arrive in England

1169–72

Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland – the Hospitallers soon follow

1190

Richard the Lionheart sets out on the Third Crusade, accompanied by the Hospitaller master Garnier de Nablus

1191

Battle of Arsuf – the Hospitallers lead the charge against Saladin’s forces

1215–17

The First Barons’ War – the Hospitallers remain loyal to the king

1264–67

The Second Barons’ War – Prior Roger de Vere abandons Henry III and supports the rebel barons

1273–81

Prior Joseph de Chauncey serves as treasurer of England, the first Hospitaller to hold high office in the kingdom

1298

Battle of Falkirk – Preceptor Alexander de Welles is slain by the Scots

1312

The Knights Templar are suppressed and their lands assigned to the Hospitallers, beginning decades of political and legal wrangling

1337

The Hundred Years’ War begins – Hospitallers serve both on and off the battlefield

1378–1417

The Papal Schism divides the Hospitallers in Britain and Ireland

1381

The Peasants’ Revolt – treasurer and prior Robert Hales is executed by the rebels for his part in the poll tax

1418–19

Henry V besieges Rouen – French counterattacks are defeated by Prior Thomas Butler

1455

The Wars of the Roses begin – the Hospitallers repeatedly switch sides

1471

Battle of Tewkesbury – the defeated Lancastrian commander Prior John Langstrother is executed after the battle

1486–87

Prior James Keating and others conspire to replace Henry VII with the pretender Lambert Simnel

1488

Preceptor William Knollis and other rebel lords overthrow James III of Scotland

1491–97

The pretender Perkin Warbeck vies for the throne, backed by Keating and Prior John Kendal, who also plots to murder Henry VII

1513

Henry VIII invades France – Prior Thomas Docwra rides in the vanguard

1527

Upon Docwra’s death, Henry VIII tries to annex the Hospitallers

1540

Henry VIII dissolves the Hospitallers in England, Wales, and Ireland

1559

Preceptor James Sandilands and other Protestant rebels seize power in Scotland

1564

Sandilands sells the Hospitallers’ remaining estates in Britain to Mary, Queen of Scots

PART I

1

FROM PALESTINE TO BRITAIN

In 1095, at a Church council in Clermont in central France, Pope Urban II stood before the attendees ‘and said … something’.1 Annoyingly, we do not know exactly what he called for. Four different and conflicting versions of his speech have come down to us. Each was written years after the event and their authors were not always people that were actually there to hear it. Yet they all agree that he called for some kind of military campaign to the East, though it is unclear whether he meant to assist the beleaguered Eastern Roman Empire, better known as the Byzantine Empire, or to defend Christianity’s holy sites in Palestine and the Eastern Christians living there, or maybe both. What is clear is the response to his speech.

Thousands of people from across Western Europe began marching to the East. On the promise of a full pardon of all their sins, they joined a years-long campaign that would much later be known as the First Crusade. Those crusaders who survived the journey through Anatolia proceeded down the coast of Syria and into Palestine, taking city after city, culminating in a bloody conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099. The crusaders had captured Christianity’s holiest city. They had travelled across Europe and the Near East to get there, surviving ambushes, battles, and sieges, and suffering many losses. And then most of them went home.

A minority did stay, becoming the new rulers, nobility, and settlers of what historians call the Latin East. These four new Crusader States, the kingdom of Jerusalem, the principality of Antioch, and the counties of Edessa and Tripoli, were now desperately short of manpower and surrounded by enemies that they had either fought or threatened. They held some of the world’s most holy Christian sites, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, but they could not defend the pilgrim routes to them, routes whose protection had been a key motive for many of the crusaders.

Pilgrims’ accounts of the early twelfth century are full of warnings of ambushes by bandits or sorties from Arab strongholds. Daniel, an abbot from what is now Ukraine, visited the Holy Land in 1106–07. His narrative of the journey repeatedly warns the unwary traveller of dangers on the road. From the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem, the road passed by Al-Khader (St George), the site of the saint’s tomb, which was regularly raided by the Muslim rulers of nearby Ascalon. From there the road turned up into the hills towards Jerusalem, the rocky terrain perfect for an ambush. If a pilgrim wanted to travel from the city to the site of Christ’s baptism in the River Jordan, Daniel wrote that they had to pass along a very dangerous road, with no sources of water and through valleys and past hills full of bandits. When he went from Bethlehem to Hebron to see the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Oak of Abraham, Daniel crossed a mountain pass in the shadow of a Muslim fortress, a journey he could only make because of the large escort he travelled with. He made sure to join another large company for the trip back to Jerusalem and wrote that it was only thanks to the protection of a well-armed Arab chieftain that he could visit Bethlehem on the way. To safely visit the pilgrim sites around the Sea of Galilee, Daniel accompanied the army of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who was marching on the Muslim city of Damascus. Further north, he was unable to visit some sites, like Mount Lebanon, his Christian guides stopping him from going there out of fear of bandits hiding in the mountains. Daniel’s descriptions of shrines, churches, and the sites of key biblical stories sit always in the shadow of lurking brigands, ever ready to strike out of the hills and valleys to waylay the unsuspecting traveller.2

Even when new crusade expeditions arrived, such as the crusade of 1101–02 and that of King Sigurd of Norway in 1107–10, most of them visited only briefly, fought a couple of battles, and then returned home, with a few of their members remaining in the East as settlers. The roads continued to be unsafe. At Easter in 1119, a group of 700 pilgrims were travelling from Jerusalem to the site of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan when they were attacked. Weak from fasting and with no weapons to speak of, hundreds of pilgrims were killed. The king sent out a force to chase down the bandits, but they had already escaped to Muslim-held Tyre and Ascalon.3 There was a desperate need for a new type of force to help defend the Crusader States; one that could remain in the East permanently. Out of this crisis, the military-religious orders were born, the most successful of which were the Knights Hospitaller.

The Knights Hospitaller

The Hospitallers were not the first of the military orders – that would be the Knights Templar, founded in 1120; but the Hospitallers would eventually surpass the Templars in both power and longevity. To find the origins of this second major military order, we have to go back before the foundation of the Templars, before the Templar Hugh de Payens gathered his small band of knights to help defend the pilgrim routes. In about 1070, twenty-six years before the First Crusade and twenty-nine years before its end, a group of merchants from the southern Italian city of Amalfi founded a hospice in Jerusalem. The site would provide care for Latin Christian (what we would today call Catholic) pilgrims visiting the city and was controlled by the nearby abbey of St Mary of the Latins. As pilgrimage increased following the First Crusade, the hospital began to cater to more and more visitors, growing in fame and stature under its leader, Gerard. In 1113, Pope Paschal II recognised the hospital as a religious order, a distinct religious community. He brought them under papal protection, exempted them from episcopal control, and gave them several other generous privileges, including exemption from the tithes which the vast majority of Christians had to pay to maintain the Church.4

Initially, the Hospitallers continued their sole mission of caring for pilgrims, providing hospitality and charity to visitors to the Holy Land. Soon, the brethren combined this duty with a military role, and by 1126, when we find Hospitallers serving in the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem, they had become a military order. The Hospitallers then received their first castle, Bethgibelin, in 1136, which drew them even further into the military infrastructure of the Crusader States, giving them a fortress and its surrounds to defend from attack and to use as a base to launch attacks into Muslim territory.5 Despite this new role, the Hospitallers never forgot their caring duties, continuing to operate their great hospital in Jerusalem until the city was conquered by Saladin in 1187. Among the first structures the order built upon settling on the Greek island of Rhodes in 1306–10, and then on Malta in 1530, was a new hospital.

Life in the Hospitallers, as in any religious order, was governed by a set of regulations called a Rule. The Hospitaller Rule dealt with all aspects of daily life in the order, such as how to behave when on campaign, during meals, or at prayer, and the punishments that brethren could face for violating the Rule. The order would continue to add to this over the centuries. Hospitallers were bound by the monastic vows of poverty (to own no possessions), obedience (loyalty to the order and to follow the commands of their superiors), and chastity (to avoid all romantic or sexual activity). The order’s membership was divided into three branches: knights, who made up most of the order’s leadership and were the elite of their fighting forces; sergeants, a mixture of military and administrative servants that were of a lower social background than the knights; and chaplains, priests in the service of the order, the smallest of the three divisions. To join the order, one had to be freely born (i.e., not a serf tied to a particular landholding), of healthy body, and free from illness, debt, or a pledge to join any other religious order. Women could join the Hospitallers, but they generally had a less active life than their male brethren, living much more like the nuns of non-military orders, unless they worked in one of the order’s hospitals.

Over the twelfth century, the Hospitallers would grow in power. Successive popes would grant them wide-ranging privileges; most important was that 1113 exemption from episcopal oversight, the jurisdiction of a bishop. Unlike most religious orders, the Hospitallers would not have to suffer inspection by the local bishop: only the pope or his appointed representative had authority over the brethren. They were also freed from paying tithes and other Church taxes, and were allowed to build their own churches, chapels, and graveyards. While these privileges helped the order to amass wealth and power, they also antagonised many bishops and rival religious houses.

More and more military orders soon arose, both in the East and back in Europe as the crusade movement begun in 1096 continued to shape the West. Orders like the Teutonic Knights would fight pagans in the Baltic, while the Knights of Santiago and the Order of Calatrava would battle Muslims in Spain. Though they mostly fought on these frontiers of Europe, the military orders were financed by their lands across the continent, given to them by generous donors from all levels of society. By the 1150s, the Hospitallers had estates throughout Western Europe, and Britain was no exception.

Coming to Britain

The early history of the Hospitallers in Britain is one of shadowy or nameless figures. Only from the 1190s do we start to find more defined characters. Before that point, historians have to rely upon lucky survivals and copies of charters granting land to the order. The earliest certain grants we have are from 1128, when the brethren were given a mill in Northamptonshire and land in Essex. In the early 1140s, Jordan de Bricet granted the Hospitallers land in Clerkenwell, then just outside London. This would become the site of Clerkenwell Priory, the Hospitallers’ headquarters in Britain. The order soon acquired a following at the highest levels of society, with gifts of land from Henry II and the baronial families of the de Clares, de Lacys, and Percys. By 1154, the Hospitallers had nine estates across England. In this early period of their history, the English brethren were subordinate to the more established Hospitaller priory of St Gilles in France. They would not become a distinct branch of the order until the 1180s, as part of the preparations for a new crusade.6

In Scotland, it was the king who was at the centre of introducing the military orders to the country. David I of Scotland, one of Scotland’s most important kings, transformed his kingdom by introducing new foreign religious orders, giving land to Norman knights and Flemish merchants, and establishing many towns and cities. Though he never went on crusade himself, sympathetic contemporaries claimed that he always hoped to one day lead a crusade to the East.7 This was a common medieval refrain and many kings have been credited with the same desire; one that they definitely would have fulfilled ‘if only’ this war or that crisis hadn’t distracted them. Even as early as the mid-twelfth century, it was expected that a ruler would support the crusade as part of his duty as a Christian king. Yet, in David’s case, there may have been some truth to this. He was devoutly religious, founding the abbeys of Kelso and Holyrood and settling several new French monastic orders in Scotland. He would also introduce the Hospitallers, Templars, and the Hospital of St Lazarus to his kingdom, all orders intimately linked to the Holy Land and the crusade.

David gave the Hospitallers land in Torphichen, now a small village southwest of Edinburgh and south of Linlithgow. The transepts of the order’s church still stand there today, abutting the modern parish church. Several tombstones and monuments to the Hospitallers are built into its walls, while outside can be seen the foundations of the preceptory complex that would become the headquarters of the Hospitallers in Scotland. The only other known Scottish supporter of the Hospitallers in this period is Fergus of Galloway. Ruler of the semi-independent Lordship of Galloway in southwestern Scotland, he gave the Hospitallers land in Galtway, near Kirkcudbright.8 Fergus was also devout, retiring in 1161 to become a monk at David’s foundation of Holyrood Abbey.

While the Hospitallers were arriving in Scotland, they were also taking their first steps into Wales. The Norman Conquest of Wales had begun soon after 1066 and by the mid-1090s they had reached the southwest of the country, with these incoming Norman lords building castles at Cardigan and Pembroke. Among the earliest grants to the order in Wales was a church and land in Newcastle Emlyn, Cardiganshire, given in about 1130 by Jordan of Cantington. Other donations followed, mostly from the incoming Anglo-Normans, and some from the Welsh. The most significant gift was the grant of the manor and church of Slebech, Pembrokeshire, in the mid-twelfth century by Walter, son of Wizo the Fleming. This would later become the order’s main estate in Wales and one of its richest in the whole of Britain.9

But why did people support the Hospitallers, giving them precious money, land, and property? The key factor was religious devotion. Medieval Europe was a deeply religious society, with Christianity permeating every aspect of life. Giving to the Church was a regular activity, whether through the compulsory tithes that everyone paid to their parish church or through voluntary donations. These payments were believed to have spiritual benefits for the donor. Patrons of monasteries were helping to support the monks or nuns in the devout lives of prayer that they lived on behalf of the rest of society, and some grantors specifically asked that the recipients pray for them. This intercessory prayer was believed to reduce the time a person’s soul would spend in Purgatory before entering Heaven. Some donors were also motivated by an interest in crusading or came from a family of crusaders. King Stephen of England and his queen Matilda, the first two patrons of the Templars in England, were both from such families. Stephen’s father was Stephen, count of Blois, who had gone on the First Crusade. Matilda was the daughter of Eustace of Boulogne, another First Crusade veteran.

With lands in England, Wales, and Scotland, the Hospitallers were well established in Britain, but not yet in Ireland, when David I died in 1153. His friend and former steward, Ailred of Rievaulx, abbot of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, wrote a eulogy for the king. Among David’s many virtues, Ailred said that he had retained the best Templars at court as ‘guardians of his morals’.10 At last, we can move beyond lone charters with this, the first reference to the military orders serving at a royal court in Britain. The Hospitallers would soon follow and eventually surpass the more senior military order in importance. Their entry into royal service would see the Hospitallers become a prominent political player in England, Scotland, and, after the invasion of 1169–72, in Ireland.

Introduced to Ireland

Beginning in 1169, subjects of the English king invaded Ireland at the behest of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, who had been deposed by his rival, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, king of Connacht. Diarmait had fled to England and sought the aid of Henry II. As he had helped Henry by providing a fleet to support a campaign in Wales in 1165, Diarmait asked for Henry to repay the favour by restoring him to power in Leinster. Henry agreed, on the condition that Diarmait swear fealty to him as his overlord. With Henry’s permission, he raised troops from several supporters among the Marcher Lords, those nobles that ruled the Welsh Marches, the borderlands of England and Wales. The most important supporter was Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare, known as Strongbow. With little land and large debts, Strongbow leapt at the chance of land and wealth in Ireland.

Strongbow landed in Ireland in 1170, capturing Waterford and Dublin and marrying Diarmait’s daughter. Henry II followed with his own invasion force the following year to ensure that Ireland was being brought under his control, fearful that Strongbow was attempting to set himself up as a king in Ireland, just as Henry’s great-grandfather, William the Conqueror, had done in England. Henry had first discussed invading Ireland in 1155, just a year after becoming king. He claimed to have received a papal bull from Adrian IV, the only English pope, which granted him the authority to invade and rule Ireland. The original copy of the document, known as Laudabiliter, does not survive and historians still debate the accuracy of the text we have, and even if it is genuine at all. Regardless, Henry used this to claim the title of Lord of Ireland. Henry campaigned in Ireland for a year before returning to England in 1172, having won the submission of the Irish Church and the Irish kings. Diarmait Mac Murchada had died the year before and Strongbow had submitted to Henry’s authority.

The king left behind him a small English colony centred on Dublin and parts of southeastern Ireland, namely Wexford, Waterford, and much of Leinster. The lords of the new colony continued to fight the Irish, eagerly grabbing more land. They would eventually call themselves the English of Ireland, what historians call Anglo-Irish, and saw themselves as a people apart from the English of England. The Anglo-Irish would later adopt some Irish customs, styles, and even names, much to the dismay of their counterparts in England. To help distinguish these two cultural groups in Ireland, the Irish are often referred to by medieval historians as the native Irish or the Gaelic Irish. It was the Anglo-Irish who would introduce the military orders to Ireland, a connection to the invaders that quickly made the Templars and Hospitallers enemies of the native Irish.

Again, the order’s early history here is patchy, with few sources surviving. We know that the Hospitallers had reached Ireland by 1177, when their brethren begin appearing in Anglo-Irish records. From the start, they were closely tied to the invaders, receiving donations from Henry II, Strongbow, and the earl’s supporters. In 1180, the Hospitallers in Ireland were led by Hugh of Clahull. Hugh was probably a relative of John of Clahull, commander of Strongbow’s cavalry. By 1203, their leader was Maurice de Prendergast, who had also fought in Strongbow’s army in 1170 before becoming a Hospitaller.11

By aligning themselves so closely with the invaders, the Hospitallers alienated the Gaelic Irish, leaving them relying solely on the English or Anglo-Irish for support. Strongbow gave the Hospitallers land to the west of Dublin at Kilmainham and the order also received lands from Henry II, King John, and several Anglo-Irish knights. The Gaelic Irish do not seem to have joined the order either, at least at first. There were some Hospitallers who were native Irish, but only from the fifteenth century, over 200 years after the English invasion. The order had Gaelic Irish servants and tenants, but not actual members. It might even have been the case that the Hospitallers initially banned the native Irish from membership, as they later did to the Maltese and as the Teutonic Knights did to their own Prussian subjects. The case was much the same in Scotland in this period, where we find no Scottish Hospitallers until the fourteenth century. Until then, the order in Britain and Ireland was dominated by brethren from England.

Strongbow’s gift of land at Kilmainham later became Kilmainham Priory, the Hospitallers’ headquarters in Ireland.12 It sat upon one of the main approaches to Dublin from the west and had a fortified bridge over the nearby River Liffey, allowing it to control traffic from the north, and was later described as holding a strong position ‘for the repulse of the king’s enemies’.13 Elsewhere, the de Lacys, a family with lands in England, Ireland, Wales, and Normandy, founded the preceptories of Castleboy (County Down) and Kilmainhambeg (County Meath). With the Hospitallers centred on Kilmainham, so near to the colony’s capital of Dublin, the order could be easily called upon to aid in its defence and to fulfil any duties the king or his representatives should assign it.

By the early thirteenth century, then, the Hospitallers were well established in the east and southeast of Ireland, where English control was strongest. Meanwhile, back across the Irish Sea, the order continued to spread across England, Scotland, and Wales.

Expanding across Britain

Over the twelfth century, Hospitaller preceptories spread across Britain and Ireland. These estates varied in size but generally had a manor house at their centre which would usually be occupied by two or three professed brethren, that is, sworn members of their order rather than servants, employees, or mercenaries. They would be supported by locals hired as farmhands, shepherds, cooks, stewards, and clerks, among other roles. Preceptories would gain their wealth from the produce of the farmland, pasture, mills, woods, and fishponds they owned, from the rents of their tenements, and from the tithes given at their churches. A portion of these funds, usually a third, would then be sent to the East to fund their order’s part in the crusades. Sometimes these sites are also referred to as commanderies, but the words are broadly interchangeable, with ‘commandery’ coming from French and ‘preceptory’ from Latin.

By the start of the thirteenth century, the Hospitallers had some thirty preceptories in England, in addition to Torphichen in Scotland and Slebech in Wales. Several of these were founded by noble families, showing the appeal that they held among the aristocracy. The de Lacy family gave the order Quenington (Gloucestershire); the Percy family, later earls of Northumberland, founded Mount St John (Yorkshire); and Ranulf, earl of Chester, gave them Maltby (Lincolnshire). The de Clares founded the preceptories of Carbrooke (Norfolk) and Melchbourne (Bedfordshire), and donated the lands that would later become Standon Preceptory (Hertfordshire). Prominent churchmen could also be patrons. William, archbishop of York, founded Ossington (Nottinghamshire) and Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester and brother of King Stephen, may have founded Godsfield (Hampshire).

Much of this support spread through family networks, with one noble’s gift to the Hospitallers sparking a trend among their relatives, but some of these estates were acquired in darker circumstances. In 1166, William de Erleigh, lord of Durston, founded a house of Augustinian canons at Buckland in Somerset. The monks remained there peacefully for many years until they fell out with William and murdered his steward, his kinsman. The monks were declared outlaws, removing any protection they had under the law. Anyone could harm or kill them without penalty. Their house was forfeit and seized by the Crown. Henry II agreed to let William give it to the Hospitallers instead, on one condition: the new preceptory would become the home of all the female Hospitallers in England (there is no evidence of Hospitaller sisters in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland). Henry was probably trying to appease the pope and keep to the terms of the peace he made with the Church after the murder of Thomas Becket by the king’s knights, which required him to support the pope’s religious reforms. Among the many changes the papacy was pushing for in the twelfth century was limiting the number of mixed-sex religious houses. William agreed to these terms and the new house was founded by 1186. Nine sisters were brought from across England and a separate community of male Hospitallers was established at Buckland to support them. The de Erleighs would continue to support their foundation for the next two centuries with more grants of land and rights. One de Erleigh, Katherine, joined the Hospitallers herself and was prioress of Buckland in 1337.14

Around the time that the Hospitallers settled at Buckland, the order in England was elevated to a priory, the priory of England, breaking away from its subordination to St Gilles in France. This was probably a result of the visit of Roger des Moulins, master of the order, to Clerkenwell in 1185 in the company of Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, who then consecrated the order’s new church there.15 All of the order’s lands in England, Wales, and Scotland were part of the new priory and answered to the prior of England at Clerkenwell. By the early thirteenth century, the Hospitallers’ Irish estates would also become a priory, the priory of Ireland. But the larger and richer English priory was still able to exercise some power over its Irish counterpart, something that would be a source of conflict in the coming centuries.

Throughout this early history, men across Britain and Ireland had joined the order, managing these new Western estates and fighting in the East. By taking up a new life in the Hospitallers, they forswore wealth and family for a vocation serving the poor and defending the Crusader States. It was a momentous commitment, one that set them upon a whole new path.

2

BRETHREN AND NEIGHBOURS

To join the Hospitallers, one had to undergo a reception ceremony, where the new recruit, known as an aspirant, formally joined the order. Wearing a white gown to represent purity and the new life that they were about to begin, the aspirant would be presented on a Sunday before the Hospitallers of whichever house had agreed to receive them. The Hospitaller presiding over the meeting would then say:

when you would desire to eat, it will be necessary for you to fast, and when you would wish to fast, you will have to eat. And when you would desire to sleep, it will be necessary for you to keep watch, and when you would like to stand on watch, you will have to sleep. And you will be sent this side of the sea and beyond, into places that will not please you, and you will have to go there. It will be necessary for you therefore to abandon all your desires to fulfil those of another and to endure other hardships in the Order, more than I can describe to you. Are you willing to suffer all these things?1

Once the aspirant agreed, the presiding Hospitaller would ask if the others present accepted them into the order and only if a majority assented could the ceremony continue. He would then remind the aspirant of the rigours of the life they were committing to in the speech given above. If the aspirant agreed to this, they would be asked if they were in good physical and mental health, freeborn, not already pledged to another religious order, had no living spouse (widowers were fine), and were clear of debts. In short, that there were no other claims on their service or person. If a Hospitaller was later found to have lied about any of these, they could be expelled from the order and whoever received them into the order would also be penalised.2 After promising that they were eligible to join the Hospitallers, the aspirant would then swear on a missal to God, the Virgin Mary, and the order’s patron St John the Baptist the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and to be a slave of ‘our lords the sick poor’. They would take the missal to the chapel, place it on the altar there, and then return it to the presiding Hospitaller, who would give them the mantle of the order, saying:

Behold this, the sign of the cross, which you will wear on this mantle in remembrance of him who suffered death and passion on the cross for you and for us other sinners. May God, by the cross and by the vow of obedience that you have made in faith and in deed, keep you and defend you, now and for ever, from the power of the devil.3

The aspirant and each Hospitaller present would then exchange the kiss of peace. They were now a member of the Hospitallers, a bond that could only be broken through death, expulsion, or fleeing the order, risking severe punishment if caught.

Life as a Hospitaller

Becoming a Hospitaller was a serious commitment, as their reception ceremony emphasised. A candidate was giving up their autonomy, their chances of a normal relationship or family life, and their private property. They had to go wherever the order sent them, from remote outposts to the frontlines of the fiercest wars. But these sacrifices were clearly worth it for some, and even those few who did try to leave the Hospitallers sometimes regretted their choice. William of Boyton, originally of Carbrooke Preceptory, left the order but by 1353 had changed his mind and wished to return. He appealed to the pope for help, who ordered the prior and archdeacon of Norwich and the precentor of Hereford to assist William.4

Life as a Hospitaller offered a career for lesser knights without large estates, or for younger sons who stood to inherit nothing. If they became a preceptor, they could then rent out the order’s lands on favourable terms to their friends and relatives. And, of course, fervour and devotion will have driven many to join a religious order backed by the pope and fighting to control Christianity’s holiest sites. One does not simply sign up on a whim for a life of poverty, celibacy, fighting, hardship, and service in the Holy Land. Medieval Britain was deeply religious and belief played a major role in many people’s lives.

Recruits in Britain and Ireland were almost always English, with very few Welsh and Scottish members, and no Gaelic Irish at all until late in the Middle Ages. In Scotland, it is only after 1300 that we begin to find Scots rather than Englishmen serving. Many of the brethren came from Northern England or the northern Midlands. The large number of Hospitaller estates in the north, particularly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, probably aided recruitment by making the order part of local networks and communities, building relationships with gentry families in the region, and raising awareness of the brethren and their mission. Northern recruits may also have been desirable for the order because of the more militarised society they hailed from compared with that of Southern England. In the north, recruits may have already gained military experience fighting border reivers or raiding across the border into Scotland before joining the order. For the recruits, especially second sons in the north of England, a less affluent region than the south, life as a Hospitaller could offer opportunities and advancement better than those of a landless or middling knight.5

Some gentry families provided multiple brethren to the order and proudly acknowledged the Hospitallers in their family. In St Mary and St Barlok’s Church in Norbury, Derbyshire, the tomb of Sir Nicholas Fitzherbert (d. 1474) is decorated on each side by carvings of his children. One of them is depicted with his hands clasped in prayer and wearing the mantle and cross of the Hospitallers. The Fitzherberts provided two members to the order in this period: Richard, who was a knight sometime around 1500, and Walter – perhaps the Hospitaller depicted on this tomb – who was a knight-brother by 1470, preceptor of Templecombe from 1479, and had died at Rhodes by 1489.6 The tomb of Thomas Babington of Dethick (d. 1518) and Edith (d. 1511), his wife, in All Saints Church, Ashover, also in Derbyshire, has similar carvings of their children on each side. On one of them is a knight in armour with a surcoat and a cross, seemingly a reference to their Hospitaller son John Babington, who was at Rhodes by 1501, held several preceptories including nearby Yeaveley, was briefly prior of Ireland, and died in 1534. Two other Babingtons also became Hospitallers: John the younger, by 1528, and Philip Babington, who joined by 1531 and was given a royal pension when Henry VIII suppressed the order in 1540.7

A new Hospitaller’s role in the order would often be determined by their background. A priest would become a chaplain. A woman would become a sister of the order and could find herself living the secluded life of a nun back in Europe, or working in the hospital of the order’s convent, its headquarters in Jerusalem or later Acre, Rhodes, and then Malta. Most brethren joined as brothers-at-arms, and by the mid-twelfth century this category was divided into knights and sergeants. From 1262, only someone from a knightly family could become a knight-brother. Those who were not of a knightly background, or lacked the necessary proofs of their descent, became sergeant-brothers. These were divided into sergeants-at-arms, who took on military duties, and sergeants-at-office, who undertook administrative ones. From the fourteenth century, recruitment became more centrally controlled, with the master of the order having to give licence for new admissions, unless there was a local shortage of chaplains and sergeants-at-office. In the fifteenth century, stricter regulations were passed requiring knight-brethren to provide evidence of their ancestry and allowing others to challenge these proofs. From 1433, a minimum age of 14 for new recruits was set, though they would not fight or have full rights as a member of the order until they were 18. In 1504, the age limit was raised to 18 for those received in the order’s European priories.8

Life as a Hospitaller could be tough, with the Rule establishing a strict daily regime and duties for each member and detailed punishments for infractions. Brethren were supposed to follow the canonical hours, attending church services several times a day, and remaining silent at night. They dressed and ate humbly, with regular fasting and abstaining from meat.9 Some of these restrictions were relaxed over time, and they were more strictly adhered to in the East, where Hospitaller communities were larger, than among the two or three brethren that would staff a typical preceptory in the West.10 Yearly chapters in each priory and at the order’s convent in the Mediterranean would see brethren gather together to vote on promotions, grants, punishments, changes to the Rule, and other matters. More irregular general chapters would see the whole order send representatives to have their say in the deliberations.11

After joining the Hospitallers, a new recruit would need to travel to the order’s convent in the Mediterranean, there to be received by his new brethren in the English langue, a regional division of the order that encompassed the whole of Britain and Ireland. Knight-brothers were expected to serve in the East for a minimum of three years before they could apply for a preceptory in the West. Priority was given to the most senior brethren (counting from the day they were received at the convent) who did not already hold a preceptory or those who could demonstrate that they had improved or expanded the estates of one they already held. The brethren of the langue would then vote on which candidate should be granted the preceptory. Priors also had the power to grant a single preceptory in their priory every five years, while the grandmaster could make one such grant in every priory in the order over the same period.

Senior preceptors who had served for at least fifteen years could put themselves forward for election by the grandmaster and his council to one of the four chief offices, or bailiwicks, of the langue: the prior of England, who was normally elected by the brethren and ratified by the council; the prior of Ireland; the bailiff of Eagle, who controlled the order’s Lincolnshire estates; and the turcopolier. This last was the highest office within the langue. Originally leader of the order’s native light cavalry, known as Turcopoles, the role of turcopolier had changed after the Hospitallers moved to Rhodes, instead being charged with the island’s coastal defences. He was one of the order’s eight capitular bailiffs, the highest Hospitaller officials who, together with the grandmaster, were expected to reside at the convent. But though the turcopolier was technically senior, the real power in the langue lay with the prior of England.12 John Weston, John Kendal, Thomas Docwra, and William Weston, the last four priors before Henry VIII suppressed the order in 1540, had each stepped down as turcopolier to hold the supposedly junior office of prior, a role that afforded them greater independence and power far away from the convent on Rhodes.13

Promotion in the order could see a member rise all the way to the leadership of their order, like Garnier de Nablus who went from castellan of Bethgibelin to prior of England to master of the Hospitallers. Such a career path could see a man of relatively humble knightly origins play a role on the national and international stage, defending the convent itself as turcopolier or sitting in Parliament and on royal councils as the prior of England. But with political power came rivalry, while their growing landholdings brought them into close contact with all aspects of society, and not always in the most welcome way.

Friends and feuds

Early in 1354, Prior John Pavely was in the Buckinghamshire town of Marlow with a few of his fellow Hospitallers when a clerk rode up to him and handed over a small document. As Pavely’s eyes scanned the text, his anger rose. It was a summons from the bishop of Lincoln, ordering the prior to appear before the bishop of London, the official guarantor of the order’s privileges and rights in England. There, the prior would answer a complaint that the bishop of Lincoln had laid against the order. As a Hospitaller, the prior was exempt from episcopal authority. He did not have to listen to any churchman but the pope or his representatives. The bishop of Lincoln had sent this clerk, Simon Ward of Boyton, to deliver the message and return with Pavely’s response. We know from the bishop’s later legal case against Pavely that it was not the response that he or poor Simon expected.

Enraged, Pavely tore the clerk from his horse, pushed him into the mud, and drove his face into a puddle. Meanwhile, his brethren, including former prior of Ireland Richard Wirkeley, saw to the clerk’s horse, severing its ears and tail. Mutilating a horse in such a way would shame the rider for all to see, long after the wounds had healed. A mount was too valuable to give up when it was still rideable but every passerby would notice the missing ears and tail. It was the bloody and cruel medieval equivalent of keying a Rolls-Royce and breaking the statue off the bonnet. When the prior thought that the clerk had had enough, he pulled his head out of the puddle and made him swear never to bother him again. After extracting this promise, the clerk was placed back on his bleeding horse and paraded through the town market, where he was mocked by the townspeople.14 This practice of docking a horse’s tail and sometimes removing its ears, mane, or lips as well, was often used by knights to shame messengers and clergy that had angered them. The public parading of their victim and his mount was called charivari.15 Such ill-treatment of messengers was unusual but not unheard of in medieval England. In 1290, the archbishop of Canterbury sent a messenger, John le Waleys, to carry some letters to Bogo de Clare, ordering him to appear in court. Bogo, a lordling notorious for skimming money from church funds, forced John to eat the letters and their wax seals.16

Pavely managed to escape censure for his attack upon Simon, the bishop’s court case going nowhere, but this was not an isolated incident in the order’s history. Peaceful men of God the Hospitallers were not. They were powerful landowners and important figures in their local communities. They had land, status, and wealth to defend, and, like any powerful medieval institution, they were prepared to do so with violence. Their prominence would embroil the order in many other disputes, some of which ended in bloodshed, but the brethren could also build strong relationships with many of the communities in which they lived.

Though most famous for fighting in the crusades, the military orders in Europe were more visible as landowners, farmers, and traders. Someone living near a Hospitaller estate would see little sign that the brethren were much different from any other religious order. The Hospitallers would not be regularly riding around fields and down country lanes in full battledress. They were there to raise funds, much like the bailiffs of an outlying monastic or noble estate; the Hospitallers’ masters were just much further away.

The brethren would be a regular sight for those living near a Hospitaller estate, something that almost every English county had, as well as most of Ireland and much of Scotland and Wales. Locals might be a tenant of the order, paying rent to them and enjoying special privileges in return. Hospitaller tenants could be exempted from taxes, communal duties to maintain important roads and bridges, or even military service. Crosses were used to mark out Hospitaller properties and those of their tenants, so that it was clear who was entitled to these exemptions and who was not. Some tenants even wore crosses on their caps to publicly proclaim their affiliation and privileges.17