William de Corbeil
Educated as a theologian, he taught briefly before serving the bishops of Durham and London as a clerk and subsequently becoming an Augustinian canon.
As a temporary solution, Pope Honorius II appointed William the papal legate for England, giving him powers superior to those of York.
[5] William joined the service of Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, as a clerk, and was present at the translation of the body of Saint Cuthbert in 1104.
He was a teacher to Flambard's children, probably in about 1107 to 1109,[6] but at some unknown date William appears to have transferred to the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
[7] In 1118, William entered the Augustinian order at Holy Trinity Priory in Aldgate,[1] a house of canons rather than monks.
[8] Subsequently, he became prior of the Augustinian priory at St Osyth in Essex,[9][10] appointed by Richard de Beaumis, Bishop of London, in 1121.
[1] After the death of Ralph d'Escures in October 1122, King Henry I allowed a free election, with the new primate to be chosen by the leading men of the realm, both ecclesiastical and secular.
[15] William was the first Augustinian canon to become an archbishop in England, a striking break with the tradition that had favoured monks in the See of Canterbury.
[1] The archbishop's next opponent was the papal legate of the new Pope Honorius II, Cardinal John of Crema,[20] who arrived in England in 1125.
That Christmas, at a royal court, Thurstan unsuccessfully attempted to claim the right to ceremonially crown the king as well as have his episcopal cross carried before him in Canterbury's province.
[1] As a result of his lengthy dispute with Thurstan, William travelled to Rome more frequently than any bishop before him except for Wilfrid in the 7th century.
[1] The council of 1125 met under the direction of John of Crema and prohibited simony, purchase of the sacraments, and the inheritance of clerical benefices.
[23] John of Crema had been sent to England to seek a compromise in the Canterbury–York dispute, but also to publicise the decrees of the First Council of the Lateran held in 1123, which neither William nor Thurstan had attended.
[24] It also enacted canons declaring that clergy who refused to give up their wives or concubines would be deprived of their benefices, and that any such women who did not leave the parish where they had been could be expelled and even forced into slavery.
[23] This council was presided over by King Henry, who then undermined the force of the prohibition of concubines by permitting the clergy to pay a fine to the royal treasury to keep their women.
[26] William reformed the nunnery of Minster-in-Sheppey however, and he installed a college of regular canons at the church of St. Gregory's, in Canterbury.
[1] Contemporaries were grudging in their praise, and William's reputation suffered after the accession of Matilda's son, Henry II, to the English throne.
