Tag: Magna Carta

Do the Templars control the world today?

Posted on by Tony McMahon

I meet and talk to people in very different situations who are convinced that the Knights Templar in some guise or other control the world. How do they come to this view?

A few months ago, I was talking to a young British Muslim and mentioned this blog. “Well, of course, they totally run the world, right?” I thought he was joking. He was university educated, very bright and well read. But no. He meant it. 100%.

Similarly, I’ve come across people who argue that Pope Francis, as a Jesuit, must be part of a Templar plot because the Jesuits are really secret Templars.

Let me run through some of the recent theories I’ve discovered online about Templars running the world:

Templars control us from Switzerland

  • Haven’t you ever noticed how similar the Swiss and Templar flags are?
  • Swiss neutrality is not a result of loving peace but because they are too busy orchestrating wars through which the Templars control us
  • Templars finance wars around the globe
  • The reason Swiss banking is secret is to hide the Templars controlling it

Templars control us from London

  • The US is still controlled from London
  • Behind the British monarchy and the City of London is the “Crown”, the Crown Templar
  • It is still based at the Temple church in the heart of London
  • That church is based in London’s legal district where the Templars have determined the Common Law system that governs the UK and US
  • King John and Magna Carta cemented this arrangement in place back in 1215

The Holy Grail has given them incredible power

  • Digging beneath the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Knights Templar found the Holy Grail and knowledge that gave them power over the church
  • This power ultimately posed such a grave threat to medieval Europe that kings and popes united to overthrow them
  • But they continue to exercise power as they still possess the Grail
  • Successive attempts to wrest the Grail from their control by the church and Freemasons have failed

The Freemasons possess Templar knowledge

  • Hiram, king of Tyre, built Solomon’s Temple in ancient times but was murdered when he refused to divulge Masonic secrets
  • The Templars discovered that knowledge when they occupied Solomon’s Temple
  • They transmitted that knowledge to the Freemasons who emerged openly in the 18th century

Templars and the Illuminati – are the same thing

  • It’s a simple deductive syllogism that goes like this…
  • The Illuminati run the world
  • The Templars are the Illuminati
  • Therefore, the Templars run the world

Templars are trying to take over all faiths

  • The Templars were part of a centuries old conspiracy to dominate the world
  • They came from elite aristocratic families
  • They deliberately questioned the divinity of Christ to more easily merge Christianity with Islam and Judaism
  • Vatican Two in the 1960s was a continuation of that plot
  • The Jesuits are an arm of the Templars and Pope Francis is acting under their orders

The Templars are trying to set up a One World Government

  • And here is a film on that theory
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Magna Carta – an original version on display!

Posted on by Tony McMahon

Magna CartaIt’s 800 years since King John was forced to sign Magna Carta by the barons of England. The British Library has an exhibition on until September where you can see an original version of Magna Carta and learn about the surrounding history. I thoroughly recommend.

As I’ve blogged previously, King John was no enemy of the Knights Templar. Quite the contrary. He regarded the Templar preceptories as safe bolt-holes to head for when he was in trouble – which was quite often. This of course contradicts other fictional accounts of the king’s relations with the Templars – in particular the glaringly inaccurate movie Ironclad.

Reading about King John and the events leading up to his capitulation to the barons, you get the image of a man running between the Tower of London to the east of the capital and then over to the Templars in Holborn, to the west. While with the Templars he was advised by them on how to handle a precarious situation having fallen out with both the English aristocracy and the pope, who had excommunicated the hapless monarch.

Magna CartaIn 1213, King John had his excommunication limited in return for a gold Mark – which he borrowed from the Templars. In early 1215, his fraught negotiations with the barons were largely conducted from the Temple in London. He spent Easter there and then in May, granted the City of London the right to freely elect its own mayor. Unfortunately, any goodwill this may have accrued from the citizenry was cancelled out when the barons seized the city.

In June, he agreed to sign Magna Carta. Just to look a bit grander for the occasion, he borrowed the imperial regalia of this grandmother the Empress Matilda – which the Templars had under lock and key in the preceptory. With Brother Aymeric, the English grand master of the Templars, King John then went and signed the historic document at Runnymede.

 

Magna Carta – a feminist charter?

Posted on by Tony McMahon

Screen Shot 2017-09-23 at 00.38.31There’s been plenty of talk in the UK about the 799th anniversary of Magna Carta this month – with the 800th anniversary looming next year. Politicians have been banging on about the need to use this ancient document to re-instil “British values” in our multicultural land.  The thing is – if any of these parliamentarians actually took the trouble to read the document they claim to know so much about (prime minister David Cameron famously couldn’t translate the latin when asked to do so on the Letterman show), they’d find some very surprising things.

For example (with supporting quotes):

MAGNA CARTA IS FOR FEMINISTS

(7) At her husband’s death, a widow may have her marriage portion and inheritance at once and without trouble. She shall pay nothing for her dower, marriage portion, or any inheritance that she and her husband held jointly on the day of his death. She may remain in her husband’s house for forty days after his death, and within this period her dower shall be assigned to her.

(8) No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she wishes to remain without a husband. But she must give security that she will not marry without royal consent, if she holds her lands of the Crown, or without the consent of whatever other lord she may hold them of.

FOREIGNERS WITH MONEY CAN COME AND GO AS THEY PLEASE

(41) All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs.

THE WELSH CAN RULE THEMSELVES

(56) If we have deprived or dispossessed any Welshmen of lands, liberties, or anything else in England or in Wales, without the lawful judgement of their equals, these are at once to be returned to them. A dispute on this point shall be determined in the Marches by the judgement of equals. English law shall apply to holdings of land in England, Welsh law to those in Wales, and the law of the Marches to those in the Marches. The Welsh shall treat us and ours in the same way.

BEING IMPRISONED WITHOUT TRIAL FOR ANY PERIOD IS A NON-STARTER

(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.

+ (39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

HS2 WOULD NEVER HAVE GOT BUILT

(23) No town or person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to do so.

UK WOULD EITHER HAVE TO GO METRIC OR IMPERIAL – BUT NOT BOTH AT THE SAME TIME

(35) There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard width of dyed cloth, russett, and haberject, namely two ells within the selvedges. Weights are to be standardised similarly.

PUNISHMENT SHOULD FIT THE CRIME – AND THE OFFENDER

(20) For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a husbandman the implements of his husbandry, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court. None of these fines shall be imposed except by the assessment on oath of reputable men of the neighbourhood.

I’m sure these aren’t the British values that prime minister David Cameron intended!

The Templars and Magna Carta

Posted on by Tony McMahon

Screen Shot 2017-09-23 at 00.38.31Next year marks the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta by King John – one of the least liked monarchs of the Plantagenet dynasty.  What is often unappreciated is the role that the Knights Templar played in the background to this momentous occasion.

John was forced by the barons to agree not to use royal powers in an arbitrary manner.  Magna Carta also covered a whole range of distinctly medieval issues that have long become irrelevant but this is the clause – buried quite deep in the charter at the time – that excited lovers of liberty in subsequent centuries.

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

Other more arcane clauses related to a proper system of weights and measures for ale, cloth and corn (no, really!) and the release of hostages John had taken from the Welsh and Scottish royal families.

There wasn’t actually a fully written charter in front of John on the day he was surrounded by angry barons – it was written up afterwards in full by court scribes and then circulated.  Four copies exist – two in the British Library in London and one in Salisbury and another in Lincoln.

Magna Carta wasn’t signed as such by King John – but acknowledged with his wax seal…nothing unusual in that.  He may or may not have been literate though John did boast to owning a big library, which suggests he may have had some reading and writing ability. It seems astonishing to us now but illiteracy was widespread beyond the clergy and even extended into the upper reaches of society.  Though the notion that everybody outside of the church was illiterate before the Reformation is now not accepted as having been the case.

The role of the Knights Templar is shadowy.  We know that John stayed with the Templars the night before he had to place himself in front of the barons to agree Magna Carta.  Brother Aymeric accompanied John to Runnymede – where the charter was assented to – in his role as Grand Master of the Templars in England.  Contrary to the enjoyable but historically inaccurate tosh in the movie Ironclad – the Templars were not opposed to John.  They were, after all, his bankers, advisers and played a lead role in the crusades in the Holy Land.

John made a series of gifts to the Templars during his reign and they in turn paid a thousand pounds – then a vast sum – for the confirmation of their privileges in the first year of his reign.  John bestowed on the Templars the Isle of Lundy and manors at Huntspill, Harewood, Radenach and Northampton.  Hardly the act of a king on bad terms!

As we near the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, I’ll share more insights with you – and happy to hear your views of this seminal historical event.  Here we have some glorious historical inaccuracy in Ironclad:

A more considered view of Magna Carta

 

 

Top baddies of the Middle Ages!

Posted on by Tony McMahon

 

 

Here they are – the TOP baddies of the Middle Ages!

170px-John_of_England_(John_Lackland)KING JOHN OF ENGLAND

  • Took on the barons and lost, then made to sign Magna Carta
  • Excommunicated by the Pope
  • Mislaid the crown jewels in a marshy swamp
  • Fled in the face of an invasion of England by the King of France

 

200px-Philippe_IV_Le_BelPHILIP THE FAIR OF FRANCE

  • Never seemed to have enough money
  • So shook down the church and France’s Jewish population
  • Then saw how much wealth the Templars when he fled to their Paris headquarters during a riot against his proposed currency devaluation
  • Issued secret orders to arrest all Knights Templar on trumped up charges of sodomy and heresy then attempted to seize the wealth he’d seen

Honorius3POPE HONORIUS III

  • The Inquisition really got going with Honorius
  • He sanctioned the new Dominican order to go heretic hunting
  • Wrote a very odd book called the Grimoire of Honorius with helpful tips on how to summon up demons in order to control them and how human sacrifice could be used to root out sorcerers

Screen Shot 2017-10-10 at 22.44.24ENRICO DANDOLO

  • The Doge of Venice who funded the Fourth Crusade only so he could direct it against another Christian state instead of the Muslims
  • Though blind and very old, he led the crusaders against the Byzantine empire
  • Constantinople, the Christian jewel of the east, was comprehensively smashed up by the Venetians and their allies – and never really recovered until conquered by Muslim forces 250 years later

Death_of_andronic_IANDRONIKOS I KOMNENOS

  • A Byzantine emperor who ruled using terror between 1183 and 1185
  • His own people could take it no longer, rose up and overthrew him
  • A mob in Constantinople tied him to a post and beat him for three days
  • Then they cut off his right hand, pulled out his teeth, hair and eyes and then poured boiling water over his head

Frederick_II_and_eagleFREDERICK II – HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR

  • A very medieval approach to science, this absolute ruler conducted experiments on living people
  • This included imprisoning somebody in a cask with a hole to see if their would escaped from that opening at the point of death
  • Feeding two prisoners and then sending one out to hunt and the other to bed. Then disembowelling them to see which had digested his food better
  • Raising two children without any human interaction to see which language they ended up speaking

 

 

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“Good” King Richard? Re-appraising the Lionheart

Posted on by Tony McMahon
Richard the Lionheart, , being anointed during...
Richard the Lionheart being anointed during his coronation 

We all know from the story of Robin Hood that Richard the Lionheart – the first king of England called Richard – was a thoroughly good egg who went off to fight the wicked Saracens in the Holy Land.  The moment he was out of his country, the kingdom of England, his wicked brother John would seize power and begin a reign of tyranny.  Then Richard would have to come back – three lions emblazoned on his tunic – and put everything right again.

Hmmm. Is there any truth in this at all? Let’s go through a little list:

1) Richard was more a Coeur de Lion than a Lionheart – he was thoroughly French in background and outlook.  His ancestry was in the county of Anjou and from his father he inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine and was also Duke of Normandy. Together, these domains were bigger than the kingdom of France – of which they are now a part.  And more often than not, the ‘Angevin’ monarchs of England were more powerful than the kings of France.  For Richard, Aquitaine was arguably more important than England – he certainly spent more time there – even though he was a mere Duke in Aquitaine compared to a King in England.

2) Richard’s coronation in England was marred by a massacre of the Jewish population – hardly an auspicious start to a reign.  The Jews had previously enjoyed the protection of the Norman kings but clearly no longer.  After being crowned king of England, Richard spent about three months in his new kingdom. And it wasn’t for love of the place.  His energies were entirely devoted to raising money by selling as much of the kingdom off as he could.  Richard even boasted that he would sell London if he could find a buyer. The reason for this fire sale of bishoprics and castles was to raise money to go on crusade – which is all he really wanted to do.

3) Richard was a crushing tax gatherer. Poor king John gets roundly blamed for the crisis that led up to Magna Carta but it’s actually Richard who imposed the most eye watering levels of taxation to raise money for his crusading activity.  If he’d lived long enough – he’d have probably faced a baronial revolt and not his hapless brother.

4) Once he got on crusade, was Richard all about chivalry? Certainly not. When it came to the Muslim Saracens, this king was super-bloodthirsty. In one sitting, he watched the execution – beheading to be precise – of an estimated 3,000 Saracen prisoners.

Here is a description of that massacre from the time: “They numbered more than three thousand and were all bound with ropes. The Franks then flung themselves upon them all at once and massacred them with sword and lance in cold blood. Our advanced guard had already told the Sultan of the enemy’s movements and he sent it some reinforcements, but only after the massacre. The Musulmans, seeing what was being done to the prisoners, rushed against the Franks and in the combat, which lasted till nightfall, several were slain and wounded on either side. On the morrow morning our people gathered at the spot and found the Musulmans stretched out upon the ground as martyrs for the faith. They even recognised some of the dead, and the sight was a great affliction to them. The enemy had only spared the prisoners of note and such as were strong enough to work.”

5) On his way back from crusade, Richard got himself captured by a political rival – the Duke of Austria – who demanded the astonishingly enormous sum of 150,000 Marks if anybody wanted to see him free again.  England was squeezed to pay the ransom.

Once free, Richard decided to go and take out his anger against the French – who had tried to keep him imprisoned. He embarked on a murderous five year campaign of town destroying and village burning paid for by…..the English.  So exacting was this new round of taxes that a man called “William the Beard” led the citizens of London in open revolt.  William was caught and hung at Tyburn by a chain.  Clearly William was a popular figure because people in London touched the chain for years after to effect cures for various ailments.

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King John and the Templar master

Posted on by Tony McMahon
English: John of England signs Magna Carta. Im...
English: John of England signs Magna Carta. Image from Cassell’s History of England – Century Edition – published circa 1902 Scan by Tagishsimon, 23rd June 2004 Português: João Sem Terra Assina a Carta Magna. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s an interesting fact that when King John was first presented with the demands of the barons, who were forcing Magna Carta (the great charter) on to him, he was staying at the New Temple in London with Brother Aymeric (sometimes spelt Elmeric), master of the Order in England.  This was rather like lodging with your bank manager who also happened to enjoy a papal seal of approval and have a handy stock of weapons and well trained soldiers.

The Templars were very much John’s bankers, particularly after he was declared excommunicate by Pope Innocent III.   John seems to have both deposited and taken out multi-thousand ‘mark’ amounts to protect his wealth and to use it to hire troops.  Aymeric also helped John out with his papal problems – particularly important as Innocent III was beyond doubt the most powerful pope in history.

The Templars were enthusiastic supporters of the Plantagenat kings and did rather well out of them.  Henry II was a keen benefactor and John gave them the island of Lundy, bits of Northampton and Cameley amongst other bequests.  For this, he got their support in his bust up with the aristocracy.

Aymeric St Maur may have been related to Milo St Maur, one of the rebel barons.  Entirely plausible as they were all from the same Norman knightly class.  It’s also claimed that the St Maur family were ancestors of the Seymours from whom Jane Seymour emerged, third wife of Henry VIII – two hundred years after the crushing of the Templar Order.

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