But the main interest of the Temple lies in its ancient church, St. Mary's, where in the Middle Ages the Knights Templars worshipped in their strength, and where their effigies, stiff and mailed and cross-legged, as befits returned crusaders, lie until the judgment day. The soldier-monks are gone, their place knows them no more; yet, like their more peaceful brethren and neighbours, the Carthusians, their spirit still inspires their ancient haunts. The Temple Church, begun in 1185, was one of the four round churches built in England in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, after the Templars' return from the first and second crusades; mercifully escaping the Great Fire, it has not entirely escaped the hardly less dangerous ravages of the "restorer." Through a fine Norman arch, under the western porch, the Round Church of 1185 is entered. In architecture it is Norman, with a leaning to the Transition style, and very rich in decoration. Hence, through groups of Purbeck marble columns, you look into the choir, a later addition of 1240, in the Early English style, with lancet-headed windows and a groined roof. "These two churches," says Mr. Hare, "built at a distance of only fifty five years from each other, form one of the most interesting examples we possess of the transition from Norman to Early English architecture." In the Round Church are nine monuments of Templars, of the 12th and 13th centuries, sculptured out of freestone, recumbent, with crossed legs, and in complete mail, except one, who wears a monk's cowl. They are probably the "eight images of armed knights" mentioned by Stow in 1598: some few are thought to be identified. Strange, unearthly objects! relics of a bygone order and a vanished faith,--silent witnesses of centuries' changes,--figures ghostly in the twilight of a London winter's day:--effigies of warriors, faithful in the life and unto the death that they knew, recalling Spenser's lines: "And on his breast a bloudie cross he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead, as living, ever Him adored. Upon his shield the like was ever scored, For sovereign hope which in his help he had." Records of the severity of the Order are not wanting. Here, opening upon the stairs leading to the triforium, is the "penitential cell" (of such painful abbreviation that the prisoner could neither stand nor lie in it), with slits towards the church so that mass might still be heard. Here the unhappy Walter le Bacheler, Grand Preceptor of Ireland,--for disobedience to the all-powerful Master,--was starved to death, and hence also, most likely, culprits were dragged forth naked to be flogged publicly before the altar. Priests, in the robust Middle Ages, did not always err on the side of mercy or humanity!