And the archbishop was sometimes at the abbey of Pontigny, and sometimes at the monastery of St.Columbe.Now, I read what follows in an ancient _pancarte_ of the abbey of St.Cyprian of Poitiers, brought there by a monk of the said, called Babilonius, who, for some grudge owed him by his abbot, was driven from his abbey, and went to complain of his wrong to Pope Alexander at Sens, while the Archbishop Thomas sojourned there; from whom this monk received a holy vial to place in the church of St.
Gregory, where reposes the body of the blessed Saint Loubette.

I have translated the said writing from Latin into the vulgar tongue, seeing that it contains some curious things.

It begins, 'Quando ego Thomas Archiepiscopus,' &c.
"When I, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, exiled from England, took refuge with Pope Alexander, who was also fugitive, in the town of Sens, and there represented to him the bad habits and abuses that the King of England had introduced into the Church; one night as I was in the church of Sainte Colombe, engaged in prayer, supplicating the Queen of Virgins that she would vouchsafe grace to the King of England and his successors, that they might have power and will to be obedient to the Church as her children, and that our Lord Jesus Christ would cause them more fully to love the said Church, suddenly appeared to me the Blessed Virgin Mary, having on her breast a drop of water, glittering like fine gold, and holding in her hand a little vial (_ampoule_) of stone.

And after she had taken from her breast the drop of water and put it in the vial, she spoke to me these words: 'This is the unction with which the kings of England shall be anointed; _not those who reign now, but those who are to reign_; for those who reign now are wicked, and so will be their successors, and, for their iniquity shall lose many things.
However, kings of England shall come, and shall be anointed with this unction, and shall be benign and obedient to the Church, and shall not possess their lands or lordships until they are so anointed.

The first of these shall recover, without violence, the countries of Normandy and Aquitaine, which their predecessors had lost.