as well as by the natives of Malta.  It was open to all who wished to use it, and the attendance of patients from a distance proved that it supplied a need.  The hospital, which had generally over 400 invalids, was maintained at great cost to the Order, and the regulations were drawn up with great care, though they reveal an amazing ignorance of some fundamental laws of health.  Patients, for instance, who were members of the Order received meals twice as large as other patients.

[Footnote 1:  So called because they were Knights “by right” of noble birth.]

CHAPTER IV

THE DECLINE

1565-1789.

The history of the Order of St. John after the siege of Malta in 1565 is a sad story of gradual and inevitable decay.  The magnificent heroism of the Knights at the siege raised their fame throughout Europe to the highest pitch, and the siege was rightly regarded as one of the first decisive checks received by the Ottoman conquerors.

It is easy to imagine the anxious expectation of Europe in that summer of 1565, when the heretic Queen of England ordered prayers to be offered in the diocese of Salisbury for the safety of the Knights of St. John.

The Battle of Lepanto, six years later, despite its lack of immediate results, dissolved the spell which the invincibility of the Ottoman fleet had woven, and in the seventeenth century the Turkish Empire showed plainly that it had passed its meridian.  Now that they were in a weakened condition, the Ottomans, though never fully regarded as a European Power, were more acceptable to the Christian States, most of whom followed the example of Francis I. and concluded commercial agreements and treaties with the Porte.  The Turk was no longer regarded as a being beyond human intercourse, and the Levant trade was too valuable to be ignored by France, England, or the Italian republics.

The Knights of Malta, with their attitude of truceless war against the infidel, were thus becoming more and more of an anachronism as time went on.  They never concluded peace with the Sultan, and always regarded the possessions of the infidel as fair and lawful booty.  It was obviously impossible for the Christian States trafficking in Turkish waters to allow such a theory to go unchallenged, and we therefore find the Order quarrelling with the Pope, Venice, England, and France, as to their rights of seizure of Turkish goods in Christian vessels or of Turkish vessels in Christian harbours.  In 1582 this led to a dispute with Gregory XIII., and in 1666 with Louis XIV., and the Knights were forced to confine their attentions to Turkish vessels trading between Turkish ports.  England was destined later to incur similar trouble with neutrals for a similar theory of international law.