No place better illustrates the transformation of the land in the hands of its Norman masters, the sudden outburst of industrial effort, the sudden expansion of commerce and accumulation of wealth which followed the Conquest.

To the west of the town rose one of the stateliest of English castles, and in the meadows beneath the hardly less stately abbey of Osney.

In the fields to the north the last of the Norman kings raised his palace of Beaumont.

In the southern quarter of the city the canons of St.
Frideswide reared the church which still exists as the diocesan cathedral, while the piety of the Norman Castellans rebuilt almost all its parish churches and founded within their new castle walls the church of the Canons of St.George.
[Sidenote: Oxford Scholars] We know nothing of the causes which drew students and teachers within the walls of Oxford.

It is possible that here as elsewhere a new teacher quickened older educational foundations, and that the cloisters of Osney and St.Frideswide already possessed schools which burst into a larger life under the impulse of Vacarius.