FOUR
Myths of an unlikely relationship
The Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon was founded in the Holy Land in 1118 by Hugh de Payen (or de Payens), a nobleman from Champagne in north-east France. In the alleged association between the St Clairs and the Knights Templar, as the Poor Knights came to be called, much is made of de Payen’s marriage to a Catherine St Clair, thought to have been either the daughter or sister of Sir Henry with whom he had served during the First Crusade. Yet in his 1700 St Clair family history Father Hay makes no reference to this, which seems odd if de Payens had indeed married into the family; Hay had already written a brief, not unsympathetic, history of the Knights Templar.1 But, as a devout Catholic, there is another reason why he might have omitted the connection.
Hugh de Payen was far from being an ideal husband. In a letter dating from 1124, we find him being castigated by Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, for abandoning his wife and vowing himself to the ‘Knighthood of Christ’.2 The assumption espoused by certain contemporary authors that the Templars were anything other than a brotherhood of celibate fighting monks dedicated to the furthering of the interests of Christianity is patently nonsensical. Women played no part in their lifestyle. As a married man, and the Order’s founder and leader, it would have been unthinkable for de Payen to remain with his wife, which would hardly have endeared him to her relatives.
The Knights Templar, their dramatic white capes displaying the symbolic red cross of martyrdom, arrived in Scotland in 1128, not long after they had become established in England. The Scottish king, David I, having been schooled at the court of his brother-in-law, Henry I of England, must have known of their reputation long before he inherited the Scottish throne in 1124. In an age of deep spiritual commitment, where the Knights Templar were seen as the avenging angels of Holy Rome, it was only to be expected that he should welcome them to his realm, especially if there were family ties within his immediate circle of friends. Since this circle of friends was almost entirely comprised of the knightly Norman companions he had acquired while in England, those family ties were, in every respect, considerable.
The Cistercian monk Aelred de Rievaulx went so far as to claim that the Scottish king surrounded himself with Templar advisers.3 Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to confirm King David’s willingness to support religious orders. In this, he was very much his mother’s son. Around 1140, for example, he granted lands at Torphichen, in West Lothian, to the Benedictine Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John of Jerusalem who already occupied the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus and would eventually control Malta. The remains of their preceptory at Torphichen survive to this day.
If Hugh de Payen was genuinely the brother-in-law or son-in-law of Henry St Clair, he would obviously have had ready access to the king when he arrived in Scotland on the northern leg of his British recruitment tour of 1128. In all probability, they might even have met previously in England. From the beginning, de Payen’s purpose was to place his followers close to figures of power to promote the spiritual benefits of their participating in the Crusades. At the same time, he was fundraising. Profits from the Templars’ substantial agricultural and manufacturing enterprises throughout Europe were pooled to finance their wider mission.
Gifted land at Balantrodoch, 11 miles south of Edinburgh, mature Templar monks, for the most part with their Crusading days behind them, created, in 1128, a preceptory featuring a mill and simple chapel situated on a small promontory above the River South Esk. Hidden from view, yet in the midst of the lush Midlothian meadowland which flanks Edinburgh’s southern approaches, this was only a brisk cross-country ride on horseback to the knightly Norman fiefdoms of the neighbouring St Clairs at Rosslyn and the Ramsays at Dalhousie; to the west, at Corstorphine, were the Forresters; to the east at Pencaitland and Luffness, the Setons. All were close friends and confidants of the king.
In a society profoundly obsessed with Crusading zeal, gifts of lands to the Templars – and Hospitallers – not only confirmed the support of the monarch, but enabled the monks to embark upon money-making ventures, the proceeds from which were put towards the greater good of the Order. Promising a great victory in the name of the Lord, Templars became business consultants, and money lenders. Travelling alone on foot or on horse was exceedingly dangerous throughout the European continent, so bodyguards were provided for pilgrims to the Holy Land. Through letters of credit, exchangeable through their various secretariats located in different countries, and with Latin as the lingua franca, they introduced the first traveller’s cheques. In their commercial dealings and operational expertise, the Poor Knights were far from poor.
Today the tiny Midlothian village which sits on the summit above Balantrodoch is known as Temple and consists of a picturesque main street of cottage-style eighteenth-century dwell-ing houses. It is hard to imagine that it was once a recruitment centre for Christian mercenaries. And indeed the fact is that subsequent to the Templars’ dispersal, between 1307 and 1309, the term ‘Temple’ was widely applied to any land or property previously held by them and, as is the case with neighbouring Rosslyn Chapel, their association with the ruined sixteenth-century Old Parish Church seen here today is also a diversion. Despite its Rose-Croix façade, it was actually built around three hundred years after the Templars were disbanded by the Hospitallers of St John, who, under the terms of the dissolution, had acquired their land. However, stones on the church’s north wall most probably did form part of the Templars’ original preceptory. And local oral tradition still hints at the existence of the Templars’ mythical treasure: ‘Twixt the oak and the elm tree/ You will find buried the millions free.’
The Templar community at Balantrodoch flourished for over a century. Indeed, by the late thirteenth century, the Templars had become substantial landowners in Scotland. They held 8,000 acres at Maryculter in Aberdeenshire. At Dalry, within the royal parklands of Holyrood, the farm of Orchardfield became a Templar property, as did tenement buildings within the Old Town of Edinburgh at the head of the Cowgate, in Greyfriars’ Park, and on the Fore Stairs, adjoining Edinburgh Castle. In St Andrews, they owned a tenement at the Mercat Cross, and had similar properties in Aberdeen and Lanark. In his book Reminiscences and Notices of the Parishes of the County of Haddington, published in 1883,4 my ancestor John Martine makes reference to a Knights Templar chapel which stood at the Custom Stone, where four streets diverged. He also refers to their 800 acres of rich farmland at Drem.
Already wealthy from patronage the length and breadth of Europe, the Templars must have believed themselves invincible. However, in 1291 their Master of Scotland, Brian de Jay, swore fealty to Edward I of England and, in doing so, undermined the Order’s code of neutrality.5 Renowned as an opportunist and villain, de Jay was to inspire the fictional Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert of Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe. His death fighting against the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 allowed his successors to adopt a more independent stance, but far too much has been read into this independence. In any squabble between secular leaders, the Templars’ allegiance was inalienably to the Pope. In this way they were expected to remain indifferent to confrontations such as those that took place between England and France, and, in the late thirteenth century, between Scotland and England. The Templar’s ultimate crime was that, with their widespread accumulated wealth, commanderies and castles from Cyprus to the Baltic, they were seen by some as being just a little bit too invincible.
All of Christendom shuddered when, on Friday 13 October, 1307 (a day and a date thereafter associated with ill fortune), with the full support of Pope Clement V, the French king, Philip IV, ordered the arrest of all Templar brothers in France, charging them with an entire catalogue of heresy which encompassed the denial of Christ, sodomy, cat worship, the veneration of a skull, and excessive secrecy.6 But the story goes that some of their number were forewarned and that Templar ships anchored at La Rochelle immediately set out to sea; some to Portugal, the remainder to Scotland to seek sanctuary from the Scottish king. This made sense since the previous year Robert the Bruce, having been implicated in the murder of his cousin, John ‘the Red’ Comyn, had himself been excommunicated by Pope Clement.
A Ban of Excommunication was among the worst fates that could befall a king. It was a political tool directed at the individual, but if it was interpreted literally it applied to the kingdom as well. In an age of deeply held faith, it was ferocious. The effect upon the mediaeval mind can only be likened to the early response to the spread of Aids. Mercifully, no television or tabloid press existed to tell the general public of the fourteenth century that they were denied salvation, and that all of their children would be stigmatised as bastards. Still, it was a fearful indictment and, as a result, excommunicated kings could find themselves with a lot on their consciences! The celebration of Mass was forbidden. Marriages could not be held in a church, and the dead were denied burial in Holy Ground, hence the mediaeval invention of those pretty little lych-gates upon the boundaries of episcopal terrain, being the nearest anyone could get to God during times of excommunication and plague.
The consequence, however, was that Scotland emerged as the only place in Europe where Papal Law was ignored and could not be vigorously enforced. Thus, the fugitive Templars, as distinct from their brotherhood who were already established in the country, are believed to have set up a headquarters at Kilmartin, a sheltered glen close to the ancient Scottish coronation site of Dunadd, in Argyll. Grave slabs dating from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century and featuring knightly figures and Templar crosses can still be seen in the churchyard.
Since their escape route was from northern France, the Templar refugees would have avoided the main trade routes of the English Channel and Irish Sea to circumnavigate the west coast of Ireland, bringing them through the Firth of Lorne to the Mull of Kintyre where Bruce’s great ally Angus Og of Clan Donald was all-powerful. At Kilmartin, the Templars’ significant military skills were soon put to good use in manufacturing weapons and training up recruits for the Scots army. The full implications of their location would become evident seven years later.
The arrest, interrogation, torture and burning of Templars in Paris and elsewhere in France continued relentlessly until 18 March 1314, when the Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Commander of Normandy, Geoffrey de Charney, were fed to the flames on an island in the River Seine. Within five weeks, Pope Clement V, their tormentor, was also dead. Two months later, the Scottish and English armies faced one another across the marshland of the Bannock Burn below Stirling Castle. Robert the Bruce’s triumph on 24 June changed everything so far as Scotland was concerned, and indeed, the Scottish Templars, it is claimed, provided the unidentified supplementary force which appeared as from nowhere to put the English to flight.
A new era had begun, and Bruce, securely established upon the Scottish throne, desperately needed the sanction and support of Christendom. It would therefore have been impolitic to be seen as the protector of a proscribed band of heretics, regardless of the unfairness of that judgement. The 11th Earl of Elgin, whose family descend from the same Bruce line as King Robert, and who for four years during the 1960s served as Grand Master Mason of Scotland, observed, when I asked him, that his kinsman always seems to have remained passive about the Templars. ‘He certainly permitted them to hold land and presumably to continue to recruit,’ he said. ‘In practical terms they possibly were suppliers of much of his armoury, sword blades and so forth.’
Andrew Sinclair in Rosslyn: The Story of Rosslyn Chapel and the True Story Behind The Da Vinci Code (Birlinn, 2005) is convinced that this is the case. With weaponry in constant demand, they definitely had the expertise and, in the years running up to their dispersal, the necessary forges and blacksmiths at their disposal. But no contemporary confirmation exists and this is only pure speculation. Both before and immediately after the Scottish victory at Bannockburn, a conspiracy of silence appears to have prevailed over anything to do with the Templars’ activities in Scotland. Or was it simply that no one was interested? That seems unlikely, but it was probably considered best to remain silent by all concerned.
Throughout Europe, all Templar allegiances were redistributed. Their properties were either reallocated to the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, a more passive Christian brotherhood dedicated to the relief of sickness, or returned to the landowning families who had originally gifted them. In Portugal, a new Military Order, the Order of Christ, was created, and in Valencia – otherwise known as the Kingdom of Aragon – the Order of Montesa was set up.7 Only a handful of the Order’s leaders in England and Ireland were rounded up and brought to trial, more as a gesture towards Rome than anything else. At the same time, Edward II of England, who had succeeded his father only three months before the Papal decree of 1307, took it upon himself to issue an order for the arrest of all Templars in Scotland. This had little effect as by then his influence north of the Border was dwindling fast. And the question has to be asked, were there any Templars still around to be arrested?
Two elderly knights, Walter de Clifton, the Preceptor at Balantrodoch, and William de Middleton, were successfully rounded up, and a third, Thomas Tocci, voluntarily surrendered. All three were brought before William Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews, and prosecuted by John Solario, the Papal Legate in Scotland.8 Among those who gave evidence against them were Sir Henry St Clair of Rosslyn, great-great-great-grandson of the Crusader Henry, and his son William, which tends to suggest that by this stage the knightly St Clairs had seriously distanced themselves from the Order.
After what amounted to little more than a show trial, de Clifton, de Middleton and Tocci were found not guilty and sent to Cistercian monasteries in the Scottish Borders. This was the final denouement of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon in Scotland. Under Papal decree, Balantrodoch and Maryculter were acquired by the Benedictine Order of Knights Hospitallers, and the assumption is that those Templar monks who remained simply swapped their white habits for the black of the Hospitallers. Others may have chosen anonymity and, in so doing, in line with popular fiction, laid the seeds for their descendants to re-emerge three hundred years later posing as Scottish Freemasons (see Chapter 10).
On the Internet there are currently in the region of 1,470,000 websites connected with the Knights Templar scattered around the globe. These include: the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States, based in Bellaire; the New Order of the Knights Templar and Daughters of Tsion (The Ladies Templar); the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani Knights Templar; the Magistral Grand Priory of the Holy Lands (a UK-based charity); and the International Order of Knights Templar, Ordo Supremus Militaris Hiersolymilitani (Sovereign Order of the Temple of Jerusalem), founded in 1854, claiming more than 5,000 members and special consultative status to the United Nations – granted in July 2001.
Militi Templi Scotia (MTS) is the oldest Order of the Temple active in Scotland and traces its origins to the reformation of the Templar order in Scotland in 1789 under Alexander Deuchar, who revitalised it after the death of Prince Charles Edward Stuart the last master of the old, Masonic, Order. Stipulating that it is of Christian and ‘Non-Masonic’ origin, its members adopt many of the moral and ethical stances of the original Christian order.
However, none of these modern membership organisations have any plausible ancestral link with the twelfth-century creation of Hugh de Payen. They are the stuff of romantic fiction. Similarly, and equally surrounded by mysteries of its own self-indulgent invention, is the shadowy Prieuré de Sion which features so significantly in both The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code. Credited with being the secret Catholic control centre behind the Knights Templar, there are an equally amazing 85,400 websites associated with this subject. Said to have been founded as early as 1099, but in all likelihood a twentieth-century invention, its provenance is examined in Chapter 16.