Preceptory
Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem
Knights Hospitaller
Royal Black Knights
The English Langue
In 1130, the Order began in Britain at Clerkenwell, London. They spread through the Middle Ages, building and obtaining (such as from the Templars) properties around Britain. The Grand Prior of England was the chief baron in Britain.
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In 1338 there were 119 brothers residing in England besides three donats or confraters and 80 corrodaries. Of these 34 were Knights of Justice, 14 of that number being Commanders; 34 were Chaplains, of whom 7 were Commanders; and 48 were Servants-at-Arms, of whom 16 were Commanders. There were 35 Commanderies excluding Clerkenwell and 27 Camerae or Chambers in England, 21 Commanderies in Ireland and one, that of Torphichen, in Scotland. The Head Houses or Priories were at Clerkenwell in London, Kilmainham in Dublin and Torphichen in Scotland.
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The Order had been in Scotland from 1153 and 1174 in Ireland. The English Langue, which included Scotland and Ireland, was the smallest of all. In 1308, when the Templars were suppressed across Europe, various of their properties within the British Isles were brought into the Hospitaller’s Order.
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During the peasant’s revolt of Wat Tyler the properties of the Order were burned, including Clerkenwell. At times, there was quite strong dissension between the Knights of England and the Knights of Scotland.
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By the time the main body were in Malta, King Henry VIII ordered, as part of the Reformation program, the seizing of the properties of the Order, as part of the wider policy of seizing Catholic houses and estates. Several of the knights survived, and representation of the English Langue continued at Malta.
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In 1540 while the Order was being closed down in Ireland, a proposal was made in Ireland to essntially revive an order called the Fraternity or Brotherhood of St George. An earlier form of this Order had existed in 1474-1494 and the Hosptialers were involved in this oragnsiation. This order would have been a front for the continuing of the Order of St John, should it have got off the ground in 1540. The Earl of Kildare, whose family had been directly involved with the Hosptiallers for years, was also plotting a return in 1548.
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Queen Mary I of England however authorised the reviving of the Order in England by indicating that its properties should be restored, including its seat of Clerkenwell. Under Queen Elizabeth I the estates of the the Order were confiscated in 1559 but without annulling its incorporation.
Meanwhile in Scotland, the Preceptor at Torphichen, Sir James Sandilands accepted the doctrine of the reformed faith in 1553 and was friendly with John Knox. Believing there to be a question about his being a Protestant in the Order, the Scottish Parliament sent him to France, but having no satisfactory answer, he gave up the properties and was awarded the same by Queen Mary of Scots as Lord Torphichen, on the condition of paying certain sums, which occurred in 1564. The Order continued under David Seton, with a greater portion of the Scottish knights who did not convert to Protestantism.
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The English Langue continued in a greatly reduced fashion in Malta. Sir Oliver Starkey represented England at the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. In 1593, Andrew Wyse became Prior. For many years British leaders were still appointed to the sovereign council, which position carried the title of Turcopolier. In 1623, 1639 (Sir Nicholas Fortescue), 1650, 1669 and 1686-90 negations took place between Malta and the Stuarts with the aim of restoring the Order in Britain.
Stuarts, such as Henry Fitzjames, was Prior in 1689, and other Jacobite leaders were leading the Order from 1701. Then Italians were appointed by the Malta leadership to manage the English Langue, and if any Englishman joined, they most likely would have become part of the Italian Langue. There was further Jacobite involvement with the Order from 1726 to 1755.
In 1782 Emmanuel Marie de Rohan-Polduc set up the Anglo-Bavarian Langue, obtaining permission from George III. This group was based in Bavaria.
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Meanwhile, in 1772, a representative from the Italian Langue of the Order was empowered to set up the Order in Poland. These Commanderies came under the jurisdiction of Catherine the Great and then Tsar Paul I of Russia. Paul I favoured the Order, and in 1797 formed the Russian Priory as based on and including the Polish Commanderies, which came under the Anglo-Bavarian Langue.
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In 1799, Paul I, now Grand Master of the Order, added an Orthodox Priory in Russia. The Angl0-Bavarian Langue was then renamed the Bavaro-Russian Langue. In 1806, the Bavarian Langue was absorbed into the German Brandenburg Order, only to have everything confiscated by Fredrick William III of Prussia from 1810. He then set up an Order of Merit in Prussia based on this in 1812. The Bailiwick of Brandenburg was revived with a few surviving original members in 1853. The Catholic Russian Priory as such ended in 1817, but the Order as a national and Orthodox identity continued with its hereditary commanders.
Revived English Langue
Meanwhile, with the restoration of the French monarchy, a French Commission of the Knights of St John was sent up the French Langue, absorbing Auvergne, France and Provence, and in connection to the Langues of Aragon and Castille.
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With the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence from the Turks in 1821, the French Commission decided to give knighthoods to Englishmen if they would join the war. They negotiated for the possession of certain Greek islands, with a plan to reconquer Rhodes. The funds they hoped for were not forthcoming.
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From 1826, the French worked to recruit and set up the Order in England. The chief architect of this scheme was the French Marquis de Sainte-Croix-Molay who recruited a London-based Scottish businessman named Donald Currie and a French Count Philippe de Castelain.
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The Order in England was then founded under the executive control of Alejandro, conde de Mortara, a Spanish aristocrat in 1831, in conjunction with French, Spanish and Portuguese authorities of the Order. The English council with the French then removed Mortara from the Order, and the Order was to be revived ("emerged") in Britain on the lines of a Royal Letters Patent of King Philip and Queen Mary from 1559, which was brought to effect in 1834.
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Although Mortara attempted to run a rival organisation, the Order in England was being led by Rev. Sir Robert Peat, Grand Prior of St John Anglia, which is dated to have begun in 1831. Rev. Sir Robert Peat was entitled to the appellation "Sir" by reason that prior to 1812, foreign honours would be counted if they were recognised, as they were by George III. Rev. Sir Robert Peat was also a chaplain to George IV (as Regent).
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In the 1830s it was generally and commonly recognised that Rev. Sir Robert Peat was the Grand Prior of the Order, called the Sovereign and Illustrious Order of St John of Jerusalem (in) Anglia.
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Throughout the 277 years which elapsed between Queen Mary in 1557 and the incorporation of the Venerable Langue of England in 1834, although in abeyance within the British isles, there never ceased to exist an Anglia representation at Malta or at St Petersburg or in the Italian Langue under the Papacy.
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In 1837 Mortara disappeared and Peat died. Sir Henry Dymoke became leader of the British Order, and was promoted to Lieutenant Turcopolier in 1847. Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb became Grand Prior that year.
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The last Grand Master in Malta, Ferdinand von Hompesch, had received Sir Joshua C. Meredyth into the Order, who eventually was a member with Rev. Sir Robert Peat in the British Order in the 1830s. Meredyth personally received Sir Edward G. L. Perrott into the Order, who conferred the accolade upon Sir Edmund A. H. Lechmere, Lt Col Gould Hunter-Weston and Charles J. Burgess in 1872. Thus, in Queen Victoria’s Order of 1888, there was a direct link back to Malta.
In 1857, Robert Broun wrote, “From the long period during which the Sovereign Order of Knights Hospitallers has been in abeyance in the British islands, many suppose that the Fraternity is an institute of the Popedom. This, however, is as much an error as it is to suppose that the Knights of the Langue of England form, in England, a foreign order of knighthood, are allied in any shape or respect with Freemasonry, or approach in character to Monastic foundations.”
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In 1869, Robert Bigsby wrote that the Venerable Sixth or English Langue of the Illustrious and Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem (Malta) received “so many vituperative attacks from a body of ultramontane Romanists opposed to its reconstruction on a Protestant basis”.
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In 1875 one of the knights left the English Order and joined the Papal Order and then became the head of the rival "Sovereign Military Order Association in Britain".
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In 1871 a new constitution renamed it “Order of St John of Jerusalem in England”. As Royals began to join, and with the founding of the Ambulance Brigade in 1877, Queen Victoria granted a Royal Charter in 1888 for “The Grand Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England”.
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In 1963, the Vatican-backed Order and the Order under Queen Elizabeth II decided to formally recognise each other. Even so attacks in the form of subtle questions and implied perplexities still come from the Vatican-aligned group to cast doubt on the origins and validity of the British Order. The British Order, the Bailiwick of Brandenburg and the Russian tradition were not Roman Catholic, and yet were genuinely, fully and manifestly the representation of the Order to the world.
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The Venerable Order has received a series of updated Charters from Queen Elizabeth II.
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Reclaiming the dignity of Anglia
The modern historians of the Venerable Order take a totally different view of the Order’s history from 1798 to 1888. Either by imbibing the view from Rome or because of modernist secular anti-religious tendencies, the history and figures of the emergence of the English Langue are ridiculed and rubbished. The French Commission is pillarised for not submitting to Rome and members of the English Langue are presented to be of the worst character.
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Rev. Sir Robert Peat, who was by contemporary records a leading Protestant, is character assassinated by all recent histories of the Venerable Order.
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Peat understood that the Royal Letters Patent (or Charter) of Queen Mary called for the restoration of the Order and its properties, and that the Order was never annulled by Queen Elizabeth I afterwards.
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In fact, Queen Mary wrote, “to renew, restore, create, institute and establish the sacred Order and religion of the English brothers of St John of Jerusalem in this Kingdom of England” and that the Prior and brothers of the Order, the Order itself, “St John Jerusalem in England shall henceforth continue forever and those named shall have a perpetual succession”. In other words, the Order was established to stay.
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Thus, Peat was able to preside over the re-emergence of the Order, and further, Peat’s revival gave grounds that his own work, in line with a Protestant version of Mary’s declaration, would indeed be able to be perpetuated.
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Queen Victoria’s Charter of 1888, and the ensuing revisions, including those of Elizabeth II (e.g. of 2003), no reference is made by name to Queen Mary’s statues. There is an arguable succession between the 2003 document and the Royal Letters Patent or Charter of 1557, though it appears as if the modern adherents tend to prefer to view Victoria as the source for a new Order.
Mary’s revival did not have any reference to Scotland, though Queen Elizabeth II Charter does. Mary’s revival could also be in effect in Ireland (e.g. Dublin), as could Victoria’s. The theoretical possibility remains that if Peat revived the Order at that time, the same could be also possible on the same basis in or from Ireland. Indeed Peat’s revival itself could still be in effect in Ireland. In like manner, seeing as the Order was not suppressed in Scotland by Queen Mary of Scots, possibility of a Scottish revival could have been or be put into effect. Again, Peat’s revival could also still be in effect there.
Further, and at the last, if the English Order as it is was deemed to depart from Protestantism, on the right basis of both the Order and some basis of legitimacy, some Cromwell could theoretically put an injunction against it or reform it.
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Preceptory does lay a claim to inheriting or even emerging both a Scottish and Irish heritage of the English Langue through the Loyalist Tradition.
Important members of the English Order
​​Henry VII, of Britain, protector of the Order.
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Henry VIII, of Britain, protector of the Order who granted an amount of cannons used around the time the Order moved to Malta.
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James Sandilands, last Preceptor at Torphichen, convert to Presbyterianism.
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George III, of Britain, authorised the Anglo-Bavarian Langue.
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King George IV, of Britain, was member of the French Order, with the English Order re-forming in his reign.
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King William IV, of Britain.
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Rev. Sir Robert Peat, a leader in the Orange Order.
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Queen Victoria, of Britain, chartered the Order in 1888.
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Queen Marie, of Romania, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, maternal grandmother of King Peter II.
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Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts and member of the Legion of Frontiersmen.
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​King Peter II, of the House of Karageorgevich, entered the British Order in 1943, and chartered his own OSJ based on the Russian tradition of the Order in 1964.
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Major Rex Clark, leader of the Australian Division of the Legion of Frontiersmen.
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Sir Hubert Opperman, Member of Parliament for Corio under Sir Robert Menzies, leader in the Karageorgevich OSJ and member of the Legion of Frontiersmen.
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Countess Mountbatten, Commonwealth patron of the Legion of Frontiersmen.
