William de Vere (died 1198) was Bishop of Hereford and an Augustinian canon.
Biography
The son of Aubrey de Vere II and Adeliza of Clare, probably the fourth of five sons, and brother of Aubrey de Vere III first earl of Oxford, de Vere spent part of his youth at the court of King Henry I of England and his second wife, Queen Adeliza of Leuven. Little is known of his education, but he had received minor ecclesiastical orders before 1141.
De Vere was promised the chancellorship of England by the Empress Matilda in the 1141 charter by which his brother was made earl, but there is no record that he served as her chancellor. He later entered the household of Archbishop Theobald of Bec of Canterbury (d. 1163). He served in the archbishop's household with near-contemporaries Thomas Becket and John of Salisbury in the 1150s. Theobald sent him on diplomatic errands to France in the early 1160s. and then nominated him as Bishop of Hereford on 25 May 1186. He was consecrated on 10 August 1186. In that office he occasionally continued to serve as a royal justice under Richard I. He expanded the work of his predecessors in the administration of the diocese and employed Gerald of Wales and Robert Grosseteste.
As a canon at St. Osyth's, de Vere wrote a Latin life of that saint,