212 THE ORDER OP S. THOMAS. [VIII. in 1323, and Robert de Rendale in 1344. In 1350 the order was recognised as still existing by the German traveller Ludolf of Suchen. In 1357 Hugh de Curteys, the preceptor of Cyprus, invested one Richard of Tickhill with the habit of the order, in the presence of Robert Swillington, canon, Sir Richard Chatesby, an English priest, and William Gaston of England, Turcopolier to the king of Cyprus. The ceremony was performed in the church of S. Nicolas of the English in the city of Nicosia; one of the many churches which formerly, according to Father Stephen of Lusignan, adorned that city, of which the Venetians destroyed 130 in the process of fortification. [It is possible that it still exists, and is indeed that church of S. Nicolas, which our dear friend the bishop of Gibraltar tried to recover in 1879.] The hospital in London became, probably at the fall of the Templars, a mere Augustinian Hospital. Its church, or one built on the site of it, is now the chapel of the Mercers' Company1. England had not, with all her business under Henry III and Edward I, forgotten Palestine : some of her sons fell at Acre, and the remnant of the little order found a home at Nicosia. But the great king himself never forgot his first love; in fact all the nobler Plantagenets, Richard of Cornwall, Edward I, Henry of Lancaster, Henry of Boling order; 'dat. Nicosise' in the house of Guddefrid, archdeacon of the church of Famagosta, vicar of Philip, archbishop of Nicosia. Feb. 2, 1357, Hugh Curteys invests Richard of Tickhill ; 'actum in regno Cypri in Nicosia intra ecclesiam Beati Nicolai Anglicorum, praesentibus Francisco de Gave burgensi Nicosise, domino Rob. de Swillington canonico, domino Ricardo de Chatesby presbytero Anglico; Guillelmo Gaston de Anglia Turcopolo regis et pluribus aliis.' The history of the London house may be read in Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 553 ; and Mon. Angl. vi. 645 : it must be carefully distinguished from the Hospital of S. Thomas the Martyr in Southwark, the germ of the present S. Thomas's Hospital. See also Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, praef. pp. cxii-cxiii.