William de Tracy

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Contemporary depiction of the assassination of Bishop Thomas Becket

Sir William de Tracy († 1189 ) was an English knight , lord of Toddington in Gloucestershire , baron of Bradninch (near Exeter ) and lord of Moretonhampstead (in Devon ). He is best known as one of the four knights who murdered Thomas Becket , Archbishop of Canterbury , in December 1170 .

family

William de Tracy's ancestry is unclear, it is believed that he was an illegitimate son of King Henry I with Fraulein Gieva de Tracy.

William appears for the first time in a document from his older brother Ralph (d. 1192), in which the monks of Gloucester Abbey are assigned the Yanworth estate near Cirencester . Two of the witnesses on this charter lived on the Tracys estate in Normandy , and two of the English witnesses witnessed an earlier charter from Henry de Tracy with the Barnstaple monastery from 1146.

William de Tracy made charitable donations in France, built and donated a house for lepers in a place called Coismas ( Commeaux  ?). In addition, he made gifts to St. Stephen's Monastery, Le Plessis-Grimoult , located in the land that belonged to the de Tracys before they all came to England.

Thomas Becket

William de Tracy was one of the four knights who murdered Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the behest of King Henry II . After the crime, they broke into the archbishop's palace and looted papal cops and treaties, gold, silver, vestments, books and ecclesiastical items. King Henry II did nothing to arrest the knights, rather he advised them to flee to Scotland . He confiscated their possessions for a short time, but they got it back after a while. They stayed only briefly in Scotland and returned to Knaresborough , Yorkshire , which belonged to Hugh (Hugo) de Morville, one of the four killers.

Boons

It is certain that Hugh de Morville, Richard Brito (Le Breton) and William de Tracy built a church in Alkborough near Scunthorpe in South Humberside . Until 1690, the foundation was noted on a memorial stone in the pulpit.

The name of the town of Bovey Tracey is derived from the name of the river Bovey, on which the town lies, and that of the "de Tracey" family. These came from Tracy-Bocage near Bayeux , and settled here after the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066. Sir William built the Church of St Peter, Paul and Thomas after 1170 as a penance for his involvement in the assassination of the Archbishop. He also donated a tower, pulpit and porch to the church at Lapford in Devon, which was dedicated to Thomas Becket.

excommunication

These foundations impressed Pope Alexander III. Not. He excommunicated William and the other murderers on March 25, 1171. William left for Rome in September. The departure of the others was prevented because two of them (FitzUrse and de Morville) were involved in a great rebellion against King Henry II in 1173/74. The archbishop's murderers obtained an audience with the Pope, who, despite their repentance, told them to go into exile and to go to Jerusalem for a few years and fight there. In due time they are to return to Rome.

Death and burial

There is speculation as to what happened next. Herbert of Bosham said that de Tracy never reached the Holy Land and died of leprosy in Cosenza , southern Italy, in 1174 . The current Lord Sudeley , after his investigations, denies Herbert's testimony and prefers a more spectacular ending. Tracey's journey to the Orient is attested by Romwald, Archbishop of Salerno. Roger Hovenden states that the Pope instructed the knights, once their duty to be fulfilled, they should go to the holy places and then live alone in prayer, devotion and lament in the Black Mountains of Antioch for the rest of their lives. Hoverton thinks de Tracy became a hermit. In addition, the bodies of the knights were buried in front of the gate of the temple after their death in Jerusalem. Another tradition says that the dead knights were transferred to Brean Down, an island off Weston-super-Mare.

progeny

A descendant of de Tracy living today is known to be Reverend Canon Jonathan Anthony de Burgh Wilmot, son of Anthony Talbot de Burgh Wilmot. However, in 1969 the Master of the Rolls introduced the Queen Mother Elizabeth to Lord Sudeley as a descendant of de Tracy.

literature

• Lord Sudeley: Becket's Murderer William de Tracy . In: The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington. Manorial Society of Great Britain, London 1987, pp. 73 ff.