ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the Hospitallers' place in the Great Revolt of 1381 and asks whether events during the revolt did indicate that the order was unpopular, how far Robert Hales contributed personally towards his own fate, and how far he was a serious loss to his order. Robert of Hales was from the new gentry’s class: of a non-knightly family, but rising in social status. As such, he was typical of fourteenth-century English Hospitallers. Other examples are the Archer family, which supplied several prominent Hospitallers to the English tongue during the fourteenth century, On 1 February 1381, a new royal treasurer was appointed – Robert Hales, the prior of the Hospital in England. By 1365, however, he had returned to the East, as he was one of the hundred Hospitallers who went with four galleys and other vessels to accompany King Peter I of Cyprus in 1365 in his campaign to capture Alexandria.
