William Russell (Bishop of Sodor)

William Russell
Bishop of Mann and the Isles
The ruins of Rushen Abbey today
Church	Roman Catholic Church
See	Diocese of Mann and the Isles
In office	1348 x 1349–1374
Predecessor	Thomas de Rossy
Successor	John Donkan
Orders
Consecration	27 April x 6 May 1349
Personal details
Born	unknown Mann
Died	21 April 1374 Westmorland, England
Previous post	Abbot of Rushen (1330x1331–1349)

William Russell (died 1374) was a fourteenth-century Cistercian prelate. He appears to have begun his career as a Cistercian monk at Rushen Abbey on the Isle of Man (Mann), ascending to the rank of abbot there, before being elected Bishop of Mann and the Isles (Sodor). After traveling to Continental Europe for confirmation and consecration, avoiding a trip to the metropolitan in Norway, he returned to the Irish Sea as a legal bishop. A few things are known of his episcopate, particularly his activities in England and a series of provincial statutes apparently promulgated under his leadership.

A native of Mann, an island in the Irish Sea south of Galloway in Scotland, for eighteen years he was the abbot of Rushen Abbey. In either 1348 or 1349 he was elected Bishop of Mann and the Isles. Papal letters reveal that the see had recently been made vacant by the death of Thomas de Rossy, and that the clergy of the diocese had elected William unanimously as the new bishop; they also reveal that Russell had had to obtain permission from the abbot at Rushen Abbey's mother-house, Furness Abbey.