Gloucestershire
A survey dating from between 1096 and 1101 records that of the 300 royal burgages that had existed in Edward the Confessor's reign 82 were uninhabited and another 24 had been removed to make way for the castle; half of the remainder had changed hands since the Conquest, many of the new tenants being Normans. At the time of the Norman Conquest Gloucester was already well established as an urban community and had acquired many of the features that were to govern its fortunes during the next few centuries. A royal borough in which 300 burgesses, possibly about half the total, held their land directly from the Crown and the site of a royal palace set at the centre of a large agricultural estate, Gloucester enjoyed a close relationship with the rulers of England. The town's mint was among the thirteen or so main producers of coin in England. It was also a religious centre with two monastic houses and possibly as many as eight churches and chapels.
Gloucester's importance to the new rulers of England was its strategic position in relation to South Wales. Its established position as a shire town, as well perhaps as its Roman origins, was reflected in the term civitas which was applied to it in the 11th and 12th centuries as that term became restricted to places with cathedrals, Gloucester was styled a town or borough until it was made a city by charter at the founding of Gloucester diocese in 1541.
In July 15, 1100 Gloucester Cathedral the new building was consecrated, although it was just the eastern arm that was finished. The first century after consecration was not a successful one; just 22 years later, another fire ripped through the Abbey which destroyed much of the Norman church. Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, built Banbury Castle in the yeare 1135 AD.
The largest holdings were attached to two important pre-Conquest estates in the neighbourhood: Deerhurst Priory, which became a possession of the abbey of St. Denis, Paris, after the Conquest, had 30 burgesses in Gloucester in 1086, while Tewkesbury manor had 8; c. 1100 36 burgesses were attached to Deerhurst, while Robert FitzHamon, lord of Tewkesbury, had 22. The smaller estates included 6 burgesses of Samson, Bishop of Exeter, apparently the remnant of a significant estate in the Southgate Street area which his predecessor Bishop Osbern had held, and the 15 burgesses of Walter of Gloucester, the hereditary sheriff and castellan.
Domesday Book and the later survey reveal a complex pattern of landholding in the town, one that presumably dated in many of its essentials from before the Conquest. Apart from the Crown 25 other lords had burgesses c. 1100, the largest holdings being the archbishop of York's 60, held in right of St. Oswald's minster, and Gloucester Abbey's 52. The minster of St. Oswald passed under the control of the archbishop of York and was later weakened by disputes between the archbishop and the Bishop of Worcester and archbishop of Canterbury about jurisdiction. Although reconstituted c. 1150 as a priory of Augustinian canons, St. Oswald's remained a relatively poor house. The total of 508 burgesses or a total population of about 3,000. The farm owed from the town, which had been £36 with various renders and customs in Edward the Confessor's reign and £38 4s. presumably also with the traditional renders in the time of Roger of Gloucester as sheriff soon after the Conquest, had been fixed at £60 by 1086; c. 1100, however, only £51 4s. appears to have been received.
The century following the Norman Conquest saw major additions to Gloucester's complement of religious institutions. The survey of c. 1100 records that there were already 10 churches in Gloucester and most of them were probably founded before 1066. Those added after the Conquest almost certainly included St. Owen's church, outside the south gate, which was probably founded by the first hereditary sheriff, Roger of Gloucester, whose son Walter added further endowments. Other late foundations were possibly the three churches with small compact parishes straddling the main market area, All Saints at the Cross and St. Mary de Grace and Holy Trinity in upper Westgate Street. The advowsons of the two last churches belonged to the Crown in the early 13th century and they were perhaps royal foundations, further manifestations of the interest shown in Gloucester by the early Norman kings.
St. Oswalds was outstripped by the new Augustinian priory of Llanthony Secunda, which was established on land on the south side of the town by Miles of Gloucester in 1137.
Llanthony Secunda Priory founded at Hempsted in 1137 and King Stephen was imprisoned in Gloucester in 1141. The importance of Gloucester the city was confirmed by Henry 1st in 1155 by the granting of a charter giving the city privileges equal to those of London is Gloucester's oldest Charter. Over the years the City burgesses succeeded in having these liberties confirmed and extended by successive monarchs, culminating in the grant of the full freedom of the town’s self-government by the Letters Patent of Richard III. Robert, Earl of Gloucester was Empress Matilda's half brother and champion during the civil war, and his headquarters were in the city of Gloucester. Matilda also benefitted from the support of Abbot Foliot (1139 - 1148), but the Abbey did not. Roger of Gloucester, Earl of Hereford, augmented the endowment in the early 1150s and the hospital was subsequently controlled by the family's foundation, Llanthony Priory. The town secured its first charter at the beginning of Henry II's reign and in 1165 became one of the earliest places to be given the right of fee farm.
The cathedral's southern tower of the west front of the Abbey collapsed in 1170. Three hospitals for the sick were founded at the approaches to the town and the leper hospital of St. Mary Magdalen, also called the hospital of Dudstone, was established on the London road at Wotton, probably by Walter of Gloucester in the early 12th century. The two oldest religious houses of the town enjoyed very different fortunes after the Conquest. Under the rule of the able and energetic Abbot Serlo from 1072, Gloucester Abbey became one of the leading Benedictine houses of England.
Hereford's city status was granted in 1189 AD by decree of Richard I. The Charter relating to this, and others more recent, remain intact.