The Order of the Temple

The Historical Background of the Order

(The full title of this body is The United, Religious and Military Orders of the Temple and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta)

The Order of the Temple was founded in 1118 at Jerusalem which had been liberated from Saracen rule nineteen years earlier. The successes of the Crusaders had brought Pilgrims to the Holy Land from all over Christendom. Rich and poor, noble and peasant, male and female wrought upon by religious excitement came through the most inhospitable countries to visit and offer up their devotions at the places made sacred by associations with the life of Our Saviour.

The difficulties facing these Pilgrims were numerous. There was a lack of roads and means of transport; the routes were menaced by Saracen raiders and Christian bandits; there was the risk of being cheated by the innkeepers and merchants of the towns through which they passed. It was to afford some protection to these otherwise unguarded Pilgrims that Hugo de Payens and seven other Knights founded the Order. Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, granted them quarters near the royal palace, and, as the site was traditionally that of Solomon’s Temple, they came to be known as "Knights of the Temple".

The Order received many gifts of land and money, and swiftly grew into an effective fighting force. Soon it began to take a full part in the war against the infidels, and the protection of the Pilgrims became a secondary consideration. From that time until the Crusaders were expelled from the Holy Land in 1291, the Templars and Hospitallers were the only standing armies on the Christian side. The Grand Masters were members of the highest councils in the realm, and the Knights earned a reputation for courage and resolution in many pitched battles over a period of almost three centuries.

The Order of the Temple was largely independent of the rulers of the Holy Lands; they were subject only to the Pope at Rome. The exemption from taxation which they enjoyed, and the fame from their exploits, both served to make them the recipients and possessors of great wealth. Great houses were erected in most Christian countries - particularly in France. This widespread wealth caused travellers to treat the Order as a banking house. Money could be deposited at one Preceptory and made available at another without the traveller incurring the risk of robbery during his journey. In these financial transactions a high reputation for financial integrity was sustained.

Although each Knight took a personal vow of poverty, chastity and obedience on his entry to the Order, he could hardly be unaffected by the great wealth of the Order and the important position it had in the Crusading world. In time this led the Order to exercise caution in provoking the Saracens to renew the fighting, although, the decision having been made, the Templars were still the most formidable troops in battle.

The story of the kingdom of Jerusalem is a sorry tale of discord, and the glorious cause which brought the Crusaders to the East was often forgotten in dynastic struggles and political intrigues. Under these circumstances it is remarkable that the eventual Saracen success was delayed so long, yet it was not until 1291 that the last stronghold of the Crusaders on the mainland of Palestine - the city of Acre - fell. The remnants of the Order retired to Cyprus, and the purpose for which it had been formed now vanished.

The Hospitallers solved this problem by taking to sea warfare, and, from Rhodes and later from Malta, kept up the struggle with the Muslims for another two hundred and fifty years. The Templars, however, lacked strong leadership, and seemed ready to settle down to managing their great possessions.

The King of France, Philip the Fair, tried to get the Order to accept him as Grand Master on the pretext that he would then lead a new Crusade, but the Knights did not choose to give up their freedom. Philip then, with the reluctant but essential connivance of Pope Clement V, determined to gain the wealth of the Order for his own use. In 1307 he suddenly arrested all the Templars in France, and he persuaded every country but Portugal to follow suit. In this extremity, the wealth, independence, pride and secrecy of the Templars proved to have deprived them of all influential friends, and the French king was able to secure their conviction for heretical practices. Many were tortured to gain confessions, and a great deal of scandalous legend was added to the story of the Order by this means. Many resisted the power of the rack and were burned at the stake as heretics. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was the last to be put to death in Paris in 1314 - the year of Bannockburn. These are his moving words from the scaffold:

"It is only right that at so solemn a moment and when my life has so little time to run, I should reveal the deception which has been practised, and speak up for the truth. Hear me! Before heaven and earth and all of you for my witnesses, I confess. I confess that I am indeed guilty of the greatest infamy, but the infamy is that I have lied. I have lied in admitting the disgusting charges laid against my Order. I declare, and I must declare, that the Order is innocent. Its purity and saintliness have never been defiled. In truth, I had testified otherwise, but I did so from fear of terrible tortures. Other Knights who retracted their confessions have been led to the stake, I know. Yet the thought of dying is not so awful that I would now uphold my confession to foul crimes which were never committed. Life is offered me, but at the price of perfidy. At such a price, life is not worth having. If life is to be bought only by piling lie upon lie, I do not grieve that I must lose it."

Modern historians reject the trial of the Templars as thoroughly unjust, and acquit the Order of the charges brought against it, but the French king’s plan had succeeded, and the greatest Crusading force was extinguished within twenty years of the fall of Acre.

A full account of the History of the Order of the Temple will be found in Edith Simon’s book "The Piebald Standard".

The tradition that the Masonic Order of the Temple is the legitimate descendant of the Crusading Order is not supported by documentary proofs and need not concern us here, but a reference of interest to Scottish Templars is from the Bye-laws of the Old Stirling Lodge agreed upon in 1745, where the list of fees payable reads - "Excelent and Super-excelent, five shillings, and knights of Malta, five shillings". In the possession of the same Lodge are the Stirling "Brasses", which would appear to be not later than middle eighteenth century, and on which are rudely engraved "Knights of Malta" and "Night Templar".

In the month of December 1778 the Lodge of Scoon and Perth conferred the "six sundry steps of Masonry" on the Office-bearers of St. Stephens Lodge in Edinburgh, viz.: "Past the Chair, Excellent and Super Excellent Mason, Arch and Royal Arch Mason and, lastly, Knights of Malta".

Less than one year later, in October 1779, Archibald, Earl of Eglintoune, the Grand Master of Lodge Mother Kilwinning, issued a charter for a lodge in Dublin by name of the "High Knight Templars of Ireland Lodge". This was the body which shortly afterwards became the Early Grand Encampment of Ireland, and which, in its turn over twenty years later, issued many charters for Encampments in Scotland, some of which still flourish under the Great Priory of Scotland (it is to be noted that the existing minutes of Mother Kilwinning show no traces of the Lodge ever having practised the Temple or Malta grades).

The practice of the so-called "high degrees" became so widespread in the Craft Lodges in the last decades of the eighteenth century in Scotland that the Grand Lodge of Scotland issued a directive in October 1800 "prohibiting and discharging its daughters to hold any meetings above the degree of Master Mason, under penalty of forfeiture of their Charter". This ruling did not have immediate results, as many of the Lodges continued in the old ways for some years, but it did lead to many Scottish masons applying to the Early Grand Encampment of Ireland for charters, as has been stated above.

In 1805 one such charter was issued to a Knight Templar group in Edinburgh under the title of the "Edinburgh Encampment No. 31". A little later this group, under Alexander Deuchar, became the "Grand Assembly of Knights Templar in Edinburgh", and proceeded to seek a charter from the Duke of Kent, Grand Master of the Order in England. In 1811 the Duke granted a charter (now in the possession of Great Priory) setting up the "Royal Grand Conclave of Scotland", with Deuchar as Grand Master, to take over the Order in this country.

Deuchar’s motives in turning to England rather than to Ireland are not clear. He may have had genuine doubts about the validity of the Irish charters, or he may have been working to raise the prestige of the Edinburgh Templars. Whatever his reasons, he was unsuccessful in his attempt to bring all the Scottish Templars into the Royal Grand Conclave. A large section, chiefly in Ayrshire, held to their Irish charters, and were organised under Robert Martin in 1826 as the "Early Grand Encampment of Scotland". Until the beginning of the twentieth century both these Grand Bodies existed. The Royal Grand Conclave, after some serious setbacks in the early 1830s, showed slow but steady growth under such Grand Masters as Admiral Sir David Milne, the Sixth Duke of Atholl and John Whyte Melville. The Early Grand Encampment showed little sign of life during its first fifty years, but revived at the end of the century.

In 1905, when Colonel Peter Spence was Grand Master, the Early Grand Encampment made some approaches to the "Chapter General" (as the Royal Grand Conclave was now called) with a view to uniting the two bodies, but nothing came of this proposal beyond the adoption by the Chapter General of the present style of "The Great Priory of Scotland".

However, negotiations were soon reopened and, on 3rd April 1909, the Early Grand Encampment under Arbuthnot Murray declared all offices vacant, and merged into and united with the Great Priory of Scotland at an impressive ceremony, during which the Ninth Earl of Kintore renewed his vow to rule the Order in Scotland.

From that time under such Grand Masters as Algernon, 9th Earl of Kintore; Alexander, 18th Lord Saltoun; Sir Robert Gordon Gilmour; James, 10th Earl of Elgin and Kincardine; Sir Charles Malcolm Barclay-Harvey of Kinord; and, more recently, Ian Logan MacKean, David Ian Liddell Grainger of Ayton and Robert McIntyre, the Order has prospered in Scotland and in many parts of the Commonwealth.

A full account of the development of the Order in Scotland will be found in "Pour la Foy" written in 1949 by the late Rt. Em. Fra. George Draffen, of Newington, M.B.E. Past Grand Seneschal GCT.

During the period when Sir David Milne was Grand Master, an attempt was made to re-constitute the Order upon a non-masonic basis. As part of this plan, a Priory was set up in London, and a number of prominent men were admitted to the Order. All were Freemasons, but it is thought that at least one non-masonic or Chivalric Knight was created in Edinburgh about 1847. Also, as a result of this plan the ritual was entirely re-written to give a close resemblance to the little that was known of the ancient Templar ceremonies. The non-masonic phase lasted only for about twelve years, but we have received from it the fine and distinctly Scottish ritual which we practise today.

The Order of the Temple in Scotland and the Order of the Knights of Malta under the Great Priory of Scotland seeks no-one to swell its ranks, but it appeals with confidence to its purity, its steadfastness and its antiquity for the support and respect of those who venerate the name of honour. Almost nine centuries have rolled past since the ruddy Cross of the Templars first waved on the plains of Palestine; let us hope that, after nine centuries more have elapsed, the name and character of the modern Order may be found as firmly established in the free soil of Scotland as they are now.