The Legacy of the Knights Templar

Scotland: Bannockburn and The Scots Guard

We know that Templars fought in the Anglo-Scottish wars. 

When Edward I defeated the Scots under William Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk [1298] the only recorded deaths of note on the English side were both Templars.

The English Master of Templars, Brian de Jay, and the Scottish Masters of Templars John de Sawtrey were both cut down as they pursued the fleeing Scots through the Forest of Callendar. 

'Edward's lieutenant in Scotland, John de Segrave, set out to raid into a Scottish-held part of Lothian to the west of Edinburgh. On 24th February 1303 near Roslyn the leading brigade of Segrave's poorly co-ordinated force was surprised and routed, with serious casualties, by a Scottish mounted force, whose leaders, it is thought, included William Wallace.' - Stirling Bridge and Falkirk 1297-1298 - William Wallace's Rebellion, Pete Armstrong

According to the authors of the 'Hiram Key' - 'There was a battle between the Scots and the English at Roslyn in 1303, which was won with the support of Templar knights, led by a St. Clair.'

"Scotland...was at war with England at the time [1307], and the consequent chaos left little opportunity for implementing legal niceties. Thus the Papal Bulls dissolving the Order were never proclaimed in Scotland - and in Scotland, therefore, the Order was never technically dissolved." "Many English and, it would appear, French Templars found a Scottish refuge, and a sizable contingent is said to have fought at Robert Bruce's side at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. According to legend - and there is evidence to support it - the Order maintained itself as a coherent body in Scotland for another four centuries." - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"There has been speculation about the presence of Templar knights at Bannockburn. ...In Scotland, as early as October 1309, John de Segrave, the Bruce's lieutenant, was ordered to round up Templars still at large in that country. It is quite possible that former Scottish Templars fought in the ranks of King Robert's army, but they would not have done so under the Templars famous 'Beauseant' banner." - Bannockburn 1314 - Robert Bruce's Great Victory, Pete Armstrong

As a means of 'friend or foe' identification in battle, in medieval times individual Scots frequently wore a St. Andrews cross patch; English a cross of St. George. Surviving accounts describe these patches sown above the heart. Templar's were visually recognised by a white robe with a red cross over the heart. 

In 1298 at the Battle of Falkirk the Templars who fought for the English. 

At Roslyn 1303 the Templars fought alongside William Wallace against the English.

At Bannockburn in 1314 Templars were fighting on the Scots side against the English.

"At the bloody Battle of Verneuil in 1424, the Scottish contingents had acquitted themselves with particular bravery and self-sacrifice. Indeed, they were virtually annihilated, along with their commander, John Stewart..." "The new French army created by Charles VII in 1445 consisted of fifteen 'compagnies d'ordonnance' of 660 men each - a total of 9000 soldiers. Of these, the Scottish Company - the 'Compagnie des Gendarmes Ecossaise'...was explicitly accorded premier rank over all other military units and formations, and would, for example, pass first in all parades. The commanding officer of the Scottish Company was also granted the rank of 'premier Master of Camp of French Cavalry'." "In 1474, the numbers were definitely fixed - seventy-seven men plus their commander in the King's Guard, and twenty-five men plus their commander in the King's Bodyguard. With striking consistency, officers and commanders of the Scots Guard were also made members of the Order of St Michael, a branch of which was later established in Scotland. "The Scots Guard were, in effect, a neo-Templar institution, much more so than such purely chivalric orders as the Garter, the Star and the Golden Fleece."

"The nobles comprising the Guard were heirs to original Templar traditions. They were the means by which these traditions were returned to France and planted there, to bear fruit some two centuries later. At the same time, their contact with the houses of Guise and Lorraine exposed them in France to another corpus of 'esoteric' tradition. Some of this corpus had already found its way back to Scotland through Marie de Guise's marriage to James V, but some of it was also to be brought back by the families constituting the Scots Guard. The resulting amalgam was to provide the true nucleus for a later order - the Freemasons [Scottish Rites]." "As late as the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than 519 sites in Scotland were listed by the Hospitallers as 'Terrae Templariae' - part, that is, of the self-contained and separately administered Templar patrimony." - Baigent & Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge

"c.1560. When the Knights-Templars were deprived of their patrimonial interest through the instrumentality of their Grand-Master Sir James Sandilands, they drew off in a body, with David Seton, Grand Prior of Scotland, at their head." - A History of the Family of Seton

"At the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, John Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, was killed on the field. When his body was recovered, he was reportedly wearing the Grand Cross of the Order of the Temple - not a recent device supposedly, but one dating from before 1307." Holy Blood Holy Grail quoting from Waite, New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.

Contemporary sources all agree that the Scots fought on foot at Bannockburn and makes no mention of Scottish cavalry and this has been taken as evidence to deny their existence. Yet John Barbour's account of the mounted reconnaissance force led by Douglas and Keith is entirely credible, as is the story of the inability of Douglas at the end of the battle to mount enough men for an effective pursuit of the English King. Only Barbour's tale of the Scottish cavalry charge that resulted in the rout of the English archers is questionable. Could so small a force of light cavalry have ridden down a formation of archers that was large enough to pose a threat to the advance of the Scottish infantry? It may be that Barbour invented the incident to account for what seemed to him the inexplicable failure of the feared bowmen to influence the battle. Yet he is far too convincing and well informed a writer for us to dismiss the details in his account simply because the English sources, admittedly earlier, fail to mention them.
Recently there has been speculation about the presence of Templar knights at Bannockburn. The Order had ceased to exist by 1312 when it was officially suppressed by the Pope. The French disposed of the Grand Master of the Temple and 45 Templar knights by burning them in Paris in 1314. In England the Templars were dispossed with more decorum and the Master of the Temple was simply pensioned off. In Scotland, as early as October 1309, John de Segrave, the King's Lieutenant, was ordered to round up Templars still at large in that country. It is quite possible that former Scottish Templars fought in the ranks of King Robert's army, but they would not have done so under the Templar's famous 'Beauseant' banner.
Bannockburn 1314 Robert Bruce's Great Victory -- Osprey Publishing - Osprey Campaign 102.


From the Scot's viewpoint the main sourse for Bannockburn is John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, who completed his epic biographic poem THe Bruce in 1376. It contains a lengthy and convincing description of the battle, but for his account he drew on written sources that are now lost and on tales he had heard over the years from surviving veterans, though the only one he names is Sir Alan Cathcart, tho told him of his adventures with Edward Bruce in Galloway. These are in fact the methods of any historian, ancient or modern.(Barbour J. The Bruce ed. A.A.M. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1997))

Bannockburn 1314 Robert Bruce's Great Victory -- Osprey Publishing - Osprey Campaign 102.

From the Templar Papers

In Scotland, Hughes de Payns, who had been married to a member of
the St. Clair family before forming the Templars, found particular favour
with King David I (by all accounts, a devout man). The Abbot Aelred of
Rievaulx, writing about the king, had this to say:
[He] entrusted himself entirely to the guidance of religious
(monks), retaining beside him the most noble brethren
of the distinguished military order of the Temple of
Jerusalem, he made them both by day and night custodians
of his morals.
King David awarded the Templars the village and lands around
Balantradoch as the site of their first and main preceptory in Scotland.
(Balantradoch can be translated as “the settlement of the warrior.” While
the Templars in Britain were primarily governed from the main Temple in
London, and Balantradoch remained subordinate, it nevertheless became
an important center of the Templars in Scotland, as is evidenced by the
following, from The Scottish Review:
At the same time, although in this strict subordination to
England, the Scottish Templars had a chief of their own
who was usually styled the Master, but sometimes the
Preceptor, of the House (or Knighthood) of the Temple
in Scotland—Magister Domus (vel Militiae) Templi in
Scotia—and who had his headquarters at Balantradoch in
Midlothian, the principal house of the order to the north
of the Tweed. The name Balantradoch has long ago vanished
from the map of Scotland, but the significant name
of Temple, which has succeeded it, and which designates
the modern parish wherein the preceptory and its lands
were situated, is the most notable vestige of the order
that Scottish geography has to show. The ruined church of
Temple, which stands picturesquely on the banks of the
South Esk a few miles above Dalkeith, is of a later date
than the dissolution of the order, and apparently there are
now no remains of the Preceptory, although from a tradition
rather vaguely reported by Augustus Hay, it seems that
“the foundations of a vast building and the root of several
big pillars of stone” were discovered at some time in the
seventeenth century, in a garden in the neighbourhood.

In truth there were not many knights of the
Order actually based in Scotland, and most members belonged to the
second or third ranks—namely chaplains (capillari), or serjeants (servientes
armorum). Many of the knights who served as preceptors over the years
were men of great experience, who, either because of age or injury, were
unsuited to serve the Order in other ways.

There was also close links with another preceptory on the
south side of the river Dee, at what is now the modern parish of Maryculter.
Of course, the preceptories were not the only lands under the control of
the Knights Templar—they were given the rights to many manors and
other estates. Most of their possessions in Scotland were in the Lothians—
namely the area to the south of Edinburgh on the eastern side of the
country.

In 1308, following the “official” dissolution of the Templar order by
Pope Clement, the Preceptory at Balantradoch was given to the Knights
of St. John. This handover actually took place because this part of the
country was under the control of the English at the time. The Knights of
St. John substantially rebuilt the church into a more traditional rectangular
shape, and the preceptory buildings gradually fell into disrepair. But
otherwise, life seemed to carry on in much the same way as it had under
the Templars.
With regard to the dissolution, it is worth noting that the two Scottish
knights, Brother Walter de Clifton and William de Middleton, were
examined by the Bishop of St. Andrews and Papal Chaplain John Solario
at the Church of the Holy Cross in Edinburgh concerning the so-called
misdemeanours of the Templars. This examination elicited nothing of
either a criminal or heretical nature. Throughout the rest of Scotland,
very little seems to have happened as a result of the dissolution of the
Order. England and Scotland were at war, Robert the Bruce had been
excommunicated, and the end result was that a large number of Templar
knights fled to Scotland to avoid persecution. These knights came from
the Scottish borders, England, and a large number from the Continent
(on board the Templar fleet). It is now generally accepted that a significant
force of Knights Templar took the field on the side of Robert the
Bruce at the battle of Bannockburnm, and thus played an important role
in the defeat of the English.

-------------------------------------------------------------

In the Anglo-Scottish wars of (insert date here) English, Scottish and possibly French, Templar Knights fought on both sides although at different times. 
At the Battle of Falkirk, when Edward I defeated the Scots under William Wallace, in 1298 the only recorded deaths of note on the English side were both Templars. The English Master of Templars, Brian de Jay, and the Scottish Master of Templars John de Sawtrey were both cut down as they pursued the fleeing Scots through the Forest of Callendar, indicating the presence of a contingent of both English and Scottish Templars at the battle.
This information is problematical because the Templars would have been fighting against a papally recognised Christian kingdom..
'Edward's lieutenant in Scotland, John de Segrave, set out to raid into a Scottish-held part of Lothian to the west of Edinburgh. On 24th February 1303 near Roslyn the leading brigade of Segrave's poorly co-ordinated force was surprised and routed, with serious casualties, by a Scottish mounted force, whose leaders, it is thought, included William Wallace.' - Stirling Bridge and Falkirk 1297-1298 - William Wallace's Rebellion, Pete Armstrong
According to the authors of the 'Hiram Key' - 'There was a battle between the Scots and the English at Roslyn in 1303, which was won with the support of Templar knights, led by a St. Clair.' This was four years before the Templars were first suppressed in France so it seems unlikely that Templars were present, fighting on the side of the Scots against Henry I who was one of their primary supporters in the following years. Other sources name the leader of the victorious Scots as Comyn.

"Scotland...was at war with England at the time [1307], and the consequent chaos left little opportunity for implementing legal niceties. Thus the Papal Bulls dissolving the Order were never proclaimed in Scotland - and in Scotland, therefore, the Order was never technically dissolved." "Many English and, it would appear, French Templars found a Scottish refuge, and a sizable contingent is said to have fought at Robert Bruce's side at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. According to legend - and there is evidence to support it - the Order maintained itself as a coherent body in Scotland for another four centuries." - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"There has been speculation about the presence of Templar knights at Bannockburn. ...In Scotland, as early as October 1309, John de Segrave, the Bruce's lieutenant, was ordered to round up Templars still at large in that country. It is quite possible that former Scottish Templars fought in the ranks of King Robert's army, but they would not have done so under the Templars famous 'Beauseant' banner." - Bannockburn 1314 - Robert Bruce's Great Victory, Pete Armstrong

As a means of 'friend or foe' identification in battle, in medieval times individual Scots frequently wore a St. Andrews cross patch; English a cross of St. George. Surviving accounts describe these patches sown above the heart. Templar's were visually recognised by a white robe with a red cross over the heart. 

In 1298 at the Battle of Falkirk the Templars who fought for the English. 
At Roslyn 1303 the Templars fought alongside William Wallace against the English.
‘He (Wallace) was successful in gaining this support because there was a battle between the Scots and the English at Roslin in 1303 which was won with the support of Templar knights, led by a St. Clair.’ – from ‘The Hiram Key – Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas.
@
At Bannockburn in 1314 Templars were fighting on the Scots side against the English.
 
Contemporary sources all agree that the Scots fought on foot at Bannockburn and makes no mention of Scottish cavalry and this has been taken as evidence to deny their existence. Yet John Barbour's account of the mounted reconnaissance force led by Douglas and Keith is entirely credible, as is the story of the inability of Douglas at the end of the battle to mount enough men for an effective pursuit of the English King. Only Barbour's tale of the Scottish cavalry charge that resulted in the rout of the English archers is questionable. Could so small a force of light cavalry have ridden down a formation of archers that was large enough to pose a threat to the advance of the Scottish infantry? It may be that Barbour invented the incident to account for what seemed to him the inexplicable failure of the feared bowmen to influence the battle. Yet he is far too convincing and well informed a writer for us to dismiss the details in his account simply because the English sources, admittedly earlier, fail to mention them.
Recently there has been speculation about the presence of Templar knights at Bannockburn. The Order had ceased to exist by 1312 when it was officially suppressed by the Pope. The French disposed of the Grand Master of the Temple and 45 Templar knights by burning them in Paris in 1314. In England the Templars were dispossed with more decorum and the Master of the Temple was simply pensioned off. In Scotland, as early as October 1309, John de Segrave, the King's Lieutenant, was ordered to round up Templars still at large in that country. It is quite possible that former Scottish Templars fought in the ranks of King Robert's army, but they would not have done so under the Templar's famous 'Beauseant' banner. From Bannockburn 1314 Robert Bruce's Great Victory -- Osprey Publishing - Osprey Campaign 102.


From the Scot's viewpoint the main sourse for Bannockburn is John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, who completed his epic biographic poem THe Bruce in 1376. It contains a lengthy and convincing description of the battle, but for his account he drew on written sources that are now lost and on tales he had heard over the years from surviving veterans, though the only one he names is Sir Alan Cathcart, tho told him of his adventures with Edward Bruce in Galloway. These are in fact the methods of any historian, ancient or modern.(Barbour J. The Bruce ed. A.A.M. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1997)) Bannockburn 1314 Robert Bruce's Great Victory -- Osprey Publishing - Osprey Campaign 102.
"At the bloody Battle of Verneuil in 1424, the Scottish contingents had acquitted themselves with particular bravery and self-sacrifice. Indeed, they were virtually annihilated, along with their commander, John Stewart..." "The new French army created by Charles VII in 1445 consisted of fifteen 'compagnies d'ordonnance' of 660 men each - a total of 9000 soldiers. Of these, the Scottish Company - the 'Compagnie des Gendarmes Ecossaise'...was explicitly accorded premier rank over all other military units and formations, and would, for example, pass first in all parades. The commanding officer of the Scottish Company was also granted the rank of 'premier Master of Camp of French Cavalry'." "In 1474, the numbers were definitely fixed - seventy-seven men plus their commander in the King's Guard, and twenty-five men plus their commander in the King's Bodyguard. With striking consistency, officers and commanders of the Scots Guard were also made members of the Order of St Michael, a branch of which was later established in Scotland. "The Scots Guard were, in effect, a neo-Templar institution, much more so than such purely chivalric orders as the Garter, the Star and the Golden Fleece."

"The nobles comprising the Guard were heirs to original Templar traditions. They were the means by which these traditions were returned to France and planted there, to bear fruit some two centuries later. At the same time, their contact with the houses of Guise and Lorraine exposed them in France to another corpus of 'esoteric' tradition. Some of this corpus had already found its way back to Scotland through Marie de Guise's marriage to James V, but some of it was also to be brought back by the families constituting the Scots Guard. The resulting amalgam was to provide the true nucleus for a later order - the Freemasons [Scottish Rites]." "As late as the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than 519 sites in Scotland were listed by the Hospitallers as 'Terrae Templariae' - part, that is, of the self-contained and separately administered Templar patrimony." - Baigent & Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge

"c.1560. When the Knights-Templars were deprived of their patrimonial interest through the instrumentality of their Grand-Master Sir James Sandilands, they drew off in a body, with David Seton, Grand Prior of Scotland, at their head." - A History of the Family of Seton

"At the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, John Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, was killed on the field. When his body was recovered, he was reportedly wearing the Grand Cross of the Order of the Temple - not a recent device supposedly, but one dating from before 1307." Holy Blood Holy Grail quoting from Waite, New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.
 

King David I (1124–1153) established the orders of the
Temple and the Hospital in Scotland but was dissuaded by
his subjects from joining the Second Crusade himself; the
orders were granted property in every burgh in the kingdom
by David’s grandson Malcolm IV (1153–1165). The Templars
came to be organized in two commanderies (preceptories),
at Balantrodoch (mod. Temple) in Midlothian and Maryculter
in Kincardineshire........the Templars were suppressed in 1312 by
the English occupation regime in the course of the general dissolution
of the order and the bulk of their properties handed
over to the Hospitallers.  - The Crusades; An Encyclopaedia