Matt Lewis (2:33)

Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gob smacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murder to find the stories, big and small that tell us how we got here, find out who we really were with. Gone Medieval. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The military orders of the medieval period have always demanded attention. Half knight, half monk, the members walked a fine line between acts of kindness in God's name and brutal slaying of their enemies. It was a circle the medieval mind became quite adept at squaring. One of those orders survives in several guises to this day. The Knights Hospitaller predates the First Crusade, though the shifting politics of the Holy Land redefined the order. So who were they, what were they established for? And how did they end up impacting European politics? Rory McClellan, author of the new book Warrior Monks, is joining us to fill us in. A very warm welcome to Gone Medieval.

Rory McClellan (4:06)

Rory, thanks for having me.

Matt Lewis (4:08)

It's good to have you here. Interesting topic because we've talked about Crusades, we've talked about military orders before, but this is a military order that we haven't really got to grips with. So I think it'd be really nice to get under the hood and find out what's going on with the Knights Hospitaller. I guess to start us off with when and where does the Hospital of St. John come into being?

Rory McClellan (4:28)

So they're actually a little bit before the Templars start up, even though they don't actually become a military order until after the templars. So around 1070, Jerusalem, even before First Crusade, it's still this very, very important pilgrimage site. And so there is a constant stream of people coming from Europe to go on pilgrimage there. And a group of merchants from Amalfi in southern Italy, they have visited the city around 1070, and they decide to set up a hospital to look after other pilgrims coming from the West. And this is what becomes for the eventual Hospitallers. And in this case, medieval hospital doesn't necessarily mean you go there because you're sick and they'll treat you. It could also be more like sort of a hostel where you stay whilst you're traveling. And it's more of that sort of case that it sort of starts off as. And then by the time it comes to First Crusade, you've got armies coming in from the west, they sort of rampage down the coast. They eventually set up these Crusader states, they conquer Jerusalem, but then they have a problem in that most of them go home. And so you now have these new states there that have invaded or attacked pretty much everyone in the region, or at least threatened them, and they're now very short of manpower and they're surrounded. So you then start to have groups like the initial knights that form the templars in around 1120, deciding to set up these military orders, this sort of new concept of a permanent body of troops that would combine the military life of a knight with the sort of monastic life discipline of a monk. So they're going to be a standing sort of military there. They're not just going to pop over for their crusade, fight some battles, see all the holy sites, go home. And the Templars do this first. And then, well, over the following 15 years, the hospital has sort of morph into doing the same and we start finding them taking on military roles or having military titles, appearing in armies and being given castles to manage. And so, you know, if you're given charge of a castle, you need to be able to defend it. You are given proper military responsibilities. But a bit unlike the Templars is that because they've got that hospital origin, they always have this dual role. They are always trying to provide some forms of charity and medical care. They end up having this very elaborate hospital in Jerusalem where they even have things like a dedicated ward for maternity and so for giving birth, a labour ward and for caring for newborns. And there's even records that they were offering diets specific to the people that were visiting. So if you weren't able to have wine, for example, because you're Muslim, then they would give you sugared water and things like that. So really quite advanced and able to have up to a thousand patients. And this remains a big part of their order throughout their history. In their documents. It's only very late on, late medieval period, that they start to sometimes refer to themselves as Knights of Saint John or Knights of Rhodes or wherever they. Officially, they are still very much the Hospital of St. John Jerusalem. And that's what really sets them apart from the Templars.

Matt Lewis (8:12)

I think it's a really interesting origin because we tend to think of all of these military orders being born out of Some form of religious war. But the hospital predates the First Crusade and the idea of holy war. And it seems like they're sort of slow. They follow the Templar model, but after a while they're not jumping two feet into the idea of becoming a military order. I guess you can picture them trying to work out how being a military order fits with the. The founding principles of providing care and support. And I guess you can marry those two when you're in a dangerous place, but it seems like they're quite slow to do that, which I think sets them apart from a lot of the other military orders that we often think about as being founded for a military purpose, but having a religious element. It's sort of the other way around.

Rory McClellan (8:58)

Yeah. There are a few other orders that start off as hospitals and then militarize, but they generally come after the hospitalists, like the hospital has already shown that that's possible. So, like the Order of Saint Lazarus or the Order of Saint Thomas Vaca seem to have started as Hospitaller orders in the same way that they run hospitals, they care for people and then because of military need, they then take on this military role. The same for the Teutonic Knights, because that's originally a little hospital for German pilgrims in Acre. And so they really sort of show that there is this idea that you can do hospitaller but military rather than just having to do your knights. Like with the Templars, where the military side comes first.

Matt Lewis (9:46)

Yeah. Do we see, then the First Crusade? I mean, the First Crusade comes along, what, quarter of a century after they've been founded in sort of 1096 and tears the Holy Land apart for several years after that. Do we see that having a significant impact on the hospital at the time? Obviously later they will change into a military order. But does the change in the politics of the Holy Land affect them at all?

Rory McClellan (10:10)

I think it certainly speeds up their development, because they've been around since about 1070. It's not until 1113 that the Pope actually recognises them as a distinct order. Until that point, they're sort of subordinate to this abbey next door to them. That's The Abbey of St. Mary of the Latins. And Latins in this case, meaning what we'd sort of now call Catholics, but it's a bit anachronistic, so called them Latin Christians. And, yeah, it's not until after the First Crusade, after this area is now under Christian control, but they then start to get donations out in the west, because presumably some of these people, they've been on Crusade, they may have actually stayed at the hospital, they may have been treated by them or helped by them. And so they start getting them donations in the west. And the Pope then actually recognizes them as this order, which then makes it a bit easier for them to manage these possessions, because that's the other quite weird thing about most of the military orders, is that if you think of, say, Benedictine monks or Augustinians, they're not actually a single organization. So you might have two Benedictine abbeys in the same county, but they are independent of each other most of the time. Unless one of them's, like, founded the other with the Hospitallers, with the Templars, it's different. The guy who's at the head of the Templar Order or the head of Hospitallers, he controls, you know, through a big network of subordinates, all of their territory, all of their lands or their possessions. So it's much more centralized, and it's even been considered sort of the first proper centralized religious order before the Cistercians, before the friars and so on. And that, I think, only really happens because you end up having the First Crusade sort of cementing Christian control there, because otherwise it would just be this little hospice in a far off city, which there'd be people traveling there, but it wouldn't be the same level of prominence.

Matt Lewis (12:18)

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. How significant is it for the. The order's development that it begins to arrive in Western European countries? What are they doing there when they're coming to places like France and England?

Rory McClellan (12:31)

It's the core part of what really leads to their massive sort of development. And it's probably actually something, because it's always difficult to work out the exact numbers. But it does seem, looking at the records, that there might actually have been more Hospitallers eventually, once you get to sort of the late 1200s and 1300s, more hospitallers back in Europe than sort of on the front line, as it were. So obviously they're running these castles in the east. They've got the hospital, and this is expensive. It's very expensive to raise these troops and to man the castles. They have some lands in the east as well. They're doing some farming there, some trading, but it's much easier if you've got it in the west, where it's not on a Crusade front line. There's still conflicts, but it's generally going to be a bit more safer, bit secure. And also, people go on crusade, they then come home and they go, I quite like those guys. I'd like to give them something to sort of help out their job. I don't own land all the way over in Jerusalem, but own it here in Essex. And so they will give lands to them. And it's not that unusual. You can also find other non military orders, normal sort of monastic orders that are given lands in, say, England, but the main monastery is actually over in Italy or in France, so it's that same sort of thing. And what they do is they use these lands to then raise money. And so most of the time, if you were to live near them, you probably wouldn't really see much difference between them and any other sort of monk, because they're not going to be riding around in full armour and sort of full battle dress. They're there basically to recruit people and to farm and to be landlords. And we know that they take part in the wool trade, which is a really big economic driver in medieval England. Up in Scotland they have salt works. They also owned lots of tenements that they rent out. So it's really important for them as a sort of financial resource. And then each of the estates they have in the west are called preceptories. This would normally be a manor house, some farmlands attached, maybe a church. And then it will own a whole bunch of other lands in the area. And each preceptory is supposed to send a third of its income out to the east. And we know that they then gather this up each year and they send it out and it normally goes via France and then through Venice and then out to the east and sometimes a slightly different route if they're at war with France. But it's really key part to how they actually get all the money and also the men that they need out to the east to do the order's work.

Matt Lewis (15:13)

Yeah. And do they become kind of significant landowners in England?

Rory McClellan (15:18)

If you look at a map of all the protectories across England, it's pretty much every county apart from, I think, Cumbria and sort of some of the areas just bordering it, very northwest that don't have a preceptory. But there are still a lot of the Orders lands throughout there. And they are very widespread because not only do they have their own lands, later on, when the Templars gotten rid of, they inherit most of the Templars lands as well. So they end up with this massive network of properties across the country, Just the Hospitallers in England and Wales, because they're also in Scotland and in Ireland, just for Hospitallers there are richer than Westminster Abbey and Glastonbury Abbey, which are two richest abbeys. In the country just because they have so much land and it does then mean that they become quite important because, you know, you can't really turn up in a country and buy up a whole chunk of it without also then becoming quite an important political figure as well.

Matt Lewis (16:21)

Yeah. I was going to ask how far they stray into politics at this point, because I think they get. They get involved in the Anglo Norman conquest of Ireland. Do we see them kind of taking a. A political role? I guess, as you say, if they're significant landowners, it's almost hard for them not to. But do they have any trouble reconciling that with their military aims in the east, or can they see the. The political connections as a way to. To enhance their presence in the Holy Land?

Rory McClellan (16:47)

I think sometimes it definitely works to enhance it because it's increasing the status and the prominence of the order by having these connections with a lot of the Anglo Norman and Cambro Norman lords that go off and invade Ireland. Those same lords then give them a lot of land in Ireland that they didn't have before, so now they have more income coming in. It's not too unusual if you think of them as churchmen, because most of the medieval administration is churchmen. The chancellor is normally a bishop or an archbishop. It is quite usual for people to get involved, even when you look at it and go, well, you're not actually supposed to be leading armies. But in Ireland, for example, it's normally the Archbishop of Dublin that is chancellor, and he often actually has to lead armies, even though he is a churchman. So in that respect it's not quite so unusual. But it does have a bit more of a difficulty because, yes, I suppose the Archbishop, he's ultimately answering to the Pope and Abbott might end up having to answer to sort of a provincial head. The Hospitallers have quite this authoritative figure on the other side of Mediterranean who might not really like that. They are ending up getting involved in fighting with other Christians and so on, but can't really do that much against it because they are holding land from the King. If the King then says to you, well, you're a landholder, I want to go to war with France, can you raise some troops for me? There's not really much they can do to sort of resist that, particularly because the King can then say, well, if you don't do this, I will just stop you sending money to the east. And because, you know, you might be sending it abroad to my enemies, I don't really like that. And the other sort of issue that gets in the way is that most of the brethren who are in England are English. And so you think, well, how much do they see themselves as being Hospitallers first or being English subjects first is their loyalty to the King or to the order? And sometimes you can see that there are priors. So the men who are heads of the order in England, Wales and Scotland is his prior of England. And sometimes you can look at it and go, oh, yes, no, he's clearly. He's putting the order first. He's repeatedly going out to the east when he's asked to. He's sending money to them and everything. He's actually avoiding getting involved too much in politics, if he can. And then there are other ones where you go, oh, he never goes out to the Holy Land, he just stays here. He clearly doesn't actually prioritize that as much. And it does end up bringing them into quite a few problems. Initially, in the 11 and 1200s, they seem to be a bit reluctant to actually get on the battlefield against Christians. They do a bit of fighting in Ireland and a few of them do in Scotland in the late 1200s, but it's only really later on that they more fully sort of go, oh, yes, no, okay, I will actually join the army that the King's raising and I will go out.

Matt Lewis (19:49)

Yeah. And I guess for the hospital itself in Jerusalem, there's an extent to which the ends justify the means. They need the money to protect the Holy Land. I suppose there's some degree to which they might feel they can turn a bit of a blind eye to how it arrives there. As long as it does keep arriving, I think so.

Rory McClellan (20:08)

There's certainly also. Do they even know about it in time to do anything? Because the news would take so long to travel that distance that, oh, the prior of Ireland, he was off on a campaign fighting the Irish three months ago. Oh, it's over now. And by the time that we tell him not to have done it. So, yes, I think there's. There's definitely that sort of. Well, we can't actually do much to stop it. But also this is firstly, probably their duty as an English subject. And if we tell them to say no, what will the King do? And the King might get in our way, and that really wouldn't be very good. So it is quite a balancing act that they have to do to not push too far. And certainly when it gets later on into the 13, 14, hundreds and then in 1500s, it's made very clear that you can push the English kings too far, they will Just seize all your lands if you don't play with them.

Matt Lewis (21:07)

I guess we might be quite familiar. We've talked about the Templars before on gone medieval and we've talked about how they become a big financial institution. They're lending money to kings and all of that kind of thing. Are the hospital is doing anything similar you mentioned they're getting involved in the wool trade, which is obviously a core part of the English economy. Are they providing those kinds of services that get them really into the fabric of England?

Rory McClellan (21:32)

Yes. So like the Templars, they developed this system of you can deposit money at one end with a hospital, a house, and then you can withdraw it at the other end, because this is what they're already having to do anyway. They're having to send money all the way from Scotland, all the way out to Jerusalem to fund their troops there. They are developing systems to manage that. So why not open it up to other people? It's helping pilgrims as they go to the East. They can get some money from it, or at least good connections with the King and so on. And so this ends up leading from being actually quite good at finances. And that therefore means that the kings can look at it and go, well, you're quite good at numbers, why don't you come and work for me? And that's how they really start to get into government in a big way. It starts a little bit in the mid-1100s when Henry II and Becket are having a falling out. Sometimes the diplomats that are going between them are Hospitallers and Templars. But then when it gets into 1200s, you start finding both orders doing things like auditing royal accounts or helping collect taxes, or they're entrusted as a sort of safe deposit place for royal jewels and funds. And this becomes a really big thing when you get two very weird sort of quite opposite sort of hospitallers in the 1270s who both become treasurers, one in England and one in Ireland. So the first one is Joseph de Chauncy, and he is the treasurer of the whole hospital order. And he's done this for over 20 years. And Edward I has come out to the Holy Land on crusade. He's still only the Lord. Edward is not just yet king, he's still got a year to go. And he goes around and he raids a couple of places, he builds a new tower, gives a bit of money and then he goes home. But with him comes Joseph de Chauncy, who's this English veteran hospitaller. And if he's been in charge of the finances of this entire pan European organization for 20 years. He's probably quite good at numbers. And Edward has recruited him. He now makes him Royal Treasurer of England. And so de Chauncey gets involved in raising taxes. He ends up paying off some of the King's debts. And he seems to become this really quite valued servant of the king and he seems to have this sort of friendship between him. They send gifts to each other, but de Chauncy eventually asks whether he can go back to Holland and he can still help out there, support the order there. And when he does, he actually sends letters back to Edward and he reports back to him and says, there's been this big battle involving some of the Mongols and Christian forces fighting against some of Muslims, and this is everything that happened, and the Holy Land's in a very bad state, but if you were to turn up, I'm sure you'd be able to conquer it all in one go, and you only need a thousand troops or so, and it would be fine. And Edward does write back to him and says, thanks for all the gifts that you've sent me, including the hoods for the falcons, but please don't send any more because I'm far too busy to actually go hawking anymore, and asks, can you come back? Because actually, I really need you here. You're really useful and this would be really helpful. But sadly for Edward, de Chauncy had probably died of ill health by this point. He's probably in at least his 70s, maybe even into his 80s, but he seems to have been such a valued servant that Edward lets him go out to the east, doesn't let any of the others go out. He's really quite restrictive afterwards and is quite cagey about letting other hospital appraisers go out, presumably because he's worried they might not come back and they can be quite useful to him. He has quite an odd sort of counterpart, Joseph de Chauncy in another hospitaller who's active at the same time, who's Stephen of Fulbun, who's probably from Cambridgeshire. Unlike de Chauncy, he's not actually a knight, so the majority of the leadership in the hospital is. Are knights. But there's two other divisions in the order. There's the sergeants, who are a mixture of some military sort of officials and some more administrative officials, who generally just are from a more humble background. And then there's the chaplains, so Fjorda's priests, and Stephen of Forborn was one of his chaplains, and he was a massive crook. He ends up going off to Ireland, on task for Henry III's queen, Eleanor of Provence. And then he ends up sort of having the rest of his career there. So Edward I makes him a royal tax collector and then this vacancy comes up for the bishopric of Waterford, and Edward puts him up for that and he's the only English hospitaller to actually make it to being a bishop. It happened for hospitallers elsewhere, but not really in England or in Ireland. And so he becomes a bishop. And very soon after, the King decides, oh, and you can also be Treasurer of Ireland. And this seems to be a sort of an idea of, I'm going to get someone from outside the colony to clean the place up and fix all the finances. The English colony in Ireland is riddled with corruption. It's far away enough from the centre that you have all of these powerful figures there who don't have very much oversight and they often get into quite brutal feuds with each other, all these English and Anglo Irish lords. And so the royal administration thinks, well, if we send over some guy from the outside who's also. He's a hospitaller, so he's. He's a monk, he's celibate. It's not like he's got loads of illegitimate children that he's going to give all these nice jobs to. So we'll send him over and hopefully he can clear it up and actually make the colony make some money. Because through most of its existence in medieval period, it's actually just a drainage on the royal finances. And he does quite well. He sets up new mints and he actually manages to make the colony start to turn enough of a profit that it can help support Edward's wars in Wales. And the King's so impressed with this that in 1281, he gives forborn the temporary job of Justicia, which is the chief governor of the colony. And so he is basically there to represent the King. He is in charge of administering justice, he's also in charge of defending the colony. So he's now in charge of justice, defence and finances. So he's got almost the entirety of the government. It's just the chancellorship, where they actually produce all of the documentation, all the writs, all the orders, all the letters that actually keep government going day to day. That's the only bit that's outside of his control for now. And like I said, even though he's a chaplain, doesn't get in the way of him doing some fighting. He joins a couple campaigns against the Irish, he recruits soldiers from Wales to help out and he Ends up having going a little bit beyond what he should be doing in terms of his sort of authority as Justicia. Because in the 1270s and 1280s, the English colonies had a lot of problems with the Irish in Leinster, the two MacMurragh brothers there. So Murtagh, the King of Leinster, and his brother Art had been repeatedly raiding the colony, and they've been getting other Gallic Irish kingdoms to support them. And by at least 1277, the war's over, but they're still seen as a threat. They are put under the king's peace so that they can negotiate. And they're supposed to come over to England in 1281 and they're given a royal safe conduct, should all be fine. And instead, Fulbun just decides, well, actually, I'm just going to put a bounty on their heads. He hires a hitman to just murder the pair, even though this is supposed to be incredibly illegal. They're in the king's peace. They've got a royal safe conduct. They're not outlaws or anything like that. And he just hires a minor knight to murder the two men whilst they are in the port waiting to get a ship to go to England to negotiate with the king. And the hitman then brings the two heads to the bishop and he generously agrees to split the reward with him. And he then holds this retrospective inquiry that proves that the McMurroghs had always been criminals, and so their deaths were entirely legal and it was all okay. And he puts a big fine on any of their supporters. And so even though, you know, he's broken the king's safe conduct, like on the king's behalf, he's broken the king's word. Edward seems quite happy because he then goes, oh, okay, you know, that temporary job is Justicia. Let's make it permanent. And admittedly, the colony doesn't have any trouble with Leinster for a couple of. Well, for about 15 years after this. So he's got almost complete control of the colonial government. He's actually gotten away with murder. He becomes a bit more blatant. He ends up appointing his brother as deputy treasurer. The chancellor dies in 1283, and so he just makes his nephew chancellor. And so he's now got control of whole of government, and he brings in his other nephews into government and other roles as well. He lets everything just fall into sort of disrepair. The chancery, he starts just employing one guy there who apparently is so incompetent that most of the writs that he writes aren't legally valid. So government just stops working and everyone starts getting quite angry with him. Within the colony, lots of the Anglo Irish lords end up fleeing into the countryside so that he can't force them to authenticate false records, and they refuse to bribe him and so on. So eventually enough of this reaches Edward and they start an inquiry into these accusations of corruption. And Forborne still doesn't give up. He threatens witnesses, he tries to get in the way of the investigation. He runs off to Wales, takes most of the treasury with him. When he does eventually come back, the auditors find that he's still withholding lots of money from. From royal accounts. He's skimming off the top of customs duties. If there's any fines given to people he likes, he pardons them. He's taken control of all the wine trade and then he. So he seizes all the imports, then sells it off at an inflated price. And he apparently appoints some poor hospitaller underling as his new deputy Treasurer to replace his brother. And this Hospitaller knows very little Latin, is very incompetent and fullborn, doesn't even pay him properly. He seizes most of his wages for himself and only gives a little bit to his underling. And he's accused of installing a secret trap door over the treasury between his office and the treasury so he can get in, steal things, and no one will know that he's been in there. And he's also accused about this murder of the two McMurray brothers. But the bigger issue seems to be less that he's murdered two guys who were supposed to be under safe conduct and more that he kept the money for himself.

Matt Lewis (34:23)

It sounds like he was doing quite well to a point, in that he was being dodgy, but he was being the right kind of dodgy from Edwards point of view. But then he's just gone and pushed it a bit too far.

Rory McClellan (34:32)

Well, he actually still comes out of it pretty well. So he is removed as Treasurer. He's given a big fine, £13,000, really massive. But the king eventually pardons him of 9,000 of that, so he only has to pay 4,000 and he still stays on as Justicia. And then a year later, another vacancy in the Church comes up and Edward says, oh, you can be the Archbishop of Tuam. So he actually gets a promotion after.

Matt Lewis (35:01)

All of this falling upwards, the classic falling upwards.

Rory McClellan (35:05)

And when he dies, you can just see because there's this inventory of all his goods, you can see how ridiculously wealthy he became after this, you know, 14 years at the top of the Colonies, government. He has an Episcopal palace to him. It's full of gold and silver. He has 11 pairs of silk shoes, he has 10 towels and his kitchen's full of all of these exotic imported things like almonds and dates. And he has 14 horses, two of which are called Rusty. He manages to do quite well. And it's the sort of. They really exemplify the two types of Hospitallers that you get out in the west, that you get people like Jechauncy, where they go out, they serve their king loyally, they become quite important, but they still remember the Order and they still keep going back and serving in the East. And then you have people like Forbin that go, oh, I'm really far away from my boss out here. They're all way over in the Mediterranean and I've got all these lands and all this income coming in. I'm just going to make the most of it.

Matt Lewis (36:16)

Yeah, yeah. Super dodgy. And that move into the role of treasurer is quite a significant one for the hospitalists, isn't it? Begins kind of a long connection of them to the very top of government in England.

Rory McClellan (36:30)

Yes. Because if you think about sort of the main royal positions, then obviously, you know, you've got the Chancellor and then you have some of the household officials, but treasurer is still very high up there and you're in charge of the money, so it really ties them in. And then when you get to Edward I, having more of these conflicts, wars around Britain, he's going into Wales, going into Scotland, you then start to have hospitals taking on more direct military roles. So we don't have anything showing that they definitely took part in the initial invasions in Wales, but they do help put down a Welsh rebellion in 1294. And then when Edward goes into Scotland in 1296, one of the Welsh Hospitallers goes with him. And then when we have the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, both the English Hospitallers and the Templars are on the battlefield on the English side, because this becomes quite a big problem for them, because the Hospitallers lands across Britain, they are all answering to a headquarters in England. Most of the Hospitallers in Britain are English. When it comes to a conflict between England and Scotland or between England and Wales, they generally side with the English. So their headquarters up in Scotland, Torfican Preceptory, was a bit west of Edinburgh. William Wallace ends up sacking it, because then the hospitals have so clearly sided with the English. Even though this is a religious order, these people are supposed to be here to fund the crusades. They're supposed to be above this. They have submitted to Edward, they're backing him. And so Wallace actually occupies Torfiken and holds his only parliament there. And then the battle Falkirk shortly comes after. Wallace is defeated, but the Hospitaller preceptor of Torfican dies in the battle. And then they have to reoccupy their old home afterwards, now that the Scots have been defeated. And this then carries on when you get 100 years war, most of it, they manage to avoid actually going out and fighting in France, I think, because there is, firstly, the English make this repeated case that they have overlordship over Wales and over Scotland, and the Scots as a political force, their position isn't that strong enough to convince much of the rest of Europe that that's wrong. Whilst France is much more secure, it's much more powerful state, and there's so much of the Order's membership are French and the Order's leadership is usually French. It's a bit more difficult for the English Hospitallers to actually go out and fight on the battlefield there. So it only happens a few times.

Matt Lewis (39:40)

A bit too much of a conflict of interest for the Order.

Rory McClellan (39:43)

Yeah.

Matt Lewis (39:43)

Whereas you can get away with Ireland and Scotland and Wales, you can't get away with it in France.

Rory McClellan (39:48)

Yeah. And also generally, they're sending their responsions. Their money they send out to the east goes through France most of the time. And so what we have at the start of 100 Years War, prior Philip de Thames, who's come prior of England, been there for about five years by start of war, and he's immediately sort of under suspicion. The King really doesn't like that he's sending this money abroad, particularly because medieval money is only really worth as much as the actual precious metal that is in the coins. And so if you are exporting coins out of the realm, you're taking silver out of a realm that's really potentially quite bad for the economy and that's really quite concerning for the kings, because that coin probably isn't going to come back. And so once you get to 100 years war, they repeatedly start cutting off the supply of money going from England out to, by this point, Rhodes, where after fall, the holy land. In 1291, Hospitallers have taken over Rhodes and made that their sort of their own independent island state. And so Prior Philip's Thames isn't allowed to send money out anymore, he's instead made an admiral and he's given charge of looking after Southampton, because that's already been raided by the French. He has to raise troops to defend it and he has to manage a lot of the defence of the south coast and then also occasionally raise troops and raise money. But when we're talking about raising troops, these aren't generally Hospitallers themselves. There might be a few of them there, or their leaders might be Hospitallers, but we're talking about raising sometimes hundreds of men at a time. There probably were only about 115 hospitallers. 120 Hospitallers in England most of the time. And so it's more they're raising them from the lands of the Hospitallers. These are sort of hospital attendants that they're raising, rather than actual members of the order who would generally only be leading these forces if they were on the battlefield.

Matt Lewis (42:13)

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Raj (44:32)

Hey, it's Raj and Noah. And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

Noah (44:41)

Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.

Raj (44:43)

But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.

Noah (44:52)

We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.

Raj (45:01)

Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.

Noah (45:08)

And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.

Rory McClellan (45:16)

Love y'. All.

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Matt Lewis (46:02)

Just to take a slight step backwards between kind of all of the stuff that happened with Edward I and the Hundred Years War. There is a crisis for the Templar. So, you know, military order in Europe in 1312 will fall, they'll be suppressed and they will be portrayed as heretics and all of that kind of thing. Are the hospitals in any danger at this point? Are they, you know, could they have fallen into the same category and been sort of rounded up with the Templars and done away with or do they escape any suspicion?

Rory McClellan (46:32)

I think there's definitely a risk if they hadn't started to reinvent themselves and if they hadn't taken roads. So 1291, kicked out of Holy Land. The Templars hospital as Teutonic Knights, they all retreat to Cyprus and at this point they then sort of, well, we've actually lost the mainland, but what do we do? And the Teutonic Knights, they're not doing too badly because they've been fighting in the Baltic, in Prussia and in what's sort of now northern Poland and Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. So they've. They can say, we're still on the front line, we're fighting against pagans, admittedly not against Muslims, but we're still doing stuff, still active. And the hospitalism, the Templars, it's a bit more difficult for them. And the Templars briefly take an island off the coast of Syria, but it's less than a square mile in size and it doesn't have its own water supply. They hold it for two years and they get starved out. So that didn't really work. And because people in the west have seen the massive estates of these orders and they know that there's all this money going out to the east, you do start to get a lot more criticism of, well, but look, they own half the county. They have so much land, all this money's going there. We donate to them. Why did they lose? They can't have lost because they weren't supplied enough or something. It must be because they were, they weren't good enough, they didn't fight hard enough.

Matt Lewis (48:11)

And I guess also if they've lost, why would you carry on giving them money? Why are they still sending that money out there when it's lost and they're not doing that work anymore?

Rory McClellan (48:19)

Yeah. So they start getting blamed for. For it as well. This all builds up and though they do, they keep on proposing new crusades and say, well, we could, this is our plan, we could go and do this. There isn't really much of a movement to it, to actually doing. Doing anything. You know, it's just a couple of coastal raids. It doesn't really work. In 1306, the hospital has decided, well, actually, what we're going to do is we're going to take over roads. It's owned by the Greeks, who are Orthodox Christians, but it's fine, you know, they don't follow the Pope, they're schismatic, so we can still go and do it. And they do actually manage to win the Pope's support for this. They even get him to declare a crusade in 1308 to take Rhodes. And so they start doing this in 1306, 1307, the Templars are arrested in France and then this follows throughout Europe. And this really spurs on the Hospitallers because it makes it clear that if you don't actually have your own independent base, Teutonic Order have their one up in. In Prussia, the Templars didn't have one. They have outposts in all of these other kingdoms controlled by other people. And so they need their own base that's on the front line to show that firstly, they are still doing things, they are still fighting Crusade, but also that it's a safe haven from kings like Philip IV of France, who's just arrested the Templars so he can seize their lands and money. And the Teutonic Order clearly realized this as well, because in 1309, until then, their headquarters had been in Venice. And that year they go, no, no, no, we're going to move it up to Prussia, far away from any. Anyone that can get us. I think if the Hospitallers hadn't established roads, they might have ended up being suppressed like the Templars. But if you've already done that once, I don't know if people would necessarily believe it a second time. And a lot of people didn't actually fully believe it because when they are suppressed, the Pope does say that he doesn't actually find them officially guilty of heresy. He just says that the Order has been so damaged by all the accusations and by the trials that its reputation is not salvageable and so they have to be suppressed. At the very least, the Hospitallers probably would have had what the same has happened to the Order of Saint Lazarus, that they would have slowly demilitarised and then they would have been sort of broken up by country and, you know, one king in one country would have seized the lands, maybe made like his own national, sort of an English Order of Hospitallers. And then they might have just ended up as like an honorific that you could give out to minor members in the royal family, like they do with the Spanish military orders. They would have just sort of faded away and been secularized. But having this place on the front line really saves them and, and lets them go. No, we are still fighting, we're still doing this, we're still fulfilling our original purpose. And also they still have the Hospitalist side of it. They're still running hospitals, almshouses and so on. They're still giving out charity, which was never as big a thing for the Templars, so they could survive a bit more easily, I think.

Matt Lewis (51:39)

Yeah, I guess it makes them more difficult to target when they are still doing something that you can identify as good and valuable work that is outside of being a military order. And I mean, ultimately, by avoiding being suppressed in the same way, they actually benefit, don't they? Because they acquire, as you mentioned before, they acquire an awful lot of the Templars lands.

Rory McClellan (51:58)

Yes. So it's a bit of a poisoned chalice when the order's suppressed by the Pope. 1312, he says, and the Hospitallers are going to inherit the lands. And of course French king's very angry about this because that was not what he was hoping for. And the Hospitallers are probably quite pleased because this is basically the biggest transfer of land in medieval Europe, because we're talking about lands in Spain, Portugal, in Germany, France, in Britain, Ireland, Italy. So much territory is about to be transferred and this is the biggest until you get all of the suppressions of religious houses during the Reformation. But it also means that they've basically put them in the largest sort of legal battle possible, because the Templars have been arrested depending on the country for four or five years. So the local kings have been managing the lands, which means that they've sent their guys over there to take over the protectories, continue farming the place and everything. And in the meantime they've been collecting all the income and they don't really want to lose that. And then you also, in some places you've had like the descendants of the original founders going, actually, we'd quite like that land back, please. My granddad should not have given it away. So they basically spend the next several decades having to fight all of these legal battles, try and persuade the King to actually do what the Pope has said. And of course, the King's given a whole bunch of the lands to his favorites. So at this time, it's Edward ii, the new temple in London. So where the Temple Church is, that's been given over to Hugh Despenser. And so they really are struggling because these are people that the King's very fond of and why would he want to piss them off by just giving it to Hospitallers? And there's also the whole side of now kings aren't really that keen on people like Popes and other outside authorities telling them what to do in their own kingdoms if they can avoid it. And they have to get through all of these legal battles. Some of the Templar lands they, they never get and they just remain outside and. And they're given to new religious houses or they're just hung on to by these different nobles. But most of them, they do acquire, like the. The new temple, they do eventually get. That certainly helped by the fact that, you know, the dispensers have quite a fall from grace and everything with Edward ii, it is a very difficult time for them. That is also very costly because they're having to pay all these lawyers. They're also basically having to bribe a lot of people and they're having to give up some lands in return for getting others. And it then leaves them very short of money for the next several decades. And on top of that, they've just had this big campaign to conquer roads. So they're quite vulnerable at this point financially. They're very overstretched and it's not really the best time for the Order.

Matt Lewis (54:58)

By the time we get to the. Towards the end of the 14th century, too, the peasants revolt in 1381. One of the major political casualties of that is Robert Hales, who is the treasurer and who is also the Prior of the Order of the Knights of the Hospital in England at that point. Have we reached a point here where the Hospitallers are so establishment that they're sort of. You can't separate them from the government, that they are tied to the successes and failures of Richard II's government. It's almost like Robert Hales has come to represent the failures of government by that point.

Rory McClellan (55:33)

Well, with Hales, I think if he'd been in another position, he might have been okay. The problem is that, of course, peasants, lots of causes behind it, but one of them is the Poll Tax. Robert Hales is treasurer, so he's in charge of collecting the Poll Tax. So, you know, if he'd been off being an ambassador somewhere or if he had just stayed being admiral like he'd been in the 1370s, he might have been okay, but he's very unlucky to. Basically been holding the parcel when it explodes. So the Poll Tax is really unpopular, even though there have been previous ones. But this one, it's not graded by income. Everyone's paying the same rate, no matter. Matter how rich you are. And the Poll Tax collectors really antagonize people and are quite aggressive in their collection. And the previous treasurer, in February 1381, he's either fired or maybe he's quite. He quite wisely resigns because he can see what's coming. And Hales is then appointed. He is a veteran hospitaller. He's had important roles out in the East. He's been an ambassador, but also an admiral back in England. And there's no evidence of him having any sort of financial or administrative experience. Specifically, it's more military. So it might just be that no one else wanted the job. But he ends up becoming treasurer. And he also has an enemy in London. So you end up having the outbreaks of rioting in May and early June 1381, and you have bands from Essex and Kent marching on London. And they particularly target religious houses, because another thing they're quite angry about is serfdom and this institution that you owe a certain amount of time working on your lord's land and so on, and the rents and dues you owe to them. And so they target religious houses and burn their archives to destroy records of the service that they owe to their landlords. And the Hospitallers are very heavily targeted for this. A lot of airlines in Cambridgeshire get burned in Essex as well. And there's one Londoner called Thomas Farrington who's particularly angry at the hospital, isn't at Hales specifically. He claims that Hales had seized some of his houses and had denied him his rightful inheritance. And Farringdon's from quite a well established London family of goldsmiths. The family has included a Lord Mayor of London and an mp. So he's probably from a higher sort of social background than this sort of of country knight that's not really from that high up in society, because most of the Hospitallers are from like the lower knightly class. And Farringdon gathers a mob, burns the Hospitallers lands in Essex. He gets into London, he burns the new temple, which had just passed two Hospitallers, and he makes sure to target a lot of their records there. He goes and marches on Clerkenwell, the new temple. He burns the Savoy Palace, Glen, Clerkenwell Priory. This is all in one day for him. And they loot and kill the Hospitaller's men there and some Flemish immigrants who had hid out in the church. And then afterwards, that night, he sits with his comrades and he writes down a hit list of all the royal officials that he wants to target. He then goes and burns for Hospitaller Manor the following day at Highbury, and then marches to Mile End where all the rebels are gathering. And on the way he meets Richard ii, who has ridden out of the Tower to try and negotiate with the rebels. And he grabs the King's bridle of his horse and insists that he have justice done and that on the Priam, that otherwise he will do justice himself on this false traitor. The priority and Richard apparently says that, you know, I will sort it. But Farringdon clearly doesn't believe him because he lets the King ride on and then he goes, well, King's out of the Tower, rest of the government's hiding in the Tower. Let's all go to the Tower with my mob. And the Tower of London does have this big reputation as a scary fortress and a castle. It's not actually a very good prison and it's not actually very good at keeping people out as well as keeping people in. So they turn up and they just persuade the garrison to lower the drawbridge and the mob is let into the castle. They break into the White Tower, where Prior Hailes is hiding, along with Archbishop Sudbury, who's the Chancellor. So, you know, Chancellor and treasurer, two of the most important figures in government. Queen Mother's there as well. They're in St. John's Chapel in. In the Tower. And clearly Sudbury and Hailes know that the end is coming because they've been praying, given confession, they're saying the listening. They know this is not going to end well for them. And they're both dragged out of the Tower along with a couple of other unfortunates, and they are led out to Tower Hill. A log is put down and several strokes of the axe are needed to behead Sudbury and Hales. And the heads of them and two others are put on spikes on the gate of London Bridge, what you traditionally do with the heads of traitors. And Farringdon then marches back into the city and the authorities soon end up capturing him, trying to knock down someone's house, probably another person who was on his hit list. And the revolt is eventually put down by Richard. He persuades them to disperse and just goes back on his promise. And then ends up setting in all of these inquiries and trials of leading figures in the revolt. And Farringdon is imprisoned. And there is a real sort of condemnation by the government of what's been done to the Hospitallers. A lot of the early pardons say we can excuse what you did, you're pardoned as long as you weren't a ringleader and you weren't involved in the murder of Sudbury or Hales, or burning the Hospitaller's headquarters at Clerkenwell Priory, or burning the Savoy palace and a few other incidents. So it's listed there as. These are the explicit things that we can't actually ignore. And somehow Farringdon survives. He stays in prison for about two years and then he is given a royal pardon. They do not execute him for this. And it's really, really odd. It might be that his claims against Hales were genuine or it might be that governments are a bit worried about, well, if we, if we execute the guy who executed Hales and everyone hated Hales, that might reignite things. So we might not want to risk that. But even the Hospitallers don't seem to complain because you would have thought that the Hospitaller leadership, or maybe his brethren in England would say, you know, this guy murdered one of us, he needs to be executed in return. But there's no demand for an investigation. The closest that happens is that Hospitallers are quite concerned about all of the chalices and so on. All of the important items that are used for administering the sacrament, they were stolen from the church in Clerkenwell Priory. So they make sure to get those back and they make sure to note down that when it was given back and to record it in their records. But there's nothing about Hales, so it might be that he wasn't very popular. It may also be that the leadership sort of took the view of, well, you know, this was in your capacity as a servant and the subject of the King and you played with fire and you got burnt. It's not really our fault. And he clearly wasn't very liked, at least by his employees. Because among the people who end up attacking the hospital and manors at Highbury and Clerkenwell are three of Hales own servants, including his groom. So presumably someone he's got a fairly close sort of relationship with. And his groom and one of the other servants then actually join the mob that drag Hales out of the Tower and they're present at his execution. So he's clearly not very well liked.

Matt Lewis (64:01)

Yeah, I guess it speaks as well to that kind of blurring of the line between being a religious figure and being a political figure. And this is maybe a sense of where that goes a little bit too far into the realm of politics and the religious order are willing to kind of cut him loose because his downfall is more related to politics than it is to religion. And he sort of blurred that line a bit too far and got caught up.

Rory McClellan (64:28)

Yeah. Which then happens even more when it gets towards roses and when you get to sort of the. The second war of sort of 1469 through to what, 70. 1471, when Edward IV gets deposed, Henry VI gets put back on the throne by the Earl of Warwick. In that new government, the readaption government of Henry vi, the Hospital of Prior John Langstruther is appointed treasurer. He is an ally of Warwick. He helped support Warwick's initial attempt to sort of launch a coup against Edward and exert control over him in the 1460s. Langstruther has a good reason to have a grudge against Edward iv, because when his predecessor as prior died, Edward iv, he's probably married for Elizabeth Woodville. He's got this very big family of in laws that he wants to give nice jobs to. And so he tries to make one of his brothers in law hospital a prior, and the Hospitallers are not having that. But it does take, I think, about a year until Edward finally accepts Langstruther as prior, as he's the one who's actually been elected by the Hospitallers rather than this outsider who has nothing to do with them. So he's got a bit of a grudge against him. So he joins with Warwick's Rebellion and he ends up becoming Treasurer. So he's right there at the center of government. He's one of the few lords that when Henry VI has been released from the Tower from his imprisonment there, Langstruther joins Warwick and George, Duke of Clarence, to actually go and formally receive the restored King. So he's really right there at the centre. He is then sent abroad to go and bring back the Queen of Henry VI and his son, Edward of Westminster, the Lancastrian Prince of Wales. And he's supposed to escort them back into England. Unfortunately for him, he gets delayed by bad weather. Edward IV does not. He is turned back up in England with his own army, is marching through the country and. And by the time that Langstruther lands in the west country with the Queen and with the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, the Earl of Warwick is dead, he's been killed by Edward iv. George, Duke of Clarence has switched sides back to supporting Edward and Henry VI has been captured again. It's all falling apart. And so you've got Paul Langstruther is there, he's realised he's really chosen the wrong side in this. And he is in joint command of the center of the Lancastrian army when Edward IV brings them to battle at the Battle of Tewkesbury. And he's got joint command with the young Edward of Westminster, the Prince of Wales. Considering we know Langstruther has had quite a good career of military service out in the east, it's probably more that Langstruther is actually in charge and is sort of, you know, making very firm advice to the Prince about what to do. But clearly it isn't actually enough. The Lancastrians are defeated, Langstruther flees into Tewkesbury Abbey. And he would have actually been killed then and there by this very angry Edward IV and his men who've stormed into the abbey to find all of the escapees. But there is a priest who comes out and is still holding the sacrament from performing Mass and basically shames them into not spilling blood in the abbey. And so instead they all get dragged out and a scaffold is set up in the centre of Tewkesbury and they're executed there. And again, there's no response from the order, there's no condemnation. This does very much seem to be them going well, you played at high politics and you lost. That's your own fault. And we're not going to get involved in this.

Raj (68:45)

Hey, it's Raj and Noah. And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

Noah (68:54)

Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.

Raj (68:56)

But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions or even dreaming.

Noah (69:05)

We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right, so the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.

Raj (69:14)

Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.

Noah (69:21)

And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.

Rory McClellan (69:29)

Love y'. All.

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Matt Lewis (70:25)

It seems like in a lot of these repeated cases, there's very little effort by the hospitallers to stand aside from politics. They're Very willing to pick a side and kind of throw their lot in with one side. In any given conflict, people will know I'm slightly obsessed with Richard III and the princes in the Tower, and two of the kind of priors of the Knights Hospital will get involved in the two pretenders who oppose Henry VII later on supporting them against Henry vii. So again, they're throwing their lot in with rebellion. They're not making an effort to say, you know, we're. We're a serious religious order, we're above politics. They are saying, bang, we're on that side.

Rory McClellan (71:03)

Yeah, they get really tied into it. And it doesn't help that the order does start to secularize a bit in the late medieval periods. It's not fully. It's not as much as has been said in the past, they do still have that quite strong religious aspect. And at least officially, they're not supposed to have kids or anything like that. There are a few of them start to. But they do start to secularize a little bit. So it's things like, initially, when they start appearing in parliament in 1300s, they sit with the clergy, but then once you get into later on into 1400s, 1500s, they actually start sitting with the barons and they're treated as one of the more senior barons. And you get more instances where the local Knightley family has put their son, one of their sons, into the Hospitallers and he'll then rent out all of the orders land in the county to them at a cut rate and things like that. We find more evidence of them going hawking and hunting and so on, and they start to take on. They become more of the knight side of things than the monk side. And that really plays in at sort of the higher level of politics. And yes, they both get involved with both Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, and one of them even ends up entertaining an idea of assassinating Henry VII as well. So they're really getting involved in these things that you look at and go, yeah, you're not actually supposed to be here to do this stuff.

Matt Lewis (72:35)

Yeah. And I guess once we get beyond the medieval period, then it feels like that secularization might have been something that could have protected them at something like the dissolution of the monasteries, because they're not overt, not. Not a very religious order anymore, if that's a. Not a weird way of phrasing it. How long do the Hospitallers end up staying in England?

Rory McClellan (72:55)

So they are suppressed by Henry VIII in 1540, which is actually quite late, because, of course, the dissolution really starts in 1536. And so they survive multiple rounds of suppression. He lets them last really quite a long time because Henry has this very ambivalent relationship with the Hospitallers. On the one hand, he really likes them because it's all, oh, they're off fighting Crusade and they're chivalrous knights and they had this amazingly valiant but failed defensive roads in 1522. And I heard all the stories about it, and it was so amazing, I thought, oh, I'm going to give them some cannon to help them retake the island, and so on. And he's even been declared the official Protector of the order in 1511 as a sort of way to keep him on side. So he really likes that side of them. But also they ultimately answer to the Pope. And so he's now got this bunch of people in his kingdom who ultimately support the Pope, and he really doesn't like that. And he's denounced the Pope and he's tried to cut ties with them. And yet these guys are still taking money out of his kingdom, money that could be quite useful here. Taking useful military commanders, particularly by this point, the Hospitallers are very known for their skill at naval combat. These guys could be really useful admirals to him. And they're going off and they're fighting on Malta, where they've now moved to after losing Rhodes. And so he's not that happy about this, but he gives them quite a lot of leeway for quite a while. He actually lets them continue to go around selling indulgences as long as they don't emphasize the authority of the Pope or anything like that for a few years after they're not supposed to sell indulgences anymore, and it's supposed to have been banned. And he does eventually come to a settlement with them in 1537, well into into the dissolution, saying that, yeah, no, you can still answer to Grandmaster. I get veto over who your new prior is going to be. I get some of the first income every time a preceptor dies. I get the first year of the new preceptor's income and so on. But you can still go out there, it's okay. You can still send money out to Malta. It only really sort of falls apart when you have a very xenophobic and rather unstable English hospitaller on. On Malta called Clement west, who is just basically writing poison pen letters back to both to Henry VIII and to Thomas Cromwell, saying, yeah, they don't believe in your supremacy over the Church. I think it's all rubbish. They think that Something bad is going to happen to you because God has turned against you. And then a couple of hospitals also get involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace, or are accused of being involved. And so at that point, it just becomes, well, Henry seems to think, I can't trust these guys. They're skirting quite close to the line by still having such close ties to the Pope. And so he then suppresses them. He ends up seizing all their lands. He gives out very big pensions to the surviving hospitallers, he gives £1,000 a year to the last Prior of England, but the Prior dies of grief the day of the Order's suppression, so that doesn't actually come to anything. And then several of them end up staying on in the country. They become royal admirals and commanders or ambassadors, so they still end up sort of remaining there. And there continues being this suggestion that pops up every now and then among the Tudor kings and then under the Stuarts that, oh, maybe we should bring the Hospitallers back. But it never comes to anything and they just sort of fade away. They survive up in Scotland and until 1564, but then after that, that's basically the end of any sort of real hospital activity in Britain.

Matt Lewis (77:01)

It sounds a bit like they blew an opportunity under Henry VII by not quite playing the game as they might have done. And in terms of the broader order, what happens to the Knights Hospitaller, you know, does the Order come to an end eventually? They've lost Rhodes, moved to Malta. What happens to them then?

Rory McClellan (77:17)

They have a bit of a revival, at least in their reputation in 1565, because when they init get to Malta, they don't really like it. They. They think it's just a temporary stopping place. There's no trees there, there's not much of a water supply there. It's not very developed at the time, and they're not that happy about it. They then get besieged by the Ottoman Turks in 1565. Turks have already kicked them off roads. They think now this is a final chance to really get rid of this quite small but quite irritating thorn in their side that they've had for a couple of centuries by this point point. And it's a massive Ottoman army and it's something like 7,000 or so defenders, only a few of whom are Hospitallers. Lots of them are locals, mercenaries and so on. And over the course of months of siege, they managed to defeat the Ottomans and drive them off. And it becomes this massive success across Europe. Even in England, you have church bells rung to celebrate the defeat of the Ottomans and So this really revives their reputation and they have this sort of chivalric image about them. And so for the following couple of centuries, they remain on Malta. They become this sort of outpost against Barbary Corsairs. They have multiple naval campaigns fighting against Muslim piracy there, whilst also doing a whole lot of their own piracy at the same time time. And they stay there until 1798, where they by that point have a real problem has been the revolution in France. Most of the Order's leadership are still French. Lots of the Order are French. Napoleon has turned up on their doorstep and the French Knights are very torn and they can't quite bring themselves to actually fight most of them against Napoleon. And so they surrender and he seizes the island. And the Order goes on a bit of a wonder around Europe, but it is still there today. There's still the Catholic Successor Order. The Sovereign and Military Order of Malta is still around. It has one room in a fort on Malta and one plaza and a couple of buildings in Rome. And it still claims sort of sovereign status. It can issue passports, has its own stamps, that sort of thing, and observer status at un and there are a couple of other Protestant Successor Orders. If you add them and the Sovereign Order together, they still do so much charity work that they are second only to the Red Cross and Oxfam. So they basically returned to their original hospitaller non military role. They still call themselves Knights, but they are doing what's there sort of institutional ancestors their predecessors did at that little hospital in Jerusalem in the 1070s.

Matt Lewis (80:17)

That's fascinating and kind of comes full circle from the beginning of the story to the end. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Rory, and talking us through the story of the Knights Hospital. It's been great to meet some of the key members of the Order and hear about their stories too. Thank you very, very much for sharing all of that with us.

Rory McClellan (80:34)

Thank you.

Matt Lewis (80:36)

Rory's book Warrior Monks is out now. If you'd like to delve deeper into the story of the Hospitallers, you can find episodes about the Templars in our back catalogue. And there's a fantastic episode with Steve Tibble about crusader criminals in there too. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please come back to join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free. Head to historyhit.com subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Mystery Hit.

Raj (81:49)

Hey, it's Raj and Noah. And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

Noah (81:57)

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Raj (81:59)

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Noah (82:08)

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Raj (82:17)

Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, where everybody you get your podcasts.

Noah (82:25)

And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.

Rory McClellan (82:33)

Love y'. All.

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