ABSTRACT
The houses of the Order of St Thomas were originally located on the eastern side of Acre, near the hospital of the Germans. On the instigation of Peter de les Roches, Bishop of Winchester, the Order moved in the 1220s to a new location in the north of the Montmusard faubourg near the Quarter of the Knights of St Lazarus (to its south on one of the medieval maps). The bishop built a church here for the Order. On the thirteenth-century map of Matthew Paris, above an illustration of a church, appear the words: ‘La maisun de seint Thomas le mar[tir]’.1 Along the length of the north-eastern wall of Montmusard appears the inscription: ‘C’est le Burg ki est apelé Munt Musard: c’est tut le plus inhabi[t]é de Engleis’.2 Prince Edward, later Edward I of England, visited Acre in 1271, at which time the Order was constructing a new church. When he subsequently came to the throne he supported the Order, giving them custody over the new tower (Turris Anglorum) that he had had constructed near the eastern end of the outer northern wall of the city.
