Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

C >> Charlotte Mary Yonge >> Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

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Admirable as warriors, desperate in battle, offering no ransom but
their scarf, these knightly monks were the bulwark of Christendom, and
would have been doubly effective save for the bitter jealousies of the
two orders against each other, and of both against all other Crusaders.
Not a disaster happened in the Holy Land but the treachery of one order
or the other was said to have occasioned it; and, on the whole, the
greater degree of obloquy seems usually, whether justly or not, to have
lighted on the Knights of the Temple. They were the richer and the
prouder of the two orders; and as the duties of the hospital were not
included in their vows, they neither had the same claims to gratitude,
nor the softening influence of the exercise of charity, and were simply
stern, hated, dreaded soldiers.

After a desperate siege, Acre fell, in 1292, and the last remnant of the
Latin possessions in the East was lost. The Templars and Hospitallers
fought with the utmost valor, forgot their feuds in the common danger,
and made such a defence that the Mussulmans fancied that, when one
Christian died, another came out of his mouth and renewed the conflict;
but at last they were overpowered by force of numbers, and were finally
buried under the ruins of the Castle of the Templars. The remains of
the two orders met in the Island of Cyprus, which belonged to Henry de
Lusignan, claimant of the crown of Jerusalem. There they mustered their
forces, in the hope of a fresh Crusade; but as time dragged on, and
their welcome wore out, they found themselves obliged to seek new
quarters. The Knights of the Hospital, true to their vows, won sword in
hand the Isle of Rhodes from the Infidel, and prolonged their existence
for five centuries longer as a great maritime power, the guardians of
the Mediterranean and the terror of the African corsairs. The Knights
Templars, in an evil hour for themselves, resolved to spend their time
of expectation in their numerous rich commanderies in Europe, where they
had no employment but to collect their revenues and keep their swords
bright; and it cannot but be supposed that they would thus be tempted
into vicious and overbearing habits, while the sight of so formidable a
band of warriors, owning no obedience but to their Grand Master and the
Pope, must have been alarming to the sovereign of the country. Still
there are no tokens of their having disturbed the peace during the
twenty-two years that their exile lasted, and it was the violence of a
king and the truckling of a pope that effected their ruin.

Philippe IV., the pest of France, had used his power over the French
clergy to misuse and persecute the fierce old pontiff, Boniface VIII.,
and it was no fault of Philippe that the murder of Becket was not
parodied at Anagni. Fortunately for the malevolent designs of the King,
his messengers quailed, and contented themselves with terrifying the old
man into a frenzied suicide, instead of themselves slaying him. The next
Pope lived so few days after his election, that it was believed that
poison had removed him; and the cardinals remained shut up for nine
months at Perugia, trying in vain to come to a fresh choice. Finally,
Philippe fixed their choice on a wretched Gascon, who took the name of
Clement V., first, however, making him swear to fulfil six conditions,
the last and most dreadful of which was to remain a secret until the
time when the fulfilment should be required of him.

Lest his unfortunate tool should escape from his grasp, or gain the
protection of any other sovereign, Philippe transplanted the whole papal
court to Avignon, which, though it used to belong to the Roman empire,
had, in the break-up after the fall of the Swabian house, become in
effect part of the French dominions.

There the miserable Clement learned the sixth condition, and, not daring
to oppose it, gave the whole order of the Templars up into his cruel
hands, promising to authorize his measures, and pronounce their
abolition. Philippe's first measure was to get them all into his hands,
and for this purpose he proclaimed a Crusade, and actually himself took
the Cross, with his son-in-law Edward II., at the wedding of Isabel.

Jacque de Molay, the Grand Master, hastened from Cyprus, and convoked
all his chief knights to take counsel with the French King on this
laudable undertaking. He was treated with great distinction, and even
stood godfather to a son of the King. The greater number of the Templars
were at their own Tower of the Temple at Paris, with others dispersed
in numbers through the rest of France, living at ease and securely,
respected and feared, if not beloved, and busily preparing for an
onslaught upon the common foe.

Meanwhile, two of their number, vile men thrown into prison for former
crimes--one French, the other Italian--had been suborned by Philippe's
emissaries to make deadly accusations against their brethren, such as
might horrify the imagination of an age unused to consider evidence.
These tales, whispered into the ear of Edward II. by his wily
father-in-law, together with promises of wealth and lands to be wrested
from them, gained from him a promise that he would not withstand the
measures of the French King and Pope; and, though he was too much shocked
by the result not to remonstrate, his feebleness and inconsistency
unfitted him either to be a foe or a champion.

On the 14th of September, 1307, Philippe sent out secret orders to his
seneschals. On the 13th of October, at dawn of day, each house of the
Templars was surrounded with armed men, and, ere the knights could rise
from their beds, they were singly mastered, and thrown into prison.

Two days after, on Sunday, after mass, the arrest was made known, and
the crimes of which the unfortunate men were accused. They were to be
tried before the grand inquisitor, Guillaume Humbert, a Dominican friar;
but in the meantime, to obtain witness against them, they were starved,
threatened, and tortured in their dungeons, to gain from them some
confession that could be turned against them. Out of six hundred
knights, besides a much greater number of mere attendants, there could
not fail to be some few whose minds could not withstand the misery of
their condition, and between these and the two original calumnies, a
mass of horrible stories was worked up in evidence.

It was said that, while outwardly wearing the white cross on their robe,
bearing the vows of chivalry, exercising the holy offices of priests,
and bound by the monastic rules, there was in reality an inner society,
bound to be the enemies of all that was holy, into which they were
admitted upon their reviling and denying their faith, and committing
outrages on the cross and the images of the saints. It was further said
that they worshipped the devil in the shape of a black cat, and wore his
image on a cord round their waists; that they anointed a great silver
head with the fat of murdered children; that they practised every kind
of sorcery, performed mass improperly, never went to confession, and had
betrayed Palestine to the Infidels.

For the last count of the indictment the blood that had watered Canaan
for two hundred years was answer enough. As to the confessional, the
accusation emanated from the Dominicans, who were jealous of the
Templars confessing to priests of their own order. With respect to the
mass, it appears that the habits of the Templars were similar to those
of the Cistercian monks; who, till The Lateran Council, had not elevated
the Host to receive adoration from the people.

The accusation of magic naturally adhered to able men conversant with
the East. The head was found in the Temple at Paris. It was made of
silver, resembled a beautiful woman, and was, in fact, a reliquary
containing the bones of one of the 11,000 virgins of Cologne. But truth
was not wanted; and under the influence of solitary imprisonment,
hunger, damp and loathsome dungeons, and two years of terror and misery,
enough of confessions had been extorted for Philippe's purpose by the
year 1309.

Many had died under their sufferings, and some had at first confessed
in their agonies, and, when no longer tortured, had retracted all their
declarations with horror. These became dangerous, and were therefore
declared to be relapsed heretics, and fifty-six were burnt by slow
degrees in a great inclosure, surrounded by stakes, all crying out, and
praying devoutly and like good Christians till the last.

Having thus horribly intimidated recusant witnesses, the King caused the
Pope to convoke a synod at Paris, before which the Grand Master, Jacques
de Molay, was cited. He was a brave old soldier, but no scholar, and
darkness, hunger, torture, and distress had so affected him, that, when
brought into the light of day, he stood before the prelates and barons,
among whom he had once been foremost, so utterly bewildered and
confused, that the judges were forced to remand him for two days to
recover his faculties.

When brought before them again, he was formally asked whether he would
defend his order, or plead for himself. He made answer that he should
be contemptible in his own eyes, and those of all the world, did he not
defend an order which had done so much for him, but that he was in such
poverty that he had not fourpence left in the world, and that he must
beg for an advocate, to whom he would mention the great kings, princes,
barons, bishops, and knights whose witness would at once clear his
knights from the monstrous charges brought against them.

Thereupon he was told that advocates were not allowed to men accused of
heresy, and that he had better take care how he contradicted his own
deposition, or he would be condemned as relapsed. His own deposition,
as three cardinals avouched that he had made it before them, was then
translated to him from the Latin, which he did not understand. In
horror-struck amazement at hearing such words ascribed to himself, the
old knight twice made the sign of the cross, and exclaimed, "If the
cardinals were other sort of men, he should know how to deal with them!"

He was told that the cardinals were not there to receive a challenge to
battle. "No," he said, "that was not what he meant; he only wished that
might befall them which was done by the Saracens and Tartars to infamous
liars--whose heads they cut off."

He was sent back to prison and brought back again, less vehement against
his accusers, but still declaring himself a faithful Christian, and
begging to be admitted to the rites of religion; but he was left to
languish in his dungeon for two years longer, while two hundred and
thirty-one witnesses were examined before the commissaries. In May,
1311, five hundred and forty-four persons belonging to the order were
led before the judges from the different prisons, while eight of the
most distinguished knights, and their agent at Rome, undertook their
defence. Their strongest plea was, that not a Templar had criminated
himself, except in France, where alone torture had been employed;
but they could obtain no hearing, and a report was drawn up by the
commissaries to the so-called Council of Vienne. This was held by
Clement V. in the early part of 1312; and on the 6th of March it passed
a decree abolishing the Order of the Temple, and transmitting its
possessions to the Knights of St. John.

There were other councils held to try the Templars in the other lands
where they had also been seized. In England, the confessions of the
knights tortured in France were employed as evidence, together with the
witness of begging friars, minstrels, women, and discreditable persons;
and on the decision of the Council of Vienne, the poor knights
confessed, as well they might, that their order had fallen under evil
report, and were therefore pardoned and released, with the forfeiture of
all their property to the hospital. Their principal house in England was
the Temple in Fleet street, where they had built a curious round church
in the twelfth century, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch
Heraclius of Jerusalem. The shape was supposed to be like the Holy
Sepulchre, to whose service they were devoted; but want of space obliged
them to add a square building of three aisles beyond. This, with the
rest of their property, devolved on the Order of St. John, who, in
the next reign, let the Temple buildings for L10 per annum to the
law-students of London, and in their possession it has ever since
continued. The ancient seal of the knights, representing two men mounted
upon one horse, was assumed by the benchers of one side of the Temple,
though in the classical taste of later times the riders were turned into
wings, and the steed into Pegasus; while their brethren bear the lamb
and banner, likewise a remembrance of the Crusaders who founded the
round church, eight of whom still lie in effigy upon the floor.

In Spain the bishops would hardly proceed at all against the Templars,
and secured pensions for them out of the confiscated property. In
Portugal they were converted into a new order for the defence of the
realm. In Germany, they were allowed to die out unmolested; but in Italy
Philippe's influence was more felt, and they were taken in the same net
with those in France. There the King's coffers were replenished with
their spoil, very little of which ever found its way to the Knights of
St. John. The knights who half confessed, and then recanted, were put to
death; those who never confessed at all, were left in prison; those who
admitted the guilt of the order, were rewarded by a miserable existence
at large. The great dignitaries--Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, and
Guy, the son of the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Commander of Normandy, and
two others--languished in captivity till the early part of 1314, when
they were led out before Notre Dame to hear their sentence read,
condemning them to perpetual imprisonment, and rehearsing their own
confession once more against them.

The Grand Master and Guy of Auvergne, both old men, wasted with
imprisonment and torture, no sooner saw the face of day, the grand old
cathedral, and the assembly of the people, than they loudly protested
that these false and shameful confessions were none of theirs; that
their dead brethren were noble knights and true Christians; and that
these foul slanders had never been uttered by them, but invented
by wicked men, who asked them questions in a language they did not
understand, while they, noble barons, belted knights, sworn Crusaders,
were stretched on the rack.

The Bishops present were shocked at the exposure of their treatment, and
placed them in the hands of the Provost of Paris, saying that they would
consider their case the next morning. But Philippe, dreading a reaction
in their favor, declared them relapsed, and condemned them to the flames
that very night, the 18th of March. A picture is extant in Germany, said
to have been of the time, showing the meek face of the white-haired,
white-bearded Molay, his features drawn with wasting misery, his eyes
one mute appeal, his hands bound over the large cross on his breast. He
died proclaiming aloud the innocence of his order, and listened to with
pity and indignation by the people. His last cry, ere the flames stifled
his voice, was an awful summons to Pope Clement to meet him before the
tribunal of Heaven within forty days; to King Philippe to appear there
in a year and a day.

Clement V. actually died on the 20th of April; and while his nephews and
servants were plundering his treasures, his corpse was consumed by fire
caught from the wax-lights around his bier. His tyrant, Philippe le Bel,
was but forty-six years of age, still young-looking and handsome; but
the decree had gone forth against him, and he fell into a bad state of
health. He was thrown from his horse while pursuing a wild boar, and the
accident brought on a low fever, which, on the 29th of November, 1314,
brought him likewise to the grave. He left three sons, all perishing,
after unhappy marriages, in the flower of their age, and one daughter,
the disgrace and misery of France and England alike.

So perished the Templars; so their persecutors! It is one of the darkest
tragedies of that age of tragedies; and in many a subsequent page shall
we trace the visitation for their blood upon guilty France and on the
line of Valois. They were not perfect men. They have left an evil name,
for they were hard, proud, often, licentious men, and the "Red Monk"
figures in many a tradition of horror; but there can be no doubt that
the brotherhood had its due proportion of gallant, devoted warriors, who
fought well for the cross they bore. Their fate has been well sung by
Lord Houghton:

"The warriors of the sacred grave,
Who looked to Christ for laws,
And perished for the faith they gave
Their comrades and the cause;

They perished, in one fate alike,
The veteran and the boy,
Where'er the regal arm could strike,
To torture and destroy:

While darkly down the stream of time,
Devised by evil fame,
Float murmurs of mysterious crime,
And tales of secret shame.

How oft, when avarice, hate, or pride,
Assault some noble hand,
The outer world, that scorns the side
It does not understand,

Echoes each foul derisive word,
Gilds o'er each hideous sight,
And consecrates the wicked sword
With names of holy right.

Yet by these lessons men awake
To know they cannot bind
Discordant will's in one, and make
An aggregate of mind.

For ever in our best essays
At close fraternal ties
An evil narrowness waylays
Our present sympathies;

And love, however bright it burns
For what it holds roost fond,
Is tainted by its unconcern
For all that lies beyond.

And still the earth has many a knight
By high vocation bound
To conquer in enduring tight
The Spirit's holy ground.

And manhood's pride and hopes of youth
Still meet the Templar's doom,
Crusaders of the ascended truth,
Not of the empty tomb."

CAMEO XL.

THE BARONS' WARS.
(1310-1327.)

_King of England_.
1307. Edward II.
1314. Louis X.
1316. Philippe V.
1322. Charles IV.

_King of Scotland_.
1306. Robert I.
1314. Louis V.

_Kings of France_.
1285. Philippe IV

_Emperors of Germany.
1308. Henry VII.

_Popes_.
1305. Clement V.
1316. John XXII.

It was the misfortune of Edward of Caernarvon that he could not attach
himself in moderation. Among the fierce Earls, and jealous, distrustful
Barons, he gladly distinguished a man of gentle mould, who could return
his affection; but he could not bestow his favor discreetly, and always
ended by turning the head of his favorite and offending his subjects.

There was at his court a noble old knight, Sir Hugh le Despenser, whose
ancestors had come over with William the Conqueror, and whose father had
been created a Baron in 1264, as a reward for his services against Simon
de Montfort. To this gentleman, and to his son Hugh, Edward became
warmly attached; and apparently not undeservedly, for they were both
gallant and knightly, and the son was highly accomplished, and of fine
person. Edward made him his chamberlain, and gave him in marriage
Eleanor de Clare, the sister of the Earl of Gloucester who was killed at
Bannockburn, and one of the heiresses of the great earldom, with all its
rights on the Welsh marches.

Still, the love and sympathy of the nation were with the King's cousin,
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who probably obtained favor by liberality, or
by the arts for which poor Gaveston had named him the "stage-player,"
since his life seems to have been dissolute under much appearance
of devotion. The last great Earl of Lincoln had chosen him as his
son-in-law, while the intended bride, Alice, was yet a young child. In
1310, just after Gaveston's fall, Lincoln died, and the little Countess
Alice, then only twelve years old, became the wife of Lancaster; but in
1317 mutual accusations were made on the part of the Earl and Countess,
and Alice claimed to be set free, on account of a previous promise of
marriage; while Lancaster complained of Earl Warrenne for having allowed
a humpbacked knight, named Richard St. Martin, to carry Alice off to one
of his castles, called Caneford, and there to obtain from her the troth
now pleaded against him. Edward II. told Lancaster that he might proceed
against Warrenne in the ordinary course of law: but this he would not
do, as he did not wish to prove his wife's former contract, lest he
should lose her great estates with herself; and instead of going
honorably to work, he added this reply to his list of discontents
against the King.

His friends even set it about that Edward II. was not the true son of
Edward I.; and a foolish man, named John Deydras, even came forward
professing to be the real Edward of Caernarvon, who had been changed at
nurse; but no one believed him, and he was hanged for treason. A like
story was invented, and even a ballad was current, making Queen Eleanor
of Provence confess that Edmund Crouchback, not Edward I., was the
rightful heir, but that he was set aside on account of his deformity;
and Lancaster, as Edmund's son, was on the watch to profit by the King's
unpopularity. Discontents were on the increase, and were augmented by a
severe famine, and by the constant incursions of the Scots. Such was the
want of corn, that, to prevent the consumption of grain, an edict was
enacted that no beer should be brewed; and meat of any kind was so
scarce, that, though the King decreed that, on pain of forfeiture, an ox
should be sold for sixteen shillings, a sheep for three and sixpence,
and a fowl for a penny, none of these creatures were forthcoming on any
terms. Loathsome animals were eaten; and it was even said that parents
were forced to keep a strict watch over their children, lest they should
be stolen and devoured.

While the King and Queen were banquetting at Westminster, at
Whitsuntide, 1317, a masked lady rode into the hall on horseback, and
delivered a letter to the King. Imagining it to be some sportive
challenge or gay compliment, he ordered that it should be read aloud;
but it proved to be a direful lamentation over the state of England, and
an appeal to him to rouse himself from his pleasures and attend to the
good of his people. The bearer was at once pursued and seized, when she
confessed that she had been sent by a knight; and he, on being summoned,
asked pardon, saying he had not expected that the letter would be read
in public, but that he deemed it the only means of drawing the King's
attention to the miseries of his people. It may be feared that the
letter met with the fate of Jeremiah's roll.

A cloud was already rising in the West, which seemed small and
trifling, but which was fraught with bitter hatred and envy, ere long to
burst in a storm upon the heads of the King and his friends. The first
seeds of strife were sown by the dishonesty of a knight on the borders
of Wales, one William de Breos. He began his career by trying to cheat
his stepmother of her dower of eight hundred marks; and when the law
decided against him, he broke out into such unseemly language against
the judge, that he was sentenced to walk bareheaded from the King's
Bench to the Exchequer to ask pardon, and then committed to the Tower.
In after years he returned to his lordship of Gower, and there committed
an act of fraud which led to the most fatal consequences. Having two
daughters, Aliva and Jane, the eldest of whom was married to John de
Mowbray and the second to James de Bohun, he executed a deed, settling
his whole estate upon Aliva, and, in case of her death without children,
upon Jane. But concealing this arrangement, he next proceeded to sell
Gower three times over--to young Le Despenser, to Roger Mortimer, and to
the Earl of Hereford; and having received all their purchase-money, he
absconded therewith.

Mowbray took possession of Gower in right of his wife, and was thus
first in the field; but Hugh le Despenser, whose purchase had been
sanctioned by the King, came down upon him with a strong hand, and drove
him out of the property. Thereupon Mowbray made common cause with all
the other cheated claimants, De Bohun joining the head of his house, the
great Earl of Hereford, who, with Roger Mortimer and his uncle, another
Mortimer of the same name, revenged their wrongs by a foray upon Lady
Eleanor le Despenser's estates in Glamorganshire, killing her servants,
burning her castles, and driving off her cattle, so that in a few nights
they had done several thousand pounds' worth of damage. The King, much
incensed, summoned the Earl of Hereford to appeal before the council;
but the Earl demanded that Hugh le Despenser should be previously placed
in the custody of the Earl of Lancaster until the next parliament; and,
on the King's refusal, made another inroad on the lands of the
Despensers, and betook himself to Yorkshire, where the Earl of Lancaster
was collecting all the malcontents.