Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/William (d.1135?)
WILLIAM (d. 1135?), archbishop of Tyre, an Englishman by birth, was prior of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem when King Baldwin II and the princes of the Holy Land appointed him archbishop of Tyre, ‘in the spring, in the fourth year after that city was restored to the Christian faith,’ i.e. 1128. He was the first Latin occupant of the see; Odo, who had been consecrated to it while it was still in the hands of the infidels, having died before it was won (7 July 1124). William was consecrated by Gormund, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and immediately went to Rome for his pall. Honorius II gave it to him, together with two commendatory letters, one, dated 8 July (probably 1128), to the clergy and people of Tyre, the other to the patriarch. On his return William was accompanied by Bishop Giles of Tusculum, whom the pope charged with a letter to the patriarch of Antioch, bidding the latter resign the jurisdiction which he was illegally exercising over certain sees which were properly suffragans of Tyre. In 1129, at Acre, William granted the church of St. Mary at Tyre to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. He witnesses two charters in 1130. His fourth successor, the great historian, Archbishop William II of Tyre, with whom he has sometimes been confused, says he was ‘commendable for his life and morals.’ As his immediate successor, Fulcher, had held the see of Tyre for twelve years when elected patriarch of Jerusalem on 25 Jan. 1147, William must have died between 25 Jan. 1134 and 25 Jan. 1136, a date which is further corroborated by the circumstance that he and Bernard of Antioch died about the same time, and Bernard is known to have been patriarch of Antioch from about June 1100 to 1135 or 1136.
[William of Tyre, l. xiii. c. 23, xiv. cc. 10, 11, xvi. c. 17, vi. c. 23 (Recueil des Hist. des Croisades, Hist. Occidentaux, vol. i. pts. i. ii.); Rozière's Cartulaire du Saint-Sépulcre (Paris, 1849, reprinted in Migne's Patrologia, vol. clv.), No. 67; Delaborde's Chartes de Terre-Sainte provenant de l'Abbaye de Josaphat (Bibl. des Ecoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 19, Paris, 1880), Nos. xvii, xviii; information kindly given by Mr. T. A. Archer.]