Sir William de Thorpe was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 lawyer, and Chief Justice of the King's Bench from November 26, 1346 to October 26, 1350. As a clerk of this court he was assaulted on one occasion in 1318, when his enemies allegedly even urinated on him. He was knighted in 1345, at the same time as he was made justice of the King's Bench.

Thorpe accumulated great estates, particularly in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, and his wealth must have derived primarily from bribes and maintenance

Champerty

Champerty and maintenance are doctrines in common law jurisdictions, that aim to preclude frivolous litigation. "Maintenance" is the intermeddling of a disinterested party to encourage a lawsuit...

. In 1350 he was imprisoned and condemned to hanging and confiscation of all property. By 1351, however, he had been pardoned and had his property restored. The next year he was made baron of the exchequer

Exchequer of pleas

The Exchequer of Pleas or Court of Exchequer was a court that followed equity, a set of legal principles based on natural law, and common law, in England and Wales. Originally part of the curia regis, or King's Council, the Exchequer of Pleas split from the curia during the 1190s, to sit as an...

, and also held various other commissions. In 1357 he was excommunicated for non-appearance at the trial of Thomas de Lisle

Thomas de Lisle

Thomas de Lisle was a medieval Bishop of Ely.He was elected to Ely on 15 July 1345 and consecrated in July of 1345. He had his servants burn down some of the houses belonging to Blanche of Lancaster, Baroness Wake of Liddell. He was rebuked by Edward III and ordered to pay damages, but after that...

, bishop of Ely

Bishop of Ely

The Bishop of Ely is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Ely in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese roughly covers the county of Cambridgeshire , together with a section of north-west Norfolk and has its see in the City of Ely, Cambridgeshire, where the seat is located at the...

, in Avignon

Avignon

Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...

.

He appears to have had a son by the same name.

Source

• Richard W. Kaeuper, 'Thorp, Sir William (d. 1361)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 9 Aug 2006