The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar Read online

  One family was the Setons. It was a Seton who held the title of master of the Hospitalers in 1346. Another had married Robert the Bruce’s sister after his role in the murder of John Red Comyn in the church of the Grey Friars. In the sixteenth century, when the Masonic order that had inherited the Templar order was again threatened by treachery, it was a Seton who led the action to preserve them.34 The treachery that came to threaten the surviving Masons was the result of religious warfare burning through Europe in the wake of the Reformation. France was trying to remain Catholic as England had gone Protestant. Scotland again became the battlefield. The Setons tried to keep the French and Scottish unity intact, their country Catholic, and the Masonic-Templar organization in the background. It was a big job.

  Mary, Queen of Scots, was the daughter of Mary of Guise of France and James V of Scotland. Their marriage had been supported by those who wanted to preserve Scotland from falling back into the clutches of the English. The other two children of James V were poisoned to eliminate their ascension to the throne. The new queen of Scotland (she became queen six days after she was born, in 1542, on the death of her father) was moved to France for safekeeping in 1548 because of the wars being fought. Protestant British excursions were met and resisted by forces that included German and Italian mercenaries who fought alongside Catholic France.

  The Seton role was to protect Mary, while she was in France, against the treachery of her enemies which often included her own family. When Mary married Francis II in 1558, a daughter of George Seton and his French wife would serve as maid of honor. Two months after the wedding the king, Henri II, died as the result of a joust and Francis II became king. Remarkably, Nostradamus had predicted the death of the king, describing his wounds exactly. Francis II died the next year.

  The mother of Francis was Catherine de Medici, who did not favor Mary as the queen of France. Instead, she ordered that Mary return the family jewels and go home to her estate in Scotland. England did not look kindly on Mary either. She was a foreigner and, even worse, a Guise. The Guise family was very Catholic and infamous in their defense against Protestants. Later, in 1562, the duke of Guise fired upon a Protestant prayer meeting, igniting open warfare between the two Christian religions. While the royal family and the leading houses of Guise and Lorraine wished for France to remain Catholic, Protestant ministers stirred the populace away from the Church.

  The connecting thread between the prominent families of Scotland was what later came to be called the Scots Guard, an openly military establishment, no doubt united through Masonry as well as country, that included Setons, Sinclairs, Stewarts, Lindsays, Hamiltons, Douglases, and Montgomerys. This force had been fighting together since Bannockburn, both for Scotland and France but possibly more for itself. It was a Montgomery whose lance had pierced the eye of young Francis as Nostradamus had predicted and caused, in turn, the Guise-Lorraine alliance to be at odds with the Valois dynasty for the French throne. France was still not ruled by an all-powerful monarchy. The king was forced to rely on the cooperation of leading families who were more than minor powers. The struggle between the Guise and Valois families to control France weakened both and brought the Bourbon dynasty to the throne.

  The Sinclairs had always had a strong connection to the Guise family through their own French relations, the St. Clairs. But the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, was determined by her enemies and not by her family. The Sinclairs had fought for the kings of Scotland, but it was a descendant of the first kings who abandoned both Scotland and his own mother. Upon learning of the Sinclair plot to enlist France in the cause of Mary, the forces that be ordered her execution. Neither the queen of England, Elizabeth I, nor Mary’s son, James, claimed to be aware of the execution, but it would not have taken place without their consent. Elizabeth had signed Mary’s death warrant, and at first held off from ordering her execution. It was claimed that her jailors at Fotheringhay Castle proceeded with the execution on their own.

  The Sinclairs and the Templar Treasure

  Despite the constant warring and struggle, and possibly because of it, the Sinclairs in Scotland grew, prospered, and undertook remarkable actions to preserve the Templars and the guardianship of the organization. The wealth of the Templars had not been depleted by the war against England, and the guardianship of Templar relics was the responsibility of the Sinclairs.

  The castle and chapel complex at Roslin is one of the wonders of the medieval world, built by Sir William Sinclair in the mid–fifteenth century. Besides being the world’s high temple of Masonry, it served as a hiding place for the treasures of the Templars brought from their London and Paris temples.35 In modern times secret vaults have been found, as have stairways that lead to nowhere and even cave entrances behind waterfalls—but no treasure.

  It is said that when Sir William Sinclair decided to build the chapel, he imported stonemasons for the work. More likely, these “masons” were Templars already under his protection. The very unusual building was much more than a temple, and it was much later that anyone became aware of just how complicated the construction was. It could hide a treasure and an army, and probably did. Sinclair designed and planned the work himself, unusual in light of his rank and obligations.

  The connection between Templars who built forts around the world and Freemasons whose guilds were first formed near Edinburgh in 1475 is obvious. This “trade” organization’s members included those knights who fought in the Crusades and the knights who fought for Bruce: Sinclairs, Setons, Stewarts, Hamiltons, and Montgomerys, not an ordinary “stonemason” among them. Under the guise of a trade guild the Templars survived intact, and the Sinclairs, once among the founders of the Templars, became the hereditary protectors of that guild. With the enterprise of both were secrets that had been kept for a thousand years and an immense treasure protected from the greedy hands of the enemy.

  Chapter 7

  THE SECRET OF THE TEMPLARS

  The Sinclair clan inherited the role of guardians of the Freemasons, which concealed the remnants of the Knights Templar. They also inherited the role of guardian of the treasures of that organization, which had once been held in the vaults of the temples in Paris and London. The wagon trains laden with the coin of the realm entrusted to the Templars was now hidden in Scotland in the secret passageways built into the chapel of Roslin. The treasure itself was monumental—more significant than what would be gained if one of the largest banks in the world today were looted completely. It was the only bank in Europe, and it disappeared.

  The Templar organization could be used as a means of depositing money for safekeeping in one city and withdrawing it in another. It also could provide loans. Earning interest was still considered usury, so the Templar bank would earn the proceeds of an estate that served as collateral until a loan was repaid.1 There was no script or checks or bonds. It was gold and silver, bullion and coinage, and even the crown jewels of some of Europe’s wealthiest families that were entrusted to the temple bank. This wealth was portable and huge enough to require wagon trains.

  If the disappearance of this treasure were not enough, the temple also held greater treasures in its care—treasures that could not be allowed to sink into the hands of the French king. Legend has it that one of the treasures being safeguarded was that secreted from Montsegur by the Cathari.2 There, at the last stronghold of the Cathari, Templars fought for the persecuted and against the Church they were sworn to obey. Montsegur held much gold and silver coin but also gold and silver objects, many that were sacred. The chalice that held the blood of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper was there, the miraculous Holy Grail. Legends of other treasures, significant in monetary terms and important in religious and historical value, are said to include the Visigoth’s loot from Rome and the Oracle of Delphi in Greece. The objects taken from Rome by the Visigoths in the fifth century included what the legions of Titus had looted from the Temple of Solomon in the first century.3

  Possibly the most important of the treasures held by
the French temple, which was taken from the Temple of Solomon, had originated through a secret mission accomplished by an order within an order. A small, elite group of the most powerful families, which had banded together years before, was still intact, at least in part As the feudal era was ending, families still held sway over their local lands. This group vied with the king for power. The treasure that they owned was of greater than simply monetary value. The nature of it was a history of the family of Jesus, the Messiah. The genealogy of Jesus, which started in the priestly families of Aaron and David, did not end at the Crucifixion. One thesis of Holy Blood, Holy Grail is that the lineage of the priest-king who was Jesus continued.4 An elite order within the Templars uncovered this secret. And it was up to the Sinclairs to guard it.

  The Sinclair Family and Scotland

  This treasure given to the Sinclairs to guard was possibly one source of their wealth in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it was not the source of their power. They had always been prominent and always close to the ruler of whichever land they chose to make their home. From their ancestral home in Norway to their lands in Norman France to their estates in Scotland, they were always a most powerful clan. They understood that the king was ruler in name but also the target of those displeased with his role. The real power would always be with those close to the king but never in the forefront.

  In France, the Treaty of St. Clair, signed at their castle, gave the Norse families their land in France but allowed the king, Charles the Simple, to remain king.5 In England, after the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror could take the credit for the victory, but Sinclairs received their spoils. In Scotland the Bruce family hid in caves and were imprisoned in lattice cages, while Sinclair power grew in the background. It was a role created for them, and one they would live up to. They were the puppeteers behind the scenes.

  From Bannockburn forward the Sinclairs had two hundred years to consolidate their wealth and power, and they met their responsibility as guardians. They were the patrons of the Freemason trade guilds into which the inheritors of the Knights Templar survived. They would be named by James II of Scotland as the guardian family of Freemasonry, a role through which they kept the secrets and the wealth of the Templars. As the hereditary grand masters of Scottish Freemasonry, they may have furthered the exploration that their ancestor Henry had started in 1398—and all from behind the scenes.6

  By 1545, however, the Sinclairs were pushed into the limelight. Oliver Sinclair was the military might behind King James IV. But the death of James at the Battle of Flodden forced Sinclair to the front. The new king, James V, was only two years old when he was made king. Sinclair became his guardian and guardian to the country of Scotland. James V later married Mary of Guise, of the Catholic French family, to whom the Sinclairs were allied both by marriage and the politics of their secretive elite group.7

  While the marriage united France and Scotland, it threatened the English and was one of the catalysts of the battle at Solway. The Scots were beaten badly, and Oliver Sinclair was taken captive.8 James V had depended on Oliver Sinclair since childhood. Without his guardian he believed all would truly be lost. He died within days of hearing of Oliver’s capture. Six days earlier, his daughter Mary had been born, while her father was suffering the breakdown that led to his death. He predicted that Mary’s birth signified the end of the Stewart line.

  Oliver Sinclair, too, might have felt a touch of despair after Solway, with his king dead and an infant female on the throne. The French relations had possibly been richer than the Scottish Sinclairs, but they did not have their resolve. They failed to come to his aid in battling the English. In Oliver Sinclair’s care was much more than the Sinclair lands. He was entrusted with the guardianship of a treasure much greater. Granted a short respite from prison, Oliver Sinclair took action. He disappeared from Scotland and history.

  The true power of the Sinclairs had remained hidden in the earliest days of the Knights Templar as well. In 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail was published in England. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln had done extensive research into a mystery and treasure search in the south of France. It led them to the earliest days of the Templars and a secret order within the order.9 Sometime between 1090 and 1099, the Ordre de Sion was founded by Godfrey of Bouillon. This order coexisted with the Templars but lay far beneath the surface. Its aim was different from the external mission of the Templars, which would serve as a cover organization for as long as needed. The plan of a secret order within another secret order has allowed the Templars and their elite creators, the Ordre de Sion, to survive even today. Godfrey of Bouillon later became the conqueror of Jerusalem. In a history clouded by secrecy and shrouded in the mists of time, the lands owned by Godfrey’s aunt served as sanctuary to a group of Calabrian monks. On her land they built an abbey. Holy Blood, Holy Grail suggests that they also built a bridge to the future Templars at that time. When they left, Godfrey led them in the crusade that devastated the holy city of Jerusalem in 1099. Once he conquered the city, another Calabrian monk crowned him king. He then built an abbey on the site of a ruined church, which would come to be called the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion.

  The original Templar order, the group of nine knights under the minor noble Hugues de Payens, arrived in Jerusalem in 1118. As we have seen, their nine-year stay produced little except some knocked-out walls in the stables of the Temple of Solomon. Yet on their return to France, the small band received a hero’s welcome by de Payen’s lord and Bernard of Clairvaux.10 Bernard held a council to recognize and promote the organization of the Poor Knights, and his Cistercian order created their code of conduct. Bernard might be compared today to a televangelist, promoting the fight against the Saracens, raising funds from both rich and poor alike. For his role, he was given the abbey at Orval, built by the Calabrian monks on Godfrey of Bouillon’s family property, which was made into a Cistercian house. The order received greater benefits as well.

  Saint Bernard’s order had gone from nearly destitute to very wealthy in a short period of time. The theory that the nine knights had been on a treasure hunt in Solomon’s temple is not the source for the new wealth of Bernard’s order. The basis for the sudden wealth of the Cistercian order was a combination of Bernard’s ability to rouse a crowd and the support of several of France’s wealthiest families. The Knights Templar, however, did not make the roads safe for pilgrims. The secret mission was, in fact, to unearth the secrets and treasures of the Temple of Solomon.

  King Solomon and Jerusalem

  There is no question that the Temple of Solomon once held great treasure. It was King David whose collaboration with the Philistines enabled him to take the throne of a divided Israel. He made Jerusalem the center of his kingdom. It was already a center of wealth as a city of the Jebusites, who called it Yerushalayim, meaning the “Foundation of the god Salem.” Salem was their god of prosperity.11 And it was already sacred. A tablelike rock behind the city, named Moriah, was considered sacred in times before the Israelites. This table rock was renamed Zion after Israel took it over. A Jebusite priest, Zadok, anointed Solomon king. And a Jebusite farmer, Araunah, owned the Rock of Sion (Zion) until Solomon’s time.

  Solomon built the city and its temple to be the center of a victorious Israel. The workforce needed to construct the temple was numbered at one hundred and eighty thousand, which included thirty thousand workers imported from Phoenicia. The Phoenician architects and masons had much more experience in building cities than the pastoral nomads who were the Israelis. The city of Jerusalem was already in existence when the construction started. Underneath the city was the tunnel of Gihon—a large shaft that went down into a tunnel that led from the spring of Gihon. There was no significance to the tunnel except that it served as a source of water to Jerusalem when the city was besieged by an enemy. But it was the water tunnel that had allowed the Hebrews to capture Jerusalem. Springs always had a religious significance of a sort to pagan peoples, since they represe
nted fertility. Water, especially in a desert area, was a source of life.

  The massive temple complex that King Solomon ordered to be built included an annex that would serve as the treasury. This was not the only place where treasures would be hidden. Throughout the turbulent history of Jerusalem, the temple was looted several times, yet mysteriously always had more treasure to be found. The Jerusalem of the Hebrews became an even greater center of wealth as the peace with the Philistines brought increased trade.12 Ships from faraway places like Sheba (in Arabia) brought goods that originated in the Orient. Ships of the Dan, a sea people of the Mediterranean who traded with the Phoenicians, sailed far west to Spain and a mysterious kingdom near Spain, called Tartessus. Solomon even had his own fleet.

  After Solomon’s days, however, the wealth of Jerusalem also attracted enemies. Sheshonk, a Libyan pharaoh, forced Jerusalem to ransom itself when the Hebrews were ruled by Reheboam. His grandson Asa used the treasury to fight off a contender to the throne. Joas found the treasury entirely depleted when he took over. But as long as Jerusalem remained powerful, the treasury could always be replenished. In 716 B.C., Hezeliah added to the tunnel system underneath the city and was later able to resist siege by the Assyrians. The Babylonian captivity that followed these times (starting in 586 B.C.) put an end to the rule of the Davidic kings, and the history of Israel became a list of outside conquerors.

  The temple destroyed and rebuilt served almost constantly as a source of revenue for Herod.13 Herod regularly plundered the structures around the temple looking for caches of wealth. When he finally penetrated the tomb where the coffins of Solomon and David reposed, legend has it that one of his bodyguards was struck by a flame that incinerated him. Herod’s reckless arrogance eventually caused the Jews to revolt against pagan rule. Rome had decided to erect an eagle over the entrance to the temple, symbolizing both the power of the great city and their pagan god Zeus (Jupiter). Two zealots took it upon themselves to tear it down—Herod had them executed.