Nicholas, the son of Robert Breakspear, was born early in the twelfth century at Langley Abbot's, in Hertfordshire.
His father appears to have been a younger son of a family deriving its name from a place situated in the adjoining parish of St. Michael; but was so indigent as to have had recourse to mendicant habits, in which his child probably participated. Upon the death of his wife, Robert Breakspear became first a lay-brother, and then a monk, of the adjacent Abbey of St. Alban's, leaving his young son to provide for himself. Nicholas, thus deserted, very naturally hung about the monastery of which his father was an inmate, waiting among the crowd assembled at its gate for the daily distribution of its broken victuals, and occasionally being employed in fulfilling some of the menial offices of the establishment.