TEMPLAR FIGURES

Born in 1133 at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, Ralph de Sudeley died at Griff, Warwickshire, England in 1192.

Ralph De Sudeley was the son of Baron John de Sudeley (1090-1140) and Grace de Traci (c. 1100). His younger brother was the more famous William de Tracy, one of the three conspirators of the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

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He was a wealthy English knight who joined the Templars in the Holy Land in 1182, and in 1189 he returned to his home at Herdewyke (now called Temple Herdewyke) in the county of Warwickshire in central England,

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On his arrival home, de Sudeley immediately bought a large estate in the area and founded a Templar preceptory to train new recruits for a fresh Crusade planned by the English king Richard I.

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The local Feet of Fines, contemporary records of land and property holdings, show that de Sudeley's preceptory possessed expensive holy relics brought back from the Middle East. An entry for the year 1192 included mention of certain objets sacrés—"sacred artifacts"—that were housed in the chapel of the Herdewyke preceptory. As official documents in the twelfth century were frequently written in Norman French, the term objets sacrés was the usual way of describing holy relics returned from the Crusades, often precious objects thought to have been associated with the Bible. Unfortunately, no specific details are given, other than the fact that pilgrims donated large sums of money to the preceptory when they visited the chapel to see these items. 

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After his death in 1192, (aged 61) Ralph de Sudely was buried at Winchcombe Tewkesbury Borough, Gloucestershire, However the Original burial was inside the old Abbey which was demolished in 1539.

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