HOSPITALLERS’ CHURCH

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1930, Page 3

HOSPITALLERS’ CHURCH

RESTORATION TO THE ORDER.

LONDON, March 23

A public inquiry was held yesterday into a proposal to unite the two Clerkcnwell parishes of St. Johns and St. James’s.

Tho project, which is designed to restore the historic. St. John’s as a private chapel of the Order of StJohn of Jerusalem, was not opposed, and the Commissioners holding the inquiry expressed themselves sympathetically towards it. Their report will be issued in due course. From the headquarters of St. John’s Gate, another relic of tho magnificent mediaeval priory, membeip of the Order go once a year in solemn procession to St. John's Church for the annual service on the eve of the Patronal festival. For the rest of the year the church serves the spiritual needs of the small parish. There are only about 1,400 parishioners all told, and the number of these who form the regular congregation is small. On tho death of the late vicar, therefore, it was decided to go forward with the scheme for uniting the parish with that of the neighbouring St. James’s, and to restore St. John’s to the Order by which it was originally founded. The project will lead to the restoration of St. John’s to its ancient proud position after the indignities of the four centuries since the dissolution of th© religious houses.

“THE COCK LANE GHOST.” When the Order of the Knights Hospitallers was suppressed, Henry VIH enriched himself with their possessions, and the church was turned into a storehouse for the King’s tents for hunting. find the wars. Worse befen in the following reign, when the greater part of the church was blown up with gunpowder to. furnish stone for the erection of a Strand mansion for my Lord Protector Somerset. The Knights camo back under the patronage of Queen Mary, only to be sent packing again by Elizabeth, who transferred the remnants of the Priory to the Master of the Revels to serve as a store plade foi* the costumes and properties of the actors. The present church buiding, which dates from the twelfth century, represents little more than the choir of.the original fabric. Beneath it is the magnificent crypt, which, after restoration, was thrown open for public inspection about fifty years ago. In the walls of the church are the remains of the deluded girl, “Scratching Fanny,” in the exposure of whose imposture as the “Cock Lane Ghost” Dr Johnson participated. St. John’s Prior, the chief seat in England of the Knights Hospitallers, was presided over by the' dignitary whom John Selden slyly described as “A kind of an otter, a knight halfspiritual and half-temporal. He is said to be Primus Bare Angliae, first baron of England. Being the last of the spiritual barons, he chose to be the first of the temporal.” The revival of the fortunes of the order in England was due to Queen Victoria, who in 1888 granted a new charter and appointed Edward Prince of Wales to be Grand Prior. The Royal patronage has been continued. King George, who, as Prince of Wales, was Grand Prior, is the Sovereign Head, and the Duke of Connaught is Grand Prior.

Five years ago the King conferred a signal mark of his favour upon the modern Hospitallers by holding an investiture at Buckingham Palace, the first occasion upon which an English monarch had thus honoured the Order.