During the Napoleonic wars the surviving Knights were too scattered and too helpless to be able to improve their condition.  But from 1815 onwards we find various attempts of the Order to obtain from Europe another chef-lieu, and representatives of the Knights at the Congress of Vienna (1815) and at the Congress of Verona (1822) tried in vain to persuade the Allies to grant them an island.  The French Knights were by far the largest and most powerful section of the Order, and in 1814 they had established a capitular commission in which they vested plenary powers to treat on their behalf.  During the various negotiations for a chef-lieu the question of reviving the English langue was started, and the French Commission entered into communication with the Rev. Sir Robert Peat, Chaplain to King George IV., and other distinguished Englishmen.  The outcome was the reconstitution of the English langue on January 24, 1831, with Sir Robert Peat as Grand Prior.

The English branch of the Order of St. John has devoted itself for the last ninety years to the succour of the sick and wounded, setting up cottage and convalescent hospitals, aiding the sick in other hospitals, and establishing ambulance litters in dangerous industrial centres, such as coal-mines and railway-stations, which at last developed into the St. John Ambulance Association, which rendered such magnificent service during the Great War.  The German branch of the Order was the first to start ambulance work in the field in the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, work which was continued in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  Since that date the mitigation of the sufferings of war has been a conspicuous part of the work of the Order of St. John, and nowhere has the Order’s magnificent spirit of international comradeship been more fully displayed.

BOOKS CONSULTED

PRIMARY AUTHORITIES

Statuta Ordinis Domus Hospitalis Hierusalem.  Edited by Fr. Didacus Rodriguez.  Rome. 1556.

Statuti della religione de Cavalieri Gierosolimitani.  Florence. 1567.

Statuta Hospitalis Hierusalem.  Rome. 1588.

Collection of Statutes in Volume IV. of Vertot’s Histoire de
Chevaliers de Malte.  Paris. 1726.

[As there was no Chapter-General between 1631 and 1776, all the above collections are practically complete, Vertot’s containing little more than the others.]

Codice Diplomatico del sacro militare ordine Gierosolimitano oggi di
Malta.  Fr. Sebastiano Pauli.  Lucca. 1737.

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic. 1523-1547.

Calendar of State Papers. (Foreign.) 1547-1585.

Calendar of State Papers. (Venetian.)

Calendar of State Papers. (Spanish.)

Les Archives de S. Jean de Jerusalem a Malte.  Delaville Le Roulx. 
Paris. 1883.

Report of Philip de Thame.  Grand Prior of England. 1338.  Camden
Society.  Volume LXV. 1857.