The Monks of War

by Desmond Seward

  The Johanniterorden has a flourishing commandery in Austria, and a sub-commandery in Canada. There are autonomous Johanniter commanderies in Finland, Switzerland, Hungary and France.

  The Order's full title is Die Bailey Brandenburg des ritterlichen Ordens St Johannis vom Spital zu Jerusalem.

  (For an account of its members' heroic contribution to the plot against Adolf Hitler, see Wilhelm-Karl Prinz von Preussen and Bernt Baron Freytag von Loringhoven, Johanniter und der 20 Juli 1944, Nieder-Weisel, 1985/1989.)

  APPENDIX 4

  THE VENERABLE ORDER OF ST JOHN

  The Venerable Order of St John was founded in 1888 as an order of the British Crown. Its Sovereign is the Monarch, its Grand Prior the Duke of Gloucester, while it has a membership strong in Lord Lieutenants and Chief Constables. But though it occupies the old priory of the Knights of Malta at Clerkenwell and bears their eight-pointed cross as its insignia, it has no historical continuity whatever from the Order of Malta or the medieval Hospitallers. Far from being 'the oldest order of chivalry in the world', it is one of the newest.

  Its early history is shrouded in obscurity. In The Venerable Order of St John in the British Realm, published at Clerkenwell in 1967, the late Sir Harry Luke – a senior bailiff – provided the fullest account which has yet appeared. He writes:

  The activities of the Grand Priory of England were temporarily dislocated in 1540 when King Henry VIII, by an Act of his amenable Parliament, sequestrated its properties at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. What remained of the properties was restored to the Grand Priory in 1557 but was re-appropriated by the Crown under Queen Elizabeth I in 1559. Since Queen Mary's Letters Patent were never revoked, and Queen Elizabeth never formally dissolved the Order in England, the Grand Priory is properly to be regarded as having remained dormant until it was resuscitated in 1831, within the framework of the Church of England, on the initiative of a representative body of Knights of the SMOM known as the Capitular Commission. The continuity is in fact expressly defined in paragraph 1 of the Schedule to the Charter of Queen Victoria in the following terms: 'the Grand Priory of England is the Head of the Sixth or English Language of the Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem'.

  He continues:

  The French body termed the 'Capitular Commission' consisted mainly of members of the three French tongues of Provence, Auvergne and France who for some years after the Napoleonic Wars represented the only effective force within the Sovereign Order, that Order which had not only lost its territorial possessions of the Maltese islands but had otherwise been despoiled and dispersed by the French Revolution and its aftermath.

  The Grand Priory of England thus revived, and perforce separated from the original stem, became a British Order of Chivalry still dedicated to its original humanitarian objects, when Queen Victoria granted it her Royal Charter in 1888.

  In a summarized and slightly modified account which Sir Harry contributed to the 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannica, he says of the alleged revival, 'The Sovereign Military Order at Rome at first accepted the step, then repudiated it in 1858.'

  His account is based on serious misconceptions, though apparently it is still the Venerable Order's official version of its origins. For a more accurate picture, it is necessary to know the Order of Malta's history during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and especially that of the 'Capitular Commission'.

  The 'Commission of the French Langues' was certainly not 'the only effective force within the Sovereign Order'. Since the death of Grand Master Tommasi in 1805 it had been ruled by Lieutenant Masters, first from Catania in Sicily and then from Ferrara. (The Lieutenancy did not establish its seat at Rome until 1834.) The Order was still recognized as sovereign by the Holy See and by the Austrian Empire, whose all-powerful Chancellor, Prince Metternich, was a bailiff of the Order.

  The French Commission was set up in 1814 to recover the Order's French estates, confiscated during the Revolution. In December of that year Louis XVIII approved legislation permitting the return to the Knights of property (mainly woodland) valued at 29 million francs, as soon as the Order acquired a territory which constituted an independent state. However, the Congress of Vienna declined to restore Malta to the Knights, while Metternich's offer of Elba was unacceptable since it entailed giving the Austrian Emperor the right to nominate a Grand Master. The legislation therefore remained in abeyance. Even so, the French government instructed the Chancellery of the Legion of Honour (which regulated orders and decorations in France) to grant official recognition to new Knights created by the Order.

  In 1821 the Commission's secretary, the Commander Jean-Louis de Dienne from the former Langue of Auvergne, decided to retire on account of his great age. As his successor he nominated a mysterious figure whom Dienne (according to his niece) 'loved more than his own self, an adventurer of a type familiar enough in today's false orders of St John. This was the self-styled 'Marquis de Sainte-Croix-Molay', alias 'Duc de Santo-Germanie' or 'Sante Germiny', titles which do not appear in any armorial of the French nobility. Nor is he listed in the register at the Grand Magistery. His real name is still unknown. Although he may have received a cross from his Commission, it is unlikely that he was ever recognized as a Knight of Malta by the Lieutenancy, which referred to him in correspondence as 'the so-called [soidisant] Marquis de Sainte-Croix-Molay'. Living under an assumed name, he could not produce evidence of his own identity, let alone furnish noble proofs.

  The Commission had been supporting itself on passage money, fees charged for admission to the Order. French Knights (of whom about 700 were admitted between 1814 and 1825) had to pay 6,000 gold francs, donats 4,000. In consequence it was able to install itself in a resplendent 'Hôtel de la Chancellerie' at Paris. Soon Molay, promoted from Secretary to Chancellor, was planning to sell several thousand more crosses.

  In 1823 Molay proposed that the Order of Malta should send a naval expedition to reconquer Rhodes, led by himself in the capacity of General of the Galleys; and he began negotiating with the Greeks. He seems to have interested the Comte de Villèle, the French Prime Minister, later claiming that the French government had offered him 'two ships of the line, two frigates, 500 half-pay officers, ammunition from Toulon and all sorts of assistance'. In order to finance the expedition, Molay and his associates (notably the 'Chevalier' Philippe Chastellain and a Mr Donald Currie) attempted to raise a loan of £640,000 on the London money-market through the bankers Hullet Bros. They also had a scheme for recruiting 4,000 new Knights of Malta and, without bothering to obtain the Lieutenancy's permission, set up a 'Priory of the Morea' for Greek Orthodox Knights, who were each to be charged 500 Venetian gold sequins for their knighthoods. (Among the few Greeks enlisted was 'Petros Bey, Prince of the Maniots'.)

  Since it would destabilize the Ottoman Empire still further, the project was calculated to infuriate Prince Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor. Only in the Habsburg lands did the Order of Malta continue to flourish, retaining all its ancient Bohemian and Austrian commanderies, its palaces at Prague and Vienna. Lieutenant Master Busca dared not antagonize Metternich. Through the Order's chargé d'affaires at Vienna, he instructed the Austrian Chancellor's confidential bankers, Messrs Rothschild, to inform the London newspapers that the loan was unsound and thus effectively killed the scheme.

  Some French historians take Molay's scheme seriously, but it bore no relation to reality. Whatever the case might have been during the Middle Ages, in the 1820s the Orthodox Greeks of Rhodes would scarcely have welcomed full-scale colonization by Catholic Frenchmen. The Vice-Chancellor Vella had good reason to write from Catania in March 1824 to the chargé d'affaires at Vienna that 'Le plan de guerre est ridicule, il ne manque rien, même pas un Don Quixote, Ste Croix [Molay] . . .'

  Vella noted in the same letter that the French Commission had disowned both the loan and the negotiations with the Greeks – 'elle rejette le crime sur le soi-disant Marquis de Ste Croix'. Forced to resign, Molay had complained in a wildly
unbalanced letter to the Lieutenancy of 'anarchy and sedition' in both Sicily and France. He also complained that the Commission was making Knights and Dames – the latter being given the title of Countess – 'without any of the accustomed formalities'. (He seems to imply that it was dispensing with noble proofs, though he can scarcely have been in a position to provide proofs of his own.) He prophesied that soon the Commission would consist only of 'legal advisers and married Knights'.

  Busca ordered his envoy at Paris, the Bailiff Baron de Ferrette, to send a dossier on the Commission's activities to the French Foreign Minister and to ask him to stop them. The response was a royal decree in April 1824, announcing that henceforward the Chancellery of the Legion of Honour would recognize as Knights of Malta only those who had entered the Order in the time of the Grand Masters. However, in July the French government formally recognized the Lieutenancy, and the Chancellery agreed to acknowledge as Knights those who could produce diplomas issued from Catania; it refused to accept 'illegal nominations made by a pretended commission which sits at Paris'. M. de Villèle was offered and accepted the Grand Cross of Devotion.

  Busca forbade the Commission to reassemble, or to reconstitute itself under any other name. Ignoring this explicit prohibition, the Commission reappeared early in 1826 as a 'Council', its members including Dienne, with Molay as Grand Chancellor. In April it convened a 'Chapter General' at Paris, where there was wild talk of nominating another Lieutenant Master in place of Busca but, since the Council had no legal existence, it could do nothing. (One historian, Cecil Torr, says that the meeting was broken up by the police.) Even so, it continued to sell admission to the Order, sending Busca letters in which it begged him to authorize these 'knighthoods' – letters which received no reply.

  However, Molay refused to abandon his Rhodian scheme, for the climate of international politics looked more promising despite Prince Metternich's opposition. In 1826 the British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, proposed that France, Russia and England should help the Greeks to win their independence, and in July 1827 the three governments signed a treaty with a secret clause in which they promised to use their navies jointly against the Turkish fleet.

  In order to attract British support, Molay hit upon the idea of reviving the Grand Priory of England 'in Protestant form', the blueprint being presumably his stillborn 'Priory of the Morea' with its Orthodox brethren. His principal agent across the Channel was Mr Donald Currie, 'Colonial and General Outfitter of Regent Street, London', who had played a key role in trying to raise the loan. In 1826–7 a group of interested Englishmen visited Paris, where they were apparently introduced to Molay by a genuine Knight of Malta, Denis O'Sullivan, who had entered the Langue of France in 1783. The only one of these Englishmen whose name has survived is the Reverend Sir Robert Peat, absentee vicar of New Brentford in Middlesex.

  Unlike the Marquis de Sainte-Croix-Molay and the Chevalier O'Sullivan, we know a good deal about Sir Robert Peat. Born in about 1775 in County Durham, he was the son of a watchmaker and silversmith in the Hamsterley area, and had been a 'Ten Year Man' at Trinity College, Cambridge – which meant acquiring a degree for money without the irksome obligation of having to read for it. He had served as a military chaplain during the Peninsular War and, although never presented to him, had been appointed 'chaplain extraordinary' to the Prince Regent. There were over 100 such chaplains but few, if any, of the others can have received the accolade as had Sir Robert, who derived his title from his questionable possession of the Polish Order of St Stanislas. A small, dandified man, he had some surprisingly unclerical ways. One source says that he was a heavy gambler, while he was undoubtedly a fortune-hunter. According to his obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1837, he had married and abandoned a very rich lady a quarter of a century older than himself. This was the grotesque and half-crazy Miss Jane Smith of Herrington House, County Durham, who had settled £1,000 a year on him before their wedding in 1815.

  Why Peat wanted to be Grand Prior of England is unknown, though obviously he was obsessed with orders of chivalry. (Someone who met him in about 1815 noticed that he was wearing three gold orders on his coat.) What is perfectly clear, however, is that he was convinced that the Council of the Three Langues had full authority to revive the Grand Priory.

  'Articles of convention' were drawn up, dated 11 June 1826, and 24 August and 15 October 1827, authorizing the 'revival'. A similar document was produced to authorize a new loan on the London money-market, perhaps the main reason for 'reviving' the Grand Priory. Elegantly printed on the finest paper, with beautifully embossed seals, their wording is a masterpiece of equivocation:

  We, Bailiffs, Grand Priors and Commanders composing the Venerable Council Ordinary of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, representing the Langues of Provence, of Auvergne and of France, the Provincial Chapters and the Grand Priories, statutorily constituted under the Protection and Spiritual Authority of Our Lord His Holiness Pope Pius VII, in virtue of the Pontifical Bull of 10 August 1814, the Authorisation of the Lieutenant of the Magistracy and the Sovereign decisions of the Great and Sacred Council sitting at the headquarters [chef-lieu] at Catania of 9 October in the same year, to our Venerable Brethren, Greetings in Jesus Christ. Forasmuch as that from this we have the right and the power . . .

  The 'bull' of 1814 had been a brief (Papal letter) and not a bull, bestowing no more than a formal blessing, while, as has been seen, the Lieutenant Master and the Sacred Council had withdrawn their authorization. But Peat and his friends were completely taken in by the articles of convention, which would one day be seen as the title deeds of the 'Grand Priory of England in Protestant Form'. London bankers were less trusting, and the loan failed to materialize; no doubt Messrs Rothschild had dispelled any illusions. There was no reconquest of Rhodes, and for three years nothing more was heard of the revival.

  In 1830 Molay came up with a fresh plan. Algiers was about to be conquered by the French – could it not be given to the Order of Malta as a colony? The Papal Nuncio at Paris, Lambruschini (a member of the Order), was enthusiastic until told by the French Prime Minister, the Prince de Polignac, that Algiers was going to need a garrison of 20,000 troops. Anxious for British support, Molay announced that some English gentlemen were urging their own Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, to revive the Grand Priory, but no evidence has been found to support this statement. The Algerian plan ended abruptly with the July Revolution, since the new Orléanist regime had no time for Knights of Malta.

  Now that the market had finally dried up in France, Molay was understandably eager to proceed with the revival of the Grand Priory. At London on 31 January 1831 Molay's 'delegate', M. Philippe Chastellain (a future drawing-master at Edinburgh and inmate of a debtors' prison), solemnly invested Sir Robert as 'Grand Prior of England'. Money changed hands, though the amount is not known. Confusingly, during the 1830s another group in Britain, headed by a 'Count Mortara' and possibly set up by the enterprising M. Chastellain, called itself the 'Grand Priory of England'. There was also a group which claimed to be the Anglo-Bavarian Langue though the real Anglo-Bavarian Langue had ceased to exist in 1806.

  Early historians of the Venerable Order state that Peat took an oath of office in the King's Bench on 24 February 1834, swearing to keep and obey the statutes of the Sovereign Order, and to 'govern the Sixth Language as Prior thereof under the provision of the statute of the 4th and 5th Philip and Mary'. A later, Protestant, historian, Cecil Torr, commented: 'By the statutes of the Order (which he promised to keep and obey) he was neither qualified for appointment nor appointed by the proper authority . . . There is no statute [Act of Parliament] of 4 & 5 Philip and Mary relating to the Order, only Letters Patent; and these make no provision for the government of the Language or the Priory. So he only bound himself to discharge the duties of an impossible office under an imaginary statute.' As for the Venerable Order's claim that the oath was recorded, 'It would certainly be on the record, if it was sworn in the Kin
g's Bench, as 9 George IV, cap 17, was then in force,' Torr observes, writing in 1921. 'I had the record searched: it was not there.' Even so, the Langue's members were convinced that Peat had taken such an oath. Yet the Letters Patent merely allowed the Order to act as a corporation in England so that it could sue, hold land and have a common seal. If Peat really did take the oath, it was, as Torr says, a meaningless gesture.

  Until our own day, the 'revival' has been widely accepted. So respected a historian of the Knights of Malta as Roderick Cavaliero could write in 1960 (in The Last of the Crusaders) that 'A number of Roman Catholic gentry established an English Priory under Sir Robert Peat who became Prior in 1831, but when it was not accepted in Rome financial stringency forced it to recruit Protestants.' Peat has even been styled '55th Grand Prior'. Such misconceptions have arisen in the absence of any proper account of the 'revival'.

  Peat's first four 'Knights' were certainly not Roman Catholics. They were Lord Dunboyne, an impoverished Irish peer living at Calais; 'Sir' John Phillipart, a government clerk with a Swedish Order; 'Sir' James Lawrence, a journalist who claimed to have become a Knight of Malta in 1789 as a boy during his holidays from Eton; and Admiral Sir William Johnstone Hope, who had been made a Knight of Malta by the Emperor Paul of Russia. Later, however, one or two Catholics would be recruited by the Langue.