the whole province of Kent in possession,’ while Gervase of Canterbury speaks of him as being already ‘in unjust occupation of Kent’ when Robert was imprisoned in his keeping in Rochester Castle, and even as having had ‘all Kent committed to his charge’ early in Stephen's reign; and it is certain that Stephen did, at some time between 1136 and 1154, provide him with large revenues from crown lands in Kent; but in no document of the period does he bear the title of earl, and there is sure evidence that in 1150 or later he was still merely ‘William of Ypres’ (Round, Anc. Charters, p. 53; Ducarel, Hist. of St. Katherine's Hospital, pp. 100–2).
For a few years after Stephen's restoration William was ‘a fear and a terror to all England.’ It may have been in 1143 that he and three other distinguished bandits threatened to burn St. Albans Abbey, and were bought off by a valuable gift from its treasury (Gesta Abbatum S. Albani, i. 94; cf. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 206). On another occasion Stephen sent him to demand a contribution from the monks of Abingdon; William broke open their treasure chest with a hatchet and seized the required sum (Hist. Abingdon, ii. 292). At the height of his power William became blind; and then ‘God enlightened his heart,’ and he set himself to distribute in good works the wealth which he had acquired by plunder and bloodshed. In 1144 or 1146 he founded a Cistercian abbey at Boxley in Kent (Tanner, Not. Monast., Kent, vii.; Monast. Angl. v. 460, 461). In 1148 he joined with Queen Matilda in endeavouring to reconcile Stephen and Archbishop Theobald [q. v.] When the abbey of St. Bertin (Flanders) was burnt down in 1152, he covered nearly the whole expense of its rebuilding. Henry II on his accession in December 1154 banished Stephen's foreign troops from England; but he suffered their blind old leader to receive his Kentish revenues up to Easter 1157 (Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II p. 65, 3 Hen. II pp. 101, 102). It was probably not till then that William went back to Loo. There he seems to have retained some property even during his exile, for a grant made by him to the abbey of Clairmarais of ‘some land in the parish of Loo which Erembald Stratin formerly rented of the same William’ is witnessed by Queen Matilda and her son Eustace. This grant was confirmed, at William's request, by Countess Sibyl of Flanders and her son, as regents for the count who was absent on crusade, in 1157 (Gallia Christiana, vol. iii., instrumenta, col. 121, where ‘Balduinus’ is evidently a scribe's error for ‘Philippus.’ For the date cf. ib. cols. 539–540, and vol. v. col. 242). William's last seven years were spent in the monastery of St. Peter at Loo, which he benefited so largely that he came to be regarded (erroneously, see above) as its founder. A comparison of the dates indicated in the pipe roll of 1157 (pp. 101–2), the ‘Genealogia Comitum Flandriæ’ (p. 388), and John of Ypres (p. 646), points to 1165 as the year of his death. He was buried on 25 Jan. in the conventual church.
[Walter of Terouanne and Galbert of Bruges (Acta Sanctorum, 2 March; Pertz, vol. xii.; Migne, vol. cxlvi.); Genealogia Comitum Flandriæ and John of Ypres (Martène and Durand's Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, vol. iii.); Le Mire's (Miræus) Notitia Ecclesiarum Belgii, cc. 114, 130, 134, 141; Ordericus Vitalis, vol. v. (Soc. de l'Hist. de France); William of Malmesbury's Historia Novella; Henry of Huntingdon; Gervase of Canterbury.]
WILLIAM de Tracy (d. 1173), murderer of Thomas Becket. [See Tracy.]
WILLIAM (1095?–1174), bishop of Norwich—his surname appears in various forms as Turbe, Turbo, or de Turbeville—was one of the boys whom Herbert de Losinga [q. v.], bishop and founder of the cathedral and monastery of Norwich, took under his protection to be educated in the monastic school at the beginning of the twelfth century. He was evidently a lad of great promise, and Bishop Herbert bestowed upon him much personal care and instruction, and watched his progress in his studies with peculiar interest. The young William acquired much facility in writing Latin verse, passed through the usual course of the trivium and quadrivium, and even read Aristotle's topics and the categories under his patron's eye. He appears soon to have been employed as the schoolmaster of the monastery, and in due course was admitted as a professed monk among the brethren. When Bishop Herbert died in 1119, William can hardly have been more than twenty-five years old; but not many years after Bishop Eborard's consecration to the see, his name appears as witnessing a charter of confirmation, being then sub-prior of the monastery. He must have become prior before Eborard's episcopate was half over, for already in 1144 he showed himself a very masterful personage in the convent, with a tendency to assert himself as against the bishop, who evidently did not cordially co-operate with him. At the Easter synod held this year, the announcement by a
