By the Battle of Deorham Down near Bristol in 577, the invading Saxons separation the "West Welsh" (the Cornish) from their kinsmen in Wales. Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester are all mentioned in the account of the battle there is no reference to Bristol - If there was a settlement on the site of the modern city, it must have been so small as to escape mention by the chroniclers.

The earliest record of Bristol is an unusual one - a silver coin in the Royal Collection at Stockholm made at "Bricgstowe" by an "Aelfweld" and bearing the image of King Ethelred the Unready who reigned from 978 until 1016. If Bristol was important enough to have its own mint by the late 10th century, it must have grown up over a considerable period of time prior to Ethelred's reign.

About the time of the Norman conquest of 1066, Bristol must have been a properous town ideed for the manor of Barton in which it lay paid taxes of £73.35 - a sum only exceeded by the ancient Lincoln, London, Norwich and York. There is no record of the town having offered any resistance to The Conqueror and it was granted to Geoffrey of Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances, by all accounts a man of the sword rather than the Church.

Following the raid of 1068 by the Irish led by the exiled Godwins (Bristol had been part of the earldom of swegen when the family were exiled in 1051 and escaped to Ireland) which the town repelled, Bishop Mowbray set about building the first castle on a narrow strip of land to the east of the town (its only unprotected side). A town wall was also constructed on the west with six gates (St Nicholas at Bristol bridge, St Leonards, St Gyless, St Johns, Blind and Pithy).

William the Conqueror found slaves being exported and passed laws banning the trade.

Bristol had sheltered Maud (or Matilda) and her son during the protracted civil war with King Stephen following the death of her father, Henry I (1100-35), leaving no male heir. The war was ended by the Treaty of Wallingford whereby Stephen agreed that Matilda's son Henry should succeed him to the throne of England. Stephen died only a year later and Henry II rewarded people of Bristol with the granting of a charter in 1155 affirming their rights as freemen and freeing them from tolls - attempts to levy tolls on them would subject the offender to a hefty fine of £10.

Bristol was further honoured and rewarded in 1171 when Henry II visited Ireland to consolidate the English conquest and receive the submission of Irish bishops and chieftains when he also "granted, to his men of Bristol, his city of Dublin to be inhabited, together with all the liberties and free customs they had at Bristol and throughout his entire land".

Desperate to raise funds for the wars with France, Edward III granted a charter to Bristol in 1373 granting it the status of a county - the first charter of its kind - for a payment of 600 marks.

By 1377, the Poll Tax returns indicate Bristol had a population in the order of 9,500 to 12,000.

William the Conqueror found slaves being exported and passed laws banning the trade.

St Wulfstan is creditted with having persuaded the merchants of Bristol from trading in slaves;-

There is a maritime town, called Bristol, which is on the direct route to Ireland, and so suitable for trade with that barbarian land. The inhabitants of this place with other Englishmen often sail to Ireland for the sake of trade. Wulfstan banished from among them a very old custom which had so hardened their hearts that neither the love of God nor the love of King William could efface it. For men whom they had purchased from all over England they carried off to Ireland; but first they got the women with child and sent them pregnant to market. You would have seen queues of the wretches of both sexes shackled together and you would have pitied them; those who were beautiful and those who were in the flower of youth were daily prostituted and sold amidst much wailing to the barbarians. Oh execrable crime, wretched dishonor, men who remind us of beasts, to sell into slavery their nearest relative because of their necessities.

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