The favourable reception given to the first edition of the ensuing work and the interest that was taken in the extraordinary and romantic career of the Knights Templars induced me to publish a second edition greatly enlarged and to introduce various collateral matters of an antiquarian and local character interesting only to a comparatively small number of readers. This enlarged edition having been exhausted it occurred to me in preparing a third edition for the press that the work might be materially shortened and reduced in price without in anywise detracting from its value and interest as a record of the chief events of one of the most remarkable and interesting periods of history and of the extraordinary and romantic achievements of the first and most ancient of the great religio-military orders of knights and monks established during the crusades.

"Having some years ago during a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem gained admission to the courts of the ancient Temple of the Knights Templars which still exists on Mount Moriah in a perfect state of preservation as a Mussulman Mosque and having visited many of the ruined fortresses and castles of the ancient order of the Temple whose shattered walls are still to be seen at intervals in Palestine and in Syria from Gaza to Antioch and from the mountains of the Dead Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean I naturally became greatly interested in the history of the order and in the numerous remains and memorials of the Knights Templars still to be met with in various stages of decay and ruin in almost every part of Europe. "