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INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH
How those charges became an indictment of the Templars in Paris; how they were tortured until they confessed, and slowly burned to death when they retracted, belongs to the general history of the Order. Here we have only to do with the Templars in London. The French King, Philippe, sent a messenger, one Bernard Peletin, to Edward the Second, his son-in-law, informing him of the detestable crimes of which the Templars were guilty, and urging him to follow his example. Edward refused at first to believe the charges. But the Pope wrote to the same effect; and, against his wishes, Edward had no choice but to arrest the Templars in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The arrest was made on the 8th of January. By this time, the news from Paris had spread over every Preceptory in the country; many anticipated their arrest by flight; but the leaders, the Master of the Temple, the Priors, and the chief officers made no attempt to escape. The knights, with the exception of the Master, who was liberated on bail, were kept prisoners till September in the following year, when the two inquisitors appointed by the Pope arrived. There were in all 229 knights. There is reported to have been a general scramble for the goods and chattels of the knights—no doubt the Temple and the Preceptories were full of silver plate and tapestry and armour. The trial began in the hall of the Bishop of London’s Palace. The first examination in London, Dublin, York, and Lincoln produced nothing. All, without exception, steadfastly denied the charges brought against them. At the same time, as the Pope had sent a bull in which he assumed as already proved the guilt of the Order, and the crime of which the members stood accused, the Inquisition was bound to find the knights guilty. One should observe here that although as yet no torture had been applied, the knights could not be ignorant of what was being done in France, where tortures too dreadful to be written down were applied to the unhappy prisoners. Probably they expected what was to follow. The infamy of the torture, however, belongs to the Pope, not to Edward. The Pope it was who wrote to admonish his dearest son that the “question” should be applied. Edward gave way: he ordered that the prisoners should be confined in separate rooms, and that the inquisitors should visit them, and do with their bodies “whatsoever they should think fit, according to ecclesiastical law.” For three months, therefore, the knights were subjected to question under torture. Not one confessed anything. The Inquisitors then examined witnesses for the prosecution. The evidence was, from beginning to end, hearsay. It discloses a great deal of hatred towards the Templars, since these things could be whispered about them, but there is not the least direct evidence. Then the knights drew up a declaration of faith, which they handed in. It is full and explicit, and asserts their orthodoxy and their belief in the strongest terms. Once more the torture was applied. By this time the prisoners filled the City prisons. Some were in the Tower, some were in the prison of Aldgate, some in that of Cripplegate, some in that of Bishopsgate, some in that of Ludgate, and some in that of Newgate.
They were loaded with fetters; they were placed in solitary confinement; they were kept in dungeons; they were living on bread and water; and thus weakened, they were tortured by the Inquisition and worried by learned doctors of theology, who succeeded at last in getting a confession from two serving brethren and one chaplain. There was nothing in the confessions except what the Inquisitors wanted. However, armed with that, they were able to satisfy the Pope. The process against the Templars was at least more humane in London than in Paris. Torture there was, but at the express command of the Pope; there was no burning, not even of the Master; nor was there any of the accursed slow roasting which makes the French business so atrocious.
What happened in London to terminate the Inquisition was this. The Bishops of London, Winchester, and Chichester had an interview with some of the Templars, and told them that they were clearly guilty of heresy in supposing that the Grand Master had power of absolution, and that it would be well for them, generally, to clear themselves of that and any other heresy of which they might be accused. The prisoners replied that they were anxious to clear themselves of any heresy into which they might have fallen. Observe that there was not one word said about any of the five charges brought by Philip; these were quietly dropped. The Templars, therefore, were publicly reconciled to the Church, and absolved by a form of words in which it was guardedly said that “they could not entirely purge themselves of the heresies set forth in the apostolic bull.” Surely a verdict of not guilty could not be more plainly returned. Then the rest were reconciled. All but William de Moray the Master. He died in prison of a broken heart. At the same time, in Aragon, Portugal, Tarragona, and Germany, the Order, though examined under torture, was pronounced innocent of the charges brought against it. It was said, long afterwards, that with his dying breath Jacques de Moray summoned Pope and King to meet him before the judgment seat of God. Both of them died the year after. Everybody, it is reported, and it was believed, connected with the trials and the cruelties, came to a miserable end. The wretched man who invented the charges, Squin de Florian, was hanged for some new crime. And as for the agonising death of Edward the Second, men whispered that thus and thus had it been done unto him in return for his treatment of the Templars. The voice of the people is difficult to hear in the first decade of the fourteenth century, otherwise one would like to know what they thought of the introduction of torture as a judicial instrument. For until these trials torture was unknown in England. To be tried, to be hanged, to have the hand struck off, to be branded, these things the people understood, but torture they did not understand. Nay, so ignorant were they of the art and method of torture that two Frenchmen were sent for to instruct the executioners. Torture was always regarded, not only by the English people generally, but by the judges and lawyers, with a shrinking and horror which did not exist on the Continent, where they continued to torture prisoners until well into the eighteenth century. There can be no doubt that the later hatred of the Roman Catholic Religion was fomented and kept alive by the reports which came from Spain and Portugal of the tortures inflicted by the Inquisition in the name of that religion. The Tudor sovereigns occasionally inflicted torture. But the judges in 1628 declared that the torture of Villiers, the murderer of Buckingham, was illegal. Considering the wholesale nature of the torture of the Templars, and that the thing was done in the City prisons, and that it was well known to the Mayor and Sheriffs, and therefore, one supposes, to all the world, one would expect some kind of shuddering recollection of the event in the minds of the people, some lingering horror. But there is none. The flames of Smithfield, all laid to the charge of Mary, remain in men’s minds. But the cruel torture of these men, and their unmerited sufferings, passed at once out of mind and were forgotten. For three years and a half the English Templars were in prison. They were arrested in January 1308 and released in 1311. In April 1312, at a Council held at Vienna, the Order was finally suppressed.
The property of the Templars—by order of the Pope—was given to the Knights Hospitallers. Their personal property, their vast heaps of gold and silver plate, their furniture, tapestry, armour, precious stuffs, their sacks of money were seized and scrambled for at the outset. When a rich Preceptory was suddenly left empty and deserted save for a few outdoor servants, anybody, any neighbouring Baron, could step in and clear out the contents. Their manors and lordships, their churches, villages, tolls and rights were given away by King Edward with a lavish hand. No king, as yet, since William the Conqueror, had had so much to give as Edward; nor would any king again have so much till the Dissolution of the Houses. The Pope expostulated. But it was difficult to make the new owners give up their holdings: an Act of Parliament was passed; it proved futile. Later on, in the reign of Edward the Third, another Act was passed, and some of the property was given to the Hospitallers. In France, Philip handed over the whole, but so charged and laden by his own demands that the Hospitallers found themselves none the richer.
The evidence and the confessions suggest certain observations. For instance, the knights wore a magical cord. That there was a cord is clear, and they all wore it, but they were mostly in ignorance of its meaning. It was intended to remind them of their vows of chastity; it was supposed to have been passed round the waist of the Virgin. The cord remained, but its symbolical meaning was lost. Then as to the denial of their religion, the kiss of brotherhood, and so forth. There have been, and are still, many societies of men in which there is a secret form of initiation, with ceremonies which are symbolical. I see no reason at all to doubt that at the initiation of a Templar he was led into the Hall naked or in a shirt only—he was to be penniless, naked, without arms, helpless—all temporal gifts he was to receive from his brethren. Is it too much to suppose that he went through the form of worshipping an idol indicated by a statue or picture while in this naked, prehistoric condition, in order that he might receive his religion also from the knights, and so owe everything in this world and the next to the Brotherhood? Considering other initiations of which one has learned something, I am quite prepared to admit the probability of such a ceremony. As to the origin of the reports and rumours, it is quite enough to live in an ignorant age, to be raised above the common herd by wealth, to be separated from the rest of the world, and to observe secrecy as regards certain forms and ceremonies. Against such men reports and rumours will speedily arise and spread abroad and fill the whole land. And these, it is very certain, will not be reports of virtue or rumours of sanctity.
The transference of the property of the Templars to their rivals makes one doubt that the object of the Pope was plunder. Since we cannot believe that he had destroyed one Order, on account of its wealth and power, only to make another Order richer and more powerful still, it seems certain that the jealousy of the Templars’ wealth was not the cause of the Pontiff’s action. Was it, then, really a belief in the charges brought against them? We have seen that there was no evidence, so far as has been recorded, to support these charges: that in Spain, Portugal, and Germany the Order was found “not guilty”: that a verdict practically amounting to “not guilty” was found in London: and that in Paris only were the knights sentenced to be punished as heretics and relapsed heretics. If Clement the Fifth actually believed in the hearsay evidence of improbabilities amounting to impossibilities, he must have possessed far less of the judicial faculty than belongs even to the ecclesiastical mind. Had such a man been a layman he would be set down as the most mischievous fool that ever sat upon a bench of justice. We will suppose that Clement was not a fool, what then? Why did he write those bulls? Was it in accordance with the sixth condition agreed upon with Philip? Is Philip, and Philip alone, responsible for this terrible crime, the greatest of all the Mediæval crimes? Did he destroy the Order simply and solely for the sake of its wealth? And did he, in order to get a handle, make use of the ignorant and idle gossip which was current as to the morals and customs of the Secret House? And to all these questions it is useless even to suggest an answer.