Godiva, LADY

Godiva, LADY, the famous patroness of Coventry, who built herself an everlasting name by an unexampled deed of magnanimity and devotion. About the year 1040 Leofric, Earl of Mercia and Lord of Coventry, imposed certain exactions upon the inhabitants, hard and grievous to be borne. His wife, the Lady Godiva, besought her husband to give them relief, and pleaded so earnestly that, to escape from her importunities, the earl said he would grant her the favour, but only on the impossible condition that she would ride naked through the town. Godiva ordered proclamation to be made that on a certain day no one should be in the streets, or even look from their houses, when, 'clothed on with chastity,' she rode through the town; and her husband, in admiration of her intrepid devotion, performed his promise. This circumstance was commemorated by a stained-glass window, mentioned in 1690, in St Michael's Church, Coventry; and the legend that an unfortunate tailor, the only man who looked out of a window, was struck blind, has also found commemoration in an ancient effigy of 'Peeping Tom of Coventry,' still to be seen in a niche of one of its buildings. The story occurs in most chroniclers who deal with the time of Edward the Confessor, although it is true that there is no narrative of it earlier than three centuries after. The earliest version is that in the English chronicle usually ascribed to Brompton (close of 12th century), quoted in Dugdale's History of Warwickshire, and followed with some variations by Matthew of Westminster, and Higden. Cox makes bold to connect Peeping Tom with the universally spread story of the Master-thief, and notes that the story of Godiva, slightly altered, is told again in the tale of Allahud-deen (Thousand and One Nights), who sees through a crevice the king's daughter on her way to the bath, when it is death for any one to be seen abroad or to be found looking at her. Part of the civic procession at the opening of the great fair of Coventry used formerly to be a representation of the ride of Lady Godiva. It continued at intervals of from three to seven years, until 1826, and was revived with great splendour in 1848. But the ceremony has now fallen into disrepute, and such attempts as have been made to revive it have not commended themselves to the best citizens of Coventry. There is a poor ballad on the subject entitled 'Leoffricus' in the Percy Folio MS., and in the Collection of Old Ballads (1726). The story has been gracefully re-told by Leigh Hunt, and in noble verse by Tennyson. See Felix Liebrecht's Zur Volkskunde (1879), and a study by E. Sidney Hartland in the Folklore Journal for 1890.