ABSTRACT

The Hospitallers probably reached England at about the same time as the Templars and the Cistercians, around 1128. 1 The Templars and Cistercians received an immediate and overwhelming response to their call for support. By 1140, the Cistercians had received 31 per cent of all the monastic foundations which would be granted to them in the twelfth century. Similarly, the Templars had been granted 26 per cent of their administrative sites. The Hospitallers, on the other hand, had received virtually nothing, and it was not until c. 1145 that they were granted the site of their English priory at Clerkenwell, near London. By the end of the next decade, however, the Order was in possession of 33 per cent of its twelfth-century administrative network throughout the country, and from c. 1180 to the end of the century, when the Templars and especially the Cistercians had reached the limit of their administrative expansion, it continued to receive active support.