Before the Conquest the site of Coventry was part of the estates held by the famous Countess Godiva, and an abbey was founded there ca.1043. It is possible a modest market settlement arose at the monastery gates in the years following; but, if so, it was apparently not significant enough for Domesday to pay it any attention. Yet by the end of the century the Bishop of Chester had moved his see to Coventry, acquired the abbey from the king and become the titular abbot, with effective leadership of the monastic community being by the prior. At some point, possibly the late eleventh century, the estates of Godiva came into the hands of the earl of Chester, and around the earl's castle a second trading settlement grew up, fostered by the earl's grant of burgage tenure. The abbey later claimed that it was a soke independent from the earl's estates (a response to Earl Ranulph II's attempts to assert his authority over both parts of Coventry), although whether this had real foundation or was based solely on charters now known to be forgeries is uncertain. The division between the "Earl's part" and the "Prior's part" of Coventry, together with Ranulph II's transfer of his principal base of operations to Coventry as a central location from which to consolidate his sphere of influence in the midlands, provide the background to the charter grants above.

Presumably the charter of Ranulph III, grandson of Ranulph II, was granted to the half of the town which lay within his lordship, although there is nothing in it that states so, and it may have been directed at the entire burgess community, part of the policy of ignoring the prior's claims. More important, the charter is essentially – although unacknowledgedly – a renewal of that granted by Ranulph II ca.1140/50, itself known only from the confirmation sought by the burgesses from Henry II in 1182, while Ranulph III was in his minority and the town was under a royal custodian. There are, however, some minor but not insignificant differences.

Ranulph II's charter referred back to a grant of burgage tenure in the time of his own father. It established a town court (portmanmoot) and allowed the burgesses to adopt the local laws of Lincoln. And it aimed at developing the town's economy by offering protection to visiting merchants (as in the above document) and, to any who would establish a residence in the town, a two-year exemption from paying any kind of dues from the time they began to build. That the latter clause was omitted in Ranulph III's charter suggests that the incentive had done its work and was no longer needed. Another difference is that Ranulph II's charter set a 12d. ceiling on amercements assessable in the portmoot, as well as the provision for a reduction in amercement should 12 neighbours testify to the convicted party's inability to pay. The abandonment of these specifications – in favour of the more general statement that amercements should not be unreasonable – in Ranulph III's charter suggests, Peter Coss has argued, that they may have been unwarranted additions (interpolations) to Ranulph II's actual terms, made by the burgesses in 1182, then suppressed once Ranulph III had emerged from his minority. Professor Coss suspects that the clause granting an elected justiciar was also an interpolation by the burgesses, on the grounds that there was virtually no precedent for such an urban officer in the time of Ranulph II – in fact, the only precedent was a London charter whose equivalent clause has itself been suspected as a forgery. However, there were such officers for the earldom, so it may simply have been a case of expressing a concept with a term familiar to the earl (see notes below), while the part of this clause emphasising the officer's responsibility to the earl is not something the burgesses needed, or would have been expected, to fabricate. Whether or not that clause was an interpolation, Ranulph III let it stand; although his revision of the clause concerning limitation on amercements did emphasize the role of the bailiff, we cannot be certain that this was not simply another way of referring to the justiciar (no officer of that name appearing in court witness lists of the thirteenth century).

Ranulph II's charter was one of the earliest granted by mesne lords to their towns, and shows a borough at the initial stage of moving towards self-government, focused around the court – there being no sign of a merchant gild such as that whose existence was recognized in Henry III's charter of 1267 to the prior's half of the town and which later had a strong role in Coventry. The possible fabrications added for an unwitting Henry II's approval – it perhaps being significant that neither original nor copy of the text of Ranulph II's charter has survived – reflect burgess ambitions to improve their situation at a time when their lord was not in a position to object. Ranulph III's renewal demonstrates both some alteration in the situation since mid-twelfth century and also reassertion of lordly authority. The only change he made in favour of the burgesses was to word more strongly the clause disenabling the constable of the castle from trying cases involving burgesses. Thus, in all, the charter and its history offer revealing documentation of the incipience of an urban constitution in the twelfth century.