compotum et memoranda dicti fratris de Scaccario qui per
capitulum ad illud officium oneratur ... lx m."

"Item in donis dandis in Curiis domini Regis et aliorum magnatum
_pro favore habendo_ et pro placitis defendendis, et expensis
parlialmentorum, ad minus bis per annum ... cc m."

I have made these extracts somewhat more at length than may, perhaps, be
to the point in question, because they contain much that is highly
interesting as to the apparently questionable mode in which the
Hospitallers obtained the protection of the courts (and probably they
were not singular in their proceedings); annual pensions to judges,
besides other largesses, and much of this "pro favore habendo,"
contrasts painfully with the "spotless purity of the ermine" which
dignifies our present age.

In the "extent" we have occasionally a grange held rent free for life by
a judge. Chief Justice Geffrey de Scrop so held that of Penhull in
Northumberland.

Putting all these facts together, and bearing in mind that, throughout
this elaborate "extent," there are neither profits nor rent entered, as
for the Temple itself, so that it seems to have then been neither in the
possession nor occupation of the Hospitallers, is it not possible that
they had alienated it to the lawyers, as a discharge for these heavy
annual incumbrances,--_prospectively_, perhaps, because by the entry of
these charges among the "reprise," the life interests, at all events,
were still paid; or perhaps the alienation was itself made to them "pro
favore habendo" in some transaction that the Hospitallers wished to have
carried by the Courts; or it may have been made as a _bonâ fide_ bribe