Memoirs of the City of London and Its Celebrities (Volume 3)

Memoirs of the City of London and Its Celebrities (Volume 3) By John Heneage Jesse CHAPTER. I. THE TEMPLE. The Knights Templars The Origin, Habits, Duties, and History of the Order Temple Church Effigies There Temple Gardens The White and Red Rose Inner and Middle Temple Halls Temple Lawyers Inner Temple Gate and Lane Doctors Goldsmith and Johnson's Rooms. King's Bench Walk Eminent Residents in the Temple. ON the south side of Fleet Street, to the eastward of Temple Bar, are the entrances into the Temple. Quitting the noise and bustle of the crowded streets, we suddenly find ourselves wandering among its silent courts, or moralising in its secluded garden ; recalling the days of chivalry and the Crusades of Saladin and Coeur de Lion, when the ground on which we stand was peopled with the white robe and the red cross, the romantic garb of the great religious and military Order of the Knights Templars. " Those bricky towers The which on Thames' broad aged back do ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers : There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide, 'Till they decayed through pride." Spencer's Prothalamion. The famous Order of the Knights Templars was first established in England by Hugo de Payens, in. 1. 1,1 3, shortly ; after the first Crusaders had rescued the Holy City from the infidels. The lives and; plrojterties ; 'of jt.he numerous pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre were at this period constantly exposed to the attacks of the merciless bands of robbers who scoured the plains of Palestine ; and accordingly it was principally for the purpose of protecting their pious Christian brethren from wrong and robbery on the road that the Order was originally founded. It was in the reign of King Stephen that a branch of the Order first established itself in England. Their earliest lodge, called the " Old Temple," was in Holborn, nearly on the site of the present Southampton Buildings. In 1184 they removed to the "New Temple," on the banks of the Thames, in Fleet Street, where they remained till the suppression of their Order, in 1310. The habits and dress of the Knights Templars were originally as simple as the duties which they were called upon to perform. Their dress was a white robe, to which was afterward added the famous red cross on the left shoulder. Honoured throughout Christendom for their piety, humility, and heroic actions, they styled themselves the Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, subsisting entirely on alms, and in their humility deeming one horse sufficient to carry two knights. This striking evidence of their original lowliness they still continued to commemorate on the seal of their order, even in the days of their proud magnificence. The principal duties which were enjoined to the Knights Templars were chastity, self-denial, and obedience to their superior. Previous to their admission into the Order, they were required to take a solemn oath that they were neither married nor betrothed ; that they were free from debt, and of sound constitutions ; that they would be strictly obedient to the master of their lodge, and the grand master at Jerusalem ; that they would solemnly observe the rules of this Order; that they would lead a life of chastity ; that their whole energies should be devoted to the conquest of the Holy Land ; and that they would never permit a Christian to be despoiled of his heritage. To kiss a woman, even though a mother or a sister, was strictly forbidden. By degrees, as the fame of these military monks increased, they relaxed the strictness of their original regulations. Instead of the single horse which was originally considered sufficient for two knights, each Templar was allowed three, with the addition of an esquire, who was usually a youth of noble birth, only too proud of such distinguished servitude. Moreover, though still required to practise habits of self-denial and to inure themselves to hardships and danger, the armour which they wore was permitted to be of the most splendid description, while their horses, which were of the purest blood, were allowed to be similarly richly caparisoned. By this time the treasures and domains of the Knights Templars had increased to an almost regal magnificence. Gold had poured in to them from the superstition of the pious and the favour of princes. The numerous powerful nobles who joined their Order threw their wealth into the common stock ; at one time they could boast the possession of no fewer than nine thousand manors. That the moral character of Knights Templars was in some degree changed by these vast accessions of wealth and power, and, indeed, that there were individual instances amongst them of arrogance, licentiousness, and broken vows, there can be little question. Nevertheless, that the whole Order had swerved from its ancient character for piety, chastity, and self-denial, and, much more, that they were guilty of the monstrous crimes with which their enemies charged them, may be safely denied. Their great crime, indeed, was their wealth, which successive sovereigns had regarded with covetous eyes, and to which, far more than to their crimes, we are to attribute the subsequent ruin of their Order and their own memorable and cruel fate. The first formidable blow struck at the Knights Templars was by Philip the Fair, King of France, in 1307, only sixteen years after their heroic defence of St. Jean d'Acre. To the cruelties to which these chivalrous warriors were subjected in this reign, it would be difficult to find a parallel even in the blood-stained chronicles of France. Philip, having determined to possess himself of their wealth, issued a manifesto, in which, after accusing them of the most atrocious offences, he directed the simultaneous seizure of their persons ; at the same time consigning them to the tender mercies of an infamous inquisition which was empowered to employ torture in order to extort confession. Accordingly, of the first 140 knights who were thus put to the torture, no fewer than thirty-six, asserting their innocence to the last, perished under the agonies of the rack. Some, indeed, while undergoing tortures too terrible for human nature to endure, faintly admitted the guilt of their Order; but of these not a few subsequently retracted the confession which pain had wrung from them, and passed even cheerfully from the dungeon to the flames. The fate of the grand master, James de Molay, the last individual who filled that exalted post, was the most striking. He, too, in a moment of weakness, had pleaded guilty to the charges brought against his Order and himself, and consequently had secured for himself a temporary security from the flames in which fifty-four of his Order had suffered at Paris at the same time. His fate, however, had been delayed merely to allow Philip to produce him as a crowning triumph to his ruthless policy. Accordingly, after a protracted imprisonment, he was led forth from his dungeon to a scaffold erected in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris, where it was expected that he would reiterate his denunciations of his departed brotherhood and his own admission of guilt. To the astonishment, however, of the assembled citizens, on advancing to the edge of the scaffold, he boldly revoked his former confession, addressing them in a speech of nervous eloquence, which is said to have made an extraordinary impression on those who listened to him. " It is right," he said, " in this terrible hour, and in the last moments of my life, that I should denounce the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, therefore, in the face of heaven and earth, ^though I speak it to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest of crimes, the acknowledging of those offences which have been so foully charged on my Order. I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on those knights who have had the courage to revoke a similar confession, but not even the dreadful death which awaits me is able to make me confirm one lie by another. The existence offered me upon such terms I abandon without regret." The same evening a charcoal fire was lighted in front of Notre Dame, at which the last Grand Master of the Knights Templars was slowly and mercilessly burnt to death. In his dying agony he solemnly cited King Philip and Pope Clement the Fifth, who had connived at the destruction of his Order, to appear before the divine tribunal within a specified time ; and as they severally expired within the period predicted, it was not unnatural in a superstitious age that the common people, who were not without commiseration for the sufferings of the Knights Templars, should have been led to regard them as martyrs in the cause of religion and truth. The fate impending over the Knights Templars in England was scarcely a less melancholy one. There, the reigning monarch, Edward the Second, was easily induced to follow the example set him by the French king, and accordingly, on the 8th of January, 1310, preparatory to the seizure of their property, an edict was issued for the simultaneous arrest of the persons of the Knights Templars in all parts of England. A few, indeed, escaped either to the dreary regions of Ireland, or to the fastnesses of Scotland and Wales, but the majority proving less fortunate, no fewer than 229 knights were thrown into prison. To what extent torture was put into practice in order to extort confessions from them is not known.

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