In the turbulent period of the Crusades, a number of medieval religious orders combined their contemplative role with that of the knight, creating formidable fighting forces of warrior monks who also performed acts of charity and hospitality for pilgrims in the Holy Land. Perhaps the most famous of the military orders was that of the Knights Templar, but they were not operating alone. There were the Knights of St Lazarus, whose communities often included hospitals for those suffering from leprosy, and the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem – ‘Knights Hospitaller’, for short – whose main purpose was to care for poor, sick, and injured pilgrims. For noblemen who wanted the social cachet of visibly supporting the Crusades without risking their own life or limbs, a popular way to do so was to donate lands to one of these orders, so that they could build fundraising and administrative centres to help further their work abroad.
While the Templars were disbanded by Pope Gregory V in 1312, the Hospitallers continued to flourish in England and Wales (often taking over abandoned Templar sites) until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. There was an attempt to refound the order during the Catholic Mary I’s short reign (1553-1558), but that was thwarted by the succession of her Protestant sister Elizabeth I. Thereafter, the Hospitallers were a spent force within these shores, though they maintained a power base in Malta until the island was captured by Napoleon in 1798. This Maltese connection can still be seen in one of the order’s more enduring legacies: the eight-pointed Maltese cross remains the emblem of the St John Ambulance, an organisation descended from the traditions of the Hospitallers (hence their leading figures are called ‘priors’), which continues to provide voluntary medical care to those in need.
Communities founded by the military orders ranged from small farmsteads to regional administrative centres known as ‘preceptories’. Records of 1338 attest that, by this date, there were 36 Hospitaller preceptories in England and Wales; all but three were in rural settings, and today there are just a dozen or so sites where any trace of them can be seen. Although some of these have been explored non-invasively through geophysical survey, just one has been excavated in any detail – and that more than 60 years ago, at South Witham in Lincolnshire (see box on p.22). It was with the hope of adding to this picture that Time Team recently carried out an investigation in the grounds of Halston Hall in Shropshire.
China’s first state