CHAPTER IX

THE PRIORY OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM

The history of this House belongs to the history of the Knights of St. John, or Knights Hospitallers. The Order was founded about the year 1048, beginning, like all great orders, in a small and humble way, with a Hospital for pilgrims at Jerusalem; after the conquest of the city, the Brethren were incorporated into a religious body, bound by vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience; in the year 1118 they became a military body, sworn to defend the Holy Sepulchre. They became, in the course of two centuries, an extremely wealthy body, whose only rivals were the Templars. They wore a red surcoat over their armour, with a Maltese Cross enamelled white and edged with gold for a badge. Their motto was “Pro fide,” with the later addition of “Pro utilitate hominum.”

There were nearly 40,000 knights scattered over the various Priories, Commanderies, and Preceptories of the Order; they were divided into eight “langues”—Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, England, Germany, and Castile.

The Grand Prior of Clerkenwell ranked as the first Baron of England; he had absolute authority over the English branch; after the suppression of the Templars the Hospitallers obtained a nominal grant of all their estates, but these were so heavily burdened with legal and other charges, that the new owners were not greatly enriched.

The church of the Priory was dedicated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1185. The English branch of the knights grew and prospered; they acquired a great number of manors; they sent abroad companies and contingents wherever fighting was going on against the Moslem; no one could accuse the knights of refusing to act up to their vows as regards fighting. But they became most unpopular; they acquired the reputation, like the Templars, of being oppressive landlords and proud neighbours. In the rising of Wat Tyler, vengeance fell especially upon the Knights Hospitallers. The mob attacked, seized, wrecked, and fired the Priory; they would not allow any effort to stay the flames; they watched it burn for a week; and they destroyed the Prior’s house at Highbury.

When the insurrection was quelled, the knights returned to their ruined Priory and set themselves to rebuild it in greater magnificence; the rebuilding, conducted in the leisurely mediæval fashion, took nearly two hundred years; it was not until 1504 that the House was completed by Sir Thomas Docwra, then Prior, and this was only one short generation before the suppression of the Order in England and the confiscation of their property.

The Dissolution of the Order took place in 1540. The Act for its suppression was read for the first time in the House of Commons on the 22nd of April, for the second time on the 26th, and for the third time on the 29th. On the 7th May the Order was suppressed. The value of its revenues in England was estimated, according to Stow, at £3385: 19: 8; according to Dugdale, at £2385: 12: 8. The last Prior, Sir William Weston, received from the King the promise of a pension of £1000 a year—an enormous pension considering the value of money. But he died on the day of the suppression.

Unlike many Houses, the Priory, with its noble church, escaped the hands of the destroyer for some time. What happened to it is told by Stow:—

“This Priory church and House of St. John was preserved from spoil or downpulling, so long as King Henry VIII. reigned, and was employed as a store-house for the King’s toils and tents, for hunting, and for the wars, etc.; but in the 3rd of King Edward VI., the church, for the most part, to wit, the body and side aisles, with the great bell tower (a most curious piece of workmanship, graven gilt, and enamelled, to the great beautifying of the city, and passing all other that I have seen), was undermined and blown up with gunpowder; the stone thereof was employed in building of the Lord Protector’s house in the Strand. That part of the choir which remaineth, with some side chapels, was, by Cardinal Pole in the reign of Queen Mary, closed up at the west end, and otherwise repaired; and Sir Thomas Gresham, knight, was then made lord prior there, with restitution of some lands, but the same was again suppressed in the first year of Queen Elizabeth.” (_Survey_, vol. ii.)

Not even the Templars, at their highest point of splendour, outdid these knights in magnificence and luxury, in pride and in independence. Unpopular as they were, they did not incur the same odium as the Templars. In their pride and their privileges, it is true, they were the equals of the rival Order; they were as hard landlords; but they had this great superiority over the Templars in the fact that they did honestly continue the work for which they were founded: they fought the Moslem without intermission at Acre, at Rhodes, at Cyprus, at Malta, and in the Mediterranean Sea. They preserved the respect of the world for unconquerable courage.

In 1191 the Knights Hospitallers took Acre, which they held till 1292. On losing this, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land, they retired to Cyprus, where they lay quiet, maturing their plans for fourteen years. It was, no doubt, the knowledge that they were forming plans for another attack on the Saracens which saved them on the downfall of the Templars. In 1308 they conquered Rhodes, which they defended for more than two hundred years. In 1522 they were turned out of this island; the few knights who survived sailed away with about 4000 soldiers and others from Rhodes, and took refuge in Candia, in Sicily, and in Naples, hoping for assistance to retake Rhodes. This assistance was not forthcoming, but they accepted from Charles the Fifth the islands of Malta and Gozo, to which they repaired, with all their archives and relics, in 1530. For two hundred and fifty years after this, the knights continued to fight Turk, Algerine, and Moor in the Mediterranean. In 1798, however, they allowed Napoleon to land without striking a blow.

Their rules were so stringent that it would seem, at first, wonderful how so much pride and luxury should have crept in. But the history of every Monastic House shows how rules can be evaded, or so obeyed as to destroy the spirit while adhering to the letter.

“Poverty, chastity, and obedience: to expect but bread and water and a coarse garment. The clerks to serve in white surplices at the altar. The priests, in their surplices, to convey the Host to the sick, with a deacon or clerk preceding them, bearing a lantern and the sponge filled with holy water. The brethren to go abroad by appointment of the master, but never singly, and to avoid giving offence. No females to be employed for or about their persons; when soliciting alms, to visit churches or people of reputation, and ask their food for charity; if they received none, to buy enough for subsistence; to account for all their receipts to the master, and he to give them to the poor, retaining only one-third part of provisions, the overplus to the poor. The brethren to go soliciting only by permission; to carry candles with them; to wear no skins of wild beasts, or clothes degrading the Order. To eat but twice a day on Wednesday and Saturday; and no flesh from Septuagesima till Easter, except when aged or indisposed. To sleep covered. If incontinent in private, to repent in privacy, and do penance; if the brother was discovered, he was to be deprived of his robe in the church of the town after mass, to be severely whipped, and expelled from the Order; but, if truly penitent, he might be again received; but not without penance and a year’s expulsion, etc.”

If we follow the fortunes of the House after the accession of Elizabeth, we find that the south gate was granted by King James in 1604 to Sir Roger Wilbraham for life. In 1607 the site of the House, containing five acres, was granted to Ralph Freeman and his heirs. The choir, which had been restored or rebuilt by Cardinal Pole, became the property of Sir William Cecil; the Earl of Elgin got it by his marriage with Diana, daughter of the Earl of Exeter; his son, being created Earl of Aylesbury, called it Aylesbury Chapel. In the reign of James the Second a Roman Catholic convent of Benedictine monks was set up in the Precinct of St. John’s. An account of the attempt is given in T. Cromwell’s _History of Clerkenwell_:—

“It appears, that in the reign spoken of, a certain _Father Corker_ was ‘resident in England to the Elector of Colen’ (Cologne); and that, having first set up a chapel in the Savoy, from which, owing to a dispute with the Jesuits, he was persuaded by the King to remove, ‘he went to St. John’s, corruptly called St. Jone’s, and there built a mighty pretty convent, which the Revolution of 1688 pulled down to the ground, to his very great loss, for as he was Dean of the rosary, he melted down the great gold chalice and patten to help towards this building, supplying the want of them with one of silver just of that make. He counted this convent for the conversion of souls amongst those things which the holy Fathers of the Church allow the church treasure to be spent on.’ This convent seems to have cost the Benedictines considerable sums of money; frequent entries appear in their account-books of that period of amounts paid towards its erection, etc. It is always styled in these books ‘The Factory,’ or, ‘The Factory in Clerkenwell.’”

In the year 1721 the estate was purchased by Simon Michell, and in 1723 he repaired and enlarged the chapel, which he sold to the commissioners for building fifty new churches, for £2950. The church was declared to be a parish church, and the parish assigned to it was the former precinct of the Priory.

The remains of the Priory consist now of the gate, the crypt of the church, some fragments of the ancient walls, and foundations of the former buildings. The crypt, which, until recently, was filled with coffins, has now been cleared; it is one of the most remarkable monuments in London; it was found by excavation to have extended, formerly, much farther to the west; probably to the whole extent of the church.

The Gatehouse consists of the gate itself, with two rooms, one on each side, and a large chamber above. In 1731 it was occupied by Edward Cave the publisher, and from this spot was issued the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. The associations of Johnson, Goldsmith, and others with the Gate belong to another place.

The Gatehouse served for some time as a tavern. In 1876 it became the Chapter House of the English Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

THE TEMPLARS

We now turn to the second of the two great Military Orders which belong to the Mediæval Life. The Templar, as well as the Knight Hospitaller, rode through the streets with his following, haughty, rich, luxurious, hated by the people as a hard and cruel landlord; hated by the King for his privileges; by the Church as outside Episcopal jurisdiction; by the City for his pride, and for the vices which were freely attributed to him.

The story of the destruction of the Order of Knights Templars in 1306-1312 is a historical problem that will never, I suppose, be satisfactorily explained. The broad facts are well known. In the year 1305, through the influence of Philippe le Bel, King of France, Bertrand, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was elected Pope and took the title of Clement the Fifth. He was the first of the Popes of Avignon. In return for the tiara, Clement undertook to perform certain acts, in number six. Five of them are known. The sixth, kept a secret, is supposed to have been the suppression of the Templars. There were indeed various reasons why the King—or any king in Western Europe—should desire the suppression of this Order. The knights had grown enormously rich; some idea of their wealth may be obtained by the enumeration of some of the manors they possessed in England alone. Let us take one county, Hertfordshire (C. G. Addison’s _Knights Templars_, p. 94). In this county formerly they possessed the town and forest of Broxbourne, the manor of Chelsin Templars (Chelsin Templariorum) and the manors of Laugenok, Broxbourne, Letchworth, and Temple Dynnesley; demesne lands at Stanho, Preston, Charlton, Walden, Hiche Chelles, Levecamp and Benigho; the church of Broxbourne, two watermills, and a lock on the river Lea; property at Hichen, Pyrton, Ickilford, Offeley Parva, Walden Regis, Furnivale, Ipolitz, Wandsmyll, Watton, Therleton, Weston, Gravele, Wilien, Leccheworth, Baldock, Datheworth, Russenden, Codpeth, Sumershale, Buntynford, etc., and the church of Weston.

It must not be supposed that Hertfordshire was exceptional in this respect; the whole of England was dotted over with the possessions of the Order. All this land was given to the Order at a time when the first passion for crusading had cooled, and princes began to think that it might be better for the country if men were paid to fight the Saracen. The Templars were at first a very fine regiment, splendidly equipped, and full of valour. To maintain this regiment was surely a good work, almost as good as going to fight in person. The land was given them on the condition that the larger part of the revenues should be sent every year to the Grand Master of the House and Order in Jerusalem. It was held by them, further, on such terms as were never before heard of; the knights were exempt from all taxation aids and “amerciaments”; they could not be compelled to plead except before the King or his Chief Justice; they had power to hold Courts; to impose fines upon their tenants; to hold markets; to try criminals caught on their lands; they could travel without paying toll; they were not obliged to contribute to bridges and other works; they seized the chattels of all felons caught on their lands. Nor was this all: they were exempted from paying tithe; they could not be excommunicated by Bishop or priest; their houses had the right of sanctuary; and they had an Ecclesiastical Court of their own, with a judge, whom they called Conservator Privilegiorum Suorum. The Grand Master and the Brotherhood were subordinate only to the Pope; a large number of priests had been admitted to the Order, which was entirely free from the Church in any country. This great Order, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, numbered, it is said, fifteen hundred knights, with chaplains and serving brothers innumerable. The revenues were, as has been shown, enormous, and not one penny went to the purpose for which the Order had been endowed. The Holy Land had been swept clear of Christians; the Latin Kingdom, the name of which survived, had been destroyed for more than a hundred years; the degenerate grandsons of the Crusaders had long been scattered to the four winds; the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers had been expelled from the country, even from the fortified ports: Jaffa and Antioch fell in 1268, Tripoli in 1290, Acre in 1291. Then the Templars, reduced in numbers, retired to Cyprus, whence, in 1300, Jacques de Moray, the last Grand Master, made an unsuccessful attempt to seize Alexandria, and in 1303, when he tried to found a settlement at Tortosa, not only the power of the knights had gone but also their prestige. These dates are necessary, because they show that as soon as the Templars were proved incapable of doing the work for which they existed, then the attack upon them commenced, and not before.

The central house of the Templars in London was called the Temple. At first it was built on the north-east corner of Chancery Lane. Remains of this house were standing until quite modern times. When the Order became richer, the members bought a piece of ground stretching from Whitefriars to Essex House, and there erected a splendid convent, of which the Chapel remains to this day. The Master of the Temple was the Master of the English Templars. There were, however, some fifty Preceptories scattered about the country, monastic establishments, each ruled by a Prior, chiefly inhabited by sick or aged Templars. The site of many of their Preceptories is still preserved by the name, as Temple Combe in Somersetshire, Temple Rothley in Lincolnshire, and others. The Priors of the Preceptories had in their hands the management of the estates and the collection of the rents and dues.

The Temple of London, in consequence of its garrison of knights, its monastic character, and its privilege of sanctuary, became a place in which great lords and even kings deposited their treasure. Queen Berengaria’s dower was placed in the hands of the Templars. Hubert de Burgh made the Temple his bank, and the knights refused to let the King’s officers remove the money and jewels he had given into their care. Kings made the place their residence; King John was there when his barons came to him demanding the “liberties and laws of King Edward.” Henry the Third, after a little quarrel with the Order, became reconciled to them, and lived for a while in the Temple; he made them the guardians of his treasure; he was present at the consecration of the Chancel of their Church in 1240. And he sent certain Castilian Ambassadors to the Temple as his guests. But by the beginning of the fourteenth century there is no doubt that the Templars had become unpopular. The King could not be pleased to think of manors and lordships which produced no revenues for the realm; the nobles grudged the immunities of the Order, and remembered that the lands of the Templars had once belonged to their ancestors before they were piously alienated; merchants could not with patience behold the annual transmission of vast sums of money out of the country; the Bishops lusted after the tithes, and regarded the Templars with suspicion and dislike as a united body over whom they had no authority. Finally, soldiers and military historians remembered that in the last days in Palestine the Order would own no subordination to King, Bishop, or Council; the knights stood apart, a compact body; so far, it was said, from supporting the Cross in the Holy Land, they did their best by their stubborn independence to pull it down. War has no rule more rigid and inflexible than the rule of obedience to one general. This rule the Templars had broken. That they fought with valour no one could deny, but they fought for themselves. Lastly, since there was no more fighting in Palestine, and no hope of any, why go on sending all their treasure out of the country? And what good were the Knights Templars any longer? There had been signs of coming storm after the fall of Acre in 1291. Edward the First seized the money intended to be sent to Cyprus on the ground that the purpose for which it had been sent in former years no longer existed. He gave it up, it is true, at the request of the Pope. Before this he had seized ten thousand pounds belonging to the Templars, and this money he did not return. Edward the Second also took away from the Temple fifty thousand pounds of silver, with a quantity of gold, jewels, and precious stones. That these acts of violence were committed without remonstrance or redress indicates that the power of the Templars had greatly diminished. These considerations—coupled with the intolerable pride of the knights and their splendour, which mocked the smaller gentry—were sufficient to account for the unpopularity of the Order and for the general acquiescence in its suppression. And with societies as well as with men when they become unpopular, sinister rumours began to be whispered, crimes began to be alleged, words began to be reported.

On 6th June 1306 Clement the Fifth addressed an invitation to the Grand Masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers inviting them both to a conference as to the recovery of the Holy Land. It is thought that it was his intention to overwhelm both Orders in one common destruction. Since, however, a great part of the property of the Templars was afterwards given to the Hospitallers, it is not probable that this was the Pope’s intention. Jacques de Moray, Grand Master of the Templars, accepted: the Grand Master of the Hospitallers declined to be present. De Moray arrived in France with sixty knights and a long train of sumpter mules bearing his treasure, estimated at 150,000 golden florins, and a vast quantity of silver. On September 14 the King, without waiting for the Pope’s consent, issued secret orders to all his seneschals instructing them to summon each a powerful force on the night of October 12; not to open the orders until that night, and then to execute them. On that night every Templar in France was arrested. The world heard with amazement that this great and valiant order was guilty of the most frightful crimes. These were arranged under five heads:

(1) That at their initiation they denied Christ and spat upon the Cross.

(2) That they worshipped an idol of some monstrous form.

(3) That they gave and received disgusting kisses at these receptions.

(4) That they omitted the words of consecration in the mass.

(5) That they practised unnatural vices.

There were other and minor charges. Among them, for instance, that the Grand Master claimed the power of granting absolution; that they wore a magical cord; that they were in secret league with the Mohammedans. How these charges arose it is impossible to prove; it was said that they came from one Squin de Florian, a man who had been imprisoned on account of his corrupt life, and according to others a certain Nosso, an apostate Templar, who between them devised and invented the whole.

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.