803 formally annulled the metropolitan dignity of Lichfield. =Aldulf= (801-812), who had succeeded Higbert as archbishop, became bishop, but took precedency after Canterbury overall the other bishoprics, and =Herewin= (812-818) on his appointment submitted to Canterbury. Shortly afterwards =Æthelwald= (818-828) organised the bishopric upon the basis of its present constitution. Churches were springing up all over the diocese, with their own clergy, and so, although the church at Lichfield remained the headquarters of the diocese, yet the clergy attached to it were no longer to be responsible for the ministrations of the whole diocese, but were to confine themselves to the estates of the bishop and the cathedral, where they were to dwell under canons or rules. It is possible that from this time the cathedral clergy became known as canons. Then comes the period of the invasion by the Danes, whereby the country was devastated and the rich abbeys were destroyed. Peterborough, Crowland, and Ely, "went up in flames"; the enemy advanced along the Trent, and levelled to the ground the famous monastery of Repton--the Walhalla of Mercia--where countless kings and princes had been buried. What happened at Lichfield is not known, but many bishops succeeded one another, of whose consecration, in some cases, the dates are so doubtful that it is not worth while to give them. Their names are:--=Hunbert=, 828; =Kynebert=; =Tunfrith=; =Ella=; =Algar=, 941; =Kinsy=, 949; =Winsy=, 964; =Elfege=, 973; =Godwin=, 1004; =Leofgar=, 1020; =Brithmar=, 1026; and =Wulsy=, 1039; but little is known of them, though these two centuries are far from being unimportant in the history of the diocese. Probably the destruction of the royal abbeys caused the building of numerous parish churches during this period, and of the collegiate churches which were planted in the principal centres of the population. The former were mostly endowed with lands or tithes to support the parish clergy, or to recompense the canons who should attend the church, in which latter case the tithes were probably "appropriated" to the cathedral. So the system developed until about the year 1000, when began, in Mercia, a new age of monasteries, not like the old royal abbeys which had mostly been destroyed, but houses that were filled with monks or nuns of the Benedictine order. These competed with the secular clergy in appropriating the endowments of the churches, and a jealousy began between the two systems which blazed continually, with greater or less heat, until the final overthrow of the monasteries by Henry VIII. at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Early in the eleventh century was founded, at Coventry, the Benedictine abbey which had so great a share in the history of the diocese. Its founder, Earl Leofric, was the husband of the beautiful Godiva whose ride through the town made Coventry free from tolls. "I, Luriche, for love of thee, Doe make Coventre toll-free,"