The Thame Report: A Grand Master’s Audit

A document of primary importance for the topography of medieval Wales sits in the archives of the Order of St John at Valletta. This is a ledger of accounts prepared in 1338 by Prior Philip de Thame for the Grand Master, Elyan de Villeneuve. Lambert B. Larking edited the text for the Camden Society in 1857, and it is usually known as the 1338 Survey. It provides a meticulous audit of the Hospitallers’ English and Welsh assets. The Order compiled it while struggling to repay massive debts from the long legal battles over the Templar inheritance. For a historian of the Welsh Templars, the survey is a lucky paradox. Through the record-keeping of their successors, we find a clear view of the Templar estates as they functioned on the ground. This ledger preserves the details of those lost properties through its cold, fiscal focus.

The 1338 Survey is an economic snapshot recorded with a pragmatism that lacks sentiment or propaganda. De Thame was a clear-headed administrator who had to justify why so little surplus wealth reached the Order’s headquarters at Rhodes. The document details exactly what land the Order held, what that land produced, and what it cost to maintain. By sifting through these balance sheets, we find the former Templar holdings in Pembrokeshire and other areas. These sites were now fully integrated into the Hospitaller administration at Slebech. By 1338, the dust of the 1308 arrests had settled. The strategic transfer of property mandated by the Council of Vienne was, in a clerical sense, complete. The Order had moved past the seizure and into a period of steady management under the Hospitaller Prior.

The geography of the Welsh entries reveals how thoroughly the Hospitallers had absorbed the Templar network. Slebech had been the primary Hospitaller commandery in Wales since the twelfth century, and it now oversaw several former Templar ‘members’ or granges. The survey records the values of these sites with clinical precision. It lists the rents from Templeton, the tithes from the churches of Llanmadoc on the Gower, and the income from small parcels of land in the Marches. We see the resilient nature of the agrarian economy. Despite the political upheaval of the suppression, sheep still grazed the same hillside pastures and the same watermills turned on the Cleddau. The land remained productive. The identity of the lords shifted from the red cross to the white, but the daily rhythm of the Welsh farm and the mill stayed the same.

One valuable aspect of De Thame’s report is its accounting of ‘reprise,’ or necessary expenditure. This provides a rare glimpse into the daily life of a Welsh house. We learn of the expenses for hospitality, which was a core duty of the Hospitallers, and the costs for sustaining the resident brothers, their chaplain, and their bailiffs. At Slebech, the survey notes the consumption of bread and ale, the maintenance of buildings, and the stipends paid to various officials. These figures allow us to calculate the ‘responsion,’ which was the net profit sent eastward to fund the defense of the Mediterranean. The Welsh estates were often less profitable than English ones. They were hampered by the costs of defending against local unrest and the difficulties of collecting rents in remote, upland regions. The numbers show the hard reality of Welsh farming.

The document also shows the legal and social friction that followed the transfer. Under the heading of ‘expenses,’ the report mentions the costs of litigation and the ‘pensions’ paid to influential local lords. These were effectively bribes or retainers to ensure their continued protection and favour. The Hospitallers did not walk into the Templar lands without resistance. Local Welsh and Marcher families had eyed the vacant Templar lands after 1308, and the Order often had to buy them off or outmanoeuvre them legally. De Thame’s ledger records a landscape of compromise. The international Order of St John had to manage the complex social terrain of fourteenth-century Wales to secure its income. They paid their way through the courts and the local halls to keep the peace and their land.

For the modern researcher, Larking’s edition provides the essential framework for mapping the Welsh Templar footprint. The 1308 inventory recorded the Templar goods at the moment of their seizure, but the 1338 survey shows the long-term survival of the estate as a working entity. It confirms that the Templar legacy in Wales was not about hidden treasuries or mysterious rituals. It was about wool, grain, and parochial administration. The 1338 report is the final ledger of a transition period. It marks the point where the Templar past finally and legally became the Hospitaller present. It is the most reliable guide to the true scale of the Order's territorial reach before the Black Death arrived. That plague would soon reshape the economy of Wales once more, making this audit a final look at the old world.

The survey records the opening of a long Hospitaller century on the Cleddau.