Chapter XIX: Part 19

Randolph caught at the proposal, desperate as it was, and, selecting thirty men, chose an excessively dark night for the adventure. Frank went the first, climbing up the face of the precipice with hands and feet; then followed Sir Andrew Grey; thirdly, Randolph himself; and then the rest of the party. The ascent was exceedingly difficult and dangerous, especially in utter darkness and to men in full armor, fearing to make the slightest noise. Coming to a projecting crag, close under the wall, they rested to collect their breath, and listen. It was the moment when the guards were going their rounds, and, to their horror, they heard a soldier exclaim, as he threw a pebble down on them, “Away! I see you well!” A few more stones, and every man of them might have been hurled from the cliff by the soldiers merely rolling down stones on them. They dared not more, and a few moments’ silence proved that the alarm had been merely a trick to startle the garrison--a jest soon to turn to earnest.

When the guard had passed on, the brave Scots crept to the foot of the wall, where it was only twelve feet high, and fixed the iron hook of their rope-ladder to the top of it. Ere all had mounted, the clank of their weapons had been heard, shouts of “Treason!” arose, and the sentinels made a brave resistance; but it was too late, and, after some hard fighting, the survivors of the garrison were forced to surrender. Sir Piers Luband, on being released from his dungeon, offered his services to King Robert, whereupon the English laid all the blame of the loss of the castle upon him, declaring that he had betrayed them. Randolph’s seizure of Edinburgh was considered as the most daring of all the many gallant exploits of the Scots.

Bruce forayed Cumberland, and threatened Berwick, so that the poor Countess of Buchan was removed from thence to a more secure place of captivity. He also pursued his enemies, the Macdougals of Lorn, up the passes of Cruachan Ben, and even hunted them into the Isle of Man, where he took Rushyn Castle, and conquered the whole island. In his absence, Edward Bruce took Dundee, and besieged Stirling, until the governor, Philip Mowbray, was reduced to such straits by famine, that he begged for a truce, in which to go and inform the King of England of the state of affairs, promising to surrender on the Midsummer Day of the following year, if he were not relieved before that time. Edward Bruce granted these terms, and allowed Mowbray to depart. Robert was displeased at such a treaty, giving a full year to the enemy to collect their forces: but his brother boldly answered, “Let Edward bring every man he has; we will fight them--ay, and more too!” King Robert saw more danger than did the reckless prince, but he resolved to abide by his brother’s word, though so lightly given. It was, in fact, a challenge to the decisive battle, which was to determine whether Bruce or Plantagenet should reign in Scotland.

Mowbray’s appeal met with attention at court. Edward II. had newly recovered from the loss of Gaveston, and hoped by some signal success to redeem his credit with his subjects. He sent his cousin, the Earl of Pembroke, who was well experienced in Scottish wars, to the North; despatched writs to ninety-three Barons to meet him with their retainers at Newcastle, three weeks after Easter, 1313; summoned all the Irish chiefs under his obedience to come with Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster; called in Gascon troops, placed a fleet under the charge of John of Argyle, and took every measure for the supply of his army with provisions, tents, and every other necessary. For once the activity and spirit of his father seemed to have descended upon him, and, as the summer of 1313 drew on, he set out with Queen Isabel, and their infant son the Prince of Wales, to St. Alban’s Abbey, where, amid prayers and offerings for the success of his enterprise, he bade her farewell.

At Berwick he met his host, and, to his disappointment, found that four of the disaffected earls, Lancaster, Warwick, Arundel, and Warrenne, had absented themselves; but they had sent their vassals in full force. Edward’s troops, at the lowest computation, could not have been less than 100,000, of whom 40,000 were mounted, and 3,000 of these were knights and squires, both men and horses sheathed in plate-armor.

To meet this force, Bruce could only muster 40,000 men, poorly armed, and few of them mounted, and those on small, rough mountain steeds, utterly incapable of withstanding the shock of the huge Flemish chargers ridden by the English knights. The fatal power of the English long-bow was like wise well known to the Scots; but Bruce himself was a tried captain, and the greater part of his followers had been long trained by succession of fierce conflicts. They had many a wrong to revenge, and they fought for home and hearth; stern, severe, savage, and resolute, they were men to whom defeat would have brought far worse than death--unlike the gay chivalry who had ridden from England as to a summer excursion.

The army met in the Torwood, near Stirling, and were reviewed with cheerfulness by King Robert. He resolved to compensate for the inferiority of his cavalry by fighting on foot, and by abiding the attack in a field called the New Park, which was so covered with trees and brushwood, and broken by swamps, that the enemy’s horse would lose their advantage; and on the left, in the only open and level ground near, he dug pits and trenches, and filled them with pointed stakes and iron weapons called calthorps, so as to impede the possible charge of the knights.

The little burn, or brook, of Bannock, running through rugged ground covered with wood, protected his right, and the village of St. Ninian was in front. He divided his little army into four parts: the first under his brother Edward; the second under Douglas and young Walter, High Steward of Scotland; the third under Randolph; and the fourth body, the reserve, under his own command. The servants and baggage were placed on an eminence in the rear, still called Gillies Hill.

By this time it was the 23d of June, and early on Sunday morning the soldiers heard mass and confessed as dying men, then kept the vigil of St. John by fasting on bread and water. Douglas and Sir Robert Keith rode out to reconnoitre, and came back, reporting to the King that the enemy were advancing in full force, with banners displayed and in excellent array; but warily spreading a rumor among the Scots that they were confused and disorderly.

In effect, Edward II. had hurried on so hastily and inconsiderately, that his men and horses were spent and ill-fed when he arrived in the neighborhood of Stirling. Two miles from thence, he sent 800 horsemen with Sir Robert Clifford, with orders to outflank the Scottish army, and throw themselves into the town. Concealed by the village of St. Ninian, this body had nearly effected their object, when they were observed by the keen eye of Bruce, who had directed his nephew to be on the watch against this very manoeuvre. Riding up on his little pony to Randolph, he upbraided him, saying, “Thoughtless man, you have lightly kept your trust! A rose has fallen from your chaplet!”

Randolph at once hurried off with a small body of his best men to repair his error; but presently his little party were seen so hotly pressed by the English, that Douglas entreated to be allowed to hasten to his rescue. “You shall not move,” said the King. “Let Randolph free himself as he may. I will not alter my order of battle, nor lose my vantage of ground.”

“My liege,” cried Lord James, as the heavily-armed knights and horses closed in on the few Scottish foot, “I cannot stand by and see Randolph perish, when I can give him help! By your leave, I must go to his succor!”

Robert sighed consent, and Douglas hastened off; but at that moment he beheld the English troop in confusion, some horses rushing away masterless, and the rest galloping off, while the Scots stood compactly among their dead enemies.

“Halt!” then said Douglas, “they have won; we will not lessen their glory by seeking to share it.”

By this time the foremost English battalions, with the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford, had come into the New Park, and were near enough to see King Robert, with a gold crown on his helmet, riding on his pony along the front of his lines. A relation of Hereford’s, Sir Henry Bohun, upon this sight, rode impetuously forward to make a sudden attack on the leader, expecting to bear him down at once by the weight of his war-horse.

Bruce swerved aside, so as to avoid the thrust of the lance, and at the same moment, rising in his stirrups, with his battle-axe in hand, he dealt a tremendous blow as Sir Henry was carried past; and such was the force of his arm, that the knight dropped dead from his horse, with his skull cleft nearly in two.

The Scottish chiefs, proud of their King’s prowess, but terrified by the peril he had run, entreated him to be more careful of his person; but he only returned by a tranquil smile, as he looked at the blunted edge of. his weapon, saying “he had spoilt his good battle-axe.”

In revenge for this attack, the Scots pursued the English vanguard for a short distance, but the King recalled them to their ranks, and made a speech, calling on them all to be in arms by break of day, forbidding any man to break his line for pursuit or plunder, and promising that the heirs of such as might fall should receive their inheritance without the accustomed feudal fine.

All night there was the usual scene; the smaller and more resolute army watched and prayed, the larger revelled and slept. Edward, among his favorites and courtiers, had hardly believed that there would “be any battle, and had no notion of generalship, keeping his whole army compressed together, so that their large numbers were encumbering instead of being available. Five hundred horse were closely attached to his person, with the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Ingeltram de Umfraville, and Sir Giles de Argentine, the last a gallant knight of St. John. When he rode forward in the morning, Edward was absolutely amazed at the sight of the well-ordered lines of Scottish infantry, and turning to Umfraville, asked if he really thought those Scots would fight. At that moment Abbot Maurice, of Inchaffray, who had just been celebrating mass, came barefooted before the array, holding up a crucifix, and raising his hand in blessing, as all the army bent to the earth, with the prayers of men willingly offering themselves.

“They kneel! they kneel!” cried Edward. “They are asking mercy.”

“They are, my liege,” said Umfraville, “but it is of God, not of us. These men will win the day, or die upon the field.”

“Be it so,” said the King, and gave the word.

The Earls of Gloucester and Hereford rushed to the charge with loud war-cries. Each Scot stood fast, blowing wild notes on the horn he wore at his neck, and the close ranks of infantry stood like rocks against the encounter of the mailed horse, their spears clattering against the armor in the shock till the hills rang again. Randolph meanwhile led his square steadily on, till it seemed swallowed up in the sea of English; and Keith, with the five hundred horsemen of the Scots army, making a sudden turn around Milton Bog, burst in flank upon the English archery, ever the main strength of the army. The long-bow had won, and was again to win, many a fair field; but at Bannockburn the manoeuvre of the Scots was ruinous to the yeomanry, who had no weapons fit for a close encounter with mounted men-at-arms, and were trodden down and utterly dispersed.

The ground was hotly contested by the two armies; banners rose and fell, and the whole field was slippery with blood, and strewn with fragments of armor, shivers of lances and arrows, and rags of scarfs and pennons. The English troops began to waver. “They fail! they fail!” was the Scottish cry, and as they pressed on with double vehemence, there rose a shout that another host was coming to their aid. It was only the servants on the Gillies Hill, crowding down in the excitement of watching the battle, but to the dispirited English they appeared a formidable reinforcement of the enemy; and Robert Bruce, profiting by the consternation thus occasioned, charged with his reserve, and decided the fate of the day. His whole line advancing, the English array finally broke, and began to disperse. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester made an attempt to rally, and, mounted on a noble steed--a present from the King--rode furiously against Edward Bruce; but his retainers hung back, and he was borne down and slain before his armorial bearings were recognized. Clifford and twenty-seven other Barons were slain among the pits, and the rout became general. The Earl of Pembroke, taking the King’s horse by the bridle, turned him from the field, and his five hundred guards went with him. Sir Giles de Argentine saw them safely out of the battle, then, saying, “It is not my custom to fly!” he bade Edward farewell, and turned back, crying, “An Argentine!” and was slain by Edward Bruce’s knights.

Douglas followed hotly on the King, with sixty horse, and on the way met Sir Laurence Abernethy with twenty more, coming to join the English; but finding how matters stood, the time-serving knight gladly proceeded to hunt the fugitives, and they scarcely let Edward II. draw rein till he had ridden sixty miles, even to Dunbar, whence he escaped by sea.

Bannockburn was the most total defeat which has ever befallen an English army. Twenty-seven nobles were killed, twenty-two more and sixty knights made prisoners, and the number of obscure soldiers slain, drowned in the Forth, or killed by the peasantry, exceeds calculation. The camp was taken, with an enormous booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine horses, herds of cattle, machines for the siege of towns, and, in short, such an amount of baggage that the wagons for the transport were numerous enough to extend in one line for sixty miles. Even the King’s signet was taken, and Edward was forced to cause another to be made to supply its place. One prisoner was a Carmelite friar named Baston, whom Edward of Caernarvon had brought with him to celebrate his victory in verse; whereupon Robert imposed the same task by way of ransom; and the poem, in long, rhyming Latin verses, is still extant.

The plunder was liberally shared among the Scottish army, and the prisoners were treated with great courtesy and generosity. The slain were reverently buried where they fell, except Lord Clifford and the Earl of Gloucester, whose corpses were carried to St. Ninian’s kirk, and sent with all honor to England.

Bruce had not forgotten that the blood of the Clares ran in his own veins, and that Gloucester had warned him of his danger at King Edward’s court: he not only lamented for the young Earl, but he released Ralph de Monthermer, the stepfather of Earl Gilbert, and gave him the signet-ring of Edward II. to bear home.

Gilbert was the last male of the stout old line of De Clares. Gloucester, and his estates descended to his three sisters--Margaret, the widow of Gaveston; Eleanor, the wife of Hugh le Despenser; and Elizabeth, who shortly after married John de Burgh, Earl of Ulster.

The Earl of Hereford had taken refuge in Bothwell Castle, but was unable to hold it out, and surrendered. He was exchanged for captives no less precious to Robert Bruce than his well-earned crown. The wife, daughter, and sister, who had been prisoners for eight years, were set free, together with the Bishop of Glasgow, now blind, and the young Earl of Mar. Marjory Bruce had grown from a child to a maiden in her English prison, and she was soon betrothed to the young Walter, Steward of Scotland; but it was enacted that, if she should remain without a brother, the crown should descend to her uncle Edward.

That midsummer battle of Bannockburn undid all the work of Edward I., and made Scotland an independent kingdom for three hundred years longer. Ill-government, a discontented nobility, and a feeble King, had brought England so low, that the troops could not shake off their dejection, and a hundred would flee before two or three Scottish soldiers. Bruce ravaged the northern counties every summer, leaving famine and pestilence behind him; but Edward II. had neither spirit nor resolution to make war or peace. The mediation of the Pope and King of France was ineffectual, and years of warfare passed on, impressing habits of perpetual license and robbery upon the borderers of either nation.

CAMEO XXXIX. THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE. (1292-1316.)

_Kings of England_.
1272. Edward I.
1307. Edward II.

_King of Scotland_.
1306. Robert I.

_Kings of France_.
1285. Philippe IV.
1314. Louis X.

_Emperors of Germany_.
1292. Adolph.
1296. Albert I.
1308. Henry VII.
1314. Louis V.

_Popes_.
1296. Boniface VIII.
1303. Benedict XI.
1305. Clement V.

Crusades were over. The dream of Edward I. had been but a dream, and self-interest and ambition directed the swords of Christian princes against each other rather than against the common foe. The Western Church was lapsing into a state of decay and corruption, from which she was only partially to recover at the cost of disruption and disunion, and the power which the mighty Popes of the twelfth century had gathered into a head became, for that very cause, the tool of an unscrupulous monarch.

The colony of Latins left in Palestine had proved a most unsuccessful experiment; the climate enervated their constitutions; the _poulains_, as those were called who were born in the East, had all the bad qualities of degenerate races, and were the scorn, and derision of Arabs and Europeans alike; nor could the defence have been kept up at all, had it not been for the constant recruits from cooler climates. Adventurous young men tried their swords in the East, banished men there sought to recover their fame, the excommunicate strove to win pardon by his sword, or the forgiven to expiate his past crime; and, besides these irregular aids, the two military and monastic orders of Templars and Hospitallers were constantly fed by supplies of young nobles trained to arms and discipline in the numerous commanderies and preceptories scattered throughout the West.

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 £10 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.

The two Earls, the Lords of the Marches or borders of Wales, and thirty-four Barons and Knights, bound themselves by a deed, agreeing to prosecute the two Despensers until they should be driven into exile, and to maintain the quarrel to the honor of Heaven and Holy Church, and the profit of the King and his family. Lancaster proceeded to march upon London, allowing his men to live upon the plunder of the estates of the two favorites. From St. Alban’s he sent a message to the King, requiring the banishment of the father and son, and immunity for his own party. Edward made a spirited answer, that the father was beyond sea in his service; the son with the fleet; that he would never sentence any man unheard; and that it would be contrary to his coronation oath to promise immunity to men in arms against the public peace.

The Barons advanced to London, and, quartering their followers in Holborn and Clerkenwell, spent a fortnight in deliberation. It appears that the token of adherence to their party was the wearing of a white favor, on which account the session of 1321 was called the Parliament of the White Bands. One day, when these white ensigns mustered strongly, the Barons brought forward an accusation on eleven counts against the two Despensers, and on their own authority, in the presence of the King, banished them from the realm, and pardoned themselves for their rising in arms. Edward had no power to resist, and, accordingly, the act was entered on the rolls, and the younger Hugh was driven from Dover, to join his father on the Continent.

This success rendered the Barons’ party insolent, and about two months after, when Queen Isabel was on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and had sent her purveyors to prepare a lodging for her at her own royal Castle of Leeds, the Lady Badlesmere, wife to the Castellane, who was also governor of Bristol and had received numerous favors from Edward, refused admittance, fearing damage to her party; and the Queen riding up in the midst of the parley, a volley of arrows was discharged from the castle, and six of the royal escort were killed.

Isabel of course complained loudly of such a reception at her own castle, whereupon Bartholomew Badlesmere himself wrote from Bristol Castle an impudent letter, justifying his wife’s conduct. Isabel was much hurt, since she had always been friendly to the Barons’ party; and when she found that even her uncle of Lancaster stood by the Badlesmeres, she persuaded the King to raise an army to revenge the affront offered to her. Summonses were therefore sent out, and the Londoners, with whom the Queen was very popular, came in great force, and laid siege to Leeds Castle. Lady Badlesmere expected to be succored by Lancaster; but he would not come forward, and in a few days her castle was taken, her steward, Walter Culpepper, hanged, and herself committed to the Tower.

Such a bold stroke on the King’s part emboldened the elder Le Despenser return to England and join his master. Thereupon Lancaster summoned the other nobles to meet him at Doncaster, to consult what measures should be taken against the minions, and led an army to seize Warwick Castle, which, during the minority of Earl Thomas of Warwick, belonged to the King. In the meantime, Hugh followed his father, but, with English respect for order, put himself under custody until his sentence of banishment should be revoked. The matter was tried before the Bishops of the province of Canterbury, when it was argued, on behalf of Hugh, that Magna Charta had been set at naught by his condemnation without a hearing, and that the King’s consent had been extorted by force; and the Earl of Kent, Edward’s brother, with several others, making oath that they had been overawed by the White Bands, the banishment was declared illegal, and the prisoners set at liberty.

Lancaster proceeded to raise the north of England; Hereford and the two Mortimers went to the marches of Wales to collect their forces; and Edward, for once under the wise counsel of the Chancellor John de Salmon, set forth alertly in December toward the West, that he might deal with the two armies separately. He was very popular on the Welsh border, and met with rapid success, breaking up the forces of the Lords Marchers before they could come to a head, and finally making both the Mortimers prisoners, sending them to the Tower. Hereford, with 8,000 men, made his way to join Lancaster, who was at the head of a considerable force, and had already taken the miserable step of entering into correspondence with Robert Bruce, Douglas, and Randolph. Elated by the succor which they promised, Lancaster advanced and laid siege to Ticknall Castle, but was forced to retreat on the approach of the King. At Burton-upon-Trent, however, they halted for three days, with Edward opposite to them.

“Upon the mount the King his tentage fixt,
And in the town the Barons lay in sight,
When as the Trent was risen so betwixt,
That for a while prolonged the unnatural fight.”

However, a ford was found, and the royal army crossing, Lancaster set fire to Burton, and retreated into Yorkshire, writing again from Puntefract Castle under the signature of King Arthur, to ask aid from the Scots, and secure his retreat.

As Michael Drayton observes, “Bridges should seem to Barons ominous;” for at Boroughbridge, upon the Ure, Lancaster found Sir Andrew Harclay and Sir Simon Ward, Governors of York and Carlisle, with a band of northern troops, ready to cut off his retreat. The bridge was too narrow for cavalry, and Hereford therefore led a charge on foot; but in this perilous undertaking he was slain by a Welshman who was hidden under the bridge, and who thrust a lance through a crevice of the boarding into his body as he passed. His fall discomfited the rest, and Lancaster, who had been attempting a ford, was driven back by the archery. He tried to bribe Sir Andrew Harclay, and, failing, begged for a truce of one night, still hoping that the Scots might arrive. Harclay granted this, but in early morning summoned the sheriff and the county-force to arrest the Earl. Lancaster retired into a chapel and, looking on the crucifix, said, “Good Lord, I render myself to Thee, and put myself into Thy mercy.” He was taken to York for one night, and afterward, to his own Castle of Pontefract, where, on the King’s last disastrous retreat from Scotland, he had mocked and jeered at his sovereign from the battlements: and Harclay took care to make generally known the treasonable correspondence with Scotland, proofs of which had been found on the person of the dead Hereford.