Internal troubles occupied the king for the next year or two. These were caused by the quarrels between the two military orders and the Church of Jerusalem. We hear only one side of the story, which throws the whole blame upon the knights. No doubt the clergy were also in some way to blame. By special permission of the pope, no interdict or excommunication could touch the Knights of St. John or the Knights Templars. They were free from all episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to the pope. It pleased Raymond, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, for no reason given by the chronicler, to raise up all sorts of troubles against the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the prelates of the Church, on the subject of parochial jurisdiction and the tithes. The way they showed their enmity is very suggestive of many things. “All those whom the bishops had excommunicated, or interdicted, were freely welcomed by the Hospitallers, and admitted to the celebration of the divine offices. If they were ill, the brothers gave them the viaticum and extreme unction, and those who died received sepulture. If it happened that for some enormous crime”—probably the withholding of tithes—“the churches of the city were put under interdict, the brothers, ringing all their bells, and making a great clamouring, called the people to their own chapels, and _received the oblations themselves_; and as for their priests, they took them without any reference whatever to the bishops.” Obviously, therefore, the quarrel was entirely an ecclesiastical squabble, due to the desire of the Church to aggrandize and preserve its power. The knights, _ecclesia in ecclesiâ_, a church within a church, would not recognise in any way the authority of the patriarch. For this they had a special charter from the pope. But they would not pay tithes, and they were constantly acquiring new territories. We may have very little doubt that it was the question of tithes on the knights’ lands which caused all the quarrel. But it is very remarkable to note the way in which the historian speaks of interdicts and excommunications. In the West an interdict was a great and solemn thing. In England only one interdict, at the memory of which the people shuddered for many years to come, was ever laid upon the country, while, though English kings have been excommunicated, it has happened rarely. In Palestine the custom of debarring offenders, whether towns or individuals, from the privileges of the Church, is spoken of as quite a common practice. The thing, evidently, was often happening. The patriarch was handy with his interdicts, and it must have galled him to the very soul to find that the people cared nothing for them, because they could get their consolations of the Church just as well from the knights.