William H. F. Brothers

William Brothers OSB
Bishop William H. F. Brothers
Installed	October 3, 1916
Predecessor	Rudolph de Landas Berghes, Jan F. Tichy
Successor	Dom John (LoBue)
Orders
Ordination	March 17, 1911 by Jan F. Tichy
Consecration	October 3, 1916 by Rudolph de Landas Berghes
Personal details
Born	Nottingham, UK
Died	1979 , New York
Nationality	British & American
Denomination	Old Catholic Church in America

William Henry Francis, also William Henry Francis Brothers with his matronymic surname added, was an Old Catholic Benedictine, advocate for the immigrant, worker and the poor.

Brothers a native of England but lived in Waukegan, Illinois was a resident of an independent Benedictine monastery located in Waukegan and run by Father Bernard Harding, OSB, a former monk of St. Gregory's Abbey in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. Brothers was influenced by Harding.

Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (PECUSA) Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton, of Fond du Lac, a founding member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, "had strong ideas about the importance of communities of men and their significant contributions to the church" and his "influence on the growth of the religious life", according to Rene Kollar on Project Canterbury, "extended across the Atlantic". On his return travel from Russia in 1903, Grafton visited "his old friend", Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax, where he met Aelred Carlyle and appraised Carlyle's Benedictine revival group living as guests on Halifax's estate in Painsthorpe.William Maclagan, Archbishop of York, "expressed some reservations about conferring this token or symbol of Anglican approval on Carlyle", but Halifax negotiated Maclagan's permission to install Carlyle as a Benedictine Abbot. Halifax wanted Grafton to bless and install Carlyle as abbot of the nascent monastic community. So, in 1903, Grafton installed Carlyle and ordained him a subdeacon, which according to Kollar was an order abolished during the English Reformation. Kollar wrote that although Carlyle previously "could not meet the educational and academic requirements" of a priest, Grafton agreed to ordain him "without the usual formalities, provided that the Archbishop of York raised no objections"; Maclagan approved and granted dimissorial letters to Carlyle for Grafton to perform his ordination "but he also made Carlyle promise to keep the ordination and the circumstances surrounding it a secret." While Carlyle visited Grafton in 1904, Grafton ordained him a priest during a secret but officially documented ceremony in Ripon, Wisconsin. Both men wanted to establish a Benedictine brotherhood in Grafton's Diocese of Fond du Lac. Kollar wrote: