solved. During the three months following Becket's return he kept up a frequent correspondence with Bishop William, and in a letter of 9 Dec. he announced his intention of soon visiting his faithful friend at Norwich. Three weeks later (29 Dec.) he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. Bishop William's memorial elegiacs on the date of the primate's assassination are to be found in one manuscript of the ‘Chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury’ (i. 232).
After the death of Archbishop Thomas we hear very little of Bishop William. On 9 June 1172 a disastrous fire broke out in Norwich Cathedral, which wrought great destruction in the church, and tradition has it that the bishop's last days were saddened by this calamity. On the other hand he lived to rejoice at the canonisation of his friend the archbishop by Alexander III in 1173. He died in January 1174. Bishop William had the reputation of being a learned and accomplished scholar in an age which had not a few of such men. At his suggestion Thomas of Monmouth drew up his account of the ‘Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich,’ and from this author we learn that his patron was celebrated for his eloquence and gift of speech not only in his own diocese, but even at Rome. That he was a credulous and superstitious person cannot be doubted. He can hardly be regarded as a great prelate; he certainly was not a man in advance of his age, and but for his steadfast and unwavering fidelity to the great archbishop to whom he clung with the tenacity of a fanatic, and his having so vehemently forced upon his diocese the cult of the boy saint, the story of whose reputed martyrdom produced such widespread and dreadful effects in the after times, we should have known very little about him.
[Since Blomefield's days (Hist. of Norfolk, iii. 474) much information on the career of Bishop William has come to light, and may be found in Goulburn and Symonds's Life and Letters of Herbert de Losinga, 1878, vol. ii.; The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. A. Jessopp and M. R. James, Cambridge Press, 1896; and in the Memorials of Thomas Becket, especially vols. vi. vii. (Rolls Series). On the canons of Pentney see Eyton's Itinerary of Henry II, p. 95 n. See, too, John of Salisbury's Epistles, ed. Migne. The date of the fire in the cathedral is derived from a manuscript in Trin. Coll. Cambr., a manuscript which Hardy thinks was compiled by a Norwich monk (Cat. iii. 25).]
WILLIAM of St. Albans (fl. 1178), hagiologist, was a monk of St. Albans. Probably on the translation of the relics of St. Amphibalus in 1178, William, at the request of Abbot Simon (1166–1183), wrote the lives of Amphibalus and Alban, printed in the ‘Acta SS.,’ June, iv. 149. William professes to translate from a Saxon author. At his request his prose was versified by Ralph of St. Albans [q. v.] Usher (Brit. Eccles. Antiq. p. 80) conjectures that William may be identified with William Martell the sacrist, who vainly tried to succeed to the abbacy on Simon's death (Gesta S. Albani, pp. 195, 199).
[Hardy's Descriptive Cat. i. 5.]
WILLIAM of Peterborough (fl. 1188), theological writer, was a native of Peterborough and a monk of Ramsey. He is improbably stated by Wood to have studied at Oxford in 1168 (Hist. and Antiquities, i. 54). Boston of Bury (Tanner, p. xl) calls him a doctor of theology, and names his ‘Commentary on the Song of Songs,’ ‘Homilies,’ ‘Distinctions,’ and ‘Euphrastica.’ These works were seen at Ramsey by Leland (Comm. de Script. Brit. p. 263), but the last alone is now known, in the Bodleian MS. Super A i. art. 44, formerly belonging to Ramsey Abbey. In his notebook (Selden MS. 64 B) Bale mentions also ‘Interpretaciones Vocabulorum,’ which he knew from a Ramsey copy.
[Tanner's Bibliotheca, p. 355; Bale, iii. 22; Pits, p. 252.]
WILLIAM Fitzstephen (d. 1190?), biographer of Becket. [See Fitzstephen.]
WILLIAM Fitzosbert (d. 1196), demagogue. [See Fitzosbert.]
WILLIAM of Longchamp (d. 1197), chancellor to Richard I. [See Longchamp.]
WILLIAM of Newburgh (1136–1201?), historian, was born in 1136 at or near Bridlington in Yorkshire. Leland (Collectanea, iv. 19, 37) calls him ‘Gulielmus Parvus,’ and later writers have assumed that this surname is a translation of ‘Petit’ or ‘Little,’ but there is no known authority for it in any language. A thirteenth-century manuscript of William's History (Bodl. MS. Rawlinson, B. 192) has at its beginning a much rubbed rubric which seems to read ‘Liber Sanctæ Mariæ Fratris Willelmi Monachi de Rufforth.’ G. J. Vossius (De Historicis Latinis, l. ii. c. 51) mentions an historical work which he ascribes to ‘William of Rievaux, a Cistercian monk of Rusheforde,’ but which is, in fact, the ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’ of William of Newburgh. Putting together this mistake of Vossius and the rubric quoted above, Mr. Howlett suggests that the latter
