KNIGHTS
TEMPLAR
CHAPTER
1
***
THE
URGE TO KILL
In 1347,
over a thousand miles from London, the Kipchak Mongols were besieging a walled
Genoese trading center on the Crimean coast. Kipchak besiegers were beginning
to die in large numbers from a strange disease that appeared to be highly infectious.
In what may be the world's first recorded instance of biological warfare, the
Kipchaks began to catapult the diseased corpses over the was.
A few months
later, Genoese galleys from the besieged city put in at Messina' in Sicily,
with men dying at their oars and tales of dead men who had been thrown over the
side all along the way. The sailorsignored the effortsofauthorities to prevent
their landing, and the Black Death set foot ashore in Europe. Carried by ships'
rats, it moved onto the continent through the ports of Naples and Marseilles.
From Italy it moved into Switzerland and eastern· Europe, meeting the spread
through France into Germany. The plague came to England on ships landing at
ports in Dorset and spread from there. Within two years it had killed off an
estimated 35 to 40 percent of the population of Europe and Britain.
As in all times
and places, famine, malnutrition, and the resultant lower immune defenses put out
the welcome mat for the epidemic. A change in climate had produced longer
winters and cooler, wetter summers, which had shortened and thwarted the growing
season. From 1315 to 1318 torrential summer rains ruined crops, and mass
starvation followed. Succeeding harvests were sporadic, but at least the people
couId survive. Then, in 1340, there was almost universal crop failure, and
thousands perished in the worst famine of the century.
Even under
what they would have considered ideal conditions, the general population was undernourished.
Their diet was chiefly of wheat and rye, with few vegetables and a minimum of meat
and milk-partially because, even if they could afford them, there was no
refrigeration or other means of preservation. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies
in winter were a part of life. Hunting could provide fresh meat, but hunting
rights belonged to the manor lords. A beating was a light punishment and death
not uncommon for taking a deer, or even a rabbit, from the lord's forests. That
so many took the risk speaks to the intensity of the biological craving for
fresh food.
Disease
generally finds its easiest victims among children, who do not develop a mature
immune system until about the age of ten or eleven, and among the elderly,
whose immune systems decline with advancing years, and so it was with the Black
Death. Although people of all ages and all stations died in the tens of thousands,
the very young and the very old dominate the statistics. It was the very
opposite ofa "baby boom," leaving few young people to enter the work
force during the next generation.
The Black
Death was not a single disease, but three, and the source of all three was a flea.
A bacillusi in the blood blocks the flea's stomach. As the flea rams its probe
through the skin of its host, preferably the black rat, the bacillus erupts
from the flea's stomach and enters the host, introducing the infection. As
the rats died off, the fleas took to
other animals and to humans.
In one form,
the bacilli settle in the lymph glands. Large swellings and carbuncles, called
buboes, appear in the groin and armpits, which give this form of the disease
the name "bubonic plague." The term "Black Death" comes
from the fact that the victim's body is covered with black spots and his tongue
turns black. Death usually comes within three days.
In another
form-septicemic-the blood is infected, and death may take a week or more. The
fastest death comes from the most infectious form, the pneumonic, which causes
an inflammation of the throat and lungs, spitting and vomiting of blood, a foul
stench, and intense pain.
No
scientific identification was made of the plague diseases at thetime, nor wasanythingknown
ofthe method of transmission. This permitted all manner of wild theories to be
promulgated, of which the most common was that the Black Death was a punishment
from God. Some even cursed God for the great calamity, and Philip VI of France
took steps to prevent God from getting any angrier than He apparently already
was. Special laws were passed against blasphemy, with very specific
punishments. For the first offense, the lower lip of the blasphemer would be
sliced off. For the second offense, the upper lip would go, and for the third
offense the offender's tongue would be cut out.
Groups of
penitents sprang up, publicly doing penance for sins hat they could not
specifically identify, but that were obviously serious enough to anger God to the
point of destroying the human race. Only the most severe penance would do to
expiate such horrible sin. Self-flagellation turned into group flagellation as
penitents walked the streets, often led by a priest, and beat one another with
knotted ropes and whips tipped with metalto lacerate their flesh. Some carried
heavy crosses or wore crowns of thorns.
Others found
their own answers in uninhibited rites and sexual orgies. Some acted on the
theory that since the world was ending shortly
every possible pleasure
should be indulged; others believed an appeal to Satan was the
only alternative, now that they had bee'n abandoned by God.
As always in
the Middle Ages, some communities put the blame on the only non Christians in
their midst, the Jews. Even though the Jews were dying from the Black Death
themselves, they were accused of poisoning wells and causing the plague with secret
rites and incantations intended to wipe out Christianity. Bloody pogroms were
mounted in France, Austria, and especially-as
had been the case during the Crusades-in Germany. In Strasbourg over two hundred
Jews were burned alive. At one town on the Rhine the Jews were butchered, then
their remains were sealed in wine barrels and sent bobbing down the river. The
Jews at Esslingen who survived the first wave of persecution thought that their
own world was coming to an end and gathered in their synagogue. They set the
building on fire, burning themselves to death. Those Jews who weren't killed
were frequently expelled, leaving their homes to spread their culture, and often
the plague, to other areas. Poland saw its own persecutions in scattered areas,
but that country was generally much safer than Germany, and German Jews streamed
into Polish territory. This was the origin of the Ashkenazic (German) Jewish
communities in· Poland. They· kept their German language, which gradually evolved·
into a vemacuIarcalled Yiddish.
Because· of
their crowded conditions and almost total lack of sanitation, thetowns and
cities were hardest hit atfirst, butasthe townsmen dispersed to avoid the plague,
they took it with them .into the' rural areas. As the farmers died off, fields
went'to weeds, and untended animals wandered the countryside until many of them died the same way their owners had.
Henry Knighton, a canon of St. Mary's Abbey in Leicester, reported five
thousand sheep dead and rotting in a single pasture. It has been estimated that
the population of England when the plague first crossed the Channel· was 4 million.
By the time it subsided, the population had been reduced to less than 2.5
million.
News of the
ravages of the plague in England reached the Scots, who concluded thatthis decimation
oftheirancientenemy could have come from no source other than an avenging Cod. They
decided to assist the Almighty in His divine plan and attack the English in
their weakened' state. The call went out for the clans to gather at Selkirk
Forest, but beforetheycould begin their march south the plague struck the camp,
killing an estimated five thousand Scots in a few days' time. There was
:nothing to do but abandon the invasion plan, so the still healthy, with the
sick and dying, broke camp to return to their homes. Word of the gathering had
reached the English, who moved north to intercept the invasion.
They··arrivedintimetointerceptand'slaughter thedispersed Scottish army.
Incredibly,
while the greatest death toll the world had ever known was in progress, the war
between England and France kept right on going, each weakened side hoping that
the other side was even 'weaker. Armies needed supplies, the products of craftsmen
and farmers, of whom over a third had died. Armies needed money, and the
population and products usually taxed for that purpose were declining. When the
plague died out after a couple of years, the world was different than it had
been before. It would never be the same again, because the lowest classes of society
suddenly experienced a new power.
What had
happened was that the one law that can never be bro ken
without consequences, the law of supply and demand, was in fullforce and
effect-this time to the benefit of the farmer, the common taborer, and the
craftsman. In the recollection of the landowning class, there never had been a time
when farm labor or farm tenant supply did not exceed the demand for it. Now the
foundations of a way of life that had worked for centuries were beginning to
crack: In the'dark ages ofanarchy the individual had been helpless. The
preservation of life itselfwas the major consideration, and men freely pledged
themselves -in servitude to a stronger man-who would provide them with
protection. These strong men pledged themselves to even stronger men, and the result
was the feudal system. -Men at all-levels pledged military service, often for a
specific campaign Or a specific period, such as forty days a year. The warrior
class became the nobility, and they required
wealth for war-horses, -weapons,
and armor. They needed still more wealth, partially in the form of,labor, to
build fortified places where their followers could come for protection. These
gradually grew from moated stockades and fortified houses to lofty
stone structures requiring an "'limy of stonecutters, masons,
carpenters, and smiths. All fhisfhad to be paid for, and although some revenue
might be genera'ted by'the loot of warfare or the ransom of wealthy captives,
the ,primary source of that wealth was the land, and the' labor' of the people
who worked it.
As the
armored horseman came to dominate the field of battle, therecame
an"armsrace" ofknights. The pledge of a local baron to his count might now include
his obligation to respond to a call to arms by bringing with him anywhere from
a single mounted knight to· dozens, depending upon -the size of his holdings. A
knight was expensive to equip and maintain. He needed at least one trained
heavy war-horse, a lighter horse for ordinary travel, and more horses for his squire, servants, and baggage.' He required
personal armor, which was very expensive, as well as some armor for his horse.
To support 'him in all this, in exchange for his services he was provided with
land, and the people on that land.
The status
ofserfs-had changed over the centuries. Some were gradually able to become tenant
farmers, tilling farmland assigned to them on shares while· still making
payments to the manor lord in fixed terms of service in the manor fields.
Customs varied from one manor to another, but generally the tenant farmer paid
in many ways for his tenure. On his death, his best farm animal went to the
lord as a fee (the "heriot"), and his second·best animal to the
parish priest. Neither he nor any member of his family could marry without
permission, which usually required a payment. In addition to his prescribed
days of labor for the lord (often two or three days a week), he might be called
upon to give extra service without pay,
a requirement with the unlikely name of "love rill boon." He was
subject to restrictions on gathering firewood, taking wood to repair his house,
and even collecting the precious manure that would drop in the roads and by
ways.
If the manor
lord owned a mill, the tenant had to use that mill and pay for the privilege.
The same applied to manor ovens, frequently creating a monopoly on the baking
of bread. In view of his rights and obligations, the tenant was not a serf, who
was a man bound almost in slavery, but neither was he totally free. The greatest
barrier to his liberty was the old law that took away his freedom of movement.
These, tenant farmers were required to stay on the manor to which they were
attached by birth they lived in a cluster of houses called a "vill"
(the obvious fore runner of "village"). For this reason ~he tenant
was called a villein, pronounced almost the same way as the more disparaging
term villain which was sometimes applied to him by his lord.
What most
dramatically changed the status of many villeins was the manor lord's need for
cash rather than a share of a crop that could not easily be transported to
market for sale. There were almost no wagon roads, and grain crops could not be
economically transported by packhorse, as was done with wool. The king needed
cash to fight his French wars, and the nobles needed cash to pay mercenaries
and to acquire transportation and supplies on the continent. Villeins began to make
deals in which a ha'penny or penny might be given instead of a day's labor and
a fixed cash payment in lieu of a share of crops. Their attitudes changed as they
found themselves "renting" the land rather than trading their time
and muscles for it. They felt free in the absence or reduction of the old
customs of humbling servitude.
By the time
of the Black Death, many of the English manors were held by the church. Some
had been purchased, and many " had been gifted. The extensive manorial
holdings of the Knights Templar had been conveyed to the Knights of the
Hospital of St. John ofJerusalem (the
Hospitallers) after the Templars were sup pressed by Pope Clement
V in 1312. All of the monastic orders had manorial properties with thousands of
serfs and villeins attached to them. Even the substitution of cash for villein
services often didn't meet the lord's or bishop's need for cash, and a
prosperous tenant would be permitted to purchase his freedom for a lump sum.
Unfortunately, such men usually did not foresee a need for documentation that would
stand up in court and so recorded the manumission improperly, or not at all.
The attitude of the church was a simple: No manumission was valid unless it was
a recorded part of a business transaction. Any other act of freeing a villein
was treated as embezzlement of valuable church property.
Now the
Black Death had taken away a third or more of the work force. With labor
shortages, prices went up, especially for the products of a greatly reduced work
force of craftsmen. There were far fewer bootmakers, weavers, carpenters,
masons, and smiths. There was less money being generated, and it bought less in
the face of rising prices.
This was a
golden time for the previously oppressed villein. Manors were lying fallow and
their owners needed the income. For the first time in his life the tenant
farmer's services were in short supply and he could bargain for, and get, a
better share of the harvest and generally better living and working conditions.
For his spare-time labor he could get double or triple the wages he was used
to. Tenants began to leave their vills for better opportunities, much to the
anger of their old landlords.
To put a
stop to all this and restore things to comfortable normaley, the English
Parliament passed a Statute of Labourers in 1351. Primarily the statute tried
to fix prices for labor at their preplague levels but it contained several
extraordinary provisions. The rates for farm laborers were not just spelled out
two and a half pence for threshing a quarter ,of barley, five pence per acre for
mowing, and so on), but, to enforce the rule, farm workers were to show
themselves in market towns with their tools in their hands so that labor contracts· would be made
in public, not in secret. The' statute forbade any extra incentives, such as
meals. Farm contracts were to be made by the year and not by the day. Farm
workers were to take an oath twice a year before the steward or constable of
their vill, swearing that they would abide by the ordinances. They were
forbidden to leave their own vills if work was available to them at home at the
set prices. Ifany man refused to take the oath or violated the statute, he was
to be put in the, stocks for three days, or until he agreed to submit to the new
law. For that purpose, the statute ordered that stocks be constructed in'every
single village in England.
Craftsmen
were not overlooked. The statute set wages at three pence per day for a master
carpenter, four pence for a master mason, three pence per day for roof tilers
and thatchers. All producers of products-saddlers, goldsmiths, tanners,
tailors, bootmakers, and soon-were to charge no more than their average price
during the four years before the plague, and all were to take oaths that they
would obey the law. Breaking the oath, and the law, carried an unusual
punishment. For a first offense, the over charger would be imprisoned for, 40
days-with the prison term to be doubled for each subsequentoffense. Thus a
third offense would mean prison for 160 days (40, 80, 160). Under this provision,
if a bootmaker could be convicted on nine counts of selling shoes at too high a
price, the ninth offense alone would earn him 10,240 days in jail.
Attempts
were made to enforce the Statute ofLabourers, some vigorous, but essentially it
just didn't work. It was trying to suppress a popular black market filled with,
eager buyers and eager sellers. Actually, the situation got worse. As farm
workers and craftsmen left the market place because of death or old age, a smaller
pool of new young workers took their places because of the disproportionate rate of infant and child
deaths during the Black Death. Inflation continued to climb. Villeins and serfs
with no claim to freedom, or who were too closely watched to be able to move
elsewhere, could only go about their daily tasks in ever reduced
circumstances'because of higher prices for everything they bought. Just as'much
victims, because they had no bargaining power, were the lower orders of the
clergy. The bishops, in order to maintain themselves in a proper state ofluxury
and to meet the demands of a papal court whose income had been shattered by a
rival claimant to the Throne of Peter, refused
to increase the stipends oftheir ordinary clergy. This left the village
priests at near-starvation levels in times of incessant inflation and gave them
common ground with their parishioners against great lords, whether temporal or
spiritual.
To add to
the demand for goods and services, the Hundred Years' War had begun in 1337.
This war saw the change from great mobs of people struggling in hand-to-hand
combat, stabbing, cutting, and thrusting at each other, to the use of improved missiles-means
by which men could kill each other from a distance. Bows and arrows had been
around forever, but were comparatively weak and no threat to the armor-plated
warrior, nor to his position as the invincible "tank" of the medieval
battlefield. Before the improved missiles the most effective weapon on the field
may not have been the knight, but rather his war-horse. What today is thought
of only as a heavy work-horse was bred to carry a man and his weight of weapons
and armor, as 'well as the weight of the horse's own armor and its
'massive horseshoes, which were terrible
weapons in themselves. No'mob of infantry could withstand that massive bulk crashing
irtto it For the melee following the charge, the war-horse was trained to'bite'
and kick.
Then along
came the crossbow, presenting the' first material threat to the battlefield
superiority of the armored knight. Its short compound bow, made of layered
wood, bone, and hom, could propel a short thick arrow (or "quarrel")
ata speed that would penetrate light armor. Thus the armored warrior, the aristocrat
in war or peace, could be killed by an opponent he could not get his hands
on-worse, an opponent from the lowerdasses. It wasn't fair, and ifit wasn't
fair to the lords, it probably was not in keeping with God's will. A pope-went
so far as to ban the use of the crossbow by Christians, but the ban had no
noticeable effect. Bans on weapons never work because they are always, accompanied
bythe unspoken caveat, "We won't use it unless we absolutely must in order
to win."
The crossbow
was notthe idealweapon, because'it had two short comings. First, the range was
short. More important, the crossbow was very difficultto draw. Somehada stirrup
fot the bowman's foot, to hold the bow to the ground, while the bow string was
attached to a hook fastened to a strap around the bowman swaistor shoulders. He
would crouch down, hook the string; and then use' the entire strength ofhis
legs and backto draw thebowto a locked position for firing. This procedure was
not only slow but required strength. It required training to draw andto aim. In
addition, the crossbow was relatively expensive to manufacture: A peasant
subject to feudal military service would not have one lying about the house.
The crossbowman became a mercenary.
It took cash
to employ the crossbowman's services,
not feudal obligation. At the Battle. of Crecy in 1346, the crossbowmen of the
French army were a band of Genoese mercenaries. On the other side, the English
were about to demonstratea weapon that immediately overshadowed the crossbow,
the so-called English longbow ("so-called~' because it was actually the product of Welsh ingenuity).
The demonstration, that day, of the superiority of the longbow rocked all of
Europe. Forget the total death toll; the important item was that over fifteen
hundred fully armored French dukes,
counts, and knights had fallen in one battle. That single fact changed the
course of European society. Previously, knights had expe~ted to be killed, if at all, only by each other. They
held the monopoly on warfare, andso on power. Now hundreds of invincible
aristocrats had been done in by a handful of the lowest level of commoner with
pieces of wood and string in their hands. It-changed forever the way the two
~lasses .regarded each other. No longer was the feudal levy that called a mob
of untrained peasants to war of any account. Archers became professional
soldiers, well trained, well paid, and well treated. They became the heroes of
the hour,and they were peasant heroes. It may be impossible for us to evaluate
the class distinctions that had existed before that time. The armored knights
were, to the peasant, invincible, and on such a lofty plane as to be superior creatures
akin to gods from another planet. One, did not even contemplate standing up to
them, and now the gods had dropped a notch. The knight had reason to sit in his
hall and stare at the fire with wrinkled brow, and the peasant had an entirely
new feeling of his own worth and pride. He might still share that new worth with
his fellows in whispers, but the thought once planted continued to grow.
With the
changes in the. conduct of war, the king more than ever needed feudal
obligations to be fulfilled with money, rather than with service. The new professional
soldier worked for pay and needed to be supplied with food, equipment, and
baggage animals, as well as transportation to the continent.. In spite of labor
shortages, inflation, and disease, the monarchy would not relent in the pursuit
of the Hundred Years' War, which had started in
1337. The only answer was-quite literally-taxes, taxes, and more taxes.
Out of that
state of affairs grew a situation that had to cause trouble: The landowners
called upon old rights under the law, propounded by lawyers that only they
could afford to hire, to take away a man's freedom and that of his descendants.
Men who called themselves free were ordered to prove it. Genealogies and parish
records were searched to prove that a man's mother or grandmother had been a
villein or serf and that he had irrevocably inherited that status. It was the
one way to use the law to get cheap and legally bound labor that could not
leave for better conditions elsewhere. The only beneficiaries were the
landowners. The bigger the landowner, the greater the benefit from the enforcement
of villeinage, and the church was the biggest land owner of them all. It had
the largest number of serfs and villeins to be held, or forced back from their
temporary freedom elsewhere. Bitterness against the church grew among.the
common people, and the flames of their resentment were frequently fanned by the
discontented lower clergy.
An Oxford
priest and scholar named John Wycliffe set in motion more, perhaps, than he had
intended when he began to preach church reform. He was especially incensed by
the corruption of the church and by what he saw as its constant struggle for more
power and material trappings, at the expense of the traditional pastoral
mission of the church. He saw a direct line of contact between men and God that
did not require the services of a priest. He claimed that no one but God had
control over men's souls. He said that the king was answerable directly to God
and did not need a papal intermediary. One of his most shocking claims, for its
day, was that sacraments served by priests who were themselves sinners, and not
in a state of grace, were of no effect whatever, and that included the pope. He
even went so far as to translate the Vulgate Bible into English, on the grounds
that all Christian men and women should have direct access to holy scripture,
for in scripture he found perfection and would not question a word of it.
However, he pointed out, there is no scriptural mention of a pope.
Such attacks
on the church could not go unanswered, and Wycliffe was arraigned on charges of
heresy at St. Paul's. That he Was not sentenced to death is probably
attributable to the London mob that raged in protest. Wycliffe was merely
removed from his post and sent down to live in his parish ofLutterworth. He did
not curtail his criticism of the church but redirected that criticism from the
audience-of his-fellow churchmen to the people, who were of a mind-to listen.
His followers became wandering preaching priests and took Wycliffe's message to
the towns and villages.
More
immediately effective on the home front' was John Ball, whom the French
chronicler Jean Froissart called "a mad priest of Kent." Ball
preached against class andprivilege, including in the church. He,'also demanded
agrarian reform,insisting that the landholdings of the great barons and of the
church be taken away fromthemand-distributedamongthe people.Since 1360 Balland his
following of priests had roamed central and southeastern England,' preaching'
doctrines of equality of rights and the redistribution·or common ownership of
property. He was arrested by church authorities a number of times and finally
excommunicated~ In 1381, at the outbreak
of the Peasants' Rebellion, he was in the archbishop's prison at·Maidstone in Kent.
There had
been hope that the French influence on the papacy would end when 'Pope' Gregory
XI returned the ,Holy See to Rome in
1377. Unfortunately, a large segment of the church hierarchyhad not agreed with
the move. By that time many' of the cardinals were French and much preferred
the French base at Avignon. When Gregory XI died the following year, the people
of Rome rioted to secure theirdemand that the new pope be an Italian, and so
,he was, taking the name of Urban VI. The French cardinals declared the
election invalid. They elected their own
French pope, who would mleas Clement VII, and returned to Avignon. This was the
Great Schism in the church, which was not healed forimany years. It became a
political schism as well, with the anti-Roman Clement VII at Avignon supported
by France, Scotland, Portugal, Spain, and several German principalities, while
the Roman pope Urban VI was supported by the enemies·of France: England,
Hungary, Poland, and the German Holy Roman Emperor. Each pope excommunicated
all of the adherents of his rival, barring them from the sacraments, so that
all across Europe every single Christian soul of the time had been damned and
placed outside God's protection by one pope or the other. This was not a
circumstance to be taken lightly. In one instance pro-English forces, supporters
of the Roman pope, captured a French convent whose members recognized the pope
at Avignon. The soldiers and their clerics had no problem agreeing that these
poor misguided sisters were totally outside the protection of either civil or
ecclesiastic law. Accordingly, they saw no deterrent to looting all of the
possessions of the convent and raping all of the nuns. By the rules ofthe day,
they didn't even have to mention the event at their next confessions.
And all the
time, the war between England and France went on, with both sides starved for
the' tax revenues needed to support the conflict.
In 1377 a
poll tax of fourpence per head had been imposed on all the people in England.
In 1379 Parliament came up with a graduated tax based on social status. Both
taxes failed, and some of the crown jewels had to be sold to maintain the war with
France. In November 1380 the tax was set at one shilling perhead, with the
extraordinary provision that the rich should help the poor topay the tax. They did
not, of course,and the tax failed.
The English
Parliament of 1376 became known to the people as the Good Parliament, primarily
because it condemned corruption in the king's government. Addressing bribery,
it said that the king's counselors should take nothing from any party to
business brought before them except presents of little value, such as small items
of food and drink. On the subject of taxation, the members asserted that if the
king had loyal officers and good counselors he would be rich in treasure
without any need for taxation, especially considering the "king's
ransoms" exacted for the release of King David II of Scotland after his
capture at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346 and for King John II of
France, captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. They suggested that the men
who had bled away those fortunes should
be accused and punished.
The Good
Parliament also impeached a merchant of London named Richard Lyons, finding him
guilty of various crimes of extortion and corruption. It was charged that, as a
royal tax collector, he had generously helped himself to funds intended for the
royal treasury. It was adjudged that all of his lands, goods, and chattels
should be seized by the crown and that he should be imprisoned
for life. Instead, Lyons's wealth and his friends secured
a royal pardon for him.
The name
"Good Parliament" may have been descriptive, but equally so would
have been the title, "The Ignored Parliament."
So here we
have an England in an incessant state of war, with skyrocketing inflation,
attempts to return free men to bondage., a Great Schism in the church that found
every man in England excommunicated by the Avignon pope, a growing segment of vocally
angry priests, and the burden of the highest poll tax ever levied upon the
people. The powder keg was filled to the brim. In the spring of 1381, the
government accelerated its efforts to collect the tax and the fuse was lit. The
explosion of rebellion was just a few days away.
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