medieval-atlas/social-and-cultural/436

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Military orders in Scotland Writing about 1185, William ofTyre commented about the Knights Templars: 'There is not a province of the Christian world which has not granted a portion of its wealth to these brothers; and they may now be said to have wealth like the opulence of kings'. Together with their rivals the Knights Hospitallers they began to accumulate lands in Scotland from the first half of the twelfth century, which consisted of substantial baronies such as Temple and Torphichen, and also a large number of tiny tenements or 'templelands' scattered up and down the country. King Malcolm IV ( 1153-65) is said to have granted a toft in every royal burgh to the Hospitallers and another to the Templars, but the templelands are by no means restricted to the burghs. They are found in all parts of the country except in the Northern and Western Isles, Caithness and Sutherland, Wester Ross, western Inverness-shire, Argyll and Bute. The Templars in Scotland had been suppressed in 1312 following the general suppression of the order throughout Europe, and their propeny passed to the Hospitallers between then and the end of Roben l's reign (1306-29). It is not always easy to know Number of Templelands none 41-60 1-20 61 -80 ::::::::::: 21-40 81-100 Temple lands, by county what lands in Lindsay's rental had previously belonged to the Templars and what had belonged to the Hospitallers. In the sixteenth century the most dense concentrations of templelands are in Midlothian and West Lothian, Ayrshire, Fife and Angus, with areas of secondary density in Aberdeenshire, Penhshire, Dumbarton and Lennox, Lanarkshire and Galloway. More thinly spread are Dumfriesshire, Berwickshire, Meams, the Border counties, and the coastal strip round the Moray Firth. In East Lothian, Peebles and probably also Renfrewshire the returns in the rental appear to be incomplete and the number of templelands cannot now be determined. All in all , Lindsay's rental provides a fascinating picture of the estate management of a prosperous institution, partly religious but partly increasingly secularised, in the first half of the sixteenth century, at a time when religious and economic change was affecting the country. The distribution of the little temple lands, taken together with that of the baronies, lands 'by thir baronys' and churches, shows the areas in which the work of the Military Orders during the Crusades had been most appreciated. ~Lovat .r

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