The Templars and their Sources

Karl Borchardt, Karoline Döring, Philippe Josserand, Helen Nicholson, Karl Borchardt, Karoline Döring, Philippe Josserand, Helen J Nicholson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315475271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Even 700 years after the suppression of the Order of the Temple and the execution of the last grandmaster, Jacques de Molay, there is no shortage of publications on this influential military order. Yet unlike other medieval institutions the Templars are subject to speculative fiction and popular myth which threaten to swamp the fruits of scholarly endeavour. Fortunately, recent years have produced a thriving academic scholarship which is challenging these myths. More and more sources are currently being edited, particularly those for the trial of the Templars (1307–1312). Others are still awaiting indepth study, among them, surprisingly, the greater part of the charters that cover more than 150 years of the Order's history.

The papers in this volume step into this gap and critically evaluate new directions in Templar studies on the basis of as-yet unedited source material. Open issues and desiderata regarding the sources are discussed and from a range of inspiring results a new status quaestionis is proposed that will not only provide a better understanding of the Order's archaeological, economical, religious, administrative and military history, but also set new points of departure for the editing of charters and administrative documents. The papers here are grouped into six sections, focusing on the headquarters of the Order, its charters, manpower and finance, religious life and finally the suppression and the Order's afterlife.

Section V
Suppression and its consequences

16 ‘The real Da Vinci Code’: the accounts of Templars’ estates in England and Wales during the suppression of the Order

Helen Nicholson and Philip Slavin

Most readers will be familiar with at least the title of Dan Brown’s 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code. In the novel, a cryptic code holds the key to valuable knowledge held by the Templars that has been hidden from the world for centuries. Likewise in this paper we will be discussing valuable information about the Templars that has been effectively concealed within the documents drawn up at the time of the Templars’ arrests in Britain and Ireland and during the proceedings against the Templars. This valuable information comprises data revealing the extent of the Templars’ estates and their moveable and immoveable property at the time of the arrests and at intervals thereafter, and the income and expenditure of those estates during the time that they were administered by the English king’s officials. The data were recorded by royal officials and are preserved in the National Archives of the UK in Kew, but these records’ heavily abbreviated state and sometimes poor state of preservation renders them effectively unintelligible to the majority of readers: hence they are effectively encoded. In this paper, we will explain how these documents were produced, summarize the information that they contain, and then present a detailed analysis of some of the data within them.

This paper is founded in our planned research project into the Templars’ properties in England and Wales. The goal of this research is to publish the records for England and Wales (the records from Ireland were published in 1967),¹ to make them available to all scholars with an interest in medieval estate records; but with the particular intention of establishing exactly how wealthy or poverty-stricken the Templars in Britain were in 1308, and what property the Hospitallers actually inherited here in 1313.

The Templars in England and Wales were arrested in the second week of January 1308, and in Ireland early in February 1308.² At the time of the arrests, they possessed vast manorial estates, totalling 141 demesnes: 137 in England and four in Wales, equalling 34,400 acres of cultivable land (about 22,000 arable and 14,400 fallow acres) plus an additional 30,000 acres or so of woodland and permanent pasture.³ Arguably, the Order of the Temple was the single wealthiest landlord in the British Isles.

When this manorial empire reverted to King Edward II, the king had to decide how best to administer this huge estate. Royal custodians – most of whom were close associates of Edward II – assumed temporary control until the lands were finally assigned to new owners. In the bull Ad providam on 2 May 1312 Pope Clement V assigned the Templars’ former properties to the Knights Hospitaller.⁴ The Hospitallers did not claim the Templars’ lands in Britain and Ireland until November 1313, when Albert von Schwarzburg and Leonard de Tibertis arrived in England. On 5 December 1313 they issued a document stating that the king of England had handed over to them all the former property of the Knights Templar insofar as he was able.⁵ In fact the estate records show that many moveables were not handed over but were taken for the king’s use. So, for example, at Garway in Herefordshire, the final account for the estate by John de la Haye refers to royal instructions for the livestock to be handed over to two members of the king’s household, Hubert of Sutton and Robert de Sapy. Hubert of Sutton was to have ‘omnes grossas bestias que fuerunt in custos ipsius Johannis in dicto manerio’ (all the large beasts in John’s custody) while Robert de Sapy received 100 multones (wethers, or neutered male sheep), 100 ewes and 30 pigs.⁶ The king retained certain desirable properties, such as Bisham in Berkshire, which was used to accommodate an eminent prisoner, Elizabeth Bruce, in 1308–12. King Edward II also stayed there, dating letters close from Bisham in December 1314.⁷ Likewise, the Hospitallers never obtained the valuable Yorkshire estates of Flaxfleet, Newsam and Hirst.⁸

Royal custodians and their records

When the Templars were arrested, royal officials compiled inventories of each manor’s possessions. While the estates were controlled by the king, the royal custodians appointed to administer each property rendered seasonal manorial accounts to the royal exchequer. In addition, each time a new custodian was appointed to an estate, an inventory was drawn up recording the value of the property at the time it changed hands. These inventories and accounts are now stored at the National Archives of the UK at the urban village of Kew in Surrey. The inventories and associated records, such as extents and claims for corrodies, comprise 129 documents in a total of 358 membranes, located at shelfmarks TNA, E 142/10–18 and 89–118. There are 206 accounts, comprising 185 accounts enrolled into four parchment rolls, which are modelled on the same basis as the ‘Winchester Bishopric Rolls’. There are also 21 ‘draft’ accounts, recorded separately. The enrolled accounts are located at shelfmarks TNA, E 358/18–21, while individual draft accounts survive at various SC 6 shelfmarks. These records represent the core of our project.

Figure 16.1 Geography of English and Welsh Templars’ landed estates on the eve of their suppression in Jan. 1308.

Note: dots denote directly managed demesnes, while triangles stand for leased out demesnes.

Source: Philip 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), 38.

While all these records contain very valuable data, these data differ in form. The inventories present a static survey in a single snapshot, setting out crops sown, livestock, furniture, clothes, kitchen equipment, religious and liturgical paraphernalia, and so on. The account rolls present a dynamic picture of financial revenue and disposal, arable and livestock management patterns, and an overview of employment records. These rolls were generally rendered on a seasonal basis, covering several months. They present data county by county, laid out in a ‘charge-discharge structure’, listing income, then expenditure, and cover the period from January 1308 to May 1314, although each county has some gaps: for example, the accounts for Lincolnshire cover only the period January 1308 to July 1309, after which all the properties were leased out to tenants who did not render accounts to the exchequer.⁹ A complete run of accounts survives for Garway on the Welsh-English border in Herefordshire, from January 1308 to December 1313.¹⁰ At Upleadon, also in Herefordshire, only the accounts from January 1308 to 20 September 1310 survive.¹¹ The accounts for Worcestershire cover the period from Michaelmas 1308 to 1312.¹² Only one account survives for Llanmadoc on the Gower Peninsula, in Glamorgan (Morgannwg), South Wales: this covers the period 10 January 1308 to Michaelmas 1308.¹³ For Temple on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, there are only summary accounts covering five years.¹⁴ Altogether, around 75 per cent of the accounts and 55 per cent of the inventories survive.

Some counties are missing altogether from the archive: for example, the accounts for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire appear never to have reached the exchequer. In 1330 the sheriff’s widow, Joan Pycot, complained to the king that she was being harassed for her husband’s outstanding accounts for the Templars’ property at Flawford, Nottinghamshire.¹⁵ The Templars had also held other property in Derbyshire, as (for example) the Hospitallers’ later depositions in the Placita quo Warranto for 4 Edward III refer to the Hospitallers’ right to hold a view of frankpledge of their tenants ‘apud Normanton iuxta Cestrefeld de tenentibus suis qui fuerunt quondam Templariorum’¹⁶ but without the detailed records of 1308–14 we have no details of the value of these estates. After the manors had been granted to new lords or handed over to the Hospitallers, no further detailed accounts were produced. Some revenue figures for individual commanderies survive in Hospitaller accounts,¹⁷ and a single surviving Hospitaller estate account from 1505 for the commanderies of Dinmore and Garway includes former Templar property in Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and Shropshire.¹⁸ However, the accounts of 1308–14 constitute our most detailed source of information on the Templars’ estates in Britain.

Under the Templars: arable husbandry and sheep farming

The detailed contents of the account rolls reveal many important facets of Templar economy, in particular its agricultural aspects. This complements our knowledge of other monastic orders’ economy, as well as of other aspects of Templar economy, especially finances. A close analysis of the Templar account rolls indicate that during the 1308–9 account year, about 8,850 quarters of crops were sown, resulting in slightly under 33,000 quarters reaped in the harvest of 1309. On average, about 35 per cent of all arable was sown with wheat, eight per cent with rye and maslin (rye-wheat mixture), nine per cent with legumes (mostly peas, but also beans, vetches and pulses), seven per cent with barley, 34 per cent with oats and further seven per cent with dredge (oat-barley mixture). The composition of arable on the Templar demesne reflects the distribution of crops on a national level.¹⁹ Obviously, these patterns varied from place to place, depending on local environmental conditions, but also managerial strategies.²⁰

The aggregate arable production levels and their financial equivalent were truly astonishing. Thus, in 1309, just under 30,000 quarters of different crops harvested were worth about £5,900 gross of seed (that is, before the deduction of the share used in seeding) and £3,900 net of seed (after seeding). Of which, the value of marketed crops stood at just above £2,000. Few if any landed lords were capable of producing such high figures. For comparison, around 1300, the manors of Westminster ...