Becket's Mother

Although the absence of any contemporaneous relation of this lady's romantic history may raise a reasonable doubt of its authenticity, it seems to derive indirect confirmation from the fact, that the hospital founded by Becket's sister shortly after his death, on the spot where he was born, part of which is now the Mercers' chapel in Cheapside, was called "The Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr *of Acon*." Erasmus, also, in his *Pilgrimages to Walsingham and Canterbury* (see J.G. Nichol's excellent translation and notes, pp. 47. 120.), says that the archbishop was called "Thomas *Acrensis*."