Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/321

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ricus calls Matilda), daughter of Richard de Redvers, and took him into his friendship [see Redvers, Family of]. William had recovered his English lands before 1130–1.

On Henry's death he was one of the barons who were sent to take charge of the frontiers of Normandy in December 1135, and in 1137 was one of the justiciars to whom Stephen entrusted the duchy (ib. v. 52, 91). About 1138 Stephen made him Earl of Lincoln. But in 1141 William and his half-brother Randulf, earl of Chester, seized Lincoln by a trick, and held it against Stephen (ib. v. 125; John of Hexham, i. 134). William was perhaps reconciled to the king in the spring of 1142 (Round, Geoff. de Mandeville, p. 159), but afterwards he seems to have been deprived of his earldom, which was conferred on Gilbert de Gand, who had married a sister of Earl Randulf. William appears as witness to a charter granted by Henry II, when Duke of Normandy, to Earl Randulf of Chester; and in his later years went on a pilgrimage to Compostella ({sc|Ormerod}}, Cheshire, i. 25). He died before 1168, perhaps about 1153. His obit was observed on 6 Aug. at Bayeux, to which he gave the church of Ver in the Bessin; but at Lincoln, where he confirmed his father's foundation of the prebend of Asgarby, it was kept on 11 Sept. (Lincoln Obituary, ap. Gir. Cambr. vii. 161). William de Roumare founded the Cistercian abbey of Revesby in 1142 or 1143 (Dugdale, Monast. Angl. v. 453; Chron. Louth Park Abbey, p. 31); he also made a bequest to Rouen Cathedral for the souls of himself and his family. Ordericus Vitalis says that he was dissolute in his youth, but, after a severe illness, and at the instance of Archbishop Geoffrey of Rouen (d. 1128), mended his ways and established monks at Neufmarché in 1132 (iv. 485, v. 207–8).

He had one son, William Elias, who died in 1152, having, by Agnes, sister of William, earl of Albemarle, two sons (Robert de Torigni, ap. Chron. Stephen, &c., ii. 167, Rolls Ser.), of whom one, William III of Roumare, is often styled Earl William de Roumare, though he never held the earldom of Lincoln; he died before 1198, without issue.

The dubious reference to a William, earl of Cambridge, under date 1139 (Monast. Angl. vi. 949), most probably is intended for William de Roumare (Round, Feudal England, pp. 184–7).

[Ordericus Vitalis (Soc. de l'Hist. de France). The notices in the Continuation of the pseudo-Ingulph ap. Fulman's Scriptores are untrustworthy. Stapleton's Rot. Scacc. Norm. vol. i. p. cxxxviii, vol. ii. pp. cli–clx; Collectanea Top. et Gen. viii. 155–8; Topographer and Genealogist, i. 17–28 (1846); Genealogist, v. 60–75, 153–73, vi. 129–39, vii. 62, 178–9, vii. 1–5, 81–91, 148–50; Nichols and Bowles's Antiq. of Laycock, pp. 66–79; Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville and Feudal England; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, v. 84–8.]

C. L. K.

ROUPELL, GEORGE LEITH, M.D. (1797–1854), physician, eldest son of George Boon Roupell of Chartham Park, Sussex, and his wife Frances, daughter of Robert M'Culloch of Chartham, a master in chancery, was born on 18 Sept. 1797. The first of the family who settled in England spelt the name Rüpell, and was an officer in William III's army, and a native of Hesse-Cassel. George Leith was sent to Dr. Burney's school at Greenwich, and, having obtained a Tancred studentship in medicine, entered at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1815. He took no degree in arts, but graduated M.B. in 1820, became a licentiate in medicine in 1824, and M.D. in 1825, and on 30 Sept. 1826 was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians. He was a censor in 1829, 1837, and 1838, gave the Croonian lectures in 1832 on general pathology, and in 1833 on cholera. The latter course was published in the same year. After some practice as physician to the Seamen's Hospital Society and to the Foundling Hospital, he was appointed physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital on 19 June 1834, in succession to Dr. Edward Roberts. He published in 1833 ‘Illustrations of the Effects of Poisons,’ a series of notes upon drawings made by George McWhinnie, a demonstrator at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1837 he read before the College of Physicians, and afterwards published, ‘Some Account of a Fever prevalent in the year 1831.’ He proposed the name ‘febris typhodes rubeoloida’ for this epidemic disease, of which twelve out of seventy-five cases were fatal, and which seems to have been what is now known as epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, a disease rare in England, but well known in Germany. He published in 1839 ‘A Short Treatise on Typhus Fever,’ based on observations made in the wards of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, but containing more extracts from other writers than notes of what he had seen in his own practice. The most interesting observation is in relation to the infection of typhus being conveyed by a corpse. He mentions that 136 students of anatomy at St. Bartholomew's minutely dissected seventeen bodies, in which the cause of death was typhus, while only two took the disease, and these were also exposed to contact with living patients. In 1838 he succeeded to his father's estates,