Sentence:  Even Rector himself <WSD>was</WSD> prey to this spirit of competition and he knew it , not for a more exalted office in the hierarchy of the church - his ambitions for the bishopry had died very early in his career - but for the one clear victory he had talked about to the colonel . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)