“Your conduct begins again to afford us no slight cause of affliction, inasmuch as it hath been brought to our knowledge from the report of several barons, that in contempt of the Holy See, and without fear of offending the divine Majesty, you have, of your own sole authority, distributed to different persons the property which belonged formerly to the order of the Temple in your dominions, which you had got into your hands at our command, and which ought to have remained at our disposition.... We have therefore ordained that certain fit and proper persons shall be sent into your kingdom, and to all parts of the world where the Templars are known to have had property, to take possession of the same conjointly with certain prelates specially deputed to that end, and to make an inquisition concerning the execrable excesses which the members of the order are said to have committed.”[151] To this letter of the supreme pontiff, king Edward sent the following short and pithy reply:--“As to the goods of the Templars, we have done nothing with them up to the present time, nor do we intend to do with them aught but what we have a right to do, and what we know will be acceptable to the Most High.” On the 13th of September, A. D. 1309, the king granted letters of safe conduct “to those discreet men, the abbot of Lagny, in the diocese of Paris, and Master Sicard de Vaur, canon of Narbonne,” the inquisitors appointed by the pope to examine the Grand Preceptor and brethren of the Temple in England; and the same day he wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops of London and Lincoln, enjoining them to be personally present with the papal inquisitors, at their respective sees, as often as such inquisitors, or any one of them, should proceed with their inquiries against the Templars.[152]