302 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
mounted to about seven hundred soon afterwards. The
Templars had not lost their fear of the king's myrmidons,
but they put their trust in the representatives of the Pope to
save them from Philip's vengeance. Hope ran high in the
prisons and most of the prisoners revoked their confessions.
Two and a half years of captivity in filthy cells where they
were starved and tortured had not completely cowed them.
It had been dinned into their ears that the Pope was con-
vinced of their guilt, but they had never quite believed that
Clement would desert them. Now, they repeated, the Pope
had intervened on their behalf and the Church would not
tyrannise over those who had served it so faithfully.
Each Templar was in turn brought before the commission
and asked whether he wished to defend the Order, and, if
he replied in the affirmative, was joined as a party to the
process. In this preliminary examination, the brethren were
to confine themselves to expressing their willingness or other-
wise as defenders, but some of them could not restrain them-
selves and shouted out that they would never admit the
charges, that they would protect the Order till death, that
they regretted nothing except the lies they had told, and so on.
One prisoner said he had been tortured by fire until the
bones fell from his feet 5 and he dramatically produced the
bones before the astonished court. Another said that twenty-
five Templars had died in his prison, mostly under torture.
A third said that for twelve weeks he had been allowed only
bread and water. A brother produced a letter purporting
to be from Philip de Vohet, one of the officers appointed by
the commission to take charge of the prisoners* The Pope,
read the letter, had decided that all Templars who withdrew
their confessions of guilt should be put to death. De Vohet
was called before the commission and said that he did not
think he had seen the letter. When the commissioners
pointed out that it bore his seal, he replied that a cleric some-
times had charge of the seal* There were many complaints,