yielding, however, at last to the exhortations and menaces of the pope, the king, on the 21st of Nov. A . ID. 1313, granted the property to the Hospitallers,* and sent orders to all the guardians of the lauds of the Templare, and to various powerful barons who were in possession of the estates, commanding them to deliver them up to certain parties deputed by the Grand Master and chapter of the Hospital of Saint John to receive them.f At this period, however, many of the heirs of the donors, whose title had been recognized by the law, were in possession of the lands, and the judges held that the king had no power of his own sole authority to transfer them to the order of the Hospital.:}; The thunders of the Vatican were consequently vigorously made use of, and all the detainers of the property were doomed by the Homan pontiff to everlasting damnation.^ Pope John, in one of his bulls, dated A . D . 1322, bitterly complains of the disregard by all the king's subjects of the papal commands. He laments that they had hardened their hearts and despised the sentence of excommunication fulminated against them, and declares that his heart was riven with grief to find that even the ecclesiastics, who ought to have been as a wall of defence to the Hospitallers, had themselves been heinously guilty in the premises. || At last (A. D . 1324) the pope, the bishops, and the Hospitallers, by their united exertions, succeeded in obtaining an act of parliament, vesting all the property late belonging to the Templars in the brethren of the Hospital of Saint John, in order that the intentions of the donors might be carried into effect by the appropriation of it to the defence of the Holy Land and the * Acta Jigmeri, torn. iii. p. 451. t Ib„ p. 451,454, 455, 457, 450—463. JJugd. Menait. Angl., vol.ri. part 2. p. 809. Î Holla of Parliament, vol. ii. p. 41, $ Dugd. Momut. Angl., vol. vi. part 2, p. 049, 050. CamU. fdag. BnX, torn.ii.p. 499" D Acta Itymert, Una. in. p. 956—959, ni ann. 1322.