ittle religious influence to wield a really spiritual power, and it was
only at the close of Stephen's reign that the nation really found a moral
leader in Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Theobald's ablest agent
and adviser was Thomas, the son of Gilbert Beket, a leading citizen and,
it is said, Portreeve of London, the site of whose house is still marked
by the Mercers' chapel in Cheapside. His mother Rohese was a type of the
devout woman of her day; she weighed her boy every year on his birthday
against money, clothes, and provisions which she gave to the poor. Thomas
grew up amidst the Norman barons and clerks who frequented his father's
house with a genial freedom of character tempered by the Norman
refinement; he passed from the school of Merton to the University of
Paris, and returned to fling himself into the life of the young nobles of
the time. Tall, handsome, bright-eyed, ready of wit and speech, his
firmness of temper showed itself in his very sports; to rescue his hawk
which had fallen into the water he once plunged into a millrace and was
all but crushed by the wheel. The loss of his father's wealth drove him
to the court of Archbishop Theobald, and he soon became the Primate's
confidant in his plans for the rescue of England.

[Illustration: The Dominions of the Angevins (v1-map-4t.jpg)]

[Sidenote: Treaty of Wallingford]

The natural influence which the Primate would have exerted was long held
in suspense by the superior position of Bishop Henry of Winchester as
Papal Legate; but this office ceased with the Pope who granted it, and
when in 1150 it was transferred to the Archbishop himself Theobald soon
made his weight felt. The long disorder of the realm was producing its
natural reaction in exhaustion and disgust, as well as in a general
craving for return to the line of hereditary succession whose breaking
seemed the cause of the nation's woes. But the growth of their son Henry
to manhood set naturally aside the pretensions both of Count Geoffry and
Matilda. Young as he was Henry already showed the cool long-sighted
temper which was to be his characteristic on the throne. Foiled in an
early attempt to grasp the crown, he looked quietly on at the disorder
which was doing his work till the death of his father at the close of
1151 left him master of Normandy and Anjou. In the spring of the
following year his marriage with its duchess, Eleanor of Poitou, added
Aquitaine to his dominions. Stephen