¬XiosMOVE|Chapter 7 The transfer of former Templar property to the Hospitallers, 1312–38

On 22 March 1312, the papal bull Vox in excelsio suppressed the Order of the Temple following the decision to do so having been made at the Council of Vienne.1 M. C. Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 228–9. On 2 May 1312, the papal bull Ad providam was issued which granted all former Templar lands to the Hospitallers with the exception of property in the realms of the kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Majorca.2 Ibid., p. 221. Four days later, on 6 May 1312, a papal letter to the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishop of Lincoln and others issued a ‘mandate to defend the Hospitallers who have been placed in possession of the Templars’ property in their respective dioceses’.3 CPL, 1305–1342, Regesta 59: 1311–12, 6 May, Vienne. This was an extraordinary turn of events. In less than six weeks the pope had not only suppressed the Templars but also ordered the transfer of their lands to the Hospitallers. Clement V apparently assumed the lands would be transferred immediately, but this belief was ill founded. In fact, the transfer of former Templar property in England to the Hospitallers, in accordance with the papal edict, was met with considerable resistance by the king, the baronage and the descendants of donors to the Templars. So began a process of reclamation by the Hospitallers which was to be both lengthy and litigious. The transfer was still incomplete in 1338, eleven years after the accession of Edward III, following the deposition of his father, Edward II, in 1327. The Report of Philip de Thame, Prior of the Hospital in England, to Grand Master Elyan de Villanova in 1338 was intended to clarify the situation by providing an inventory of all Hospitaller lands in England including those which had belonged to the Templars.4 L&K. Between 1308 and 1338, there were three French popes, Clement V, John XXII and Benedict XII, all based in Avignon. Each of them had an interest in the fate of the former Templar estates, the disposal of which they regarded as their prerogative. This view was not shared by Edward II, his son Edward III or the English baronage.

Of the litany of problems facing Edward II at the beginning of his reign, the greatest was debt. The war which his father, Edward I, had prosecuted against the Scots had proved both expensive and ultimately inconclusive. The enormous debt of £200,000 which Edward II inherited as a result of his father’s Scottish war was an abiding concern.8 Phillips, Edward II, p. 129. Besides the enormity of the debts, the king’s troubles were further exacerbated by the legacy of resentment which the populace felt due to the widespread application of the system of compulsory purchase, associated with unreliable payment, which Edward I had used to provision the Scottish war. Edward II employed the same stratagem of prises and purveyance in 1308 and 1309 to provision a Scottish campaign which never took place, further deepening an already profound sense of grievance.9 Ibid., p. 62. The expedition failed to materialise because, at the English court, magnate rivalry took precedence over a campaign in northern Scotland and so no strategic agreement could be reached.10 C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland, 1306–1328 (East Linton, 1997), p. 43. Following the arrest of the Templars on 10 January 1308 and the subsequent attainder of their lands by the crown, revenues from rents and sales were paid directly into the king’s chamber and administered by clerks who were responsible to the king. This fortuitous acquisition enabled Edward to repay some of the outstanding debts, to enrich his favourites and to provision his Scottish castles whist reducing his dependence on the despised prises and purveyances.

On 25 March 1308 the chancellor was ordered to be at the exchequer daily to ensure the continued provision of money to the royal household; such was the gravity of the situation.11 M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1377 (London, 1988), p. 82. The debt was still of the order of £60,000 in the 1320s.12 Phillips, Edward II, p. 129. Much of this was owed to the Italian merchant houses, and the proceeds from the Templar wool clip of 1308 were rapidly sent on to reduce the king’s financial burden to the Ballardi of Lucca. The former Templar properties and their revenues had been quickly appropriated by the king following the arrest of the Order in January 1308 and subsequently administered by the chamber, as had happened to Langton’s estate. Slavin finds that ‘of the forty keepers mentioned in the Templars’ demesne accounts, fifteen were royal clerks holding key positions in the king’s chamber’.13 P. Slavin, ‘Landed estates of the Knights Templar in England and Wales and their management in the early fourteenth century’ Journal of Historical Geography, 42 (2013), p. 37. Numbered among the fifteen clerks was William de Spanneby, keeper of the Templar lands in Lincolnshire. This was hardly in keeping with the pope’s intent. A papal letter to Edward II, dated 5 March 1309, urged the king to assist those who administered Templar property, and, ‘to hand to them any [Templar property] retained by him, that such property may be used for the service of the Holy Land should the brethren of the Order be found guilty’.14 CPL, 1305–1342, Regesta 56: 1308–9, 5 March, Montpellier.

In 1310 the debt owed to the Frescobaldi of Florence, the king’s bankers, was of the order of £22,000.15 Ibid., p. 163. During the same year, Edward was coerced by the barons to consent to the appointment of the Lords Ordainers to supervise his government. During the autumn of 1310 and the first half of 1311, Edward II pursued an unsuccessful campaign against the Scots in an attempt to re-establish royal authority, which was much diminished since the days of his father and the rise to power of Robert Bruce. Equally, he hoped that a successful campaign would undermine the governmental reforms of the ordainers. His absence from Westminster allowed him to avoid addressing the growing discontent of the English magnates.

The death of Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham and Patriarch of Jerusalem, enabled Edward to make a further providential payment to the Ballardi. A letter patent was issued at Berwick on Tweed dated 26 March 1311 which granted:

By July 1311 the pressure of domestic unrest was such that the king was obliged to return to Westminster from Berwick. Robert Bruce marked Edward’s departure from Scottish soil by visiting a wave of destruction on northern England; further chevauchées were to follow. The king met parliament on 16 August 1311. Phillips states that ‘By this time the power of prayer was about all that was left to Edward’.17 Ibid., p. 175. The king was presented with the ordinances, a series of forty-one articles which he was compelled to accept, appropriating much of the king’s prerogative to a baronial council. Included in the ordinances were declarations that all revenues should be paid into the exchequer, extortionate prises should be banned, benefactions of lands and goods made since the appointment of the ordainers should be returned to the crown, and that the Frescobaldi should be arrested and their possessions confiscated.18 Phillips, Edward II, pp. 177–8. Following Edward’s reluctant appointment of the ordainers in 1310, and their publication of the ordinances on 27 September 1311, the barons took steps intended to amend the administration of the Templar estates. In November 1311 writs were issued placing the former Templar estates under keepers, other than the chamber officials who were responsible directly to the king.19 Harriss, King, Parliament, and Public Finance, p. 153. Revenues were to be paid directly into the exchequer, where the barons now had a far greater influence on their expenditure. Within a month the writ was revoked by the king, who was exercising his will to retain control of the Templar estates.20 Ibid.

The heavy debts and the raising of taxes were exacerbated by the expenditure and complexities arising from Edward II’s weak governance and his munificence towards his favourites. The dissenting barons under the leadership of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, were sufficiently incensed to pursue and capture Gaveston, actions which ultimately led to the Gascon’s execution on 19 June 1312. However, for the first five years of Edward’s reign Gaveston’s wellbeing had been uppermost in his mind, to the chagrin of his queen, Isabella, and the rancour of her father, Philip IV of France, who felt that the honour of his daughter and indeed of France had been slighted. The continuing Scottish wars, the king’s need to support Gaveston, his conflict with the barons (in particular Thomas of Lancaster), and a difficult relationship with France not only occupied Edward’s thinking but also made huge demands on the exchequer. The sequestration of the former Templar lands in 1308 came at an opportune moment, for it provided both a substantial additional income and a source of livestock and lands which could be used in the king’s patronage, a privilege he fought to retain throughout the eleven years when the ordinances were at least nominally in effect. Following the defeat of the dissenting barons at Boroughbridge in 1322, the ordinances were repealed and fiscal control returned to the king supported by the Despensers. During these turbulent years, when Edward II was in contention with Lancaster and his allies for much of the time, it is not difficult to see why the king was reluctant to relinquish the former Templar estates over which he had direct control through his officers.

The decision of Pope Clement V to transfer the former Templar estates to the Hospitallers, as communicated in the bull Ad providam of 2 May 1312, was directly influenced by the Order’s occupation of Rhodes and their need to maintain a base in the eastern Mediterranean so as to prosecute naval warfare against the Turk.23 Riley-Smith, Hospitallers, p. 94. Clement had not, however, considered any encumbrances such as prior claims or lawsuits which might have been attached to Templar properties, an error which he was obliged to rectify.24 T. M. Vann, ‘The assimilation of Templar properties by the Order of the Hospital’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. J. Burgtorf, P. F. Crawford and H. J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2010), p. 341. In the absence of the Templars, the naval campaign of the Hospitallers was in the vanguard of the Christian attempt to halt the westwards advance of Islam. Clement V was a French pope based at Avignon, who, despite being in thrall to Philip IV of France (Edward II’s father in law), saw the Military Orders as directly responsible to the Holy See, and so exempt from secular obligation or control. As a consequence, just as the Templars had been responsible to the pope, so their lands belonged to the Church and were at the disposal of the papacy. The wish of Clement V, until his death in 1314, was that the Templar lands, with the exception of those in the Iberian Peninsula, were to be transferred to the Hospitallers to help finance their naval campaign in the eastern Mediterranean. To that end he expended a considerable amount of diplomatic energy, directing both correspondence and legations to England to encourage the king to release the Templar lands to the Hospitallers.

Alienation – that is, the removal of lands from the property market, particularly by ecclesiastical houses – had been an issue for some time. The Statute of Mortmain of 1279 was intended to stop the further alienation of land by the Church. Among the reasons suggested for the statute was that of the challenge of the master of the Templars in a case heard in the Trinity Term 1279 during the Yorkshire Eyre.27 S. Raban, Mortmain Legislation and the English Church, 1279–1300 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 20. The Templars were involved in land acquisition throughout the thirteenth century as they consolidated their estates and, as a result, legal disputes were not uncommon. The final concords of the county of Lincolnshire, which were the final judgements on freehold ownership and land transfers, enrol nineteen disputes over land within the county between 1245 and 1272, each involving the master of the Templars in England.28 Final Concords of the County of Lincoln, ed. C. W. Foster, Lincoln Record Society, 17 (Lincoln 1920), pp. 5, 16–17, 29, 38, 39, 41–2, 56, 64, 95, 100, 140, 161, 165, 196, 213, 216, 248, 259, 271. As early as 1299 the crown may have begun to sell licences to alienate land, in contravention of the mortmain statute, in response to the mounting cost of Edward I’s Scottish campaign.29 Ibid., p. 59. Certainly by 1311–12 Edward II was disposing of licences for cash as he struggled to protect Piers Gaveston from the animosity of the magnates.30 Ibid., p. 62.

Since the fall of Acre in 1291 and the withdrawal of Christian forces from the Holy Land, the Templars had lost not only their reason for existence but, with it, a great deal of public support. The wealth of the Order and its exemption from taxes had been bearable while the Templars were in the van of Christian forces in the Holy Land, but became cause for resentment when the Order was in retreat. In the political climate of the time, the transfer of the former Templar lands to another exempt Military Order, the Hospitallers, may have been against both the royal will and that of the populace at large. Further, it cannot be assumed that the families of the Templars’ benefactors were all content for their donations to be transferred to the Hospitallers: many wished to reclaim donated land instead. In the instances of both the king and the families of benefactors there was a case for the return of the former Templar lands to secular hands.

In obedience to the ordinances, in early 1312 the Frescobaldi, the king’s bankers, were expelled from England and declared bankrupt.34 CPR, 1307–13, p. 219. Still short of money, the king was obliged to levy tallage on towns and royal demesnes, an arbitrary tax which was highly unpopular.35 Prestwich, Three Edwards, p. 106. In April of the same year the role of king’s chief financier, in the absence of the Frescobaldi, was assumed by Anthony Pessagno of Genoa, who continued as Edward II’s principal banker until 1319.36 Phillips, Edward II, p. 219. Within two years of being designated the ‘king’s merchant’, he had lent sums in excess of £111,000 and been repaid £102,000.37 Prestwich, Three Edwards, p. 106. On 15 May 1312 a letter from the pope, with the mandate to transfer all former Templar lands to the Hospitallers, was written to Edward II, the archbishops, bishops and barons of England.38 H. J. Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308–1311 (Stroud, 2009), p. 118. The letter reached England after the death of Piers Gaveston, on 19 June 1312, by which time the king’s relationship with his barons was at breaking point.39 Ibid. However, on 1 June 1312, William de Spanneby, keeper of the Templar lands in Lincolnshire, was enjoined to ‘deliver into the king’s wardrobe forthwith the £100 that he has in his hands of the issue of the Templar manors of Bruer and Aycle in that county’.40 CCR, 1307–13, p. 424. By 11 June 1312 he was to ‘deliver by indenture to Ebulo de Montibus all the king’s stock in the Templars’ house of La Bruere’.41 Ibid., p. 426. Edward was acting as though acquainted with the content of Ad providam even if he had not yet received the papal instructions to relinquish all former Templar property to the Hospitallers. The pursuit of Gaveston by the barons, his surrender at Scarborough Castle to the earls of Pembroke and Surrey, followed by his execution at the behest of Lancaster at Blacklow Hill, on 19 June, created political turbulence in which there was little response to either Scottish raiding in northern England or the fall of Scottish castles.42 McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, p. 60. There was a real risk of civil war as the king wished to wreak vengeance on the killers of Gaveston. In the circumstances which prevailed in June 1312, the contents of the papal letter must have been most unwelcome.

The royal reluctance to transfer the former Templar properties to the Hospitallers became apparent almost immediately. On 1 August 1312 the prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem was prohibited ‘from proceeding further before the next parliament, in the matter of the assignment of the goods of the Templars’.43 Ibid., p. 544. At the time the king was engaged in a power struggle with the magnates including the earls of Lancaster, Hereford and Warwick and clearly wished to defer the business of the Templar estates.44 Phillips, Edward II, pp. 192–4. None of the accounts of the estates of Temple Bruer, Eagle and Aslackby for the period after 19 June 1312 indicate an immediate transfer of lands to the Hospitallers. In fact, quite the reverse: on 2 July 1312, Temple Bruer was handed over to Ebulo de Montibus; on 6 June 1313, Eagle was handed over to David Graham.45 TNA, E 358/18, 38/1 dorse, lines 1–5; 39/1 dorse, lines 40–1. Neither benefaction was altruistic. Both men had served in Scotland, de Montibus as castellan of Sterling Castle, and it was critical to retain and reward support for the crown.46 Mc Namee, Wars of the Bruces, p. 51. On 6 December 1313, Aslackby was handed over to Thomas de Derby.47 TNA, E 358/18, 55/2, lines 8–10.

On 25 November 1313 a notarial instrument of John Durandi, clerk of the diocese of Albi, recorded that Albert de Negro Castro, Grand Preceptor of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, and Leonard de Tibertis, Prior of Venice, ‘prayed the king in the name of the master and brethren of the Hospital, to deliver to them all the goods of the brethren of the late order of the Temple in accordance with the pope’s grant to their order’.48 CCR, 1313–18, pp. 87–8. Leonard de Tibertis had already been involved in the negotiations with King Philip IV for the transfer of former Templar property to the Hospitallers. On 21 March 1313 he had agreed, on behalf of the grand master, to pay the French royal treasury 200,000 livres tournois in compensation for claimed losses against royal treasure which had been deposited at the Paris preceptory of the Templars. Barber, Trial of the Templars, p. 231. Edward II did not respond cooperatively, ‘he protested that the rights of himself and his subjects should not be prejudiced by any restoration of the goods to the Hospitallers if he should make such restitution, and that they could sue for their rights in the same notwithstanding any restoration’.49 Ibid. Much rests on the word ‘restoration’. It implied that right was on the side of the Hospitallers. In other words, land held by the Military Orders was by right of papal authority; it was held by the king only under attainder, while the transfer to the Hospitallers was taking place.

Understandably, Edward II was unwilling to relinquish any source of income over which he had personal control. He was still trying to resist the fiscal organisation imposed by the ordainers. But an auspicious day dawned on 28 November 1313. On that day Edward announced that he intended to be at Berwick on Tweed with his army on 24 June 1314.50 Phillips, Edward II, p. 225. A mandate was issued to all the keepers of the Templars’ lands for the transference of the Templars’ property to the Hospitallers in compliance with the papal edict.51 CCR, 1313–18, p. 52. Further, on the same day, a writ was issued to, among others, Thomas de Derby, in Lincoln, who was ‘commanded to receive all his [the king’s] animals and goods in the lands, late of the Templars in the county of Lincoln, from the keepers of those lands, and to bring and carry the same to certain places, as is more enjoined on him’.52 Ibid., pp. 44–5. All that was moveable was to be removed according to the king’s instruction before any transfer of land was to take place. A statement was issued by Albert de Negro Castro and Leonard de Tibertis on 5 December 1313 which asserted that ‘the king of England had handed over to them [the Hospitallers] all the former property of the Knights Templar insofar as he was able, and he had ordered his subjects to restore to them the former Templars’ properties that they held’.53 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, p. 189; TNA, E 135/1/25. The insertion of the phrase ‘insofar as he was able’ suggests either that the king was not in complete control of all former Templar lands, or that he was a exercising a ploy to slow down the transfer.54 Ibid. In fact, both were true. By 16 July 1313, when Edward returned from France having sought Philip IV’s support to negotiate a loan from the pope, he was confronted with the loss of the Isle of Man to the Scots.55 McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, p. 60. By November 1313 a Scottish campaign had been decided upon, and during December 1313 a host was summoned to be at Berwick on Tweed on 10 June 1314.56 Ibid. Neither the earl of Lancaster nor the earl of Warwick responded to the summons.57 Ibid., p. 62. Lancaster’s blatant disregard for the king’s edicts meant that any Templar property he had escheated would have been beyond the king’s power to transfer even had he wished to do so.58 N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321–1326 (Cambridge, 1979) p. 98. Lancaster’s estates were worth in excess of £11,000 a year. Edward II retained most of Lancaster’s property after his execution in 1322. Meanwhile, although the king did appear to be acceding to the pope’s wishes, perhaps to ensure the papal loan he was seeking, in reality Edward’s agents were still taking moveable goods and livestock from former Templar property and the transfer to the Hospitallers remained illusory.

While implementing the king’s orders to take all that was moveable from the former Templar properties before their transfer to the Hospitallers, the royal agents clearly saw an opportunity for gain. To an extent the removal of goods and chattels by agents for their own enrichment may have been both expected and acceptable; overindulgence in ‘intermeddling’ was not. Aslackby, the smallest of the Templars’ Lincolnshire estates, was handed over to Thomas de Derby on 8 December 1313. On 11 December 1313, Derby was ordered not to ‘intermeddle’ with the goods and chattels of Joan, late wife of Alexander Comyn, keeper of the manor of Faxfleet (Yorkshire); and on 5 January 1314 the same order was issued with regard to the goods and chattels of David Graham, keeper of the late Templars’ manor of Eagle.59 CCR, 1313–18, pp. 33, 35. In 1338 the manors of Faxfleet and Cave were still held illegally by Ralph Neville ‘of the king’s gift’. L&K, p. 212. Alexander Comyn had been the second son of the earl of Buchan. In both cases the ‘intermeddling’ was ‘under colour of the king’s order’ to deliver to him the king’s beasts and goods and chattels of the manor.60 Ibid. While by no means all the lands of the Templars, if any, were being transferred to the Hospitallers as the pope would have wished, neither were all the moveable goods finding their way to the king. The king’s agents were helping themselves to those goods and chattels, further emphasising that Edward was not in full control of the situation. The formal receipt of all Templar property from Edward II, issued by Albert de Negro Castro, on behalf of Grand Master Fulk de Villaret, on 5 December 1313 was manifestly premature.

Although the king’s authority was challenged by the ordainers, he was in possession of the Templars’ charters and muniments; this meant he was fully cognisant of the extent of most of their property. In the absence of muniments, the Hospitallers were not as well informed regarding the extent of former Templar lands, which weakened their position considerably when prosecuting a claim to property. It is also likely that charters were stolen or destroyed. The political turbulence of the period gave powerful individuals opportunities to lay claim to Templar property, and allowed the descendants of original donors of Templar lands to reclaim them on the basis that their ancestors never intended the donations to be transferred to the Hospitallers. As Barber points out, ‘the baronage […] was not inclined to relinquish the hold which it had established during the trial’.65 Barber, Trial of the Templars, p. 236. The respective claims of Hugh le Despenser the Younger upon Carlton le Moorland, and of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, upon Saxby were cases in point.66 CCR, 1333–37, pp. 211, 202.

As late as 10 March 1334 a Close Roll entry notes that the prior of Sempringham had been:

It was not as though the Hospitallers had been inactive in their pursuit of the former Templar lands, ‘the prior of the Hospital having long sued for delivery of the charters and muniments concerning the possessions of the Templars that are in the treasury’.71 CCR, 1323–27, p. 501. Had Edward II quitclaimed the former Templar properties, and transferred them all to the Hospitallers as the pope had intended, then most certainly the related charters and muniments would have been relinquished as proof of ownership. The reality of the situation was a far cry from the precisely expressed mandate of 28 November 1313, in which Edward II ordered that Templar property be transferred to the Hospitallers, and the favourable response of 5 December 1313 in which Albert de Negro Castro and Leonard de Tibertis asserted that the king had transferred all the Templar property in his hands and ordered his subjects to do the same.72 CCR, 1313–18, p. 52; Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, p. 189; TNA, E 135/1/25. The Hospitallers found themselves lacking documentary evidence of legal ownership, and as a result became involved in lengthy and expensive litigation in an attempt to claim that which was rightfully theirs, as they saw it.

Throughout the years between the English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314 and the establishment of a truce between Robert I and Edward II in late 1319 there was continued Scottish raiding into northern England, in which Sir James Douglas and Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, were particularly prominent. Any English response was severely hampered by the fractious relationship between Edward and his barons, Lancaster in particular, and by recurrent crop failures which made the provisioning of a sizeable army for a military campaign virtually impossible. In addition, finance still proved to be a problem. A letter patent issued at Lincoln on 1 September 1315 promised payment ‘before All Saints’ day to the merchants of the Bardi of Florence [of] £3,215 15s. 4d.’73 CPR, 1313–18, p. 348. The payment to the Bardi was in itself a sub-contract of part of the £7,084 15s. 4d. which Edward II owed to Pessagno.74 Ibid. Money was to be raised from ‘the tenth granted to the king by the clergy, the twentieth granted by the commonality, and the fifteenth by the citizens and burgesses of the realm’ for the purposes of repaying debt and meeting other expenditure.75 Ibid. In addition, the transfer of the Templars’ property to the Hospitallers remained unresolved as a result of both royal intransigence and baronial obduracy. A papal mandate was issued on 16 April 1317 ‘to compel all nobles who detain goods of the Hospitallers to restore them to the master and brethren within a given time, the said goods having been taken from the Templars by decree of the Council of Vienne’.76 CPL, 1305–42, Regesta 63: 1316–17, 16 April 1317, Avignon.

The 1318 Treaty of Leake was an attempt to heal the rift between the king and Lancaster, given the rise to prominence, and the king’s favour, of the Despensers, father and son, the previous year.77 Phillips, Edward II, p. 294. It did not, however, provide a long-term solution. Finance was still difficult. A papal letter of 4 June 1319 granted a tenth of the annual income of all benefices ‘for the defence of the king and the realm, and of the churches which have suffered by the invasion of the Scots, the Hospitallers being exempted’.78 CPL, 1305–42, Regesta 69: 1318–19, 4 June 1319, Avignon. When Elyan de Villanova (Helion de Villeneuve) became grand master of Rhodes on 18 August 1319, he found the common treasury heavily in debt as a result of sums borrowed by Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to finance the capture and resettlement of the island.79 Vann, ‘Assimilation of Templar Properties’, p. 345. Both the English king and the Hospitallers’ grand master were short of revenue.

The pope was fully aware of the financial state of the Order, and in the following year again pushed for the transfer of Templar properties to the Hospitallers. A papal letter dated 15 February 1320 granted a mandate to the archbishop of York ‘to carry out the orders issued by Clement V touching on the Hospitallers’ and demanding that restitution be made by ‘certain nobles and corporate bodies of the realm’ who held Templar property, ‘the king having given up what he held. Those who disobey this order are to be visited with ecclesiastical censures’.80 CPL, 1305–42, Regesta 70: 1319–20, 15 February 1320, Avignon. On the following day, an order was sent to the earl of Lancaster, in person, demanding that he restore to the Hospitallers the rents and goods of the Knights Templar in his possession, adding, for good measure, that ‘although the king has freely given up all that he held the earl has not done the like’.81 Ibid., Regesta 110: 1334–7, 16 February. The letter to Lancaster, which clearly deals with the affairs of February 1320, would suggest that the dating of Regesta 110 is incorrect. It is noticeable that the pope severely chastised the magnates, particularly Lancaster, for not surrendering Templar property despite the king having (supposedly) transferred all that he held. Slavin argues that there is no evidence that the Hospitallers managed to secure a single former Templar manor between 1314 and 1324, adding further that the Templar estates either remained in the king’s hands or were redistributed among new tenants.82 P. Slavin, ‘The fate of the former Templar estates in England’, Crusades, 14 (2015), p. 228. In Lincolnshire there is no direct reference to the transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers over the same period. Perhaps the references to the king’s transfer of Templar property in the papal letters of 1320 were articles of diplomatic nicety rather than actual fact. They echo the words of Albert de Negro Castro and Leonard de Tibertis, who stated in 1313 that Edward had transferred property ‘insofar as he was able’ – an assertion which proved to express aspiration rather than fact.

The truce with the Scots, of November 1319, allowed Edward the opportunity to confront and ultimately vanquish his opposing barons, the contrariants during the Despenser War of 1321–2.83 McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, p. 96. At the decisive Battle of Boroughbridge on 16 March 1322, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and his allies were finally defeated. Lancaster was executed at Pontefract Castle six days later. Slavin states that following the fall of the contrariants, at least 132 demesnes were escheated, some of which had formerly belonged to the Templars.84 Slavin, ‘The fate of the former Templar estates’, p. 228. The outcome of the sequestration was that the vast majority of former Templar demesnes were now in the hands of the king.85 Ibid.

On 20 April 1322, John Walewyn, escheator beyond the Trent, was ordered to assign one third of the lands in Willoughton, which had belonged to the Templars, to Ada, ‘late the wife of Gerard de Chancy’.86 CCR, 1318–23, p. 483; N. Denholm-Young, ed., Vita Edwardi Secundi: Monachi cuiuisdam Malmesberiensis (London, 1957), pp. xix–xxviii. John Walewyn (Walwayn) was also a Chancery clerk and is the putative author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi. This indicates that the Willoughton lands were still in royal hands. On 2 May 1322 the Statute of York was passed, which repealed the ordinances of 1311; Edward II, with the Despensers, was once more at the helm of the kingdom’s finances. The king was able to escheat and dispose of the considerable wealth derived from the former rebel estates as he wished. The Despensers were the main beneficiaries of his munificence. On 8 May 1322, John de Whitenton was ordered to give Robert de Silkeston and Henry de Leycestre, who had been appointed auditors of the accounts of the late Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, ‘information concerning the land that belonged to the Templars in county Lincoln, and other things that they might require, and concerning the lands that were in the hands of the said rebels’.87 CCR, 1318–23, p. 442. The ‘information’ would come from the deeds and muniments, which were in the king’s hands even though the lands were not. It is clear that at least some of the former Templar lands in Lincolnshire had been held by Lancaster and other rebels, and that the king was keen to reclaim them. A Close Roll entry of 15 April 1324, addressed to the keeper of certain lands in the king’s hands in Lincolnshire, refers to John de Whitenton as a corrodian of the manor of Willoughton, which had been held by John de Mowbray, but was escheated by the king because of de Mowbray’s rebellion – he being a contrariant.88 CCR, 1323–27, p. 108. It would seem that de Whitenton had been rewarded with a corrody for his efforts in assisting the auditors of the accounts of Thomas of Lancaster. It is worthy of note that a further contrariant and Marcher lord, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, was imprisoned in the Tower of London in February 1322 and subsequently condemned to death on 2 August in the same year.89 Phillips, Edward II, p. 142. On the following day, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, an act of clemency which Edward would live to regret.90 Ibid.

The difficulty with which attempts to reclaim Templar lands were met was not restricted to Lincolnshire. In 1322, Piers Deyvill petitioned the king and council for the return of tenements in South Cave (Yorkshire), which the Templars had held in fee of the lordship of his ancestors.91 TNA, SC 8/6/261. The tenements had been in the hands of the king following the arrest of the Templars, but when he had ‘removed his hand’ Deyvill had entered his ancestral tenements from which he had been ejected by John de Mowbray.92 Ibid. The lands having been returned to the king’s hand following the forfeiture of Mowbray, Deyvill requested that he might be reseised of them.93 Ibid. The response was that because the Hospitallers were suing to have the lands of the Templars he should have to wait until the matter was resolved by due process of law.94 Ibid. Clearly, Deyvill, the descendant of the original donor, wished to reclaim what he saw as his inheritance and did not wish it to be transferred to the Hospitallers.

From the viewpoint of the Hospitallers the situation remained most unsatisfactory, for little if any progress was being made. This resulted in a further presentation being made to Edward II in 1322 by Thomas Larcher, Prior of the Hospital in England, and William Rambureles.95 CCR, 1318–23, p. 677. This was ten years after the issue of Ad providam. Leo de Villa Nova, Master of the Hospital, was notified of the presentation, and the outcome, that the king had ‘assigned a day to the prior and William in the next parliament because the wisest men of his council were not at that time assisting him’.96 Ibid. The priorities of Edward II and Thomas Larcher were at variance. Larcher was committed to the maintenance of the Hospitaller base of Rhodes and the prosecution of naval campaigns against the Turk in the eastern Mediterranean, both of which needed finance from the western European estates. The pressing need for revenue was emphasised by a communication of 15 December 1322, in which the pope instructed the Hospitallers to sell or rent some of their possessions ‘in order to free themselves from debt’.97 CPL: 1305–42, Regesta 74: 1322–3, 15 December 1322, Avignon. Edward II was heavily involved in reasserting his royal power, exacting revenge on the contrariants after the demise of Lancaster, and rewarding his favourites, particularly the Despensers, from the escheated estates of the rebels, which included former Templar lands. There can have been no convergence of interest between the two men; the transfer of Templar land remained far from complete; the muniments were still in the exchequer; the problem appeared intractable.

The unequivocal Close Roll entry for 26 March 1324, citing the statute, is addressed to all the sheriffs of England. All the ‘lands, fees and liberties of the Templars would be assigned to the prior, on condition that services such as feeding the poor, hospitalities, celebration of divine service and the defence of the Holy Land were maintained’.101 CCR, 1323–27, p. 91; S. Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 8. The act extended to all those who had come into possession of former Templar lands by succession, gift or purchase; the lands were to be surrendered, and crown officials were to ensure that all knew the ruling.102 CCR, 1323–27, p. 91.

The context of the act of 1324 is enlightening. During the first fourteen years of his reign, Edward II had generally been on good terms with the English bishops and the papacy. The bishops and the pope had mediated between the king and his baronial opponents. By 1321–2 things had changed. The papal appointments to the bishoprics of Hereford, Coventry and Lichfield, and Winchester were not the royal nominees.103 Phillips, Edward II, pp. 448–54. In addition the king was at loggerheads with both the bishop of Lincoln and the bishop of Bath and Wells. By 1324 England and France were approaching war over Gascony, and Edward needed accord within his kingdom and ideally papal support for his cause in the coming conflict. The act to transfer Templar lands to the Hospitallers twelve years after the issue of Ad providam may well have been a royal stratagem to curry papal favour.

An order was issued on 1 July 1324 to the keepers of ‘certain lands’, among whom was Edmund de Assheby in Lincolnshire, in pursuance of the transfer of Templar property.104 CCR, 1323–27, p. 91. There was a caveat to the order which bore a striking similarity to that which appended the mandate of 28 November 1313, which had also ordered the transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers.105 Ibid., p. 117. The caveat stated that:

By 30 August 1324, a demand for £494. 3s. 7d. was issued by the king against the Hospitallers, consequent upon the transfer of the former Templar lands. However, the demand had to be postponed until ‘the morrow of All Souls […] by reason of the aforesaid lands are still in the king’s possession’.107 Ibid., p. 219. The situation was little different from that which pertained in 1313: an order had been issued for the transfer of Templar lands, followed by a proviso that crops and moveable goods were not to be transferred without due compensation. Twelve years after the papal bull Ad providam, the transfer process remained incomplete.

There were, then, two powerful sources of resistance to the statute of 1324: on the one hand, the heirs of those who had originally donated land to the Templars, who had no intention of that land being transferred to the Hospitallers if it could be avoided; and, on the other, the great barons, who were not about to cede estates in their possession.108 King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 43. The commons presented a petition in four parts to the king and council in the same year as the statute of 1324, against prevailing injustices – debts levied by the exchequer despite having been pardoned; the fact that the commons could no longer petition in Chancery for writs but had to address the king directly; and the continuing practice of sheriffs to take fees, robes and pensions in contravention of the Statute of Lincoln.109 TNA, SC 8/108/5398. The final part of the petition asked ‘that the king provide a remedy against the damage that will result if the lands of the Templars are granted to the Hospitallers’.110 Ibid. The implications of this are clear: firstly that any transfer of Templar property to the Hospitallers would be deleterious to the commons; and secondly, that such transfer was yet to take place.

The petition of Hugh le Tygheler of Lincoln (lodged sometime in the period 1324–7) illustrates why the commons sought redress.111 TNA, SC 8/16/775; F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948, rep. 1965), p. 323. Hugh Tyler was mayor of the city of Lincoln in 1325. The manor of Rowston had been escheated by Adam de Everingham because of the dissolution of the Order of the Temple who had held the manor of him.112 TNA, SC8/16/775. Adam in turn gave Hugh the manor of Rowston for life. However, the transfer was declared void because of the act of 1324.113 Ibid. This was precisely the situation which the commons feared, that of confiscation of property to which they felt they had right of ownership. Three years later the magnates expressed their dissatisfaction by presenting a petition to the king and council.114 TNA, SC 8/159/7946. They complained of being ‘ousted from the lands which formerly belonged to the Templars’.115 Ibid. Further, they claimed that ‘as heirs of the original donors, they were entitled to repossess the lands when the Templars were suppressed’.116 Ibid. The resentment caused by the statute of 1324 continued well into the reign of Edward III. A further petition of the commons presented to the king and council in 1330 requested that the statute of 1324 be annulled, ‘as it was made by deceit by the Despensers who were paid by the Hospitallers’, and demanded ‘that those that were ousted by writ because of the Statute be able to recover their land’.117 TNA, SC 8/79/3938. Clearly the initial commons’ petition of 1324 had not produced the desired results. There were still some who felt aggrieved that property to which they laid claim had been transferred to the Hospitallers.

While being the beneficiaries of the Templar estates to an extent, the Hospitallers yet found themselves to have inherited the Templars’ financial obligations, and to have become both litigants in the expensive pursuit of those estates, and defendants in retaining what they held. One way in which Templar benefactors could legitimately regain lands was to prove that the services enrolled in the act of 1324 – those of religion, alms and hospitality – which had previously been provided by the Templars, were not being maintained by the Hospitallers.118 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 8. As late as 6 July 1335 a commission was called to establish whether the Hospitallers had withdrawn services for the manor of Eagle.119 CPR, 1334–38, p. 199. It was not until 10 May 1344 that the Hospitallers were exonerated and Prior Philip de Thame allowed to hold Eagle quit of alms and other charges.120 CCR, 1343–46, p. 313.

During the final years of the reign of Edward II the instability of the realm must have rendered the fate of the former Templar estates a very low priority. In March 1325, Queen Isabella was despatched on a diplomatic mission to her brother, the King Charles IV of France. This must have been a welcome respite from the company of Hugh le Despenser the Younger, the king’s favourite, whom she despised. Two years earlier, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore had escaped from the Tower of London and taken refuge in France. A royal proclamation of 8 February 1326 was the first acknowledgement that there was a connection between the queen and Mortimer.121 Phillips, Edward II, p. 488. However, events moved quickly. On 24 September 1326, Isabella, Mortimer and an armed force landed on English soil.122 Ibid., p. 502. Such was the dislike of the Despensers and the autocratic reign of Edward that the invasion force met surprisingly little resistance. By the end of the same year, both Despensers had been executed and Edward II was a prisoner. On 21 January 1327, Edward II was deposed; his deposition was publicly proclaimed three days later.123 Ibid., p. 536. On 2 February, Edward III was proclaimed king but, because of his minority, for the following three years the reins of power were in the hands of his mother, Isabella, and Roger Mortimer.

On 10 February 1327 five escheators, responsible for twenty-three counties, were ordered to take into the king’s hand the lands lately held by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster.126 Ibid., p. 10. Numbered among the escheators was Matthew Broun, escheator in the counties of Lincoln, Northampton and Rutland.127 Ibid. By the end of April 1327, Thomas of Lancaster’s lands had been granted to Henry of Lancaster, Thomas’s brother and heir, he having done homage to the king.128 Ibid., p. 33. However, he did not receive his deceased brother’s lands in their entirety: John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey and Sussex, counterclaimed a substantial acreage in Yorkshire.129 Ibid. Further, none of the former Templar estates which Thomas had escheated were granted to Henry by the king.130 Ibid. Perhaps they had already been transferred to the Hospitallers, though I have seen no evidence to suggest that was the case.

Nominally, the king continued to exercise largesse drawing on the assets of the former Templar properties, as had his father. The keepers of the manors of Temple Newsam and Temple Hirst, both in Yorkshire, and Denny in Cambridgeshire, were ordered to deliver the respective manors to Mary, late the wife of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke.131 Ibid., p. 42. Not all property dealings were to the satisfaction of all parties. On 1 December 1327 the sheriff of York was ordered ‘to take into the king’s hand all lands late of the Templars into which certain men and servants of John de Mowbray have entered in his name […] contrary to the exception [that the Templar lands were not part of the wardship] made in an order to Simon de Grymesby, escheator this side [of the] Trent’. Clearly, with the establishment of the new regime, nominally under Edward III, the important issue of tenancy of estates needed to be resolved. Significantly, the Templar estates which the contrariants had held were not returned to their heirs but remained at the king’s disposal. By 20 July 1328 the Hospitallers’ total income from all former Templar property in England was only £458 1s. 10d., which Phillips attributes to the expense of appeals mounted against the transfer of former Templar land to the Hospitallers under the 1324 statute.132 L&K, p. 217; Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 5. However, appeals from the descendants of Templar benefactors were not the only drain on the Hospitallers’ income.

Larcher was confronted with two major problems: firstly, the Hospitallers were in severe financial difficulties and needed money to repay creditors; secondly, the transfer of former Templar lands and the income which they generated needed to be concluded as expeditiously as possible. The pressing need to pay creditors resulted in the granting of both corrodies and land in exchange for ready money. While this policy produced a short-term inflow of cash, the medium-term effect was the loss of income. Kemble held Larcher entirely responsible for the Hospitallers’ parlous state: ‘he had greatly burdened the Order by grants of pensions, and c. indiscreetly to obtain ready money’.136 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 273. Luttrell makes reference to ‘many pensioners in England where the unrestricted sale of pensions, sometimes to quite wealthy people, could become a business affair, but while it initially produced income the resulting expenditures had by 1328 helped to provoke a financial crisis’.137 A. T. Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers’ medical tradition’, in The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. M. C. Barber (Aldershot, 1994). Larcher may, however, have had little alternative. Bronstein writes that ‘There is evidence that the English commanderies laboured under financial difficulties and to counter them they chose, like the French priories, to alienate property and take loans’.138 J. Bronstein, The Hospitallers and the Holy Land: Financing the Latin East, 1187–1274 (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 99. Perhaps Larcher was merely applying the financial practices which had been so widely adopted by the Hospitallers in France during the previous century.

Larcher’s difficulty lay in ensuring the implementation of the statute of 1324 which enacted the transfer of former Templar estates to the Hospitallers. Phillips suggests that the granting of lands by Larcher was a means of gaining ‘the majority of Templar possessions’.139 S. Phillips, ‘The Hospitallers’ acquisition of the Templar lands in England’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars, ed. Burgtorf, Crawford and Nicholson, p. 239. The manor of Keadby, formerly of the Templar estate of Willoughton, consisting of a house, 180 acres of land, 32 acres of meadow and a windmill, was granted to John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and his wife for life, rent-free by Thomas Larcher.140 L&K, p. 152. Also on a rent-free basis, Larcher granted Warenne the manor of Temple Belwood, consisting of a house, 80 acres of land, 20 acres of meadow and a small wood.141 Ibid., p. 153. Warenne was a staunch supporter of Edward II and had been an implacable enemy of Lancaster. The manor of Aslackby was granted to Richard, son of Petronilla of Boston, for an entry fine of half a mark.142 CPR, 1330–34, p. 414. While these rent-free arrangements are recorded in the Report of 1338, they had been granted by Larcher, who died in 1329, and so must have contributed to the low income from former Templar properties in 1328.143 L&K, p. 213. The same Earl Warrene illegally occupied the former Templar manor of Saddlescombe in East Sussex, which had an annual income of £66 13s. 4d. However, had properties such as these not been granted to the likes of the earl of Surrey, they may well not have been transferred to the Hospitallers at all. Larcher was at least safe in the knowledge that the income from those Templar properties which had been granted away would be recovered by the Hospitallers, in the long-term, after the death of the rent-free tenant. Warenne was more likely to support the transfer of Templar lands to the Hospitallers if he was a beneficiary for life of Larcher’s munificence.

Nine years after Larcher’s death on 28 August 1329, there were still surviving corrodians in receipt of corrodies he had granted. In addition, there were surviving landholders who still held land grants rent-free. Had the former Templar lands been transferred to the Hospitallers with more speed and less litigation then there would not have been such need to raise short-term cash at the expense of medium-term income. Further, had bribery not been instrumental in enabling the transfer of Templar property to the Hospitallers, then the granting of lands on a rent-free basis may not have been necessary. As a means to an end, Larcher’s strategy was successful; Phillips cites thirty-three of the forty-six former Templar possessions, where the priors are identifiable, as having been gained during Larcher’s period of tenure.144 Phillips, ‘Hospitallers’ acquisition’ p. 239.

A letter from Edward III, dated 8 March 1329, informed the pope that Thomas Larcher had been replaced by Leonard de Tibertis, who had been prior of Venice and procurator-general of the Order at the papal court, and had been appointed by Master Fulk de Villaret to serve on the commission sent to take possession of the Templar lands in the West.145 L&K, pp. lxxi–lxxii; King and Luke, Knights of St John, p. 44. As Kemble observes, ‘Thomas Larcher was suspended or deposed, and Leonard de Tybertis elected ad interim’.146 L&K, p. lviii. Larcher died just a few months later, ‘old and infirm and quite incapable of dealing with the intricate state of affairs that had arisen’.147 Ibid. However, in the light of the evidence cited above, Larcher was not the incompetent administrator that Kemble portrays. He was astute enough to ensure the passage of the statute of 1324 and may have been playing a long game to ensure the eventual transfer of Templar estates to the Hospitallers. Nonetheless, it is Leonard de Tibertis, who had been involved in the transfer of former Templar lands in the West since 1312 and had already shown his considerable financial acumen, to whom Phillips attributes the improvement in the Hospitaller fortunes.148 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 5.

Perhaps the reason for the king’s uncompromising attitude to Tibertis was that the meeting was a rare opportunity to exercise regal power. Edward III was now into his eighteenth year and deeply resentful of Mortimer’s overbearing presence, particularly since the execution of his uncle the earl of Kent on 19 March 1330.152 I. Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (London, 2006), p. 80. Even if Edward’s unsympathetic attitude towards Tibertis had been at the behest of Mortimer, it proved to be consistent with Edward’s approach to the Order after Mortimer’s fall. The governance of the realm was to change dramatically when, on the night of 19 October 1330, after a brief skirmish, Mortimer was arrested at Nottingham Castle. On 26 November 1330, Mortimer was sentenced to death and subsequently executed. Edward III assumed all the attributes of royal power.

The following year, 1331, Tibertis was confirmed as English prior by Grand Master Elyan de Villanova (Helion de Villeneuve), for a further ten years.153 L&K, p. lviii. During the early years of the reign of Edward III a petition from the prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England (most probably Tibertis) was presented to the king and council requesting the hand-over of the ‘chief of the muniments’, which the treasurer and chamberlains had hitherto refused to do.154 TNA, SC 8/294/14654A. The response was that the muniments were to be delivered to the Hospitallers, or a satisfactory explanation was to be offered if this was not effected expeditiously.155 Ibid. In 1332, ‘Edward III repeated his father’s instructions that all the former Templar properties should be given to the Hospital’, but this did not include the New Temple, the Order’s headquarters in London.156 H. J. Nicholson, ‘At the heart of Medieval London: the New Temple in the Middle Ages’, in The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art, ed. R. Griffith-Jones and D. Park (Woodbridge, 2010, pbk edn 2017), p. 15. This raises two issues: firstly, the need for such instructions to be restated must have been because they had not been obeyed in the first place; secondly, as the Templars most prominent possession, the New Temple in London, was to be an exception to the instruction then it was clearly to be applied selectively. Denny Abbey (Cambridgeshire), former Templar preceptory and infirmary, was granted to Mary de Valence by the crown in 1327; in 1339 she received a licence to ‘transfer from Waterbeach [to Denny] the house of the Franciscan Order of Minoresses’.157 P. M. Christie and J. G. Coad, ‘Excavations at Denny Abbey’, The Archaeological Journal, 137 (1980), pp. 140–1. Denny is a further example of a former Templar property to which the edict of 1332 did not apply.

The contrast between royal word and deed must have been a test for Tibertis’s considerable diplomatic skills, particularly in light of the Hospitallers’ financial problems which he had inherited. The extent of his financial difficulties is suggested by the enrolment of a sale dated 8 July 1333. For the sum of 2,681 marks 2s. 11d., the societies of Bardi and Peruzzi, both of Florence, were sold ‘380 horses, 399 oxen, 572 cows, 137 calves, 1,201 pigs, 10,353 sheep, 2,620 lambs, forty sacks of wool, and silver vessels of the weight of 200 marks’.158 CCR, 1333–37, p. 124. Of the thirty-two manors providing sale items, Gainsborough, Willoughton, Temple Bruer and Brauncewell were on the former Templar estates in Lincolnshire.

Three Patent Roll entries during 1335 are equally contradictory. An entry of 30 June 1335 records the appointment of Thomas de Blaston and Thomas de Sibthorpe as ‘assessors and collectors in the lands of the prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England beyond the Trent of the fifteenth granted to the king […] for his service against the Scots and other pressing matters’.161 CPR, 1334–38, p. 128. A further entry of the same date added Adam de Lymbergh to ‘make a reasonable assessment of the lands of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England beyond the Trent for the fifteenth’.162 Ibid., p. 148. Had the king regarded the Order as exempt from taxation, as they had been previously, they would not have been called upon to contribute to the fifteenth. The Patent Roll entry of 20 July 1335 briefly reaffirmed the statute of 1324, stating that all the ‘lands, lordships, fees, advowsons and liberties belonging to the lately dissolved Order of the Templars were assigned to the prior and brethren of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England, to remain to them and their successors for ever’.163 Ibid., p. 158. There was, however, no mention of the Hospitallers’ exemption from taxation.

As the relationship between Edward III and Philip de Thame developed, particularly after the outbreak of war with France in 1337, it became increasingly clear that the king not only expected fealty from the Order, but demanded it. The secular pressure to which de Thame was subject was increasing. In 1337 he was still petitioning for the return of the New Temple in London to the Order, it having been taken by force by Hugh le Despenser the Younger and then transferred into the king’s hand after Despenser’s forfeiture.164 CCR, 1337–39, p. 72. De Thame had sent, at the king’s request, ten men-at-arms to Scotland and had maintained them there for half a year. It was stated ‘that this grant made of his own free will shall not prejudice the house as a precedent’.165 CPR, 1338–40, p. 11. The Close Roll entry of 23 July 1337 further highlights the prior’s plight.166 CCR, 1337–39, p. 240. In it he was prohibited from sending any money or goods out of the realm on pain of confiscation of the lands, goods and chattels of the Order into the king’s hands.167 Ibid. Further, he was to attend the king’s council on the morrow of Martinmas to inform them about the sums which had already been sent.168 Ibid. A Close Roll entry of 4 October 1337 addressed to Philip de Thame demanded that he pay his outstanding debt to the Society of the Peruzzi ‘because they have promised at the king’s request to pay a great sum of money in aid of his expenses’, presumably dependent upon receipt of the Hospitallers’ outstanding debt.169 Ibid., p. 186. As Phillips succinctly expressed it, ‘the prior’s greater involvement in secular affairs coincide[s] with the outbreak of the Hundred Years War’.170 Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 163.

By 1338 the financial tide had turned: the gross income from the former Templar lands in Lincolnshire alone was £661 18s. 11d. whereas ten years earlier the income from all the Templar lands in England which had been transferred to the Hospitallers was £458 1s. 10d.171 L&K, pp. 144–61. The net income of the Hospitallers nationally was £6,839 9s. 9d.172 Ibid., p. 213. However, the Hospitallers still had a substantial number of sizeable debts to be honoured, among which were £2,666 13s. 4d. owed to Asselin Simonetti of Lucca, £1,200 to Blyndus Gyles of Florence, and £1,000 to John de Oxonia and Walter Nel.173 CCR, 1337–39, p. 137. The size of these debts is best appreciated when compared with the proceeds of the livestock sale of 1333, which generated a total income of less than £1,800. Then, more than ever, it was crucial that the Hospitallers made an inventory of the property to which they laid claim in England, particularly as their claim to the former Templar lands was supported by the French papacy based at Avignon. The Close Roll entry of 12 January 1339 encapsulates the situation, Elyan de Villanova is informed that the 1,041 marks which Philip de Thame had deposited at Clerkenwell and other sums elsewhere ‘are taken in support of the charges of the war with France for the king’s use’.174 Ibid., p. 632. Edward III was determined that the Hospitallers should bend to his will, not least by providing him with financial support rather than Grand Master Elyan de Villanova, in Rhodes. It is no accident that the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to Grand Master Elyan de Villanova was completed during the first year of the Hundred Years War with France.

By the end of Edward II’s reign in 1327, the transfer of former Templar property to the Hospitallers was far from complete despite the best efforts of pope, grand master and the English priory. Following the execution of Roger Mortimer in 1330 and the assumption of power by Edward III, the transfer of former Templar property to the Hospitallers became even less probable as the king applied increasing pressure upon the Order, demanding both fealty and financial support for his military endeavours. With the onset of the Hundred Years War, Templar lands which remained in secular hands were increasingly beyond the reach of the Order of St John, the Hospitallers.