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112 and which makes William from first to last a distinguished figure in the 'university' of that city.

The meagre facts thus elicited concerning the philosopher's external biography are abundant in comparison with those recorded of his colleague at Chartres, Richard l'Évêque, whose virtues as a man and a scholar are, a celebrated in no ordinary terms by his pupil and friend, John of Salisbury. Richard, so far as is known, left no memorial as a writer. Unlike William he advanced from teaching to the active service of the church; he became archdeacon of Coutances, and finally in 1171 bishop of Avranches. The situation of his ministry brought him also into connexion with the house of Anjou, and it was his city of Avranches that witnessed the readmission of Henry the Second to the communion of the church after the murder of Thomas Becket. He died in 1182, the last survivor of the masters of Chartres.

Gilbert of La Porrée has a more important place in the philosophical history of the age even than William of Conches, partly because his studies lay in departments of learning to which a greater relative weight was attached, than to natural philosophy or grammar. A contemporary panegyrist proclaims him lacking in no one of the seven liberal arts, save only astronomy; but in sober history he appears as a theologian and a dialectician. In dialectics he holds in one way a quite unique position; for