The Templars and the Parisian Builders 117lum was not granted them and they were driven out by an order of the
Temple bailiff on September 11, 1651.^14 These instances remain the
exception to the rule, however; the compagnnonages, especially those
of the masons, always had their headquarters, their cayennes, in the
jurisdiction of the Temple.
The privilege of franchise for craftsmen was maintained all the
more easily by the Hospitaliers of Saint John, for they had already rec-
ognized such a privilege in their own censive district on the left bank of
the Seine. Workers, though in small numbers, remained in the com-
mandery of Saint John of Latran, where they could plie their craft with-
out purchasing a trade.^15
The right of franchise within the Templar censive district survived
intact until the end of the seventeenth century, the time when the king's
council began to batter it. A council decision on January 28, 1678,
declared the rights of high justice belonging to the Enclos would be
respected and added that it would not allow "the craftsmen and work-
ers plying their trade or crafts to settle in the Enclos without being sub-
ject to inspection by masters, guards, and the sworn servants of the
city."
Overall, however, the right of franchise appears to have remained
fairly intact through the years, as can be seen by another passage from
a 1701 memorandum of the high prior Philippe de Vendome:
It is not without good reason that it pleased the king to confirm
said privileges... because it is obvious to each and all what the
famous merchants and traders of Paris are in a position to con-
firm—that is, if said Enclos was not an asylum and a free retreat
for different merchants and other folk for whom a fall from grace
was precipitated by an unexpected misfortune in business that not
all the prudence in the world could have avoided, there would be
an infinite number of merchants and traders in Paris, and likewise
outside, who would find themselves forced to move into foreign
lands and carry with them their effects because there is naught but
this place in Paris that is regarded as an established haven. This
would be a consequence more dangerous than it is possible to say.