INTRODUCTION.

XI

poor and sick of all descriptions were received, and their necessitiesrelieved.

The hospital ol St. John existed in J erusalem from the reignof Justinian. It was principally intended for the reception ofstrangers, and the great crowds of pilgrims who constantly throngedfrom all parts to visit the Holy Sepulchre: it afterwards became anursery for the knights of Malta ; and the time they passed in thatplace may well be regarded as the golden age of their history.

I do not intend, in this work, to write the history of thoseprimitive times, nor of the knights of St. John, afterwards knightsof Rhodes; I shall only present to my reader a chronologicalhistorical table*, with observations, of the principal events whichtook place in the reigns of the successive grand-masters, from the timeof Gerard till the epoch when LTsle Adam was obliged to abandonRhodes. I have corrected the dates of several facts, which wereerroneous in most of the ancient authors who have treated of theOrder, and taken notice of other mistakes, which, from never havingbeen rectified, had glided into the works of more modern historians.

* Intended to make part of a complete history of Malta, about which I havefor some time past been employed.

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