Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/William de Wycumbe

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1006118Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 61 — William de Wycumbe1900Walter Eustace Rhodes

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.]