William the Conqueror gave the convent the manor of Barnwood and the church of St. Peter Mancroft at Norwich. When William II Rufus lay sick at GLOUCESTER in 1093, he gave the church of St. Gundelay at Newport and fifteen hides. Henry I granted the manor of Maisemore in 1101. Lands and churches in the marches in Wales were lavishly presented by Norman lords; in 1088 Bernard of Newmarch gave the manor of Glasbury and the church of Cowarne; Robert Fitzhamon granted the church of Lancarvan and fifteen hides at Penhow. In 1100 Harold, lord of Ewyas, founded and endowed the cell of Ewyas in Herefordshire. In the following yeare Hugh de Lacy gave the collegiate church of St. Peter at Hereford. The church of St. Martin in the Vintry, London, was the gift of Ralph Peverel. The number of monks increased rapidly, and in 1104 was said to have reached 100. In a charter granted by Samson, bishop of Worcester, on 23 July, 1100, he expressly stated that Serlo had gathered around him more than sixty monks, and that the possessions of the house scarcely sufficed to provide for them.

The parish of St. Aldate in the north-east part of the walled area may have housed the 30 burgesses who at Domesday belonged to the church of St. Denis, Paris. For St. Aldate's church later belonged to Deerhurst Priory, which had been granted to St. Denis by Edward the Confessor. 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. Two other manors with large holdings were Bisley with 11 burgesses in 1086 and Kempsford with 7. The survey of c. 1100 records that there were already 10 churches in GLOUCESTER and most of them were probably founded before 1066.

The palace of Kingsholm existed by 1051, and various customary dues rendered in the king's hall and chamber are mentioned in Domesday Book. The economy, on the evidence, can hardly be termed urban. Streets with Old English names existed north of the town on the road to the royal palace at Kingsholm. Other Roman gates of the town survived until the 11th century, possibly that there was an Anglo-Saxon gate-chapel set in the Roman structure of forum. The endowing of more than one of Ethelfleda's royal boroughs with a minster and important relics may have been part of a political policy aimed at conciliation of Mercia during the 'Reconquest' of the Danelaw. There were ten GLOUCESTER churches by c. 1100. St. Peter, St. Mary de Lode, and St. Oswald, there were probably other Anglo-Saxon churches, without right of baptism or burial but neverthless maintained by their local communities. The earliest of those churches are likely to be those with the largest parishes and with land outside the town walls, that is, St. John, St. Kyneburgh, St. Michael, and, probably, St. Mary de Crypt.

The priories of Newent, Horsley, and Brimpsfield were established as cells of Benedictine monasteries in Normandy in the reign of William the Conqueror. Before the middle of the twelfth century the Augustinian canons had four important houses including Fearn Abbey, Painswick, Lewes-Easebourne, Lurg, Dungiven, Kells, St. Peters, Burford, Coxwold, Lincoln Cathedral... In 1131 they took the place of the secular canons of Cirencester. The monastery of Lanthony by GLOUCESTER had its origin in 1136; St. Augustine's, Bristol, in 1148. Robert, earl of GLOUCESTER (ob. 1146), gave lands at Tregoff and Penhow in Glamorganshire. The dependent priory of St. Guthlác at Hereford was founded between 1139 and 1148, with the aid of the bishop, Robert de Bethune.

Although the Cistercians came to England in 1128, and spread rapidly in the north and in the marches of Wales, the small monastery of Flaxley, in the Forest of Dean, was not founded until about 1151. In 1141 Maurice of London founded and endowed the cell of Ewenny in Glamorganshire. In 1144 the lands at Glasbury were exchanged for the manor of Eastleach. The more noted house of Hayles had its origin in 1246. The parishes lay inside the walls and extramural areas of the town and former grid. The priory of St. James, Bristol, was founded about 1137, Stanley St. Leonard in 1146. In 1146 the college of secular canons at Stanley St. Leonard was given to the monastery by Roger of Berkeley III, with the consent of the prior and canons, and became another cell. The industry which was to be the most significant in the next two or three centuries, the working of iron from the Forest of Dean. The town's mint was among the thirteen or so main producers of coin in England. 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.

GLOUCESTER's most obvious importance to the new rulers of England was its strategic position in relation to South Wales. The crossing of the Severn controlled by the town was rapidly secured by a castle, which was rebuilt on a more substantial scale in the early 12th century. The castle was entrusted by the Norman kings to a notable family of royal servants who, as hereditary castellans and sheriffs of the county, were dominant in the history of GLOUCESTER for a century after the Conquest.

Since Abbot Serlo from 1072, GLOUCESTER Abbey near Down Hatherley became one of the leading Benedictine houses of England. Although reconstituted c. 1150 as a priory of Augustinian canons, St. Oswald's remained a relatively poor house. 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. Some burgesses preferred to endow external religious houses, and Cirencester, Flaxley, Winchcombe, Godstow (Oxon.), and Eynsham (Oxon.) The preceptories of the Templars and Hospitallers were established at Guiting and Quenington before the end of the twelfth century.

In 1222 the Carthusians settled for a few years at Hatherop, but afterwards moved to Hinton in Somerset. GLOUCESTER's trading connections with the smaller market towns of its region and its own local market area were among the diverse elements that provided its livelihood. It had an industrial base supplied in particular by ironworking, for which it was widely known at that period, and by clothmaking; it played a part in the trade of the river Severn and, mainly through Bristol, in overseas trade; and its control of the trade routes out of South Wales benefited it from before the time of the Edwardian conquest.

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