He was a son of another William of Worcester, a Bristol whittawer (worker in white leather), and his wife Elizabeth, née Botoner.

His survey of Bristol, which he appears to have devised as a self-contained work, is particularly detailed, and of great value to historians and antiquaries.

[5] The Boke of Noblesse, written some time in the 1450s, was produced in the wake of disastrous English losses in France and was later revised with the apparent intention of encouraging King Edward IV to renew his claim on the French throne.

This was published by Thomas Hearne in 1728, and by Joseph Stevenson for the Rolls Series with his Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry VI (1864).

Stevenson also printed here collections of papers made by Worcester respecting the wars of the English in France and Normandy.