 The property of the English branch was confiscated in 1540.The German Bailiwick of Brandenburg became Lutheran in 1577, then more broadly Evangelical, but continued to pay its financial contribution to the Order until 1812, when the Protector of the Order in Prussia, King Frederick William III, turned it into an order of merit; in 1852, his son and successor as Protector, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, restored the "Johanniterorden" to its continuing place as the chief non-Roman Catholic branch of the Knights Hospitaller.The Knights of Malta had a strong presence within the Imperial Russian Navy and the pre-revolutionary French Navy.