Thread: Hospitallier?
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Old 9th November 2005, 05:39 PM   #8
Mark
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Good suggestion to track down descendents. Another would be to contact the Order directly. One question I had was whether or not this Watts fellow was connected to the Venerable Order of St. John (which is the only English Hospitallar Order with a real link to the medieval one), or to one of the numerous organizations that claim a more tenuous tie, including the Masonic Knights Templar, and others that mostly claim a link via an extinct Russian Order. The Venerable Order has had continuous existance in England, as it was simply a transformation of the English priories into a separate, Protestant entity after the Reformation in the 16th century, so if Watts "revived" it, I would think it was some other one, as the Venerable Order was in no need of reviving.

By the way, I would hazard a guess that +F+ stands for "Frere," or maybe "Frater," i.e., "Brother."
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