THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
TWO
Scotland and a Hidden Tradition
6
The Templar Legacy in Scotland
One of the fallacies of conventional scholarship is to insist on a rigorous and artificial distinction between ‘ history’ and ‘ myth’ . According to such a distinction, ‘ history’ is regarded as documented fact alone — data which can be subjected to an almost scientif ic scrutiny, which will stand up to assorted tests and prove thereby that something ‘ actually happened’ . ‛History’ , in this sense, consists of names, dates, battles, treaties, political movements, conferences, revolutions, social changes and other such ‘ objectively discernible’ phenomena. ‘ Myth’ , on the other hand, is dismissed as ir relevant or incidental to ‘ history’ . ‘ Myth’ is consigned to the realm of fantasy, to poetry and fiction. ‘ Myth’ is deemed to be the spurious embellishment or falsification of f act, a distortion of ‘ history’ , and something therefore to be ruthlessly excised. ‛History’ and ‘ myth’ must, it is believed, be prised apart bef ore the truth of the past can be revealed.
And yet, for the people who originally created what later ages might call ‘ myth’ , there was no such distinction. In his own age, and for centur ies after , Homer ’ s Odyssey, devoted to the probably fictitious adventures of one man, was deemed no less historically authoritative than the Iliad, devoted to a presumed ‘ actual’ occurrence, the Siege of Troy. Events in the Old Testament — the parting of the Red Sea, for instance, or God conferring on Moses the Tables of the Law — are held by many people today to be ‘ mythic’ ; but there are also many people, even today, who believe the same events actually to have occurred. In Celtic tradition, the sagas pertaining to, say, Cuchulain and the ‘ knights’ of the Red Branch were believed for centuries to be historically accurate; and even today, there is no way of knowing whether they are indeed so, whether they are greater or lesser embellishments of historical events, or whether they are wholly fictitious. To cite a more recent example, the ‘ Wild West’ of the nineteenth- century United States, as portrayed first by ‘ dime novels’ , then by Hollywood, is now generally recognised to be ‘ mythical’ . And yet Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wild Bil Hickok, Doc Holliday and the Earp brother s did exist. The legendary gunfight at the OK Corral did actually take place, if not quite in the form usually supposed. Until very recently, the ‘ myths’ woven around such figures and such episodes were virtually inseparable from ‘ history’ . Thus, in the era of Prohibition, men such as Eliot Ness on the one hand, John Dillinger and ‘ Legs’ Diamond on the other , f ancied themselves to be reenacting an historically accurate Western drama of stalwart lawmen and romantic outlaws. And, in the process, they created a new ‘ history’ around which new ‛myths’ were to be woven.
According to the extent that they inflame the imagination and remain alive in a people’ s imaginative life, historical events and personages grade imperceptibly into myth. In cases such as King Arthur or Robin Hood, the myth has effectively subsumed whatever historical ‘ actuality’ there may once have been. In the case of Jeanne d’ Arc, historical ‘ actuality’ , though not eclipsed completely, has receded into the background, while the foreground is dominated by exaggeration, embellishment and pure invention. In more recent instances — Che Guevara, for example, John Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon or Elvis Presley — histor ical ‘ actuality’ can be discerned among the elements of myth, but cannot ultimately be separated from them; and it is precisely the elements of myth that make us interested in the historical ‘ actuality’ .
It can be argued — and has been argued — that all written or recorded history is essentially a form of myth. Any historical account is oriented towards the needs, attitudes and values of the time in which it is composed, not the time to which it refers. Any historical account is necessar ily selective, including certain elements, omitting other s. Any historical account, if only by virtue of its selectivity, emphasises certain f actors and neglects others. To this extent, it is biased; and to the extent that it is biased, it inevitably falsifies ‘ what actually happened’ . If modern media cannot agree on the interpretation of events that occurred only yesterday, the past is subject to far greater latitude of interpretation.
For such reasons as these, post- war novelists — f rom Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Márquez in Latin America to Graham Swift, Peter Ackroyd and Desmond Hogan in England and Ireland — have insisted on a reassessment of what we mean by ‘ history’ . For such novelists, history consists not only of external and provable ‘ data’ , but also of the mental context, in which such data are embedded — and within which, in the hands of subsequent generations, they are interpreted. For such novelists, the only true ‘ history’ is the psychic life of a people, a culture, a civilisation — and this includes not only external data, but also the imaginative exaggerations, embellishments and interpretations of myth. Ivo Andrić, the Yugoslavian novelist who won the Nobel Prize in 1961, insists on the histor ian’ s need to recognise the under lying ‘ truth of lies’ . The ‘ lies’ of a people or a culture, Andrić maintains — the hyperbole, the exaggeration and embellishment, even the outright falsification and invention — are not purely gratuitous. On the contrary, they bear witness to underlying needs, underlying wants, underlying lacks, underlying dreams and over - compensations; and to that extent they are, in their very falsity, not just true, but also revealing and informative statements containing clues vital to under standing. And to the extent that they serve to crystallise a collective identity or self - definition, they create a new truth — or create something which becomes true.
A simple and all too dismally relevant example should suffice to illustrate the kind of process Andrić describes — the process whereby ‘ truth’ and ‘ lies’ , ‘ history’ and ‘ myth’ become entwined so as to create a new historical actuality. In 1688, the Protestant citizens of Londonderry, more out of panic than genuine necessity, shut and barred the city’ s gates against a contingent of Catholic troops dispatched by James II to garrison the place. This rebellious act produced a predictable reaction on the part of the king; and without either side really having wanted it or intended it, Londonderry f ound itself besieged. In the sweep of European history, the Siege of Londonderry was a squalid little affair , trivial by comparison with the military operations which, within a decade or so, would be conducted on the Continent. It was also inconsequential, resolving nothing, determining nothing. It was dictated by no military necessity, created no new military necessities, and was not, in any strict military sense, decisive. But on a less tangible level, it was indeed decisive. It shaped and created attitudes, values, orientations. And those attitudes, values, or ientations subsequently translated themselves into events.
In reaction not to what ‘ actually happened’ at Londonderry, but to what was believed to have happened, Protestant and Catholic moulds of thought in Ireland congealed. It was in strict accordance with these moulds of thought that the two communities proceeded to act. These actions were to determine the course of Irish affairs for the next century. And when, in 1798, Catholic Ireland rose in revolt, the conduct and course of that revolt were conditioned not by the events of the siege a hundred year s before, but by the myths that surrounded those events. Myth thus generated new history. And history — in this case, the 1798 rebellion — generated new myths of its own. These new myths, in their turn, precipitated fresh developments in so- called history, which, also in their turn, fostered f resh myths. The culmination of the process is Nor thern Ireland today, where the real clash is not so much a clash of religions as a clash of conflicting myths, of conflicting interpretations of history.
The Battle of Blenheim (1704, a mere fifteen year s af ter the Siege of Londonderry) was a genuinely major battle. It was also decisive. It altered the balance of power in Europe and radically transformed the course of European history. But Blenheim, today, lives in people’ s minds primarily as a stately home in Oxfordshire which also happened to be Churchill’ s birthplace. The Siege of Londonderry, on the other hand, and the 1798 rebellion, and all the other half -mythic and half – historical milestones of Irish history, have been bundled wholesale into the present, where they are regularly celebrated, commemorated, reenacted, ritualised — and where, in consequence, they are still able to shape attitudes and values, determine tribal identity and polarise communities. Such is the power of myth. And such is the inseparability of myth from what we call history.
History consists not only of f acts and events. It also consists of the relationships between facts and events and the interpretation, of ten imaginative, of such relationships. In any such act of interpretation, a mythic element necessarily comes into play. Myth is not thus distinct f rom history. On the contrary, it is an inseparable part of history.
Exploitation of the Templar Myth
From their very inception, the Templar s mantled themselves in myth, capitalised on myth, exploited myth. The sheer obscur ity and mystery surrounding their origins enabled them to surround themselves with an equally potent mystique. This mystique was accentuated by the loyal patronage not only of leading nobles, but also of romanciers such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Church luminaries such as Saint Bernard. It was easy enough for the Templars, in the minds of their contemporaries, to become ‘ legends in their own lif etime’ , and they did nothing to discourage the process whereby they became so. On the contrary, they of ten actively encouraged it. Among biblical texts, they constantly invoked Joshua and Maccabees, promoting themselves as latterday avatars of the army that toppled the walls of Jericho, the army that nearly defeated Rome in the years just pr ior to the Christian era. They encouraged the popular image of themselves as being in some way associated with the Grail Romances, as ‘ guardians’ of that mysterious object or entity known as the Holy Grail.
Amidst the mystique sur rounding the Order of the Temple, a number of echoes and images thus became fused. Joshua’ s army, the Maccabees, the Grail knights merged with yet other historical and/or legendary antecedents — the peers of Charlemagne, the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table and, especially in the British Isles, the Red Branch of Ulster . Nor was martial prowess the only vir tue which the mystique sur rounding the Temple conf er red on them. The Templars appear in The Perlesvaus not just as military men, but also as high mystical initiates. This is indicative, for the Templar s were only too eager to rein orce the popular image of themselves as magi, as wizards or sorcerers, as necromancer s, as alchemists, as sages privy to lofty arcane secrets. And indeed, it was precisely this image that rebounded upon them and provided their enemies with the means of their destruction.
Yet even in the Order ’ s demise, the myth-making process remained active and inseparable from historical actuality. Did Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master , as he was being burned alive over a slow f ire, really pronounce a curse on the Pope and the French king, order ing both to join him bef ore God’ s seat within the year? Whether he did or not, both, within the year , died, in distinctly suspicious circumstances. It is easy enough today to ascribe their deaths to refugee knights or sympathiser s drawing on the Order ’ s expertise in poisons; but the medieval mind was only too happy to see some more occult power at work. The French monarchy began to regard itself as accursed, with Jacques de Molay’ s malediction hanging over it like a sword of Damocles. And that malediction was to remain associated with the French throne regardless of changes of dynasty. Thus, in 1793, when Louis XVI was guillotined, another historical event became entangled with myth and legend: a French Freemason is alleged to have leaped up on to the scaffold, dipped his hand in the king’ s blood, flicked it out over the crowd and cr ied, ‘ Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!’
In their lifetime, then, the Templar s cloaked themselves in legend and myth. In their demise, they spawned new legends, new myths, which were then translated by other people into ‘ historical fact’ . As we shall see, one particularly potent such translation was to be Freemasonry. But there were other , ear lier manifestations of the phenomenon — manifestations on which Freemasonry itself was to draw and in which it was itself rooted. Indeed, scarcely had the Order of the Temple been destroyed than it arose again, phoenix- like, from the flames of its own pyre, to assume a new mythic guise.
Within a quarter of a century of the Temple’ s dissolution, a spate of neo- Templar order s began to appear — and would continue to do so for centuries afterwards. Thus, for example, in 1348, Edward III of England created the Order of the Garter , consisting of twenty- six knights divided into two groups of thir teen each. The Garter , of course, continues to the present day, and is the world’ s premier order of chivalry. In France in 1352, Jean II created an almost identical institution, the Order of the Star . It was rather more short- lived than the Garter , however , its entire member ship being annihilated in 1356 at the Battle of Poitiers. In 1430, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, created the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1469, Louis XI of France created the Order of St Michael. Its membership was to include such individuals as Claude de Guise, Char les (Connétable) de Bourbon, François de Lor raine, Federico de Gonzaga and Louis de Nevers — as well as commander s and officers of an institution soon to f igure prominently in our story, the Scots Guard.
Such orders were, of course, much smaller in number than the Templars, and much less consequential. They never exer ted any notable histor ical inf luence. They had no land, no preceptories, no holdings of any kind and no revenue. They lacked autonomy, being attached to the person of one or another potentate or sovereign. Although composed initially of fighting men, they were not, strictly speaking, military. They provided no military training, for example; they were organised around no military hierarchy; they did not function as distinct military units or formations, either on or off the battlefield. Ultimately, they were affairs of prestige rather than of real power , vehicles for royal patronage, the domain of courtiers; and their military accoutrements and nomenclature soon became as metaphor ical as those of , say, the Salvation Army. But in their inception, in their rites and rituals, in the mystique they sought to arrogate f or themselves, they looked to the Temple as a model.
This particular legacy of the Temple was more heraldic than anything else, but there was another legacy which not only transformed the face of European Catholicism, but projected it across the sea — as far westwards as America, as far eastwards as Japan. In 1540, a former military man named Ignatius Loyola, mortified by the advances of Protestantism, resur rected the or iginal Templar ideal of the warrior monk, the soldier of Christ, and created his own such soldiery. Unlike the Templar s, however , Loyola’ s soldiery would crusade not with the sword (though perfectly prepared to let other s wield it on their behalf ), but with the word.
Thus was born what Loyola called the Company of Jesus — until the Pope, recoiling f rom the explicit military connotations of ‘ Company’ , insisted it be changed to ‘ Society’ . In their martial structure andorganisation, in their far flung network of ‛provinces’ , in their rigid discipline, the Jesuits were, by Loyola’ s own admission, modelled on the Templars. Indeed, they often acted as military advisors and ordnance exper ts, as well as high- level diplomats and ambassadors. Like the Templars, the Jesuits were nominally subject only to the Church; but like the Templars, they of ten became a law unto themselves. In 1773, in circumstances recalling the suppression of the Temple 461 years before, Pope Clement XIV, ‘ on secret grounds’ , suppressed the Jesuits. Subsequently, of course, in 1814, they were resurrected. But even today, the Jesuits are in many respects a self - contained institution, and not infrequently at odds with the Papacy to which they supposedly owe allegiance.
The chivalric orders and the Jesuits were, in different ways, heir s of the Temple who eventually forgot, or deliberately repudiated, their origin. In Scotland, however , a more direct and more tangible heritage of the Templar s was to survive, duly acknowledged as such and transmitted by the more concrete channels of soil and family bloodlines. In the first place, collusion, cover - up and wheeling and dealing ensured that the Order ’ s holdings in Scotland were kept intact, retained as a separate unity and administered, at least for a time, by ‘ defrocked’ Templar s themselves — and subsequently by some off shoot of them. Templar property in Scotland was not to be dismembered and parcelled out, as it was elsewhere. On the contrary, it was to be held in trust, as if awaiting restoration to its original owners.
Then, too, there was to emerge in Scotland a network of inter locked families who were to provide both a repository and a conduit. To the extent that an authentic Templar tradition survived in Scotland, it survived under the auspices of these families and that of the military formation they sponsored, the Scots Guard, perhaps the most genuinely neo- Templar institution of all. Through the Scots Guard, moreover , and through the families who staffed the Guard with their sons, a new energy was to be imported to Scotland from the Continent. This energy — expressed originally through a spectrum of ‘ esoter ic’ disciplines, as well as through stonemasonry and architecture — would fuse with the residue of Templar tradition and breathe fresh life into it. And thus, from the pyres of the old religious-military Order , modern Freemasonry was to be born.
The Templar Lands
In 1312, a month after the official papal dissolution of the Temple, all the lands, preceptories and other installations owned by the Order were granted to their former allies and rivals, the Knights Hospitaller of St John. In the Holy Land, the Hospitaller s had been quite as corrupt as the Templars, quite as prone to powerbroking, intrigue, factional strife and pursuit of their own interests at the expense of the crusader kingdom’ s welfare. Like the Templars and, by the mid- thirteenth century, the Teutonic Knights, the Hospitaller s were also involved in banking, in commerce, in a broad spectrum of other activities extending far beyond their original brief of warrior -monks. In Europe, however , and especially in their relations with the Papacy, the Hospitaller s kept their noses scrupulously clean. They remained proof against any ‛infection’ by heresy, any transgression that might have rendered them subject to persecution. Neither did they pose a threat to any European monarch.
Undoubtedly, the Hospitaller s were as arrogant and autocratic as the Templar s and the Teutonic Knights. But their hospital work, and their unswerving loyalty to Rome, more than counteracted such adverse impressions as they made. In consequence, they enjoyed a respectability in both papal and public minds that r ival order s did not. Indeed, in the years prior to 1307, there was even talk of ‘ purifying’ the Templar s by amalgamating them with the Hospitaller s into a single unif ied order . Between 1307 and 1314, while the Templar s’ trials were in progress, the Teutonic Knights incur red similar accusations and, fearing similar prosecution, moved their headquarters from Venice to Marienburg, in what is now Poland, far beyond the reach of both papal and secular authority. The Hospitallers remained felicitously placed to benefit from the misfortunes of both their rivals.
Never theless, the Hospitallers’ acquisition of Templar holdings was not as simple or straightforward as one might think. In some cases, for example, as many as thirty years passed before they actually obtained the property conferred upon them; and by then, of course, the property in question had generally been run down, ruined, made worthless and unviable without investment of considerable capital expenditure. On two occasions — in 1324 and again in 1334 — the Priors of St John resorted to the English Parliament to confirm their right to Templar lands. 1 Even so, it was not until 1340 that they obtained the title to the London Temple. On a number of occasions, too, the Hospitallers f ound themselves in conf lict with secular lords — men who, rather than see it pass into the hands of St John, sought to reclaim property conferred on the Temple by their forebear s a century or two before. In many instances, such secular magnates were, if not powerful enough to win the argument, at least able to prolong it through litigation.
Such was the situation in England. In Scotland, matters were even more confused, and often deliberately concealed as well. Perhaps the strongest indication of developments in Scotland lies not in what was said, but in what was left unsaid. Thus, six months after Bannockburn, Bruce issued a char ter to the Hospitallers confirming all their possessions in the kingdom. 2 No mention whatever was made of any Templar lands or holdings, even though such lands and holdings should have passed into Hospitaller hands two years before. The Hospitallers were simply confirmed in what they already possessed. Nor , interestingly enough, did the Hospitallers, or the crown, or the secular lords, attempt to lay claim to Templar property. In fact, with but one exception, there is no record of anyone obtaining Templar property, or even endeavour ing to obtain it. For the duration of Bruce’ s lifetime, such proper ty might never have existed, so complete was the silence surrounding it.
In 1338, nine years after Bruce’ s death, the Grand Master of the Hospitaller s requested a list of all Temple proper ties acquired by his Order everywhere in the world. Every regional or national Prior was instructed to submit an inventory of Templar holdings in his par ticular sphere of author ity. During the last century, a document, quoting the response of the English Prior , was found in the library of the Order of St John at Valetta. Af ter itemising a substantial number of Templar possessions acquired by the Hospitaller s in England, the manuscript says:
Of the land, buildings . . . churches and all other possessions which were Templar in Scotland the reply was nothing of any value . . . all were destroyed, burnt and reduced to nothing because of the enduring wars which had continued over many years. 3
As of 1338, then, the Hospitallers had still not laid hands on Templar properties in Scotland. On the other hand, ir regularities of some sort were clearly taking place. For if Templar properties did not figure in any transactions of the Hospitallers, the Scottish crown or secular nobles, some of them we re never theless sold — without being entered in any official records. Thus, for example, before 1329 an officer of the Order of St John, one Rodulph Lindsay, is repor ted to have disposed of the Templar lands of Temple Liston. 4 Yet the transaction is not mentioned in any of the Order ’ s documents or archives. On what authority, then, was Lindsay acting? For whom was he functioning as agent?
Lindsay’ s transaction is only one of a number which have blurred, f or later histor ians, the whole question of Templar lands in Scotland during the period in question. As a result, no clear picture of any sort can be obtained:
It is . . . unknown how the Templar s’ properties were handed over to the Hospitallers; it seems to have been a ragged piecemeal process, and there is evidence that well into the f our teenth century the Hospitallers were still having difficulty getting possession of former Templar properties.5
The same writer concludes: ‘ There is no period in the history of the military orders in Scotland more obscure than the four teenth century.’6
Notwithstanding the obscurities, a certain pattern does emerge: after 1338, the Hospitallers began to acquire Templar holdings in Scotland, albeit in a decidedly equivocal way; pr ior to 1338, however , no Templar property was passed on, yet with the exception noted above there is no record anywhere of anything else happening to it. What is more, the Templar lands, when the Hospitallers did eventually receive them, were kept separate. They were not parcelled out, integrated with the Hospitaller s’ other holdings and administered accordingly. On the contrary, they enjoyed a special status and were administered as a self contained unit in themselves. They were handled, in fact, not as if St John actually owned them, but were simply, in the capacity of agents or manager s, holding them in trust. As late as the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than 519 sites in Scotland were listed by the Hospitallers as ‘ Terrae Templariae’ — part, that is, of the self – contained and separately administered Templar patrimony! 7
In fact, the disposition of Templar land in Scotland involved something quite extraordinary — something which has been almost entirely neglected by historians, and which enabled the Temple to sustain at least some degree of , as it were, posthumous existence. For more than two centuries in Scotland — f rom the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth — the Templars, it appears, were actually me rg e d with the Hospitallers. Thus, during the period in question, there are frequent references to a single joint Order — the ‘ Order of the Knights of St John and the Temple’ .8
It is a bizar re situation, and it raises some tantalising questions. Did the Hospitallers anticipate some future resurrection of the Temple and under take, perhaps by some secret agreement, to hold Templar property in trust? Or could it be that the Order of St John in Scotland had taken into its ranks enough fugitive Templar s to administer their own lands?
Both answers are possible; they are not mutually exclusive. Whatever the truth of the matter , it is clear that Templar lands enjoyed a unique status which has not been officially defined in the historical record. And they continued to do so. In 1346, a Master of the Hospitallers, Alexander de Seton, presided over the regular legal session at the former Templar preceptory of Balantrodoch. By this time, the site had, finally, passed into the hands of the Hospitallers. Never theless, it was still being administered separately, possessing a status of its own as part of the Templar patr imony. Two of the charters witnessed by Alexander de Seton survive. 9 They indicate that despite the date, thirty- four years after the suppression of the Templars, ‘ Temple Courts’ were still being held.
‘ Temple Courts’ of the same kind, retaining the same name, were to continue sitting for a good two centuries. Once again, we are confronted with evidence that the Order of St John, though given authority over Templar proper ties in Scotland, was, f or reasons never explicitly stated, unable legally to assimilate them. Once again, we are confronted with the suggestion of an invisible Templar presence looming in the background, waiting f or an oppor tunity to reassert itself and legally reclaim its her itage. And all of Scotland — the monarchy, the wealthy landowner s, the Order of St John itself — seems to have colluded in the veiled design.
The Elusive Knight — David Seton
Early in the nineteenth century, a noted genealogical lawyer and antiquarian named James Maidment discovered a chartulary — a roll or bound volume of land deeds — f or ‘ Ter rae Templariae’ within the Order of St John between 1581 and 1596. In addition to the two known preceptor ies at Balantrodoch and Maryculter , this document listed three others — at Auldlisten, Denny and Thankerton. 10 It also listed more than 500 other Templar properties, from crofts and fields, flourmills and farms, to castles and four entire townships. Spurred by his discovery, Maidment under took further research. His final tabulation, transcribed in a manuscript now housed in the National Library of Scotland, lists and names specifically no f ewer than 579 Templar holdings! 11
What had happened to this land? How had it been disposed of , and why had records pertaining to it all but vanished from the historical chronicle? At least some answer s to these questions can be found in a family which was among the most important and influential in Scotland during Bruce’ s time. Their name was Seton.
As we have seen, Sir Christopher Seton was married to Bruce’ s sister . He was present at Bruce’ s murder of John Comyn and himself killed Comyn’s uncle when the latter attempted to intervene. He was also present at Bruce’ s coronation at Scone in 1306. Subsequently, at the Battle of Methven, he was captured and, on Edward I’ s order s, executed. A similar fate befell his brother , Sir John Seton. Both, in fact, died alongside Bruce’ s brother , Neil. In 1320, Christopher Seton’ s son, Alexander , along with representatives of such other eminent Scottish families as the Sinclair s, signed the Declaration of Arbroath.
For another four hundred years, the Setons were to remain prominent in Scottish affairs and Scottish nationalist activities. It is not therefore surprising, nor even particularly vain, that yet another Seton, George, in 1896, should under take a comprehensive chronicle of his forebears. In this monumental volume, A History of the Family of Seton, the author lists numerous of his ancestors bearing titles ranging from the inconsequential to the illustrious. He also lists numerous other Setons who do not figure in standard noble genealogies. Some of them are humble artisans and burghers. Among this entangled forest of family trees, there is one particularly enigmatic and relevant entry:
c.1560. When the Knights- Templar s were deprived of their patrimonial interest through the instrumentality of their Grand-Master Sir James Sandilands, they drew off in a body, with David Seton, Grand Prior of Scotland (nephew of Lord Seton?), at their head. This transaction is alluded to in a cur ious satir ical poem of that per iod, entitled:
Haly kirk and her theeves
Fye upon the traitor then, Quhas has brocht us to sic pass, Greedie als the knave Judas!
Fye upon the chur le quhat solde Halyer the for heavie golde; Bot the tempel f elt na loss, Quhan David Setoune bare the crosse.
David Seton died abroad in 1581 and is said to have been bur ied in the church of the Scotch Convent at Ratisbon [now Regensburg, near Nuremburg]. 12
It is a tantalising fragment, alluding explicitly to the Temple. It becomes even more tantalising by virtue of its date. Two and a half centuries after the Templars were officially suppressed, the poem suggests, they were still fully operational in Scotland, and undergoing a f resh cr isis. But who, precisely, was David Seton? And who, for that matter , was Sir James Sandilands?
The latter , at least, is easy enough to trace. James Sandilands, f ir st Baron Torphichen, was born around 1510, the second son of landed gentry in Midlothian. Sandilands’ s father was a friend of John Knox, who, af ter his return to Scotland from Geneva in 1555, resided on the f amily’ s estate at Calder . Despite his father ’ s association with a Protestant reformer , the young James Sandilands entered the Order of St John some time shortly before 1537. In 1540, he requested from James V a saf e conduct to travel to Malta and obtain there, from the Grand Master , official confirmation of his right to succeed to the Preceptorship of Torphichen on the death of its sitting incumbent, Walter Lindsay. Sandilands’ s r ight to succeed Lindsay was duly confirmed by the Grand Master of the Hospitaller s, Juan d’ Omedes, in 1541. Returning home from Malta, the ambitious young man stopped in Rome to have his newly promised sinecure ratified by the Pope.
Five years later , in 1546, Walter Lindsay died. In 1547, the Master in Malta officially recognised Sandilands as Prior of Torphichen. In the Scottish Parliament, he became known as Lord St John and sat on the Privy Council. By 1557, he was back in Malta, engaged in a prolonged and evidently rather silly dispute with a putative relative, also a member of the Order , over a question of certifiable nobility. To the discredit of both men, the argument culminated in a public brawl, and the putative relative was imprisoned. 13 In 1558, Sandilands returned to Scotland. Here, along with his f ather , he supported the Reformation and actively opposed the Queen Regent, Marrie de Guise — elder sister of François, Duc de Guise, and Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine — who, in 1538, had married James V.
It must have seemed puzzling at first how and why Sandilands could support Protestant reform against a staunchly Catholic ruler , while still remaining a member in good standing of a Catholic military order . He contrived, nevertheless, to accommodate these conflicting allegiances, and his ulterior motives were soon to become outrageously clear . In 1560, by act of the Scottish Parliament, the Pope’ s authority in the country was abolished, and the Order of St John’ s rights to the ‘ Precepterie of Torphephen [sic] Fratibus Hospitalis Hierosolimitani, Militibus Temple Solomonis’ were annulled. 14 As Prior of St John, Sandilands was thus obliged to turn over to the crown the properties he administered for the Order . He did not object. Instead, in 1564, he presented himself to the new monarch, Mary Queen of Scots, as:
. . . present possessor of the Lordship and Preceptories of Torphephen [sic] which was never subject to any Chapter or Convent whatsomever , except only the Knights of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon. 15
On payment of a lump sum of 10,000 crowns plus an annual rent, Sandilands proceeded to negotiate f or himself a perpetual leasehold on the properties he had previously administered f or the Hospitallers. As part of the transaction, he also obtained the hereditary title of Baron Torphichen.
With an entrepreneurial spirit that any modern yuppie might envy, Sandilands thus effectively swindled the Hospitallers, illicitly disposing of their lands for his own advantage and profiting very handsomely from the deal. It is almost certainly to this affair , or to some aspect of it, that the poem quoted above refers — for the holdings Sandilands disposed of were not just Hospitaller holdings, but also par t of the Templar patrimony.
In 1567, Sandilands attended the coronation of James VI, subsequently James I of England. In 1579 he died. His heir was his great- nephew, born in 1574, also named James Sandilands, who became Second Baron Torphichen. But the young man soon found himself financially pressed, and proceeded to sell off the lands he had inherited. By 1604, they had passed into the hands of one Robert Williamson, who, eleven year s later , sold them to Thomas, Lord Binning, subsequently Earl of Haddington. They then passed through a number of hands until at last, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, those remaining were purchased by James Maidment.
If Sir James Sandilands is relatively easy to trace and document, David Seton is altogether more elusive. Not only is there much question about who precisely he was; there is even some question about whether he ever actually existed. 16 The only evidence of his existence is the fragment of the poem quoted above, which prompted George Seton to accord him a perplexed footnote in the 1896 family genealogy. And yet scholar s have taken the poem seriously enough to accept it as testimony to something which, it would appear , both history and human agencies have conspired to conceal.
As we have seen, the Seton f amily were among the most distinguished and influential in Scottish history, and were to continue as such for another three centur ies. What is not clear is where precisely the myster ious David Seton f its into their family tree. The genealogist of 1896 suggests, plausibly enough, that he was the grandson of George, Sixth Lord Seton, who succeeded to the title in 1513 and died in 1549. 17
Sandilands, as we have noted, was hostile to Marie de Guise and her marriage to James V. He opposed the dynastic alliance linking the Stuarts with the continental house of Lorraine and its cadet branch, the house of Guise. George Seton was in the opposite camp. In 1527, he had married a certain Elizabeth Hay and had two sons by her , the elder of whom succeeded to the title and became the Seventh Lord Seton, a close friend of Mary Queen of Scots. But in 1539, George Seton married f or a second time. His new br ide was Marie du Plessis, a member of the entourage who had come to Scotland with Marie de Guise; and Seton’ s wedding to her thus placed him in intimate association with the royal court. By Marie du Plessis, Seton had three more children, Robert, James and Mary. Mary Seton was to become a maid of honour to Mary Queen of Scots, and was to go down in ballad and legend as one of ‘ the three Marys’ who accompanied the queen to France for her marriage to the Dauphin, later François II, in 1558. Of Robert and James Seton, however , little is known, save that the latter died around 1562 and the former was still alive a year later . Both would have had time to sire children, and genealogists have concluded that David Seton must have been the son of one or other of them. He would thus have been the grandson of the Sixth Lord Seton and the nephew of the Seventh Lord.
If David Seton is so elusive, where did the family’ s chronicler , wr iting in 1896, obtain even the meagre information he did? At first we knew of only one earlier pr inted source, the nineteenth- century historian Whitwor th Porter , who had access to the Hospitaller s’ archives in Valetta. Writing in 1858, Porter vouchsafes only that David Seton is ‘ said to have been the last Prior of Scotland, and to have retired with the greater portion of his Scottish brethren, about 1572—73’ . 18 He adds that Seton died in 1591, ten year s later than the date given by the 1896 genealogist, and was bur ied in the church of the Scotch Benedictines at Ratisbone. Porter also cites the poem, ‛Haly Kirk and her Theeves’ — with a variant reading of the penultimate line. This line, in the 1896 version, ran: ‘ Bot the Tempel f elt na loss.’ Por ter quotes it as: ‘ But the Order [our italics] felt na losse.’ 19
It is obvious from this that, even as late as the nineteenth century, the issue was still a sensitive one. ‛Tempel’ is quite unequivocal. ‘ Order ’ , however , could as readily denote the Hospitallers as the Templars and, in the context, would seem to do so. Had the 1896 genealogist deliberately tampered with the text? If so, why? If any tampering did occur , it would seem more likely in the ear lier ver sion. Nothing would have been gained by changing ‘ Order ’ to ‛Tempel’ . But to change ‛Tempel’ to ‘ Order ’ would have exonerated the Knights of St John from the suspicion of harbouring Templars in their midst.
The issue would have remained uncer tain, had not an ear lier version of the poem turned up, printed in 1843, fifteen years before Whitworth Porter ’ s quotation of it. It draws not on the archives in Valetta, but on Scottish sources. We will have occasion to consider these sources later . For the moment, it is sufficient to note that this 1843 text of the poem — the earliest known — quotes the line precisely as the Seton genealogist was to quote it in 1896: ‘ But the Tempel felt na loss.
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