May I be allowed to inform your correspondent R. L. P. that he is in error, when supposing that the English knights were deprived of their property by Queen Elizabeth, as it was done by act of parliament in the year 1534, and during the reign of Henry VIII.

For the information sought by your correspondent R. L. P., I would refer him to the following extract taken from Sutherland's History of the Knights of Malta, vol. ii. pp. 114, 115.:

"To increase the despondency of L'Isle Adam [the Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem], Henry VIII. of England having come to an open rupture with the Pope, in consequence of the Pontiff's steady refusal to countenance the divorcement of Catherine of Arragon his queen, commenced a fierce and bloody persecution against all persons in his dominions, who persisted in adhering to the Holy See. In these circumstances, the Knights of St. John, who held themselves bound to acknowledge the Pope as their superior at whatever hazard, did not long escape his ire. The power of the Order, composed as it was of the chivalry of the nation, while the Prior of London sat in parliament on an equality with the first baron of the realm, for a time deterred him from openly proscribing it; but at length his wrath burst forth in an ungovernable flame. The knights Ingley, Adrian Forrest, Adrian Fortescu, and Marmaduke Bohus, refusing to abjure their faith, perished on the scaffold. Thomas Mytton and Edward Waldegrave died in a dungeon; and Richard and James Bell, John Noel, and many others, abandoned their country for ever, and sought an asylum at Malta[[4]], completely stripped of their possessions. In 1534, by an act of the legislature, the Order of St. John was abolished in the King of England's dominions; and such knights as survived the persecution, but who refused to stoop to the conditions offered them, were thrown entirely on the charity of their brethren at Malta. Henry offered Sir Wm. Weston, Lord Prior of England, a pension of a thousand pounds a year; but that knight was so overwhelmed with grief at the suppression of his Order, that he never received a penny, but soon after died. Other knights, less scrupulous, became pensioners of the crown."

W. W.

La Valetta, Malta.

Footnote 4:[(return)]

I have sought in vain among the records of the Order at this island to find any mention made of those English knights, whom Sutherland thus mentions as having fled to Malta at the time of this persecution in their native land.

Replies to Minor Queries.

Anticipatory Worship of the Cross (Vol. vii., p. 548.).—A correspondent wishes for farther information on the anticipatory worship of the cross in Mexico and at Alexandria. At the present moment I am unable to refer to the works on which I grounded the statement which he quotes. He will, however, find the details respecting Mexico in Stephens's Travels in Yucatan; and those respecting Alexandria in the commentators on Sozomen (H. E., vii. 15.), and Socrates (H. E., v. 16.). A similar instance is the worship of the Cross Fylfotte in Thibet.