The Friar of the Pool and the Correction of Thomas

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, the English Franciscan theologian remembered for the Correctorium Fratris Thomae—the “Correction of Brother Thomas”—written against propositions associated with Thomas Aquinas.

Then the Lincoln detail arrived.

William de la Mare is recorded in the Franciscan tradition as having preached at Lincoln after returning to England.

That gave the scroll its first image:

William of the Pool comes to Lincoln and corrects Thomas.

The line is symbolic, not genealogical. But it opened a chamber in which the names de la Mare, de la More, de Lacy, Malet, Lany, Slaney, and de Molay began appearing around water, abbey, Temple, castle, church, land, and Crown.

The task is to keep the echoes alive without making them one false family tree.

William de la Mare: The Friar Who Corrected Thomas

William de la Mare was a thirteenth-century English Franciscan theologian. His Correctorium Fratris Thomae, usually dated to the later 1270s, challenged a substantial body of propositions drawn from the work of Thomas Aquinas.

The dispute belonged to a genuine medieval intellectual conflict over the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy, Augustinian theology, Scripture, and the developing scholastic synthesis.

William's role matters here because his function is correction. Thomas builds one of the great systems of medieval Christian thought; William tests it from another theological tradition.

The old name-form de la Mare carries its own landscape association with a mere, pool, or watery place. That linguistic note belongs to the surname itself. The symbolic reading comes afterward:

reason rises;

the Pool asks whether anything has been left beneath the structure.

Lincoln then gives the episode a place already central to this project.

William de la More: The English Templar

A different William stands nearby in time and spelling: William de la More, senior English Templar.

The spellings cannot simply be merged. de la Mare and de la More may belong to different surname histories, and medieval orthography alone is not enough to make the Franciscan and the Templar members of one family.

William de la More's own route is nevertheless powerful.

He appears within the English Templar world connected with Temple Ewell, Dinsley, and Temple Bruer. By the suppression he was one of the order's most senior English officers. He was arrested in 1308, held through the English proceedings, and ultimately imprisoned in the Tower of London. He died there in December 1312 after refusing to make the kind of confession demanded of the order's leaders.

Two years later, Jacques de Molay was burned in Paris.

The historical sequence is enough:

William de la Mare — Franciscan correction.

William de la More — the English Temple under accusation and imprisonment.

Jacques de Molay — the final Grand Master at the French end of the destruction.

The names resonate. Their roots and families must remain separate until documents say otherwise.

Alice de Lacy and the Temple Ewell Land-Field

The search for William de la More's family did not produce his father. It produced something different: a female inheritance-field around one of the Templar places in his route.

Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, daughter and heir of Henry de Lacy, stood inside one of the great aristocratic inheritances of her age.

Chancery material concerning former Templar property records lands at Horsemede and Braddon as belonging to the fee of Alesia/Alice, and likewise places the advowson of Ewell within her fee. The record reaches backward to grants by her Longespée ancestors to the Templars and forward to the seizure and redistribution of those holdings after the order's suppression.

Through her maternal Longespée ancestry, Alice also belonged to the Salisbury line descended from William Longespée, the illegitimate son of Henry II.

That does not make Alice the mother, ancestress, or secret patron of William de la More.

Her importance is territorial and legal. A Templar site associated with his English route stood inside a major female inheritance that became contested when the Temple collapsed.

The pattern is therefore land before blood:

Alice carries the fee in which Temple Ewell sits.

That is a documentary carrier.

The Female Custody Current

Alice joins a wider recurrence already visible in the project:

Godiva — historical Mercian noblewoman and later mercy legend.

Countess Lucy — major Lincolnshire heiress and patron within the debated Turold/Malet reconstruction.

Nicholaa de la Haye — hereditary castle custodian who held Lincoln through siege.

Alice de Lacy — Countess of Lincoln whose inheritance touched former Templar lands and rights.

These women do not form one demonstrated lineage.

What recurs is a medieval mechanism: land, patronage, jurisdiction, and memory often survive through women when male lines fail, estates are divided, or political structures change.

That is the historical pattern from which the symbolic “female custody current” grows.

A Different William de la Mare on the Humber

The name then reappears in a wholly different man.

A fourteenth-century Master William de la Mare, canon of York and a relative or dependant of Archbishop William Melton, became Provost of Beverley in 1338. Antiquarian material associates him with the Melton-on-Humber world and with work touching river administration.

The same record has been used to identify him with a William de la Mare appointed in connection with sewers on the River Don and Isle of Axholme and later with inquiry into unlawful fishing on the Ouse between the Humber and Aire.

That identification should remain attached to the underlying record, but the landscape cluster is substantial:

Melton-on-Humber,

Beverley,

Welwick,

York,

Axholme,

Don,

Ouse,

Aire,

Humber.

This is not symbolic water alone. It is the practical medieval world of drainage, fishery, church office, jurisdiction, and river management.

The Humber William also had a brother Thomas de la Mare, vicar of Welwick and canon of York, who left William a significant bequest in 1358.

The recurrence is striking without needing to be enlarged:

William and Thomas.

Church and water.

Welwick and Beverley.

A de la Mare name inside the same wider Humber landscape that later becomes central to Alkborough, South Ferriby, Paull, and the Slaney fishery route.

Peterborough and Northborough: Abbey Custody

Another de la Mare family appears in the Peterborough Abbey world.

The de la Mares of Northborough held estates at places including Maxey, Northborough, and Thurlby under the abbey. Historical work describes members of the family as hereditary constables of Peterborough Abbey, while Northborough Manor House preserves their fourteenth-century architectural presence.

Here the surname enters a different custody system:

abbey land,

hereditary office,

manor,

fortified domestic stone.

The exact relationship between the Northborough de la Mares and the Humber de la Mares still needs genealogical proof.

But the recurrence has moved from theology into administration and landed service.

Nunney and Fisherton: The Pool Becomes Stone

Sir John de la Mare gives the name-field one of its clearest architectural bodies.

He received licence to crenellate Nunney Castle in Somerset in the fourteenth century. The surviving castle is dramatically enclosed by water, making the old mare / mere association visually irresistible: a fortified house held inside a moat.

The symbolism is secondary to the record. John de la Mare was a real landed soldier whose wealth and status became architecture.

His land trail also reaches Fisherton de la Mere, where John de la Mere of Nunney settled interests in the manor and advowson in the 1370s and 1380s.

Now the name-field joins:

castle,

moat,

manor,

advowson,

fishery-language,

and water-place.

The “Pool” has become stone without needing any Templar inheritance theory.

Curry Mallet and the Courcelles Land-Memory

Fisherton de la Mere then sits near another old Somerset name-field: Curry Mallet.

Domesday material places Roger de Courcelles in the earlier estate history, with the Malet family later becoming associated with Curry Mallet. Older genealogical writers, including Arthur Malet, proposed a marriage between a Malet son and a Courcelles heiress as an explanation for part of that transfer.

That proposed marriage remains an older hypothesis rather than a settled carrier.

The useful observation is geographical and tenurial:

Fisherton becomes associated with de la Mere.

Curry becomes Mallet.

Both stand within a landscape whose earlier land history includes Courcelles.

This brings the Pool-name and Malet-name into one estate-field without proving de la Mare descent from Malet or a hidden transfer from the Temple.

Peter de la Mare: Correction of the Crown

The name's second great “correction” figure is Sir Peter de la Mare.

In the Good Parliament of 1376, the Commons chose Peter as their principal spokesman in an unprecedented confrontation with royal government and court corruption.

After the political reaction associated with John of Gaunt, Peter was imprisoned in Nottingham Castle.

The symbolic parallel can be stated cleanly:

William de la Mare corrects Thomas Aquinas.

Peter de la Mare corrects the Crown.

Between them, William de la More endures the destruction of the English Temple and dies in the Tower.

They are different men, and possibly different families.

What recurs is a function around power:

correction,

custody,

resistance,

conscience,

institutional pressure.

The Name-Field Without a False Genealogy

Several names ring together in this project:

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

They should not be collapsed.

de Lacy has its own Norman territorial history.

de la Mare / de la Mere belongs to a distinct surname field associated with the mere or pool.

de la More may have a different topographical origin, including moor/heath possibilities.

de Molay is a French locative surname from Molay.

Lany and Slaney require their own documentary pedigrees.

Their value together is recurrence, not etymological identity.

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.

That is a landscape-and-function field, not a proved super-lineage.

What the Route Establishes

The strongest present claim is cleaner than the older draft's repeated speculation:

the de la Mare and de la More material repeatedly occupies medieval systems of custody—church, abbey, water, castle, Temple, land, Parliament, and Crown—while the exact relationships between the surname branches remain open.

What is secure or strong:

• Secure / strong: William de la Mare’s Franciscan theological correction of Aquinas and Lincoln association; William de la More’s senior English Templar role, arrest, imprisonment and death during the suppression; Alice de Lacy’s legal fee around former Templar lands and rights at Ewell and related holdings; the fourteenth-century Humber de la Mare clerical and river-administration field; de la Mare holdings and office around Peterborough / Northborough; John de la Mare at Nunney and Fisherton; and Peter de la Mare’s role in the Good Parliament and later imprisonment.

What remains open:

• Who were William de la More's parents?

• Was his surname connected to any de la Mare family, or was de la More an independent moor/heath name?

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

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

• Can the Fisherton/Curry Mallet land-memory be promoted from recurrence into a firmer family bridge?

Those are archive questions now, not conclusions.

Keeper Lines

William de la Mare brings correction to Thomas.

William de la More carries the English Temple into captivity.

Alice de Lacy reveals the female land-field around Temple Ewell.

The Humber William brings de la Mare into church, fishery, and river governance.

Northborough brings abbey custody.

Nunney turns the water-name into a castle in a moat.

Fisherton brings manor and advowson.

Curry Mallet brings the older land-memory beside it.

Peter de la Mare brings correction to the Crown.

The route is too structured to dismiss as random, and too unfinished to call one bloodline.

For now, it stands where it is strongest:

a medieval custody-field awaiting its carriers.