ABSTRACT
The English brethren of the Hospital only occasionally played a prominent role in its affairs and their presence in the East was never numerous. The English Hospitaller milites or knight-brethren, many from the Midlands or the north of England, seldom belonged to the higher nobility. In 1402 the Hospitallers lost their mainland castle at Smyrna to the Mongol ruler Timur. During the first part of the fifteenth century the Hospitallers built various towers in and around the island of Rhodes as well as on the surrounding islands, but the oblong tower above the sea at Bodrum with its grandiose residential upper chamber had no real parallel. In 1407 or 1408 a new castle was constructed at Bodrum on the Anatolian mainland just across the sea from the Hospital's island of Kos. By 1409 the Hospitallers were already claiming to have spent 70,000 florins on Bodrum and to be expending 7,000 ducats annually on their brethren and mercenaries there.
