tever may have been his real motive, and the
cause of his change of conduct, it is certain that he issued an order
for the arrest of the Templars, and the seizure of all their estates,
houses, and property.

The greatest caution and secrecy were adopted. Instructions were sent to
all the sheriffs throughout England to hold themselves in readiness to
execute certain orders which would be given to them by trusty persons on
that day. Similar arrangements were made in Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales; and on January 8, 1308, every Templar was simultaneously
arrested.

It was not till October in the following year that any trial took place.
All this time the Templars had been suffering the miseries of
imprisonment. More than two hundred men of high rank, many of them
veterans who had fought and bled in Palestine, and who were now grown
old and feeble after a life of hardship and privation, maimed with
wounds, bronzed with exposure to the Eastern sun, languished under the
tender mercies of jailers, with no opportunity of defending themselves
or of raising up friends to say a word for them. Some were foreigners
who happened to be in England on the business of the order. A few
managed to evade the vigilance of the King's emissaries, notwithstanding
the secrecy and suddenness of the arrest, and escaped in various
disguises to the wild and remote mountain districts of Scotland, Wales,
and Ireland.

The court appointed by the Pope commenced its proceedings in London, in
October, 1309, under the presidency of the Bishop of London. Several
French ecclesiastics had come over to take their seat upon the bench as
judges--an ill omen for the English Templars. After the usual
preliminaries, which were long and tedious, the articles of accusation
were read. They stated that those who were received into the order of
the Knights of the Temple did, at their reception, formally deny Jesus
Christ and renounce all hope of salvation through him; that they
trampled and spat upon the cross; that they worshipped a cat(!); that
they denied the sacraments, and looked only to the grand master for
absolution; that they possessed and worshipped various idols; that they
practised a variety of cruel, degrading, and filthy customs and rites;
that the grand master and many of the brethren had confessed to these
things even before they had been arrested. Such is a brief summary of
the accusation, the original documents of which have happily come down
to us.