Walter Eustace Rhodes

“ After Reinfrid had ceased to be abbot, and Stephen, who entered the abbey in 1078, had taken his place, William, according to an autobiography of Stephen (now among the Bodleian MSS., and printed in Dugdale's ‘Monasticon,’ 1846 edit., iii. 544–6) , repented of his gifts, and sought to drive away the monks by violence. Percy's hostilities, combined with troubles from pirates, led the monks to complain to the king, who gave them the manor of Lastingham as a refuge from Percy. ”

“ Early in the reign of Henry III Ulecot had a quarrel with Roger Bertram, and was threatened with the seizure of his lands before he would restore Roger's castle of Midford on 4 April 1213 (Close Rolls, p. 357 b) , while on 18 July he was ordered to destroy an adulterine castle he had built at Nafferton to the injury of the lands and castle of Prudhoe, belonging to Richard de Umfraville (ib. p. 379 b) . ”

“ The noteworthy feature about William's works is their democratic character. Frégus, a shepherd boy, becomes a knight and marries a lady of rank; the king is twitted with some shameful actions by the tale of ‘La Malle Honte;’ and in the ‘Besant de Dieu’ and ‘Le Prêtre et Alison’ the papacy and the priesthood are respectively attacked. ”

“ PERCY, WILLIAM, sixth Baron Percy (1183?–1245) , was son of Henry de Percy, eldest son of Agnes de Percy and Josceline de Louvain. He was in his fifteenth year on his father's death in 1196. His uncle Richard [q. v.] , who thereupon assumed the administration of his lands and his baronial rights, refused to relinquish them when William attained his majority. His lawful guardian was William Brewer [q. v.] (Abbreviatio Placitorum, p. 86) . In 1200 William was appointed one of the two custodes of the county of York under William de Stuteville (Rot. de Obl. et Finibus, p. 109) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ There Serlo and his monks stayed until the quarrel was healed. William ultimately yielded to the monks; Ralph de Everley agreed to hold Everley jointly with the abbey, and surrendered Staxby to Percy, who regranted it to the monks. In 1095 he took the cross, and he died at Montjoie, near Jerusalem, in 1096. ”

“ In 1216 Ulecot and Hugh de Balliol were put by John in command of the country between the River Tees and Scotland, and held the castles against the barons' ally, the king of Scots (Wendover, pp. 166, 191) . The custody of the lands of the bishopric of Durham between Tyne and Tees had, however, been taken from him and given to Robert de Vieuxpont [q. v.] ”

“ Accused of conspiring against John in 1212, he fled to Scotland (Rog. Wend. ii. 62) . The tale of John's attempted seduction of his wife, and the trick played on him, which first appears in Walter of Hemingburgh (i. 247–249) , and is copied in Knighton (i. 193–5) , is scarcely credible, and bears in some of its main details a close resemblance to the story of Valentinian III and Petronius Maximus (Procopius, Bonn ed., i. 328) . ”

“ He was with the king in Palestine in 1195. On 13 Aug. 1199 he appeared as one of the guarantors of the treaty between John and Renaud, count of Boulogne (Charter Rolls, p. 30 b) , and in the same year, probably later, he was sent to William the Lion of Scotland to promise him satisfaction of his rights in England, and witnessed his homage on 22 Nov. 1200 (Rog. Wend.; Rog. Hov. iv. 122) . ”

“ He gave his manor of Gisburn, with the forests, to that abbey, reserving the services of the freeholders and his liberty of hunting. To the master and brethren of the hospital at Sandon in Surrey he gave all his lands in Foston and the twenty marks paid annually by the abbey of Sawley for the manor of Gisburn. ”

“ Alexander Neckham has some verses in his honour in his ‘De Laude Sapientiæ.’
His works are: 1. ‘Similitudines’ (MSS. in Balliol ccxxii. and Merton cclvii. Colleges, Oxford, and Peterhouse, Cambridge) . 2. ‘Summa de officio sacerdotis’ (MSS. in Caius College, Cambridge, Bodleian Library, New College xciv. f. 28, cxlv. f. 94, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, ccclx. f. 100) . 3. ”

“ The ‘Besant de Dieu,’ a serious poem, which belongs to the end of his life, contains some outspoken strictures on the Albigensian crusade, and refers to the death of Louis VIII in his expedition to the south ”

“ He married, first, Elena, daughter of Ingelram de Balliol, by whom he had seven sons—Henry (1228?–1272) , seventh Baron Percy, who was succeeded by his third son, Henry Percy, first Baron Percy of Alnwick [q. v.] ; Ingelram, William, Walter, Geoffrey, Alan, and Josceline—and one daughter, Elena. His second wife was Joan, daughter and coheiress of William Brewer, the wardship and marriage of whom, along with that of her four sisters, he obtained from Henry III on 12 June 1233 (ib. i. 243) . ”

“ 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 ”

“ Historians of York, iii. 87) , and accompanied Richard to the Holy Land. He was surety for Richard's peace with Tancred of Sicily in November 1190 (Rog. Hov. iii. 62) , and witnessed a charter at Messina on 23 Jan. 1191 (Pipe Roll. Soc. Anc. Charters, p. 98) . He arrived in Palestine in June 1191 (‘Itin. Ricardi’ in Memorials of Richard I, i. 217) , and on 21 Aug. was left with Stephen de Longchamp in charge of Acre and the queens of England and Sicily, and the daughter of the Emperor of Cyprus, while Richard proceeded towards Jerusalem (Bened. Peterb. ii. 190; Rog. Hov. iii. 128) . ”

“ In 1175 and the three following years he was regularly present as a baron at the sittings of the curia regis (Madox, History of the Exchequer, i. 94) , and from 1175 to 1179, and probably later, acted as itinerant justice in eight counties (ib. i. 137; Bened. Peterb. i. 107) . ”

“ Brodrick's Memorials of Merton (Oxf. Hist. Soc.) ; Cal. Pat. Rolls of Richard II; O'Flanagan's Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, i. 43–55; D'Alton's Archbishops of Dublin, pp. 142–6; Rot. Pat. in Canc. ”