Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/156

130 difference between legal rights and actual possession. The struggle between themselves and the many vultures who had settled upon the prey was continued for a lengthened period, and rendered the addition to their property in England a matter far more nominal than real.

Such was the sad end of the Order of the Temple, an institution coeval with that of the Hospital, and which had stood side by side with it on many a well-fought field, and during many a protracted struggle. Now, whilst the one Order had by its recent conquest of Rhodes raised itself to a still higher position in the estimation of the world, the sun of its rival’s glory had set in gloom, and was for ever quenched in blood.

The accusations by which its overthrow had been achieved were in themselves so preposterous and ludicrous that they were evidently only a cloak behind which to conceal the actual motives which influenced its persecutors. At the present time it seems extraordinary that such childish and absurd fabrications should have entered the imaginations of men like Philip and his co-adjutors—men distinguished for the vigour of their judgment and the wisdom of their policy, unscrupulous though it too often was. The result, however, proved that they rightly gauged the intelligence of the age, and that their fables were suited to the capacity of those for whose benefit they had been concocted. No statement was too gross, no imputation too transparent for the vulgar prejudices and credulity of the fourteenth century. Under cover of popular ignorance, and beneath the mask of pious enthusiasm, a bitter vengeance was wreaked for many a bygone injury and many a forgotten insult; forgotten, that is, by the haughty Templar in all the pride of his wealth and position, but not by those who were quietly biding their time, and by whom it was carefully nursed in silence and in secret until the fatal hour should arrive when it might be promptly and amply avenged.

Still, although it cannot for one instant be denied that the pretences under cover of which the annihilation of the fraternity was accomplished, were utterly false and without a shadow of foundation, it does not therefore follow that the Order is to be acquitted of all evil, and to be surrounded by that halo of martyrdom which it has been the object of so many panegyrists