3 Acquiring Heritage The Venerable Order of St John and the Accumulation of Its Past (1858–1931)

Nigel Hankin

DOI: 10.4324/9781003200802-4

On 24th June 1893, the feast day of St John the Baptist, the Prince of Wales, in his role as Grand Prior, officially opened the newly restored St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell as the headquarters of the Grand Priory of England of the Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem (OSJ).1 In the previous three decades the order had been transformed from a rather purposeless group of antiquarians and eccentrics into an important philanthropic organisation with royal approval. St John’s Gate had been part of the Priory of England, centre of the English ‘langue’, or branch, of the Knights Hospitaller, a physical reminder of the order’s medieval antecedents, so its re-occupation was of considerable symbolic significance.

However, the order’s claim to descent from the medieval Knights Hospitaller was not undisputed. Reporting on the event, the Morning Post observed that, ‘as it exists at present, the order is both a continuation and a revival of the old Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem’.2 This ambiguity was something the order was very sensitive about. Only a few weeks before the celebrations at St John’s Gate, a letter to The Times stated that ‘there is a charitable society in England which tries to pass itself off as a branch of the order’ but that ‘the claims of this society are based on garbled documents and on statements that are directly contrary to fact’.3 Since the 1870s, the order had created the St John Ambulance Association, trained thousands in first aid at a time when industrial accidents were rife, and established the beginnings of an ambulance service where none had previously existed. In recognition of this it had received a royal charter in 1888. Yet despite this public validation of their activities the members of the OSJ still seem to have felt uneasy at any suggestion that their claims to medieval ancestry were bogus. As this chapter shall show, their collecting activities in this period can be seen partly as a reflection of this concern, reinforcing their collective self-image by acquiring pieces of the order’s heritage, and giving additional credibility to their philanthropic efforts.

The Order of St John in the Late Nineteenth Century

In 1798 Napoleon expelled the Hospitallers from Malta and they spent the next several decades in disarray. The French langues, restored in 1814, hoped to take advantage of the Greek struggle for independence to re-establish the order in the Mediterranean. Imagining that it would make it easier to get political support and money in London to sponsor such a venture, a handful of French knights explored the possibility of reviving the English langue, and in 1831 the Revd Robert Peat was elected prior of a restored English priory.4 Peat and his associates contended that they were a continuation of the English order resurrected under Queen Mary in 1557 since, although Elizabeth I had seized their property, the organisation had never subsequently been dissolved. Over the following decades attempts to obtain official recognition from the revitalised Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome failed.5 It proved impossible to reach a compromise whereby the legitimacy of the Protestant knights in England could be recognised by Rome without them acknowledging Papal authority.6

A final attempt in 1858 came to nothing. As Sir Edmund Lechmere was later to record, ‘the Roman Knights suddenly attempted to cast off the acts of their predecessors and entered what has been called a “protest”. [Since then] the English branch has been the object of jealousy and continuous attack’.7 The following year it was reported that

Grave doubts exist as to the legitimacy of this revived branch of the English langue. The authorities in supreme governance over the order at Rome deny its validity, and refuse to recognise it as an integral branch of the venerable order of St John.8

The Knights felt that their integrity was being questioned. At a time when it was not clear that the OSJ had either a mission or a future, these attacks were felt especially keenly.

With few members and little money, the OSJ in England in 1858 was, as it was later described, ‘feeble and purposeless’.9 Their main charitable efforts were directed at providing a healthy diet to the convalescent poor after their discharge from Charing Cross and King’s College Hospitals. In 1872, the Revd John Woodward, one of the chaplains of the order, despaired at ‘the degradation of so time-honoured an institution to the level of a mere charitable society for the distribution of soup’.10 It was only in the late nineteenth century that the OSJ found a purpose. Members of the order had been the driving force behind the establishment of the National Aid Society to provide help to victims of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and it was that experience which convinced John Furley that mobilising aid once war had broken out was insufficient.11 He felt there was a role to be played by the order in providing first aid training during peacetime so that trained medical help was available in the event of war. Furley, Lechmere, and Col Francis Duncan toured the country addressing meetings and encouraging the establishment of ambulance associations to provide instruction in first aid in what became known as the ‘Ambulance Crusades’.

Subsequently, the trained volunteers were formed into ambulance brigades with equipment (often designed by Furley) to assist the injured and get them to hospital. By 1887 over 100,000 had received first aid training from the Association, and by 1905 there were 479 divisions of the Ambulance Brigade in England and Wales with 13,922 members.12 Especially in the early years much was made of the usefulness of such training in wartime, but it was rapidly clear that there was also a huge need in a peacetime world fraught with danger, ‘the war which went on from day to day in their streets, factories, and workshops’.13 As Col R.J. Blackham wrote in his history of the order, published in 1921, ‘the White Banner of St John […] has waved over many a battlefield from Palestine in the eleventh century, to Flanders in the twentieth, and yet has achieved its greatest victories in time of peace’.14

At the same time that the order was pursuing this major charitable endeavour the members were also accumulating artefacts associated with their adopted ancestors. In a history of the collection, published in 1945, its first curator, Henry Fincham, recorded that by 1875 there was a library of 228 books, and a catalogue compiled in 1895 listed 438 items. By 1912 this had swollen to nearly 1800 books, paintings, and other objects.15 Mostly these were donated by members, although funds were made available for purchases from 1901 and increased substantially in 1912, and in 1923 a separate museum room was created to display the acquired heritage that identified the order with its crusader past. The expansion of the collection went hand in hand with the expansion of the order’s charitable activities, each validating the other. In 1888, reflecting on the previous few decades, Dr John Oakley, Dean of Manchester and a chaplain of the order, described how ‘a few grave and public-spirited men have tried to keep alive an ancient and venerable society, with a definite purpose of benevolence to the sick and wounded in war, and of other forms of succour to suffering humanity’.16 Collecting books, objects, and even buildings associated with the history of the Hospitallers helped reassure the members of the legitimacy of their claim to be ‘an ancient and venerable society’, constructing a synthetic memory in material form of an imagined collective past.

Romantic Medievalism and St John’s Gate

From at least the 1160s St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell had formed the entrance to the inner courtyard of the Priory of England.17 It was substantially rebuilt by Prior Thomas Docwra (1501–27) and completed in 1504. It had been denuded of its battlements sometime in the 1760s as they had become unsafe, and by the 1850s it had become a pub called the Old Jerusalem Tavern decorated with suits of armour like the ‘vault of some feudal ruin’, and selling its own ‘Chivalrie’ gin.18 (Figure 3.1) During the 1830s, the uncertain status of the fledgling OSJ had produced a rival organisation called the Knights of St John, and for a time they operated a dispensary for the sick poor and foreigners from the ground floor of the west tower.19 This desire to validate their humanitarian efforts by the physical association with what remained of the Hospitaller past continued with the OSJ. When the freehold of the Gate became available in 1873, Lechmere acquired it and leased part of the building to the order. By one account, Fincham claimed Lechmere had outbid Cardinal Wiseman, who wanted to acquire the building for the SMOM.20 This seems unlikely as Wiseman had died in 1865, but the story reinforces the idea that acquiring the Gate was part of a rivalry for legitimacy. The physical re-occupation of the Hospitaller past was a concrete claim to that legitimacy.

Figure 3.1 Unknown artist, St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell. A view from the south side before the mid-century restoration. Nineteenth-century engraving. Ink on paper. Private Collection. Courtesy of Bridgeman Images.

The order acquired the freehold from Lechmere in 1887 and soon commissioned a much more significant redevelopment from John Oldrid Scott, son of the architect of the Victorian Gothic revival, Sir George Gilbert Scott. He employed a generic and rather heavy ‘Tudor Gothic’ to convey an appropriate sense of ancient military heritage (Figure 3.2). The reinstatement of the crenellations is typical of Victorian Gothic, re-imagining what is essentially a set of offices as a crusader castle. The panelling and armorial glass that were installed are also typical of neo-Gothic design, recreating an imagined medieval past as an appropriate setting for the self-proclaimed descendants of the Knights Hospitaller and as a home for their collection of objects associated with that history.

Figure 3.2 St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell. Illustration for The Queen’s London (London: Cassell, 1896). This photo shows Oldrid Scott’s restoration of the crenellations but predates the creation of the Chapter Hall in the space to the right. Private Collection. Courtesy of Bridgeman Images.

A further expansion of the building by Oldrid Scott in 1901–3 included the creation of the Chapter Hall, a large ceremonial space with a lantern ceiling and Perpendicular-style windows. The decoration of this important room can be seen as a physical assertion of the legitimacy of the English langue and its place within the wider order, emphasised by the arms of the different langues decorating the corbels supporting the roof beams. In the 1920s the arms of all the Priors of England, medieval and modern, were added to the panelling. In a bold statement of continuity, the centuries after Mary I are filled with the arms of holders of the office, albeit that they were based in Malta, before continuing with the arms of the Revd Peat in 1831.

The order also became more closely linked with the nearby parish church of St John, parts of which dated back to the medieval church of the priory. Lechmere acquired the advowson, which was transferred to the order in 1909, and the annual St John’s Day service was held there from 1895.21 From 1889, Oldrid Scott was involved in restoration work, partly funded by the order, including turning the middle aisle of the crypt, which dates back to the earliest days of the priory in the twelfth century, into a chapel.22 The stained glass there today reuses glass originally installed in 1914 in the east window of the main church. It includes figures associated with the OSJ and the heraldry of the order and some of its English priors and knights (Figure 3.3). Once again, the order is re-occupying spaces associated with its supposed medieval predecessors and the decorative scheme asserts a link with that Hospitaller past.

Figure 3.3 The East Window of the Crypt of St John’s, Clerkenwell, depicting Raymond du Puy (Hospitaller grandmaster, 1118–60), St John the Baptist, and St Ubaldesca (a sister of the order, canonised for charitable deeds and miracles). The glass, by Archibald K. Nicholson, dates from 1914 and was originally installed in the east window of the church. Courtesy of The Museum of the Order of St John (photograph © Peter Dazeley from his book London Explored).

The OSJ attracted men with antiquarian interests like Lechmere and Fincham, whose imagined Middle Ages was a romantic one of chivalrous knights and tournaments straight out of the pages of Sir Walter Scott. For them acquiring relics of the order’s past served to reinforce their self-image as the heirs of the medieval Hospitallers, and nothing could be more iconic than St John’s Gate. Writing in 1874, Lechmere felt that ‘the interest which attaches to this relic of the ancient possessions of our order would amply compensate its members for any inconvenience’.23 The Gate was used for meetings of the order’s council from March 1874 and became a centre for the storage and distribution of first aid supplies and equipment for the St John Ambulance.24 As Blackham later wrote, ‘The glorious spirit of the old Knights must inspire the Council located once more under the ancient roof-tree of the order’.25 Even if Clerkenwell was now a poor neighbourhood full of noisome industries and crowded tenements, the Gate could serve as a simulacrum of a fortress from which the Knights could sally forth to do good deeds.26

Emulating the Crusaders: Bearers of the Cross

Whilst travelling in Italy in 1894, Lechmere acquired a processional cross decorated with the eight-pointed cross of the order (Figure 3.4). Made of silver plates on an oak core, attached to the front is an earlier figure of Christ crucified. Beneath this is a shield depicting a lion rampant which has been identified as the arms of Pierre Decluys, Grand Prior of France (1522–35), and on the reverse is a plate engraved ‘F.P. DECLUYS 1527’. However, Fincham identified the arms as those of Prior Robert Mallory (1433–40). In December 1904, in a letter to Col Sir Herbert Perrott, secretary of the order, he wrote that the shield:

bears the arms of Mallory, Grand Prior of Clerkenwell and […] my theory is that it was made for Mallory and belonged to our priory. The cross is early Italian Renaissance work but the shield of arms is quite Gothic in character and may have been affixed after it came to England.27

He also suggested that the cross should be carried in procession on St John’s Day, as it still is.28 Fincham’s keenness to connect the cross with the English langue is particularly interesting. Overlooking the evidence of the engraved plaque he found reason to associate it with the knights of Clerkenwell. In his desire to underscore the English order’s validity he is happy to romanticise a connection with its distant past that was entirely spurious.

Lechmere may have been being disingenuous when he claimed ‘this Order of St John was simply a revived English branch of the old Order of Malta’ but it was to the supposed piety and charity of the medieval Hospitallers that he referred when he stated that the order’s ‘usefulness and philanthropic nature were based on historic chivalry’.29 Motives of Christian idealism and piety were ascribed to the crusader knights, and it was this benevolent aspect of the Hospitaller past that the order was keen to co-opt to validate their philanthropy. As well as the processional cross, other religious artefacts were acquired, including two chasubles purchased in 1913 embroidered with the arms of Grandmasters Perellos (1697–1720) and Cotoner (1663–80), and a silver chalice given by Vere, Lady Galway in 1910, allegedly brought to England by Philip II on his marriage to Mary I. As the Pall Mall Gazette observed in 1893, ‘Any one fortunate to visit St John’s Gate and meet the industrious secretary, Mr Easterbrook, in his comfortable office, finds him surrounded by relics of the former days of the order, as well as signs of its present activity’.30 The quasi-religious overtones of the term ‘relic’ suggest that the collection of historic objects somehow sanctified their ‘present activity’.

Figure 3.4 Processional Cross, 1527, silver on oak, with an earlier figure. French. 46 × 55 cm. Museum of the Order of St John, London. LDOSJ 659. Courtesy of the Museum of the Order of St John.

From the mid-nineteenth century the Anglican Church was also trying to counter the perceived ‘feminisation’ of religion, with church- going increasingly seen as the province of women.31 Churchmen and writers such as Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes looked for examples of Christian heroism that showed religious belief was compatible with masculinity.32 Crusader knights provided the perfect example of this ‘muscular Christianity’.33 Earlier in the century Kenelm Digby had depicted the Crusades as combining chivalric and Christian values in a way that a Victorian gentleman should emulate.34 That for much of their history the Hospitallers had been a maritime organisation countering piracy in the Mediterranean was largely ignored in how the order portrayed itself. Although views of Malta and scenes of naval engagements with corsairs also formed part of the collection in this period, it was the military and medical elements of the Hospitaller past that were promoted, for example in the Ambulance Crusades. The religious zealotry of the crusader knights was also overlooked. In 1879 Jackson’s Oxford Journal described how:

The Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who had inaugurated this movement, were […] one of the most chivalrous, and noble, […] of the great guilds or associations of the Middle Ages, and the objects of love, charity, and chivalry which first founded them [were] everlasting principles. It was a Society which based itself on a long line of charity, love and good works, and it was showing how some of these old principles might be applied to modern civilisation.35

As the Western Daily Press remarked in 1901, ‘The spirit of valour, mercy, and self-sacrifice which the Knights Hospitaller were in the romantic middle ages the incarnation, still lives vigorously in our prosaic modern world’.36 Invoking their imagined crusader past to inspire their volunteers and raise funds was true from the very beginnings of the St John Ambulance, but was especially the case in times of war. In 1914 an illustration that appeared in Punch portrays this idea of the work of the St John Ambulance amongst the troops being blessed by the spirit of their crusader past (Figure 3.5). For an organisation about to provide valuable assistance to the war effort, it was to the muscular Christianity of their supposed medieval antecedents that they looked for inspiration.

Figure 3.5 Poster produced by Jordan Gaskell Ltd, London, 1914. Ink on Paper. 160 × 110 cm. Museum of the Order of St John, London. LDOSJ 9118. Courtesy of the Museum of the Order of St John.

This genuflecting to a largely bogus past whilst creating an organisation to deal with the very real needs of the modern world is a leitmotif of the OSJ in this period. In acquiring artefacts associated with the Hospitallers they seem to be wishing to sanctify their current activities, their re-imagined crusading past providing assurance that their philanthropic work was both proper and manly. Ignoring the order’s maritime heritage and focusing instead on its medical activities in the Holy Land they used selected aspects of their supposed past to promote involvement in the St John Ambulance as noble, Christian work. As Blackham asserted, ‘the St John Ambulance had its roots in the earliest years of chivalry when the Knights of St John combined […] the art of healing with valour and prowess as soldiers’.37 In emulating their re-interpreted version of their Hospitaller antecedents they were manufacturing a collective self-image that emphasised the pious heroism of the knights of old. The cross that Lechmere acquired may have had nothing to do with the medieval English langue, but it was a tangible reminder that they, like their forbears, were doing God’s work.

The Order of St John and Empire: Cannonballs and Ophthalmology

From its earliest days the order seems to have had an eye to British imperial interests in the Mediterranean where there was an obvious overlap with their Hospitaller past. The revival of the order in England had its origins in thoughts of military adventure as the Ottoman Empire began to crumble, and in 1841 one member, Sir William Hillary, had written a pamphlet advocating a new crusade.38 By the 1850s all dreams of military glory had been abandoned. Nonetheless, reconnecting with their crusader past did not stop at St John’s Gate. Members of the order added physical reminders of the OSJ’s history in the Mediterranean to the collection throughout the period. In 1902 Lady Lechmere donated an early sixteenth-century breastplate that had allegedly been used by the Knights on Rhodes, complete with bullet hole. Furley acquired some stone cannonballs from Malta, and Lady Strangford donated two iron cannonballs from Rhodes.39 On a larger scale, in 1911 the order began negotiations to acquire the fifteenth- century Hospitaller castle at Kolossi in Cyprus and, in the early 1920s, part of the English ‘Auberge’ in Rhodes – which had been the hostel for the English knights there – was acquired by Sir Vivian Gabriel, a Knight of Justice, and subsequently bequeathed to the order.40

Moreover, the desire to re-establish the order in Jerusalem did not stop with Hillary. As early as 1873, Lechmere, in his role as secretary, recorded in the annual report that:

[a] subject which has from time to time occupied the attention of the Chapter for some years […] has lately been more prominently brought before our notice, which is the possible acquisition of a site within the walls of Jerusalem, the cradle of our Order, with a view to the ultimate establishment of some such Hospitaller object as a British hospice [and] to secure, if possible, part of the ancient Hospital of St John.41

Unfortunately, the Prussian order of St John acquired most of the site before the English could act and attempts to acquire the remaining section came to nothing.42 As with St John’s Gate, the acquisition and physical re-occupation of the Hospitaller past is a reflection of the OSJ’s preoccupation with their heritage as the heart of their self-image and collective identity, re-occupying the sites of their past as validation of their activities in the present. The direct echoing of the order’s medieval medical heritage in Jerusalem is obvious and the re-establishment of the order’s links with the Holy Land was explicit in their appeal for funds:

Those who belong to the English branch of the order of St John are justified in looking for liberal assistance towards the expense of maintaining the hospice. The great nations of the Continent have their hospitals at Jerusalem; and this country […] will surely be willing to sustain an undertaking which […] claims the support of hospitallers as connected with the earliest home of the order and of Christians as a work of humanity, established in the birthplace of their Faith.43

It was also part of a wider British imperial mission to preserve ancient sites in a way that the local inhabitants were deemed incapable of doing. As Swenson has argued, ‘Across Europe the protection of monuments explicitly became a symbol of a nation’s ability to rule overseas – a measure of civilisation’, justifying paternalistic and imperialistic assertions of stewardship over other territories. The British, as well as vying for political advantage in the tottering Ottoman Empire, were implicitly pursuing what they saw as their imperial mission to bring civilisation to local populations regarded as incapable of fending for themselves.44 Or, as the Pall Mall Gazette reported in 1893, the order ‘support[s] an ophthalmic hospital at Jerusalem, where it is much needed, since the modern Canaanite is much too lazy to wash out of his eyes the dust and insects that gather in them’.45

The OSJ’s engagement with the Near East fits into the Victorian re-imagining of the crusades as a ‘civilising’ mission amongst ‘backwards’ peoples, bringing medical aid to the locals and reinforcing British ‘soft’ power whilst asserting their legitimacy by re-occupying sites associated with the order’s past. The idea of returning to ‘the cradle of our Order’ had long been entertained in England, almost as an obligation imposed by their past. In the event it went hand in hand with competition amongst the European powers to gain influence in the crumbling Ottoman Empire, justifying their involvement by providing medical services to the local people and preserving selected aspects of their heritage. Further afield, the exporting of the St John Ambulance became part of the network of empire, and by 1905 there were 50 brigade divisions overseas, in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and India.46 As King later wrote, the St John Ambulance had ‘become one of the firmest links in that sacred chain of loyalty which binds together the Dominions and Colonies in affectionate and devoted service to their King-Emperor’.47 Even as they were acquiring the armour and armaments of the order’s bloody military past they were also engaged in a ‘civilising’ and life-saving mission across the British Empire and beyond.

Collecting and Collective Identity

By the time of the centenary of its revival in 1931, the order had become so much more than what Oakley described as an ‘ancient and honourable guild of good breeding and good works’.48 Yet in their collecting activities and in the promotion of their work they were continually gesturing to that ancient past, and this sense of historic continuity was a key part of how they saw themselves and wanted to be perceived. Their collection served to promote what Cubitt has described as ‘concepts of collective identity or corporate continuity that foster the fiction of collective memory’.49 In acquiring the physical remains of the order in Clerkenwell they were literally occupying the Hospitallers’ heritage, using it both as a centre for the St John Ambulance and as a home for their collection of books and artefacts associated with the order’s history, asserting their claim to that history by acquiring pieces of it. Sanctifying their actions by collecting ‘relics’ gave them legitimacy and status in the eyes of their own members, as well as external recognition. As Misztal has argued, it is ‘the presentation of the past, both that shared by a group and that which is collectively commemorated that enacts and gives substance to the group’s identity, its present conditions and its vision of the future’.50

Their collecting activities encompassed the Hospitallers’ heritage well beyond the English langue, co-opting their Mediterranean history as well. Even when the original items were not available the order was happy to make do with replicas – literally fabricating their history. Copies of Hospitaller seals were donated by Barclay Squire in 1914 (Figure 3.6). On a larger scale the order acquired casts of crusader tombs from the Musée Cluny in Paris in the mid-1920s. Reminders of the past – genuine or replica – served to sustain the idea of a continuous existence, projecting backwards a current perception of identity that drew on particular elements of Victorian crusader myth-making. The attitude to the past also shifted as the members of the OSJ discovered a sense of purpose. In 1864 the chancellor of the OSJ, Sir John St George, disconsolately described the knights as ‘very famous in the history of past times but comparatively unsuited to the present’.51 By 1880, however, Lechmere was much more positive about the ‘value of antiquity’, and expressed confidence that the order ‘was quite as well adapted to the nineteenth century as it was for the time when it was founded’.52 Cementing ties with their medieval Hospitaller past helped foster that new-found sense of purpose. Their activities extended to acquiring and re-occupying sites of particular symbolic significance in their supposed crusader past, exemplifying what Nora describes as lieux de mémoire, places imbued with particular significance in the collective memory.53 The acquisition of St John’s Gate, the establishment of a hospital in Jerusalem, and the attempted purchase of the castle at Kolossi all exemplify the OSJ’s active re-occupation of its symbolic material heritage. Buildings and objects became the material building blocks of a collective synthetic memory.

Figure 3.6 Cast of the seal of Garnier de Nablus, Prior of England and later Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller (d. 1192). The original seal dates from 1185 and is in the British Library. Wax. 54 mm in diameter. The Museum of the Order of St John, London. LDOSJ 3608. The replica was one of a number given in 1914 by W. Barclay Squire (Museum of the Order of St John and University of Birmingham 2016).

Conclusion

In the centenary celebrations in 1931 Lord Scarborough, the sub-prior, was careful to emphasise that ‘the purpose was to celebrate a Revival, not a creation’.54 The contested nature of its history made the OSJ peculiarly sensitive to the question of heritage. Lechmere and the other key figures in the OSJ deployed the crusader image to promote the work of the St John Ambulance, tapping into the Victorian re- imaging of the crusader knight as the image of heroism, morality, and masculinity. Cementing their ties to a long and distinguished history by acquiring books, objects, and buildings associated with the Hospitallers in their heyday, they reinforced that image and their own sense of collective identity, of validation and legitimacy, as well as creating a powerful promotional tool. Theirs was a fractured identity – looking to the past as both a justification and a responsibility, whilst also looking forward to the needs of a dangerous modern world. The OSJ’s acquisition of St John’s Gate, and the decorative schemes employed there and in the nearby church, the establishment of a hospital in Jerusalem and their accumulation of artefacts all asserted the continuity of the order’s history and its links with a romanticised medieval past. They saw their charitable work as blessed by the spirit of their pious and heroic crusader predecessors, their supposed past serving as a source of inspiration for their charitable endeavours in the present. That history gave them both a sense of collective identity and a mission.

Notes

  1. As it was styled in the royal charter of 1888. Hereafter referred to as the OSJ or the order.
  2. Morning Post, 26 June 1893, p. 4.
  3. The Times, 6 April 1893, p. 2.
  4. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘The Order of St John in England 1827–58’, in The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith, ed. Malcolm Barber (London: Variorum, 1994), pp. 121–38.
  5. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta, usually abbreviated to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta or SMOM.
  6. Helen Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (London: Boydell Press, 2013), p. 143.
  7. London, The Museum of the Order of St John (MOSJ) T26.3. Letter from Lechmere to the editor of the Morning Post, 24 April 1873. Sir Edmund Lechmere, MP, was a philanthropist, antiquarian, and a leading figure in the OSJ in the late 19th century.
  8. ‘Literary Review’, John Bull and Britannia, 8 January 1859, p. 26.
  9. E. Walford, In Memoriam. Sir Edmund A. H. Lechmere, Baronet (1895), p. 23.
  10. MOSJ Late 19th Century Correspondence. Woodward to Gould-Weston, 23 February 1872.
  11. The British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War, or the National Aid Society was the precursor of the British Red Cross. Furley was also associated with the founding of the Red Cross movement.
  12. Ronnie Cole-Mackintosh, A Century of Service to Mankind: A History of the St John Ambulance Brigade (London: Century Banham, 1986), p. 25; Nigel Corbet Fletcher, The St John Ambulance Association, Its History, and Its Part in the Ambulance Movement (London: St John Ambulance Association, 1929), p. 49.
  13. ‘Aid to the Injured’, Leicester Chronicle and the Leicestershire Mercury, 17 January 1880, p. 3.
  14. Col R.J. Blackham, The White Cross of St John (Bombay: G.W. Claridge, 1921), p. 49.
  15. Henry Fincham, Notes on the History of the Library and the Museum of the Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem (London: private publication, 1945).
  16. Dr John Oakley, ‘The Order of St John’, Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1888, p. 5.
  17. Barney Sloane and Gordon Malcolm, Excavations at the Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, London (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2004), p. 39.
  18. ‘St John’s Gate and St John’s Lane’ in Survey of London: Vol 46, South and East Clerkenwell, ed. Philip Temple (London, 2008), pp. 142–63. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol46/pp142-163 [accessed 9 April 2019].
  19. Ibid.
  20. Sir Edwin King, The Knights of St John in the British Realm, revised by Sir Harry Luke (London: Hills and Lacy, 1967), p. 146.
  21. ‘St John’s Church and St John’s Square’ in Survey of London: Vol 46, South and East Clerkenwell, ed. Philip Temple (London, 2008), pp. 115–41. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol46/pp115-141 [accessed 9 April 2019].
  22. Ibid.
  23. MOSJ, Annual Report of the Order of St John 1874, p. 11.
  24. Survey of London: Vol 46, South and East Clerkenwell, pp. 142–63.
  25. Blackham, White Cross, p. 29.
  26. Charles Booth’s survey in the summer of 1898 found the area rather squalid, noting a ‘fearful stench’ from a Gorgonzola factory. A tin-plater’s works stood next to the gate for much of the 19th century (British Library of Political and Economic Science, Booth survey notebooks, B353, pp. 156–59).
  27. MOSJ T26.3. Fincham to Perrott, 20 December 1904.
  28. Or at least a copy of it is.
  29. ‘Aid to the Injured’, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 22 March 1879, p. 6.
  30. ‘The Order of St John’, Pall Mall Gazette, 24 June 1893, p. 3.
  31. Adam Knobler, ‘Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades’, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 48 (2006), pp. 293–325, 311.
  32. Olive Anderson, ‘The Growth of Christian Militarism in Mid-Victorian Britain’, The English Historical Review Vol. 86, No. 338 (1971), pp. 46–72, 39.
  33. Mike Horswell, The Rise and Fall of British Crusader Medievalism, c. 1825–1945 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018) pp. 39–44.
  34. Mark Girouard, Return to Camelot (London: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 56. The first two editions of Digby’s Broad Stone of Honour were subtitled Rules for the Gentlemen of England, whilst later editions bore the subtitle The True Sense and Practice of Chivalry.
  35. ‘Aid to the Injured’, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 22 March 1879, p. 6.
  36. Western Daily Press, 13 February 1901, p. 7.
  37. Blackham, White Cross, p. 49.
  38. Elizabeth Siberry, The New Crusaders (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 76–82. Appendix B reproduces the text of the pamphlet.
  39. MOSJ Annual Report, June 1879, p. 10.
  40. King, Knights of St John in the British Realm, pp. 218–20.
  41. MOSJ Annual Report, June 1873, p. 11.
  42. The Prussian Order, the Johanniterorden, was refounded in 1852 by Frederick William IV.
  43. Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 3 November 1883, p. 6.
  44. Astrid Swenson, ‘The Heritage of Empire’, in From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c1800–1940, eds. A. Swenson and P. Mandler, Proceedings of the British Academy 187 (Oxford, 2013), p. 10.
  45. ‘The Order of St John’, Pall Mall Gazette,24 June 1893, p. 3.
  46. Corbet Fletcher, pp. 49–50. By 1912 there were also divisions in Sri Lanka, Canada, and Malta.
  47. King, Knights of St John in the British Realm, p. 148.
  48. Dr John Oakley, ‘The Order of St John’, Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1888, p. 5.
  49. Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 19.
  50. Barbara Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003), p. 7.
  51. MOSJ T26.3. St George to Bigsby, 12 January 1864.
  52. ‘Aid to the Injured’, Leicester Chronicle and the Leicestershire Mercury, 17 January 1880, p. 3.
  53. Pierre Nora, ‘From Lieux de mémoire to Realms of Memory’, in Realms of Memory, ed. Pierre Nora, 3 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), I, p. xvi.
  54. The Centenary of the Revival of the Order of St John in England, 1931 (London: St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, 1932), p. v.

Bibliography

Unpublished Primary Sources

  1. Archives of the Museum and Library of the Most Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem, London.

Published Primary Sources

Books and Pamphlets

  1. Blackham, R.J. The White Cross of St John. Bombay: G.W. Claridge, 1921.
  2. Corbet Fletcher, Nigel. The St John Ambulance Association, Its History, and Its Part in the Ambulance Movement. London: St John Ambulance Association, 1929.
  3. Fincham, H.W. Notes on the History of the Library and the Museum of the Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. London: private publication, 1945.
  4. The Centenary of the Revival of the Order of St John in England, 1931. London: St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, 1932.
  5. Walford, Edward. In Memoriam Sir Edmund A.H. Lechmere, Baronet. London: Cull & Son, 1895.

Newspapers

  1. Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 3 November 1883.
  2. Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 22 March 1879.
  3. John Bull and Britannia, 8 January 1859.
  4. The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury, 17 January 1880; 25 October 1890.
  5. The Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1888.
  6. The Morning Post, 26 June 1893.
  7. The Pall Mall Gazette, 24 June 1893.
  8. The Times, various.
  9. The Western Daily Press, 13 February 1901.

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  4. Girouard, Mark. Return to Camelot. London: Yale University Press, 1981.
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  8. Knobler, Adam. ‘Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 48 (2006), pp. 293–325.
  9. Misztal, Barbara. Theories of Social Remembering. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003.
  10. Nicholson, Helen J. The Knights Hospitaller. London: Boydell Press, 2013.
  11. Nora, Pierre. ‘From Lieux de mémoire to Realms of Memory’. In Realms of Memory, ed. Pierre Nora, 3 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. xv–xxiv.
  12. Riley-Smith, Jonathan. ‘The Order of St John in England 1827–58’. In The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith, ed. Malcolm Barber. London: Variorum, 1994, pp. 121–38.
  13. Siberry, Elizabeth. The New Crusaders. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
  14. Sloane, Barney and Gordon Malcolm. Excavations at the Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, London. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2004.
  15. Swenson, Astrid. ‘The Heritage of Empire’. In From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c1800–1940, eds. A. Swenson and P. Mandler, Proceedings of the British Academy 187. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 3–28.

Online

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  3. ‘St John’s Gate and St John’s Lane’. In Survey of London: Vol 46, South and East Clerkenwell, ed. Philip Temple. London, 2008, pp. 142–63. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol46/pp142-163 [accessed 9 April 2019].