William I of Bures
William and his brother, Godfrey, were listed among the chief vassals of Joscelin of Courtenay, Prince of Galilee, when their presence in the Holy Land was first recorded in 1115.
After Joscelin received the County of Edessa from Baldwin II of Jerusalem in 1119, the king granted the Principality of Galilee (also known as Lordship of Tiberias) to William.
William was the most prominent member of the embassy that Baldwin II sent to France in 1127 to start negotiations about the marriage of his eldest daughter, Melisende, and Fulk V of Anjou.
Fulk, who succeeded Baldwin II in 1131, dismissed his father-in-law's many officials, but William retained the office of constable.
[4][3] Historian Hans Eberhard Mayer emphasizes that William's ancestry has not been convincingly verified and his relationship to the Montlhéry clan is only an assumption.
[2] Riley-Smith writes that William settled in the Holy Land only in 1114, "presumably to expiate some act of violence perpetrated during the unsuccessful rebellion of a league of castellans against the king of France".
[5] The Gesta episcoporum Cennomannensium ("Deeds of the Bishops of Le Mans") recorded that William had come to the Holy Land "as an act of penance".
[6] Joscelin divided his army to encircle the tribe's camp on the river Yarmouk, making the Bures brothers the commander of one of the corps.
[19] The patriarch, William and Pagan, the chancellor of Jerusalem, concluded a treaty with the Doge of Venice, Domenico Michiel on behalf of the king.
[18][17] In accordance with Baldwin's previous promises to the Venetians, the treaty—the so-called Pactum Warmundi—granted privileges to them in both the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Principality of Antioch in exchange for their assistance to besiege either Tyre or Ascalon.
[23] The patriarch appointed William and Pons, Count of Tripoli, to launch a military expedition against Toghtekin, but he avoided any engagements and returned to Damascus.
[26][28] William was also authorized to pledge that Fulk could marry Melisende in fifty days after he came to the Holy Land and the marriage would secure his right to succeed Baldwin on the throne.
[38] William accompanied Fulk during his unsuccessful campaign against Imad ad-Din Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul, who had laid siege to Montferrand (at present-day Baarin in Syria) in July 1137.
[28] The abbot complained that Robert I, Archbishop of Nazareth, had cunningly installed his chaplain in the abbey's church at Lajjun after the news of Pope Innocent II's death reached the Holy Land (most probably in the spring of 1144).
[28][40] Mayer emphasizes that the memorandum does not prove that William was actually dead, because the document does not refer to his death and a Mass could also be said for the benefit of a living person.
[42] On the other hand, a Willelmus Tiberiadis (or William of Tiberias) witnessed a charter that Constance of Antioch issued at Latakia in 1151.
[44] William, Mayer continues, regained Galilee in 1153, shortly after Fulk and Melisende's son, Baldwin III of Jerusalem, started to rule independently of his mother.
