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of English Industry and Commerce, has credited the Templars with a share in the financial operations of the thirteenth century. In 1889, M. Léopold Delisle made "Les Opérations Financières des Templiers" the subject of a mémoire before the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, in which, after illustrating the employment of the order in financial affairs by the popes and by many of the princes, prelates, and magnates of western Europe, he has dealt exhaustively with the financial relations between the French kings and the Templars. It is the object of the present study to set forth, as precisely as may be, the exact nature and extent of the financial relations between the Templars and the English Crown. The subject is deserving of investigation both because of the slight contribution it may yield to the fiscal history of England in the thirteenth century, and because the civil services which the order had long been rendering at the time of its dissolution ought to be taken into account in a final estimate of its place in history.

Every financial transaction is a matter of receipt or disbursement according to the point of view. If one take one's stand in the Temple treasury in London, the relations of the order with the outside world resolve themselves, so far as money is concerned, into these two general classes. Under receipt the Temple is to be considered as a place of safe-deposit for those who had valuable possessions and as a royal treasury where funds were stored and taxes paid in. The outlook is towards the exchequer at Westminster where the fiscal system of the realm centered, and beyond to the various sources from which the king's revenue was derived. Under the second head of disbursements the relations to be examined are more directly with the king. In addition to loans and payments made at the king's order, are to be considered some more complex banking operations, in the development of which the Templars were, in M. Delisle's opinion, the rivals, if not the precursors, of the Italian societies of merchants.

The fact of any connection between the order of soldier monks, devoted to the rescue and defense of the holy sepulchre, and the financial affairs of Christendom is to be accounted for, possibly, by the common medieval practice of depositing objects of value in consecrated places for security during times of trouble and tumult. In addition to the spiritual protection of a hallowed spot, the houses. of the Templars possessed the great practical advantages of having been built by men who were excellent engineers and of being defended by the bravest soldiers of the age.3

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To speak only of England, all classes of persons who possessed treasure seem, during the thirteenth century, to have availed themselves of the New Temple' for purposes of what would to-day be called safe-deposit. In the absence of any records kept by the Templars, there is evidence of this custom of storing gold, silver, jewels, and the like at the Temple on the part of individuals only when circumstances happened to give publicity to the fact. Many thirteenth century chroniclers record such deposits incidentally in narrating the story of their sequestration or confiscation. This was the case with the 40,000 marks entrusted to the Templars by Falkes de Breauté, the Norman adventurer who had served John but fell into conspiracy and rebellion against the government of Henry III. In 1226, the masters of the order in both France and England were directed to sequestrate this sum as an indemnity for his depredations. So also it appears that Hubert de Burgh had deposited his treasure at the New Temple, since Henry III. confiscated it there in 1232.3 The departing Poitevins left a large sum at the Temple when they were forced to leave England in 1258.* Five years later, Edward, the heir to the throne, seized £10,000 which had been deposited at the Temple by the merchants and magnates of the land." In 1278, the bishop of Rochester's chest was sequestrated at the Temple on the ground of debt. Just before the downfall of the order, Edward II. seized and gave to Piers Gaveston £50,000 which had been placed in the custody of the Templars by Bishop Langton, his father's treasurer. Thus, justly or unjustly, the thirteenth century kings of England, from time to time, replenished their funds by confiscating the treasure entrusted to the Templars. These unfortunate depositors are doubtless but a small proportion of the many, whose treasures, safely guarded and restored intact, were unrecorded in the annals of the time.

About the beginning of Henry the Second's reign, the Knights Templars, leaving their home in Holburne, situate on the south part of that street where Southampton House lately stood, . . . did, for their more conveniency, set up another habitation for themselves over against the end of a street heretofore called New Street but now Chancery Lane; which had thereupon the name of the New Temple and contained all that space of ground from the White Fryers westwards unto Essex House, without Temple Barr.". Dugdale, Originales Juridicales, 144.

2 Rot. Claus., II. 214.

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3 Matthew Paris (R. S.), III. 232; Roger of Wendover (R. S. ), III. 41 ; Calendar of Documents rel. to Scotland (ed. J. Bain), I. No. 1163.

Matthew Paris (R. S. ), V. 704; Stubbs, Const. Hist. (fourth edition), II. 81.

5 Annales Monastici (R. S.), III. 222; Gervase of Canterbury (R. S.), II. 222;

Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, I. 94.

6 Calendar of Close Rolls, 1272-1279, pp. 446-447.

7 Walter of Hemingburgh (Eng. Hist. Soc.), II. 273; Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 335.

The Temple was also, quite naturally, used as a place of deposit for papal subsidies,' and for bequests and grants in aid of the Holy Land. Notices in the records of the period from Henry II.'s reign to that of Edward II. furnish abundant evidence that this was the usual practice. Thus the custom of storing treasure at the New Temple may be regarded as established by the beginning of the thirteenth century. There were deposited the wealth of the magnates of the land, lay and ecclesiastical, the surplus capital of the merchants, and the papal subsidies.

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By far the largest depositors on the books of the Templars were doubtless the English kings who regularly made use of the Temple as one of the royal treasuries. "It is to be understood," says Madox, "that the king had several treasuries, for though the receipt of the Exchequer was the principal place where his treasure was paid in, yet it was sometimes paid and deposited, at least for the present, in the king's wardrobe, in the Tower of London, and in the New Temple at London." An early notice of this use of the New Temple occurs in a fragment of an exchequer receipt roll for the year 1185. From this it appears that the exchequer was at Westminster. From funds received there, the treasury at Winchester was replenished, while the balance was deposited in the Temple. This was at the Michaelmas term. An accountant who appeared in the following February paid in his money directly at the Temple.* King John deposited the crown jewels and important records in the Temple, as well as money; in 1215, for example, the account of a secret agreement between John and his sister-in-law, Berengaria, was placed in the New Temple. Under Henry III. and Edward I., the Temple continued to serve as a royal treasury. In 1220, the papal nuncio, Master Pandulf, then an important factor in the English government, wrote to the treasurer and vice-chancellor to deposit the money in hand at the house of the Temple. In 1276, EdIn 1214, the papal legate was entertained at the New Temple for three days at a cost to King John of £6 19s. 5d. Rot. Claus., I. 175. See also Matthew Paris (R. S.), IV. 557.

2 Henry II. in his will of 1182 provided that a bequest for the Holy Land should be entrusted to the Templars. Rymer, I. 47. Almost a century later, Richard of Cornwall's bequest for the same object was deposited with them. Compilation de Bérard de Naples, cited by Delisle, 29, 109. Subsidies for the Holy Land were to be deposited at the Temple in 1286. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1281-1292, pp. 231, 244; in 1291, Madox, Exchequer, I. 271, note G; and in 1300, Bond, 215. See also Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1301-1307, pp. 27, 63, 234; and Rotuli Parliamentorum, I. 343. 3 Madox, Exchequer, I. 267.

Receipt Roll of the Exchequer for Michaelmas Term, 1185, pp. vi, 31.

5 Rymer, I. 126; Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies (ed. M. A. E. Wood), I. For other examples in John's reign, see Rot, Pat., 48, 54, 51, 58, 131, 134; Cal endar of Documents rel. to Ireland (R. S.), I. No. 541.

31.

6 Letters, Henry III. (R. S.), I. 113; see also pp. 118-120.

ward I. had a deposit at the Temple from which he withdrew 1,000 marks. Many texts of the thirteenth century record the paying in or actual receipt at the Temple of various specific kinds of taxes, such as aids, carucage,3 fractional grants of movables, tallage of London and of the Jews," the Irish treasure,' queen's gold, and feudal dues.9

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A survey of the available evidence concerning the Temple as a royal treasury leaves the impression that it was constantly employed for this purpose for about a century. The relations between it and the exchequer tended to become closer as time went on. In the first twelve or fifteen years of Edward I.'s reign, the Temple treasurer must constantly have been carrying on his books a large volume of accounts relative to the receipt of the royal revenue. Yet, important as these services must have been, it is at this point that the chief difference appears between the relation of the order to the fiscal system in England and in France. Unfortunately, in the matter of records, there is nothing for England comparable to a document printed by M. Delisle, which, he is convinced, is a part of a daybook kept by the Templars at the Temple in Paris during 12951296.10 From this and from other evidence produced by M. Delisle, it is clear that, from the time of Louis IX. well into the reign of Philip the Fair, the chief royal treasury was at the Temple. The treasurer of the Temple was the king's treasurer. France, less fortunate than England in her administrative development, owed what order and system there were in the management of the fisc to the Templars. Yet, if in England the Temple played a comparatively subordinate rôle, it still seems to have been an integral part of the financial system of the government.

1 Calendar of Close Rolls, 1272-1279, p. 264. tice, see Calendarium Rotulorum Patentium (R. 270, note F.

2 Rymer, I. 87; Rot. Claus., I. 516.

3 Ibid., I. 437, cf. Dowell, Taxation, I. 37.

For further illustration of this prac-
C.), p. 21; Madox, Exchequer, I.

* Matthew Paris (R. S.), III. 230-232; Rymer, I. 207; cf. Dowell, Taxation, I. 62, 66; Matthew Paris (R. S.), III. 221; cf. Dowell, Taxation, I. 65, 66; Madox, Exchequer, I. 270, note D; cf. Dowell, Taxation, I. 68; Deputy Keeper's Report, V. 64, No. 445; Calendar of Close Rolls, 1272-1279, pp. 21, 25, 79; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–1281, pp. 140–141; Ibid., 1281–1292, pp. 70, 184; Hist. MSS. Com., IV. 395.

5 Calendar of Close Rolls, 1272-1279, p. 63.

6 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272-1281, pp. 52, 99, 100.

Calendar of Documents rel. to Ireland (R. S. ), I. No. 2871; No. 3013; No. 3189.
Calendarium Rotulorum Patentium (R. C.), 21; Madox, Exchequer, I. 270,

note E.

9 Rot. Pat., 189; Rotuli Selecti, ed. J. Hunter (R. C.), 117; Calendar of Close Rolls, 1272-1172, p. 943; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272-1281, pp. 166–167, 170-171, 208. 10 Delisle, 73-86, app. xxix; also pp. 40-73 and app. xxii-xxviii.

Individual knights and the order as a whole were commonly employed by the English kings in the collection and transportation of revenue, missions for which they possessed obvious qualifications. Movable property was first taxed in order to provide money for the Crusades. In the ordinances of 1184 and 1188,1 it is provided that a Templar and a Hospitaller should assist in the collection of the money in each district. It would seem from the story of Gilbert Hoxton that the Templars were sometimes unworthy of the trust imposed. Gilbert Hoxton was a brother of the Temple of Jerusalem whom the Lord King had appointed to collect tithes together with his clerks. Money was constantly being added to the chest, yet the sum total steadily diminished. It was presently found that Brother Gilbert was responsible for this phenomenon and we read that, although spared by the King, he was properly punished by the master of the Temple.2

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Both John and Henry III. frequently sent Templars on financial errands. In Henry III.'s time, the order of the Templars and that of the Hospitallers were employed for the transportation of money between England and Ireland, and between England and France. In 1228, for example, the indemnity which Henry III. had agreed to pay for injuries to the men of St. Émilion was entrusted, on account of the dangerous conditions of the roads, to the Templars in England, who undertook to see that it was safely brought to Paris.1 A Templar was sometimes employed as one of a board for auditing accounts. In one case, in 1294, a committee of three to adjust the conversion from old to new money included both the preceptor and treasurer of the Temple in London. Thus it seems to have been customary to employ Templars in matters of financial administration which involved skill, accuracy, and honesty throughout the thirteenth century. They must, therefore, have possessed these qualities in the opinion of the government. The order as a whole, and individual members, like Aimeric de St. Maur in the first quarter of the century or Brother Warin in the last, were honest and efficient agents in matters pertaining to finance.

The first of the functions to be examined under the general head of disbursements is in the nature of what would to-day be called 1 Stubbs, Select Charters, 159; Liber Custumarum (R. S.), 654; Benedict of Peterborough (R. S.), II. 31.

2 Benedict of Peterborough (R. S.), II. 47-48.

3 Rot. Pat., 122, 123, 142, 159; Rot. Claus., I. 381, 514, 558. Letters, Henry III. (R. S.), I. 336-337. See also Rot. Claus., I. 431; Rôles Gascons (Ed. Michel), I. No. 3999; Deputy Keeper's Report, V. p. 62, No. 409. 5 Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland (R. S.), I. No. 2157; II. No. 238; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272-1281, pp. 379, 451.

6 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1292-1301, p. 88. .

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