He was Dean of Westminster for just a year. The inscription around the rim of the tomb in St Benedict’s chapel can be translated “Here lies William Bill, D.D., Dean of Westminster, President of Eton College and head of Trinity in Cambridge, and Chief Almoner to the most serene princess Queen Elizabeth. He died 15 July 1561”. There is a longer inscription on the main plate. The four shields have now gone but showed the Abbey’s coat of arms and those of Bill himself (two silver pelican’s heads between a red rose at the top of the shield, with two crossed bill-hooks on an ermine background below). He was born at Ashwell in Hertfordshire and his brother Thomas was physician to Henry VIII.
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