Here
Lies … England’s Last Templar?
In recent years, the Knights
Templar have become a familiar name. Books and films have speculated
dramatically about the possible lost ‘grail’ treasures and secrets
of this mysterious, doomed order of knight-monks, and the possible
survival of their order via the legendary ‘Priory Of Sion’ and
other guises following their mass arrest in 1307 and banning of
their Order by the Pope. Traditional historians point out there
is no evidence for any of this, and their fate is well documented.
But following the trail of a Templar who seems to have survived
the Order’s downfall suggests we may know less than we think ....
Was England’s last known surviving Templar a prisoner kept at Christchurch
Priory?The alternative conspiracy theory is that some of the ‘inner circle’ Templars were tipped off, and escaped, some even fighting at Bannockburn, enabling them to set up a treasure citadel in Scotland, at what would become Roslin Chapel, made famous by The Da Vinci Code. They continued to exist as an ‘underground stream’, exerting political influence both via the fabled, ultra-secret “Priory of Sion” and the founders of Freemasonry. The mainstream academic historians’ view is that even before 1307 the Fratres Templari, the Templar Brotherhood, set up during the Crusades between 1118 and 1140 to guard pilgrim routes to the Holy Land, had became redundant and an expensive liability after 1291, when the last stronghold in the Holy Land fell. After the records of their various trials and the Papal dissolution of their order in 1312, the Order Of Poor Knights Of The Temple disappear from official history.
But when we follow the trail of documentary evidence collected by local historians regarding the case of a Templar who survived the Order’s downfall by several decades we still find many oddities and unanswered questions. This case came to light in 2001, in a row over a relic found at Christchurch Priory - the “sword on the stone” affair.
Often
referred to as "the last Templar," James de Molay, the Templars'
last Grand Master was burnt alive in 1314 after he withdrew the
confession of heresy he had made under torture.
In 2000, a former Mayor of Christchurch, Mike Winfield, owner of Oldways salvage yard, bought several tons of stone scrap left over from restoration work done on the Priory. It was soon noticed that on one of the broken stone slabs a double-handed sword had been carved, with its handle representing a fleur-de-lys pattern - evidently the lid of a mediaeval stone coffin. The Priory committee then sent him solicitor’s letters “instructing” and “demanding” he return the stone they had sold him. Why it was discarded as scrap in a church “restoration” was not explained. “It is surprising that such an important piece of Christchurch history should have turned up for sale,” commented another former Mayor of Christchurch, local historian Michael Hodges.
The matter of whose coffin lid this had been remained open. Who would have been buried with a sword decorated with a fleur-de-lys … a symbol associated with the French aristocracy? In a followup letter, the Priory’s archivist, KC Tullett, argued this had been the grave of Walter de Pinckney, a Norman Knight appointed Constable of Christchurch’s Twynham Castle, who had been killed in the Priory’s precincts in 1145. A near-contemporary chronicle described how he was hacked to death by battle-axes when (after some unspecified outrage) he and his bodyguard were surrounded by angry townspeople while seeking sanctuary in the Priory. The other suggested candidate was one Stephen de Stapelbrigge, Staplebrigg, or Stapelbrugge (spellings vary), a Templar who appeared in Priory records being kept there, after the Order’s downfall, under some sort of supervision. His name appears in a 1992 book by Ken Tullett, Ecclesia Christi In Tuinham: The Augustinian Priory In Christchurch 1042-1351. This quotes various church records of the time, the relevant reference being …
1319 Induction of Stephen de Stapelbrigge into Priory … ordered by John Sandale, Bishop of Winchester, with the authority of the Pope.”
The
ruin of Twynham Castle. A rival theory is that the graveslab found
in 2000 could have been the Constable in charge of the castle,
who was killed by a mob in the Priory grounds in 1145.
An ex-Templar at the Priory, on the authority of the Pope? This is one of those intriguing references historians sometimes come across when researching other matters, which reveal insights into society at the time. In this case it would contradict some of the established ideas about the Templars – from the viewpoint of both the traditionalist and ‘alternative’ camps.
Ken Tullett, the book’s researcher, was also the Priory archivist who had suggested the grave slab’s owner was Walter de Pinckney, the short-lived Constable of Twynham Castle. He wrote a letter to the Echo disputing that the 2000-1 find was the tomb of Stephen de Stapelbrigge, the former Templar, whose name had been put forward by fellow historian Michael Hodges, and gave his reason. Six years before, in 1996, he and Curator Ray Lax had rescued another grave slab from the Priory’s North Crypt, made of Purbeck marble and dated to the mid-14th C. This was decorated with “a sword, surmounted by a Maltese Cross, both fairly common embellishments for Templar graves.” (The Maltese Cross is associated with the Knights Of Malta, otherwise known as the Knights Hospitaller, who largely took over the Templars’ estates after their downfall.) With the help of Dr. [Malcolm] Barber, “this country’s leading authority on the Templars” and a colleague from the Mediaeval History Department of Reading University, it was tentatively identified. “They saw no reason to doubt that this slab had probably covered the last resting place of Stephen de Stapelbrigge.” This tomb cover was repaired and placed on display in the Priory Museum.
He added that with his late colleague Ray Lax, the Priory Museum’s Curator, he had begun researching the ex-Templar 8 years before, in 1993. In that time, he researched old ecclesiastical histories not available locally, and was able to discover a number of documented events in the Knight’s life. Eventually he published, from his typed notes, a one-page summary of his findings in his ‘Triforium’ column in the Christchurch Parish News, which included still-unanswered questions - hence his comment, in his 2001 letter, that he found the ex-Templar to have been “a very shadowy figure indeed.”
A reproduction of one of the Templar effigies in London's Temple Church. Note what appears to be a sword hilt on the apex of the lid.
The
tomb slab incised with a Maltese Cross found in 1996 is on display
in the Priory’s loft museum, the webpage caption reading, “thought
to be the tomb slab of Stephen de Stapelbrugge, a Knight Templar.”
[Click
here to see onsite photo]
The name Stephen de Stapelbrigge, Stapelbrugge etc. (early spellings vary) is taken to mean ‘Stephen of (or from) Stalbridge’ - to use the modern name of the Dorset village situated southeast of Sherborne, and the family evidently had strong church links in the area. Other Staplebriggs were on record locally at the time in church personnel records, including as rectors of Stalbridge. Earlier, a Gilbert de Stapelbridge had acted as sheriff of Dorset on behalf of the Bishop of Sherborne, 1224-6. In Stephen’s own lifetime, several de Stapelbridge men held church posts in the region, including an Abbot Of Sherborne, 1309-22, and a Canon of Salisbury, 1313-30.
Yet when young Stephen was received into the Templars, his initiation was not at the Templars’ local preceptory a few miles to the north of Stalbridge, at Templecombe in Somerset. His first ‘reception’ was in fact at Keele in the West Midlands in 1295, and in 1297 he was received again, the second time at Lydele, Shropshire (now Lydley Heyes, Salop). No doubt a novelist or dramatist would posit Stephen’s family fleeing some terrible local scandal. One is almost tempted to believe this scenario, for after Stephen’s time the de Staplebriggs seem to disappear from church records, as if the whole family had fallen from church favour. Ken Tullett’s notes ask, under “Questions needing answers” “Why did Stalbridge have no vicars recorded from 1297-1342 ? Why did the church appear to have no vicars between 1297 and 1342?” (Stephen’s adult lifetime). “Why is the Church at Stalbridge and other works of reference, so silent about the local Lords of the sizeable manor (some 2000 acres) there?”
The Priory graveyard, said to be haunted.
The documented career of Stephen himself is odd from the outset, for he was ‘received’ into the Templars twice within two years. His first recruitment was on August 15th, 1295 (Feast Of The Assumption Of The Virgin) by the Grand Preceptor of England. In 1297 he was received again, this time by the Master Of The Templars in England. What makes this odder is that judging from other dates in his lifetime, he was still a child. This contradicts orthodox history. The Cistercian Order, on which the Templar Order was firmly based, would not admit a boy “until such time as he is able to bear arms with vigour, and rid the land of the enemies of Jesus Christ.” The Order’s final head, the unlucky Jacques de Molay, said at his trial he joined when he came age at 20.
Of course not all Templars were Knights. Most were “Serving Brothers,” helping look after the Templars’ estates, and older boys could have been used here in menial roles. This scenario could be consistent with the birth-year of 1286 later claimed for him by Ken Tullett, which would make him 9 and 11 when inducted. And the Order was popular enough that membership was restricted - an initiate’s father and grandfather had to have been of knightly class, and the father actually a member of the order (presumably as a Knight). Perhaps early ‘cadet’ enrolment was the privilege of noble families.
We don’t hear any more of Stephen until the aftermath of the Templar collapse, when he was arrested by the King’s bailiffs. Here again we have an oddity, for he was not arrested until three years after the official suspension of the order. In England the roundup of the Templars began several months after the French coup, in January 1308. But Stephen was not arrested until June 1311, at Salisbury. Evidently he had been lying low, presumably sheltered by relatives or Templars who escaped, or were never arrested. Ken Tullett has suggested he may have been trying to get back to Stalbridge when he was caught.
He was taken to London and interrogated regarding some 87 different offences. Whether torture was used is not known. In France in 1307, Templars had been tortured and if they recanted, were burnt alive, but this was on the orders of the fanatical and greedy Philip The Fair, who had even ‘arrested’ the previous Pope (the shock is thought to have killed him). Edward had written the Pope saying torture was not an option in England as it lacked professional torturers, but the Pope sent a team of ten professional torturers under two Dominican friars to extract confessions. Edward needed the Pope’s support in his war against Robert the Bruce, lost in 1314, when Bruce won independence for Scotland at Bannockburn. (It has become a sort of ‘factoid’ that the Scots were aided in the battle by a band of surviving Templars, who later hid their treasures nearby, at the now-famous Roslin Chapel.) Ironically it was Edward himself who would die at the wrong end of a red-hot poker. Suspected of unnatural vices, he was deposed by his wife, known as “The She-Wolf of France” (Philip The Fair’s daughter) and her new partner and their allies in 1327. He would die, bent naked over a table, as a local knight, de Maltravers, thrust a red-hot poker into him, killing him in a way that left no outer mark.
Luckily for Stephen, before then Edward and the Pope had reached a compromise political solution that all English Templar prisoners had to do was admit their order was heretical and they would be sent to live the rest of their days under the supervision of the church as novices. Stephen confessed, making his written deposition in French - in that era the aristocratic language of court. This has suggested French family connections to some … which might in turn explain that fleur-de-lys engraved on the tomb-slab. (Stapelberg is an established name from the French-speaking part of Holland.) Stephen was sent to an Augustinian establishment in London. Then, in 1313, together with another Templar, Stephen escaped, but was recaptured, again at Salisbury, retried, and put back into gaol for five years. [continued]
Temple
Church, London, containing Templar effigies (seen in the film
The Da Vinci Code). Two men riding a single horse was a Templar
motif.