home. A papal legate, the Cardinal John of Crema, was sent to England to settle the question on the spot (Sym. Dunelm ii. 269, 273). On his way back to England William visited the king in Normandy (Flor. Wig. cont. ii. 78). On his arrival he was enthroned at Canterbury, and consecrated Bishops Alexander of Lincoln and Godfrey of Bath.
The legation of John of Crema (1125) excited great indignation in England, as attacking the rights of Canterbury and the English church. Received with great pomp by both William and Thurstan, John on Easter day usurped William's function by officiating at high mass in Canterbury Cathedral. The spiteful monks regarded this indignity as a retribution for the election of a clerk as archbishop. In the legatine council held on 9 Sept. in Westminster Abbey the cardinal took precedence over both archbishops, though in the writs of summons William claims that the council was celebrated with his assent (Wilkins, i. 408). The canons passed were mainly directed against the married clergy (Gervase, ii. 279–81, gives them at length); but nothing effectual was settled with regard to Thurstan and William. In consequence probably of this, both archbishops again started for Italy on the conclusion of the council, Thurstan accompanying the legate, and William being summoned by his rival, though his indignation at the proceedings of the legate and a desire to prevent the continuance of such missions also contributed to take him there. He was, however, well received by the new pope, Honorius II, and won an important victory by obtaining for himself the appointment as papal legate in England and Scotland, while Thurstan had to return empty-handed. This was the most important act of William's archbishopric. It secured him personally an immediate precedence over the northern primate, though at the expense of some diminution of the independence of his own see. It saved England for a time from the unwelcome presence of an Italian legate. It became the precedent for the later custom of making the archbishop of Canterbury the ‘legatus natus’ of the Roman see. The supreme jurisdiction of the pope was thus admitted, though in English hands it assumed its least offensive form (Stubbs, Const. Hist. iii. 229; the bull, dated 25 Jan. 1126, is in Wilkins's Concilia, i. 409).
Even now, however, William's difficulties with Thurstan were not at an end. Soon after his return Thurstan rushed into a new quarrel because his rival alone was suffered to impose the crown on the king's head at the Christmas court at Windsor. Again, William refused to allow Thurstan to bear his primatial cross erect before him within the southern province, and turned his cross-bearer out of the royal chapel. At a council held by him at Westminster in 1127, as archbishop and legate, Thurstan refused to attend. At the council of 1129, however, Thurstan got over his scruples, and on one occasion went so far as to ask for William's advice. After the secession of several monks from the abbey of St. Mary's, York, to which the establishment of the great Cistercian house of Fountains was ultimately due, Thurstan wrote a long and temperate letter to William, as legate, dwelling on the advantages of intercommunication between the chief rulers of the church and asking him to join in protecting the stricter monks and to co-operate with him in restoring order in the divided monastery (Walbran, Memorials of Fountains, pref. xxx–xxxii. Surtees Society, and pp. 11–29, where the letter is printed in full). It is unknown whether William interfered or not. If he did, his good offices were of no avail.
With King Henry William seems to have generally remained on fair terms. In 1126 he was the first to take the oaths to observe the succession of Matilda. At Michaelmas 1129 he, with the king's permission, held a council at London to deal with the chronic difficulty of the married clerks. It was agreed by the bishops that the offenders were all to put away their wives by St. Andrew's day or give up their benefices. But the king took advantage of the simplicity of the archbishop and allowed all who paid him a sufficient fine to keep their wives; at which the bishops were both sorry and angry (Hen. Hunt. p. 251; Chron. Sax. s. a. 1129).
William of Corbeil was, like his early patrons Flambard and Belmeis, a great builder. He received a gift from the king of the church and castle of Rochester, a see always intimately connected with the archbishopric, and to which William had appointed his archdeacon John as bishop. There he continued Gundulf's great works by constructing the lofty and massive keep of the castle which is still standing (Gervase, ii. 381; cf. Hasted, Kent, iv. 695, from Regist. Priorat. Christi Cant. and G. T. Clark, Mediæval Military Architecture, ii. 421). He also took an active interest in the rebuilding of the cathedral of St. Andrew in that city, and attended its dedication, 5 May 1130. His benefactions to the chapter were also numerous (Thorpe, Registrum Roffense). Immediately before that he had celebrated, with a magnificence that contemporaries could only parallel by the opening of Solomon's Temple,
