In my letter in The Sunday Times of Malta of February 4, 2018, on the curious Latin inscription over the Main Guard, I had written that it had been removed and broken because of weathering. That is what actually happened to the Royal Arms and I assumed that the fate of the inscription went with it.
[attach id=678714 size="medium" align="right"]The Supplement to The Malta Standard of December 24, 1865, was a calendar of 1866 which showed the Royal arms and the Latin inscription which is found written on the Main Guard.[/attach]
I have since come across another entry in the manuscript Giornale of Cesare Vassallo dated April 27, 1863, in which he wrote that restoration of the portico was taken in hand because the cornicione (entablature) was deteriorating, not because it was old, but due to the poor quality of the stone.
He recorded later that the portico was coming down in gross pieces and it was reconstructed exactly on the same design and with the same measurements. The Royal Arms were also restored, and the inscription underneath was faithfully copied from the previous one. One electric clock was installed for the first time and it was lit up on February 13, 1864.
As I had stated in my letter, the neoclassical portico was constructed in 1814, but the Arms were added later. On May 30, 1814 the First Peace Treaty of Paris was signed. This Treaty was fully confirmed at the Congress of Vienna which closed on June 9, 1815 and Malta fell under the absolute Sovereignty of the King of England. A tiny colony in the vast British Empire, not a Principality.
By letter dated June 24, 1815 the Governor of Malta Sir Thomas Maitland, wrote to Lieutenant Colonel (later General Sir) George Whitmore, commander of the Royal Engineers, informing him that he had received instruction from the British Government to direct that His Majesty’s Arms be placed in such places as are most conspicuous. He had taken immediate steps to have the Arms placed over the Main Guard and in the Palace. He therefore directed Whitmore to proceed forthwith to get the same erected over Porta Reale and the Marina Gates.
In anticipation of the said instructions, Maitland had already taken steps to erase all visible vestiges of Principality, following similar acts ordered by Napoleon in 1798. By a Proclamation dated February 4, 1814, as soon as the horrific plague had come to an end, Maitland directed that all the Armorial Bearings, and other emblems of Sovereignty of every kind, wherever they might be found, were to be removed and substituted by the Majesty’s Arms. The removal had to be done with that degree of observance and decency due to an Order (of St John) of great antiquity and much well-deserved celebrity.
It is therefore probable that the Royal Arms were placed over the Main Guard and in the Palace in 1814, rather than in 1815.