Virtually all goldsmiths from the Middle Ages onward were either Jews or Moors.

Indeed, the surname Goldsmith or Goldschmidt almost always belonged to a person of

Jewish ancestry. In Victorian England, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was the first Jew to receive

a hereditary title in 1841; he was made a baronet. When we examine the list of Scottish

goldsmiths (list 12) we are struck by the number that are prima facie of Jewish origin:

Aitken (“from Aix”), Aldcorne, Annand, Argo, Arnot, Bannerman, Bogie (Ottoman Turk-

ish), Burrell, Davidson, Dalzell, Falconer, Gillett, Green, Hector, Houre, Izat, Low, Moss-

man, Orrock, Pollock, Symonds, Vogil (“bird” in Yiddish), and Zieglar (“sailor” in

Yiddish), among many others. 12 We also see surnames from several of the clans previ-

ously identified as Jewish in ancestry: Campbell, Christie, Douglas, Gardyne, Gordon,

Leslie, and Stewart. We believe that members of these clans either possessed goldsmithing

skills when they first migrated from France and Flanders, or they “adopted-in” persons

having these skills, who then took the clan surname.

 

 

Clock- and Watchmakers 1576-1800;

 

Glassmakers and Printers

 

Clock- and watchmaking were, like goldsmithing, virtually a monopoly exercised

by Jews and Moors, who closely guarded their valuable trade secrets. Surnames in this

industry in Scotland (list 13) prove also to suggest a Sephardic or French Jewish back-

ground: Adams, Alexander, Corrie, Currie, Davidson, Gardiner, Given, Jamieson, Low,

Muir, Orr, Saveli, Seiffert, Sim and Yuill. Early glassmakers (list 14) show the same pat-

tern: Davidson, Dow, Barrat, Wothersponn, Rowan, Gardner and Waddell.

 

Although printing was developed in Europe only in the latter half of the 1400s and

did not spread to many regions until the 1500s, by 1507 King James of Scotland had set

up Andro Myllar and Walter Chepman as printers in Edinburgh. In 1520 Thomas David-

son (from Aberdeen) set up a second printing press in Edinburgh. We believe that all

three men were of Jewish descent.

 

Trade Incorporation Records: St. Andrews,

 

Kircaldy, Dunfermline, Fife

 

List 15 shows the names and dates of persons granted trade incorporation permits

in central Scotland. There are several Jewish (and Moorish) names: Alison, Boyack, Fer-

rier, Leuchars, Syme, Annal, Balmanno, Corsar, Cowan, Norrie, Patie, Sabez, Beaucher,

Deas, Davidson, Bruce, Coventrie, Nobel, Balcase, Forbes, Muir and Rennie.

 

Apprenticeships and Trade Incorporation Records: Fife

 

Fife is in east central Scotland, so we are moving toward Aberdeen a bit here, yet

we still find much the same pattern. Lists 16 and 17 document the surnames of some of

the figures to whom trade incorporation and apprenticeship permits were issued. These

include Arnot, Lessels, Davidson, Eizatt, Flukour, Simers, Martyne, Angell, Porteous,

Douglas, Annan, Bone, Hannah, Riddell, Macara, Balmanno, Pigot, Low, Yule, Salmond

and Scobie. Thus, we see that a relatively common set of French and Sephardic surnames

was found across central Scotland.

 

 

Western Scotland Seamen

 

Another valuable skill that the French and Spanish Jews brought to Scotland was

their navigational and sailing acumen. From the Clyde River near Glasgow, Scottish

vessels traded with Mediterranean ports, the Caribbean, and the American colonies. A

partial listing of Scottish sailors from 1600 to 1800 (list 18) shows many names recogniz-

able as stemming from French, Spanish, Jewish, Moorish, Hebrew or Arabic: Alexander,

Allason, Bisset, Davidson, Dougall, Gemmell, Hammill, Landells, Moor, Pollock, Paltoun,

Yoole, Sleiman, Spainzea, Caldwell, Cowan, Glaister (glazier), Gordon, Jargon, Lyon,

Nimmo, Sheron (Hebrew: Sharon), Sabaston (Sebastian) and Ure (gold).

 

 

Glasgow

 

Glasgow was founded as early as the sixth century and became a royal burgh in the

twelfth century under King David I. The University of Glasgow was chartered in 1451 as

the fourth oldest university in the British Isles and counts among its intellectual lumi-

naries the economist Adam Smith, novelist-physician Tobias Smollett, and chemist Joseph

Black. Our focus in Glasgow is upon the small set of merchant families who, beginning

in the mid-1600s, made vast fortunes in international trade and banking. In particular,

they traded with the southeastern American colonies, purchasing tobacco, brokering it

to France and Holland, and setting up a series of Tidewater and frontier stores that

reached from Maryland to Florida.

 

Around Glasgow, the merchant shipping trade was an oligopoly highly concen-

trated (50 percent-80 percent) in the hands of a few families. Among these were the

Cunninghames, Glassfords, Dunlops, Oswalds, Donalds, Murdochs, Ritchies, Bogles

(Turkish), Speirs, Nisbets and Riddells. As Devine (1975) notes in his detailed work

The Tobacco Lords, these men were all the sons of Glasgow merchants, not its landed

gentry. Most had been sent by their families to live and work for some period of time

in the Colonies in order to establish business ties there. In due course, they incorporated

themselves into partnerships that in turn formed.networks, trading in wine from Lis-

bon and Madeira, rice and flaxseed from South Carolina, wheat, fish, and tobacco

from Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, and later sugar and cotton from the

Caribbean.

 

To establish such a trading empire required not only large sources of capital, but

also contacts who would honor letters of credit, insurance notes, and customs declara-

tions in Portugal, Spain, the Caribbean and Dutch, Danish, French and British colonies,

as well as Scotland. Not all of this activity was above board or even legal. The Board of

Trade and officially enfranchised merchants in London and Liverpool alternately turned

a blind eye on and descried such hugely profitable operations, especially the repeated

undercutting of prices to captive planters and the winning by the Bogle Company of the

large annual French state contract for tobacco at Le Havre. The canny Scots traders obvi-

ously drew on the Auld Alliance with France, but we feel confident that another likely

reason for the success of such a network were the blood ties, and shared Jewish ethnic-

ity, of the principles in these Glasgow firms.

 

This same set of merchant partners formed the Glasgow Arms and Ship Bank in the

early 1750s, and around a decade later the Scottish Thistle Bank. In this way, their ven-

tures could be more firmly capitalized and protected from competition. The banks per-

mitted the tobacco lords of the Clyde to loan out money, as well. One bank owner, George

 

 

7. To Scotland’s Stirling, Ayr, and Glasgow

 

 

103

 

 

Boyle, extended loans to John Shaw, Lord Cathcart, John Napier and Lady Pollock, among

others (Devine 1975).

 

As was typical of both French and Spanish Jewish families, marriages were almost

exclusively endogamous; they occurred only between group members. In-marriage helped

to consolidate capital, preserve political power, and maintain cultural ties and identity.

By the mid-1700s, most of these merchant families had acquired enough money to buy

large tracts of land in the surrounding countryside. Once they became landowners, they

were able to select their own church ministers and schoolteachers. This likely proved very

useful in perpetuating their Crypto-Judaic heritage, as ministers and teachers could be

chosen who were of Jewish descent or sympathy.

 

Once the American Revolution began, the tobacco trade was disrupted. The Glaswe-

gian merchants hence began to turn to manufacturing. One group, consisting of Andrew

Buchanan, William French, John Campbell and George Coats, organized and operated

several successful mining ventures, including coal, iron ore and pottery clay — all three

of which had been originally perfected by Sephardic Jews and Moors in Muslim Spain.

This same group, now including James Milliken, later ventured successfully into leather

tanning and sugar refining. Apparently, no great efforts were made to hide their religious

identity: a town in the countryside near some of the manufactories was named Succoth —

a major Jewish holiday. This town is the ancestral home of the Campbells of Argyll. A

portrait of Archibald Campbell, Duke of Argyll, is shown in chapter 1. Also known as

the Feast of the Tabernacles, Succoth celebrates the Jews’ wandering in the desert; it was

the perfect emblem for a migratory waystation a great distance from Israel.

 

An excerpt from Devine (p. 37) below describes the complexity of these financial

partnerships:

 

Of the three malleable ironworks in eighteenth century Scotland, the two situated in the

Glasgow area... were financed by tobacco merchants. The first of these was founded in 1734

when a number of traders erected a slitting mill on the banks of the River Kelvin to manu-

facture nails; this early venture subsequently developed into a major concern producing

“nails, adzes, axes, hoes, spades, shovels, chisels, hammers, bellows and anvils” for the colo-

nial market. Thirty-five years after the Smithfield Company was established, Islay Campbell

of Succoth, Advocate and M.P. for Glasgow Burghs, feued parts of the lands of Dalnottar to

three wealthy merchants, the brothers Peter and George Murdoch and William Cunning-

hame, all of whom were already fellow partners in a Virginia firm.... Throughout its forty-

four years of existence until 1813 it was sold to William Dunn, a leading cottonmaster, the

Dalnottar Co. was financed by a series of tobacco merchants....

 

In 1781, the Muirkirk 13 Iron Co. was set up by the merchants who controlled Smithfield

and Dalnottar, together with the partners of Cramond Iron Co. in order to maintain a safe

supply of cheap bar-iron at a time when Swedish and Russian prices were rising. It was by a

similar process of integration that in the last thirty years of the eighteenth century a tight-

knit group of tobacco importers obtained control of almost the entire West of Scotland glass

industry and a sizeable proportion of its coal extraction developments.

 

All of this oligopolistic activity was supported in part by a triangle trade network

through the heavily Sephardic Caribbean:

 

The West Indies trade was a necessary corollary to the tobacco trade. Most Glasgow houses

had correspondents there who supplied sugar, rum and molasses for their North American

outlets. Sometimes vessels outward bound from the Clyde were directed firstly to the

 

 

104

 

 

When Scotland Was Jewish

 

 

Caribbean before proceeding to the tobacco colonies; alternatively merchantmen awaiting a

cargo of tobacco were occasionally dispatched to the West Indies to load store provisions....

As planters often paid for their imported articles in wheat and corn, the storekeepers found

the West Indies market a profitable outlet for grain. For instance, Neil Jamieson, the chief

colonial representative of John Glassford and co., carried on an extensive trade with the

Caribbean, particularly Antigua, and with the Azores and the Mediterranean, dealing in pro-

visions, lumber and wine. He also financed shipbuilding and owned coastal shipping and

was involved in the salt trade from Bordeaux to Lewiston and in the slave trade to the Car-

olinas [p. 62],

 

Just as remarkable was the fact that the primary market for all the Sephardic Scot-

tish tobacco was none other than their original homeland, France. This lucrative market

and their own financial contacts provided the Scottish Jewish tobacco lords not only with

wealth, but also stability over an extended period of time.

 

Undoubtedly a major element in providing this was the bulk sales to the French Farmers

General, the most important single purchasers in the trade.... Significantly, in the credit crisis

of 1772, Sir Robert Herries, the French buyer “was received with open arms” by the great

Clyde traders... [and] in 1762, when it was difficult to procure credit and sales were sluggish,

William Alexander and Sons, acting for the French, advanced cash for customs duties to

Lawson, Semple and Co....

 

Perhaps the most valuable asset possessed by the eighteenth century businessman was not

his capital, but rather his reputation and his connexions. The prestige and influence of the

well-known families in the Glasgow tobacco trade meant that they... had little difficulty in

securing credit from contacts in other parts of the United Kingdom or Europe. One of the

Bogles borrowed freely in London in the 1720’s because his father’s credit “was as good as

ever” and consequently his son “can never want money when you think to borrow it and that

without paying Interest on it.” James Lawson secured sums of varying amounts from fellow

merchants in Bristol, Liverpool and London by drawing bills for between six and twelve

months [p. 96].

 

List 19 (see end of chapter) and the three tables show business dealings and genealo-

gies for the Glasgow merchants.

 

 

A Glasgow House of Worship: Ramshorn Kirk

 

Among Jews, the ram’s horn or shofar has a special significance. It is used to rally the

people, call them to worship, and remind them of who they are and who their God is. It

is in perfect keeping with these traditions that a Jewish house of worship would be named

for the ram’s horn. Ramshorn Kirk (church) on Ingram Street in the old merchant city of

Glasgow represents just such a Crypto-Jewish meeting house. First established in 1720, it

was the place of worship for the merchants of the city. Its pastors were drawn from among

their own kind, and members of the congregation lie buried around its exterior yard.

 

We took photos of the Ramshorn Kirk during the summer of 2002. The original

building was replaced by a new structure in 1828, most unfortunately, and was heavily

rebuilt after the dying out of its congregants and eventual acquisition by the university,

but even the new stained glass windows are primarily of Old Testament scenes; Abra-

ham and Isaac, Jeremiah, David and Solomon.

 

However, it is the cemetery that is most remarkable: as the photographs show, it is

unlike most cemeteries the reader has probably encountered: there are no upright head-

stones (a Christian custom), no crosses of any kind, no citations from the New Testa-

ment, and no invocations of Jesus. Instead we see rows and walls of flat tablets stating

austerely the names and occupations of the deceased. Significantly, the only images used

Ramshorn Kirk was rebuilt in the 1800s, but stained glass windows still show primarily Old Testa-

ment scenes. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

The Ramshorn Kirk cemetery is remarkable; it contains only flat Judaic-style grave markers. There

are no Christian symbols. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

on any of the markers are the Book of Life and the Tree of Life, both Hebrew insignia.

The names of those interred in the Ramshorn Kirk grounds overlap with those mentioned

above, with the addition of explicitly Jewish surnames like Pirie and Davidson.

 

 

And Now to Stirling

 

The town of Stirling was ruled by the Alexander family, which we have argued to be

of Jewish ancestry. On a trip in the summer of 2002 we visited Stirling town and Stirling

Castle and made two notable discoveries. The first was Cowane’s Hospital, founded in

1637 with money left by the Stirling merchant and guild dean John Cowane. As discussed

in chapter 2, the name Cowane is analogous to Kohane, the surname carried by mem-

bers of the Jewish priestly caste traced to Aaron, brother of Moses. Very probably Mr.

Cowane was a Kohane. Second, the hospital was actually used as a charity home for indi-

gent guild members, providing them with free room and board. Such an endowment was

not common in England at the time, but was de rigueur for Jewish communities, which

always sought to provide for widows, orphans, unmarried women, pensioners, and other

needy members. Examples abound from Bayonne, Bayeux, Amsterdam, Bremen, Copen-

hagen, Curacao, Hamburg, Barbados, and elsewhere during the Sephardic Diaspora. The

custom is grounded on several mitzvoth (commandments) concerning almsgiving and

halakic conduct ( zedeka ) and later became a cornerstone of the Scottish Presbyterian

Church, 14 as noted by Herman (2001, p. 17):

 

 

7. To Scotland’s Stirling, Ayr, and Glasgow

 

 

The congregation was the center of everything. It elected its own board of elders or

presbyters; it even chose its minister. The congregation’s board of elders, the consistory,

cared for the poor and the sick; it fed and clothed the community’s orphans. Girls who were

too poor to have a dowry to tempt a prospective husband got one from the consistory.

 

This Ramshorn Kirk grave marker shows an open “Book of Life” motif— a Judaic practice. Photo-

graph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

When Scotland Was Jewish

 

This gravemarker for Jane Freeland states that she is the wife of William Gemmell. Gemmell is a

Hebrew letter. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

Cowane’s Hospital in Stirling, Scotland, was built in 1637 suing a bequest from the Dean of the Guild,

John Coawane. He is depicted by the statue above the entry door. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell

Hirschman.

 

Of London Jewry, Jacobs (1911) writes:

 

The Sephardic Orphan Asylum had been established as early as 1703, and a composite soci-

ety, whose title commenced with “Honen Dalim, ” was founded in 1704 to aid lying-in

women, support the poor, and to give marriage portions to fatherless girls. In 1736 a Mar-

riage Portion Society was founded, and eleven years later the Beth Holim, or hospital, came

 

This chair within the hospital’s main hall carries Cabalah mathematical images and a Ten Com-

mandments motif on the chair back. Note the several forms of triangles and the Tao/Tough symbol.

The number 4 was sacred to the Jews. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

into existence, this in turn being followed in 1749 by the institution known as “Mahesim

Tobim.” Thanks to these and other minor institutions, the life of a Sephardic Jew in London

was assisted at every stage from birth, through circumcision, to marriage, and onward to

death, while even the girls of the community were assisted with dowries.

 

The third feature that struck us upon entering the building was that it appeared to

have been designed much more as a worship center and Masonic hall than as a hospital

 

 

Cowane’s grave marker near the hospital (1570-1633) displays the same Cabalistic imagery seen in

the building. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

 

or charity ward. The ceiling was arched and there were few windows to the interior; thus

services could have been held without being visible from outside. Fourth, the interior of

the building and its original chairs were marked with Masonic emblems. Cowane’s grave

itself was inscribed with the same Masonic emblems, forming a Star of David symbol.

 

A Stirling guidebook ( Stirling’s Talking Stones, 2002) provides the following infor-

mation on John Cowane (1570-1633):

 

Stirling’s greatest benefactor was born in 1570, a contemporary of William Shakespeare....

 

His father was a merchant, burgess and indweller in Stirling and a prominent man. He and

his wife supplied the Royal Palace in Stirling with goods and their premises would have been

the Harrods of the day. John was in business with his father until the latter’s death in 1617,

when John took over all of his father’s business, including running his booth or shop in what

is now Broad Street.

 

Records also show that John Cowane was involved in more than simply selling goods in

his booth. He was a substantial landlord in the town and was not averse to evicting non-

paying tenants, if the rent was not paid. He was a member of the Town Council and on more

than one occasion Dean of Guild, the real source of power in the burgh at that time.... He

was also the main banker/money lender in the town....

 

In addition to his political activities (he was a member of the old Scots Parliament), John

Cowane was heavily involved in shipping. [It] was always necessary for a merchant to reach

the main Scots export markets of the Low Countries. He could not always rely on trading to

make him rich and with empty ships he also acted as a privateer — essentially a pirate with a

license.... Kirk records show he did have at least one child by a maid servant.

 

Even more interesting, however, than John Cowane’s seeming litany of Jewish-related

business and charitable activities was the kirk altar at which he and the Stirling guild

brothers worshiped (Morris 1919, p. 132):

 

It was usual for each Incorporation to have a special altar in the Parish church, at which

masses were said for behoof of the members, and the maintenance of which was their special

duty.... We venture to suggest that the members of the Stirling Merchant Gild [sic] consti-

tuted the Fraternity of the Holy Blood and were responsible for the upkeep of that altar in

the Parish Church. In the published Extracts from the Stirling Town Council Records, there

are a good many references to the altar of the Holy Blood. That there was a Fraternity of the

Holy Blood is shown by the... entries [from] 14th February, 1521-2 (Extracts Vol. I., pp.

13-19), 2nd October, 1524 (Trans. Stirling Nat. Hist, and Arch. Socy. 1905-1906, p. 54), 3rd

July, 1530, 24th January, 1549-50 (Extracts Vol. I pp. 266, 58, 70).

 

There is no proof that the Stirling Fraternity of the Holy Blood were the Merchant Gild,

but the following facts warrant the suggestion: (1) There was an Altar of the Holy Blood in

Stirling Parish Church, and such altars were in Stirling, as elsewhere, supported by Gild Fra-

ternities. (2) There was a Fraternity of the Holy Blood in Stirling. (3) From the analogy of

other towns, it is to be presumed that the Stirling Merchant Guild maintained an altar in the

Parish Church. (4) On 12th October, 1556, the Town Council of Stirling directed the rev-

enues of the altar of the Holy Blood to be gathered by the Dean of Gild. (Extracts. Vol. I., p.

70). (5) In Dundee the Merchant Gild constituted the Fraternity of the Holy Blood and

maintained the altar of that name in the Parish Kirk, their written obligation to do so being

still preserved. ( Old Dundee, Alexander Maxwell, pp. 25, 127). (6) In Edinburgh, also, the

Merchants were the Fraternity of the Holy Blood, and were patrons of, and upheld the Holy

Blood altar in St. Giles. (Extracts from Edinburgh Records. 10th Dec., 1518, 25th April, 1561.)

(7) There were altars of the Holy Blood in the Parish Kirks, with corresponding Fraternities

in the following towns, where there were also Merchant Gilds, although the connection in

each case is only inferred: Dunfermline (Chalmers, p. 126), Linlithgow ( Ecclesia Antiqua,

Ferguson, pp. 156, 320), Haddington ( Lamp of Lothian, Miller, p. 177), Lanark (Extracts,

Lanark Records, pp. 15, 16, 326), Peebles (Chaters, Peebles, pp. 73, 300, 348), Aberdeen

(Chartulary of St. Nicholas, numerous entries). (8) In Letters of Reversion by Androw Cow-

ane, merchant, father of John Cowane, Stirling’s benefactor, granted in 1580 (Fraser Papers,

H.M. Gen. Register House), the grant was declared to be redeemable in the “Holy Bluid lie, ”

situated in the Parish Kirk of Striveling [Stirling], The fact that Androw Cowane was a mer-

chant and chose Holy Blood aisle as the place for redeeming the debt suggests an association

between the merchants and the Holy Blood alter.

 

Of course, what is remarkable about this testimony is that, when added to the his-

torical record that Cowane supplied the Royal Stewart family with goods, it reveals a close

connection between the Cowane family and Stewart monarchy, which claimed to be

descended from “the holy blood” ( Sange Real ) of King David. Thus, rather than Christ-

ian, we suggest that the Holy Blood altar and fraternity of merchants and guildsmen

were, in fact, Crypto-Jewish. The guild hall at Cowane’s Hospital has three large scallop

shell carvings on the inside above its entryways that strongly hint we are entering a place

that was Jacobite, one frequented by supporters of the Stewarts and of the Davidic blood-

line the Stewarts embodied. As shall become clear in the next chapter, the cult of the Holy

Blood ( Sange Real) was originally a Templar and later a Masonic practice, with roots in

the Cabala. In passing, let us also observe that the Cowanes of Stirling frequently mar-

ried Alexanders, and that two of the daughters of such unions were named Maisie, the

feminine form of Moses.

 

Venturing up the hill from Cowane’s Hospital to Stirling Castle, a Royal Stewart

holding, also proved enlightening. In the main building, a similar large sanctuary dat-

 

The mural on the sanctuary wall inside Stirling Castle, a Royal Stewart residence, is replete with

Cabalistic images. The window is designed in a Ten Commandments motif. Photograph by Eliza-

beth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

ing from 1628 was found. Around the ceiling border were murals with Old Testament

and Mediterranean scenes painted by Valentine Jenkins. While looking at these, it

occurred to us that the construction of the “matching” or twin windows at either end of

the gallery, unlike windows in churches which typically have three divisions with a cen-

tral high arch (to symbolize the Holy Trinity) instead consisted of two wide, arched dip-

tyches. The windows on the left had geometrical stained glass panels cross-cut by

horizontal lines. As the photograph illustrates, both sets of windows, particularly the

ones with the colored glass (perhaps replaced, originally rendering a Hebrew text), seem

to represent the Ten Commandments that Moses received from hand of God at Mount

Sinai. To all intents and purposes, this could have been a synagogue.

 

John Yuill, Shoemaker in Glasgow

 

Marquis of Annandale

 

 

Chapter 8

 

 

The Knights Templar, Freemasons

and Cabala in Scotland

 

 

Before we venture to the northeastern section of Scotland, we want to attend to sev-

eral European and Middle Eastern events that will help place the Jewish migration to Scot-

land in perspective. Shortly after the Normans invaded England in 1066 C.E., bringing

scores of French Jewish families to that country to assist with the civil administration, a

holy war was declared throughout western Christendom to regain Palestine from the

Muslims. Over the next 300 years, from Pope Urban’s bull of 1095 until the close of the

14th century, there was a series of Crusades to the Holy Land.

 

Prominent French, Scottish and English knights, as well as several of their princes

and kings, fought in the Crusades and established fiefdoms throughout the lands we

think of as the Levant, or Middle East, stretching from Sicily, Tripoli and Malta to Cypress,

Rhodes, Antioch, Tyre and Macedonia. Called Outremer (“Beyond the Sea”), the Norman-

French-Scottish domain was ruled by free-standing noblemen and controlled militarily

by distinctive “Christian” fighting forces that included the Knights of the Temple of

Solomon, or Templars, and the Knights of the Hospital of St. John, or Hospitalers.

Although both these military orders began as Christian-soldiered militias, they soon

evolved into enormous, profit-making enterprises that owned vast tracts of land, castles,

priories, burgs, mills and manufactories, banks, and shipping lanes throughout Europe

and the Middle East (Selwood 1999). The persons who managed the vast wealth from

this trading empire were not themselves knights, but rather seneschals (retainers), and

though the individual knights themselves may have taken Christian vows of chastity or

poverty, no such requirements were placed upon the majority of those associated with

the order — its estate managers, clerical employees and administrators:

 

[I] t should not be imagined that armored warriors, largely illiterate, spent their odd hours

decoding messages or in the countinghouse maintaining ledgers and checking inventory or

out in the barn supervising the annual sheepshearings.... In the Order of the Temple, they

were the officer class, and they had as their principal training and occupation direct partici-

pation on the battlefield; the army of administrators, native troops, and employees behind

them outnumbered them by as much as fifty to one [emphasis added].... The Templar clerics

 

* Castles

 

Routes of the Crusades. Map by Donald N. Yates.

 

were the literate faction, and far more likely to be assigned duties of a managerial or

accounting nature, including the drafting of letters in code. Other administrators, supervi-

sors, and scribes were simply employees, and in later years a number were Arabic-speaking

[Robinson 1989, pp. 77-78]. 1

 

Men from several Scottish (and English and French) Jewish families enlisted in the

ranks of the Knights Templar, including Bruces, Douglases and Sinclairs. Countless oth-

ers were involved in the administration of the Templar wealth. Thus, to understand this

period of time in Scotland, we must examine the Knights Templar, the Crusades and Out-

remer.

 

 

The Knights Templar

 

In 1842, a member of the Knights Templar, Charles G. Addison of London, wrote

a book titled History of the Knights Templar that put forth their origin and history as he

understood it. Addison (1892) writes that the Knights Templar were formed around the

year 1 100 by “nine noble knights” who had committed themselves to protecting pilgrims

on the way to Jerusalem. At the time, “Mussulmen” (Muslims) controlled the Holy Land

and would frequently attack and rob Christian pilgrims. By 1118, King Baldwin II, a

French aristocrat who ruled Jerusalem, 2 granted the knights a headquarters on the Tem-

ple Mount. The site was believed to be the location where the Temple of Solomon had

stood in remote antiquity; hence the knights came to be known as the Knighthood of

the Temple of Solomon. Each knight took a vow of chastity and poverty, yet the order,

itself, was permitted to accumulate communal property of unlimited magnitude. On this

very site was the ancient Moslem mosque, the Dome of the Rock, dedicated to King

 

 

8. The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland

 

David/Daoud and Allah. Over the centuries, Jews, Muslims and Christians had alter-

nated in tearing down each other’s sanctuaries on this holy place and erecting their own.

 

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