Philip instituted regular proceedings against the dead pope, accusing him of every manner of impiety and wickedness, and Clement was forced to give ear to it, but though Philip’s creature, he remembered the throne he sat upon, and was loath to dishonor it by blasting the memory of one of his predecessors; so he gained time: he heard testimony and took counsel; and then he heard more testimony and took more counsel. He whispered to Philip that if Boniface was the unhallowed wretch they supposed, he was already damned, and they were losing their time; and Philip finally let the matter drop. It were well for the memory of these two potentates if the attempt to dislodge Boniface from purgatory, were the greatest wrong they undertook. We now come to one of the foulest crimes in history: one in which the king was principal and the pope accessory. In Paris, but in a quarter no longer fashionable and which therefore you have not visited, is a congeries of shops where everything is sold by the penny worth. It is called the Temple from the building that once stood there. In the last century it served as a prison. Louis XVI. was kept there before his execution. In London there is a Temple church; and we hear of lawyers of the middle and inner temple. All these sites take their name from having been occupied by the commanderies or convents of the Knights-Templar an order of fighting monks founded in the twelfth century at Jerusalem, to guard the Holy Sepulchre. As monks they made vows of chastity and poverty; as soldiers, never to decline combat at whatever odds. But as years rolled on they forgot one of their vows: they became rich and riches made them haughty without however letting down at all their soldierly discipline and valour. They were respected and feared throughout Europe. The head of the order called the Grand-master was, according to Voltaire, equal in dignity to a king. Their chief commandery was the one in Paris on the spot where needles are now sold by the paper, and thread by the skein; and it formed a kind of imperium in imperio little to the taste of Philip IV. But a still graver fault was their wealth. Philip had begun the quarrel with Boniface by pocketing his tithes, and he sought an issue of the same character with the knights. But in order to get their money it was necessary to destroy them, or at least to destroy their organisation: they were the best soldiers in France; and desperately would they defend their persons and their pockets if the chance were afforded them. So Philip used craft, the only weapon he wielded better than they. He invited the Grand-master, Jacques Molay, to be god-father to one of his children, and treated him as an equal. Never did the standing of the order seem higher.