infamy, and we supplicate most affectionately your Sanctity if it
please you, that considering with favour suited to the good
character of the Master and brethren, you may deem fit to meet with
more indulgence the detractions, calumnies and charges by certain
envious and evil disposed persons, who endeavour to turn their good
deeds into works of perverseness opposed to divine teaching; until
the said charges attributed to them shall have been brought legally
before you or your representatives here and more fully proved.[157]

Edward II also wrote in the same terms to the Kings of Portugal,
Castile, Aragon, and Sicily. But two years later, after Clement V had
himself heard the confessions of the Order, and a Papal Bull had been
issued declaring that "the unspeakable wickednesses and abominable
crimes of notorious heresy" had now "come to the knowledge of almost
everyone," Edward II was persuaded to arrest the Templars and order
their examination. According to Mr. Castle, whose interesting treatise
we quote here, the King would not allow torture to be employed, with the
result that the Knights denied all charges; but later, it is said, he
allowed himself to be overpersuaded, and "torture appears to have been
applied on one or two occasions,"[158] with the result that three
Knights confessed to all and were given absolution.[159] At Southwark,
however, "a considerable number of brethren" admitted that "they had
been strongly accused of the crimes of negation and spitting, they did
not say they were guilty but that they could not purge themselves ...
and therefore they abjured these and all other heresies."[160] Evidence
was also given against the Order by outside witnesses, and the same
stories of intimidation at the ceremony of reception were told.[161] At
any rate, the result of the investigation was not altogether
satisfactory, and the Templars were finally suppressed in England as
elsewhere by the Council of Vienne in 1312.

In France more rigorous measures were adopted and fifty-four Knights who
had retracted their confessions were burnt at the stake as "relapsed
heretics" on May 12, 1310. Four years later, on March 14, 1314, the
Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, suffered the same fate.

Now, however much we must execrate the barbarity of this sentence--as
also the cruelties that had preceded it--- this is no reason why we
should admit the claim of the Order to noble martyrdom