Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

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

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