General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> Of Coventry
Godiva, Lady (flourished about 1040-80), Anglo-Saxon noblew
oman, wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia (flourished 1005-57)
. She is known to have persuaded her husband to found monas
teries at Coventry (1043) and Stow. According to legend, sh
e obtained a reduction in the excessive taxes levied by he
r husband on the people of Coventry by consenting to ride n
aked through the town on a white horse. Only one person dis
obeyed her orders to remain indoors behind closed shutters
; this man, a tailor known afterward as Peeping Tom, peere
d through a window and immediately became blind. The oldes
t form of the legend is in the 13th-century Flores Historia
rum (Flowers of the Historians). A festival in her honor wa
s instituted as part of Coventry Fair in 1678.