by Steven Sora
In 1411 the earl of Mar came up against the Donalds in protecting his own lands at Harlaw. The bloodiest battle in the Highlands saw nine thousand of the clan die, and possibly an equal number among the defenders. As a result of this gruesome battle, and irritated by the constant warfare in the north, King James I, the prince who had been imprisoned with Henry, reacted quickly.5 In 1428 James ordered the heads of forty clans to come before him. He arrested most of them, threw them into his dungeon, and executed three. It was a bold step, and he took an even bolder one in denying the pope’s powers. He declared the pope corrupt and, in standing up to Rome, alienated himself from other countries.
In a few short years the king had done much for Scotland and made many enemies. In 1436 he was assassinated in his bedchamber by Robert Graham, a hired assassin.6 He died with twenty-eight dagger wounds, and his queen sought revenge. Robert Stewart, the son of the earl of Atholl who allowed access to the bedchamber, and Graham were tortured and executed. That same year, Prince Henry’s grandson, William Sinclair, was designated admiral. He was already the inheritor of the world’s largest fleet and the Templar treasure as well, so it was a designation mostly in name, which seemed to belong to the Sinclairs as a birthright.7
After the assassination of James, the country fell into the hands of a child king and a warring regent. The Douglas clan joined with the Livingston family against the Crichton clan, and this time the hostilities were centered around Stirling and the Sinclair base of power at Roslin. The new war and the child king’s inability to rule served as an excuse for the English to march north, to Edinburgh and the Sinclair ancestral home. William Sinclair was imprisoned for part of his father’s ransom that was never paid. Henry Sinclair (not the prince) had been held in the Tower of London, but was allowed to go free when he agreed to pay a ransom—a ransom he never paid once he was free.
For the Sinclairs this placed the battle on two fronts; they faced both the constant irritation of the English and incessant infighting among the clans, which even had Sinclair fighting Sinclair. It is very likely at this time that Admiral Sinclair made his own trip to North America to see the lands his grandfather had discovered. The secret of lands in the far western Atlantic would have been passed from father to son, along with the role of guardian of the Templar wealth and the surviving Freemasons. A trip to Nova Scotia from Scotland could be made in three weeks’ sailing time if the weather was good. Leaving time to confirm and examine firsthand the harbors described by his grandfather, an entire expedition could be made in three months. Between the year he was appointed admiral and 1441, William made his plans.
In Roslin he constructed an edifice that would be worthy of the master masons and craftsmen in his protection.8 And he built a warren of tunnels and secret depositories to guard his treasure. In Nova Scotia he also built a vault to guard the Templar treasure, in case the civil war and the war with England threatened his ancestral home. It was William who started importing workers for these projects in 1441, five years before he began a job that took forty years to complete.9
In a phone conversation, David Tobias, the present owner of the Money Pit, told me that his theory had Sir Francis Drake bringing Cornish miners to Nova Scotia. There they excavated the Money Pit and created the treasure vault. Where would Sinclair find miners? He certainly would not find them in the English-owned Cornwall area. Researching Roslin further, I discovered that it had once been a mining village. Importing workers for his chapel and tunnel system five years before the actual work took place concealed Sinclair’s ulterior motive. The new workers were, in fact, replacing more trusted workers, who had been sent to Nova Scotia.
Only an Englishman as powerful as Sir Francis Drake, and in command of a private navy, would be able to conceal such a project. William Sinclair might have been at least Drake’s peer. He was powerful, in command of both a private navy and the national navy, and capable of enlisting the needed talent. Sinclair had the means, the wealth, possibly a much more trusted workforce, and certainly a stronger motive. At some time between 1436 and 1441, Sinclair ships took on boatloads of miners from the home borough of Roslin and began a settlement near Oak Island, perhaps on one of the larger islands in Mahone Bay.
In addition to laying the groundwork for the secret vaults at Roslin and in Nova Scotia, Sinclair also started an elite group of fighting men called the Scots Guard.10 Like the Templars before them, the Scots Guard was made up of young men from wealthy and noble families. It pledged itself not to Scotland but to the king of France—and nominally at that. Their loyalty was given directly to the Valois rulers and a subset of Valois, the House of Guise. Finally, William Sinclair was reappointed as grand master of the crafts and guilds and orders of Scotland by James II. This office remained hereditary until the Lodge was formed three hundred years later. Strangely enough, Sinclair also appointed himself protector of the gypsies. Each year, from May to June the gypsies of Great Britain would migrate to the Sinclair home at Roslin. There they were given land to camp on and were allowed to perform their summer pageant, a play about Robin Hood and the May Queen. The Protestant Calvinists believed this to be nothing but pagan rites in disguise and protested fiercely.11
William Sinclair would have everything but peace. When James II was crowned king at age six, he was under the tutelage of Sir William Crichton and Sir Alexander Livingston. Stewarts and Douglas vied for rule of Scotland and, fearing a power play, the two tutors had the young earl of Douglas killed.12 A decade later, when James came of age, he said he wanted to reconcile with the Douglas clan. He had learned that William Douglas had gone abroad to meet with both the pope and the English, and he feared that a rebellion with English support was imminent. He invited Douglas to dinner at Stirling, the royal castle, and asked the head of the clan if he could discuss affairs without the presence of Douglas’s bodyguards. Douglas rebuffed him, and James stabbed him in the neck. Other court attendants rushed to plunge their daggers into Douglas as well. Another Douglas rose to take William’s place and marched on Stirling with six hundred men. The king defeated the Douglas clan, but in one of many continual skirmishes with the English, a cannon exploded, killing James II. His son, James III, took over the rule of Scotland in 1460.13
It is very likely that while the Douglas clan rebellion and the continuing attacks by the English were going on, the Sinclair inheritance was being moved to the New World. The Sinclairs stood by their kings but at the same time saw that the opposition was mounting. Young James III was kidnapped after inheriting the throne. Upon his escape he married Margaret, the daughter of King Christian of Norway and Denmark.14 The following year he made a deal with another William Sinclair, Henry’s great-grandson, buying the earldom of Orkney. The castle of the Sinclair sea kings at Kirkwall was traded for Ravenscraig in Edinburgh, although several Orkney estates stayed in Sinclair hands. While lucrative properties remained in the Sinclair domain, this William came to inherit the nickname the “Waster” for trading away the family property.15
In 1475 the stonemasons of Edinburgh received a charter from the king, which was ratified at Mary’s Chapel in that city. This would later be known as Lodge One, but the Sinclairs were still recognized as the patrons and guardians of the Masons, despite this early recognition of autonomy.16 In 1488 the Douglas rebellion was rekindled. James III went to battle himself, was wounded, and fell off his horse. He was carrying the sword of Robert the Bruce, but this time it failed him. Fearing he was near death, he rushed from the battlefield, where he met a priest. When he asked the priest for final absolution, he was instead stabbed to death.
The thirteen-year-old James IV became king. He would be remembered as a Renaissance man who tried to keep peace with England. In 1503 he married the twelve-year-old Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII and sister of the man who became Henry VIII (in 1509). At this point, the Reformation was making Christian Protestants turn against Christian Catholics. Protestant Henry VIII and Catholic France went to war. Scotland, loyal to France, invaded Englan
d in 1513. At the Battle of Flodden the Scots were beaten badly, and for the Sinclairs it was a major personal blow.17 Forty Sinclairs had marched to Flodden with their earl and king; only one would survive. Since that disastrous day, no Sinclair has ever worn the color green—the color worn that day—to battle again.18 James IV allegedly died at Flodden as well, although the body purported to be the king’s was missing his ever present iron chain of expiation (worn around the waist as a symbol of piety), leading many to speculate that James had survived.
War and the massive building and rebuilding projects of the Sinclairs were beginning to take a toll on the family’s seemingly inexhaustible resources. The Sinclairs had once been the puppeteers running their country’s affairs from behind the scenes; now the weak kings were pushing them to the front. It cost them dearly in terms of their own lives and their property. Oliver Sinclair was a favorite of James V. His protection of Sinclair and his marriage to Mary of Guise ensured his loyalty to the side of the Catholics, but the religious revolution that was under way in the form of the Reformation was causing trouble between England and Scotland. Henry VIII tried to convert his relative to the Protestant side, but James would not repudiate his faith. In 1542 the Battle of Solway saw Scotland defeated and Oliver Sinclair captured. James V was horrified and declared that all was lost with the loss of Oliver. At the same time that he heard of the defeat at Solway, he also heard of the birth of his daughter, Mary. He predicted the dynasty was over and himself died shortly afterward.19 His daughter Mary would become known to history as Mary, Queen of Scots.
While the new queen was under the protection of the Sinclairs, Oliver was furloughed from prison in England. He was allowed a short visit home, but instead he disappeared from Scotland and history—forever.20 The year was 1545. The regent, Mary of Guise, worked closely with (still another) William Sinclair. She would go far to show the Sinclairs that their alliance was with the House of Guise-Lorraine. In the same year that Oliver was supposed to report back to prison in England, the Sinclair family was ordered by Reformation bishops to turn over the treasures of the Scottish Catholic Church. Since the family had commissioned and paid for many of these religious objects, they had taken them under their protection. The property of the Catholic Church also included relics that the Sinclairs had brought back from the Crusades, including a piece of the True Cross. The Reformation mobs everywhere were looting Catholic churches and stealing and destroying such relics. The Sinclairs refused to allow this to happen at Roslin.21 The same year that Oliver disappeared, so did the sacred objects under the care of the Sinclair family.
William Sinclair allowed only the Guise family to be privy to his greatest secret. Mary of Guise proclaimed a “bond of obligation” to William, stating, “We shall be loyal and true masters to him… . His counsel and secret shown to us, we shall keep secret.” What secret? Andrew Sinclair, biographer of his ancestors, asserts that the secret was that there was a room beneath the chapel at Roslin that contained a repository with the sacred relics.22 After devastating vandalism by Protestant mobs and twentieth-century excavation that uncovered many secret vaults, no such relics have turned up. It is more than likely that every castle and every cathedral in medieval times had a hidden tunnel or chamber. The absence of one would be uncommon. William Sinclair and Sir Oliver Sinclair harbored a much greater secret. That secret was Oak Island. Oliver, commander of both the army and the navy, had set sail for the concealed vault and secluded country of the Sinclairs in 1545, never to return.
The fortunes of the Sinclairs in Scotland and the Guise family in France would be hurt badly in the religious wars that followed. William Sinclair was made Lord Justice General by Queen Mary of Scotland and traveled back and forth to France. Mary of Guise died in 1560. François, duke of Guise, was assassinated in 1563.23 Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1587 while her own son stood idly by. His lack of concern earned him both the throne of Scotland and, later, the throne of England when Elizabeth died. The year after Mary’s execution, François of Guise’s son, the new duke, and his brother, the cardinal Guise, were both assassinated on the orders of Henri III of France. In 1589 the Guise family, in turn, had Henri III assassinated.24 The religious wars caught up to the Sinclair family in Roslin as well. In 1615 the head of the family, William Sinclair, was ordered condemned to death for allowing a Jesuit priest to conduct the Catholic Mass at Roslin. The priest was hung and William pardoned to an exile in Ireland; mobs destroyed the Sinclair home and chapel.25
This act by the Sinclairs seems to indicate that despite the paganistic-Masonic trappings of Roslin, they were devout to the Catholic religion and loyal to their faith. They were also loyal to their role as guardian of secrets and treasures whose care they had inherited. The massive Templar treasure that included objects once looted from Jerusalem was not dissipated, nor was all the Sinclair wealth spent. It disappeared. The relics, as well as the treasures of the Scottish Church, were never uncovered. Everything had vanished; so had Oliver Sinclair. The Sinclairs had been transferring the objects in their care for more than a half a century to their vault in Nova Scotia. In 1545 that transfer was completed. The only document we have mentioning the “secret” is that order from Mary of Guise. How much did Sinclair allow the Guise family to know? At some point a parting of the ways took place between the French families that made up the Ordre de Sion, later known as the Prieuré de Sion, and the Scottish Sinclair family. The schism was not complete, but the Scottish contingent appears to have taken control of the Templar treasure hoard.
The Guardian Families in France
The Guise family and the Sinclair family remained united by a greater bond, the secret Prieuré de Sion. This group was truly an elite network of a very small number of French families.26 The first grand master of that group, after the split with the Templars, was Jean de Gisors. He took control after the “cutting of the elm” in 1188, which symbolically divorced the Templars from the Prieuré de Sion, and for the first time the Templars and the Prieuré de Sion were not controlled, at least in name, by the same person.
The second grand master was Marie de St. Clair, who had descended from the Scottish branch at Roslin. Her maiden name was Levis, indicating that St. Clair, too, had married into the kingship line of David.
The third grand master was Guillaume de Gisors, who had started another secret society, the Order of the Ship and the Double Crescent. He was related to the St. Clairs and connected to the temple at Paris from which the vast Templar fortune had disappeared into history. His sister married into the des Plantard family, who gave their name to the Plantagenet dynasty. The Plantards, too, claimed descent from the Davidic bloodline, the word plantard being French for “flowering shoot.” In the Apocalypse, John had said that he was the root and stock of David; so, too, were Levis and Plantards. Two members of the de Bar family held the grand master title next. One of them, Jean de Bar, had owned the land around Stenay where the last Merovingian king had been murdered. The de Bars were related to the family of René d’Anjou and to the Coucy family of Picardy. The lords of Picardy were described alternately as kingmakers or challengers to the throne as the subjects of Barbara Tuchman’s study of the medieval world, A Distant Mirror.27
The sixth grand master was again a St. Clair, this time from the French side of the family. He was a minor figure, but it shows the relatively tight circle that was in control of the Prieuré de Sion. The ninth grand master was a major figure in medieval history, René d’Anjou, whose multitude of titles included the count of Guise. He was the most important force behind the Renaissance of Europe and was called the “Good King René” by his subjects. He was married at the age of twelve, to Isabella of Lorraine in a political alliance. While most court-arranged marriages do not last, René was dedicated to Isabella for thirty-three years, until her death. René composed music, learned languages, studied mathematics and geology, learned the law, and reformed his own lands. As the true Renaissance man, he brought to his domain new and
modern trends in learning and science. He took part in one mania of the day, which was the collecting of relics. His prize possession was a cup that had been used at the marriage at Cana (which may have united Jesus with Mary Magdalene). He claimed to have obtained the cup in Marseilles.
René d’Anjou was a member of several secret orders, including a revival of the de Gisors’ Order of the Ship. One member of that order was the father of Leonardo da Vinci’s patron. Da Vinci, too, became a grand master in the Prieuré de Sion. In an age of chivalry, d’Anjou was a promoter of the pageantry and the chivalric display of his times. He participated in the Tarascon festivals, in which the town celebrated Martha’s driving away the dragon that had plagued the town. He also staged what were called pas d’armes, medieval combinations of plays and tournaments. Often the theme would evolve around the central idea of the earthly Garden of Eden, Arcadia, and an underground stream. Well before Jacopo Sannazaro’s poem was published, the Arcadia theme was important to d’Anjou. Each year his mistress played the role of shepherdess.
It was the work of Nicolas Poussin that captured the ideals of the Arcadia theme, replete with trappings of a mystical and idyllic life. And it was his painting Les Bergers d’Arcadie, (The Shepherds of Arcadia) that took Father Saunière to the Louvre in Paris to find clues to his treasure hunt in Rennes-le-Chateau. That clue brought him to a tomb that he deemed so important he obliterated the engraving on it. The message that took Saunière to Paris to seek the work of Poussin was “Poussin holds the key.” That key was a code employing pentagonal geometry, which was used to conceal the directions to the treasure in the village of Rennes-le-Chateau. The lines forming the pentagon had at their central point the forehead of the shepherdess. What made the shepherdess so important to Poussin and to René d’Anjou?