The Secret History of the Knights Templar in America

Continued from page 1

Yes, there is a tradition that said that she landed in a boat with Lazarus. Each year there is a festival there. And on the first day of the festival, they carry the patron saint, known as Saint Sarah, down to the sea. She is known as Sarah the Egyptian. The story says that she was a servant girl, but it’s our belief that she was actually Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s daughter.

Now explain the relationship between that story and the families of the Knights Templar.

Families who founded the Knights Templar were part of the same group as Jesus’ descendents because one of Jesus’ brothers was a high priest—James the Righteous. So all these families had claims to ancient lineage and ancient teaching, and they all intermarried.

Now help us understand the connection between Earl Henry Sinclair and these families.

The Sinclairs are one of the families—they’re one of the leading ones, in fact. And a grandson of Earl Henry Sinclair, William Sinclair, was regarded by the families as the Fisher King, the heir apparent to the throne of Jerusalem. The man was an intellectual giant, a genius. But his grandfather, Earl Henry Sinclair, is the one we’re interested in from the point of the view of the voyage.

Could you explain the voyage?

This is where the fun starts. As Oscar Wilde once famously said, “Many people discovered America before Columbus, dear boy, but most of them had the good sense to keep quiet about it.” He was probably being sarcastic, but in actual fact, he was telling a great truth because the Romans and the Egyptians had been there repeatedly and they kept quiet about it for reasons of protecting their sources of trade.

Henry Sinclair’s family descended from the Vikings. And it was the Viking sagas, which are the first written record of Europeans visiting America, are quite specific about how to get there. They island-hopped across the North Atlantic. They were never more than a couple hundred miles out of sight of land. And they left in their sagas precise sailing directions. Henry started to explore the North Atlantic following the paths laid down by Viking ancestors. And eventually ended up in Nova Scotia and New England.

Tell us some of the places in New England that they landed.

They went inland to Westford in Massachusetts, because there is rock carving there known as the Westford Knight, which commemorates the death of one of Earl Henry’s companions, Sir James Gunn.

And then we spend quite a lot of time in the book examining one of the most controversial buildings in the North American continent, the Old Stone Mill at Newport, which we refer to as the Newport Tower. This is a classic example of rubble-built, Romanesque architecture in the Templar tradition of round churches. The proofs we put forward we think are conclusive, though we’re aware that opinions are sharp, and they’re divided about the origins of this tower. So trying to convince people is probably a waste of time.

Continued on page 3: Freemasonry played a pivotal and formative role »