Philip Duplessies.
A. D. 1201.
The Grand Master, Gilbert Horal, was succeeded by Philip Duplessies or De Plesseis.[245] We must now refer to a few events connected with the order of the Temple in England.
Brother Geoffrey, who was Master of the Temple at London at the period of the consecration of the Temple Church by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, died shortly after the capture of the holy city by Saladin, and was succeeded by Brother Amaric de St. Maur, who is an attesting witness to the deed executed by king John, A. D. 1203, granting a dowry to his young queen, the beautiful Isabella of Angouleme.[246] Philip Augustus, king of France, placed a vast sum of gold and silver in the Temple at Paris, and the treasure of John, king of England, was deposited in the Temple at London.[247] King John, indeed, frequently resided, for weeks together, at the Temple in London, and many of his writs and precepts to his lieutenants, sheriffs, and bailiffs, are dated therefrom.[248] The orders for the concentration of the English fleet at Portsmouth, to resist the formidable French invasion instigated by the pope, are dated from the Temple, and the convention between the king and the count of Holland, whereby the latter agreed to assist king John with a body of knights and men-at-arms, in case of the landing of the French, was published at the same place.[249]
A. D. 1213.
In all the conferences and negotiations between the mean-spirited king and the imperious and overbearing Roman pontiff, the Knights Templars took an active and distinguished part. Two brethren of the order were sent by Pandulph, the papal legate, to king John, to arrange that famous conference between them which ended in the complete submission of the latter to all the demands of the holy see. By the advice and persuasion of the Templars, king John repaired to the preceptory of Temple Ewell, near Dover, where he was met by the legate Pandulph, who crossed over from France to confer with him, and the mean-hearted king was there frightened into that celebrated resignation of the kingdoms of England and Ireland, “to God, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, to the holy Roman church his mother, and to his lord, Pope Innocent the Third, and his catholic successors, for the remission of all his sins and the sins of all his people, as well the living as the dead.”[250] The following year the commands of king John for the extirpation of the heretics in Gascony, addressed to the seneschal of that province, were issued from the Temple at London,[251] and about the same period the Templars were made the depositaries of various private and confidential matters pending between king John and his illustrious sister-in-law, “the royal, eloquent, and beauteous” Berengaria of Navarre, the youthful widowed queen of Richard Cœur de Lion.[252] The Templars in England managed the money transactions of that fair princess. She directed her dower to be paid in the house of the New Temple at London, together with the arrears due to her from the king, amounting to several thousand pounds.[253]
A. D. 1215.
John was resident at the Temple when he was compelled by the barons of England to sign Magna Charta. Matthew Paris tells us that the barons came to him, whilst he was residing in the New Temple at London, “in a very resolute manner, clothed in their military dresses, and demanded the liberties and laws of king Edward, with others for themselves, the kingdom, and the church of England.”[254]
King John was a considerable benefactor to the order. He granted to the fraternity the Isle of Lundy, at the mouth of the river Severn; all his land at Radenach and at Harewood, in the county of Hereford; and he conferred on the Templars numerous privileges.[255]
William de Chartres.
A. D. 1217.
The Grand Master Philip Duplessies was succeeded by Brother William de Chartres, as appears from the following letter to the Pope: