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. A total of 11 churches, all in existence by the later 12th century, exercised parochial functions in the town and its adjoining hamlets and there were also a number of non-parochial chapels.
Until the mid 17th century Gloucester had 11 churches with parochial functions. Save for St. Owen's church, established by the late 11th century. It was closely connected to Gloucester Abbey and served a large parish in the outlying hamlets of Gloucester, where the parochial division of lands indicates that the church of St. Michael was also an early foundation. The priory church of St. Oswald exercised parochial functions in the late 12th century and part of it remained a parish church, under the dedication of St. Catherine, after the Dissolution. The church was part, the north transept and aisle, of the former priory church of St. Oswald.
By the 12th century chapels had been built in those parts of the liberty outside the town and St. Oswald's parish, as defined in the mid 14th century, comprised the northern suburb next to the priory, Brook Street, the house of the Carmelite friars, and Hyde to the east of the town, and parts of Longford and Twigworth to the north; parts of Kingsholm were also in the parish in the mid 16th century. In 1648 St. Catherine's parish was included in the parish served from St. John the Baptist. The medieval parish church included a chantry called the charnel service, which had been founded in the chapel of St. Michael by Edward and William Taverner, John Constable, and Simon Baker c. 1392.
At the end of the 11th century there were said to be 10 churches in the king's soke at Gloucester. They included the later parish church of St. John the Baptist. Five other churches mentioned by the end of the 12th century (All Saints, Holy Trinity, St. Mary de Crypt, St. Mary de Grace, and St. Nicholas) became parochial and another (St. Martin) a chapel to St. Michael. In 1143 Gloucester Abbey claimed burial rights within the town but by 1197 it had conceded some, chiefly in respect of the parishes of St. Mary de Crypt and St. Owen, to Llanthony Priory, though St. Owen, which was outside the walls, had a graveyard before that time. St. Michael acquired burial rights in the mid 14th century, St. Aldate, St. John, St. Mary de Crypt, and St. Nicholas had them by the early 15th, and All Saints, Holy Trinity, and St. Mary de Grace by the early 16th. In the Middle Ages chantries were founded in all the parish churches.
Religious houses such as Winchcombe Abbey found it advisable to maintain lodgings for use when business brought the monks to Gloucester. From the later 12th century suburban growth was recorded on monastic land outside the north, east, and south gates.
In the early years of the 13th century, Henry de Bohun, earl of Hereford, and Roger de Berkeley and their activities among the burgess community at the same period. The proliferation of Gloucester's religious institutions and the attraction to it of a large Jewish community are among indications of the economic vitality of the town during the 12th and 13th centuries. Aids raised from the English towns during Henry II's reign suggest that Gloucester may then have ranked about ninth in order of prosperity, well behind such great regional centres as York and Norwich but among the leading county towns, on a par with such places as Oxford and Winchester. Within the northern half of Gloucestershire, however, Gloucester was not seriously challenged as the trading and administrative centre. Among neighbouring settlements Tewkesbury and Cirencester became market towns soon after the Norman Conquest, but both remained much smaller than Gloucester. Of the many other places which gained markets between the late 12th and early 14th centuries several in the immediate area of Gloucester, including Newent, Cheltenham, Painswick, and Newnham, were moderately successful and made some impact on its market trade but in the expanding economic climate of the period looked to Gloucester as the centre for the supply of manufactured and imported goods.
The town remained the site of a mint at least until the recoinage of 1248, probably losing that role at a reorganization of mints in 1279. 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. An attempt soon afterwards by a group of leading burgesses to gain greater freedom from royal control was suppressed and the achievement of the right to elect bailiffs, under a charter of 1200, was the next major advance. Following that the exclusion of the county sheriff and other royal officials from interfering in their affairs remained a goal. The government of the town, carried on until 1483 by the two bailiffs, acting mainly through the hundred court, settled into an oligarchical pattern; the bailiffs were drawn from a recognized class of wealthier burgesses, apparently composed in the 13th century and the early 14th by the leading merchants in wine and wool and the principal wholesalers, such as mercers and drapers.
A clause in the town's charter of 1227 protecting absconded villeins who had been in the town for a yeare and a day from being reclaimed by their lords suggests that numbers of immigrants were then being attracted to Gloucester. Surnames of 13th-century inhabitants that derived from place-names show that such immigration was mainly from a local area of north Gloucestershire villages; a few men had come from a greater distance, from Midland towns such as Ludlow, Kidderminster, Banbury, Warwick, and Northampton, and from Brecon and Abergavenny, places on the main route into Wales which Gloucester commanded.