Series 4 > Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Scotland

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THE KNIGHTS OF ST JOHN
up 400 scuta in all [sic].1 Leighton may have been able to procure
terms so favourable to himself because he was present in person at
the assembly in Avignon.2
To suggest that the Great Schism did not divide Scotland from
the English langue is only partially correct. Binning and Goodwin
retained their loyalty to Rhodes throughout, though this must have
been very difficult during the last decade of the Schism (1408-1418),
under pressure from Leighton and Benedict xm. Goodwin,
however, shared Leighton’s anxiety to preserve the independence
of the Scottish house from England and at the chapter general of
1420 asserted that the preceptory of Scotland was not subject to the
priory of England; but he failed to appear to prove his case, was
declared contumacious, and in 1422 the superiority of England was
confirmed.3 A petition of the English prior, brother William Hulles,
submitted some years later, clearly states that during the Great
Schism, now healed, England and Scotland were divided in
allegiance, and the preceptory of the order in Scotland was separated
from the Priory and held for a time by Leighton; now Hulles (in
1426) requested that the pope should reintegrate Scotland into the
priory, of which it was a member before the Schism, and if by
chance it was not a member but otherwise dependent on the priory,
that he would grant it to him in commendatn.* Perhaps Goodwin
was attempting to revive his assertions made in 1420. Anyway, in
view of all this, the thesis that Scotland remained within the priory
of England all through the Schism is impossible to sustain.
iv. The Hospitallers in Scotland after 1418
The history of the Hospitallers in Scotland towards the close of
the middle ages is more straightforward than that of the fourteenth
century; there were fewer of the upheavals of war, schism and
plague in Europe generally, and in Scotland as elsewhere there was
a return to relatively greater stability and prosperity.5 Despite the
1 Malta Cod., 342, f. I30r-v; cf. Delaville, Rhodes, 343-4
2 Malta Cod., 342, f. 130V
8 Malta Cod., 346, ff. I22t-v, 236r-v
* CSSR, ii, 137
B See in general J. M. Brown (ed.), Scottish Society in the fifteenth century (London,
1977), esp. ch. 6