* * *
So quiet it is to-day in the safe keeping of the law. You would
never dream that these lawns sloping to the Thames were eight hundred
years ago the beginning of that long, hard road to Palestine, the
nest of the Templars, those priest warriors who began their history
so splendidly poor that two men rode one horse, and ended so richly
and dangerously that two kings and the Pope of Rome broke them as
three millionaires might smash a trust.
Nothing now remains of all this ancient fire but the Round Church and
a few stone crusaders lying with their feet towards the east. A few
names linger on, their meaning quite changed. The serjeant-at-law
owes his title to the "Fratres Servientes," the serving brothers of
the Templars; and the judges' title of "Knight" of the Common Pleas
takes us back eight hundred years.
Between the crusaders lying cap-à-pie with Paynim knights beneath
their spurred heels, are two brass tablets let into the floor. One
is in memory of the members of the Inner Temple, and the other of
members of the Middle Temple who laid down their lives in the war.
* * *
So these crusaders, with eight hundred years dividing them, are
rightly commemorated together in this quiet, lovely place, whose
atmosphere, once so charged with stress and strife, is now purged by
time of all passion, either good or evil. But the ghosts live on,
and it would not astonish me to hear that some quiet, harmless lawyer
going to his chambers at night down that sloping path past the church
met an armed host ready for the march, from whose throats burst like
an organ note: "Deus vult!"
This was the cry that built the Temple, and, spreading out over the
land like a flame, fired men's hearts, leading them into the desert
in defence of the holy places of Christendom.