The removal of Bishop Remigius from Dorchester to Lincoln was in accordance with a new practice, which had come in since the Norman conquest, of placing the episcopal see in the chief town of the diocese. The same motive had prompted a translation of the old Mercian bishopric from Lichfield, now described as “a little town in the woodland, with a rivulet flowing by it, far away from the throng of cities,”[104] to Chester, whence, however, it was soon removed again to the great abbey of Coventry.[105] The same reason, too, caused Norwich to succeed Thetford as the seat of the bishopric of East-Anglia. It was but very recently that Lincoln had outstripped Norwich as the chief city of eastern England. The mouth of the Yare, which had a tideway navigation quite up to the point where the Wensum falls into it, was no less conveniently placed than that of the Witham for intercourse with northern Europe; and the Scandinavian traders and settlers in the first half of the eleventh century had raised Norwich to such a pitch of prosperity that at the coming of the Norman it contained twenty-four churches, and its burghers seem to have been more numerous than those of any town in the realm except London and York.[106] Twenty years later their number was indeed greatly diminished; the consequences of Earl Ralf’s rebellion had wrought havoc in the city. But if its native population had decreased, a colony of Norman burghers was growing up and flourishing in a “new borough,” now represented by the parishes of S. Peter Mancroft and S. Giles; the number of churches and chapels had risen to forty-four,[107] and in the Red King’s last years the foundations of the cathedral were laid by Bishop Herbert Lozinga, whose grave may still be seen before its high altar.[108] Once in the next reign Norwich supplanted Gloucester as the scene of the Midwinter Council; King Henry kept Christmas there in 1121.[109] It may have been on this occasion that the citizens won from him their first charter; but the charter itself is lost, and we only learn the bare fact of its existence from the words of Henry II., confirming to the burghers of Norwich “all the customs, liberties and acquittances which they had in the time of my grandfather.”[110] [104] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. iv. c. 172 (Hamilton, p. 307). [105] _Ib._ cc. 172–175 (pp. 307–311). [106] Domesday, vol. ii. pp. 116, 117. [107] _Ib._ pp. 116–118. [108] Will. Malm. _Gesta Pontif._, l. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, p. 151). [109] Eng. Chron. a. 1122. [110] Charter printed in Blomefield, _Hist. of Norfolk_, vol. iii. p. 34. [Illustration: Plan IV. OXFORD in the XII century. Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co. ]