What happened in London to terminate the Inquisition was this. The Bishops of London, Winchester, and Chichester had an interview with some of the Templars, and told them that they were clearly guilty of heresy in supposing that the Grand Master had power of absolution, and that it would be well for them, generally, to clear themselves of that and any other heresy of which they might be accused. The prisoners replied that they were anxious to clear themselves of any heresy into which they might have fallen. Observe that there was not one word said about any of the five charges brought by Philip; these were quietly dropped. The Templars, therefore, were publicly reconciled to the Church, and absolved by a form of words in which it was guardedly said that “they could not entirely purge themselves of the heresies set forth in the apostolic bull.” Surely a verdict of not guilty could not be more plainly returned. Then the rest were reconciled. All but William de Moray the Master. He died in prison of a broken heart. At the same time, in Aragon, Portugal, Tarragona, and Germany, the Order, though examined under torture, was pronounced innocent of the charges brought against it. It was said, long afterwards, that with his dying breath Jacques de Moray summoned Pope and King to meet him before the judgment seat of God. Both of them died the year after. Everybody, it is reported, and it was believed, connected with the trials and the cruelties, came to a miserable end. The wretched man who invented the charges, Squin de Florian, was hanged for some new crime. And as for the agonising death of Edward the Second, men whispered that thus and thus had it been done unto him in return for his treatment of the Templars. The voice of the people is difficult to hear in the first decade of the fourteenth century, otherwise one would like to know what they thought of the introduction of torture as a judicial instrument. For until these trials torture was unknown in England. To be tried, to be hanged, to have the hand struck off, to be branded, these things the people understood, but torture they did not understand. Nay, so ignorant were they of the art and method of torture that two Frenchmen were sent for to instruct the executioners. Torture was always regarded, not only by the English people generally, but by the judges and lawyers, with a shrinking and horror which did not exist on the Continent, where they continued to torture prisoners until well into the eighteenth century. There can be no doubt that the later hatred of the Roman Catholic Religion was fomented and kept alive by the reports which came from Spain and Portugal of the tortures inflicted by the Inquisition in the name of that religion. The Tudor sovereigns occasionally inflicted torture. But the judges in 1628 declared that the torture of Villiers, the murderer of Buckingham, was illegal. Considering the wholesale nature of the torture of the Templars, and