CHAP I.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

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manderies; and let such residence be a necessary-qualification for any of the high employments.Rhodes will thus cease to be looked on as a placeof exile; and idlers, by this removal from infection,may learn some probity and honour. Therefore,most venerated vicar, I beseech you not to think ofme—though one of your most dutiful servants—but of what I have said; and allow me to proposea law of that nature to this assembly.”

And so it was proposed and passed, and standson the statute-books still. But was it executed?It is to be hoped it was, sometimes at least—how-ever feebly. 1 That vicar, or locuni-tenens , was theDe Pins who had been made such in 1317, andstill retained the situation, the grand master beingabsent. Never had the vicar the least pretensionto be more, nor is he ever named anything else, in thedocuments. 2 Yertot has no excuse! 3 Yertot

1325

is full of errors. Thus he talks of a bull of1323, and upon no such thing being found, he issupposed to have meant that of 1322. Which ishowever to the King of England, and not to the

1 Bosio: par. ii., lib. ii., anno 1331.

2 Cod. Dipl. Gcros., ii., Hum. lix.—Appendix, cxxvi.

3 Seb. Paoli: Serie Chron., ii., 463.—Cod. Dipl. Gcros., ii.,Hum. xlv.- -Appendix, cxxv.