Note 174 — HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS. (continued 3)

In this point of view the history of Wells is well worthy of the care of students of municipal history. The number of boroughs which arose under the shadow of abbeys, as at Saint Alban's and Bury Saint Edmund's (on which last see Mr. Green's papers, published in Macmillan's Magazine in the course of 1869), is not small; but of Bishops' boroughs there are not many. Durham and Salisbury (see above, p. 3) are the nearest examples, but their history is not exactly the same as that of Wells. Coventry, a still greater city, grew up under the shadow of an Abbey which became a Bishoprick.