[3] William admitted in his writings that he fled to the choir of Canterbury Cathedral when the first blows were struck.
[6] William began to collect and edit the stories of miracles that happened at Becket's shrine in June 1172.
It was edited by James Craigie Robertson and published in 1875 as part of the Rolls Series as well as in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina from 1898 to 1901 as number 8184.
[14] William appears to have read two others of the "Canterbury Group" works – the one conventionally called the "Anonymous II", as well as that written by Edward Grim.
William's Vita in turn influenced a work by Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence in French verse.
[3] The Vita was also included in a conflation of various biographies of Becket into the Quadrilogus II compiled about 1198 by Elias of Evesham at Crowland Abbey.