William of Hecham
WILLIAM OF HECHAM
First known master of the Augustinian Order at the University of Oxford (also known as William of Hegham, or Heigham). By 1292, only five years after giles of rome became the first of the augustinians (Austins) to obtain the magisterium at Paris, William had been made master regent at Oxford. Hecham's promotion to the magisterium in England enabled the English province to found a studium generale for the order. William helped to settle a dispute between the Abbey of Wellow and the Austin friary in Grimsby, whereupon Bp. John Dalderby of Lincoln lifted the ban against the Austins (1300). Two of William's university sermons are extant. The library of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, formerly had his Quaestiones disputatae.
Bibliography: a. b. little and f. pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians (Oxford 1935) 186–187, 265–266. f. roth, History of English Austin Friars, 2 v. (New York 1961) 1:48, 150. a. b. emden A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 v. (Oxford 1957–59) 2:899.
[f. roth]