File:Harness piece, Hospitaller, St John, Eagle (FindID 131264).jpg

English: A copper-alloy pendant in the form of a hinged banner. The turned hollow end has the remains of a corroded pin. This would have allowed the banner to pivot from the centre of a bronze mount (now missing). The pendant has a cross design on one side. There are traces of red enamel near the cross. It appears that a solid blank has been cut away in the area of the field leaving the cross proud. The other side has a stylised eagle cut into the plain field, with no trace of enamel.

The cross is likely to have been silvered, gilded or burnished. If it was silvered it would form the arms of the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem† (gules, a cross argent), a military-monastic order founded in the 12th century to assist pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over time, this organization was known as the Knights Hospitaller, Knights of Rhodes and Knights of Malta (the latter two because they moved their main base successively to these locations), and the organization survives to this day as St John's Ambulance, which continues the 12th-century Order's medical work. The eagle on the other side of the piece would add some credence to this attribution of the arms, for the eagle was the symbol of St John.

The Order was left a good deal of land throughout Europe in the form of bequests, and had to develop an administrative system to deal with these possessions. England was one of the areas in which they held land, and it is possible that the owner of this particular piece of horse-trapping had some connection with the Knights Hospitallers, either as an administrator or servant.