Lady Godiva and Me by Liam Guilar copies available.

I have a few rare surviving print copies for sale, only at the website, and at sane prices.

http://www.liamguilar.com/shop/

Update, 2024, the second edition is now available online at

https://www.lulu.com/shop/liam-guilar/lady-godiva-and-me/paperback/product-14qg5qqv.html?q=lady+godiva+and+me&page=1&pageSize=4

or from the link to the shop above. 

Hug a medievalist day, with thanks

This from the New Yorker.

HUG A MEDIEVALIST
by Macy Halford

Today is International Hug a Medievalist Day. Do I really want to hug a medievalist?, you wonder. Yes! you do. Medievalists are the best kind of historian, in my opinion (which is why I majored in medieval history in college): they are always very interested in the body, the bawdy, and the beautiful, by which I mean they have a profound interest in the nitty-gritty of Western culture—in its material composition and the spiritual and intellectual urges that give rise to it. Perhaps because they delight in details and see worlds within them, medievalists are uniformly possessed of an excellent if slightly juvenile sense of humor, which becomes more pronounced when they drink and their inherent social awkwardness wears off. They drink most nights, usually at dimly lit pubs or sitting in tight clusters on the floors of grad-student apartments, and they prefer to drink red wine or ale. The caveat to this is that at least once a year, in every medievalist cluster, someone has the idea of hosting a medieval-themed party, at which they serve a) mulled wine b) mincemeat pies and c) some multi-animal mishmash like turducken. If you are very unfortunate, someone will attempt rabbit stew with cinnamon and mace, which no one will eat. But such comical failures are part and parcel of the medievalist lifestyle.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/03/hug-a-medievalist-day.html#ixzz1IEEbKGDR
(I have never had the idea of hosting a medieval themed party, though I did once participate in an all night reading of Beowulf which was lubricated by some devastating ale brewed, we were told, to an Old Icelandic recipe.

So here's thanks to all the saints and scholars, the gentle lunatics and social misfits, the straight geniuses, the professional teachers and the ones who didn't mean to but did, to all those who preserved the field, the antiquarians, archivists, librarians, the amateurs when there was no profession, who have , one way or another, helped and hindered along the way.
Many thanks.

Leofric's family...the events of 1065

With so little evidence the Historian is forced to fit what is available into which ever grand narrative he or she prefers. It’s the only way to make what is a scattered mess into a tidy story. The generally accepted master narrative of the 11th century is that the families of Godwin and Leofric vied for power, possibly at the expense of the Anglo-Saxon state and the unity and strength of the kingdom.

Richard Fletcher, who was after all writing a book about Blood Feuds, could write about the events of 1065: “ For Edwine and Morcar it was an opportunity not to be missed. Here at last was a chance to hit out at the hated sons of Godwin” (Bloodfeud. p161). Victor Head in his “biography” of Hereward wrote: “it is tempting to see in this [the exile of Hereward] evidence of the political intrigues that marked the years leading up to the Norman Conquest and to a large extent contributed to its success.”
Reading backwards family politics becomes a reason for the Norman success and for Edwine and Morcar’s recalcitrance in 1066 and later. That backward reading is supported, consciously or otherwise, by later medieval history where great families did split the kingdom all ends up and by earlier Anglo-Saxon history where Mercia and Wessex and Northumbria were kingdoms vying for political dominance. And by the assumption that two families, both alike in dignity, must have been each other’s throats.

Baxter suggests that the earls were in fact both powerful and vulnerable, hard working administrators who may not have been quite so geographically focussed as we would suspect and that the continued strength and prosperity and peace of the kingdom under the anointed king was in their best interests.

But not being an historian, I can indulge in some whatiffery. Is there any reason to suppose that the Godwinsons and Leofwinsons did hate each other? Or saw each other as rivals? If so for what?

But first a quick recap on what is known about the Northumbrian uprising in 1065.

After ten years or so, the people of Northumbria had had enough of Tostig. While he was away at the southern court they rose against him. The uprising was well-planned. The rebels entered York on 3rd October and killed Tostig’s retainers. Having declared Tostig an outlaw, they offered the “Vacant Earldom” to Morcar, the youngest brother of Eadwine and son of Aeflgar. Morcar accepted, and marched south with his new people, joined by his brother, the fighting men of Mercia and their Welsh allies. Harold Godwinson acted as an intermediary between the king and the rebels. Rather than bring them to heal by fighting, as Edward may have wanted, an agreement was reached which legalised what had happened. Morcar was confirmed as Earl of Northumbria, Edward agreed to follow the Laws of Cnut, and Tostig was isolated. Outraged, he claimed his brother had manufactured the uprising and Harold had to clear himself on oath. The rebels did a bit of Harrying around Northhampton where Tostig had estates, and then went home. The had entered York on the 3rd, the council finished its deliberations on the 28th and Tostig was offered a choice: accept or be exiled. He chose exile. Before speculating about skulduggery.


Edwine and Morcar's father was dead. So was their grandfather Leofric. But Godgifu wasn't. I wonder what Grandma G thought of all this.

1) The rebellion, which is usally simply narrated and explained, was outrageous. The Earl was the King’s appointed deputy in his earldom. To throw him out was an act of gross disobedience. In a top down society, no matter how interdependent the parts of the hierarchy, to overthrow your king’s appointed officer was novel. King’s had exiled earls, but not at the request of the people they were supposed to keep in line.

2) There’s nothing odd about the rebels' choice of Morcar. They obviously needed a candidate to replace Tostig. You don’t just rock up to Morcar’s front door in the aftermath of your rebellion and ask “how’d you fancy being earl of Northumbria’ to which he replies : ”Cor, I’d like that. Hey Edwin, bro, I’m marching south against the King, wanna get some homeys together in a posse and ride with me?”

Choosing a local replacement for Tostig was not a good idea for several reasons. Firstly it would isolate the northumbrians between the Mercians and the Scots; secondly, if Fletcher is correct, while there were candidates from old families in the area, they tended to have enemies who were candidates from other old familes; at least they could all regard an outlander with mutual suspicion and hostility. Morcar was the ideal choice: While planning the uprising they were hardly going to approach one of Tostig’s brothers; as a son of Leofric he had had what passed as training for Earling: secondly, his elder brother had an army.

3) Tostig’s actions after his exile suggest he was following a well known script without quite realising that the world had changed. He probably remembered his father’s banishment and had heard enough stories about it. The pattern, which Aeflgar had worked twice with minor variations, meant you went away, gathered an army, found an ally, roughed up the locals, then gathered enough supporters to make the King take you back. King Harald’s Saga is not a reliable historical source, but it’s interesting that in the dramatic confrontation between the two brothers before Stamford Bridge, Harold offers Tostig a third of England, including Northumbria. Tostig says it’s a pity he didn’t say this last year, and then asks what English Harold will give Viking Harald. The reply ”seven feet of ground” sums up the bind Tostig put himself in.

4) If Tostig was playing a well known script the context had changed in subtle but important ways. Godwin had been exiled for refusing to harry Dover. He had good will in the bank when he came back. Tostig had been evicted by his own people and they didn’t want him back. When he raided along the coast he was seen off by Edwin and Morcar. There was no popular rising in his favour. Godwin had faced Edward. Tostig now had to face his brother. And while Aelfgar had made treaties with the Welsh, Tostig went and made his with a man even the Vikings thought was a hard case, who wouldn’t be happy to see Tostig reinstated in York and then sail home. He wanted the crown of England. And that changed everything.
But the question that intrigues me, is did Harold “do his bother good and proper” in 1065? And does the concept of family feud obscure something else.

Under the Radar ))

There's multiple levels of irony in that title, but I have two pieces in issue four. Grandmother's Story and Presentment of Englishry
Both are 'English pieces'. The latter a record of the irritation I feel every time someone asks me if I'm English, the former a favourite ghost story. I'm not sure Gran ever revealed what was under the floorboards.

What the poem tries to catch is the absolute conviction of her delivery. She wasn't trying to entertain us, she was reporting something she really believed had happened. The poem is an 'Outtake' from Lady G, as i couldn't cut it back to the necessary twelve lines.

There's other fine things (finer things) in Issue four: poems and reviews,and Jane and Matt are developing a good looking and content rich magazine that rewards rereading.

Naked woman rides round city! (Shock! Horror! Sensation!)

If I read a newspaper from 1942 which says “’plane Crash in Laytown” chances are there was a plane crash in Laytown. I have no reason to doubt it. I know ‘planes crash, and they are dangerous both for their crews and the people on the ground. I know there is a Laytown (I’ve been there but even so, I can look it up on a map) and I suspect that there was a man called Sam Farrell and he died. I could import all the paraphernalia of the “Critical Literacy” I’m supposed to inflict on my students but the fact remains I have no reason to doubt that at 6.45 or thereabouts on Wednesday July 1st 1942 a ‘plane crashed in Laytown.
(And I did just check that July 1st was a wednesday in 1942

When I read..

Then the countess, beloved of God, accompanied by two soldiers, as it is said, mounting her horse naked, loosed her hair from its bands, so veiling the whole of her body, and thus passing through the market place she was seen by nobody (a nemine visa) except for her very white legs.

I immediately doubt the story.

But I do so because there was no academic discipline of history writing in the Middle Ages, and the chroniclers tend to record both what we might consider fact, and what we might think of as pure fantasy. By the time Lawman is translating Wace who was translating Geofrey the line between Romance and Chronicle is almost impossible to draw. But before we dismiss them as childish, there’s two things to keep in mind.

1) The writers lived in a world where miracles and wonders were everyday events. Miracles were the outward, public proof of an invisible reality. When Saint Augustine argues with the British Bishops over Easter, he proves his argument is better than theirs by performing a miracle. And when they refuse to change their practice, they are struck down as a sign of divine displeasure. Part of learning to be Christian and literate involved learning to “read” the world as a manifestation of divine love. To see through or beyond. One of the educational uses for Anglo-Saxon riddles. If you live in such a world, it’s difficult to switch off and say ”could never happen”.
2) Elvis isn’t dead. Lennon was assassinated by the CIA. The Twin Towers was a FBI plot. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. You’ve only got to scan the internet to see that a willingness to believe in the totally improbable is not confined to people living before 1499.

However, that doesn’t explain why this story. The idea, delivered ex cathedra at the book launch by someone I’d never met before, was that this is a folk tale tacked on to an historical personage. That doesn’t work because there’s no independent evidence for the folk tale, nor does it explain why that tale and this character? And the idea that it was a pagan ritual being performed by one of the country’s most visible women almost five hundred years after the conversion, seems equally unbelievable.
Roger of Wendover probably believed the story as he wrote it down. But I doubt he checked his sources. How or why it was initially generated remains an unknowable but entertaining question.

Tennyson’s Lady Godiva 1842 #5 An however reading

So, I think this finishes off Tennyson for now.

The frames include the fact that Tennyson is in explicit control of the material: he tells the story, and keeps his distance. (A thing some of his earlier critics took him to task for.)

and there I shaped
The city’s ancient legend into this

The actions he described are completed, something “ancient”, existing in a past where miracles happened in a way they don’t in the present. Besides, he’s not telling us a factual story. “Ancient legend” explicitly undermines any truth claim the tale might have and once more invites us to see this on the level of a story about monsters or heroes. A story about Lady Bloggs, who rode naked round the streets of London in 1840, to help the poor of the city, would be unbelievable. Just as we're not invited to consider the long term consequences, we’re not invited to consider the reality of a real woman riding naked in a real city in the West Midlands of England.

Within the poem there are other frames to contain the action. Spatial: She rides to the gate, and returns. Temporal: She knows she must be back by Midday.
Above all, she steps out and uncovers herself, with her husband’s express permission, painfully aware of the shame she risks in her actions, and at the end of the ride she hurries back:

but even then she gain’d
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown’d,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name

She removes the signs of her status as married woman but she rides out and back, she gets to the gate and turns, and turns within a set time limit. Her position hasn’t been changed, she has merely been allowed to do this thing. Any real power here is Leofric’s: he sets the terms of her actions, even though he does it negatively, and gives permission to her to transgress social and cultural norms of behaviour, for a limited time. She exposes to the world what is his; her body, she makes public what language describes as private. But she is trapped. She finishes off robed and crowned, the earl’s golden eagles presumably back round her waist. as she began, wearing the signs of her husband’s ownership; a feme coverte. Her act of individually has been sanctioned and contained: the commonplace of “her lord” casually reinforces her position in the feudal hierarchy of their marriage, and the fact that Tennyson tells us nothing about Leofric’s reaction suggests he is unchanged by it all. If Lady G is an icon, she is an icon of subservient action. Sanctioned rebellion is no real rebellion at all.

Tennyson’s Lady Godiva 1842 #3 A reading

Tennyson tells his story within his own cultural assumptions about the role,status and behaviours appropriate to a 19th century upper middle class woman. His past is the fictionalised no when, set in a noplace conveniently labelled "Coventry".

Initially Lady g is moved by her “feminine instincts”. Her response to the starving poor is purely emotional. She doesn’t criticize the system or analyse the economic imbalance, nor is she apparently aware of her role in the imbalance. She is simply moved by pity. As such she is typical of Ingham’s previously quoted description: she is a: domesticated, middle-class wife far less rational than a man but intuitive , emotional with a natural maternal instinct and an equally natural nurturing ability.

She crosses the boundary from passive feminine empathy to masculine action by trying to effect a political change.

She doesn’t try to argue from economics or better production figures and she does it in the domestic sphere of female influence often described as “nagging” Eve did it, Lady Macbeth did it, but here we have our first transgression. Female influence in non domestic/political affairs is often presented in modern (post renaissance) literature as negative. Here, the influence is presented as being for the good.

Ironically, her husband reacts emotionally, in a non masculine manner. He reaches for the impossibility. Instead of saying “No”, or “Not till hell freezes over” he says ”when you ride naked though the town ”. Lady G now exhibits courage, which is a neutral quality, both men and women had courage, though male courage is typically physical, she rides out, she moves from private to public, domestic to political, and she makes a political change.

The illustration Holman Hunt did for the poem captures Lady G at a crucial moment.
She has removed her crown (referred to at the end of the poem) and is about to unbuckle her belt.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasp’d the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl’s gift; but ever at a breath
She linger’d, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud:

In Law, remember, for Tennyson and his readers, she is a feme coverte, a hidden woman, a woman covered by her Husband’s rank, station, personality, little more than a possession. She steps out from under the covers, and she does it by removing the “Earl’s gift”, iconically the predatory eagles who grasp her round her waist, linked to the polysemic “wedded” which precedes them. Her status as “Lady”, her wealth, whatever distinguishes her from the poor of the town, are the “Earl’s gift”; hers by right of marriage. By taking off the signs: the crown, the belt, her rich robes (and presumably the earrings?) she steps out as her self: dissolves the plural pronouns, the grammars of possession, the feudal hierarchy of marriage. In becoming naked, she sheds the cultural trappings, the insignia of her subjection. The crown is presumably here to mark her status as “lady”, but it is a status conferred on her. This leaves her “in the raw’ and raw to the sense of her own discovered individuality. It takes courage to get out of her Husband’s house, from under his shadow:

Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach’d
The gateway;


Her sense of her own exposure is such that even the buildings seem to be staring at her. But she is protected in her enterprise. Presumably because of the nobility of her cause? The wind holds its breath (so as not to disturb her hair?) and Tom is blinded for thinking about peeking. She is able to return before the clock strikes twelve, to her position in society and culture, unharmed and, more importantly, undiminished. She has ridden clothed in “chastity” and effected change.

This is the crucial aspect of the story that attracted her later commentators and made Lady G an icon for the later nineteenth century woman’s movement. In a society where, for the middle and upper classes “reputation’, especially a woman’s reputation, was almost a social capital to be drawn on, Lady G preserves her essential femininity, which is after all on show to the whole town. She rides forth. Because she crosses from the feminine sphere to the masculine without abandoning her femininity, and for reasons that are recognizably feminine, she offers a role model to the countless women who were too intelligent and frustrated to accept the role society was trying to give them. Her model suggests you can have both an active life and a domestic one.

HOWEVER....

Tennyson’s Lady Godiva 1842 #1

I WAITED for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To match the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city’s ancient legend into this:—


Yo freddy dude, hanging with ya porter homeys...whoops...

In Tennyson’s version, mothers bring their starving children to Lady G, who goes to her husband and asks him to remit the tax. This conversation follows:

‘You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?’—‘But I would die,’ said she.
He laugh’d, and swore by Peter and by Paul;
Then fillip’d at the diamond in her ear;
‘O ay, ay, ay, you talk!’—‘Alas!’ she said,
‘But prove me what it is I would not do.’

(Prove here means test)


He says: “ride naked through the town”, and strides off with his dogs. Inspired by pity she agrees, sends out heralds to make sure everyone stays locked in doors until midday and rides out. One “churl” (The story is so well known Tennyson doesn’t need to name him.) tries to look and is blinded by "the Powers" before he can see anything. She gets back as the town clock strikes twelve and the tax is remitted. In Tennyson’s handling of the poem, the story’s oddness is evident. OF all the things that Leofric could ask her to do, why does he choose this one? None of the versions of the story adequately explain this choice.

The town architecture is voyeuristic.

The little wide-mouth’d heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey’s footfall shot
Light horrors thro’ her pulses: the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared:

In one sense this highlights how acutely exposed she feels, but in another reading it displaces the voyeurism of the poem on to inanimate objects and one scapegoat. I don't see how this works myself.

Two things at least, are odd about Tennyson’s Lady G. The first is that her husband implicitly accuses her of hypocrisy, when he plays with the diamond at her ear, the implication is “this would stop them from starving; your wealth is based on their starvation”. And why she doesn't simply offer to pay the [fictional]tax remains unaswered.

The second is that realistically she risks very little. The townsfolk, whether for love of her or simple self interest, have a huge incentive to stay indoors and the “Powers” (not God incidentally) look after her to the point of blinding some poor churl before he even gets to peek. So what does she risk? How is she heroic? One answer is that her only cultural capital, which she risks to prove her courageis her reputation and her reputation is tied inextricably to her body.In fact her body is her only cultural capital. So a man might prove his courage by fighting, or by climbing mountains, all she can do is strip off and ride naked round town, risking shame in a good cause.
More later.

"For the ones like us/ who are oppressed by the figures of beauty"

Reading about 18th century attitudes to the sublime (as you do) I came across this quote:
“The need to destroy the power of the beautiful other is an outcome of her very purity, her separateness from the perceiver’s interest. Thus as Mary Shelley presents it, the purity of Kantian beauty is a deprivation that inevitability evokes the enmity of the perceiver, who wants to punish it for its inaccessibility and distance. When woman is the embodiment of that beauty, she is at risk. (Wendy Steiner. The Trouble With Beauty. P17)

The header quote is from a Cohen song. It could just as easily be
"Beauty is the first touch of terror/and it awes us so much/because it so coolly disdains to destroy us” which thanks to google I’ve just learned, after twenty years, is a misquotation from Rilke.

Leofric and Tom can be read as representing two responses to The Other. In this case the Other is a beautiful woman. (Lady G doesn't have to be beautiful for my purposes, but it works just as well if we play along with that idea).

Leofric, in my version, loves his wife. She is God's gift to him. She makes him want to be better, to honour her or words to some such thought. It's like the two players in a duet where one is perceived as being so much better than the other. The positive and healthy response is to rise to the challenge, to want to play better, and in fact to play better. Leofric loves her because she takes his performance as a human being to somewhere he can't get on his own and because he has the self-confirming sense that the feeling is mutual, that he does the same thing for his wife. You could say he's the ideal adult male in an ideal relationship. A bit radical really, a happily married man who loves his wife and is loved by her. Not many of them in fiction.

Tom on the other hand (who seems to me to be very adolescent) experiences nothing but a revelation of beauty. He doesn't see a flesh and blood woman. He sees beauty with a capital B riding past and when he turns back to his little room that is both literal and symbol of his life, he realises he cannot imagine her there, cannot believe she would even give him the time of day if they passed in the street.

Instead of feeling enriched by his encounter with this Other he feels inadequate. He can imagine that body in his bed, but not at his table, or by his fire...and because of that he feels small and ugly and diminished...so he will quickly start to hate her even though she doesn't know that he exists...and his sexual fantasies about her will sour and become an act of psychic revenge. He is blinded to his own true nature. (Trapped in his little room, he doesn't see that he could just as easily step out of it) and to hers because he doesn't see her clearly enough.. Godgifu, for him, becomes Godiva. Like everyone else, he invents versions of other people, only in his case his version is an impossible ideal that diminishes him.
His ability to see clearly is destroyed.

Contexts: Contemptus Mundi

Throughout the first section of Lady Godiva and Me, a Contemptus Mundi preacher intrudes. I hope his voice is distinctive. I find him utterly repellent, and writing him was unpleasant, but he is the essential context in which any medieval story operates.

The Christian Church undoubtedly saved civilization in Northern Europe, if by civilization you mean more than just living in towns. It also provided an ideal of social behavior, based on the first ten commandments, which made life something more than a vicious little grudge match.

The cost however, was a guilt culture, institutionalized misogyny, and at the extreme, a belief that the best life you could live would be one where you died immediately after you were baptized. And a context which was so intolerant of dissent that for a thousand years people were burnt, tortured, murdered, and persecuted, for disagreeing over the interpretation of some Hebrew Folk tales.

That old joke that Catholics don’t believe in life after birth is grounded here, as is the distrust of the body, and the cultural awkwardness about sex and gender we’re still living with.

Whether or not guilt cultures actually work is a fascinating historical question. In theory, wanting to do something, but knowing it’s defined as wrong, you experience a sense of guilt and stop. Macbeth at 1.7 would be the classic rebuttal. You can know all the moral reasons for not doing something, and if you want it badly enough, they won’t stop you.

Which eventually leads towards peeping Tom. Shame cultures work the other way round, what prevents you is fear of being caught and being exposed. Tom doesn't feel guilt, Lady G risks shame.

Though in the later versions of the story, she really risks very little.

The Legend of Lady Godiva begins

The VCH states that the earliest surviving version of the story of the ride occurs in the Chronicle of Roger of Wendover (who died in 1237).

It’s written in Latin, by a Monk, and the time lapse is important. Because it’s written in Latin, I have to rely on someone else’s translation. So this is taken from the VCH Warwickshire which I compared with Donoghue, who quotes other early versions.

If you compare these with Tennyson’s 1842 poem, then there are some significant differences. There is no Peeping Tom and far from doing a deal with the Townspeople to stay indoors, Leofric stipulates that she has to ride “through the market place of the town, from one side right to the other while the people are congregated and when you return you shall gain what you desire.”

Accompanied by two “soldiers” “the Countess mounted her horse naked, loosed her hair from its bands, so veiled the whole of her body except for her brilliantly white legs, passed through the market place unseen by anybody.”

The key to the whole story, I think, is not the fact that her name has been Latinized, or she’s been given a title, or the impracticalities of covering yourself with hair while riding a horse (on a day when obviously there was no wind).

It’s the assumptions that Wendover and Tennyson share that are revealing. In six hundred years, what doesn’t change in the story is the power imbalance between Godiva and Leofric.

She has none, except her ability to nag him, while he has the right to impose or to remit taxes and tolls on the people of Coventry.

The History

Godiva is the Latin form of Godgifu. Women’s names in Old English do not end in A in the nominative. That simple act of renaming, which ignores cultural and linguistic conventions, is the real clue to the process by which an historical character came to be associated with something that probably never happened.

Godgiefu, or Godgifu, God’s gift, did exist and she did play an important role in the development of Coventry and late Anglo-Saxon England. She was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia.

Not much is known about her except her connection to Coventry and the fact that by 1067 she was one of the wealthiest women in England.

She and her husband founded, or reestablished, a religious institution where Coventry now is, in about 1043, dedicating it to St Mary, St Osberg and All Saints.

There had already been a convent there which had been sacked by the Danes in or about 1016. Its Abbess, Osberg, had been martyred. Little is known about the early foundation or its abbess, except that she died and courtesy of Godiva and Leofric her head ended up on the alter in a jewel spangled box.

The couple were noted benefactors, and amongst the things that they were supposed to have donated to their new establishment was a reliquary holding the arm of Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Stumbling over such little gems of information is what makes doing research for a project like Lady Godiva and me so enthralling. But while it sent me spinning off on a productive sidetrack for now the digressions can wait.

Although her dates are sketchy, she outlived Leofric.
Before he died there is some evidence that that Coventry may have become their chief residence if not their permanent home.

Their granddaughter was twice a Queen. First of Wales, then married to the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, probably in a move designed to appease her bothers, whose activities in 1066 probably didn’t make Grandma proud. She was alive after the conquest, recorded as one of the richest women in England, and was buried by Leofric’s side in Coventry.

And the ride?

Remember that mistranslation.

The Legend of Lady Godiva

The Legend.

The story most people know is the one Tennyson tells in his poem of 1842. (I’ll return to the poem, and its own peculiar version).






The poor of Coventry complain to Lady G that they are starving. Moved by pity, she asks her grim and heartless husband, Earl Leofric, to lift the taxes. He refuses. She nags him. Exasperated he says “I’ll lift the taxes if you ride naked round the city”.
Before she does this, she does a deal with the townsfolk. They will stay off the street and keep the windows shut while she rides round, clad in nothing but her hair.

One dastardly individual, a tailor called Tom, tries to bore a peep hole so he can watch her riding past but his eyes are blasted, in Tennyson’s version by “the powers”, and fall out before he gets to see her.
She rides round the city, returns, and Leofric lifts the taxes.

Did she do it?