My aim in this project is to re-edit in full, translate and analyse the proceedings of the trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1307-1312; and to identify, edit, translate and analyse other surviving documents relating to the trial in the British Isles. These documents together contain a wealth of information about national and international mobility of lay religious, religious beliefs among the lay population of the British Isles and the operation and economic state of the estates of an international religious order in the British Isles in the early fourteenth century. The objective of this project is to make these extensive resources readily available to scholars and, by providing a translation, more accessible to the wider research community. In addition, by comparing these sources and analysing the data that they contain, the project will advance historical knowledge of the trial and of its related fields.
In
October 1307 all the brothers of the military religious order of the Temple in
France were arrested on the orders of King Philip IV and charged with heresy.
The trial of the Templars is now regarded by most scholars as a political trial,
and its proceedings and the propaganda which accompanied it as being of
considerable significance in the development of such trials. Whereas the trial
of the Templars in France has been extensively studied (e.g., by Malcolm Barber,
The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)
and a study of the trial in Aragon was published recently by Alan Forey, The
Fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), the
trial in the British Isles has been largely overlooked. Historians studying the
Templars in the British Isles have incorporated a study of the trial into their
wider study, such as: Thomas W. Parker, The Knights Templar in England
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1963); Evelyn Lord, The Knights Templar
in Britain (London: Longman, 2002). There are more detailed, specific
studies in Clarence Perkins, ‘The Trial of the Knights Templars in England’,
English Historical Review, 24 (1909), 432-47; Eileen Gooder, Temple Balsall (Chichester: Phillimore,
1995); and J. S. Hamilton,
‘Apocalypse Not: Edward II and the Suppression of the Templars’, Medieval Perspectives, 12 (1997),
90-100. Yet none of these studies has considered the trial of the Templars in
the British Isles within the broader international context of the trial
overall.
The trial in the British Isles is particularly illustrative of the political significance of the trial. King Edward II initially refused to implement the papal order to arrest the Templars in November 1307, but was eventually forced by a combination of political factors to co-operate with papal instructions. King Edward II used the Templars’ properties to finance his campaigns in Scotland, and only with extreme reluctance did he agree in 1322 to hand them over to the Order of the Hospital – an agreement which was not implemented. Because of the difficulty in obtaining confessions from the Templars the investigators of heresy took extensive third-party evidence, which was apparently based on folklore. A study of this evidence has been made by Anne Gilmour-Bryson, ‘The London Templar Trial Testimony: “Truth”, Myth or Fable’, in A World Explored: Essays in Honour of Laurie Gardiner, ed. Anne Gilmour-Bryson (Victoria: University of Melbourne History Department, 1993), pp. 44-61 (now available online), but was based on the abridged edition of the proceedings published by Wilkins (1737).
The
trial proceedings survive in three significantly different versions, preserved
in four manuscripts:
(1) A long transcript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,
MS Bodley 454.
Published in abridged form by David Wilkins, Concilia
magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), vol. 2, pp. 328-401. For
Wilkins’s omissions see Perkins, ‘Trial of the Knights Templars in England’, 435
note 28, 436 note 31, 437 note 38, 440 note 51. Wilkins’s version is about one
quarter of the length of the original manuscript.
Related to this manuscript
is the transcript preserved in the British Library, London: BL Cotton Julius B
xii, fols 67-82 (was 70-85). This begins at the first full interrogation (MS Bodley
454 fol. 13v), with some differences in transcription and some additional
material.
(2)
A summary of the depositions of the Templars and third-party evidence, including
much evidence not in (1): ‘Deminutio laboris examinantium processus contra
ordinem Templi in Anglia, quasi per modum rubricarum’, in Vatican Archives, MS Arm.
XXXV, v. 147.
Published by Konrad Schottmüller, Der Untergang des
Templerordens mit urkundlichen und kritischen Beiträgen, 2 vols (Berlin,
1887, repr. Liechtenstein: Vaduz, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 78-102. This is a full
transcription, with a few errors that can be corrected through comparison with
MS Bodley 454.
(3)
A summary of the depositions based on version (2), but differently presented and with additional material,
in the ‘Annales Londonienses’. The original was seriously damaged in the Cotton
fire of 1731. A transcript of the manuscript is at London, British Library MS
Add. 5444.
Published by William Stubbs, Annales Londonienses and Annales
Paulini; edited from manuscripts in the British Museum and in the Archepiscopal
Library at Lambeth (London: Longman, 1882), vol. 1 of Chronicles of the
Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, Rolls Series 76: here pp. 180-98. This is
a full transcription, with some doubtful readings that can be explained by
reference to the other manuscripts.
A comparison of the different versions of the trial depositions throws much light on how the trial was progressed and how material was organised to present it to the best advantage, in the eyes of the inquisitors.
Other documents
Other
documents relating to the trial – the inventories and extents of Templar
property made by
King Edward II’s officials, the government accounts and correspondence – survive
in the National Archives at the Public Record Office at Kew in London. Much of this material was noted in the
works set out above and by Clarence Perkins, ‘The Wealth of the Knights Templars
in England and the Disposition of it after their Dissolution’, American
Historical Review, 5 (1910), 242-63; by Agnes Leys, ‘The Forfeiture of the
Lands of the Templars in England’, in Oxford Essays in Medieval History
presented to Herbert Edward Salter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp.
155-63; by Rosalind Hill, ‘Fourpenny retirement: the Yorkshire Templars in the
fourteenth century’, in The Church and Wealth, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diane
Wood, Studies in Church History, 24 (1987), pp. 123-8 and by Alan Forey,
‘Ex-Templars in England’, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 53 (2002), 18-37. They analysed but did not publish
this material. Lord, in her Knights
Templar in Britain, has published a few of the inventories; some of the
inventories and extents have been published elsewhere in various local studies, but
few of the early inventories. Some correspondence has been published in
Foedera, conventiones, literae et cuiusque generis acta publica..., ed.
Thomas Rymer et al., vol. 2 part 1, 1302-1327 (London: A. J. Churchill,
1818).
Conclusion
Overall, while this
material is known to historians, it is not easily accessible. Editions of texts
are widely scattered, and many do not comply with modern scholarly conventions.
Scholarly studies have concentrated on limited aspects of the material; much
work has been done by local historians who lack knowledge of the wider European
context necessary for full analysis. My initial research has indicated that
these sources contain valuable evidence relating to international mobility of
lay religious, religious beliefs among lay people and relations between this
religious order and secular society as well as the areas already examined by the
scholars noted above. As the project progresses further fields for research will
emerge. By collating, comparing and analysing this material I intend to make a
substantial contribution to scholarship in this area.
This
research will be published, as an edited edition with translation, critical
apparatus and analytical introduction. The transcription and translation of the text is now complete, the draft has been checked by readers, and I am now checking the text back to the manuscript for a second time.
Additional analysis is being published as
a series of scholarly articles. The first article containing some information
from my research to be published was: ‘International Mobility versus the Needs of the Realm: The Templars and
Hospitallers in the British Isles in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’,
in International Mobility in the Military Orders (Twelfth to Fifteenth
Centuries): Travelling on Christ’s Business, ed. Jochen Burgtorf and Helen
Nicholson (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, ISBN 0-7083-1907-6, and
Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, ISBN
0-8173-1512-8, 2006), pp. 87-101. A second article, ‘Relations between Houses of the Order of the Temple in Britain and their Local Communities, as Indicated during the Trial of the Templars, 1307-12’, was published in Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar, Presented to Malcolm Barber, ed. Norman Housley (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-5527-5), pp. 195-207. A third article, ‘The Testimony of Brother Henry Danet and the Trial of the Templars in Ireland’, has been published in In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar, ed. Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum and Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusades Subsidia 1 (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7546-6140-5), pp. 411-23. Early in my research, in 2003, I drew up a summary of the state of research on the subject. Regrettably publication was delayed, but was at last published as ‘The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles’, in Religiones militares: Contributi alla storia degli Ordini religioso-militari nel medioevo, ed. Anthony Luttrell and Francesco Tommasi (Citta di Castello: Selecta Editrice, 2008; ISBN 978-88-901124-2-5), pp. 131-54. I have prepared a survey of the whole trial in the British Isles, entitled The Knights Templar on Trial, which was published by The History Press in June 2009. A short article, ‘The Templars on Trial: A very muted inquisition’, appeared in BBC History Magazine for June 2009, with an associated podcast. There are also some initial
translations in the documents produced for my final year undergraduate course
HS1805 The Military Orders, relating to
economic activity and to the
trial.
I had originally intended to publish my findings online but, as in the past material has been taken from my web pages
without acknowledgement, I have now decided that this is an inappropriate method of disseminating unpublished research. Instead, for the benefit of the general reader, I have produced a summary of some aspects of the trial of the Templars in the British Isles, in an appropriate user-friendly format. This summary is on a site outside Cardiff University.
Go to summary.
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This page was created by Helen J. Nicholson on 5 April 2004, was last
updated 4 June 2009 and is
valid until 30 September 2009.