It must not be supposed that Hertfordshire was exceptional in this respect; the whole of England was dotted over with the possessions of the Order. All this land was given to the Order at a time when the first passion for crusading had cooled, and princes began to think that it might be better for the country if men were paid to fight the Saracen. The Templars were at first a very fine regiment, splendidly equipped, and full of valour. To maintain this regiment was surely a good work, almost as good as going to fight in person. The land was given them on the condition that the larger part of the revenues should be sent every year to the Grand Master of the House and Order in Jerusalem. It was held by them, further, on such terms as were never before heard of; the knights were exempt from all taxation aids and “amerciaments”; they could not be compelled to plead except before the King or his Chief Justice; they had power to hold Courts; to impose fines upon their tenants; to hold markets; to try criminals caught on their lands; they could travel without paying toll; they were not obliged to contribute to bridges and other works; they seized the chattels of all felons caught on their lands. Nor was this all: they were exempted from paying tithe; they could not be excommunicated by Bishop or priest; their houses had the right of sanctuary; and they had an Ecclesiastical Court of their own, with a judge, whom they called Conservator Privilegiorum Suorum. The Grand Master and the Brotherhood were subordinate only to the Pope; a large number of priests had been admitted to the Order, which was entirely free from the Church in any country. This great Order, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, numbered, it is said, fifteen hundred knights, with chaplains and serving brothers innumerable. The revenues were, as has been shown, enormous, and not one penny went to the purpose for which the Order had been endowed. The Holy Land had been swept clear of Christians; the Latin Kingdom, the name of which survived, had been destroyed for more than a hundred years; the degenerate grandsons of the Crusaders had long been scattered to the four winds; the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers had been expelled from the country, even from the fortified ports: Jaffa and Antioch fell in 1268, Tripoli in 1290, Acre in 1291. Then the Templars, reduced in numbers, retired to Cyprus, whence, in 1300, Jacques de Moray, the last Grand Master, made an unsuccessful attempt to seize Alexandria, and in 1303, when he tried to found a settlement at Tortosa, not only the power of the knights had gone but also their prestige. These dates are necessary, because they show that as soon as the Templars were proved incapable of doing the work for which they existed, then the attack upon them commenced, and not before. [Illustration: KNIGHT TEMPLAR] [Illustration: KNIGHT TEMPLAR: TEMPLE CHURCH]