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 RELIGIOUS HOUSES The rents from the property in the City and suburbs alone from lo January to Michaelmas, 1308, amounted to over ;^50, although deductions were made for tenements unoccupied. '^^ The principal possession of the order in London was of course the New Temple itself, which is constantly referred to as a manor,^^^ and from the size of the buildings ^^^ and extent of the ground^** well deserved the term. The church contained altars to St. Nicholas and St. John besides the high altar, and appears to have been well provided with books,^^* plate and orna- ments ^'^ of silver, silver gilt, ivory and crystal, altar-cloths and frontals and vestments. The Temple was granted by the king to Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, but Thomas, earl of Lancaster, claiming it as his fee, Aymer de Valence surrendered it to him on 1 October, 1314.^*' On the execution of Lan- caster the manor again fell to the crown, and was made over a second time to Aymer de Valence in 1322,'*" but when he died without issue in 1324 it lapsed to the king according to the terms of the grant. The bull of Pope Clement V granting the lands of the Templars to the Knights Hospitallers '^' had been unheeded in England, but after the statute to the same effect in 1324 ^^^ the knights of St. John were put in possession of the Temple with a great deal of the other property of the late order. It seems probable that they already held the consecrated portions such as the church and cemetery, since the claim of the prior to some houses erected by him on a portion of this ground, which had been seized by the younger Despenser, and escheated to the crown after his forfeiture in 1326, was evidently quite distinct from his right to the other portion of the manor.^^^ William de '" L.T.R. Enr. Accts. 18, rot. 7. '" Ca/. Rot. Pat. (Rec. Com.), 68, 133^. '" A council of prelates and clergy was held there in 1269, and mandates for convocations to be held there v/ere issued in 1273, 1282, I298, 1299, and 1302. Wilkins, Concilia, ii, 19, 93, 239, 253, 272. For mandate of 1299 %ts nho Cal. of Pat. 1 292-1 301, p. 450. One national council at least was held there. Riley, Chron. of Old Lond. 159. '"The sheriffs in 1 308 account for 60s. from the fruit of the garden sold in gross. L.T.R. Enr. Accts. 18. '" Among them were five antiphonaries, nine psalters, two legends, eight processionals, a martilogium and an organ book. Ibid. "^ In silver and silver-gilt there were four chalices, three censers, two basins, two lamps, a vase with sprinkler, a chest for relics — this last worth j^io — two silver cruets, Sec, while there were several objects in ivory, among them three pyxes and two tables with ivory images. Ibid. '" Cal. of Pat. 1313-17, p. 184. ''» Rymer, Foed. (Rec. Com.), ii (i), 480. ■=' Ibid. 167. '^° Stat, of the Realm (Rec. Com.), i, 194, 195. "' Cal. of Close, 1337-9, P- 7^- Langford, to whom the king had let the Temple, had part of his rent remitted for giving up these tenements,"^ and in June, 1338, Edward III made a grant of the whole manor to the Hospital in frankalmoign."' The history of the Temple as a religious house however had really ended with the fall of the original owners. The prior of Clerkenwell appointed one of his brothers to keep the church, and the allowance to him and the other chaplains figures in the expenses of the Knights of St. John in 1328."'^ The accounts of 1338 show that there were then eight chap- lains besides the warden, and that these eight were not of the order of St. John, but seculars like the thirteen who served the church in the time of the Templars. '" In 1338 a definite sum was allotted to the warden, but the next year Ficketsfield and Cotells Garden were assigned him by the prior for his maintenance, and that of the lights and services of the church.^^ The priests needed only part of the Temple buildings, and the others were let to the lawyers by the priory, it is said, in 1347,^^' at any rate about the middle of the fourteenth century. The prior of Clerkenwell occurs twice in an interesting connexion with the Temple : in 1373, when he was engaged in a dispute with the City over a right-of-way through the Temple Gate to the Temple Bridge ; ^^^ and in 1 38 1, when the rebels did a great deal of damage out of hatred to the same Prior Robert Hales, then the king's treasurer.'" At the suppression ot the order of Knights Hospitallers in England by Henry VIII in 1540 the New Temple, which in 1535 had been valued at £it2 lu.,''* passed to the crown.^'^ The master of the Temple and chaplains were still, however, allowed their stipends, and retained their posts, and a lease made by the master in 1542 of a messuage, and the master's lodging adjoining the church, stipulated that the four priests of the Temple should have two chambers in the house.'^'" The re-establishment of the order by Mary seems to have made no change at the Temple, except that the rent of ;^io due from the two societies of lawyers was again paid to the prior, for Ermested, who had been master in 1540, '"Ibid. 416. "' Cal. Rot. Pat. (Rec. Com.), 133* ,• Sharpe, Cal of Letter Bk. G. 324. ■''" Larking, The Knights Hospitallers in Engl. (Cam- den Soc), 218. '"•^ Ibid. 202. '" Cott. MS. Nero, E. vi, fol. z6b. '" Inderwick, Introd. of Cal of Inner Temple Rec. i, p. xi. '"^ Sharpe, Cal of Letter Bk.G. 322. '" Walsingham, Hist. Angl (Rolls Ser.), i, 457. '" Valor Eccl (Rec. Com.), i, 403. "' Inderwick, op. cit. i, p. xhii. '"^ Ibid, i, p. xliv. 489 62