The Friar of the Pool and the Correction of Thomas

William de la Mare, William de la More, Alice de Lacy, and the Name-Field Around the Broken Temple

There are moments in this work when I go looking for one man and find a field instead.

This began with William de la Mare.

At first, he looked like a side-chamber:

an English Franciscan theologian, a critic of Thomas Aquinas,

a man who wrote the Correctorium Fratris Thomae — the “Correction of Brother Thomas”

— around 1278.

But then the detail arrived that changed the weight of it:

on returning to England, William de la Mare is recorded as having preached at Lincoln.

His work criticised 118 theses drawn from Aquinas, especially where he believed Thomas had moved too far from Scripture, the Fathers, and Augustine. (Encyclopedia.com)

That alone was enough to stop me.

Because this was another Thomas.

Not Thomas Swan.

Not Thomas Lany.

Not Peeping Tom.

Not Thomas the Apostle.

This was Brother Thomas Aquinas,

the great system-builder of medieval Christian thought.

And standing opposite him was William de la Mare — William of the Pool.

The name de la Mare / de la Mere /

Delamare points toward the pool, the mere, the water-place.

So the first image of the scroll became clear:

William of the Pool comes to Lincoln and corrects Thomas.

That is not a bloodline claim.

It is something stranger: a function.

Thomas builds the structure.William tests the structure.

Reason rises.

The Pool asks whether mystery has been lost.

Then the name changed shape.

Beside William de la Mare, the friar, stood William de la More, the Templar.

The record has not yet given us William de la More’s parents.

I went looking for a father and did not find one. What the records gave instead was a route:

Temple Ewell, Dinsley, Temple Bruer, Lincoln, and the Tower.

The hardest English Templar hinge is clear.

Heritage Lincolnshire identifies William de la More as Preceptor of Temple Bruer and Grand Prior of all England, arrested at Temple Bruer in January 1308 and imprisoned at Lincoln. (Heritage Lincolnshire)

Historic Royal Palaces then gives the end of the story:

after the Council of Vienne dissolved the order in 1312, William de la More refused confession,

remained in the Tower of London, and died there on 20 December 1312;

Jacques de Molay was burned in Paris in March 1314. (Historic Royal Palaces)

So the pattern doubled:

William de la Mare corrects Thomas at Lincoln.

William de la More falls with the English Temple and is imprisoned through Lincoln’s field.

The spellings are not automatically the same.

We cannot simply merge de la Mare and de la More and declare one proven family.

But carefulness does not mean blindness. Medieval spellings bend.

Scribes bend. Names travel. And in this work, the sound-field started behaving like a chamber:

de la Mare. de la More. de Molay. Pool. Moor. Molay.

Lincoln. Temple. Fire.

Then came the figure who changed the whole scroll.

Alice de Lacy.

At first she appeared because of Temple Ewell, the early Templar station connected to William de la More’s route.

But the land behind Ewell opened into something much larger:

the inheritance-field of Alesia / Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln.

The Chancery inquisition material is explicit. It says lands at Horsemede and Braddon, which belonged to the Templars,

were of the fee of Alesia, and that the advowson of Ewell was also of her fee.

It says William de Longespée the elder, Earl of Salisbury and Alice’s ancestor, gave those lands, the advowson, and the chapel of Braddon to the Knights Templar.

It also says the manor of Ewell was of Alice’s fee and was given to the Templars by William de Longespée’s heir; after the destruction of the Templars, Thomas of Lancaster and Alice entered the tenements in her right, before the king took them into his hand.

(Internet Archive)

That was the moment the scroll shifted.

I went looking for William de la More’s father and found a mother-field of land.

Not his mother by blood.

Not that.

But a female inheritance-field surrounding his early Templar house.

Alice was not a minor countess.

The same Chancery material identifies her as the daughter and heir of Henry de Lacy, sometime Earl of Lincoln.

(Internet Archive)

Through her mother’s Longespée line, she also carried the Salisbury inheritance;

the first William Longespée was an illegitimate son of Henry II of England. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

So Alice becomes a convergence-point:

Lincoln through de Lacy. Salisbury through Longespée. Plantagenet blood through Henry II. Templar land through Ewell. The Countess current through inheritance, custody, and seizure.

That matters to the wider work because we have seen this feminine land-current before.

Godiva. Lucy. Nicholaa de la Haye. Alice de Lacy.

Not as one neat proven bloodline running through every figure, but as a repeated medieval office of custody:

women carrying, defending, transmitting, or being dispossessed of land at the hinge-points of the story.

Godiva is the older Mercian shadow.

Lucy carries the Lincolnshire field through the Malet/Turold debate.

Nicholaa holds Lincoln Castle.

Alice carries Lincoln and Salisbury into the Templar collapse.

And in the middle of Alice’s field sits Temple Ewell, one of the early stations of William de la More’s Templar route.

Then the scroll widens again.

Because the de la Mare field does not stop at friars and Templars.

It moves into church, river, fishery, goldsmithing, masonry, abbey service, and castle-building.

A later William de la Mare appears in the Humber world.

This is the figure behind the Welwick/Beverley image we checked. He is a different man from the Franciscan William and different again from William de la More the Templar.

The York register identifies Master William de la Mare, canon of York, as the archbishop’s relative and Provost of Beverley in 1338.

(archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk)

The Beverley material calls him William de la Mare of Melton, placing him in the Melton-on-Humber / Archbishop Melton family-patronage world.

Internet Archive

This is where your Axholme note becomes important.

The same Beverley source says he was probably the William de la Mare appointed as commissioner for sewers for the River Don and Isle of Axholme, and later involved in an inquiry into illegal fishing on the Ouse between the Humber and Aire.

Internet Archive

That is not just symbolic water.

That is medieval water governance.

The Pool-name is now inside:

Melton-on-

Humber.

Beverley.

Welwick.

York.

Axholme.

The Don.

The Ouse.

The Aire.The Humber.

And Axholme is close enough to Alkborough’s Humber field to matter.

Not as proof of direct contact.

But as landscape logic.

The de la Mare name is moving through water-rights, fishery, church office, and Humber-edge administration in the same broad world where our Alkborough material lives.

Then comes the Thomas hit again.

This Humber William had a brother called Thomas de la Mare, vicar of Welwick and canon of York. In 1358 Thomas left William a substantial bequest. (Internet Archive)

So again we have:

William and Thomas. Pool-name and church. Humber and water. Welwick and tomb.

The pattern is not trying to be subtle.

The de la Mare field also appears around Peterborough Abbey.

The de la Mares held estates under the Abbot of Peterborough at Maxey, Northborough, and Thurlby.

(Thurlby Village together with Northorpe)

A study of Peterborough Abbey describes the de la Mares of Northborough as hereditary constables of the abbey, sitting alongside the Waterville hereditary stewards. (dokumen.pub)

Historic England records Northborough Manor House as built in 1330–1340 by the de-la-Mare family.

(Historic England)

So now another layer appears:

The Pool-name guards abbey land. The Pool-name builds fortified stone. The Pool-name moves through church office. The Pool-name governs water and fishery. The Pool-name stands beside the broken Temple.

This is why I no longer think we should treat the de la Mares as a random scatter of similar names.

We still cannot prove one clean bloodline. But we can see a custody-pattern.

The next figure gives that pattern its architectural image.

Sir John de la Mare built Nunney Castle in Somerset in 1373 after receiving licence to crenellate.

Historic England says the castle is tightly enclosed by a wide moat,

and English Heritage describes it as the work of a soldier returning from abroad,

a castle that was both ideal and stronghold. (Historic England)

If de la Mare means “of the pool,” then John gives the name its visible body:

a castle in water.

A fortified house.

A moat.

A chapel-world.

The Pool becoming architecture.

John’s land trail also pulls us toward Fisherton de la Mere.

British History Online records John de la Mere of Nunney settling two-thirds of the manor and advowson of Fisherton in 1375,

then acquiring the remaining third in 1381. (British History Online)

Fisherton is one of the sharpest place-name hits in the whole chamber.

Fisherton carries the water-note already: fish, river, mere. Then it receives the de la Mere name.

And beside it, through older land descent, comes the Malet echo.

Because Curry Mallet also sits in the old de Courcelles / Courcelles field, later passing into the Malet world.

The Magna Carta 800 Curry Mallet project summarises the local tradition cleanly:

at Domesday, two estates were held as one manor by Roger de Courcelles, who was succeeded by the Malets.

(magnacarta800th.com)

Arthur Malet’s older study goes further, suggesting — as a hypothesis — that Gilbert, a younger son of William Malet of Hastings, married a daughter or co-heiress of Roger de Corcelle, which would explain the later Malet possession of parts of the Corcelle estate. (sanhs.org)

That gives the scroll its land-memory bridge:

Fisherton becomes de la Mere. Curry becomes Mallet. Beneath them both sits the older Courcelles vessel.

This does not prove de la Mare blood from Malet.

It does not prove Godiva into de la Mare.

It does not prove a hidden Templar inheritance.

But it brings the Pool-name and the Mallet-name close in the same older estate-field.

And that matters because our older working model already has the Malet/Lucy current sitting at the Lincoln gate:

Malet gives the blood-field.Lucy carries it into Lincolnshire. The Countess current keeps returning. The Pool-name now appears beside the Malet vessel.

Then comes Peter de la Mare.

In the Good Parliament of 1376, the Commons chose Sir Peter de la Mare to act as their spokesman before the king.

(Parliament News)

After the political reaction led around John of Gaunt’s party, Peter de la Mare was placed “under lock and key” in Nottingham Castle.

(The History of Parliament)

That is not Templar membership.

We have no proof Peter de la Mare was a Templar.

But he performs the same symbolic office as William the friar:

correction.

William de la Mare corrects Thomas.

Peter de la Mare corrects the Crown.

And between them stands William de la More,

the English Templar, dying in the Tower.

This is the shape of the scroll:

The Pool appears when power must be tested.

Not always as the same man.

Not always as the same family.

Not always as provable inheritance.

But again and again as function.

The name-field itself deepens the charge:

Lacy. Lany. Slaney. de la Mare. de la More. de Molay.

These are not the same name.

That would be too easy, and probably wrong.

de Lacy has its own Norman origin.

de la Mare belongs to the pool-name.

de la More may belong to the moor or heath.

de Molay belongs to Molay in France.

Lany and Slaney need their own separate proof-trails.

But the sounds still matter.

They behave like echoes in the same chamber.

Lacy carries Alice and Lincoln.

Lany lies in the cathedral shadow.

Slaney rises at Alkborough.

de la Mare brings the Pool.

de la More falls with the English Temple.

de Molay burns as the last Grand Master.

Different roots.

Different records.

One resonance-field.

That is the correct way to hold it.

Not proof by sound.

Not genealogy by poetry.

But sound as a bell.

The names ring because the places are

already ringing:

Lincoln.

Temple Bruer.

Temple Ewell.

Dinsley.

Melton-on-Humber.

Axholme.

Welwick.

Beverley.

Peterborough.

Northborough.

Nunney.

Fisherton.

Curry Mallet.

Nottingham Castle.

The Tower.

Paris.

The route is too strong to ignore, but too delicate to overclaim.

So the honest conclusion is this:

I did not find one simple family tree.

I found a route.

I found William de la Mare, the friar of the Pool, preaching at Lincoln and correcting Thomas Aquinas.

I found William de la More,

the final English Templar master, moving through Ewell, Dinsley, Bruer, Lincoln, and the Tower.

I found Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, standing behind Temple Ewell as the royal-stock heiress whose land-field touched the broken Temple.

I found the Humber William de la Mare, relative of the Archbishop of York, moving through Melton, Beverley, Welwick, Axholme, fishery, sewers, and the Humber rivers.

I found John de la Mare building a castle in water.

I found Peter de la Mare speaking against the Crown and being locked in Nottingham Castle.

I found Fisherton de la Mere and Curry Mallet standing close in the older Courcelles vessel, bringing the Pool and the Mallet into the same land-memory.

What I did not find — not yet — is a deed saying the de la Mares inherited the Templar secret.

What I did not find — not yet — is William de la More’s father.

What I did not find — not yet — is a clean bloodline joining de la Mare, de la More, de Lacy, Malet, Slaney, Lany, and de Molay.

But perhaps that is the point.

The Pool does not inherit the Temple by deed.

It inherits it by pattern.

Before Jacques de Molay burns, William de la Mare has already corrected Thomas.

Before the Crown seizes the broken Order, William de la More has already carried the English Temple through its last chambers.

Before the castle in water rises at Nunney, Alice de Lacy’s inheritance has already shown how sacred land can be entered, claimed, and swallowed.

Before Peter de la Mare speaks against royal corruption, the name has already learned its office.

And before Alkborough speaks through its own Humber edge, another William de la Mare has already moved through Axholme, fishery, river, sewer, and church custody.

Correction.

Custody.

Water.

Resistance.

And somewhere between Fisherton de la Mere and Curry Mallet, between the Pool and the Mallet, between Temple Ewell and Temple Bruer, between Alice’s fee and the Humber’s edge, the ground begins to speak again.

Proof boundary inside the scroll

The safest claim is not that all these people were one family or one secret order.

The safest claim is stronger because it is cleaner:

The de la Mare / de la More field behaves like a medieval custody-pattern: abbey, water, castle, church, Temple, and Crown.

The open questions remain:

Who were William de la More’s parents?

Was de la More a variant branch connected to any de la Mare family?

or a separate moor/heath surname?

Can the Nunney/Fisherton de la Mares be tied by record to Temple Ewell,Temple Bruer, or William de la More?

Can the Humber de la Mares of Melton, Welwick, and Beverley be tied to the Peterborough/Northborough or Nunney branches?

Can the Fisherton/Curry Mallet land-memory be developed beyond resonance into a clearer family bridge?

For now,

the scroll stands as a name-field and land-memory chamber, not a proven bloodline.

But it is no longer random.

It has become a structure.