masters who benefited by his bequest to live together and form a separate community, and he cannot be regarded in any way as the founder of the collegiate system [see Merton, Walter de], but his benefaction was the first that was subsequently evolved into a college or hall. This took place about 1280, when four masters formed a community that was the nucleus of University College, still legally styled ‘Great University Hall.’ The locality of the original hall is doubtful, and the present site in High Street was not acquired till 1332; it was called the ‘college of William of Durham,’ but as early as 1374 it occurs as ‘aula quondam Durham, nunc Universitehall’ (Cartulary of St. Frideswide's, Oxf. Hist. Soc. i. 344). There William of Durham is expressly named as its founder; but three years later, in order to secure the evocation of a lawsuit into the royal council chamber, ‘the masters and scholars of University first devised the impudent fiction of a royal foundation by Alfred the Great, which has now become part of the law of England by a decision of the court of king's bench’ (Rashdall, ii. 472). This fiction was not finally discredited until 1728, when William Smith (1651?–1735) [q. v.] published his ‘Annals of University College. Proving William of Durham the Founder’ (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 8vo), the best of early college histories.
[Besides Smith's Annals above cited, see Matt. Paris's Chron. Majora, iii. 168, v. 91, Hist. Anglorum, iii. 67, 311, Anstey's Munimenta Academica, i. 56, 87, ii. 490, 586–8, 780, and Mon. Franciscana, i. 56 (Rolls Ser.); Cal. Papal Letters, 1198–1304, p. 251; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl.; Parker's Early Hist. of Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 52–4; Bryan Twyne's Apologia, 1622; Wood's Colleges and Halls, ed. Gutch, pp. 37 sqq.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. App. ii. 477; Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte's Hist. of Oxford Univ. 1886; Clark's Colleges of Oxford; Rashdall's Universities of Europe.]
WILLIAM de Longuespée called Earl of Salisbury (1212?–1250). [See de Longuespée.]
WILLIAM of Nottingham (d. 1251), Franciscan. [See Nottingham.]
WILLIAM of York (d. 1256), bishop of Salisbury, was in 1226 granted 10l. for his expenses on an iter into Lincolnshire (Close Rolls, ii. 119). On 10 Sept. 1227 he was associated as justice with the justices itinerant of Kent and Huntingdon; he was acting in this capacity in the liberties of the bishopric of Durham (ib. p. 213) in the same year. In 1234 Robert de Lexinton and William of York were apparently the two senior judges, and presided in the two branches of the court of common pleas (Foss). In 1235 he was justice itinerant at Worcester, Lewes, Gloucester, and Launceston (Annales de Theokesberia, i. 97); and in 1240 at Bedford and St. Albans (Annales de Dunstaplia, iii. 155; Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. iv. 51). In this latter year he was at the head of the section of the justices which made an iter in the southern part of England, under the pretext of redressing grievances, but really to collect money (Matt. Paris, iv. 34). The chronicler gives him the title of provost of Beverley. Fines were levied before him from 1231 to 1239 (Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales, p. 43). He was again on iter in 1241 at Bermondsey (Ann. de Waverleia, ii. 328), and Oxford (Ann. de Theokesberia, i. 118). In 1242 he was one of the king's two representatives sent to the parliament of 29 Jan. to ask for money and counsel for the French war (Matt. Paris, iv. 185), and when the king departed for Gascony he, the archbishop of York, and William de Cantelupe were entrusted with the custody of the realm (Ann. de Dunstaplia, iii. 159). When on 2 Nov. 1246 Robert de Bingham, bishop of Salisbury, died, the canons of Salisbury, anxious to propitiate the king, elected William his successor (8 Dec.) (Matt. Paris, iv. 587; Ann. de Dunstaplia, iii. 170). His election was confirmed by the king the day after, and his consecration by Fulk, bishop of London, took place, the Dunstable annalist says, on the 7th (iii. 170), the Winchester annalist the 14th (ii. 91) of the July following. He still seems to have retained his judicial office, for in 1248 he gave judgment against the priory of Dunstable in the question of the seisin of the pastures in Kensworth and Caddington (Ann. de Dunstaplia, iii. 178).
William was present at the meeting of bishops at Dunstable on 24 Feb. 1251 to protest against Archbishop Boniface's right of visitation (Matt. Paris, v. 225), but wavered on the question of refusing the king's demand for a tenth in 1252 (ib. p. 326), though he took part in the excommunication of infractors of Magna Charta by the bishops in the same year (Burton, i. 305). He was one of a deputation of four sent during the parliament of April 1253 to the king from the bishops in parliament to ask him to allow liberty of ecclesiastical elections (Matt. Paris, v. 373). Henry replied by proposing that those bishops of his own appointment should resign—a hit at William himself—and reminded William that he had ‘exalted him from the lowest place.’ He died on 31 Jan. 1256 (ib. v. 545). Matthew
