Sigegar (975-977), a pupil of St. Dunstan, and abbot of Glastonbury, was succeeded, or perhaps supplanted, by Aelfwine, in 997-999.
Aethelstan, or Lyfing; translated to Canterbury 1013.
Aethelwine and Brihtwine shared the episcopate, either as rivals or coadjutors. Brihtwine was last in possession. Merewit, also called Brihtwine, succeeded in 1026.
Duduc (1033-1060), a German Saxon. Cnut had given him the estates of Congresbury and Banwell, which he left to the church of Wells; but Harold took possession of them.
Gisa (1060-1088), a Belgian from Lorraine, found his see in a sad condition: the church was mean, its revenues small, and its four or five canons were forced, he says, to beg their bread. He at once set to work to increase the revenues; and from Edward the Confessor, from his queen, Edith, then from Harold, and afterwards from William the Conqueror, he obtained various estates for the support of his canons.
He also changed the way of living of the canons, and built a cloister, dormitory, and refectory, thereby forcing them to live a common life, much as if they were monks—an unpopular innovation which was supported by the appointment in the foreign fashion of a provost to be chief officer, the canons choosing for this post one Isaac of Wells.
John de Villula, Bishop of Bath (1088-1122), a rich physician of Tours. He put an end to the semi-monastic discipline of Gisa by pulling down his community buildings and erecting a private house of his own on the site. And he removed the see of Somersetshire from Wells to the Abbey of Bath.
Godfrey (1123-1135).
Robert of Lewes (1136-1166), the second founder of the cathedral; he made the constitution of the chapter, he rebuilt the old Saxon church, and he started Wells as a borough by the grant of its first charter of freedom. Of a Fleming family, though born in England, he was a monk from the Cluniac house of St. Pancras at Lewes; and to another and more famous Cluniac monk, Bishop Henry of Winchester, King Stephen's brother, he owed his advancement. In the very year of his consecration he began the recovery of Wells from the low estate in which John de Villula and his rapacious relatives had left it. He restored their property to the canons, and, in order to secure it, he divided it off from the property of the see by a charter of incorporation. He assisted at Henry II.'s coronation in 1154, and at the consecration of Thomas à Becket in 1162.
Bishop Robert arranged the quarrel with Bath by settling that Bath should take precedence of Wells, but that the bishop should have his throne in both churches, and be elected by the two chapters conjointly.