I am writing this on the feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, overlooking the terrace of Villa Palazzola outside Rome, which offers stunning views over Lake Albano. Owned in turns by the Cistercians and the Franciscans, it was purchased in 1920 by the then Mgr Hinsley as a summer retreat centre for seminarians of the Venerable English College.
I am here to attend a Caritas conference representing Anchor House, an admirable Catholic home for the homeless, whom it tries to reintegrate into normal life. The previous chairman, Mgr John Armitage, now Rector of Walsingham, was rash enough to ask me to be a trustee. Some 50 of us are here to study “Christian leadership”, a skill in which I fear I may be sadly lacking. The Bishops of England and Wales are also in Rome, for their ad limina visit, and we plan to attend Mass with them at St Paul Outside the Walls later in the week.
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One sadness from being committed to the conference is having to miss the funeral today in King’s Lynn of Professor David Watkin, the distinguished architectural historian. The Mass is being celebrated by Fathers Julian Large and Ronald Creighton-Jobe of the London Oratory, doubtless with suitable dignity and brio.
It has been a bad month for architectural historians, as some two weeks ago I went to the funeral of Colin Amery in London. Both he and David Watkin were Catholic converts, the former through Fr Michael Seed and the latter through Mgr Alfred Gilbey. Between them, through their work and writings, they did much to stem the tide of architectural modernism. May they both rest in peace.
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We have had an ecumenical time as we dashed back from looking at Caldey Island to attend the installation of the very tall Nicholas Papadopulos as the new Dean of Salisbury. Deans, like policemen, seem to get younger: this one is only 51. The establishment feel of the Church of England was very much in evidence with the Lord Lieutenants of Dorset and Wiltshire solemnly processing up the Early English nave of the Cathedral. We crossed the Dean’s path again a few days later, at a fundraising party for the Cathedral in the wonderful Elizabethan setting of Longford Castle by the banks of the Avon, courtesy of Lord Radnor.
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The month has also been distinguished by the birthday celebrations of two Catholic friends. Neither would thank me for mentioning their ages, although both look many years younger than they should. The first party was a lunch for John Martin Robinson, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary (among various other claims to fame), at Arundel Castle. The Duke and Duchess had kindly and bravely invited 40 of John’s very varied friends to enjoy, inter alia, grouse and claret. “Eddy” Norfolk gave a very moving speech detailing John’s distinguished services to the Fitzalan Howard family since the latter’s appointment by the former’s father as castle librarian in 1978.
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The second party was a dinner for 14 in Rome given by Fra’ Ian Scott, Grand Prior of England in the Order of Malta, in the glorious surroundings of the Circolo della Caccia, situated as it is on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Borghese.
Fra’ Ian is my confrère at the Order of Malta in England. I became, slightly to my surprise, a somewhat unlikely Chancellor of the British Association in 2012. I should perhaps take the opportunity to point out that the order nowadays spends far more time in worrying about its duties towards the poor and the sick than about its members’ coats of arms, notwithstanding the public perception to the contrary.
Fra’ Ian was responsible for me writing my latest book – by blithely saying in 2016 that he thought it might be nice if “someone” wrote about the Knights Hospitaller (the precursors of the Order of Malta) in Great Britain at the time of their dissolution in 1540. I agreed to do this without giving much thought to the vast amount of time that would be spent in criss-crossing the counties of England and Wales, from Cornwall to Northumberland and from Kent to Lancashire, in pursuit of the remains of their 40 or so “commanderies” and the 200-plus churches whose advowsons had been appropriated to them.
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I had not begun to appreciate the wealth of the Hospitallers, who in 1540 were the largest individual landowner after the Crown (the proxime accessit seems to have been Glastonbury Abbey). Their lands had been given to them from the 12th century onwards in order to provide funds for their activities in defending the Holy Land and, after their eviction from that region, Rhodes. Their wealth doubled in 1312 when the Pope dissolved the Templars and (at least in theory) gave all their land to the Hospitallers.
Their story came to a sad, though fortunately temporary, end in this country when the Grand Priory in England was dissolved in 1540 by its so-called Protector, King Henry VIII; the Hospitallers were the last of the great religious orders to be dissolved.
Copies of The Knights Hospitaller in Great Britain in 1540 can be obtained from the Grand Priory of England, Craigmyle House, 13 Deodar Road, London, SW15 2NP at a cost of £25 (including p &p)
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