In 1836 the archdeaconry of Coventry was annexed to Worcester and its name disappeared from the title, and now it is probable that Coventry will soon again give her name to a See without dividing the honour. For the joint episcopal history the reader must be referred to the handbook in this series on Lichfield Cathedral. In this place will only be given that of the Monastery as such, and specially in connection with its "appropriated" parish churches and the City in which it stood. That history is not essentially different from that of other monasteries. Though its connection with the See and the rival claims and antagonisms of the respective Chapters produced a plentiful crop of serious quarrels, its relations with the townsfolk were free from such violent episodes as occurred at Bury St. Edmunds or St. Albans. The Chapter of Lichfield consisted of secular priests (Lymesey and his next successor were married men), while the Monastery, though freed by pope and king from any episcopal or justiciary power and with the right of electing its own abbot, was, like all monastic bodies, always jealous of the encroachments of bishops, and regarded secular priests as inferior in every respect. The opinion of the laity who saw both sides may be gathered from Chaucer's picture of a "poore Persoun of a toun." He knew well enough how the revenue, which should have gone to the parish, its parson and its poor, went to fill the coffers of rich abbeys, to build enormous churches and furnish them sumptuously, to provide retinues of lazy knights for the train of abbot or bishop, and to prosecute lawsuits in the papal courts. But when bishop and abbot were one and the same, the monks still claimed the right of election, and so for generations the history of the diocese is a tale of strife and bickering, and how it was that pope, king or archbishop did not perceive that it was a case of hopeless incompatibility of temper, or, perceiving it, did not dissolve the union or get it dissolved is difficult to see. Probably the injury done to religion weighed but lightly against vested interests and the power of the purse. The Monastery was, however, as Dugdale says, "the chief occasion of all the succeeding wealth and honour that accrued to Coventry"; for though the original Nunnery may have been planted in an existing settlement, or have attracted one about it, the greater wealth of the Abbey, its right to hold markets, and all its own varied requirements would quickly increase and bring prosperity to such a township, as it did at Bury St. Edmunds, Burton-on-Trent and many another.