Message #226524

[Crystal Thielkien]

We now know where Sinclair got his engineers. But what was his connection with the Templar treasures? To answer this, let’s delve back a bit in the history of the Knights Templar. Although ostensibly organized to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades, the original Templars consisted of nine French knights under the leadership Hugues de Payen (whose wife was Catherine de St. Clair, or as the family later became known, Sinclair).

These nine knights occupied the site of the ruined Temple of Solomon and began, not to guard pilgrims, but to excavate the temple. Their extensive tunnels have themselves been explored, with Templar artifacts found, proving the Order had been present. No one knows what Payen found, but not long after their excavations the Templars exploded into one of the most powerful and wealthy organizations of the Middle Ages.

By 1300, the Order was the major banker of Europe, issuing drafts which could be redeemed at any of the extensive and multi-national preceptories. They had also attracted the enmity of Philip IV (ironically known as “Philip the Fair”) despite having provided large loans and protection to the monarch. To avoid paying his debts, Philip manufactured charges or heresy and bullied Pope Clement V into ordering the Templars excommunicated as heretics. Philip tried to arrange for secret orders to be sent to have all the Templar knights arrested and their property seized on Friday, October 13th, 1307. Many of the Order were arrested but the Templars must have been forewarned as their wealth, their documents and their fleet disappeared and were (officially) heard from no more. The Order’s elderly grand master, Jacques de Molay, was tortured, and then burned alive.

This particular Friday the 13th also proved very unlucky for Philip and Pope Clement. They were both dead within a year. Many countries proved remarkably slow in pursuing the Templars and it would appear Scotland may even have welcomed many to its shores. This was hardly surprising since Robert the Bruce, the king of Scotland, had been contemporaneously excommunicated for killing his rival, Comyn, on the Franciscan church altar at Dumfries. He would have been in dire need of funds and troops as the English had long coveted Scotland’s territory. William Wallace was a predecessor of Robert the Bruce and if you saw the movie Braveheart you have some idea of how fond the Scots were of the English. The Templars had initially fought Wallace, but adversity makes for strange bedfellows.

The greatest victory of the Scots against the English, and the one which established Scotland’s independence for centuries, was the Battle of Bannockburn. On November 6, 1314, the English appeared poised to win against an apparently weaker Scottish army, when an armored force appeared over the horizon. From records of the money and equipment left behind, and relatively low casualties it would seem the English fled in terror. An armored force of knights wearing the Templar emblem would have had just such an effect, as if an army of ghosts had suddenly risen from the dead.

Having cemented the claim of Robert the Bruce to the Scottish throne, however, the Templars now presented a bit of a problem for Bruce. He remained a fair target for the rest of Catholic Europe as long as the excommunication held, as did the Knights Templar themselves. A logical move would have been to rename the latter organization or perhaps merge it with an existing one. By this time the medieval cathedral building spree had begun to wane and the Masonic lodges would likely have realized the need for new “blood”. The Templars with their wealth and power would have been an attractive acquisition as well as another way of the Freemasons thumbing their noses at the Catholic Church. Everyone, the Catholic Church included, would have been happy to see the Templars “disappear”.