(Leland has it De La Mare) from the great fief of La Mare, near St. Opportune, in the commune of Autretot, Normandy; where their castle was built upon piles on the margin of the lake still called Grande-mare. The Sire de La Mare is one of the Norman nobles enumerated by Wace at the battle of Hastings; and the family became very numerous both in Normandy and England. Sir William de la Mare, and his lands in the valley of La Mare, are mentioned in a charter of St. Louis, dated 1259; and as many as nine Sires de La Mare (almost all of them bearing different arms) are entered on the roll of “Gentilshommes de la Normandie” given in the Nobiliaire. De La Marre de Longueville, of the bailifry of Bayeux, and the Sieur de La Mare, of that of Carentan, sat in the Assembly of Norman nobles convened in 1789.

The ancestor of the English families, “Norman de La Mare, lived c. 1030. Hugo de La Mare, 1070, occurs in a Breton charter (Morice, Hist Bret Preuves, i. 434).” —The Norman People. This was one of his sons, of whom four came to England at the Conquest, though in all probability not the eldest of them. William Fitz Norman, who in 1086 held of the King in chief in Gloucester and Hereford, and as William de Mare, appears as an undertenant in Wiltshire and Hertfordshire (Domesday), must have been the head of the house. Hugh, also called Fitz Norman (Hugo de Mare in Domesday), held of Hugh Lupus in Cheshire. Ralph, the third, was the Earl’s Dapifer or Seneschal, and the ancestor of the Palatinate Barons of Montalt. He and Roger, a fourth brother, are mentioned in a charter of Hugh Fitz Norman’s to St. Werburgh’s Abbey, Chester, between 1107-20.

William is said to have married a daughter of Hugh Lupus (it must have been a bastard daughter), and had a son, named after his grandfather, Hugh, “ancestor of the Barons of Kilpec, and censor of the Forest of Dean, 1131.” - A. S. Ellis. The custody of this forest “had been attached to the holding of some of Fitz Norman’s lands in the time of Edward the Confessor.”—Sir Henry Ellis. Hugh gave the church of Kilpec, with the chapel of Our Lady within the Castle, in 1124 to the monks of St. Peter’s at Gloucester; and his son Henry assumed the name of this Herefordshire castle, which was the head of his barony. This Henry, in 1175, was fined one hundred marks for trespassing in the King’s forests; and his successor John, obtained a charter from King John, the year after his accession, “That neither himself nor any of his Heirs, should be abridg’d of the Bailiwick of his Forest of Herefordshire.” - Dugdale. He died four years afterwards, leaving a son who proved the last heir male, and had two daughters who inherited. Isabel, the eldest, carried the barony to William Waleran; and Joan, the second, married Philip Marmion.

The three other sons of Norman de La Mare were, as I have already said, settled in Cheshire. Hugh Fitz Norman, Lord of Lea, held a con­siderable estate that had been allotted to him by the Earl in his county palatine; but his line failed with his grandson, and the whole reverted to the Barons of Montalt, descended from his next brother Ralph, Seneschal of Chester.

Ralph’s son Robert had adopted the name of the head of his barony, “a little Hill,” says Dugdale, “in Flintshire, then called Montalt, whereon he built a castle, but of late time (vulgarly) Moulde”: It is called by the Welsh “Wyddgrug,” the conspicuous hill, translated Montalt by the Normans. and ruled his territory with the iron hand of a Baron Marcher. In the time of his successor Roger it was over run by Llewellyn’s son David; and one of the articles in the treaty of peace concluded in 1243 between Henry III. stipulated that the Baron of Montalt should enjoy his own again. In 1249, “being reputed one of the greatest Barons of this Realm, and signed with the Cross in order to an Expedition to the Holy Land" with Prince Edward, he sold to the Monks of Coventry “a great part of his Woods and Revenues” there, to raise money for his outfit This property had come to him through Cecily his wife, one of the coheirs of Hugh de Albini, Earl of Arundel, by whom he left two sons; John, twice married, but childless: and Robert, styled the “Black Steward of Chester,” who was the father of the two last Lords of Montalt, Roger, and Robert. Roger was in arms against Hen. III., but twice followed Edward I. to the Gascon wars, and was rewarded by a summons to parliament in 1294. He died s. p. three years afterwards; and his brother Robert, again a soldier and again a baron by writ, being likewise childless, settled his whole vast estate, with the castles of Monthalt, Hawarden, &c, on Queen Isabel, the mother of Edward III. for her life, and afterwards on her younger son, John of Eltham, and his heirs. He died in 1329.

But, according to Ormerod, he had another brother and heir-at-law, Hugh de Montalt, whom he thus defrauded of his rights; and Hugh was succeeded by a son and a grandson. Judith, the daughter of the grandson, married - Glegg; and “her descendants claimed the town, castle, lordship, and manor of Mohaute and Mohautesdale.” But what they obtained is a widely different question.

The name of Monhalt or Monhaut was transmuted to Moulde or Maude; and a branch of the house - vaguely described as “cousins” - was long seated at Riddlesden in Yorkshire. Robert Maude, of Riddlesden and Ripon, living in the seventeenth century, sold his English estates to buy land in Ireland, and settled at Dundrum, co. Tipperary. His grandson, who married a Cornwallis heiress, received a baronetcy in 1705, and was the father of Sir Thomas Maude, created Baron of Montalt in 1776, whose title expired with him in the following year. It was revived in favour of his brother, Sir Cornwallis, in 1785; and the Viscountcy of Hawarden followed in 1793. Both titles are still borne by his descendant; and another - the Earldom De Montalt - was added in 1886.

The collateral branches that retained the original name of De La Mare, which, by a curious fatality, had been discarded by the principal families - were extremely numerous. Nearly twenty different bearings are assigned to the name in Burke’s Armoury, exclusive of the coat of the Barons of Kilpec, Argent a sword in bend Sable; or that of the Barons of Montalt, Azure, a lion rampant Argent. The unravelling of their respective pedigrees would be a task over which a conscientious genealogist might grow grey. Robert de La Mare (no doubt belonging to the house of Kilpec), who in 1165 held ten knight’s fees of the Earl of Gloucester, is credited with being the ancestor of the Gloucester, Worcester, and Herefordshire branches. "By the White Book of Worcester it appears that Thomas de La Mare held in Ordewicke, in the parish of Eldersfield of the gift of William Earl of Gloucester, about 1182: and 20 Ed. III. John Delamare held lands in Eldersfield. This family extended themselves into the county of Hereford, and gave name to the parish of Tedstone Delamare. In 7 Hen. VI. the Delamares of Tedstone were returned into the Exchequer in rank next to the knights, and before the esquires, to attend the King’s person with horse and arms to France. About the same time John Delamare of Hardwicke was returned into the same court as an esquire to serve the King. Delamare having sold this estate to Sir Thomas Coventry, soon after left the country.” - Nash's Worcestershire. Sir Peter de La Mare of Yatton, knight of the shire for Herefordshire, was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons at the accession of Richard II. He had been nominated for the office in the last Parliament of the previous reign, but rejected through the influence of the Court party, and imprisoned in Nottingham Castle for speaking his mind too freely respecting Alice Perers, "the Abishaig of King Edward III.” He continued none the less independent and "bold of speech;” for his first act as Speaker was to make several important regulations for the government of the country during the young King’s minority. At his death, Yatton passed to his great nephew Roger Seymour, ancestor of the Dukes of Somerset Richard De la Mare was Sheriff of Hereford 1 Henry VI. Their arms, Barry of six, dancetté Or and Gules, remain in Hereford Cathedral.

In Oxfordshire, Henry de la Mare, on the death of his father in 1139, paid a fine “that he might enjoy his office of Veltrare (Vaultrer, or Huntsman), holding it by petty Serjeanty.” His successor, Robert, Sheriff of Oxon 34 Hen. II., and of Oxon and Berks in the first two years of Cceur de Lion’s reign, was the father of Geoffrey, who held Dudcote in Berkshire. From him (I am still quoting the Baronage) descended John de la Mare of Gersynden (Garsington) in Oxfordshire, who served in Edward I.’s foreign wars in 1293 and 1297, and was summoned to Parliament by him in 1299. None of the name ever received a second summons; and with him Dugdale consequently closes the pedigree. Even the portion he has given must be far from complete. There was a Henry de la Mare in the reign of Henry III., who “held of land at Elwescot in Oxfordshire by the serjeanty of keeping the door of the King’s hall, and providing brushwood and litter for the use of the King’s household; and two marks of land at Eston by the serjeanty of keeping the meretrices It should be borne in mind that in mediæval times this word was used for latrices or laundresses. following the King’s Court” (Testa de Nevill). His wife Gunnor has left her name to Winterborne-Gunnor in Wiltshire, also called (in the Pipe-Roll of 1254) Winterborne de la Mare. They had “a son named Henry, who was slain in 1267, fugiens de pace. He was a robber of churches and monasteries, and was imprisoned at Bampton in Oxfordshire, where, breaking his prison, he was pursued and cut down with an axe. According to one account he left Alicia his sister and heiress; but his lands, as those of a felon, were seized into the King’s hands.”—Hoare's Wilts.

Contemporary with him was Nicholas de la Mare, Lord of Nunney-de-la-Mare in Somersetshire, of which the family had been “very early possessed. He was succeeded by another Nicholas, who lived there in the time of Edward I., and had several children, of whom Elias de la Mare was a great warrior, and was the first projector of the castle there, which was finished by his successors. John de la Mare was Sheriff of Wilts” (where he has left his name to Fisherton-de-la-Mare) “in 1377, and then bore on his shield two lions passant This John and his younger brother Jaques finished the castle, embellishing it with spoils brought from abroad, which had been won in the wars of France. Philip de la Mare succeeded to the manor of Nunney-de-la-Mare, and was father of several children, of whom Sir Elias de la Mare was Sheriff of Wilts 2 Hen. V., but died without issue; and Eleanor his eldest sister became heir to the whole estate lying in Somersetshire. This Eleanor was married to William Paulet, second son of Sir John Paulet of Melcombe in this county.”—Collinson's Somerset. He was the ancestor of the Marquesses of Winchester and Dukes of Bolton. Leland describes Nunney as “a praty castle at the weste end of the paroche churche, havynge at eche end by northe and southe 2 praty rownd towres gatheryd by cumpace to joyne into one. The waulls be very stronge and thykke, and the stayres narrow; the lodgynge within somewhat darke. It standith on the lefte ripe of the ryver devidethe” (dividing) “it from the churcheyarde. The castell is motyd about, and this mote is servid by water conveyed into it owte of the ryver. There is a stronge waulle withe owte the mote rounde about, saving at the est parte of the castell where it is defendyd by the brooke.” It was held by the Paulets till the time of Henry VIII.

“Ther was,” continues Leland, “a younger Brother of this House of the Delamares; and he by Præferrement of Manage had about the tyme of Edwarde the 3, the Doughter and Hey re of one Achard, a Man of fay re Landes in Bark- shire. Syr Thomas Delamare, Knight of the Sepulchre, the last of this House had a Sun callid John; and he dying afore Thomas his Father left two Doughters; whereof one was maried to Humfre Foster, Father to Syr Humfre that now lyvith; the other to Morton of Dorsetshire, Kinsman to Cardinal Morton; but she had no Children, and so the Landes of this Delamer cam totally to Foster.” Her sister, however, amply atoned for this deficiency: for, adds Leland, “Syr Humfre Foster’s Father had twenty Children.”

There were probably other ramifications of this ubiquitous race that I have left unnoticed. But at least one family, bearing the same name, may be discarded from the list The De la Mares or De la Meres of Cheshire were a younger branch of the Venables, seated at Mere in that county; a town originally held by Gilbert de Venables, and so called from the adjoining lake or mere. Their coat of arms - an ancient three-masted ship; and their crest - a mermaid with a green tail holding a golden comb or mirror - betoken this origin.