On the 16th of May, however, the pope addressed bulls to the king, and to all the earls and barons of the kingdom, setting forth the proceedings of the council of Vienne and the publication of the papal decree, vesting the property late belonging to the Templars in the brethren of the Hospital of St. John, and he commands them forthwith to place the members of that order in possession thereof. Bulls were also addressed to the archbishops of Canterbury and York and their suffragans, commanding them to enforce by ecclesiastical censures the execution of the papal commands.[442] King Edward and his nobles very properly resisted this decree, and on the 21st of August the king wrote to the Prior of the Hospital of St. John at Clerkenwell, telling him that the pretensions of the pope to dispose of property within the realm of England, without the consent of parliament, were derogatory to the dignity of the crown and the royal authority; and he commands him, under severe pains and penalties, to refrain from attempting to obtain any portion of the possessions of the Templars.[443] The king, indeed, continued to distribute the lands and rents amongst his friends and favourites. At the commencement of the year 1313, he granted the Temple at London, with the church and all the buildings therein, to Aymer de Valence earl of Pembroke;[444] and on the 5th of May of the same year he caused several merchants, from whom he had borrowed money, to be placed in possession of many of the manors of the Templars.[445] Yielding, however, at last to the exhortations and menaces of the pope, the king, on the 21st of Nov. A. D. 1313, granted the property to the Hospitallers,[446] and sent orders to all the guardians of the lands of the Templars, and to various powerful barons who were in possession of the estates, commanding them to deliver them up to certain parties deputed by the Grand Master and chapter of the Hospital of Saint John to receive them.[447] At this period, however, many of the heirs of the donors, whose title had been recognized by the law, were in possession of the lands, and the judges held that the king had no power of his own sole authority to transfer them to the order of the Hospital.[448] The thunders of the Vatican were consequently vigorously made use of, and all the detainers of the property were doomed by the Roman pontiff to everlasting damnation.[449] Pope John, in one of his bulls, dated A. D. 1322, bitterly complains of the disregard by all the king's subjects of the papal commands. He laments that they had hardened their hearts and despised the sentence of excommunication fulminated against them, and declares that his heart was riven with grief to find that even the ecclesiastics, who ought to have been as a wall of defence to the Hospitallers, had themselves been heinously guilty in the premises.[450]