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The head of the order had the title of "Grand Prior," and when the Christians were expelled from Palestine, the Knights retreated to Cyprus, after which they took from the Turks the island of Rhodes, which they held against the Sultan until 1522, when Solyman II., after a long siege, forced them to capitulate. A few years after that, the Emperor Charles V. gave them a home in Malta, and they thenceforth were commonly called Knights of Malta. They fortified the island, and imported soil to make it productive, and putting to sea with their galleys they made constant war upon all Turkish vessels. Solyman at length determined to drive them out of Malta. He despatched a fleet of 180 galleys, carrying 30,000 men. The Turks took the fort of St. Elmo, but with a loss of 8,000 men; and when the Emperor sent an army to assist the Knights, La Valette, the Grand Prior, a famous leader, drove the Moslems off. After this they remained in Malta until the order was dissolved at the close of the eighteenth century by order of Napoleon, when most of the Knights took service in the French army. Whilst the society existed it had branch establishments in England, where the chief or Prior took precedence of all the barons, and had a seat in Parliament. Their establishments were called "commanderies—while those of the Templars, who were ruled by "Grand Preceptors," were called "preceptories." Of these there were three in Lincolnshire: at Willoughton, four miles south of Kirton in Lindsey; at Aslackby, two miles south of Falkingham; and at Temple Bruer; all three situated close to the Ermine Street or "High Dyke" as they call it, on Lincoln Heath, and it is from the heath that one of them gets its name Templum de la bruère, or the temple on the heath, shortened into Temple Bruer.

The lands of these Knights Templars, which were handed over by Edward II. in 1324 to the Knights Hospitallers, were all sequestrated in England at the time of the dissolution of the monastic and religious houses in 1538, and, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, granted by Henry VIII. to his relative, Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. Henry, with his wife, Katherine Howard, dined at Temple Bruer when on his way to Lincoln in 1541. The buildings then were of considerable size, and the circular church, whose pillar bases have been laid bare, a little to the west of the existing tower, was fifty feet in diameter. It is modelled on the plan of the Holy Sepulchre