The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (31 page)

The Sinclair family had something of great value that needed to be hidden. There was no Bank of Scotland that could serve as a repository; instead the cliffs and caves and tunnels constructed by the Masons would become their secret vault. Modern treasure seekers using every means available have attempted to discover just what the Sinclairs were hiding. Basements under basements and secret depositories have been uncovered, but nothing has been found.
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Where, then, do our clues lead? An elite family with a pretension to a bloodline that starts with David. A sacred vine that extends its sprouts into southern France, where Visigoths, Merovingians, and Carolingians seemingly aspire to a Davidic ancestry. A cover organization, the Templars, concealing a secret and elite inner circle. A succeeding cover organization that combines pagan symbolism with secret handshakes. And an immense treasure that includes the wealth of Europe entrusted to Templar safekeeping in the vaults of a Scottish family who was possibly holding the treasure for itself. All finally leading to an empty vault. Between 1441 and 1482 the treasures guarded by the Sinclairs left their hiding place in the warren of tunnels in the cliffs near and under Roslin. They set sail again, this time for the western lands of the Sinclairs.

Chapter 11

T
HE
T
REASURE
C
OMES TO
O
AK
I
SLAND

T
he Sinclair family had grown and prospered in the years after Robert the Bruce achieved independence for Scotland. They had signed the Declaration of Arboath in 1320, which decreed Scotland an independent nation.
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This is a sign of prominence equal to being a signer of the American Declaration of Independence, and it highlights the importance of the Sinclair family. It is an unusual document, in that it claims an Asian ancestry for the Scottish people and calls Robert the Bruce a second Maccabeus, referring to a Jewish freedom fighter.

The Sinclairs themselves were fighting for their Templar organization, resisting the efforts of the pope to grant the Hospitalers all of the Templar lands in Scotland. They claimed that the Templars owned no lands in Scotland, although they did own more than five hundred individual properties. As Templar lands were being recovered by the enemies of the organization, the Sinclair family took steps to defend them. The Sinclairs were in contact with their French counterparts, but repression
against the Templars and a hostile England separating France from Scotland drove a wedge between the two elite families. As this wedge widened, it was the Scottish Sinclair family that held possession of the order’s treasures. Thirty years after the last Viking expedition to America, Henry Sinclair and his Venetian first mate Zeno made their first voyage to the New World.

The Guardian Family in Scotland

Between 1398 and 1400 Henry Sinclair made perhaps two trips to the New World and laid plans for a colony. He controlled the largest fleet in the world and, in his role as guardian, the largest treasure in the world. But when he returned to Scotland, hostilities between the ever warring clans were raging out of control. After his return to Scotland he encountered the English, who attacked both Edinburgh and then the chief Sinclair property in the Orkneys, Kirkwall. Kirkwall was a castle with a walled harbor built to protect it against sea raids. Henry lost his life in defense of his stronghold.
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With Scotland’s independence threatened, Henry’s son (also Henry) was given the task of guarding the son of the king. Robert III trusted Henry to sail to France and safety, but both Crown Prince James of Scotland and the younger Sinclair were taken prisoner and released later for ransom.
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The next threat to both the Sinclairs and Scotland would come from within.

Norway had given up domination of the northern islands, many of which had been in Norse control since the tenth century. The clan Donald made a violent bid to rule the north believing themselves to be more powerful than the Sinclairs and other allied clans. Armed with swords, axes, and bows, the Donalds raised the largest army ever to fight in a clan war in the Highlands. After defeating the McKay clan, the wild men of the north marched south toward Aberdeen, plundering everything in their way.
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In 1411 the earl of Mar came up against the Donalds in protecting his own lands at Harlaw. The bloodiest battle in the Highlands saw nine thousand of the clan die, and possibly an equal number among the defenders. As a result of this gruesome battle, and irritated by the constant
warfare in the north, King James I, the prince who had been imprisoned with Henry, reacted quickly.
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In 1428 James ordered the heads of forty clans to come before him. He arrested most of them, threw them into his dungeon, and executed three. It was a bold step, and he took an even bolder one in denying the pope’s powers. He declared the pope corrupt and, in standing up to Rome, alienated himself from other countries.

In a few short years the king had done much for Scotland and made many enemies. In 1436 he was assassinated in his bedchamber by Robert Graham, a hired assassin.
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He died with twenty-eight dagger wounds, and his queen sought revenge. Robert Stewart, the son of the earl of Atholl who allowed access to the bedchamber, and Graham were tortured and executed. That same year, Prince Henry’s grandson, William Sinclair, was designated admiral. He was already the inheritor of the world’s largest fleet and the Templar treasure as well, so it was a designation mostly in name, which seemed to belong to the Sinclairs as a birthright.
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After the assassination of James, the country fell into the hands of a child king and a warring regent. The Douglas clan joined with the Livingston family against the Crichton clan, and this time the hostilities were centered around Stirling and the Sinclair base of power at Roslin. The new war and the child king’s inability to rule served as an excuse for the English to march north, to Edinburgh and the Sinclair ancestral home. William Sinclair was imprisoned for part of his father’s ransom that was never paid. Henry Sinclair (not the prince) had been held in the Tower of London, but was allowed to go free when he agreed to pay a ransom—a ransom he never paid once he was free.

For the Sinclairs this placed the battle on two fronts; they faced both the constant irritation of the English and incessant infighting among the clans, which even had Sinclair fighting Sinclair. It is very likely at this time that Admiral Sinclair made his own trip to North America to see the lands his grandfather had discovered. The secret of lands in the far western Atlantic would have been passed from father to son, along with the role of guardian of the Templar wealth and the surviving Freemasons. A trip to Nova Scotia from Scotland could be made in three weeks’ sailing time if the weather was good. Leaving time to confirm and examine firsthand the harbors described by his
grandfather, an entire expedition could be made in three months. Between the year he was appointed admiral and 1441, William made his plans.

In Roslin he constructed an edifice that would be worthy of the master masons and craftsmen in his protection.
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And he built a warren of tunnels and secret depositories to guard his treasure. In Nova Scotia he also built a vault to guard the Templar treasure, in case the civil war and the war with England threatened his ancestral home. It was William who started importing workers for these projects in 1441, five years before he began a job that took forty years to complete.
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In a phone conversation, David Tobias, the present owner of the Money Pit, told me that his theory had Sir Francis Drake bringing Cornish miners to Nova Scotia. There they excavated the Money Pit and created the treasure vault. Where would Sinclair find miners? He certainly would not find them in the English-owned Cornwall area. Researching Roslin further, I discovered that it had once been a mining village. Importing workers for his chapel and tunnel system five years before the actual work took place concealed Sinclair’s ulterior motive. The new workers were, in fact, replacing more trusted workers, who had been sent to Nova Scotia.

Only an Englishman as powerful as Sir Francis Drake, and in command of a private navy, would be able to conceal such a project. William Sinclair might have been at least Drake’s peer. He was powerful, in command of both a private navy and the national navy, and capable of enlisting the needed talent. Sinclair had the means, the wealth, possibly a much more trusted workforce, and certainly a stronger motive. At some time between 1436 and 1441, Sinclair ships took on boatloads of miners from the home borough of Roslin and began a settlement near Oak Island, perhaps on one of the larger islands in Mahone Bay.

In addition to laying the groundwork for the secret vaults at Roslin and in Nova Scotia, Sinclair also started an elite group of fighting men called the Scots Guard.
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Like the Templars before them, the Scots Guard was made up of young men from wealthy and noble families. It pledged itself not to Scotland but to the king of France—and nominally at that. Their loyalty was given directly to the Valois rulers and a subset of Valois,
the House of Guise. Finally, William Sinclair was reappointed as grand master of the crafts and guilds and orders of Scotland by James II. This office remained hereditary until the Lodge was formed three hundred years later. Strangely enough, Sinclair also appointed himself protector of the gypsies. Each year, from May to June the gypsies of Great Britain would migrate to the Sinclair home at Roslin. There they were given land to camp on and were allowed to perform their summer pageant, a play about Robin Hood and the May Queen. The Protestant Calvinists believed this to be nothing but pagan rites in disguise and protested fiercely.
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William Sinclair would have everything but peace. When James II was crowned king at age six, he was under the tutelage of Sir William Crichton and Sir Alexander Livingston. Stewarts and Douglas vied for rule of Scotland and, fearing a power play, the two tutors had the young earl of Douglas killed.
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A decade later, when James came of age, he said he wanted to reconcile with the Douglas clan. He had learned that William Douglas had gone abroad to meet with both the pope and the English, and he feared that a rebellion with English support was imminent. He invited Douglas to dinner at Stirling, the royal castle, and asked the head of the clan if he could discuss affairs without the presence of Douglas’s bodyguards. Douglas rebuffed him, and James stabbed him in the neck. Other court attendants rushed to plunge their daggers into Douglas as well. Another Douglas rose to take William’s place and marched on Stirling with six hundred men. The king defeated the Douglas clan, but in one of many continual skirmishes with the English, a cannon exploded, killing James II. His son, James III, took over the rule of Scotland in 1460.
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It is very likely that while the Douglas clan rebellion and the continuing attacks by the English were going on, the Sinclair inheritance was being moved to the New World. The Sinclairs stood by their kings but at the same time saw that the opposition was mounting. Young James III was kidnapped after inheriting the throne. Upon his escape he married Margaret, the daughter of King Christian of Norway and Denmark.
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The following year he made a deal with another William Sinclair, Henry’s great-grandson, buying the earldom of Orkney. The castle of the Sinclair sea kings at Kirkwall was traded for Ravenscraig in Edinburgh,
although several Orkney estates stayed in Sinclair hands. While lucrative properties remained in the Sinclair domain, this William came to inherit the nickname the “Waster” for trading away the family property.
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In 1475 the stonemasons of Edinburgh received a charter from the king, which was ratified at Mary’s Chapel in that city. This would later be known as Lodge One, but the Sinclairs were still recognized as the patrons and guardians of the Masons, despite this early recognition of autonomy.
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In 1488 the Douglas rebellion was rekindled. James III went to battle himself, was wounded, and fell off his horse. He was carrying the sword of Robert the Bruce, but this time it failed him. Fearing he was near death, he rushed from the battlefield, where he met a priest. When he asked the priest for final absolution, he was instead stabbed to death.