The downfall of the Templars--The cause thereof--The Grand Master comes to Europe at the request of the pope--He is imprisoned, with all the Templars in France, by command of king Philip--They are put to the torture, and confessions of the guilt of heresy and idolatry are extracted from them--Edward II., king of England, stands up in defence of the Templars, but afterwards persecutes them at the instance of the pope--The imprisonment of the Master of the Temple and all his brethren in England--Their examination upon eighty-seven horrible and ridiculous articles of accusation before foreign inquisitors appointed by the pope--The curious evidence adduced as to the mode of admission into the order, and of the customs and observances of the fraternity--The Templars in France having revoked their rack-extorted confessions, are treated as relapsed heretics, and burnt at the stake--Solitary confinement of the Templars in England in separate dungeons--Torture--Confessions and recantations--The Master of the Temple at London dies in the Tower--The Grand Master is burnt at the stake--The abolition of the order and disposal of its property. En cel an qu’ai dist or endroit, Et ne sait a tort ou a droit, Furent li Templiers, sans doutance, Tous pris par le royaume de France. Au mois d’Octobre, au point du jor, Et un vendredi fu le jor. _Chron. MS._ It now only remains for us to relate the miserable and cruel fate of the surviving brethren of the order of the Temple, and to tell of the ingratitude they encountered at the hands of their fellow-Christians in the West. After the loss of all the christian territory in Palestine, and the destruction of every serious hope of recovering and retaining the Holy City, the services of the Templars ceased to be required, and men began to regard with an eye of covetousness their vast wealth and immense possessions. The clergy regarded with jealousy and indignation their removal from the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction, their exemption from tithe, and the privilege they possessed of celebrating divine service during interdict; and their hostility to the order was manifested in repeated acts of injustice, which drew forth many severe bulls from the Roman pontiffs.[144] The Templars, moreover, became unpopular with the European sovereigns and their nobles. The revenues of the former were somewhat diminished through the immunities conceded to the order by their predecessors, and the paternal estates of the latter had been diminished by the grant of many thousand manors, lordships, and fair estates to the fraternity by their pious and enthusiastic ancestors. Considerable dislike also began to be manifested to the annual transmission of large sums of money, the revenues of the Templars, from the European states, to be expended in a