Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/155

Rh he had contemplated a complete justification for the severity of his previous persecutions, and he determined to wreak a fearful vengeance on the authors of his disappointment. Without the delay of an hour the fiat for their instant execution was issued, and on that same evening James de Molay and his fellow-victim Guy, the prior of Normandy, were both burnt before a slow fire on a small island in the river Seine. The spot where this tragedy took place is now marked by the erection of the equestrian statue of Henry IV.

The promulgation of the papal mandate announcing the extinction of the Order of the Temple had been followed by a bull carrying out the decision of the council, before mentioned, namely, that its property should be transferred to the knights of St. John. For a considerable time this mandate remained a complete nullity; eventually a small portion of the forfeited revenues did find its way into the treasury of the Hospitallers. In Castile, Aragon, and Portugal the respective monarchs created new military Orders, taking for themselves the position of Grand-Masters under the title of perpetual administrators. The ostensible purpose of these new establishments was the provision of a barrier to repel the inroads of the Moors, the real motive being that by this means they retained all the property of the defunct fraternity in their own hands. In France Philip laid claim to the sun of 200,000 livres as a reimbursement of the money which the prosecution of the Templars had cost him, and his son extorted a further sum of 60,000 livres before he could be brought to permit the transfer of the much-coveted lands to the Hospitallers. In England the overthrow of the brotherhood was followed by a general scramble for the good things thus left without an owner. Much was seized by Edward for himself; more was transferred to favourites about the court, whilst in other cases claims were put in by the heirs of the original donors which were acceded to. The Pope, indignant at this secular appropriation of so much ecclesiastical property, wrote most urgently and menacingly upon the subject. Ultimately the dread of papal fulminations led to the enactment of a bill in parliament in the year 1324, by which the Hospitallers were put into legal possession of their rights. They found, however, to their cost, that in those troublous times there was a vast