Series 4 > Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Scotland

INTRODUCTION
I. HISTORY OF THE MILITARY ORDERS IN SCOTLAND,
II28-I564
the knights of the Temple and of the Hospital - collectively
known as ‘the military orders’ - were originally founded in con¬
nection with the crusades, and no account of their activities in
Scotland or elsewhere would be complete without some discussion
of their raison d’etre. Indeed, into the sixteenth century the Hospital¬
lers in Scotland retained a link with the central organs of the order
at Rhodes and Malta at a time when many other religious houses in
Scotland had lost any relationship with their original central
authority. The military orders were cosmopolitan and international,
and this could sometimes lead to a conflict of loyalties, especially as
it appears that the orders in Scotland were under a measure of
control from England, and houses of the orders were often run by
English brothers as part of an English priory. As late as 1513 James
iv complained to the master of Rhodes that appointments to
Scottish preceptories were made by the English turcopolier and
that Scottish brothers of the order must look to the prior of England
as lord and protector.1 This complex division of loyalty could lead
to tension at such times as the Great Schism,2 or periods of war
between England and Scotland.3 This tension existed necessarily
because of the unique character of the military orders, and the fact
that they never completely lost the cosmopolitan purpose for which
they were founded.
1 James IV Letters, 296-7
2 For an alternative view, cf. C. L. Tipton, ‘The English and Scottish Hospitallers
during the Great Schism’, Catholic Historical Review, lii (1966), 240-5
8 In 1338 the Priory of England could extract no revenue from Scotland because of
continuous war and destruction; The Knights Hospitallers in England: the Report oj
Prior Philip de Thame, (Camden Soc., 1857) 129, 201