WILLIAM THE CLITO (1 rot–1128)  was the son of Robert, duke of Normandy, by his marriage with Sibylla of Conversano . After his father's defeat and capture by Henry I. of England at the battle of Tinchebrai (11(36) the young William fell into the hands of the conqueror . Henry magnanimously placed his nephew in the custody of Helias of Saint Saens, who had married a natural daughter of Duke Robert . Fearing for the safetyof the boy, Helias carried him, in to the court of Louis VI. of France . That sovereign joined with the discontented Norman barons and others of Henry's enemies in recognizing William as the rightful claimant to the duchy; Robert, a prisoner whom there was no hope of releasing, they appear to have regarded as dead in the eye of the law . William's claims furnished the pretext for two Norman rebellions . The first which lasted from 1112 to 1120 was abetted by Louis, by Fulk V. of Anjou and by Baldwin VII. of Flanders . In the second, which broke out during 1123, Henry I. had merely to encounter the forces of his own Norman subjects; his diplomatic skill had been successfully employed to paralyse the ill-will of other enemies . In 1122 or 1123 William married Sibylle, daughter of Fulk of Anjou, and with her received the county of Maine; but Henry I. prevailed upon the Curia to annul this union, as being within the forbidden degrees . In 1127, however, the pretender obtained from Louis the hand of Johanna of Montferrat, half-sister of the French queen, and the vacant fief of Flanders . His own rigorous government or the intrigues of Henry I. raised up against William a host of rebels; a rival claimant to Flanders appeared in the person of Thierry or Dirk of Alsace . In besieging Alost, one of the strongholds of the rival party, William received a wound which mortified and proved fatal (July 28, 1128) .

He

left no issue; although Duke Robert survived him and only died in 1134, the power of Henry I. was thenceforth undisputed by the Normans . See Ordericus Vitalis, Hist. ecclesiastica, and Sir James Ramsay's Foundations of England, vol. ii . (1898) .