WILLIAM OF POITIERS (c. 1020—C. 1090), Norman chronicler, was born at Preaux, near Pont Audemer, and became chaplain to Duke William (William the Conqueror) and arch deacon of Lisieux. He wrote an eulogistic life of the duke, the earlier and concluding parts of which are lost ; and Ordericus Vitalis, who gives a short biography of him in his Historia ecclesi astica, says that he also wrote verses. William's Gesta Guilelmi ducis Normannorum, the extant part of which covers the period between 1047 and 1068, is valuable for details of the Conqueror's life, although untrustworthy with regard to affairs in England.
The Gesta was first published by A. Duchesne in the Historiae Normannorum scriptores (1619) ; and it is also found in the Scrip tores rerum gestarum Willelmi Conquestoris of J. A. Giles (London, 1845). There is a French translation in tome xxix. of Guizot's Collec
tion des memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France (1826). See G.
Korting, Wilhelms von Poitiers Gesta Guilelmi ducis (Dresden, 1875) and A. Molinier, Les Sources de l'histoire de France, tome in. (1903). WILLIAM OF ST. CALAIS (CARILEF) (d. 1096), bishop of Durham and chief counsellor of William Rufus, a Norman monk and prior of St. Calais in Maine, received the see of Dur ham from the Conqueror (ro8i). He is remembered as the prel ate who designed the existing cathedral, and for his reform of ecclesiastical discipline. His political career is less creditable. He died in Jan. 1096.
See E. A. Freeman, William Rufus (1882), and Symeon of Durham, vol. i., pp. 170-195 (Rolls ed.).