A fascinating look at a little-known episode in which the king of Jerusalem came to England on a fundraising expedition in 1223. Like a microcosm of the crusades, it started with high hopes and ended in bitter recriminations.
The military situation in the Holy Land was a slow-motion train wreck. For much of the thirteenth century, and particularly from 1250 onwards, the Franks were little more than bit-part players in a landscape dominated by huge Mamluk armies and the other new entrants in an already dangerous region – the fearsome Mongols.
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Despite this unstoppable strategic shift, however, the British Templars did their best to support the terminally failing (and terminally fractious) Frankish colonies.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other crusader states in the early 13th century – Wikimedia Commons
They did this, as always, in a symbiotic military partnership with the English crown. As this period saw the growing need for men and money to be shifted to the East, so the British Templars played an increasingly desperate role in helping the cause – by continuing to improve financial, logistical and agricultural efficiency in Britain.
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Not surprisingly, the Templars were also at the heart of more general efforts to raise money for the defence of the Holy Land. In June 1222, a Great Council was convened in Westminster to raise taxes for the aid of the Holy Land. All property owners were called upon to contribute. A sliding scale of financial contributions was fixed, ranging from a penny for small freeholders up to 3 marks for an earl.
Specific instructions were issued to ensure that the money raised would be entrusted to the taxpayers’ local Templar house or to other nearby monasteries. The taxes would then be gathered and stored at the New Temple in London by 1 November 1222, before being sent out to Palestine. At around the same time, and not coincidentally, John of Brienne, the King of Jerusalem, came to Britain. He had been fighting on the Fifth Crusade (1217–21) alongside some of the more eminent English crusaders. They had assured him, perhaps over-optimistically, that he would receive a warm and generous welcome in Britain.
Philip d’Aubigny, an English crusader who had been tutor to the young King Henry, wrote back home shortly after the evacuation of Damietta in 1221, saying, ‘I have also to tell you that [John] the lord king of Jerusalem is about to come to your part of the world; therefore, I ask you to provide him with aid in accordance with the promises made to him and to other magnates, for his debts are so great that it is a wonder to describe them.’
Indeed, it seems likely that it was these unspecified promises, made by English crusaders as the wine flowed all too freely around the comradely siege campfires of Egypt, that sparked off John’s interest in coming to England. Drunken conversations and big talk were cheap, but they became the catalyst for the taxation imposed by the Great Council in the summer of 1222.
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In the autumn of 1223, John of Brienne arrived in England. He expected to collect the promised riches and gather military support. He was to be disappointed.
‘The Promises Made to Him’
The English chroniclers put a partisan face on their version of events. One wrote that, when John went home, he was ‘loaded [down] with gold and silver, donated with the greatest largesse by the archbishops, bishops, earls and barons’. But these seem to have been gifts and individual presents – the promised, and very substantial, lump sum did not materialise. John’s trip lasted less than a month. He was unable to get promises of armies to go on crusade. The king returned to France, complaining of the ‘English foxes [vulpines] on the other side of the Channel’.
King John of Jerusalem was bitter, but perhaps unreasonably so. Shortfalls in raising the funds were not the fault of the king or the Templars.
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Inevitably, attempting to raise money through special taxation did not go entirely smoothly. On 12 April 1224, for instance, royal sheriffs were still making efforts to ensure that the local Templars and other monastic orders got the money that was due. It was clear that the New Temple had not received the funds it had been expecting and, at the end of 1224, the king had to issue yet another edict, requiring payments to be made in full by January 1225. Doubtless, as the putative taxpayers of England had hoped, the whole thing eventually petered out.
The Templars could lobby and cajole but, as John of Brienne found out to his chagrin, they were rarely fully in control.
Dr Steve Tibble is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge and London University. He is an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Steve is a leading authority on warfare and violence in the crusading era.
He is a contributor to ‘The Cambridge History of the Crusades’ and ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades’, both forthcoming in 2023. You can learn more about Steve on his personal website, or follow him on Twitter or Instagram.
Further Reading:
La Torre, I. de, ‘The London and Paris Temples: A Comparative Analysis of their Financial Services for the Kings during the Thirteenth Century’, in The Military Orders, vol. 4, ed. J. Upton-Ward, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 121–7
Perry, G., John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237, Cambridge, 2013
Perry, G., ‘A King of Jerusalem in England’, History, 100/5 (343), December 2015, pp. 627–39
Phillips, J., ‘Hugh of Payns and the 1129 Damascus Crusade’, in The Military Orders, vol. 1, ed. M. C. Barber, Aldershot, 1994, pp. 141–62
Tibble, S., Templars – The Knights Who Made Britain, London, 2023
Top Image: The coronation of John and his wife – Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Français 2824 fol. 186v
By Steve Tibble
A fascinating look at a little-known episode in which the king of Jerusalem came to England on a fundraising expedition in 1223. Like a microcosm of the crusades, it started with high hopes and ended in bitter recriminations.
The military situation in the Holy Land was a slow-motion train wreck. For much of the thirteenth century, and particularly from 1250 onwards, the Franks were little more than bit-part players in a landscape dominated by huge Mamluk armies and the other new entrants in an already dangerous region – the fearsome Mongols.
Despite this unstoppable strategic shift, however, the British Templars did their best to support the terminally failing (and terminally fractious) Frankish colonies.
They did this, as always, in a symbiotic military partnership with the English crown. As this period saw the growing need for men and money to be shifted to the East, so the British Templars played an increasingly desperate role in helping the cause – by continuing to improve financial, logistical and agricultural efficiency in Britain.
Not surprisingly, the Templars were also at the heart of more general efforts to raise money for the defence of the Holy Land. In June 1222, a Great Council was convened in Westminster to raise taxes for the aid of the Holy Land. All property owners were called upon to contribute. A sliding scale of financial contributions was fixed, ranging from a penny for small freeholders up to 3 marks for an earl.
Specific instructions were issued to ensure that the money raised would be entrusted to the taxpayers’ local Templar house or to other nearby monasteries. The taxes would then be gathered and stored at the New Temple in London by 1 November 1222, before being sent out to Palestine. At around the same time, and not coincidentally, John of Brienne, the King of Jerusalem, came to Britain. He had been fighting on the Fifth Crusade (1217–21) alongside some of the more eminent English crusaders. They had assured him, perhaps over-optimistically, that he would receive a warm and generous welcome in Britain.
Philip d’Aubigny, an English crusader who had been tutor to the young King Henry, wrote back home shortly after the evacuation of Damietta in 1221, saying, ‘I have also to tell you that [John] the lord king of Jerusalem is about to come to your part of the world; therefore, I ask you to provide him with aid in accordance with the promises made to him and to other magnates, for his debts are so great that it is a wonder to describe them.’
Indeed, it seems likely that it was these unspecified promises, made by English crusaders as the wine flowed all too freely around the comradely siege campfires of Egypt, that sparked off John’s interest in coming to England. Drunken conversations and big talk were cheap, but they became the catalyst for the taxation imposed by the Great Council in the summer of 1222.
In the autumn of 1223, John of Brienne arrived in England. He expected to collect the promised riches and gather military support. He was to be disappointed.
‘The Promises Made to Him’
The English chroniclers put a partisan face on their version of events. One wrote that, when John went home, he was ‘loaded [down] with gold and silver, donated with the greatest largesse by the archbishops, bishops, earls and barons’. But these seem to have been gifts and individual presents – the promised, and very substantial, lump sum did not materialise. John’s trip lasted less than a month. He was unable to get promises of armies to go on crusade. The king returned to France, complaining of the ‘English foxes [vulpines] on the other side of the Channel’.
King John of Jerusalem was bitter, but perhaps unreasonably so. Shortfalls in raising the funds were not the fault of the king or the Templars.
Inevitably, attempting to raise money through special taxation did not go entirely smoothly. On 12 April 1224, for instance, royal sheriffs were still making efforts to ensure that the local Templars and other monastic orders got the money that was due. It was clear that the New Temple had not received the funds it had been expecting and, at the end of 1224, the king had to issue yet another edict, requiring payments to be made in full by January 1225. Doubtless, as the putative taxpayers of England had hoped, the whole thing eventually petered out.
The Templars could lobby and cajole but, as John of Brienne found out to his chagrin, they were rarely fully in control.
You can buy Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain from
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Yale University Press
Dr Steve Tibble is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge and London University. He is an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Steve is a leading authority on warfare and violence in the crusading era.
His Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain (Yale) is due out in September 2023, and his two most recent books (‘The Crusader Armies’, Yale 2018, and ‘The Crusader Strategy’, Yale 2020) were received to critical acclaim. The latter was short-listed for the Duke of Wellington’s military history award, 2021.
He is a contributor to ‘The Cambridge History of the Crusades’ and ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades’, both forthcoming in 2023. You can learn more about Steve on his personal website, or follow him on Twitter or Instagram.
Further Reading:
La Torre, I. de, ‘The London and Paris Temples: A Comparative Analysis of their Financial Services for the Kings during the Thirteenth Century’, in The Military Orders, vol. 4, ed. J. Upton-Ward, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 121–7
Perry, G., John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237, Cambridge, 2013
Perry, G., ‘A King of Jerusalem in England’, History, 100/5 (343), December 2015, pp. 627–39
Phillips, J., ‘Hugh of Payns and the 1129 Damascus Crusade’, in The Military Orders, vol. 1, ed. M. C. Barber, Aldershot, 1994, pp. 141–62
Tibble, S., Templars – The Knights Who Made Britain, London, 2023
Top Image: The coronation of John and his wife – Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Français 2824 fol. 186v
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