The papal canonisation was the high point of William's international reputation. The universal proclamation of his sanctity was greeted by an almost universal lack of interest. A few months later Francis of Assisi died. The rapid and international spread of his cult, like that of St Dominic, was assisted by the order which he founded and responded to the mood of the times. By contrast, William was a conventional figure from the past with no popular appeal and no institutional support outside York. The generation of those who remembered him finally passed away around the time of his canonisation. The disputes of the 1140s which had aroused such passions both locally and internationally were now of remote interest. The fame of his miracles scarcely spread beyond the boundaries of the province of York. His feast-day was entered into the calendar of the church of York, but even at St Mary's Abbey, York, it was thirty years before he was accorded an annual liturgical commemoration, and only then at the instigation of an ambitious new abbot who originated from elsewhere. In 1284 the relics of St William in York Minster were translated in the presence of Edward I, and in the early fourteenth century a splendid new tomb-shrine was constructed at the east end of the nave. The cult was sustained throughout the years at the Minster, but William's reputation was limited, the later history of his cult essentially a local affair beyond the purview of the present study.

In the fifteenth century the cult of St William underwent something of a national revival, being promoted for political reasons by clerical supporters of the Lancastrians. The most striking memorial of this somewhat unexpected renewal of interest in the twelfth-century archbishop is the immense St William window in York Minster. Created in about 1415, its one hundred panels illustrating the life and miracles of William fitzHerbert constitute one of the largest pictorial cycles of the life of a saint ever attempted. The current restoration of the damaged panels of glass is bringing vividly back to life one of the most ambitious and unusual stained glass windows to have survived from medieval Europe. St William still has the capacity to surprise!