Editing William de Corbeil (section)

==Election as archbishop==
[[Image:Henry1.jpg|thumb|upright|Henry I from a 13th-century manuscript of Matthew Paris]]
After the death of Ralph d'Escures in October 1122, King Henry I allowed a free election, with the new primate to be chosen by the leading men of the realm, both ecclesiastical and secular.<ref name=Cantor282>Cantor ''Church, Kingship, and Lay Investiture'' p. 282</ref>{{efn|This would have included the barons and earls as well as the leading royal servants on the secular side, and the bishops and some of the abbots on the ecclesiastical side.<ref name=DNB/>}} The monks of the cathedral chapter and the bishops of the kingdom disagreed on who should be appointed. The bishops insisted that it should be a clerk (i.e. a non-monastic member of the clergy), but Canterbury's monastic [[cathedral chapter]] preferred a monk, and insisted that they alone had the right to elect the archbishop. However, only two bishops in England or Normandy were monks ([[Ernulf]], [[Bishop of Rochester]], and [[Serlo, Bishop of Sées|Serlo]], [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Sées|Bishop of Séez]]), and no monks other than [[Anselm of Canterbury]], Ernulf, and Ralph d'Escures had been elected to an English or Norman see since 1091; recent precedent therefore favoured a clerk.<ref name=BlackMonks/> King Henry sided with the bishops, and told the monks that they could elect their choice from a short list selected by the bishops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the list contained no monks.<ref name=HenryI288>Hollister ''Henry I'' pp. 288–289</ref>

On 2 February<ref name=BHOCant>Greenway "Canterbury: Archbishops" ''Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300'': Volume 2: Monastic Cathedrals (Northern and Southern Provinces)</ref> or 4 February 1123,<ref name=Handbook232>Fryde, et al. ''Handbook of British Chronology'' p. 232</ref> William was chosen from among four candidates to the See of Canterbury; the names of the three unsuccessful candidates are unknown.<ref name=BlackMonks/> He appears to have been a compromise candidate, as he was at least a canon, if not the monk that the chapter had sought.<ref name=Green178>Green ''Henry I'' pp. 178–179</ref> William was the first Augustinian canon to become an archbishop in England, a striking break with the tradition that had favoured monks in the See of Canterbury.<ref name=Monastic175>Knowles ''Monastic Order'' p. 175</ref> Although most contemporaries would not have considered there to be much of a distinction between monks and canons, William's election still occasioned some trepidation among the monks of the Canterbury chapter, who were "alarmed at the appointment, since he was a clerk".<ref name=Bartlett399>Quoted in Bartlett ''England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings'' p. 399</ref>