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Lady Godiva

11th-century Anglo-Saxon noblewoman and figure of legend

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She is mainly remembered for a legend dating back to at least the 13th century, in which she rode naked – covered only by her long hair – through the streets of Coventry to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation that her husband, Leofric, imposed on his tenants. The name "Peeping Tom" for a voyeur originates from later versions of this legend, in which a man named Thomas watched her ride and was struck blind or dead.

Historical figure

Godiva was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. They had nine children; one son was Ælfgar. Godiva's name occurs in charters and the Domesday Book, though the spelling varies. The Old English name Godgifu or Godgyfu meant "gift of God"; 'Godiva' was the name's Latinised form. Since the name was a popular one, there are contemporaries of the same name.

It is claimed that Godiva was born in Bucknall, Lincolnshire, around 995 AD; however several historians have declared the charter used as evidence for this to be spurious.

A woman named Godiva was recorded in the Liber Eliensis, a 12th-century history of Ely Abbey. If that "Godiva" were the same person as [the legendary figure] 'Lady Godiva', then she would have been a widow when Leofric married her. Both Leofric and Godiva were generous benefactors to religious houses. In 1043, Leofric founded and endowed a Benedictine monastery at Coventry on the site of a nunnery destroyed by the Danes in 1016. Writing in the 13th century, Roger of Wendover credits Godiva as the persuasive force behind this act of generosity. In the 1050s, her name is coupled with that of her husband on a grant of land to the monastery of St Mary, Worcester, and the endowment of the minster at Stow St Mary, Lincolnshire. She and her husband are commemorated as benefactors of other monasteries at Leominster, Chester, Much Wenlock, and Evesham. She gave Coventry a number of works in precious metal by the goldsmith Mannig and bequeathed a necklace valued at 100 marks of silver. Another necklace went to Evesham, to be hung around the figure of the Virgin Mary accompanying the life-size gold and silver rood she and her husband had donated, and St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London received a gold-fringed chasuble. Godiva and her husband were among the most munificent of the several large Anglo-Saxon donors of the last decades before the Norman Conquest; the early Norman bishops made short work of their gifts, carrying them off to Normandy or melting them down for bullion. Nevertheless, the memory of Godiva and Leofric survived during the Norman reign and in 1122 their names were commemorated in the mortuary roll of Vitalis of Savigny.

The manor of Woolhope in Herefordshire, along with four others, was given to the cathedral at Hereford before the Norman Conquest by the benefactresses Wulviva and Godiva—usually held to be the Godiva of legend and her sister. The church there has a 20th-century stained glass window representing them.

Her signature, Ego Godiva Comitissa diu istud desideravi ("I, The Countess Godiva, have desired this for a long time"), appears on a charter purportedly given by Thorold of Bucknall to the Benedictine monastery of Spalding. However, this charter is considered spurious by many historians. Even so, it is possible that Thorold, who appears in the Domesday Book as sheriff of Lincolnshire, was her brother.

After Leofric's death in 1057, his widow lived on until her mid-fifties and died sometime between the Norman Conquest of 1066 and 1086. She is mentioned in the Domesday Book as one of the few Anglo-Saxons and the only woman to remain a major landholder shortly after the conquest. By the time of this great survey in 1086, Godiva had died and her former lands are listed as held by others.

The place where Godiva was buried has been a matter of debate. According to the Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, or Evesham Chronicle, she was buried at the Church of the Blessed Trinity at Evesham, which is no longer standing. According to the account in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "There is no reason to doubt that she was buried with her husband at Coventry, despite the assertion of the Evesham chronicle that she lay in Holy Trinity, Evesham." Her husband was buried in the monastery of St Mary (later Coventry Cathedral) in 1057.

According to William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Bishops), Godiva directed in her will that a "circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly, were to be placed on a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary," the oldest known textual reference to the use of a rosary-like string of prayer beads.

William Dugdale (1656) stated that a window with representations of Leofric and Godiva was placed in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, about the time of Richard II.

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