Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/157

Rh to spread over its later days. The motives ordinarily attributed to Philip, Clement, and the other authors of their overthrow, will not suffice entirely to account for the catastrophe, though doubtless they may have had much weight in the matter. If it were avarice alone that prompted the act, how came it that Clement, who was the principal agent in the transaction, never dreamt of appropriating their revenues to himself, or even to the ecclesiastics under his own immediate control; but on the contrary, exerted his authority to the utmost to transfer them intact to the rival fraternity of the Hospital? Again, how came it that that Order did not itself share the same fate? Had the amount of their worldly possessions been the only object by which the decision of the judges was influenced, the Hospitallers would have been their first victims. They were more numerous and endowed with far larger revenues, if not in England, at all events in France, where the plot was first hatched; they would therefore have afforded a far richer booty to the spoiler than could have been extorted from the Templars. Had this motive of avarice been the only incentive which prompted Philip, who was the original author of the scheme, he was not the person to have tamely submitted to be defrauded of any portion of his gains at the very moment when they had fallen within his grasp through an abject dread of the ecclesiastical fulminations which were the only weapons Clement could have wielded against him. The Pope was, moreover, a creature of his own, elected by his nomination and pledged to support him in all his undertakings. What then had he to fear, even though he had retained in his own possession every acre of land which throughout. the breadth of his fair kingdom had once been lorded over by the red cross knights?

We must needs look deeper than this for the motives which prompted the annihilation of one Order, whilst aggrandizing the other on its ruins. At this distance of time, and in the absence of any conclusive evidence on the subject, it would be unjust to assert positively what these motives may have been. That the Templars had of late years achieved for themselves a reputation far from enviable is an indisputable fact; that dissoluteness, riot, and debauchery of every kind had for some time past been rampant within their preceptories must be admitted by