William de Vere

William de Vere
Bishop of Hereford
Appointed	25 May 1186
Term ended	24 December 1198
Predecessor	Robert Foliot
Successor	Giles de Braose
Orders
Ordination	10 August 1186
Consecration	10 August 1186
Personal details
Died	24 December 1198 Herefordshire
Buried	Hereford Cathedral
Denomination	Catholic

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

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. He was a friend of Bishop Arnulf of Liseux, and may have studied in Paris.

William de Vere was promised the chancellorship of England by the Empress Matilda in the 1141 charter by which his brother was made earl, but given the political and military setbacks she suffered in that and subsequent years, it is not surprising that 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. He is thought to have served briefly as a secular canon of St. Paul's, London, about 1163, but that William de Vere may have been a member of an unrelated Ver family associated with the bishop of London in Domesday Book. William became an Augustinian canon at St Osyth's Priory at Chich, Essex, for from that monastery he was recruited in 1177 by King Henry II to supervise the rebuilding of Waltham Abbey in Essex to house an Augustinian canonry. His name is one of two listed in the Pipe rolls as receiving monies toward that project.

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