In anticipation of this, his father had therefore entered into a number of covenants with Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham designed to enable his son to acquire the properties through entail.

Early in Edward I's reign, William asked the king to intervene to enforce the implementation of these covenants.

On 24 June 1314, while serving as a retainer of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, William perished at the Battle of Bannockburn.

[1] On his death without children, his estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire were inherited by a distant relation, Sir Gilbert Aton.

[3] William's stone effigy of an armed knight, that seems to have originally sat at St Mary's Abbey, shows the Vescy family coat of arms differenced with a bend sinister, a symbol of bastardy.