The Persecution of the Knights Templars. By Anthony O'Neal Haye.
s(T. G. Stevenson.)—We cannot say that Mr. Haye seems to us to have added anything to our knowledge of this subject, but he has told the , story well and plainly. On his own showing it seems clear that the Tempters were a most dangerous body to the Kings of France. So long as they were in the Holy Land their wealth was simply a drain on the resources of the kingdom, but when they were driven out and the Grand Master was in France their attention was naturally turned to French politics. Of course they sided with the Popes, and a body of trained soldiers, who as ecclesiastics were exempt from civil control, -" whose wealth consisted in enormous sums of money, being in that respect the richest men in France," always intriguing against the King, was obviously intolerable. If the monarch had not destroyed the Tempters, the Tempters would have destroyed the monarchy. Their pride, too, and arrogance were absolutely proverbial. As for the means by which the Order was destroyed they were simply infamous, but history 311/5 long since vindicated their innocence, as completely as Mr. Haye can do. The charges against them were absurd, nor has Von Hammer made them at all more credible. If the Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights had not conquered themselves a kingdom each, they would certainly have *hared the fate of the Order of the Temple. What authority has Mr. Haye for the portrait of the Grand Master Dr. Molai which he gives as .a frontispiece?
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