THE TEMPLARS AND THE INQUISITORS 253
were led to believe that the prisoners had been handed over
to the Inquisition. Actually, however, the seneschals and
other royal agents were ordered by Philip to conduct the
primary examination of the Templars themselves, and only
afterwards to hand them over to the Inquisition. William
Imbert, the chief of the Inquisition in France, was also the
king's confessor and one of Philip's most servile tools.
Before the arrest of the Templars, William had sent instruc-
tions to the Dominicans who served the Inquisition through-
out France. The Inquisitors had shown themselves pitiless
in their examinations of other prisoners, but William of Paris
thought it necessary to warn them to adopt special measures
with the Templars. Every kind of torture was to be
employed unsparingly by the most expert torturers of the
day to extract confessions from prisoners who had previously
been ill-treated by the royal officers.
Copies of the confessions thus obtained were given to the
Franciscans. Throughout the kingdom they carried the tale
of terrible crimes committed by the Templars, giving
particulars of what they called the proven enormities and
hinting at others too shameful to mention. They had no
opposition. The Templars were in prison dungeons, cut off
from the world, and anyone who dared to say a word in their
defence drew down upon himself the wrath of the king's men.
Philip had not condemned the Order, the friars insisted, nor
would he attempt to judge it, for he had too much respect for
the rights of the Church to interfere with a religious institu-
tion. The friars declared that Philip had done a noble work
for Christendom in seizing the Templars and praised him for
his zeal in protecting the purity of the faith. By proclama-
tions, by public addresses, and by a campaign of whispers the
people were assured of the guilt of the brethren, and a case
was skilfully manufactured against men who had been
stripped of all their authority and divested of their lands and
possessions and everything on which they had hitherto relied.