Personal nobility and the Order of Malta

In Republican Europe there will in the future be more and more families who will be able to demonstrate such prominence for several generations and who, had the Monarchies survived, would have been ennobled; these too may perhaps be suitable candidates for the reformed class of Grace and Devotion. Since membership of the Order of itself has always been held to confer personal nobility, there is a strong argument for maintaining that the descendant of a Magistral Grace knight admitted more than one hundred years ago or for the fourth generation descended therefrom to be entitled to apply for Grace and Devotion, particularly if the intervening generations were also members of the Order.