The Peterborough chronicler, Walter of Whittlesey, writing in the fourteenth century, states that he was born in Normandy, of a noble family, being related to Eleanor of Provence, the queen of Henry III, and entered the monastic life when a child seven years of age.
In 1249 William Hotot, Abbot of Peterborough, had been accused by his monks to Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, of enriching his relatives at the expense of the church.
One of his acts was to invite his predecessor to take up his residence at Oxney, close to Peterborough, and to assign to him during his life the portion of four monks from the cellar and kitchen of the monastery, deducting it from the allowance which he was entitled to claim for his own table.
[2] It was the custom of Henry III to appoint the heads of Benedictine houses – greatly, as Matthew Paris complains, to the detriment of the wealth of the order – to act as itinerant justices.
His secular employments rendered it necessary for him to be frequently absent from the monastery, but Walter of Whittlesey states that he exercised strict control over its management, so that the interests of the house did not suffer.