it in their own cemetery at the New Temple,* in the portico before the western door of the church.-f- Pope Alexander, from whom the absolution was obtained, was elected to the pontifical chair in September, 1159, and died in 1181. It was this pontiff who, who by the bull orane datum optimum, promulgated in the year 1162, conceded to the Templars the privilege of having their own cemeteries free from the interference of the regular clergy. The land whereon the convent of the New Temple was erected, was purchased soon after the publication of the above bull, and a cemetery was doubtless consecrated there for the brethren long before the completion of the church. To this cemetery the body of the earl was removed after the absolution bad been obtained, and when the church was consecrated by the patriarch, (A. D . 1185,) it was finally buried in the portico before the west door. The monks of Walden tell us that the above earl of Essex was a religious man, endowed with many virtues.*. He was married to the famous Koisia de Vere, of the family of the earls of Oxford, who in her old age led an ascetic life, and constructed for herself an extraordinary subterranean cell or oratory, which was curiously discovered towards the close of the last century.§ He had issue by • Curoque Prior file, corpue dcfuuctum deponere, et secum Waldenam transferre satagcret, Tcmplfirii caute premeditati, stalim illudi totlentes, in cimiterio Novi Templi ignobili satis tmdidertlnt sepulturiB.—lb. t Α. I). MCLxmi, sexto leal, Octobris, obiit Oalfridus de Mandeuil, comes Essexian, fundator primus hujus monasteri! de Walden, cujus corpus jacet-Londoiûis humntum, apud Temple-bar in porticu ante ostium ecclesia? occidentale. JMS. in the library of the Royal Society, marked No. 29, entitled Liber de fondanone Sanasi Jacobs Apostoli de Waldeni. Cotton, MS. Veep. E. vi. fo). 2,5. X Hoveden speaks of him as a man of the highest probity, but rrreljgfoufl. Erat autem gumma) probitatis, scd summs in Deum obstinationis, magna) in mundanis diligenti^, magme in Dcum negligentise. lìoceden ut supra. (j It «as a recess, hewn out of the chalk, of a bell shape and exactly circular, thirty feet high and seventy feet in diameter. The sides of this curious retreat vere adorned