The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple

“Witness ourself at Westminster, the 15th day of January, and fourth year of our reign.”556

Two years afterwards (6 E. III, A. D. 1333) the king committed the custody of the Temple to “his beloved clerk,” William de Langford, “and farmed out the rents and proceeds thereof to him for the term of ten years, at a rent of 24l. per annum, the said William undertaking to keep all the houses and tenements in good order and repair, and so deliver them up at the end of the term.”557

In the mean time, however, the pope, the bishops, and the Hospitallers had been vigorously exerting themselves to obtain a transfer of the property, late belonging to the Templars, to the order of the Hospital of Saint John. The Hospitallers petitioned the king, setting forth that the church, the cloisters, and other places within the Temple, were consecrated and dedicated to the service of God, that they had been unjustly occupied and detained from them by Hugh le Despenser the younger, and, through his attainder, had lately come into the king’s hands, and they besought the king to deliver up to them possession thereof. King Edward accordingly commanded the mayor of London, his escheator in that city, to take inquisition concerning the premises.

From this inquisition, and the return thereof, it appears that many of the founders of the Temple Church, and many of the brethren of the order of Knights Templars, then lay buried in the church and cemetery of the Temple; that the bishop of Ely had his lodging in the Temple, known by the name of the bishop of Ely’s chamber; that there was a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas-à-Becket, which extended from the door of the Temple Hall as far as the ancient gate of the Temple; also a cloister which began at the bishop of Ely’s chamber, and ran in an easterly direction; and that there was a wall which ran in a northerly direction as far as the said king’s highway; that in the front part of the cemetery towards the north, bordering on the king’s highway, were thirteen houses formerly erected, with the assent and permission of the Master and brethren of the Temple, by Roger Blom, a messenger of the Temple, for the purpose of holding the lights and ornaments of the church; that the land whereon these houses were built, the cemetery, the church, and all the space inclosed between St. Thomas’s chapel, the church, the cloisters, and the wall running in a northerly direction, and all the buildings erected thereon, together with the hall, cloisters, and St. Thomas’s chapel, were sanctified places dedicated to God; that Hugh le Despenser occupied and detained them unjustly, and that through his attainder and forfeiture, and not otherwise, they came into the king’s hands.558

After the return of this inquisition, the said sanctified places were assigned to the prior and brethren of the Hospital of Saint John; and the king, on the 11th of January, in the tenth year of his reign, A. D. 1337, directed his writ to the barons of the Exchequer, commanding them to take inquisition of the value of the said sanctified places, so given up to the Hospitallers, and of the residue of the Temple, and certify the same under their seals to the king, in order that a reasonable abatement might be made in William de Langford’s rent. From the inquiry made in pursuance of this writ before John de Shorditch, a baron of the Exchequer, it further appears that on the said residue of the Temple upon the land then remaining in the custody of William de Langford, and withinside the great gate of the Temple, were another HALL559 and four chambers connected therewith, a kitchen, a garden, a stable, and a chamber beyond the great gate; also eight shops, seven of which stood in Fleet Street, and the eighth in the suburb of London, without the bar of the New Temple; that the annual value of these shops varied from ten to thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen shillings; that the fruit out of the garden of the Temple sold for sixty shillings per annum in the gross; that seven out of the thirteen houses erected by Roger Blom were each of the annual value of eleven shillings; and that the eighth, situated beyond the gate of entrance to the church, was worth four marks per annum. It appears, moreover, that the total annual revenue of the Temple then amounted to 73l. 6s. 11d., equal to about 1,000l. of our present money, and that William de Langford was abated 12l. 4s. 2d. of his said rent.560

Three years after the taking of this inquisition, and in the thirteenth year of his reign, A. D. 1340, king Edward the Third in consideration of the sum of one hundred pounds, which the prior of the Hospital promised to pay him towards the expense of his expedition into France, granted to the said prior all the residue of the Temple then remaining in the king’s hands, to hold, together with the cemetery, cloisters, and the other sanctified places, to the said prior and his brethren, and their successors, of the king and his heirs, for charitable purposes, for ever.561 From the above grant it appears that the porter of the Temple received sixty shillings and tenpence per annum, and twopence a day wages, which were to be paid him by the Hospitallers.

At this period Philip Thane was prior of the Hospital; and he appears to have exerted himself to impart to the celebration of divine service in the Temple Church, the dignity and the splendour it possessed in the time of the Templars. He, with the unanimous consent and approbation of the whole chapter of the Hospital, granted to Brother Hugh de Lichefeld, priest, and to his successors, guardians of the Temple Church, towards the improvement of the lights and the celebration of divine service therein, all the land called Ficketzfeld, and the garden called Cotterell Garden;562 and two years afterwards he made a further grant, to the said Hugh and his successors, of a thousand fagots a year to be cut of the wood of Lilleston, and carried to the New Temple to keep up the fire in the said church.563

King Edward the Third, in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, A. D. 1362, notwithstanding the grant of the Temple to the Hospitallers, exercised the right of appointing to the porter’s office and by his letters patent he promoted Roger Small to that post for the term of his life, in return for the good service rendered him by the said Roger Small.564

It is at this period that the first distinct mention of a society of lawyers in the Temple occurs.

The poet Chaucer, who was born at the close of the reign of Edward the Second, A. D. 1327, and was in high favour at court in the reign of Edward the Third, thus speaks of the Manciple, or the purveyor of provisions of the lawyers in the Temple:

“A gentil Manciple was there of the Temple,Of whom achatours mighten take ensemple,For to ben wise in bying of vitaille.For whether that he paid or toke by taille,Algate he waited so in his achate,That he was aye before in good estate.Now is not that of God a full fayre grace,That swiche a lewed mannes wit shal pace,The wisdome of an hepe of lerned men?”“Of maisters had he mo than thries ten,That were of lawe expert and curious:Of which there was a dosein in that housWorthy to ben stewardes of rent and londOf any lord that is in Englelond,To maken him live by his propre good,In honour detteles, but if he were wood,Or live as scarsly, as him list desire;And able for to helpen all a shire,In any cas that mighte fallen or happe;And yet this manciple sette hir aller cappe.”565

It appears, therefore, that the lawyers in the Temple, in the reign of Edward the Third, had their purveyor of provisions as at this day, and were consequently then keeping commons, or dining together in hall.

In the fourth year of the reign of Richard the Second, A. D. 1381, a still more distinct notice occurs of the Temple, as the residence of the learners and the learned in the law.

We are told in an antient chronicle, written in Norman French, formerly belonging to the abbey of St. Mary’s at York, that the rebels under Wat Tyler went to the Temple and pulled down the houses, and entered the church and took all the books and the rolls of remembrances which were in the chests of the LEARNERS OF THE LAW in the Temple, and placed them under the large chimney and burnt them. (“Les rebels alleront a le Temple et jetteront les measons a la terre et avegheront tighles, issint que ils fairont coverture en mal array; et alleront en l’esglise, et pristeront touts les liveres et rolles de remembrances, que furont en leur huches deins le Temple de Apprentices de la Ley; et porteront en le haut chimene et les arderont.”566) And Walsingham, who wrote in the reign of Henry the Sixth, about fifty years after the occurrence of these events, tells us that after the rebels, under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, had burnt the Savoy, the noble palace of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, they pulled down the place called Temple Barr, where the apprentices or learners of the highest branch of the profession of the law dwelt, on account of the spite they bore to Robert Hales, Master of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, and burnt many deeds which the lawyers there had in their custody. (“Quibus perpetratis, satis malitiose etiam locum qui vocatur Temple Barre, in quo apprenticii juris morabantur nobiliores, diruerunt, ob iram quam conceperant contra Robertum de Hales Magistrum Hospitalis Sancti Johannis Jerusalem, ubi plura munimenta, quæ Juridici in custodiâ habuerunt, igne consumpta sunt.”)567

In a subsequent passage, however, he gives us a better clue to the attack upon the Temple, and the burning of the deeds and writings, for he tells us that it was the intention of the rebels to decapitate all the lawyers, for they thought that by destroying them they could put an end to the law, and so be enabled to order matters according to their own will and pleasure. (“Ad decollandum omnes juridicos, escaetores, et universos qui vel in lege docti fuere, vel cum jure ratione officii communicavere. Mente nempe conceperant, doctis in lege necatis, universa juxta communis plebis scitum de cætero ordinare, et nullam omnino legem fore futuram, vel si futura foret, esse pro suorum arbitrio statuenda.”)

It is evident that the lawyers were the immediate successors of the Knights Templars in the occupation of the Temple, as the lessees of the earl of Lancaster.

Whilst the Templars were pining in captivity in the dungeons of London and of York, king Edward the Second paid to their servants and retainers the pensions they had previously received from the treasury of the Temple, on condition that they continued to perform the services and duties they had rendered to their antient masters. On the 26th of November, A. D. 1311, he granted to Robert Styfford, clerk, for his maintenance in the house of the Temple at London, two deniers a day, and five shillings a year for necessaries, provided he did service in the church; and when unable to do so, he was to receive only his food and lodging. Geoffrey Talaver was to receive, in the same house of the Temple, three deniers a day for his sustenance, and twenty shillings a year for necessaries, during the remainder of his life; also one denier a day for the support of his boy, and five shillings a year for his wages. Geoffrey de Cave, clerk, and John de Shelton, were also, each of them, to receive from the same house, for their good services, an annual pension of forty shillings for the term of their lives.568 Some of these retainers, in addition to their various stipends, were to have a gown of the class of free-serving brethren of the order of the Temple569 each year; one old garment out of the stock of old garments belonging to the brethren;570 one mark a year for their shoes, &c.; their sons also received so much per diem, on condition that they did the daily work of the house. These retainers were of the class of free servants of office; they held their posts for life, and not being members of the order of the Temple, they were not included in the general proscription of the fraternity. In return for the provision made them by the king, they were to continue to do their customary work as long as they were able.

Now it is worthy of remark, that many of the rules, customs, and usages of the society of Knights Templars are to this day observed in the Temple, naturally leading us to conclude that these domestics and retainers of the antient brotherhood became connected with the legal society formed therein, and transferred their services to that learned body.

From the time of Chaucer to the present day, the lawyers have dined together in the antient hall, as the military monks did before them; and the rule of their order requiring “two and two to eat together,” and “all the fragments to be given in brotherly charity to the domestics,” is observed to this day, and has been in force from time immemorial. The attendants at table, moreover, are still called paniers, as in the days of the Knights Templars.571 The leading punishments of the Temple, too, remain the same as in the olden time. The antient Templar, for example, for a light fault, was “withdrawn from the companionship of his fellows,” and not allowed “to eat with them at the same table,”572 and the modern Templar, for impropriety of conduct, is “expelled the hall” and “put out of commons.” The brethren of the antient fraternity were, for grave offences, in addition to the above punishment, deprived of their lodgings,573 and were compelled to sleep with the beasts in the open court; and the members of the modern fellowship have in bygone times, as a mode of punishment, been temporarily deprived of their chambers in the Temple for misconduct, and padlocks have been put upon the doors. The Master and Chapter of the Temple, in the time of the Knights Templars, exercised the power of imprisonment and expulsion from the fellowship, and the same punishments have been freely used down to a recent period by the Masters of the Bench of the modern societies. Until of late years, too, the modern Templars have had their readers, officers of great dignity, whose duty it has been to read and expound LAW in the hall, at and after meals, in the same way as the readers of the Knights Templars read and expounded RELIGION.

There has also been, in connexion with the modern fellowship, a class of associates similar to the associates of the antient Templars.574 These were illustrious persons who paid large sums of money, and made presents of plate, to be admitted to the fellowship of the Masters of the Bench; they were allowed to dine at the Bench table, to be as it were honorary members of the society, but were freed from the ordinary exercises and regulations of the house, and had at the same time no voice in the government thereof.

The conversion of the chief house of the most holy order of the Temple of Solomon in England into a law university, was brought about in the following manner.

Both before, and for a very considerable period after, the Norman conquest, the study of the law was confined to the ecclesiastics, who engrossed all the learning and knowledge of the age.575 In the reign of king Stephen, the foreign clergy who had flocked over after the conquest, attempted to introduce the ancient civil law of Rome into this country, as calculated to promote the power and advantage of their order, but were resolutely resisted by the king and the barons, who clung to their old customs and usages. The new law, however, was introduced into all the ecclesiastical courts, and the clergy began to abandon the municipal tribunals, and discontinue the study of the common law. Early in the reign of Henry the Third, episcopal constitutions were published by the bishop of Salisbury, forbidding clerks and priests to practise as advocates in the common law courts. (Nec advocati sint clerici vel sacerdotes in foro sæculari, nisi vel proprias causas vel miserabilium personarum prosequantur.576) Towards the close of the same reign, (A. D. 1254,) Pope Innocent IV. forbade the reading of the common law by the clergy in the English universities and seminaries of learning, because its decrees were not founded on the imperial constitutions, but merely on the customs of the laity.577

As the common law consequently gradually ceased to be studied and taught by the clergy, who were the great depositaries of legal learning, as of all other knowledge in those days, it became necessary to educate and train up a body of laymen to transact the judicial business of the country; and Edward the First, who, from his many legal reforms and improvements, has been styled “the English Justinian,” made the practice of the common law a distinct profession.

In antient times the Court of Common Pleas had the exclusive administration of the common law, and settled and decided all the disputes which arose between subject and subject; and in the twentieth year of the reign of Edward the First, (A. D. 1292,) the privilege of pleading causes in this court was confined to a certain number of learned persons appointed by authority. By an order in council, the king commanded John de Metingham, chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and the rest of his fellow justices, that they, according to their discretions, should provide and ordain from every county a certain number of attorneys and apprentices of the law, of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, to do service to his court and people, and those so chosen should follow his court and transact the affairs therein, and no others; the king and his council deeming the number of fourscore to be sufficient for that employment; but it was left to the discretion of the said justices to add to that number, or to diminish it, as they should think fit.578

At this period the Court of Common Pleas had been fixed at Westminster, which brought together the professors of the common law at London; and about the period of the dissolution of the order of the Temple, a society appears to have been in progress of formation, under the sanction of the judges, for the education of a body of learned secular lawyers to attend upon that court. The deserted convent of the Knights Templars, seated in the suburb of London, away from the noise and bustle of the city, and presenting a ready and easy access by water to Westminster, was a desirable retreat for the learned members of this infant legal society; and we accordingly find, that very soon after the dissolution of the religio-military order of Knights Templars, the professors of the common law of England mustered in considerable strength in the Temple.

In the sixth year of the reign of Edward the Third, (A. D. 1333,) when the lawyers had just established themselves in the convent of the Temple, and had engrafted upon the old stock of Knights Templars their infant society for the study of the practice of the common law, the judges of the Court of Common Pleas were made KNIGHTS,579 being the earliest instance on record of the grant of the honour of knighthood for services purely civil, and the professors of the common law, who had the exclusive privilege of practising in that court, assumed the title or degree of FRERES SERJENS or FRATRES SERVIENTES, so that knights and serving-brethren, similar to those of the antient order of the Temple, were most curiously revived and introduced into the profession of the law.

It is true that the word serviens, serjen, or serjeant, was applied to the professors of the law long before the reign of Edward the Third, but not to denote a privileged brotherhood. It was applied to lawyers in common with all persons who did any description of work for another, from the serviens domini regis ad legem, who prosecuted the pleas of the crown in the county court, to the serviens or serjen who walked with his cane before the concubine of the Patriarch in the streets of Jerusalem.580 The priest who worked for the Lord was called serjens de Dieu, and the lover who served the lady of his affections serjens d’amour.581 It was in the order of the Temple that the word freres serjens or fratres servientes signified an honorary title or degree, and denoted a powerful privileged class of men. The fratres servientes armigeri or freres serjens des armes, of the chivalry of the Temple, were of the rank of gentlemen. They united in their own persons the monastic and the military character, they were allotted one horse each, they wore the red cross of the order of the Temple on their breasts,582 they participated in all the privileges of the brotherhood, and were eligible to the dignity of Preceptor. Large sums of money were frequently given by seculars who had not been advanced to the honour of knighthood, to be admitted amongst this highly-esteemed order of men.

The freres serjens of the Temple wore linen coifs, and red caps close over them.583 At the ceremony of their admission into the fraternity, the Master of the Temple placed the coif upon their heads, and threw over their shoulders the white mantle of the Temple; he then caused them to sit down on the ground, and gave them a solemn admonition concerning the duties and responsibilities of their profession.584 They were warned that they must enter upon a new life, that they must keep themselves fair and free from stain, like the white garment that had been thrown around them, which was the emblem of purity and innocence; that they must render complete and perfect obedience to their superiors; that they must protect the weak, succour the needy, reverence old men, and do good to the poor.

The knights and serjeants of the common law, on the other hand, have ever constituted a privileged fraternity, and always address one another by the endearing term brother. The religious character of the antient ceremony of admission into this legal brotherhood, which took place in church, and its striking similarity to the antient mode of reception into the fraternity of the Temple, are curious and remarkable.

“Capitalis Justitiarius,” says an antient MS. account of the creation of serjeants-at-law in the reign of Henry the Seventh, “monstrabat eis plura bona exempla de eorum prædecessoribus, et tunc posuit les coyfes585 super eorum capitibus, et induebat eos singulariter de capital de skarletto, et sic creati fuerunt servientes ad legem.” In his admonitory exhortation, the chief justice displays to them the moral and religious duties of their profession. “Ambulate in vocatione in quâ vocati estis… Disce cultum Dei, reverentiam superioris(!), misericordiam pauperi.” He tells them the coif is sicut vestis candida et immaculata, the emblem of purity and virtue, and he commences a portion of his discourse in the scriptural language used by the popes in the famous bull conceding to the Templars their vast spiritual and temporal privileges, “Omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum desursum est descendens a patre luminum, &c. &c.!”586

The freres serjens of the Temple were strictly enjoined to “eat their bread in silence,” and “place a watch upon their mouths,” and the freres serjens of the law, we are told, after their admission, did “dyne together with sober countenance and lytel communycacion.”

The common-law lawyers, after their location in the Temple, continued rapidly to increase, and between the reigns of Richard the Second and Henry the Sixth, they divided themselves into two bodies. “In the raigne of king Henry the Sixth,” says the MS. account of the Temple, written 9 Charles the First, “they were soe multiplied and grown into soe great a bulke as could not conveniently be regulated into one society, nor indeed was the old hall capable of containing so great a number, whereupon they were forced to divide themselves. A new hall was then erected which is now the Junior Temple Hall, whereunto divers of those who before took their repast and diet in the old hall resorted, and in process of time became a distinct and divided society.”

From the inquisition taken 10. E. III. A. D. 1337, it appears that in the time of the Knights Templars there were two halls in the Temple, so that it is not likely that a fresh one was built. One of these halls, the present Inner Temple Hall, had been assigned, the year previous to the taking of that inquisition, to the prior and brethren of the Hospital of Saint John, together with the church, cloisters, &c., as before mentioned, whilst the other hall remained in the hands of the crown, and was not granted to the Hospitallers until 13 E. III. A. D. 1340. It was probably soon after this period that the Hospitallers conceded the use of both halls to the professors of the law, and these last, from dining apart and being attached to different halls, at last separated into two societies, as at present.