Burcester, who was a native of Oxfordshire, possibly derived his name from the town of Bicester. His origins are obscure, although it may be speculated that he was a relation of Ralph Burcester, the mason employed in the 1340s to build Stafford castle on behalf of Ralph, Lord Stafford, for the early part of his own career was spent as a retainer of that nobleman and his son, Hugh, 2nd earl of Stafford. In a curious episode in 1376 Burcester was taken prisoner by the sheriff of Oxfordshire on the assumption that he was one and the same person as the earl’s servant, William Goldene, clerk, who had been indicted and outlawed for a number of felonies. Protesting that an error in identification had been made, Burcester secured his release and the return of goods distrained to ensure his appearance in court to clear his name. Yet it was as alias Goldene that he took out a royal pardon of outlawry in the following year. Whether or not the earl had helped him out of his difficulties, there is ample evidence of his close relationship with the Staffords over the next nine years. In February 1378 Burcester was associated with Sir Nicholas Stafford (Earl Hugh’s cousin and the chief steward of his estates) as a mainpernor in the Exchequer for the prior of Wootton Wawen, and later that same year he was mustered as one of the esquires in the earl’s retinue destined for service in France. It was to be while overseas on campaign that he won his spurs.
Shortly before embarkation, Burcester named the earl of Stafford and his uncle Richard, Lord Stafford, among the feoffees of certain estates he had acquired through his highly opportune marriage to Margaret, Lady Burghersh. Margaret was an heiress of some note, for her grandfather,
John Gisors
†, the pepperer and several times mayor of London, had left her in his will in 1351 all his property in the city parish of St. Martin Vintry, together with an annual rent of 100 marks from his mansion known as ‘Gisors Hall’, and in the years that followed she had received an income of as much as £92 a year from her holdings in the City alone. The deaths of her sister and other heirs to the Gisors estate were to bring further additions to her possessions in the capital, together with substantial holdings in Stepney and elsewhere in Middlesex, property in Southwark, land in Hertfordshire and a moiety of ‘Newton Hall’ in Great Dunmow, Essex.
Clearly, Burcester’s first marriage had made him a wealthy man. And in her third husband Margaret found a vigorous champion of her territorial rights, which he prosecuted with zeal not only in the courts of law but also in the localities in question. Thus it came about that Sir William eventually took possession of the Burghersh manor in Burwash (Sussex) together with other lands in the same county (which he contrived to pass on to his children by his second wife), and he also made sure that Margaret’s manor of ‘The Maze’ in Southwark and her holdings in Middlesex remained in his keeping after her death. The outcome of litigation regarding the manor of Foxgrove (Kent), in which he was engaged in 1385, is uncertain, but he was evidently successful in securing his title to the manor of Lesnes near Woolwich, which he purchased from Helming Leget. The overall value of Burcester’s holdings is nowhere recorded. He must have suffered a diminution of income following his first wife’s demise, yet the subsidy assessors of 1412 (after his death) took note only of lands worth £20 a year in Surrey and property in London worth £4 6s.8d., which together were no more than a small part of his estate.
It may well have been his close connexion with the Staffords which had first brought Burcester to Kent, where the earl held substantial estates administered from Tonbridge castle. There, he played a part in restoring order after the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. In June 1385 he took out royal letters of protection as about to join Earl Hugh’s retinue in Richard II’s army preparing to invade Scotland, but then, preoccupied with his own affairs, he neglected to ride north, and the letters were accordingly revoked in October. The episode may mark the beginning of Burcester’s estrangement from the Staffords; indeed, after the earl’s death at Rhodes in the following year, he apparently ceased further association with them. Instead, he began to cultivate an acquaintance at the royal court: thus, in June 1388 he appeared as a mainpernor for the release on bail, from the Tower of London, of Richard Metford, clerk, the King’s secretary imprisoned by the Lords Appellant. His appointment as sheriff of Kent followed not long after the King regained control over the government in the next year. Another associate, for whom Burcester acted as a trustee in 1392, was the ‘King’s esquire’, John Colshull I, at one time an apprentice to his wife’s father, who had since risen to be steward of the duchy of Cornwall. Burcester had sufficient influence to secure at the Exchequer in November 1393, a few months after he had sat in the Commons, a lease of the manor of Emmington (Oxfordshire), pending an inquiry into the title of his friend, Sir Thomas Sackville II of Buckhurst. Through his first wife’s stepdaughter, he had also established links with the Despensers, whom Richard II favoured; consequently, in the autumn of 1394 Thomas, Lord Despenser, Sir Hugh Despenser and Lord Thomas’s retainer, Hugh Mortimer, all nominated him as their attorney to safeguard their interests at home while they were in Ireland with the King. On a later occasion he provided securities for Mortimer at the Exchequer.
Although Burcester took the precaution of obtaining a royal pardon in the summer of 1398, he appears to have remained loyal to Richard II to the end. In July 1399 he was placed on a commission by Richard’s council to besiege Pevensey castle and recover it from the Lancastrians, but no doubt he had to abandon the attempt when the King was taken captive not long afterwards. Such was his continued close relationship with Lord Despenser as to lead to suspicion of complicity in the plot to dethrone Henry IV in January 1400; and on the 23rd orders were issued not only for his arrest but also for that of a number of his friends, all of them to be brought before the King and Council to answer charges. Even though they were all released on bail within a few days, lingering doubts about Sir William’s loyalty to the new regime may account for his absence from royal commissions for more than two years. Nevertheless, the episode was eventually forgotten, for in 1403 he received a personal summons to attend a great council, as one of two men so called from Surrey, and three years later he sat on a judicial tribunal to hear an appeal from the constable’s court.
Burcester’s will, made at his manor-house in Southwark on 31 July 1407, was proved within a fortnight. He was buried in the Minories. Settlements of his manors in Surrey and Kent and of his property near the Conduit in London entitled his widow to tenure for her lifetime, with successive remainders in tail to their son John (c.1404-1466) and daughter Willelma (who afterwards married Walter Urry of Sussex). Bequests to young John of swords, daggers and armour recall the military events of Sir William’s life. His widow went on to marry, as her third husband, the wealthy Sir John Berkeley I of Beverstone, whom she also outlived, eventually dying in 1444.