Origins
His grandfather, William I de Tracy (d. circa 1136), was an illegitimate son of King Henry I. The king granted William I the feudal barony of Bradninch, Devon, which had escheated to the crown from William Capra, listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as holding that barony. William I left one daughter and sole-heiress, Grace de Tracy, who married John de Sudeley, son of Harold de Mantes. The connection, if any, to the family of de Tracy, feudal barons of Barnstaple in Devon, is unknown. They had two children: Ralph de Sudeley (d. 1192), the eldest, who became his father's heir, and Sir William II "de Tracy" (d. post 1172), the co-assassin of Becket, who inherited his mother's barony of Bradninch and assumed her family name in lieu of his patronymic. He became a knight of Gloucestershire and held the lands of his brother by service of one knight's fee. He had a son William III de Tracy (d. pre-1194), who left a son Henry, who lost his lands in 1202.
William II appears in a charter of his older brother Ralph de Sudeley (d. 1192) assigning the manor of Yanworth, near Cirencester, to Gloucester Abbey. Two of the witnesses to that charter lived on land held by the Normandy branch of the de Tracys, and two of the English witnesses had previously witnessed a charter for Henry de Tracy to Barnstaple Priory in 1146. In 1166 William held one fee from his brother Ralph.
William III de Tracy made charitable benefactions in France, building and endowing a house for lepers at a place called Coismas, possibly Commeaux. He also made gifts to the Priory of St. Stephen, Le Plessis-Grimoult of lands possessed by the family before they all finally came to England.
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