 This appellation carries its own prestige and competition for the status is hard-fought.The status does not apply automatically on the basis of any particular criteria, though in England and Wales it was traditionally given to towns with diocesan cathedrals.This association between having a cathedral and being called a city was established in the early 1540s when King Henry VIII founded dioceses (each having a cathedral in the see city) in six English towns and granted them city status by issuing letters patent.