The colourful marble top celebrates the ancient chivalric order of The Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, the name adopted for the Knights of Malta in 1834. In 1814 the Treaty of Paris had assigned Malta to Great Britain and from 1834 the Knights were permanently established in Rome. The table-top is likely to have been made in Rome at this period and displays a laurel-wreathed Maltese cross encircled by a rayed ribbon of vari-coloured marbles. It is designed in the George IV antique manner, and with triumphal palms wrapping its pillar, and Roman acanthus wrapping the trussed feet of its altar-tripod plinth, it relates to patterns in George Smith's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1826.