William de Vere

William de Vere (died 1198) was Bishop of Hereford and an Augustinian canon.

Biography The son of Aubrey de Vere II and Adeliza of Clare, probably the fourth of five sons, and brother of Aubrey de Vere III first earl of Oxford, de Vere spent part of his youth at the court of King Henry I of England and his second wife, Queen Adeliza of Leuven. Little is known of his education, but he had received minor ecclesiastical orders before 1141.

De Vere was promised the chancellorship of England by the Empress Matilda in the 1141 charter by which his brother was made earl, but there is no record that he served as her chancellor. He later entered the household of Archbishop Theobald of Bec of Canterbury (d. 1163). He served in the archbishop's household with near-contemporaries Thomas Becket and John of Salisbury in the 1150s. Theobald sent him on diplomatic errands to France in the early 1160s. and then nominated him as Bishop of Hereford on 25 May 1186. He was consecrated on 10 August 1186. In that office he occasionally continued to serve as a royal justice under Richard I. He expanded the work of his predecessors in the administration of the diocese and employed Gerald of Wales and Robert Grosseteste.

As a canon at St. Osyth's, de Vere wrote a Latin life of that saint, which now exists only in fragments recorded by antiquarian John Leland in the sixteenth century. In that work, he made references to his family. He donated a relic of St. Osyth to Waltham Abbey, and promoted the cult of that saint at Hereford Cathedral. He may have visited the Holy Land, perhaps in 1178 or in 1182–1185.

De Vere was one of several bishops who excommunicated Prince John and his supporters in 1194, and was present at Winchester Cathedral for the recoronation of King Richard I in April 1194. De Vere died in December 1198 and is buried in Hereford Cathedral, where his tomb with an effigy can be found.