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This article is from the
Scottish Review of July, 1898 where we've extracted it into a separate
pdf file which you can download below.
Article in pdf format
However we have also done a quick ocr'ing of
this article to read here but the pdf file will provide all the relevant
footnotes. ON the
map of "Lowland Scotland one finds in places the name Temple, marking
here a parish, and there, it maybe, a farm, a hamlet, or a croft. The
name, of course, is a relic of the presence and possessions of the order
of Knights Templars in our country—the only relic and memorial of itself
which the order has left on Scottish soil. Elsewhere throughout Western
Europe, and even in the Mohammedan East, material remains not unworthy
of the power and glory of the greatest military order of mediaeval
Christendom have endured till modern times. The ruins of the Pilgrim's
Castle are still to be seen on the coast of Palestine, frowning over the
perilous defile which, about the time of the Third Crusade, it was built
to guard. In all its rich store of antiquities Cyprus has nothing more
splendid than the noble halls and churches, which were the abode of the
order in its later years. The last king of the old regime in France
passed to the guillotine from the fortress whence his predecessor,
almost five centuries before, had dragged the last Grand Master of the
Temple to torture and death. The grey walls of more than one preceptory
still stand among the meadows of England, and in the central throng and
roar of London, the order has bequeathed to the Inns of Court not its
name only, but also, xxxn. 1 in its chapel, one of the finest and most
venerable examples of Gothic art. Scotland alone possesses no tangible
memorial of these monkish knights whose pride and riches once provoked
the fear and envy of kings. Other monastic orders have left tokens
enough of their presence to give beauty and melancholy to our
landscapes. Black monks and grey, Cistercians, Augustinians,
Praemonstratenses—one sees their ruined churches and cloisters rising in
the heart of busy towns, or above the roofs of sleepy villages, or, in
some quiet and fertile valley, peeping from amidst immemorial trees.
Even the Knights of St. John, the masters of Rhodes and Malta, have
their memorial in the church of Torphichen. But the Templars are without
a monument. Chapel and preceptory have vanished.
' The Knights' bones are
dust,
And their good swords rust,'
and the place of their
sepulchre is remembered here and there only by some vague and doubtful
tradition, in the mouths of country folk, of ' the Templar's grave.'
Nothing but their name is left, haunting ghostlike and impalpable the
ancient scenes of their habitation.
This utter lack of
monuments is unfortunately accompanied by a great deficiency of written
record. Our old chroniclers, while sometimes describing the exploits of
the Templars in Palestine, never mention the organisation, estates, or
membership of the order at home, nor does the list of our extant
monastic chartularies include any collection relating to a preceptory of
Scottish Templars. The early extinction of the order and the probable
fact that most of its Scottish muniments were kept elsewhere than in
Scotland will help to account for this want of information. The result
at any rate is that for an account of the Templars in our country we
have hitherto had to rely on the compilations of Father Augustin Hay and
the careless Spottiswood—compilations extremely meagre and sometimes
misleading. It is not possible, of course, to supply this defect in any
adequate fashion, or to do for the Scottish Templars what has been done
for their English brethren in the work of G. G. Addison. Yet by bringing
together the few scattered references in old records and charters one
may perhaps succeed in giving a slightly more copious and precise
account than has hitherto been offered of the position occupied in
Scotland by that famous military brotherhood, which, at the date of the
battle of Bannockburn, was already a thing of the past.
The order of the
Knighthood of the Temple—Militia Templi Jerosolimitani as it was styled
in common official form —must have been introduced into Scotland very
soon after its foundation. It was in 1118 that Hugh de Payens and
Godfrey de St. Omer, two knights of Northern France, drew around them
the little band of crusaders sworn to the defence of pilgrims on the
dangerous roads between Jerusalem and the seaport towns of Palestine,
and in 1128 the society, already largely increased by an eager throng of
the most devout and adventurous warriors of Frankish Christendom,
received confirmation and a code of rules from Pope Honorius II. at the
Council of Troyes in Champague. Hugh de Pavens, the founder and first
head of the order, was present at that Council, along with St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, its great eulogist and legislator, and immediately
afterwards he made a journey through some of the Western kingdoms,
exhorting their princes and nobles to help the new brotherhood and send
succour to the Holy Land. In Normandy he was honourably welcomed by King
Henry Beauclerk, who sent him over to England, ' and there,' in the
words of the English Chronicle,
'he was received by all
good men, and they all gave presents to him; and in Scotland in like
manner. And moreover they sent to Jerusalem great wealth in gold and
silver. And he invited people out to Jerusalem ; and there went along
with him and after him so many people as more had never done before
since the first expedition during the days of Pope Urban.'
One may imagine the
warmth of the welcome which the Templar would receive in Scotland from
the devout King David, who at this time had been four years on the
throne. The year 1128 saw the foundation of the monastery of Holy-rood
and the building of the great abbey church at Kelso, and in all
probability it witnessed also the gift of those lands on the South Esk
in Midlothian which general tradition represents as David's benefaction
to the Templars. At all events there is no doubt about the king's
devotion to the new military brotherhood, since Aifred of Rievaulx tells
us that he kept some of the brethren constantly at his court and made
them judges and advisers of his conduct by night and day.
After all, this may be accounted but moderate devotion for an age
wherein saints could become the panegyrists of the Templars, and a
monarch could bequeath them his kingdom. Natural enough too it was,
since the order embodied three of the great mediaeval ideals which were
at the height of their popularity in the century between Godfrey of
Bouillon and Richard of the Lion Heart. As vowed to celibacy and the
renunciation of all private aims, the Templars shared in th6 reverence
paid to monasticism: as professed men-at-arms they attracted the
admiration due to the knight and the warrior, while as the sworn foes of
the infidel and guardians of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem they
represented the crusading spirit. They were the very model and mirror of
Christian chivalry, and the days were still far distant when hideous
stories of their greed and pride and profligacy should find credence or
foundation.
It was of course the very
reverence in which the Templars were held that served most effectually
to destroy the pristine severity and humility of the order. The guides
and guardians of pilgrims in the Holy Land were rapidly transformed into
the standing army of the Latin Kingdom in the East; the 'poor comrades
of the Temple' were the objects of so much devout munificence that
within a century they had become the lords of some nine thousand mauorst
in different parts of Europe. This accumulation of property soon made it
necessary for them to frame a huge organisation in which the countries
of Western Christendom, as well as the Levantine regions, were embraced.
The Templars' proper sphere of duty and activity was of course in
Palestine, where the brethren fought continually against the Saracens,
and where the Grand Master had his headquarters at the so-called Temple
of Solomon on Mount Moriah. But the territorial possessions of the order
had also to be looked after, and thence arose the system of preceptories,
and the great scheme of provincial hierarchy and organisation. Fortified
houses, each, as a rule, with a chapel attached to it, were built on the
principal estates, and served at once as offices for administration of
the lands, as places of retirement for sick and aged brethren, and as
centres for the reception of recruits. The Templar who was put in charge
of one of these houses and who bore rule over its inmates, was called a
Preceptor, from the precipimns tibi with which his commission began, and
the establishments themselves, naturally termed preceptories, were
grouped in provinces, each governed by a master or prior, according to
the kingdom in which they chanced to be situated. Western Europe was
thus divided into eleven provinces, of which two were allotted to Italy
and three to the Spanish peninsula, four to the territory corresponding
to the modern kingdom of France, and one each to Germany and England.
Scotland never attained provincial rank, but, along with Ireland, formed
part of the English province. As the whole order was ruled by the Grand
Master at Jerusalem, so the Scottish houses and possessions were under
the government of the Master of the Temple at London, which was the
chief English house. This subordination is amply proved. In the
inquisitions made at the dissolution of the order it was stated as a
notorious fact that the brethren of Ireland and Scotland had always been
subject to the English Master, and the Scottish Templars themselves
admitted that they took their orders from him.
It is significant also that grants of land belonging to the order in
Scotland were sometimes at least made at the Temple in London, and that
the common seal of that house was appended to documents signed in
Scotland and relating to the Scottish possessions.
At the same time,
although in this strict subordination to England, the Scottish Templars
had a chief of their own who was usually styled the Master, but
sometimes the Preceptor, of the House (or Knighthood) of the Temple in
Scotland— Magister Domus (vel Militiae) Templi in Scotia ]—and who had
his headquarters at Ballantrodach in Midlothian, the principal house of
the order to the north of the Tweed. The name Ballantrodach has long ago
vanished from the map of Scotland, but the significant name of Temple,
which has succeeded it, and which designates the modern parish wherein
the pre-ceptory and its lands were situated, is the most notable vestige
of the order that Scottish geography has to shew. The rained church of
Temple, which stands picturesquely on the banks of the South Esk a few
miles above Dalkeith, is of a later date than the dissolution of the
order, and apparently there are now no remains of the preceptory,
although from a tradition rather vaguely reported by Angustine Hay, it
seems that' the foundations of a vast building and the root of several
big pillars of stone' were discovered at some time in the seventeenth
century, in a garden in the neighbourhood.}
In this vanished
preceptory, whatever was its situation, the government of the order in
Scotland was carried on, and its business administered. Charters
relating to the Templars' lands were granted at Ballantrodach, and there
also payments by and to the order were appointed to be made. The last
preceptor who was ever stationed there, told the inquisition who
examined him, that he was chief preceptor in Scotland, and had charge of
all the order in that kingdom—in subordination, of course, as has begn
already said, to the English Master, whose vicegerent he was, and whose
chapters at London he was obliged to attend. The names of only a very
few of these Masters of the Temple in Scotland have been preserved. A
certain Bartholomew was Master some time between 1165 and 1169, and
about 1180 the office was filled by Ranulf de Corbet, probably a member
of that Roxburghshire family, lords of Clifton and Makerston, who appear
as benefactors of the Abbey of Melrose. These apparently are the only
Scottish Masters before the end of the thirteenth century of whom
anything can be known.
The Templars in Scotland
of course enjoyed a full measure of those great and various privileges,
both temporal and spiritual, the possession of which made their order
one of the most favoured societies in Christendom. To understand their
position, however, one must avoid the error of regarding them as
ecclesiastics. They were monks only, not clerks; although sworn to
chastity, obedience, and poverty, they possessed, no more than the
meanest layman, any of the mysterious power and sanctity of the
priesthood. But at the same time, the extraordinary meritoriousness of
their vocation—for what higher or holier calling could there be for a
layman than to fight, as Saint Bernard phrased it, the battles of the
Lord ?— gained them some important privileges which were strictly proper
to the clergy, and some which made them even more highly favoured aud
advantaged than the great majority of ecclesiastics. By the great Bull
of Pope Alexander II., known as Omne Datum Optimum (1163), they were not
only exempted from payment of tithes, but were allowed to hold tithes
themselves. They might have chapels and cemeteries of their own, and the
priests whom they engaged as chaplains were not to be subject to any
other authority than that of the order. In effect, the Templars and all
their dependants were withdrawn from the ordinary episcopal
jurisdiction, and made subject directly to the Pope and
to him alone. One very notable privilege was that which allowed the
churches in any place lying under sentence of interdict, to be opened
once a year on the arrival of any brethren of the order who might come
for the purpose of collecting alms. Obviously
it was expected that the faithful, in gratitude for this relaxation of
the interdict, would give bountifully for the succour of the Holy Land,
and in order still more to provoke their liberality a remission of
penance was promised. From the canons of the Scottish Church,f however,
it appears that this privilege was sometimes abused by the Scottish
Templars to the extent not only of admitting excommunicated persons to
divine service, but even of allowing the bodies of such persons, and of
public robbers and violators of churches, to obtain the rites of
Christian burial.
Still more liable to
abuse (although we do not hear any complaint of it), must have been the
right of girth, or sanctuary, which was recognised as belonging to the
Templars'* houses as well as to those of the Knights of St. John. It was
to their character as crucesignati that the Templars and Hospitallers
owed this privilege, which strictly was an adjunct of churches and
churchyards, and the token of it, as well as of the many other
exemptions enjoyed in common by the two orders, was the cross which they
engraved upon all buildings belonging to them. In the comprehensive
charter} granted by Alexander II. to the Scottish Templars in 123G,
there is formal recognition of this right of sanctuary as applying to
murder, robbery, and other crimes of violence—;flemyngyrth, murthir et
latrocinio et forsemento. The tradition of the privilege lingered for
centuries after the right itself had been abolished, and there is an odd
story of an old woman, so late as the beginning of the present century,
taking refuge in a Temple tenement and defying the town officers to lay
hands on her in that secure retreat.
In the charter by
Alexander II. which has just been mentioned, and the terms of which are
in great part a mere repetition of a similar document granted by Henry
III. of England in 1227, if the various civil privileges enjoyed by the
Scottish Templars are enumerated and confirmed. They held their lands
not only with the common feudal rights of sac and soc, tol and theam,
infangthief and outfangthief, but also, as in perpetuam elemosinam, with
freedom from all feudal aids and exactions, whether for the king himself
or his ministers. They were exempt from scot and gild, from attendance
with the king's host and in his courts, from the casualties of ward and
relief, and from all services connected with the royal castles, fleets,
parks, and houses. Any lands which they might reclaim and cultivate,
even within the bounds of the royal forest, were to be exempt from the
forest laws. Finally in fairs, harbours, and markets, and on highways
and bridges, no dues or tolls were to be taken from the Templars or
their serfs or tenants, while any fines or forfeitures incurred by these
dependents were to be made over to the order. The extraordinarily
privileged position of the military orders as landlords can hardly
perhaps be better indicated in brief and in fine than by a quotation
from a charter of William the Lion, granting certain lands to the Priory
of St. Andrews ' with the same freedom from all custom, service, and
exaction as is everywhere enjoyed by the brethren of the Hospital and of
the Temple.' £ Evidently the conditions on which the Templars held their
lands were regarded as a model of the most favourable kind of tenure.
The estates thus
possessed were scattered over nigh every part of Scotland, from
Drumfriesshire and Wigtown north to Forres, Nairn, Inverness and
Dingwall. In fact, as one may see from the letters issued by Edward I.
in favour of the Templars in 1296, there was but one Scottish sheriffdom—that
of Argyll—in which they owned no lands.8 Their
particular estates, however, it is as a rule impossible to identify, for
in the aggregate of so-called Temple Lands, familiar to every Scottish
lawyer and antiquary, they are coufused with the original possessions of
the Knights of St. John who succeeded to the property of the Templars on
their suppression. But the mere extension of the name of Temple Lands to
the estates of the Hospitallers would suffice, even if we had no more
effectual means of definite comparison, to show the preponderance of the
Templars' possessions. From a report, however, which was made in 1335
by Prior Philip de Thame of the Hospital, it appears that the Scottish
estates of the Templars exceeded in value those of the Hospitallers in
the same country by a third. The Templars in Scotland, it is there said,
used in time of peace to pay as 'responsious,' or annual contributions
to the headquarters of their Order, the sum of 300 merks, while the
Hospitallers paid only 200 merks. Responsions were usually fixed at
one-third of the gross receipts of the order in any district, so that
the annual income of the Scottish Templars before the outbreak of the
desolating War of Independence must have been about £600. After the
vague statements one often sees about the vast wealth of the Templars,
this sum will perhaps appear strikingly small. Not only is it, at the
most, a mere fifth of the annual income of the order in England—a
difference due doubtless in great part to the comparative poverty of the
northern kingdom—but, (as may be seen from the ancient rental of Kelso,}
it was inferior even to the revenue in some cases enjoyed by a single
Scottish abbey. It is clear that the Templars in Scotland, though fairly
well endowed, were not, for so popular an order, burdened with
extravagant wealth.
The bulk of their
possessions was doubtless situated in the Lothiana Round the preceptory
of Ballantrodach their lands (part of which, as appears from a charter
of the year 1350 in the General Register House, was obtained from the
second or third Alexander) stretched down the Esk to Carrington and
Harvieston, and up towards the Moorfoot Hills by Halkerston, Utterston,
Rosebery, and Yorkston. In the richer flats towards Gullane and Aberlady
they had the acres which afterwards became the barony of Drem. Temple
Liston, the older name of Kirkliston, shows their presence on the Almond
in Linlithgowshire, which is proved also by the mention of their
neighbours at Liston in the Inquisition of 1309; but the fine old
Norman church at that place was not in their hands. At Falkirk and in
the carse around it they had land and salt pits. Like most of the better
endowed monasteries, they owned property in Berwick, that great and
wealthy seaport, which seemed to the chronicler of Lanercost a second
Alexandria, while in Glasgow, as yet a poor episcopal burgh, struggling
hard against the oppression of Rutherglen, they possessed, by the gift
of Bishop Jocclin, a tenement (probably in the Stockwell) worth twelve
pence yearly, and a right of fishing in the yet unpolluted Clyde.9
The Temple Lands in Rutherglen itself may be set down as belonging to
them, seeing that letters on their behalf, but not on the Hospitallers',
were addressed by Edward I. in 1296 to the vicecomes at that place.
Spottiswood, copying blunderingly from the inquisition of the English
Templars' lands made in 1185, f has spoken of their house at Oggerston
in Stirlingshire, and in this he has been incautiously followed not only
by George Chalmers, but also by so learned and careful an antiquary as
Cosmo Innes, ' who, in one of his books, includes the name of Oggerston
as the site of a preceptory of Knights Templars in a geographical index
of mediaeval Scotland. As a matter of fact, however, ' baillia de
Ogereston, apud Stiucle,' was not in Scotland at all, but within the
territory belonging to the English earldom of Huntingdon, and the
Templars' lands there were granted to them by one or another of the
kings of Scotland as holder of that fief. Stiucle is not Stirling, but
Stewkley in Huntingdonshire, while the ruins of Oggerston may be found
marked on any map of that county a few miles to the south of
Peterborough.
Oddly enough the Scottish
possessions of the Templars of which we have most knowledge were those
lying in the remote district of Deeaide, in Aberdeenshire and the Mearns.
Shortly before 1239 Walter Bisset, the head of that powerful family
which within a few yeais was to come to ruin through the suspicion that
its members were concerned in the murder of the young Earl of Athole at
Haddington, built a house for the order in what was then the undivided
parish of Culter. This house, which is the only Scottish preceptory we
know of besides Ballantrodach, was erected on the south side of the Dee,
where also was situated the greater part, if not the whole; of the land
attached to it. Blairs, Tulichezirt, Estirtully, Kincolsy or Kincausy,
and the two Deliburries or Tilbouries are still recognizable in the
geographical nomenclature of the present parish of Maryculter.
Within a few years the
possessions of the order on Deeside were augmented by a grant of the
church of Aboyne, some thirty miles up the river, which was conveyed
adproprier usus by Ralph, the Bishop of Aberdeen, between 1239 and 1249.
By the terms of the grant the Templars were bound to maintain a vicar in
the church, and to present him, duly qualified, to the Bishop, to whom
he should be answerable in spiritual matters and for the cure of souls,
while to the Templars he was to account for the temporalities of his
benefice. It is significant of the position of Scotland in the Templars'
hierarchy that this episcopal donation was confirmed by Pope Alexander
IV. in a Bull addreased to the Master and brethren of the Knighthood of
the Temple in England. That the rights thus conferred on the Order were
exercised we have evidence in the record of the presentation of a
certain John of Annan, King's Chaplain, to be vicar of Aboyne in 1277.
Ten years later the
Templars were engaged in an arbitration concerning their lands at Culter,
and from a copy of the sentence, fortunately preserved in the episcopal
chartulary of Aberdeen,f we get a most interesting glimpse of their
relations with the ecclesiastical orders in Scotland, and of the kind of
disputes to which their extraordinary privileges gave rise. The parish
church of Culter, which embraced under its jurisdiction both sides of
the Dee, belonged to the Monks of Kelso, who had obtained from Pope
Urban. IV. an indult to the effect that no one in any of their parishes
should rebuild any church or chapel without their consent. In spite of
this the Templars had lately rebuilt the chapel at their preceptory at
Culter, and also refused to pay the tithes due from their lands. The
monks therefore asked for payment of the tithes, and for the destruction
of the chapel. To this the Templars replied by a reference to their
privileges. They were exempted, they said, from the payment of tithes
from waste lands which they had brought into cultivation, and in such a
category were the lands of Estirtully, Kincolsy, and the two Deliburries,
as well as those of Tulichezirt and Blairs, which had formerly been part
of the royal forest. Farther, it was their privilege in these waste
lands to erect churches with cemeteries for themselves and their vassals
and also for wayfarers. The parish church of Culter was on the north
bank of the Dee, and, as the river had no bridge, their men, living on
the other side, often could not get to mass without danger. On this
account they had built the chapel, with cemetery and baptistery, at
their house at Culter, and had possessed it peaceably, along with the
tithes of their lands, for more than forty years. The dispute, after
reference to arbiters appointed by the Pope, was settled in 1287 by a
compromise very favourable to the Templars, who were allowed to keep
their chapel and teinds, but adjudged to pay, as compensation to the
monks of Kelso, the sum of eight marks a year. The result of this
virtual disjunction of the southern part of the parish is seen in the
existence of the two parishes of Peterculter and Maryculter at the
present day.
The average number of
Templars in Scotland is, of course, not ascertainable, yet by inference
we may conclude that it was but small. At the extinction of the order
there were between two and three hundred members in England, and, if we
keep in mind the wealth of the Templars there, represented by a revenue
of more than £3000 a year, and the multitude of their preceptories,
which were about forty in number, it cannot be imagined that the
brethren in poor and sparsely-peopled Scotland, with their income of
some £600 a year, were ever more numerous than forty or fifty. This,
however, is not to say that the order contained on an average no more
than forty or fifty Scottish members. Until the fall of Acre in 1291,
the great majority of the Templars, made up of men of all nationalities,
must have been stationed at the various posts in the IIolv Land, while
even after that event most of them would naturally be found at the
headquarters of the order in Cyprus. We know, too, that Knights were
received in any preceptory, and were moved about from one kingdom to
another. Thus, for example, a certain Robert the Scot, in his
examination by the English Inquisitors in 1309, admitted that he had
twice been received into the order—once at the Pilgrim's Castle in
Palestine, and the second time, after desertion and repentance, at
Nicosia in Cyprus. Again, Robert de Hamilton, who was examined at
Lincoln in the following year, said he had been admitted at the
preceptory of Dyunesley in Ilertfordshire. And yet again we hear of a
Richard Scot received as a serving brother at Paris, and of a John Scot
admitted at a house in the County of Ponthieu. Doubtless, therefore,
there were Scottish Templars stationed from time to time in many parts
of Western Christendom, as well as in taast, while, on the offlter hand,
knfflts of other nationalities must have been often sent to the Scottish
houses. In most cases these knights would naturally be Englishmen, and
it is noteworthy that all the Templars mentioned in the Scottish
Inquisition of 1309 as being quartered in the Scotch preceptories are
also described as born in England. The Templar, of course, had no
nationality from the moment he assumed the red cross. He was the soldier
of Christendom, and not of any particular country or kingdom, and so
could pass from one realm to another, finding everywhere, in the prior
and preceptory of his order, the only master and home that he owned. In
Scotland this general cosmopolitism must have well accorded with the
peculiar character of the Scottish knights. These would, in almost every
case, be members of the Norman baronial class, introduced by David I.
from England, and in ways of thought and feeling, and often, too, from
family interest, they would generally be more in sympathy with
Englishmen than with the people among whom they lived.
Although there exist no
remains of any preceptory of Scottish Templars, we may be sure that the
houses of the order to the north of the Tweed were of the same kind as
those in England. The ruins at such places as Temple Bruere in
Lincolnshire and Temple Balsall in Warwickshire, show a half-baronial,
half-monastic type of structure, with strongly fortified towers, and
enceinte enclosing a stately hall which served for refectory, and a
chapel which, like that of the Temple in London, appears sometimes to
have been of circular shape. Of this type, doubtless, though on a
smaller and humbler scale, were the Scottish preceptories at
Ballantrodach and Culter. The Templars who inhabited them were of three
classes, knights, chaplains, and serving brothers. The knights, who
alone were the proper and original Templars, were distinguished by the
famous white mantle with a red cross on the left breast, which they wore
over a complete suit of chain mail. Each knight had three horses and an
esquire, and whatever may be signified by the well kuown seal bearing
the device of two cavaliers on one saddle, the Templars were expressly
forbidden to ride iu this manner. The serving brethren (fratres ser-vientes),
though taking the vows of the order, were only a kind of inferior
attendants, and their inferiority was marked by the black or brown robe
which they wore. They served the knights as esquires, teudiug their
horses and following them to the field armed with bows, bills, and
swords, while at home they did the menial work of the preceptory. The
chaplains were ordinary ecclesiastics who had been admitted to the order
that they might perform divine service and administer the sacraments to
the brethren. In addition to these, a house of Templars generally
contained some servants and esquires who were not members of the order.
The administration of the
preceptory was conducted by the Master or Preceptor, with advice of the
other brethren, who formed his chapter. This form of government
prevailed in all grades of the order, from the highest downward. As the
Grand Master iu Jerusalem or Cyprus was advised by the Priors of the
various provinces, and the English Master at Londou by the Masters of
Scotland and Ireland and the preceptors of the three kingdoms, so the
Scottish Master had for councillors the brethren under his command. The
composition of a chapter at Ballantrodach may perhaps be gathered from
the list of witnesses to a charter* granted expressly with counsel and
consent of the brethren there by Master Ranulf Corbet, about 1180. In
this list we find the names of brother Roger, the Almoner, brother Alan,
the Preceptor, brother Anketin, brother William, Warin, the chaplain,
and Peter, Walter, John, and Hugh, ' our clerks.' Legal documents
affecting the property of the order were usually signed at a chapter,
where also disputes were settled and appointments to offices or
benefices made. Some of the witnesses at the Scotch inquisition of 1309,
spoke of the chapters in Scotland being held by night and in secret, but
it is noteworthy that no one had ever seen or heard of the most solemn
and mysterious ceremony of the order—the reception of a new brother
—taking place at any of them. Doubtless the most important and exciting
of the Scottish chapters were those convened to meet the Master of the
Temple at London, when, in the ordinary exercise of his office, he came
down to visit the Scottish houses, to correct the faults of their
discipline, and remove any brethren who had proved themselves
incompetent or unworthy.
The round of life in the
preceptory was the common monastic one. The brethren were bound to daily
observance of all the canonical hours from matins to compline. In the
refectory they ate their meals in silence, while one read aloud some
passage of scripture, or homily, or sacred legend ; four days a week
they abstained from flesh, and on Fridays had nothing but Lenten fare.
At supper it was commanded that wine should be used but sparingly, and
when compline was over, all went to bed, conversation, save in case of
absolute necessity, being forbidden after they had left the common hall.
Every day a tithe of the bread was given to the poor, its distribution
being the duty of the almoner, whose office is more than once mentioned.
The vow of chastity was so strictly interpreted that the knights were
forbidden to accept any service from a woman—even so much as a basin of
water for washing the hands. Of course they were denied all the ordinary
luxuries of apparel. They might not wear furred garments, pointed shoes,
or baldricks: the adornment of their arms with gold and silver was
discouraged, neither might they suffer their hair and beards to grow to
picturesque length. The delights of hunting and hawking, too, were
prohibited. i None of you,' so ran their rule, ' may catch one bird with
another, or shoot with bow or cross-bow in the forest, or ride shouting
after the hounds. Your strength is devoted ut leo semper ferietur—to the
smiting of the adversary that goeth about like a lion seeking whom he
may devour.'
Such, at least, was the
rigour of the rule given by St. Bernard, but there is no question that
in later times that rule was greatly relaxed. From the first its stern
monastic character must have been profoundly modified by the fact that
the Templars were not only religious devotees, but men-at-arms, who '
With a stronger faith embraced A sword, a horse, a shield.'
The preceptory, indeed,
must have been an odd mixture of the monastery and the feudal castle,
where mailed and bearded monks passed from the narrow cell, the solemn
chapel, and the droning refectory, to the armoury where hung the
red-cross shield and the banner of Beau-seant, to the stables where the
war-horse champed and whinnied, and the tilt-ground where martial
exercises were practised. Among minor and particular causes of
relaxation none perhaps can have been more effectual than the rule which
allowed married brethren to be associated to the order on condition that
they and their wives made over their property to it. These married
brethren were not members of the order, inasmuch as they had not taken
the vows, nor been initiated, and consequently they might not wear the
white habit. They participated, however, iu the privileges of the Order,
received pensions from its funds, and sometimes, in spite of the
prohibition of St. Bernard, were allowed to live in the preceptories—of
course apart from their wives. Iu Rymer's Ftedera we have records
of a number of pensions of this kind granted by the English Templars. A
certain Richard Osmund, for example, had 3d. a day for food, and 20s. a
year for clothes, in return for a donation beforehand of £24, while the
widow of Samp-sou of Hull received an annual allowance of com, straw,
forage, and firewood, besides the pasturage of two cows, and the
liferent of a house and garden, in consideration of a grant of lands
which she had made to the Templars out of her dowry. That the practice
prevailed iu Scotland may be seen from an unpublished charter in the
Scottish General Register House, granted in 1354 by Thomas Lyndsay,
faster of the successors to the Templars,
which narrates certain
events that had occurred near Ballantrodach in the Templars' time.
According to this document, a certain William the son of Geoffrey of
Halkerston—a man ' fonder of ease than of labour '—conveyed his wife's
property at Esperston to the Templars and was, as part of the bargain,
received into their preceptory, and maintained there for the rest of his
days, his wife with her children being left in a house which had been
reserved for her on a corner of the estate. It is evident that such a
practice, offering as it did a life of privileged ease to idle and
selfish persons, must have been very pernicious alike to the community
at large and to the Templars, whose discipline it was bound to relax. In
this particular case it not only wrought gross injustice to a family
which was robbed of its inheritance, but resulted, as we shall see
farther on, in a series of acts of cruelty, oppression, and treachery
which forms the blackest blot on the history of the Templars in
Scotland.
Passing from the
preceptory and its inmates to the lands around it, one has to note that
these, like the generality of monastic lands at the time, were doubtless
partly tilled by serfs adscripti glehae, and partly farmed out to
husbandmen who paid their rent in money as well as in services and in
kind. What these services were like on the lands of Ballantrodach we may
learn from some charters of the fifteenth century preserved among the
Arniston papers, which, although they refer to a time when the Templars'
lands had long been in the possession of the Hospitallers, represent
doubtless a state of things that had remained unaltered for centuries.
The tenants of Utterston and Yorkston were bound to do so many days'
ploughing in winter and harrowing in Lent, and in autumn they were
required to labour at harvest in some cases for three full weeks. They
must also lend their horses to carry a load from Ballantrodach to the
Templars other lands at Kirkliston—an obligation which was known as the
Listonlade. While performing these enforced labours, however, they were
fed—and not ill-fed—by the Templars who had to give them their 'disjune'
and to provide for each man's supper a peck of meal and a pound of
cheese. Of course they were all ' thirled' to the Templars' mill, which,
along with the baronial dovecot, probably stood close to the preceptory
gates. One of the conditions of a tenancy under the Templars was that on
the tenant's death the order took half of his goods if he left no heir,
or a third if he were survived by wife or children.16
Doubtless it was also the custom in Scotland, as in England, that the
tenants were forbidden to sell any horse colts foaled upon their lands,
and to marry their daughters without license, f The latter of these
restrictions was a common feudal condition, while the former was
evidently meant to provide the order with a supply of good horses for
purposes of war.
It was, of course, from
the rents of their estates that by far the greatest part of the Templars'
wealth was obtained. Another source of income was found in the tithes of
the churches bestowed upon them, which, as in the case of the church of
Aboyne, they appropriated to their own uses, filling the cure with a
vicar, who no doubt was underpaid. Something also was derived from the
confratriae or collections which they were authorised to make in
churches other than those that belonged to them, and even, as has been
seen, in churches closed by sentence of interdict at the time. The money
thus gained seems to have been turned to the best account, for the
Templars, in all that we know of them, shew as good business men. The
Scottish burghs soon found it necessary to protect themselves against
their encroachments by enacting that no Templar should meddle in buying
or selling goods belonging to the guild unless he were a guild brother.
The order, however, must
have had a high reputation for trustworthiness in money matters, else it
would not have became, as it did, virtually thcLalraatest banker of the
time. Not only was the money collected for the Holy Land commonly paid
into the hands of the Templars and by them transmitted to the East,* but
laymen also habitually found in the Templars' houses a safe place of
deposit for their wealth, while these houses were often named in
contracts as the places where payment was to be made of money due. When
the Sieur de Joinville, for instance, received the arrears of his pay
from St. Louis at Acre, he at once banked the greater part of the sum
with the Commander of the Palace of the Temple there.f The Temple of
London seems to have been a kind of thirteenth century Bank of England,
where the King and his nobles, as well as the rich burghers of the
capital, regularly kept their money and jewels. Matthew Paris tells us
how the treasure of Herbert de Burgh, the great and patriotic Justiciary,
was entrusted to the Templars, and how they refused to surrender it to
King Henry III. ; and what is still more curious, he gives the form of a
bond by which the money-lenders of Cahors in Guienne—those same usurers
who are damned by Dante to the seventh circle ot the Inferno—bound their
debtors to repayment at the 'New Temple' in London, f There are several
instances of important money transactions concerning Scotland being
settled in a similar manner through the medium of the great military
order. When, in 1225, Queen Ermengarde, the widow of William the Lion,
bought the lands on which she meant to found the monastery of
Balmerinoch, it was arranged that the title deeds of the property should
be deposited at the Temple in London until the price was paid down
there. Three years later, Roger le Bigod bound himself to pay two
thousand pounds of silver at the same place on behalf of Alexander II.,
while in 1282 Alexander III. was apparently under obligation to deposit
a sum of money there. How St. Bernard would have mourned over all this,
and especially over the reception of the Cahors bouds, it is easy to
imagine, and certainly the successors of Hugh de Payens and Godfrey de
St. Omer would have had some difficulty in makiug it out to be a fashion
of smiting the lion.
What has been said so far
almost exhausts the known history of the Scottish Templars until the
great interregnum and the beginning of the troubles with England. Only
two small details, iu fact, remain to be added. The Master of the Temple
in Scotland, whoever he was, seems to have taken part in the unfortunate
Egyptian Crusade of 1249, since he is mentioned in the Cotton MS. as an
authority for the amount of St. Louis' ransom, and in 1255 we find the
name of Richard the Almoner of the Templars iu the list of counsellors
of the Comyus' party removed by the influence of Henry III. The latter
detail supplies the only instance of a Templar busying himself in the
politics of Scotland, while the former adds another figure, though not
another name, to the meagre roll of Scottish Crusaders. As companions iu
the eighth Crusade, this shadowy Master of Ballantrodach would have the
Earl Patrick of Dunbar (who, however, died at Marseilles on the outward
journey), and the equally vague 'Monseigneur Hugues d'Escoz,' who,
according to Joinville, ' moult lien seprouva en la sainte Terre.'
With the beginning of the
last decade of the thirteenth century, our information about the
Scottish Templars is suddenly and substantially increased. While from
the preceding century and a half we have the names of only two Masters
of the Temple in Scotland—Bartholomew aud Ranulf de Corbet— the
subsequent twenty years yield the names of no less than four. The first
of these, Brian de Jay, appears in the Ragman Rolls as Preceptor
Militiae Templi in Scotia, in July 1291, and next month he is found
receiving from King Edward two grants of oak trees from the forests of
Clackmannan and Selkirk. Next year he was appointed to act in place of
the English Master, Guido de H^resta, and on the eBation ot Guido's
successor, the hapless Jacques de Molay,to the Grand Mastership of the
whole order, Brian was appointed to the command of the English province.
His successor in Scotland was John de Sautre, a member of a family which
seems to have given several brethren to the Order, since mention is
found of three other de Sautres as Templars about this time.f Both Brian
and de Sautre appear to have been Englishmen, and about the former two
or three curious and picturesque anecdotes have been preserved, which
shew him, with strange vividness, as a sinister figure, the very
embodiment of the cruelty, arrogance, and impiety with which the name of
Templar was associated in the order's later years. At the English
inquisition in 1309, one witness asserted that Brian de Jay had denied
Christ to be true God and man, and had said that the least hair in a
Saracen's beard was worth a Templar's whole body. Worse still, on a
certain winter's day, when some poor men asked alms for the sake of Our
Lady, Brian had answered, ' Go and be hanged with your lady!' and,
throwing down a farthing on the frozen mud, had made the wretches grovel
and pick it up with their mouths.
It is true that the
evidence given against the Templars at their dissolution is not to be
accepted with implicit faith; but there is from another source a very
ugly story about Brian's conduct in Scotland. Mention has already been
made of William, the son of Geoffrey of Halkerston, who conveyed his
wife's estate at Esperston to the Templars, and became an inmate of
their preceptory at Ballantrodach. The gift (so at least it was
asserted) had been made only for the husband's lifetime; yet on his
death Brian de Jay, then evidently Master of the Temple in Scotland,
proceeded with a band of followers to expel the widow and her children
from the house in which they lived. When she resisted and closed the
door in his face, the Templar ordered his men to break their way in and
drag her out by main force. This was done, and as the poor woman clung
desperately with both hands to the door of her dwelling, a ruffian in
the band unsheathed his dagger and cut off one of her fingers. So, in
the words of the old charter which tells the tale, they dragged her
forth 'vidneratam, clamantem, ct ululantem,' and Brian de Jay took
possession of the house and inheritance from which she had been
iniqui-tously expelled.
This, however, is only
the beginning of the story. Christiana (for that was the widow's name)
seems to have been a woman of spirit, and as soon as her hand was healed
she set out to seek the King at the Abbey of Newbottle, where he chanced
to be lodging. The King, of course, must have been John Baliol, and one
is glad to hear, for the credit of poor ' Toom Tabard,' that he was very
effectually moved to indignation by her tale. By his royal letters
Christiana was at once restored to her inheritance, and there she lived
in peace until the sad outbreak of the war, by which the courts of
justice were closed. The Templars, as might have been expected, took
advantage of the commotion to lay hands upon Esperston, and the widow
was again violently driven forth. So things went on till the eventful
summer of 1298, when Brian de Jay, marching with a band of Welshmen to
join the army of Edward I., arrived at Ballantrodach four days before
the battle of Falkirk—or, in other words, on the 18th of July —and put
up there for the night. With some faint hope of obtaining justice,
Christiana's eldest son, Richard, betook himself to the Preceptory to
plead his mother's cause. He was well received by Brian, who promised,
if he would guide the Welshmen on their march towards Kirkliston, to
make all right there. Private orders, however, were given to the Welsh
captain to make away with the young man, who, accordingly, was
treacherously slain next day at Clerkington (now Rosebery), when he came
to fulfil his engagement. Thenceferward the disputed land at Esperston
remained in the hands of the Templars until the dissolution of their
order.
Such is the story which
one finds told with wonderful vividnes and circumstantiality in the
Hospitallers' charter of 1354, to which reference has already been made.
As embodying with solemn legal attestation a tradition which then was
only sixty years old, and which from its relation to particular legal
rights and claims was more likely than usual to be preserved with
accuracy, it may surely be accepted as authentic. Certainly no other
extant story gives a more striking or significant picture of the lawless
violence which Scotland endured through the aggression of Edward I., or
enables one better to understand old Barbour's impassioned eulogy of
freedom. As for the Templars, it serves to confirm some of the most
serious charges against them, and to show Brian de Jay as a somewhat
blacker Bois-Guilbert. With the traditional insolence of his order,
however, Brian evidently combined its characteristic bravery, and when,
three days after the treacherous murder of the widow's son, he fell, the
only slain man of note on the English side at Falkirk, he left behind
him the reputation of a ' templer of pris' and a ' douhty man.' The
exact circumstances of his death are variously related, for while Trivet
says that he fell in the beginning of the battle, and the chronicler of
Lanercost that he was killed while too rashly charging the Scottish
schiltrons, Hemingford and Robert de Brunne assert that he came to his
end through pursuing the Scottish fugitives till his horse floundered in
a bog and left him at the mercy of the foe.19
Along with him was slain the Master of the Scottish Templars—doubtless
the John de Sautre already mentioned. Following an error of Lord Hailes,
several writers have spoken of the Preceptor of the House of St. John at
Torpichen as killed along with Brian at Falkirk, but the words of
Trivet, ' socins ejus (i.e., Preceptoris Militice Templi in Anglia) qui
erat Preceptor Seotice,' make it indubitable that the Templar, and not
the Hospitaller, was the man.
For all the crimes and
errors of the Templars a dreadful reckoning was soon to be held. Within
a decade after the death of Brian de Jay, the order had been attacked by
Philip the Fair of France, and ere fourteen years were over it had
ceased to exist. This is not the place to discuss anew the oft-vexed
question of the Templars' guilt or innocence of many of the charges
brought against them, or to tell over again in detail the story of the
greed and cruelty of Philip, the miserable weakness of Pope Clement, and
the martyr-like heroism of .Jacques de Molay. The story is oue of the
blackest tales of inhumanity and injustice in the whole range of
history, yet whatever indignation the sufferings of the Templars may
rightly stir, there is no doubt that their day of usefulness was over,
and that their abolition was of benefit to Europe. After the Saracens'
capture of Acre iu 1291, and the complete and final loss of the Holy
Land, they had no longer any reason for existence. The similar order of
Hospitallers, it is true, managed to secure a new lease of life which
was to last for five centuries, by establishing itself as an outpost of
Christendom in the island of Rhodes; but the Templars lacked either the
foresight or the good luck to do likewise. In Cyprus, whither they
retired after the loss of Acre, they got into disputes with the reigning
family of Lusignan, while the utter perversion of their activities was
shown by the fact that, in breach of the vows which forbade them to
fight against their fellow Christians, they began to take part in the
wars of Western Europe. We have seen the Templars of England and
Scot-laud enlisting in the army which Edward I. led against Wallace, and
about the same time other members of the order drew their swords in the
struggle between the houses of Aragou and Anjou. The continued existence
of a rich military brotherhood, perfectly framed and armed, and ready to
mix in the internal wars of Christendom, while neither possessed any
natural tie or owned allegiance to any sovereign, would have been a
terrible calamity to Europe.
There was, however, no
lack of causes at work to bring the order to a speedy end. The decline
of the crusading spirit had much impaired the reverence and admiration
in which the Templars were formerly held, and made men listen to stories
against them which doubtless had often a fatally good foundation. Their
arrogance as well as their greed was proverbial; more than a hundred years
before theiWownfall Richard Coeur de Lion had scoffingly left them a
legacy of his pride. A fraternity of soldiers, of course, could hardly
be expected to shew a shining example of humility : on the contrary such
incidents as Brian de Jay's brutal treatment of the widow of Esperston
were only what one might look for from warriors whose manners and habits
had been acquired in that sink of all dissoluteness and violence, the
Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. It is morally certain, too, that among their
Eastern surroundings the vow of chastity must have become mainly a mere
dead letter; the ominous proverb, ' beware of the kisses of the Templars,'
points to a corruption only too natural in that age, and too credible in
this.
If all these causes
combined to bring popular odium upon the order, there were others which
were effectual to raise up dangerous enemies to it in high places. The
numerous exemptions conferred by the Pope ensured the hostility of the
clergy of all ranks, whose tithes were withheld, whose revenues from
oblations were diminished, and whose jurisdiction, parochial and
episcopal, was invaded. The nobles must have grudged the possessions
heaped upon the Templars by their more pious ancestors, and, last and
most dangerous of all, the kings of Western Europe, then just beginning
to consolidate the fabric of monarchy, cast envious and jealous eyes
upon their wealth and power. Both Edward I. and Edward II. of England
robbed the Temple at London of large sums in money and jewels, but it
was left for Philip IV. of France, with the aid of his obsequious
creature the Avignonese Pope Clement V., to effect the thorough
spoliation and destruction of the order.
In the beginning of 1307
the Grand Master Jacques de Molay came from Cyprus to Paris, with a
train of knights and a hoard of treasure, on the invitation of the Pope.
On the 13th of October in the same year he and all the members of the
order throughout France were arrested by secret orders of Philip on
charges of heresy, idol worship, and impurity. They were accused of
renouncing Christ and all his saints at their secret initiation, of
spitting and trampling on the cross and using indecent ceremonies, of
causing their chaplains to omit the words of consecration iu the mass,
of worshipping a cat and a human-headed image in their chapters, and of
regular and universal indulgence in unnatural vice. Along with these
monstrous charges were some more credible accusations. The Grand Master,
it was said, and also the visitors and preceptors, presumed, although
laymen, to absolve the brethren from their sins. Templars were forbidden
to confess to any priest who was not a member of the order. Almsgiving
and hospitality were not duly observed, and it was accounted no sin to
acquire the property of others by fair means or foul. To make good this
indictment some nine hundred Templars were cast into the prisons of
Paris alone, and subjected in mauy cases to horrible and nameless
tortures, and when a number of the victims afterwards withdrew the
confessions which had thus been extorted, one hundred and thirteen of
them, including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were burned, as
relapsed heretics, at the stake.
Edward II. of England
hesitated at first to follow the example of Philip, but by strenuous
exhortations from that mouarch and from the Pope he was urged to take
action, and on the 8th of January 1308, the English Templars were
seized. Their examination did not take place for more than a year and a
half, but at length, on the 20th of October, 1309, the Bishop of London
and two other Commissioners began to investigate the charges against
them. At that time there were two hundred and twenty-nine Templars in
custody in England, but it was said that many others were still
wandering about at large, and that some had escaped to Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales. Orders had been given by King Edward for the
seizure of the Scottish Templars at the same time as their English
brethren, f but their examination was still longer delayed. It was not
until the beginning of October, 1309, that the Inquisitor for Scotland,
Master John de Solerio, papal chaplain and canon of Hereford and St.
Radegund's, Poictiers, started on his northward journey from London, and
that orders were given to John de Segrave, the English Guardian of
Scotland, to bring up the Templars there for examination. On the 17th of
November along with William Lamberton, the politic and versatile Bishop
of St. Andrews, Solerio opened the inquisition in Holyrood Abbey.
Edinburgh, like the greater part of the Scottish Lowlands, was still at
that time in subjection to the English, although Bruce was every day
gaining strength in the northern wilds and the fastnesses of Galloway
and Carrick. Most of the year 1309 had been consumed iu negotiations for
a truce, and in the month of November Edward was being approached by
ambassadors from France, who came to attempt a mediation between him and
the Scots. The disturbed state of the country, however, and the growing
power of Bruce are shewn by the inquisitors' statement that their work
had to be hurried over because of the incursions of the enemy and the
continual expectation of war.
Only two Templars, Walter
de Clifton and William de Middleton, appeared before the inquisitors at
Holyrood, and according to their evidence they were the only members of
the order left in Scotland. Both were Englishmen by birth, and had been
initiated at English preceptories, the one by William de la More, the
last Master of the Temple at London, and the other by his predecessor
Brian de Jay. Their time had been spent partly in the English houses—at
Temple Newsom, Temple Rockley, and Aslakeby, for example—and partly in
the Scottish ones. Middleton had lived both at Culter and Ballantrodach,
while Clifton had been for three years at the latter house as Master of
the Scottish Templars in succession to John de Hufflete, also an
Englishman, who in his time had filled that office for two years, but
who now, along with some other brethren of the order, had fled beyond
sea.
The anamination of the
Templars iu France £iad been systematically accompauied with most
horrible tortures, and in England also, although to a comparatively
limited extent, the rack and other engines of torment had been used.
That no torture was employed in Scotland is proved iu the most
convincing way not so much by the lack of all mention of it, as by the
fact that the witnesses made none of those horrible and incredible
confessions which elsewhere were extracted by mere physical pain. All
the accusations against their order Clifton and Middleton admitted that
one only which charged the Masters, Preceptors, and Visitors with
usurping the priestly power of absolution. Middleton had seen and heard
the English Master absolve the brethren from all sin—a quocunqne peccato—'
by the authority given unto us by God and St. Peter and our lord the
Pope.' Clifton, who described the Grand Master as signing the peniteuts
with the cross, believed that the absolution did not extend to the crime
of murder or of violence offered to a priest. In all probability the
witnesses, or else the reporter of their evidence, simply misunderstood
the exercise of that mere disciplinary power of absolution from offences
against the rules of the order which, according to the priest of the
Temple Church at London, was possessed by the Grand Master and his
representatives.*
The mysterious secrecy of
their rites of initiation was what gave opportunity for the most
horrible charges against the Templars, and Clifton sadly admitted that
it was, aud had long been, the cause of strong suspicion. He had,
however, no startling revelation to make, and his story of his own
reception, which is perhaps the most detailed and picturesque account of
the ceremony that we possess, discloses a sufficiently solemn and
edifying scene. After telling some Templars of his wish to become one of
them, and being at first discouraged and told that he sought a great and
hard thing in desiring to give up his own will and enter into obedience,
he was at length introduced to a chapter held by the English Master at
the Lincolnshire preceptory of Bruere. There, with i^ied hands and on
bended kle«. he asked to have the habit and brotherhood of the order.
The Master questioned him as to possible impediments—was he in debt? was
he affianced to a woman ? had he any secret infirmity of body? When
these questions had been answered in the negative, and the brethren
present had given their consent to his reception, the ceremony of
initiation at once took place, for with the Templars there was no period
of probation. Still on his knees, the postulant promised to be servant
for ever to the Master and brethren iu defence of the Holy Land, and
swore to God and the Virgin, placing his hand beneath a copy of the
Gospels which had a cross depicted on it, that he would live in
chastity, poverty, and obedience. Then the Master handed him the mantle
and cap of the order, gave him the kiss of peace, and, making him sit
down upon the ground, recited and explained to him certain of the rules
of discipline.
In addition to the two
Templars, nearly fifty witnesses, lay and clerical, were examined at
Holyrood on that 17th of November, 1309; but their evidence, although
strikingly significant of the general dislike and suspicion of the
Templars, is almost entirely of the vaguest and most worthless kind. The
abbots of Dunfermline, Holyrood, and Newbottle knew nothing for certain
of any of the enormities mentioned in the articles of accusation, but
had been told that such things were done, and thought the secret and
nocturnal chapters most suspicious. The Warden of the Greyfriars at
Haddington had a more particular grievance, for he had never heard of
any Templar confessing to a friar. The chaplain of Liston, a 'neighbour'
of the order in Scotland, declared that its members had always been
hostile to the Church, and swore that for his own part he had not heard
of any of them dying a natural death, nor had he ever seen a Templar's
grave. This last statement, of course, has reference to the ridiculous
story of the Templars burning the bodies of deceased brethren, and
making the ashes into a powder for the younger brethren to drink as a
pledge of secrecy. Somewhat more noteworthy was the evidence of brother
Adam de Wedale, a monk of Newbottle, who asserted that the Templars gave
no alms and shewed no hospitality save to the rich and powerful, aud
that through their greed and injustice in seizing by fair means or foul
the possessions of their neighbours, they were generally defamed.
Doubtless, Brother Adam was thinking of the sufferings of the widow of
Esperston, and the fate of her son, who had been slain within a few
miles of his own convent wall some nine years before, and iu this part
of the evidence we reach at last a grave and quite credible charge
against the order. The same accusations of unjust greed and lack of
hospitality were repeated by Wiiliam de Preston, William de St. Clair,
aud a few other young esquires (domicelli), who also asserted that they
had heard their fathers say that if the Templars had been good
Christians the Holy Laud would never have been lost. Finally, some nine
or ten of the Templars' own tenants and servants spoke of the secrecy of
their chapters and their habit of giving and receiving lay absolution.
This was all the evidence
that could be got for the condemnation of the Templars- in Scotland, and
to most who have dispassionately studied the story of their fall, the
two grains of serious and pertinent matter iu its bushel of hearsay and
irrelevance will seem to represent very nearly the worst that could be
said against them. But the order as a whole was prejudged and doomed on
charges so monstrous as almost to carry their own refutation. Within six
months after the inquisition at Holyrood the burning of the ' relapsed '
brethren had begun at Paris, no less than fifty-four being led out on a
single morning to the stake. In this island, fortunately, no such scenes
of cruelty were witnessed. The Master of the English province, it is
true, died a prisoner iu the Tower of London; but in England no Templar
was actually put to death, while the great majority, after making
confession of their guilt and being absolved and reconciled, were sent
to do penance in various monasteries, where a small pension was allowed
for their support.
The formal abolition of
the order was reserved for the Council of Vientie, which met iu the
month of October, 1311, aud before which the great mass of hideous
confessions obtained under torttee was prodfced. Nirre Templars,
however, unexpectedly made their appearance before the Council,
demanding to be heard in defence of their brethren, and, to the credit
of the Assembly be it said, the great majority of its members, including
the English, Scottish, and Irish bishops,22
decided in favour of their request. But the ruthless policy of Philip
and the Pope was not to be so frustrated. Clement prorogued the Council,
called a secret consistory of Cardinals on whom he could depend, and
with their advice prepared an ordinance abolishing the order by way of '
prudent provision, not of condemnation.' This ordinance was published in
the Council at its reassembling ou the 3rd of April, 1312, and on that
day, consequently, by the sole decree of the Pope and without consent of
the Church, the Order of the Temple, one hundred and eighty four years
after its formal incorporation at the Council of Troyes, ceased to
exist.
The fate of the Scottish
Templars has been the subject of much unprofitable conjecture by the
more fantastic writers on the history of the order, and especially by
those who have tried to trace a connection between the Templars and the
Freemasons. The fact that only two brethren were arrested in Scotland
has been regarded as especially mysterious, and the question has been
asked, What became of the others? Michelet, in support of the wild
theory that the fugitive Templars formed themselves into secret
societies, remarks it as significant that ' the most secret arcana of
freemasonry are reputed to have come from Scotland, and the highest
grades of the society have Scottish names.' In regard to such vague and
vain imaginings, however, one does well to follow the example of
Eaynouard, who declines to lift the 4 mysterious veil of conjectures' by
which the fate of the Scottish Templars has been explained. History is
absolutely silent on the subject, nor, after all, is there anything so
very mysterious in their disappearance. As has been already said, the
number of Templars in Scotland can
never have been great, and during the disquieting and desolating Wars of
Independence it must have become smaller than ever. That war, too, would
make it all the easier for the brethren to escape when the news came of
the proceedings in France and England. Some, like John de Hufllete, fled
over the sea, probably to Norway or Denmark, while others, perhaps,
found a refuge in the little army of the excommunicated King Robert,
whose fear of offending the French monarch would doubtless be vanquished
by his desire to secure a few capable men-at-arms as recruits. This
also, however, is a mere conjecture, which may pass for what it is
worth.
But, while nothing is
known of the escaped Templars, there is fortunately a scrap or two of
authentic information as to the subsequent fate of one of the captives.*
On the 4th of February, 1318, Brother William de Middleton received from
the Archbishop of York a certificate stating that the bearer, on whose
identity some doubts had been cast, was really an ex-Templar, and had
spent three years and a half in the Cistercian monastery of Roche, and
behaved himself well. Next year the same Archbishop wrote to the Prior
of the English Hospitallers, asking for payment of Middleton's pension,
which apparently had been delayed. Evidently the Templars iu this
island, though robbed of their property aud reduced to a dependant
condition, were not left in absolute want. In fact, from a papal letter
f addressed to certain English deans and priors in 1318, reminding them
that the Templars were not to be allowed to live iu luxury on their
pensions or save up money out of them, it would seem that their
condition was in some quarters regarded as rather too easy. As for
Middleton, he appears to have drawn his pension for but a few years
longer, for if he is the same as the quondam frater Willelmus de
Middleton mentioned in one of the documents of Coldingham Priory J as
lately occupying a cell in that monastery, he must have been dead in
1325.
The original object of
Philip the Fair had been to seize the Templars' possessions, and during
the course of the judicial proceedings against them the greater part of
their estates, both in France and England, passed into the royal hands.
In the year 1311 and 1312 many Scottish nobles who had taken the English
side—David Earl of Athole, for example, John of Argyll, David de Graham,
and David Beton—were rewarded by Edward II. with gifts of Temple lands
in England.* The moral and religious sense of Christendom, however,
forbade a general and formal secularisation of property given for
religious purposes, and on the suppression of the order its possessions,
by a papal bull dated 16th June, 1312, f were transferred to the Knights
of St. John. So far as Scotland was concerned, effect was given to this
bull in November of the following year by letters from King Edward to
his Scottish chancellor and chamberlain, ordering that all the
churches, houses, manors, lands and rents of the Templars in that
country, with the crops in their fields and the ornaments of their
churches, should be delivered to two Commissioners appointed by the
Grand Master of the Hospital. It is odd to find such letters granted so
soon before Bannockburn, but doubtless Albert de Nigro Castro and
Leonard de Tibercis put King Edward's sign manual discreetly into their
pockets, and trusted to the bull of His Holiness, when they crossed the
Border and found themselves in a country where the real master was
Robert Bruce.
Of the actual
transference of the Scottish lands there is no record, but its
accomplishment is an historic fact. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries all the known possessions of the Templars in Scotland—the
houses of Ballantrodach and Culter, the church of Aboyne, the lands of
Drem and Liston —are found in the hands of the Preceptor of Torphichen
as local chief of the Knights of St. John. § In these hands they
remained until the Reformation, when, in the great scramble for monastic
property, they were settled by Sir James Sandilands, the last Preceptor,
who, having turned Protestant, obtained from Queen Mary in 1563 a
grant of all the lands of his order in his own favour. Thus definitely
secularised, the great aggregate of Temple Lands, in which the original
possessions of the Temple and the Hospital were hopelessly confounded,
soon became dispersed among various owners. Ballantrodach, for example,
passed to the Duudases of Arniston, while the estates at Drem became the
property of that shrewd and grasping lawyer, Thomas Hamilton, first Earl
of Haddington. The distinctive character of the Temple Lands, however,
was long preserved because of the privileges which still clung to them
as relics of the ancient vast immunities of the military orders. In
towns, for instance, the old exemptions from scot and gild and from the
dues of fairs and markets persisted, as giving some claim to freedom
from civic obligations and burdens, and it was in token of these and
other privileges that the cross was so religiously kept engraved on
every Temple tenement within burgh. The exemption from payment of teinds,
also, endured for more than a century, as may be seen from the mention
of it in Stair's Institutions (Book II.. title 8, cap. 7, and Book IV.,
title 24, cap. 9). But all these lingering relics of a vanished order
have vanished in their turn, and the Temple Land, as indicating a
privileged variety of tenure, is now as much a thing of antiquity as the
knighthood of the Temple itself. In Scottish law, as in Scottish
geography, the Templars have left, of all their power and glory, only
the shadow of a great name.
Robert Aitken. |
