sophus’), he wrote also glosses on the ‘Timæus,’ part of which have been printed as the work of Honorius of Autun in Cousin's ‘Œuvres inédits d'Abélard,’ App. pp. 648 seq., and a commentary on Boethius's ‘De Consolatione Philosophiæ,’ which Jourdain describes as the first real commentary other than mere glosses on this popular work (Notices et Extraits, vol. xx. pt. ii. p. 57). His tendencies were strongly platonistic and realistic; the most interesting of his speculations are perhaps those which develop the Epicurean atomic theory and a theory of the antipodes.
[The complicated bibliographical history of William's work has been unravelled by Mr. R. L. Poole in Herzog and Plitt's Real-Encyklopädie and in his Illustrations of the Hist. of Mediæval Thought, where full references may be found, pp. 124 sqq. 338–63. See also Antoine Charma's Guillaume de Conches, Paris, 1857, 8vo.]
WILLIAM de Wycumbe (fl. 1160), biographer, was chaplain to Robert de Betun (d. 1148), bishop of Hereford, and wrote a eulogistic life of the bishop, which is printed in Wharton's ‘Anglia Sacra’ (ii. 322). Manuscripts are in the British Museum (MS. Cotton Julius D. ii.) and at Lambeth (MS. 151). He became prior of the second Llanthony Abbey, founded at Gloucester by his patron Robert de Betun, who was its first prior. He wrote as well a history of the acts of violence and injustice perpetrated on his monastery by Milo, constable of Gloucester. He seems to have treated his monks harshly; for aided by Milo's son Roger, who had been offended at the narrative of his father's misdeeds, they expelled him from the monastery. He is said to have passed the remainder of his life in retirement at Frome.
[Wright's Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period, p. 317; Tanner's Bibliotheca Britanno-Hibernica, p. 364.]
WILLIAM of Ypres (d. 1165?), erroneously styled Earl of Kent, was son of Philip, count or viscount of Ypres, younger son of Robert I, count of Flanders. Suger (Vita Ludov. Grossi, chap. xxix.) calls him ‘Guillelmus Bastardus,’ and later writers mostly say that he was illegitimate, but there seems to be no other contemporary authority for the assertion, unless it be one document quoted by Galbert of Bruges, which describes him as ‘spurius, to wit, born of a noble father and a mother of low degree, who carded wool all her life;’ and Kervyn de Lettenhove (Hist. de Flandre, i. 358) thinks that this refers to a lawful union, only vitiated by the disparity in the condition of the parties. William had a brother, or half-brother, named Theobald Sorel. William is called by contemporary writers ‘William of Ypres’ and ‘William of Loo.’ Loo (near Furnes, in West Flanders) was a place of which Philip had been lord, but in which he had in 1093 ceded most of his seignorial rights to a convent of canons regular dwelling there in a monastery dedicated to St. Peter. His son appears to have inherited his estates at Loo, but not his rank and title; in a charter dated 1118 he calls himself simply ‘William, son of Count Philip.’ He was married to a niece of Clementia, widow of Count Robert II of Flanders, and mother of the reigning Count Baldwin VII. In 1119 Clementia, seeing that her son was about to die childless, wished him to be succeeded by her niece's husband; Baldwin, however, nominated as his successor another cousin, Charles of Denmark. On Baldwin's death on 17 June 1119 Charles became Count of Flanders; and in 1123 the privileges of the minster at Loo were confirmed jointly by Charles and William, whom Charles oddly calls ‘my nephew;’ they were really first cousins. On 2 March 1127 Charles was murdered at Bruges. William at once claimed the county of Flanders, forcibly occupied Ypres and the neighbouring towns, and extorted homage from their inhabitants, and from the merchants who were assembled at the fair of Ypres. On 6 March he sent a message to Bertulf, the provost of Bruges, who was known to have instigated the murder of Charles, greeting him openly as his ‘intimate friend,’ and requesting his support. On 9 March a party bent on avenging Charles entered Bruges and besieged the provost in the citadel. On the 16th two knights endeavoured to make this party acknowledge William as count, by telling them that Flanders had been granted to him by its overlord, King Louis of France. William meanwhile had ‘unfurled his banners, as lord and count of the land, against all who refused to pay him the revenues due to its sovereign;’ and hearing that one of Charles's murderers had been captured at Térouanne, he claimed the right of punishing him, and caused him to be hanged at Aire on 20 or 23 March.
On 20 March Louis came to Arras to examine the claims of the competitors for the Flemish succession, of whom there were already two besides William of Ypres; and on the 23rd he adjudged the fief, not to any one of these three, but to William Clito, son of Robert, duke of Normandy [q. v.] This was against the interest of Clito's
