ABSTRACT
On 2 July 1463 the master and council ordinary of the Order of St John in Rhodes called the members of the langue of England before them and asked if they had any interest in or claim to the preceptory of Templecombe in Somerset, regarding which King Edward IV of England had recently written to the master. In particular, the langue was asked to consider whether it claimed any right in Templecombe on behalf of Marmaduke Lumley, a conventual knight who had been given magistral license to return to England on his own business in the previous year. After two days’ deliberation, the langue’s spokesman, Robert Pickering, reappeared in council and stated that both Lumley’s visit to England and what he had done there had taken place without the langue’s consent and that as a body it therefore did not intend to say anything in the matter of Templecombe. In their own names, however, Pickering and Richard Sandford insisted that, if the preceptory was to be adjudged to any brother on grounds of ancienitas, it should not be to Lumley, because they were his elders. 1 Three days later the master wrote to Lumley saying that he had upheld the complaint of the lieutenant turcopolier, Brother John Weston, who had asserted that Lumley detained Templecombe unlawfully to the prejudice of the turcopolier William Dawney, who had been appointed its preceptor by magistral grace in 1456. In the usual manner, Lumley was summoned to Rhodes to account for himself. 2
