aring himself worthy to die for having made
false confessions through fear of death and in order to please the king.
One of his companions took part with him in this; but the other two,
broken down in body and in spirit by their long confinement, had not the
courage to join them. Philip, on hearing what had taken place, gave
orders that James de Molay and the other who took part with him should
be burnt without delay; and on the same day they were led forth to death
on a little island in the river Seine (which runs through Paris), while
Philip from the bank watched their sufferings. Molay begged that his
hands might be unbound; and, as the flames rose around him and his
companion, they firmly declared the soundness of their faith, and the
innocence of the order.

Within nine months after this, Philip died at the age of forty-six (A.D.
1314); and within a few years his three sons, of whom each had in turn
been king of France, were all dead. Philip's family was at an end, and
the crown passed to one of his nephews. And while the clergy supposed
those misfortunes to be the punishment of Philip's doings against Pope
Boniface, the people in general regarded them as brought on by his
persecution of the Templars. It is not for us to pass such judgments at
all; but I mention these things in order to show the feelings with which
Philip's actions and his calamities were viewed by the people of his own
time.

In other countries, such as England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and
Spain, the Templars were arrested and brought to trial; and, rightly or
wrongly, the order was dissolved. Its members were left to find some
other kind of life; and its property was made over to the order of the
Hospital, or to some other military order. In France, however, Philip
contrived to lay his hands on so much that the Hospitallers for a time
were rather made poorer than richer by this addition to their
possessions.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE POPES AT AVIGNON (_continued_).

A.D. 1314-1352.

Pope Clement V. died a few months before Philip (April, 1314), and was
succeeded by John XXII., a Frenchman, who was seventy years old at the
time of his election, and lived to ninety. The most remarkable thing in
John's papacy was his quarrel with Lewis of Bavaria, who had been chosen
emperor by some of the electors, while others voted for Frederick of
Austria. For the choice of an emperor (or rather of a king of the
Romans) had by this time fallen int