WILLIAM I

born 1143 died Dec. 4, 1214, Stirling, Stirlingshire, Scot. William the Lion byname William The Lion king of Scotland from 1165 to 1214; although he submitted to English overlordship for 15 years (117489) of his reign, he ultimately obtained independence for his kingdom. William was the second son of the Scottish Henry, Earl of Northumberland, whose title he inherited in 1152. He was forced, however, to relinquish this earldom to King Henry II of England (reigned 115489) in 1157. Succeeding to the throne of his elder brother, King Malcolm IV, in 1165, William joined a revolt of Henry's sons (1173) in an attempt to regain Northumberland. He was captured near Alnwick, Northumberland, in 1174 and released after agreeing to recognize the overlordship of the king of England and the supremacy of the English church over the Scottish church. Upon Henry's death in 1189, William obtained release from his feudal subjection by paying a large sum of money to England's new king, Richard I (reigned 118999). In addition, although William had quarreled bitterly with the papacy over a church appointment, Pope Celestine III ruled in 1192 that the Scottish church owed obedience only to Rome, not to England. During the reign of King John in England, relations between England and Scotland deteriorated over the issue of Northumberland until finally, in 1209, John forced William to renounce his claims. In his effort to consolidate his authority throughout Scotland, William developed a small but efficient central administrative bureaucracy. He chartered many of the major burghs of modern Scotland and in 1178 founded Arbroath Abbey, which had become probably the wealthiest monastery in Scotland by the time of his death. William was succeeded by his son Alexander II. born 1120 died May 7, 1166, Palermo, kingdom of Sicily byname William The Bad, Italian Guglielmo Il Malo Norman king of Sicily, an able ruler who successfully repressed the conspiracies of the barons of his realm. His epithet was bestowed on him by his hapless enemies. He patronized science and letters and showed religious tolerance; among those who frequented his court were many Muslims. The deaths of William's three elder brothers made him heir apparent in 1148. He was associated in kingship in 1151 with his father, Roger II, and was crowned king after Roger's death in the Cathedral of Palermo on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1154. On the advice of his minister, Maione of Bari, William energetically pursued his father's policy of strengthening royal authority over the towns and the barons, who rallied around his cousin Robert of Loritello and looked to the German king Frederick I Barbarossa for help. When Frederick's projected expedition to Italy came to naught, the rebels sought support from the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus. In 1155 the Byzantines invaded southern Italy and overran Apulia, but William won a resounding victory at Brindisi and reconquered the province. He next settled his disputes with Pope Adrian IV in the Concordat of Benevento (1156), winning papal acknowledgment of his authority over all the territories that had come under Norman control. The loss of the kingdom's African possessions (115860) weakened William's prestige, and the assassination of Maione in November 1160 exposed him to new danger from the conspiring barons, led by a Norman noble, Matteo Bonello. An attempt to depose him nearly succeeded, and rebellions broke out in Sicily and on the mainland. The royal palace in Palermo was plundered of its treasures, including the silver planisphere of the great Arab geographer al-Idrisi, who was forced to flee Sicily as the island's Muslims became targets of mob attacks. But William quickly suppressed the disorders. He imposed stern punishment on the dissidents, who this time received no help from abroad. At his death his kingdom passed intact to his young son, William II. born April 24, 1533, Dillenburg, Nassau died July 10, 1584, Delft, Holland in full William, Prince Of Orange, Count Of Nassau, byname William The Silent, Dutch Willem, Prins Van Oranje, Graaf Van Nassau, or Willem De Zwijger first of the hereditary stadholders (157284) of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and leader of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule and the Catholic religion. born Aug. 24, 1772, The Hague died Dec. 12, 1843, Berlin Dutch in full Willem Frederik king of The Netherlands and grand duke of Luxembourg (181540) who sparked a commercial and industrial revival following the period of French rule (17951813), but provoked the Belgian revolt of 1830 through his autocratic methods. The son of William V, prince of Orange, William married Wilhelmina, daughter of his uncle, Frederick William II of Prussia, in 1791 and emigrated with his family to England in 1795 after the French invasion of the Dutch Republic. He gained title to the bishopric of Fulda and other smaller areas in Germany in negotiations with the French emperor Napoleon I in 1802 but lost all his German titles in 1806, when he sided with Prussia against Napoleon. Except for some service with the Austrians against Napoleon in 1809, he lived in exile at the Prussian court until 1812. After the Dutch revolt against French rule in 1813, William accepted the provisional government's offer to become sovereign prince of the Dutch Republic, and in 1815 he became king of the United Netherlands, which included Belgium, Lige, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. He soon undertook an economic recovery program for the kingdom, founding a bank in 1822 to finance industrial expansion in Belgium and forming The Netherlands Trading Society in 1824 to facilitate long-distance commerce in the north. The Belgians, however, objected to the union with the northern Netherlanders because the two groups were given equal representation in the Parliament and charged equal taxes, although the Dutch had a far greater accumulated debt and a far smaller population. The Belgian Catholic clergy were alienated by William's policy of state supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. He placed the universities of Ghent, Louvain, and Lige under state control and required seminary students to attend a new philosophical college at Louvain. The Belgians were further antagonized by the decision to make Dutch the administrative language throughout the kingdom and by the Dutch insistence on free trade when protection was needed by Belgian industries. The Belgian Liberal and Catholic factions opposed to William's rule joined in 1828 (the union of parties) and petitioned the King for political and religious reforms. Inspired by the revolution in Paris in July 1830, a rebellion broke out in Brussels the following month. After initial rebel military successes, a conference of the leading European powers decided in January 1831 that Belgium should be an independent state. William refused to accept the Belgian separation and anticipated renewed warfare. Aware that the Dutch people were increasingly opposed to his autocratic methods, he abdicated in October 1840 and spent the rest of his life in Berlin. born March 22, 1797, Berlin died March 9, 1888, Berlin German in full Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig German emperor from 1871, as well as king of Prussia from 1861, a sovereign whose conscientiousness and self-restraint fitted him for collaboration with stronger statesmen in raising his monarchy and the house of Hohenzollern to predominance in Germany. He was the second son of the future king Frederick William III of Prussia. In 1814 he fought at Bar-sur-Aube in the German War of Liberation against Napoleon I. Subsequently he devoted himself to the Prussian Army and military affairs. In 1840, on the accession of his childless elder brother, Frederick William IV, he became prince of Prussia and heir presumptive. When revolution broke out in Berlin in March 1848, the conservative William's advocacy of force earned him the sobriquet of Karttschenprinz (Prince of Grapeshot). After a brief exile in England, he returned to Prussia in June 1848, and in 1849 he commanded the troops sent to suppress an insurrection in Baden. William's mistrust of constitutionalism was mitigated by the lessons of 1848, by his exposure to English political ideas, and by the influence of his consort, Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. (He married this witty and temperamental princess in 1829, after renouncing a youthful love affair with Eliza Radziwill.) Appointed military governor of Rhineland Province in 1849, he made his residence at Coblenz, a centre of opposition to the reactionary policies of Berlin. He described Otto von Bismarck's ideas as schoolboy's politics. From October 1858 William was regent for his ailing brother, and, on Jan. 2, 1861, William succeeded to the Prussian throne. As regent he made himself popular by proclaiming a New Era of liberalism, but he appointed a ministry comprising pronounced conservatives as well as moderate liberals. The problems raised for Prussia in 1859 by the wars for Italian independence were beyond his capacity: while he favoured an alliance with Austria against the France of Napoleon III, he insisted that Prussia have the supreme command on the Rhenish front; and the Austro-French armistice of Villafranca took him by surprise. On internal affairs William's fundamental conservatism reasserted itself. Backed by his war minister, Albrecht von Roon, and by the chief of the military cabinet, Edwin von Manteuffel, the King insisted on a three-year term of military conscription, which the liberal lower chamber rejected in 1862. William thereupon was ready to abdicate but was dissuaded by Bismarck, whom he installed as prime minister during this crisis. After the Prussian victory in the Seven Weeks' War against Austria in 1866, the King, despite their frequent disagreements, realized that Bismarck was more necessary to Prussia than he himself was. In 1870, when the Hohenzollern candidature to the Spanish throne was leading to the Franco-German War, William was far more cautious than Bismarck; during the war, he arbitrated between his chief advisers, Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke. He was distressed by the Kulturkampf that Bismarck and the liberals conducted against the Roman Catholic Church, but in 1877, when Bismarck made his last appeal to be relieved of office, William answered: Never. William was so imbued with the traditions of the Prussian monarchy that it was painful for him to accept Bismarck's foundation of the German Reich and the imperial title, which came to him by a sham offer (arranged by Bismarck) from the German princes. William was acclaimed German emperor (not emperor of Germany, which he thought more suitable) at Versailles, in conquered France, on Jan. 18, 1871. General indignation at the two attempts made on his life in 1878 (by Max Hdel on May 11 and by K.E. Nobiling, who seriously wounded him, on June 2) was expressed in popular support for Bismarck's anti-Socialist legislation. born c. 1028, , Falaise, Normandy died Sept. 9, 1087, Rouen byname William The Conqueror, or The Bastard, or William Of Normandy, French Guillaume Le Conqurant, or Le Btard, or Guillaume De Normandie duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England from 1066, one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages. He made himself the mightiest feudal lord in France and then changed the course of England's history by his conquest of that country. died Dec. 17, 942, Picardy also called William Longsword, French Guillaume Longue-pe son of Rollo and second duke of Normandy (927942). He sought continually to expand his territories either by conquest or by exacting new lands from the French king for the price of homage. In 939 he allied himself with Hugh the Great in the revolt against King Louis IV; through the mediation of the pope, the war ended, and Louis renewed William's investiture of Normandy (940). William, however, continued his territorial ambitions, especially northward. Drawn to a conference on an island in the Somme River, he was assassinated on the orders of the count of Flanders, Arnulf I. Additional reading A full account is Felix Rachfahl, Wilhelm von Oranien und der niederlndische Aufstand, 3 vol. (190624). A standard biography, on a less heroic scale, is P.J. Blok, Willem de Eerste: Prins van Oranje, 2 vol. (191920). Other biographies include C.V. Wedgwood, William the Silent (1944, reissued 1989); and K.W. Swart, William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands (1978). Additional reading David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (1964); and Frank Barlow, William I and the Norman Conquest (1965), are the definitive biographies. Earlier works still of value are E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, vol. 12, 2nd ed. (1870); 35, 1st ed. (186975); and F.M. Stenton, William the Conqueror and the Rule of the Normans (1908, revised 1967). Among the standard textbooks on William and the Norman Conquest of England are F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (1943); and Frank Barlow, The Feudal Kingdom of England, 10421216 (1955). There is a vast literature on the Conquest. A useful introduction is provided by Dorothy Whitelock et al., The Norman Conquest: Its Setting and Impact (1966); and C. Warren Hollister (ed.), The Impact of the Norman Conquest (1969).