[5] The son of well-off parents, William entered the order early in life[3] and may have attended Robert Grosseteste's lectures at Oxford.
[3] As Minister Provincial, he appears in the chronicle of his friend Thomas of Eccleston as a helpful and wise cleric with good humor and strong force of character, "thinking nothing of incurring the anger of the powerful for the sake of justice".
[11] He had the roof removed from the London chapel and the embossments on its cloister scraped away[11] but provided lecturers from the universities to visit all the larger convents.
)[12] In 1250, John of Parma held a chapter at Oxford, taking a referendum as to whether William should be confirmed in or deposed from his post; the vote was unanimous in his favor.
[13] "A Good Sermon on Obedience" (Latin: Sermo Bonus de Obedentia),[14] copied in the style of the 3rd quarter of the 13th century, is attributed to William.