Venerable Order of Saint John - History

History

In June 1826, the Council of the French Langues—a self-proclaimed revival of the Order of Malta (the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta) in France—sought to raise through private venture, funded by subscription, sufficient money to restore a homeland for the resurrected society. However, this was essentially a ploy by which to create a mercenary army of unemployed English soldiers using readily available cheap war surplus. Philippe de Castelain, a French knight, was thus appointed by the Council to negotiate with suitable persons in England, where Scotsman Donald Currie was given the authority to raise £240,000. Anyone who subscribed to the scheme and all commissioned officers of the mercenary army were granted the right to be created Knights of the order, but this attracted few donations; the Greek War of Independence had been won without the help of the Knights of the Council of the French Langues. In response, de Castelain and Currie were allowed by the so-called Chevalier de Sainte-Croix to form the Council of the English Langue, which was inaugurated on 12 January 1831, under the executive power of a man who called himself "Count" Alexander Mortara, and headquartered at the "Auberge of St. John, St. John's Gate, St. John's Square, Clerkenwell". This was the "Old Jerusalem Tavern", a now defunct public house occupying what had once been the gatehouse to the ancient Clerkenwell Priory, the mediæval Grand Priory of the Knights Hospitaller, otherwise known as the Knights of Saint John.

The Reverend Sir Robert Peat, the absentee Perpetual Curate of St Lawrence in Brentford, Middlesex, and one of the many former chaplains to Prince George, Prince Regent (later King George IV), was recruited by the council as a member of the society. He and other British members of the group, with the backing of the Council of the French Langues, then, on the grounds that he had been selling knighthoods, expelled Mortara, leading to two competing English chivalric groups between early 1832 and Mortara's disappearance in 1837. Peat was thus credited as being the first Grand Prior of the association, though this is not mentioned in any of his obituaries, leading W.B.H. in January 1919 to write in the journal Notes & Queries: "His name is not in the knights' lists, and he was never 'Prior in the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem': he became an ordinary member of that Order on Nov. 11, 1830." Regardless, Peat died in April 1837 and Sir Henry Dymoke was appointed Grand Prior and he re-established contact with the knights in France and Germany, where the group had also by that time expanded to. However, up to the late 1830s, the British arm of the organization had only considered itself to be a Grand Priory and Langue of the Order of St. John, having never officially been recognized as such by the established order. Dymoke sought to rectify this by seeking acknowledgement from the Roman Catholic headquarters of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, but that group's Lieutenant Grand Master, then Philippe de Colloredo-Mansfeld, refused the request. In response to this rebuff, the British body declared itself to be the Sovereign Order of St. John in the United Kingdom, under the title The Sovereign and Illustrious Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Anglia, thereby founding the modern myth of the order's direct and continuous succession from the Order of St. John that was established in the 11th century.

This new order grew in population over the ensuing decades, during which the Duke of Manchester was in 1861 recruited as Grand Prior and a national hospitaller organization was formed when the Order of St. John formed a corps of ambulances. In 1871, a new constitution brought about further changes to the group's name, offering the more modest Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in England, and, five years later, Princess Alexandra, Princess of Wales, was recruited into its membership, followed by her husband, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. In 1877, the order established at large railway centres and mining districts various St. John Ambulance associations, so that railway men and colliers could learn how to treat victims of accidents; in 1882, the Grand Priory founded a hospice and ophthalmic dispensary in Jerusalem (known today as the St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group); and by 1887, had created the St. John Ambulance Brigade, which undertook practical and life-saving work.

The Order of St. John's most substantial leap forward came in 1888 when Queen Victoria granted the society a Royal Charter, yet again renaming the order, this time as the Grand Priory of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in England. This was amended in 1926 to the Grand Priory in the British Realm of the Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, and further in 1936 to the Grand Priory in the British Realm of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. It in 1961 played a role, together with the Protestant Continental branches of the original Order of Saint John (the so-called "Johanniter Orders" in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and elsewhere), in the establishment of the Alliance of the Orders of St. John of Jerusalem and thereafter finally received through a concordat in 1963 collateral recognition by the Order of Malta. The most recent Royal Charter was issued in 1955, with a supplemental charter granted in 1974, recognizing the world-wide scope of the organization by setting its present name. In 1999, the order was granted special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.