Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

264 TEMPLARS SUPPRESSED.
investigation, Clement V. finally suppressed the
Order (1312) as a measure of expediency. His Bull
disposed at the same time of the property left by the
Templars, and ordered that it should be transferred
to the Knights Hospitallers. Edward II. demurred
to this, and it was only eleven years later that the
bill of transfer passed through Parliament.1
In the meantime Archbishop Keynolds had to
deal on the one hand with a king and nobility
hungry after treasure, and on the other with the
Pope's positive commands as to how it was to be
applied. At first his own line of conduct was not
absolutely blameless, since he, together with other
bishops, began to appropriate the spoils. In deference
too to Edward he called a council, not as
hitherto a convocation, in order to consider the
question of supplies. The clergy indignantly refused
to be appealed to through a council for a
purely temporal object.
Edward had strongly advocated the election of
Walter Beynolds, who had been his tutor, and was
now raised by his influence to be the first peer
spiritual and temporal of the realm. At the time
of Eeynold's accession Gaveston had not long fallen
a victim to the general execration, and soon the
defeat of Bannockburn was to prove Edward's
incapacity for fulfilling another of his father's requests.
Considering that he was somewhat of a
king's man, the conduct of Beynolds as primate
"
1 Lingard, History of England, iii. 350.