PICTURESQUE PAGEANT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 6 October 1928, Page 11

PICTURESQUE PAGEANT.

GREAT SIGHT IN LONDON

People in Oerkenwell Road, London, rubbed their eyes in amazement, on a recent afternoon as they saw tramway-cars, motor-ljorries, and bicycles stop to let the Middle Ages pass by. In towing mantles and robes and fiat Tudor caps, the Knights and Chaplains of the VeneraDle Order of .St John of Jerusalem moved in slow procession from the dim shadow of the ancient stone gate of the former priory of St. John. I.ed by the high-borne cross and the children of the Chapel Royal, in gold and scarlet Elizabethan coats, singing .a hymn, came the group of . haplains in scarlet and black and white. Then came the Bishop of Gibralter, whose golden and yellow cope blazed with dazzling splendour in the ri lit June sunshine. The stnndaid and the silver cross of the order followed, and behind Came the i hapter, general officers, commanders, Knights of Grace and Knights ot Justice. Among them were the Earl of Hhaiehaslurry, \ isrouni: Galway, Lord Herbert Scott, Lord Most n, and the Earl of Meath, who with his long white heard and his velvet can and flowering cloak seemed some venerable figure from a painting ivv an old master.

Pie eded by the sword of the Order in its dark blue velvet scabbard hel i aloft by a robed officer came the most impressive figure of all. This was the Grand Prior of the Order, the Duke o' Connaught. Mis mantle of dark blue velvet swept the ground and lii.s hands were crossed gravely on th» breast o his dark cassock, emblazoned like the mantle with the eightpointed cross of the Order. Across the tramway-lines he walked slowly to the old quiet church which must hear the most impressive name o. any church in England, for it is the Church of the Grand Priory in the British Realm of the Venerable Order of the"’ Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.

There, on the day following the Festi al o: . c t. John the Order commemorated 804 unbroken years of service for the- sick apd injured, which began in the days of the Crusades in Palestine.