hed to use it, and the attendance of
patients from a distance proved that it supplied a need. The hospital,
which had generally over 400 invalids, was maintained at great cost to
the Order, and the regulations were drawn up with great care, though
they reveal an amazing ignorance of some fundamental laws of health.
Patients, for instance, who were members of the Order received meals
twice as large as other patients.

[Footnote 1: So called because they were Knights "by right" of noble
birth.]

CHAPTER IV

THE DECLINE

1565-1789.

The history of the Order of St. John after the siege of Malta in
1565 is a sad story of gradual and inevitable decay. The magnificent
heroism of the Knights at the siege raised their fame throughout
Europe to the highest pitch, and the siege was rightly regarded as one
of the first decisive checks received by the Ottoman conquerors.

It is easy to imagine the anxious expectation of Europe in that summer
of 1565, when the heretic Queen of England ordered prayers to be
offered in the diocese of Salisbury for the safety of the Knights of
St. John.

The Battle of Lepanto, six years later, despite its lack of immediate
results, dissolved the spell which the invincibility of the Ottoman
fleet had woven, and in the seventeenth century the Turkish Empire
showed plainly that it had passed its meridian. Now that they were in
a weakened condition, the Ottomans, though never fully regarded as a
European Power, were more acceptable to the Christian States, most
of whom followed the example of Francis I. and concluded commercial
agreements and treaties with the Porte. The Turk was no longer
regarded as a being beyond human intercourse, and the Levant trade
was too valuable to be ignored by France, England, or the Italian
republics.

The Knights of Malta, with their attitude of truceless war against the
infidel, were thus becoming more and more of an anachronism as time went
on. They never concluded peace with the Sultan, and always regarded
the possessions of the infidel as fair and lawful booty. It was
obviously impossible for the Christian States trafficking in Turkish
waters to allow such a theory to go unchallenged, and we therefore
find the Order quarrelling with the Pope, Venice, England, and France,
as to their rights of seizure of Turkish goods in Christian vessels
or of Turkish vessels in Christian harbours. In 1582 this led to
a dispute with Gregory XIII., and in 1666 with Lou