William VI of Montpellier

It is probable that William was the first lord of Montpellier to oversee the extension of the walls to include territory judicially under the control of all three leading figures in the town.

[10] Early in William's reign documents start to sharply distinguish knights and other noblemen from burgesses in the witness lists, either by surnames or by title of occupation.

[11] In 1139 William instituted an administrative change: he began using a notary (notarius) named Durantus instead of a mere scribe (scriba).

In 1128, in concluding a war with his son-in-law, Count Bernard IV of Melgueil, William extorted a promise that the coinage would not be debased.

Alfonso Jordan, the Count of Toulouse, "attempted to fish in troubled waters", receiving a strong rebuke from Pope Anacletus II, with whom William VI had a close relationship bordering on an outright alliance.

[16] The Chronique Romane highlights the role of Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona and the siege-induced famine in the surrender of the town:[17] In the year one thousand, one hundred and forty-one, the men of Montpellier ejected lord William of Montpellier from the city, and the lord went to Lattes, and the battle endured two years.

[19] These moves, and probable the conciliation of the disaffected bourgeoisie, were successful in removing the hereditary viguiers, the Aimons, from a place of influence.

[23] The submission of García Ramírez, the king of Navarre, as well as "many other nobles from Gascony and France had become his vassals" was the justification for Alfonso's coronation as Emperor of Spain in 1135.

Hence the boundaries of the kingdom of Alfonso, ruler of León, extended from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, near where the city of our holy patron Santiago is located, all the way to the Rhone River.

[25] In 1146 Alfonso sent Arnaldo, the bishop of Astorga, as his envoy to the courts of Barcelona and Montpellier, requesting them to come in August 1147 for the siege of Almería "for the redemption of their souls".

[29] According to the Genoese account, the Ystoria captionis Almarie et Turtuose of Cafarus, the lords of Barcelona and Montpellier camped atop "Mount Magnara", one of two hills overlooking Tortosa, while the other foreign troops, mostly English, French and Flemish knights who had participated in the siege of Lisbon the year before, camped on the hill called "Romelinus".

(According to documents adduced at the annulment of the marriage of Marie of Montpellier, her great-granddaughter, she was the daughter of Boniface del Vasto and therefore the sister of Manfred I of Saluzzo, but this cannot be confirmed.)

The marriage was less an alliance between William and a minor aristocratic family from Catalonia than a tightening of ties with the House of Barcelona, soon to rule a complex of territories north and south of the Pyrenees.

Guillemette's first marriage was part of an agreement (convenientia) of 1120 between her father and husband by which the former gained control of the Melgorian mint when Bernard mortgaged it to him for 7,000 sous.