The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple

by C. G. Addison

The fate of the persecutors of the order is not unworthy of notice.

A year and one month after the above horrible execution, the pope was attacked by a dysentery, and speedily hurried to his grave. The dead body was transported to Carpentras, where the court of Rome then resided; it was placed at night in a church which caught fire, and the mortal remains of the holy pontiff were almost entirely consumed. His relations quarrelled over the immense treasures he left behind him, and a vast sum of money, which had been deposited for safety in a church at Lucca, was stolen by a daring band of German and Italian freebooters.

Before the close of the same year, king Philip died of a lingering disease which baffled all the art of his medical attendants, and the condemned criminal, upon the strength of whose information the Templars were originally arrested, was hanged for fresh crimes. “History attests,” says Monsieur Raynouard, “that all those who were foremost in the persecution of the Templars, came to an untimely and miserable death.” The last days of Philip were embittered by misfortune; his nobles and clergy leagued against him to resist his exactions; the wives of his three sons were accused of adultery, and two of them were publicly convicted of that crime. The misfortunes of Edward the Second, king of England, and his horrible death in Berkeley Castle, are too well known to be further alluded to.

To save appearances, the pope had published a bull transferring the property, late belonging to the Templars, to the order of the Hospital of Saint John,[429] which had just then acquired additional renown and popularity in Europe by the conquest from the infidels of the island of Rhodes. This bull, however, remained for a considerable period nearly a dead letter, and the Hospitallers never obtained a twentieth part of the antient possessions of the Templars.

The kings of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, created new military orders in their own dominions, to which the estates of the late order of the Temple were transferred, and, annexing the Grand Masterships thereof to their own persons, by the title of Perpetual Administrators, they succeeded in drawing to themselves an immense revenue.[430] The kings of Bohemia, Naples, and Sicily, retained possession of many of the houses and strongholds of the Templars in their dominions, and various religious orders of monks succeeded in installing themselves in the convents of the fraternity. The heirs of the donors of the property, moreover, claimed a title to it by escheat, and in most cases where the Hospitallers obtained the lands and estates granted them by the pope, they had to pay large fines to adverse claimants to be put into peaceable possession.[431]

“The chief cause of the ruin of the Templars,” justly remarks Fuller, “was their extraordinary wealth. As Naboth’s vineyard was the chiefest ground of his blasphemy, and as in England Sir John Cornwall Lord Fanhope said merrily, not he, but his stately house at Ampthill in Bedfordshire was guilty of high treason, so certainly their wealth was the principal cause of their overthrow.... We may believe that king Philip would never have taken away their lives if he might have taken their lands without putting them to death, but the mischief was, he could not get the honey unless he burnt the bees.”[432]

King Philip, the pope, and the European sovereigns, appear to have disposed of all the personalty of the Templars, the ornaments, jewels, and treasure of their churches and chapels, and during the period of five years, over which the proceedings against the order extended, they remained in the actual receipt of the vast rents and revenues of the fraternity. After the promulgation of the bull, assigning the property of the Templars to the Hospitallers, king Philip put forward a claim upon the land to the extent of two hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of the prosecution, and Louis Hutin, his son, required a further sum of sixty thousand pounds from the Hospitallers, before he would consent to surrender the estates into their hands.[433] “J’ignore,” says Voltaire, “ce qui revint au pape, mais je vois evidemment que les frais des cardinaux, des inquisiteurs déléguès pour faire ce procès épouvantable monterent à des sommés immenses.”[434] The holy pontiff, according to his own account, received only a small portion of the personalty of the order,[435] but others make him a large participator in the good things of the fraternity.[436]

On the imprisonment of the Templars in England, the Temple at London, and all the preceptories dependent upon it, with the manors, farms, houses, lands, and revenues of the fraternity, were placed under the survey of the Court of Exchequer, and extents[437] were directed to be taken of the same, after which they were confided to the care of certain trustworthy persons, styled “Guardians of the lands of the Templars,” who were to account for the rents and profits to the king’s exchequer. The bishop of Lichfield and Coventry had the custody of all the lands and tenements in the county of Hants. John de Wilburgham had those in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, and there were thirty-two other guardians entrusted with the care of the property in the remaining counties of England.[438] These guardians were directed to pay various pensions to the old servants and retainers of the Templars dwelling in the different preceptories,[439] also the expenses of the prosecution against the order, and they were at different times required to provide for the exigencies of the public service, and to victual the king’s castles and strongholds. On the 12th of January, A. D. 1312, William de Slengesby, guardian of the manor of Ribbestayn in the county of York, was commanded to forward to the constable of the castle of Knaresburgh a hundred quarters of corn, ten quarters of oats, twenty fat oxen, eighty sheep, and two strong carts, towards the victualling of the said fortress, and the king tells him that the same shall be duly deducted when he renders his account to the exchequer of the rents and profits of the said manor.[440] The king, indeed, began to dispose of the property as if it was wholly vested in the crown, and made munificent donations to his favourites and friends. In the month of February of the same year, he gave the manors of Etton and Cave to David Earl of Athol, directing the guardians of the lands and tenements of the Templars in the county of York to hand over to the said earl all the corn in those manors, the oxen, calves, ploughs, and all the goods and chattels of the Templars existing therein, together with the ornaments and utensils of the chapel of the Temple.[441]

On the 16th of May, however, the pope addressed bulls to the king, and to all the earls and barons of the kingdom, setting forth the proceedings of the council of Vienne and the publication of the papal decree, vesting the property late belonging to the Templars in the brethren of the Hospital of St. John, and he commands them forthwith to place the members of that order in possession thereof. Bulls were also addressed to the archbishops of Canterbury and York and their suffragans, commanding them to enforce by ecclesiastical censures the execution of the papal commands.[442] King Edward and his nobles very properly resisted this decree, and on the 21st of August the king wrote to the Prior of the Hospital of St. John at Clerkenwell, telling him that the pretensions of the pope to dispose of property within the realm of England, without the consent of parliament, were derogatory to the dignity of the crown and the royal authority; and he commands him, under severe pains and penalties, to refrain from attempting to obtain any portion of the possessions of the Templars.[443] The king, indeed, continued to distribute the lands and rents amongst his friends and favourites. At the commencement of the year 1313, he granted the Temple at London, with the church and all the buildings therein, to Aymer de Valence earl of Pembroke;[444] and on the 5th of May of the same year he caused several merchants, from whom he had borrowed money, to be placed in possession of many of the manors of the Templars.[445]

Yielding, however, at last to the exhortations and menaces of the pope, the king, on the 21st of Nov. A. D. 1313, granted the property to the Hospitallers,[446] and sent orders to all the guardians of the lands of the Templars, and to various powerful barons who were in possession of the estates, commanding them to deliver them up to certain parties deputed by the Grand Master and chapter of the Hospital of Saint John to receive them.[447] At this period, however, many of the heirs of the donors, whose title had been recognized by the law, were in possession of the lands, and the judges held that the king had no power of his own sole authority to transfer them to the order of the Hospital.[448] The thunders of the Vatican were consequently vigorously made use of, and all the detainers of the property were doomed by the Roman pontiff to everlasting damnation.[449] Pope John, in one of his bulls, dated A. D. 1322, bitterly complains of the disregard by all the king’s subjects of the papal commands. He laments that they had hardened their hearts and despised the sentence of excommunication fulminated against them, and declares that his heart was riven with grief to find that even the ecclesiastics, who ought to have been as a wall of defence to the Hospitallers, had themselves been heinously guilty in the premises.[450]