4 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NORWICH AND DISTRICT 
Chronicles describing the savage revenge of Sweyn, King of Denmark, 
for the murder of his sister in A.D. 1003, during the Massacre of St. 
Brice. By then it was called Norwyk and had already a considerable 
Danish element. The street names which survive, Colegate, Cowgate, 
Fishergate, Westwick, Pottergate, and the dedication of some of its 
churches show this. It had recovered by the time of the Norman con- 
quest, so that over 1000 burgesses were registered in Domesday. A 
third warring element was then added, the Normans dominating the 
place from the massive stone Keep which remains (refaced) to-day, to 
house the Museum. ‘They also planted a hardly less formidable eccle- 
siastical fortress, to-day the cathedral and its Close, infringing on the 
old market and common meeting place of Tomland or ‘Tombland, and 
made a new market and French-speaking quarter west of the Castle. 
Here, then, were all the racial antagonisms and linguistic barriers which 
should have made for centuries of hatred and disruption. But the 
opposite was the case. In about a century the inhabitants of the four 
rival villages, Conisford of Saxon origin, Westwick with its Danish pre- 
ponderance, the Ward over the water, with a mixed population, and the 
Norman quarter had all come to speak one language, and think of 
themselves as citizens of one community. In 1194 they obtained from 
King Richard the right to elect their own chief citizen to govern them. 
They already possessed a charter (1158). 
Between 1263 and 1342 the city was surrounded by a wall, portions of 
which, with some towers, still remain to be seen. 
In 1404 the citizens obtained a more formal and elaborate charter 
incorporating the city as a county, with a Mayor, two sheriffs, Court 
of Aldermen, and Common Council, which lasted until the Municipal 
Reform Act of 1835, and they then built the Guildhall still in use. In 
1909 Royal Letters Patent granted to Norwich the privilege of calling its 
chief citizen the Lord Mayor. 
The long story of the civic development of Norwich is told in detail 
hereafter. That of religious bodies planted in the City, but often with 
their own jurisdiction separate, includes a long strife between the citizens 
and the Cathedral Priory. A more intimate relationship existed with 
the various orders of Friars, Black, White, Grey and others established 
in Norwich, and when they, like the older religious bodies, were dis- 
established, the great church of the Dominicans was preserved and 
handed over to the City as a Wool Hall, and its nave and chancel still 
form the two main assembly halls of the city, known as St. Andrew’s 
and Blackfriars’ Halls. The remaining development of religious feeling 
in the city brings us into closer and closer connection with its commercial 
growth. 
At first merely a centre and market it drew to itself the local trade, 
but above all the spinning of yarn of the kind made at, and called after, 
Worstead, a few miles to the north-east. In the early fourteenth century 
Flemings were brought over to teach weaving, and despite the great 
disaster of the Black Death, by the end of the century Norwich had 
become a foremost textile town. Its trade was much injured by the 
religious wars of the sixteenth century, but the outcome was beneficial 
