What we now call Belgium saw enthusiastic support for the Knights Templar – though when they fell from grace, the knights were not immune from being put on trial.
Belgium – as we know it today – didn’t exist in the Middle Ages. During the medieval period, it was divided up into the very wealthy County of Flanders; the Marquisate of Namur; the Duchy of Brabant; the County of Hainault; the Duchy of Limburg; the County of Luxembourg; and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. There was a north-south linguistic divide that has persisted in modern Belgium between a Flemish-speaking north and French-speaking south. Flemish is closely related to Dutch.
In 1128, Count William of Flanders donated land to the Knights Templar, followed by the Count of Henegouwen (1139) and the Landgrave of Brabant (1142). These nobles, having benefited from the Templars’ help during the Crusades, expressed their gratitude with land gifts.
The Landgrave of Brabant made a substantial donation of land to the Templars. It consisted of a hundred acres of farmland, marshes and pastures. The knights were often given land that had proved difficult to farm in the belief that they would succeed where others had failed in developing it.
The oldest document mentioning the establishment of the Templar preceptory in Wavre is a papal bull from Pope Lucius III, dating from 1181-1183. When the order was crushed in 1312, Wavre passed into the hands of the Knights Hospitaller.
In October 1307, King Philip IV ordered the arrest of all Knights Templar in France, including those in Flanders, on charges of heresy, blasphemy, and other crimes. The arrests in Flanders were coordinated from Amiens, and despite some resistance from Count Robert of Béthune, the Templars were apprehended. Many Templars in France, including those in Flanders, were subjected to torture to extract confessions of heresy, which was a common tactic during the trials.
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Hello: I saw this on Twitter and as the de Montforts are related to me (my branch and theirs share a descent from a Thurstan de Bastemburgh; we came to England in 1066; out lines re-intergrated through marriage when Simon came to England), have an interest in this period.
John kept his treasures partly with the Templars and when the French arrived (the Dauphin, not the king), we have records of his withdrawing them from all the various places they’d been kept and having them sent to him at Corfe castle, where he was at the time. One of the ways we can verify that John lost in the Wash the three sets of coronation regalia in his possession is that when Henry was enthroned king, it was with a circlet, rather than crown. He therefore probably did not have much to hock.
This dynasty seems to have taken a practical view of their possessions and were, as you say, quite innovative in the manner they raised money. John, at the time he lost his treasures, was on the east coast because as London was closed to him, was using the Hanseatic ports to bring in mercenaries from Germany via Antwerp, as well as collect taxes from the trade of these ports (salt was a major export from the east coast salt pans).
With the family heirlooms lost by John, I doubt Henry had much personal commitment to the few baubles he’d managed to collect.
Very grateful for your contribution here. The point about John losing the Crown Jewels in the Wash is of course very pertinent and that Henry’s regalia would have been much diminished. Worth adding that our image of the ‘Crown Jewels’ is linked to the regalia that emerged in the Restoration after Cromwell and the Victorian period. The collection has probably never been grander than it is today!