To turn to another subject. In the account of the early days of St. Thomas à Becket we get a glimpse of the London merchant’s home which, like Fitzstephen’s description of London, goes not far enough. The future Archbishop, Martyr, and Saint was born where the present Mercers’ Chapel stands in Cheapside. His father, Gilbert, was of knightly family, a native of Thierceville, a little town near the Abbey of Bec in Normandy. He appears to have migrated to Rouen while still young; there he married Roesia, daughter of a burgher of Caen. The young couple came over to London about the year 1116 and here prospered. It has been suggested that Gilbert of Rouen and Roesia of Caen were Thomas’s grandparents and that his father, Gilbert, was born in London and that his mother’s name was Matilda. It seems difficult to understand how a simple burgher from Rouen should in two or three years become a leading citizen in London, even, according to his biographer, vice-comes, _i.e._ portreeve. He was a man at one time of large property; he founded a chapel in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where he was himself buried; and for many years the newly elected Mayor paid a visit on his election to the tomb of Gilbert. To say that Gilbert came over in the wake of the Conqueror is absurd, because he must then have been of age, which would make him seventy, at least, when Thomas was born. Yet he was a leading citizen of London during the years of his boyhood, and this fact is impossible to explain on the assumption that Gilbert came over in 1116. If, however, his father, the elder Gilbert, came over in 1066 or thereabouts, being then, perhaps, twenty years of age, a son of his, born say in 1086, might very well be the father of Thomas, born in 1118. (See also p. 8). The City of London in any case claimed the saint as her own son: “Me quae te peperi, ne cesses, Thoma, tueri.” Gilbert claimed kinship with the Norman Theobald; among his friends was one Rechin de l’Aigle of Pevensey, a noble of Norman birth, who lodged with Gilbert when he came to London. The visions which came to the mother before the birth of her child are pleasing in their simplicity. We are told that she saw her child standing before her at the door of Canterbury Cathedral; that twelve bright stars dropped into her lap; and that she dreamed that she was giving birth to the Cathedral itself. There is the pretty story of the baby’s coverlet. Roesia (or Matilda) found fault with the nurse for not laying a coverlet over him in his cradle. “Why,” said the nurse, “he has already got a beautiful red silk coverlet.” She took it up and unfolded it. The coverlet proved too big for the room; it was too big for the hall; it was too big for the street; it was too big for Smithfield.