The Monuments in the Temple Church have been frequently described, by Stow and Weever, for instance, by Dugdale,[21] and by Gough.[22] The tradition that they represent ‘ancient British Kings,’ or even necessarily Templars, has been long exploded. The theory that every figure whose legs are crossed in effigy belonged to that Order has been consigned to the limbo of vulgar errors. But five of these effigies are mentioned by Stow as being of armed Knights ‘lying cross-legged as men vowed to the Holy Land, against the infidels and unbelieving Jews.’ And it is very probable that cross-legs did indicate those who had either undertaken a Crusade or vowed themselves to the Holy Land. At any rate, I know no evidence to show that this was not the symbolism by which the medieval mason in England and Ireland chose to indicate the Crusader.
None of these remarkable monuments can with certainty be identified. Of those now grouped upon the South side Stow says: ‘The first of the crosse-legged was W. Marshall, the elder Earl of Pembroke, who died 1219; Wil. Marshall, his son, the second, and Gilbert Marshall, his brother, also Earl of Pembroke, slayne in a tournament at Hertford, besides Ware,’ in 1241. And this may or may not be so. The fourth is nameless; the fifth, near the wall, is possibly that of Sir Robert Rosse, who, according to Stow, was buried here.
Of the group upon the North side, only that of the cross-legged knight in a coat of mail and a round helmet flattened on top, whose head rests on a cushion, and whose long, pointed shield is charged with an escarbuncle on a diapered field, can with any probability be named. For these are the arms of Mandeville (de Magnavilla)—‘quarterly, or and gules, an escarbuncle, sable’—and this monument of Sussex marble gives us the first example of arms upon a sepulchral figure in England.[23] It is supposed to be the effigy of Geoffrey Mandeville, whom Stephen made first Earl of Essex, and Matilda Constable of the Tower. A ferocious and turbulent knight, he received an arrow-wound at last in an attack upon Burwell Castle, and was carried off by the Templars to die. But, as he died under sentence of excommunication, it is said that they hung his body in a lead coffin upon a tree in the Old Temple Orchard, until absolution had been obtained for him from the Pope. Then they brought him to the new Temple and buried him there (1182).
The Choir, or rectangular part of the Church, of which the nave is broader than the aisles, but of the same height, is a beautiful example of the Early English style, and is lighted by five lancet triplet windows. By the Restorers the old panelling and the beautiful seventeenth-century Reredos were removed. Tiers of deplorable pews, deplorably arranged, and a very feeble Gothic Reredos[24] were substituted. The roof, supported by the Purbeck marble clustered columns that culminate in richly-moulded capitals, was painted with shields and mottoes in painstaking imitation of the thirteenth century. The windows at the East End were filled with very inferior modern stained glass, none of it of the least interest, poor in colour and wretchedly ignorant in design—ignorant, that is, of the rules which guided the art of the medieval glazier.
A bust of the ‘Judicious’ Hooker, Master of the Temple Church, and author of the ‘Ecclesiastical Polity,’ the grave of Selden near the South-West corner of the Choir, and above it a mural tablet to his memory, are the monuments of known men most worthy of attention. The fine fourteenth-century sepulchral effigy near the double piscina of Purbeck marble is supposed to be that of Silvester de Everden, Bishop of Carlisle.
The Organ, frequently reconstructed and finally renewed by Forster and Andrews, 1882, has been famous for generations. It was originally built by Bernard Schmidt. Dr. Blow and Purcell, his pupil, played upon it in competition with that built by Harris. The decision of this Battle of the Organs was referred to the famous, or infamous, Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, who was a good musician, and in this matter, at least, seems to have proved himself a good Judge.
The Triforium[25] is reached by a small Norman door in the North-West corner of the oblong. A winding staircase leads to the Penitential Cell—4 feet long, by 2 feet 6 inches wide—where many of the Knights were confined. To the Triforium many tablets and monuments (e.g., of Plowden), once in the Church below, have been removed.
Among the epitaphs in brass, quoted at length by Dugdale, is one in memory of John White:
‘Here lieth a John, a burning, shining light;
His name, life, actions, were all White.’
The Templars’ Church was equally divided between the two Societies of Lawyers from ‘East to West, the North Aisle to the Middle, the South