Its head was wealthy, but not to such a degree as to excite special notice or envy; he and his wife lived in comfort and affluence, but only such as befitted their station; they seem to have been in no way distinguished from the bulk of respectable, well-to-do, middle-class citizens of their day. The one peculiarity of their home was the circumstance to which we owe our knowledge of its character and its history:--that in it had been born a child who was to begin his career as Thomas of London the burgher’s son, and to end it as Thomas of Canterbury, archbishop, saint and martyr. [148] _S. Thomæ Ep._ cxxiv. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 515). [149] Anon. II. _Vita S. Thomæ_ (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 81. [150] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii. p. 14) calls him _vicecomes_, which in relation to London at this period can only mean port-reeve; and a constant tradition of later days pointed to the father of S. Thomas as the most venerated predecessor of the mayor. [151] Anon. I. _Vita S. Thomæ_ (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iv.), p. 7. [152] Will. Fitz-Steph. (_ib._ vol. iii.), p. 14. [153] E. Grim (_ib._ vol. ii.), p. 359. Anon. I. (_ib._ vol. iv.), p. 6. Garnier, _Vie de S. Thomas_ (Hippeau), p. 3. The Norman settlers were not the only new element in the population of the English towns. Flanders, the border-land of Normandy, France and the Empire, the immediate neighbour of the Norman dukes, the ally of the English kings, had been for ages associated with the destinies of England. The relation between the two countries was primarily a political one; but kindred blood, kindred speech and kindred temper drew Fleming and Englishman together in the bonds of a natural sympathy which grew with the growth of both nations. The merchants of Bruges were even more familiar visitors in London than those of Rouen and Caen. The trade with Flanders was the most important part of the trade of eastern England. Not only was the estuary of the Scheld a high-way of communication with the more distant regions of central Europe, but Flanders herself was the head-quarters of a flourishing industry for which the raw material was in great part furnished by England. The cloth which all Europe flocked to buy at the great yearly fairs of Bruges and Ghent was made chiefly from the wool of English sheep. Dover was the chief mart for this export; in the itinerary of the canons of Laon we see Flemish merchants dispersing to buy wool all over the country and bringing it up to Dover in great bales, which were deposited in a warehouse built for that special purpose till they could be shipped over sea.[154] As yet the Flemings had almost a monopoly of this weaving trade, although the appearance of weavers’ gilds at Huntingdon, Lincoln, Oxford and London may show that Englishmen were already beginning to emulate their example; it may, on the other hand,