Godgifu of Coventry

• Birth Notes
  • B: Abt. 1010
    P: Mercia, England
    http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=stolp&id=I6205&style=TABLE

• General Notes
  • [Pullen010502.FTW]
    
    Godiva, Lady (flourished about 1040-80), Anglo-Saxon noblewoman, wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia (flourished 1005-57). She is known to have persuaded her husband to found monasteries at Coventry (1043) and Stow. According to legend, she obtained a reduction in the excessive taxes levied by her husband on the people of Coventry by consenting to ride naked through the town on a white horse. Only one person disobeyed her orders to remain indoors behind closed shutters; this man, a tailor known afterward as Peeping Tom, peered through a window and immediately became blind. The oldest form of the legend is in the 13th-century Flores Historiarum (Flowers of the Historians). A festival in her honor was instituted as part of Coventry Fair in 1678.
    
    Source: 'The World Book Encyclopedia', 1968, p G235. 'Godiva, Lady,' Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993
    Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation
    
    
    # Note:
    
        This is the famous Lady Godiva. She complained constantly to her husband that the taxes were too high on the townspeople of Coventry. He finally said that he would reduce the taxes if she would ride nude through the marketplace on market day. She arranged for all of the men to remain inside and covered her entire body, except her legs, with her hair. Supposedly one person named Tom did not remain inside during her ride and became known as "Peeping Tom". Leofric eliminated all taxes, except for one on horses. During Edward I's reign, a check was made and the only tax in Coventry was one on horses. Since 1678 the town of Coventry still celebrates the ride during its annual fair.
    
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        Concerning her dates of birth and death. I originally had 980-1067, but this was not in agreement with Ancestral Roots line 176a-2, which has her birth at c1010 and her marriage at c1030. Nor was it consistant with the Encyclopedia Britannica which had Godiva fl. 1040-1080. However the 980 birth date was consistant with her gr grandaughter Nesta b. c1055/7, dau of Edith, dau of Aelfgar, son of Godiva. With some serious scrunching of dates I could conceive of:
    
    Godiva b. 1010 (originally 980)
    Aelfgar b. 1025 (originally 1002)
    Edith b. 1041 (originally 1030)
    Nesta b. 1057
    
    with two other daughters of Leofric born to a "first wife or mistress". It is physically possible for 3 generations in a row born at the 15/16th year of their parents life (however unlikely), so that is what I have done.
    
    date of death [of Godiva, which at the time was 10 Sep 1067]]
    Warwickshire - the Domesday Book in 1086
    
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        Perhaps one of the most famous early personalities of the period was Lady Godiva (Godwa or Godgifu) who allegedly rode naked the streets of Coventry in Warwickshire as a protest against her husband's high taxes on the people of the city. This husband, Earl Leofric, a Saxon Earl of Mercia, died an old man in 1057, nine years before the Norman Conquest. They seemingly had issue, at least one daughter, who married into the Malet family. 29 years after her husband's death, Lady (Countess) Godiva held many estates in Warwickshire, including Coventry, as revealed by the Domesday Book in 1086. Chronologically, either Leofric had married a child bride, or Lady Godivawas a very old woman at the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086. The former is the most likely. The lordships bestowed on Lady Godiva in Warwickshire by William the Conqueror in 1066 were considerable, probably the result of an alliance struck either with Leofric or Lady Godiva before the Conquest. Since, Lady Godiva was a wealthy woman in 1057, and still wealthy after the Conquest, it is not likely she displayed herself in protest after that date, since she would have been protesting her own taxation. She apparently inherited her lands and titles in 1057. Therefore, the event in question probably took place, if at all, several years before 1057, when, young and innocent, the impatient and passionate Lady Godiva, appalled by her aging husband's despotic ways, leapt on her nag and took to the streets of Coventry in all her naked glory, perhaps too young to realize that within a few short years she would be in full control of all the taxation of her husband's considerable holdings at the time of his death, holdings which she carried through to at least 1086. [Ref: ]
    
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    # Note: Also the Encyclopædia Britannica lists "fl. c. 1040, -80"
    
    Other refs:
    aka: Gogdifu [Dict of Brit History p153-4, Ency Britannica]
    
    Godiva's ancestry is uncertain, but she was evidently of an old, noble family. [Ref: Weis AR7 176A]
    
    sister of Thorold of Buckingham, sheriff of Lincs [Ref: Weis AR7 176A, Watney 673] Turold the Sheriff [Ref: KeatsRohan Lucy]
    
    Title: Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, 7th Edition, by Frederick Lewis Weis, additions by Walter Lee Shippard Jr., 1999
    Page: 176a-2
    
    Text: Sister of Thorold - not daughter.Godiva's gr grandchild Nesta is born c 1055/7. That requires very exact birth dates of all generations between.This marriage date is incompatible, given that their great grandchild Nesta was born about 1055/7.
    

Click here for details of Godgifu's family with Leofric (The Great) Mercia III

¹ http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=tjglad&id=I67708&style=TABLE

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