Lady Godiva

So I had a bit of a read up about Godiva and Leofric to try and shed light on this very good question. The impression I get is that nobody knows much cast iron about Godiva. There may even be more than one Godiva as it was a popular name at the time. They don't know for sure who her parents were, where her lands, including Coventry, came from, if she and Leofric were married to other people before uniting or even if his first son was also hers. She may have brought the lands she owned after Leofric's death, from her parents, a first marriage or they may have been gifts from Leofric after their marriage. A lot more is known about Leofric. He seems to have been a political genius, managing to have won favour with King Cnut and Edward the Confessor. He was awarded the Earldom of Mercia which covered a large part of the middle of the country from roughly the Mersey to London and the Humber to the Severn. His main residence seems to have been at Kings Bromley. The question is really three questions. The first being - was Leofric and Godiva's main home in Coventry? The second question where was it? The final is what was it? While the couple were clearly fond of Coventry, Leofric was the Earl of Mercia, which covered a very big area. I believe that the lot of a Lord in those days was to work their way round their domain to meet up with others (eg the king), for pleasure (eg hunting), business and to remind the people who was boss, which sometimes involved fighting. Likewise the king moved about. The system boosted the direct connection between influential people but it also made sure that nobody was eaten out of house and home. Cnut, having achieved a semi united England by force, decided to make amends for the destruction of towns and religious houses by a programme of rebuilding. This was continued by powerful people like Godiva and Leofric. It was normal practice to set up a monastery or nunnery and give it lands and people to fund and feed it. While Leofric was the Earl and had many towns and villages in his possession, they were dotted about. It wasn't unusual for neighbouring towns to belong to different people or groups. Conquerors could snatch lands and redistribute them as they wanted and it is thought that Cnut may have killed Leofric's older brother so he could give his lands to his favoured ally. That may seem weird but I get the impression that siblings and even parents didn't always live together in a family, the way we do now, even before adulthood. I suppose the reason was to disperse the seed so that no one incident could wipe out a family line. They could all be essentially strangers. That could include married couples, especially if the husband spent a lot of time fighting, but Leofric and Godiva do seem to have been close. The pair had an early connection with Evesham and a Prior Efic was their father confessor. I seems to me that their fondness for Coventry grew after his death but overall the couple probably moved about, sometimes together and sometimes not. They would have had houses of their own they could lodge in but others were available " allies, subordinates, and at Abbeys and Priories. Religious houses had a duty to travellers anyway but someone bestowing gold and jewels would be made very welcome. The household of the wealthy, including possessions, would have often travelled with them. Pots, furniture, wall hangings, etc. Whether Kings Bromley, Coventry, Evesham or some other residence was their favourite is unknown but it seems entirely possible that they would have had a permanent base in Coventry.

Continued. So where would Godiva and Leofric's Coventry home have been and what would it have looked like? We are hampered by the elapse of time and the totally different ways people lived back then. Coventry would have been unrecognisable when compared to even our oldest images. As far as I know, castles were a French thing and although I've read that a few popped up before 1066, they were built by French ex-pats. There was no obvious progression from wooden castles to stone ones, it was a matter of taste and resources. That doesn't mean that there were no fortifications, and the Red Ditch is supposed to date to before the Normans. That would have been topped by wooden palings of some sort and would have had rudimentary gate houses. There is evidence that this cut through Much Park Street at just north of Kirby House, which probably sets a southernmost limit of the town at that time. I could be wrong but I doubt that Godiva would have lived outside the protection of the ditches, which makes it unlikely that there was anything at Cheylesmore during her time. A lot of people have mistaken the gateway and the more modern east wing as being all there was of the manor house but there was a much older, southern wing, which was demolished entirely just after the Civil War as they were taking down the town wall. That building may have given the impression of a very old castle when its origins were lost. I can't find my book dating it but I suspect that it was Norman. I'm not aware of anything building shaped that survived to be recorded that was older than 1100. Over 40 years after Godiva's death. St Mary's wouldn't have been a grand affair, size wise in her time and was a separate Anglo-Saxon building to the grand St Mary's. We know that the central crossing tower of Norman St Mary's cathedral was still under construction in 1147 when it was used as a temporary fortification during an attack on Coventry's castle. The rest of it was later editions. This means that there are no candidates for an early hall and anyway, building in stone was rare. The town would have been very different then, with only the ghost of the later street design. Properties would have been set apart rather than running on into another. There were small hamlets that later became part of Coventry eg Spon, Far Gosford but in Godiva's time they were distinctly separate. I think that on the old maps there are the markings of something like an Anglo-Saxon burh round the Bayley Lane area and while it wasn't an official one set up by Alfred the Great, it wouldn't be odd that communities copied near neighbours. The Normans often took over suitable Anglo-Saxon fortifications they found and built castles within them. That Bayley Lane area is the most likely location for the Norman castle and at the same time, the most likely place for a significant residence for an Anglo-Saxon Earl and his wife just before the Conquest. It would have served very well for Godiva to visit either St Mary's or Holy Trinity in their first incarnations. So if we assume that there was a residence, but not a castle and it was located within the ditch encircled town and probably roughly where the castle was, what would it have looked like? Quite unimpressive, I suspect. Even early Norman halls were mostly modest affairs. A castle keep was mainly just for emergencies and there was usually a more comfortable stone and/or wood building a bit like a barn within the inner bailey. Centrally there was often a fire set into the floor and the smoke drifted off into the rafters. Chimneys were a later addition. The lord and lady might have a separate room but often they slept on a raised area at one end, with their guests and senior team kipping down by the fire. There was little furniture other than chests (for clothes etc) and tables and benches. There would have been a very few real chairs for the Lord, the Lady and any special guests. Windows were without glass, although other materials like slivers of cow horn might have offered light without fresh air. A Saxon hall was even less impressive and more barn like. What Godiva would have lived in might have looked like this imagined hall at Tamworth. This PDF includes a speculative sketch of the burh at Tamworth on page 3 and may have been very similar to Coventry. Note the hall set within another ditch compound. A good footprint for a later castle. PDF about the Anglo-Saxon towns

Wow, Helen! Thank you so much for that wonderful pair of posts, which answer the questions surrounding Leofric & Godiva better than I've ever seen. Fantastic work!

Helen, I was so impressed that I threw my arms apart ready to give you a virtual hug. My full mug of coffee flew across the room and smashed against the wall. Now I have to clear it up. But, thanks a million.

It's been around forever, and the Domesday Book is in libraries for the last fifty years. But cleverly written, the best I have seen also. King Offa, Welsh Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia, fond of ditches for they were also famous as a moat in those days. But the earthwork (bank) is 80 miles long with the ditch on the western side, Britain's longest archaeological monument. The Dyke Path runs for 177 miles. I was about to walk it in 2001 but was refused permission, because of Foot and Mouth, by J Saunders, Path Controller. Not far from Chippenham, there's a long grassy bank. At one end it tapers down into the farmer's field, the other end a passage that is a 6000 year old tomb, man-made - it's older than the Pyramids. Rituals and sacrifices made by residents over 200 generations ago.

Aww shucks folks. Sorry about the coffee Robin! A real expert would probably pull the above to pieces but I've tried to include the best stuff from other people's guesses. There are lots of guesses. One of the things that is said about Leofric and Godiva is that prior Efic told them to build a church to the Holy Trinity but there is none in Evesham. We could speculate that they did and it was subsequently demolished without record or that Efic had some connection to Coventry and it was Coventry's first Holy Trinity church that they founded. Another theory is that the first version of St Mary's may have been commissioned by Cnut as penance for the destruction of St Osburg's nunnery and Leofric and Godiva merely endowed it. The more I read, the less I know things for sure. We are (well I am) thrown by the various paintings of Godiva into a false sense of what her town looked like and what lordly luxury entailed. Our modern homes are palaces beyond price, in comfort if not size, by comparison. Although, imagine your entire floor space upstairs and down, including sheds and garages set out in one large oblong, it would make a fairly impressive hall. We have more furniture, possessions and clothes than them. We eat foods they couldn't even imagine and don't need land of our own to produce it. We even have many servants, albeit ones powered by electricity or co-opted into our service as part of our purchases. I suspect that an idea we might have of a home that was normally empty if the lord or lady was away isn't accurate. I think that they doubled as civic buildings, where the locals sought or faced justice, if not from the lord or lady when they were away, then from their local representative. Probably the few things that got left permanently were the tables and benches. Ideal for meetings. That the courts and council activities ended up in the Bayley Lane area is probably not by accident and is, in my opinion, another strand indicating that the area has ancient significance as an place of administration and rule. What I haven't been able to work out, is if buildings were demolished and their replacement built on the same spot or if the replacement was built nearby and then the old building freed up for something else or demolition. Logic would suggest the latter because you wouldn't want to be without the amenity of the old structure in the interim. So you wouldn't dispose of the old hall before you'd built the new one. That would have meant purposed buildings slowly moving about. Alternatively since the lord and lady could be elsewhere while the building works went on, did they just demand stuff be rebuilt as they prepared to leave and come back when it was complete? Or none of the above? It drives me potty thinking about it.

Helen, Don't worry, you know as much as the experts, no one can possibly know the secrets of the ancients. What puzzles me is how they could get cleaved in the skull, and lived, horrendous scars have been found, but they lived.

Anglo-Saxon health and later, up until antibiotics and knowledge of disease, followed much the same pattern as some of the very unsafe parts of the World today. Parents had lots of kids, not because they didn't know what caused them but because a lot of them died. If Godiva and Leofric had previous spouses it was most probably because they died, not because they were divorced. One of the possible Godivas was supposed to have been very ill and given some or all of her lands away. It's not known if she recovered and married Leofric or if she was another woman and died. Babies back then started out with some protection from their mothers but as they were exposed to lots of bacteria and diseases they either developed immunity or died. Some would have received lifetime damage but many would have entered adulthood far tougher than modern people. Thus some of them would have survived injury and infection with bacteria in circumstances that would kill a modern person from a 'safe' country.

Helen I rather think they had children because they didn't have the Pill, they also wanted boys to keep them in old age, and for extra hands to till the land, and prosper. I rather think mothers gave them most of the illnesses in the first place, men didn't marry for looks in the old days, they married for child bearing women who could give them workers. A large number were small, deformed and died young, more women died in childbirth than survived, because they had illness themselves.

Leofric and Godiva and Peeping Tom is a lovely story but about four or more hundreds of years between each other. As Helen pointed out, they slept in barn type buildings, windows, balconies, upper storeys did not exist in the eleventh century, so where did the ride come from? The cathedrals did not appear for four centuries after Godiva, those old churches were built like barns, they had to use buttresses to support walls. So where did they get the story of someone overlooking the scene? Neither did Coventry have streets, it wasn't even a city, county or parish. It was a few one room buildings. How did they marry? The bible wasn't even thought about, christianity came in the eleventh century, no churches.

Christianity did arrive in the UK well before Godiva's time but not far north of Coventry, the Viking half officially followed Viking polytheism. I'm not sure how strong that religion was at the beginning of King Cnut's time but he converted to Christianity, which was partly why he was keen to make amends for the damage done to Christian sites. Leofric was apparently very devout, going to mass twice a day. Godiva was likewise very serious about her faith which makes it highly unlikely she would have stripped off. The official consensus was that the ride story is fictional, even if the people were real, and created long after they were dead. There are a few Anglo-Saxon churches still remaining and most of them are very modest stone buildings. So yes, no upper room to observe a ride.

Helen I'm trying to find out where you got that from. Other than St Augustine, a lot of doubt. The story was written several centuries later, had to be converted from Latin in those days, to Saxon or whatever. We had a lot of trouble in the eleventh century to make head and tail of it - sounds a bit like Peeping Tom stuff to me.

BBC article on English Christianity. Services were Catholic and would have been in Latin (there may have been some explanations by the priest?). One of the reasons that churches were highly painted back then was because they told the bible stories the peasants couldn't understand. Educated people would have been able to understand Latin. In later years there was a lot of resistance from the church over having the bible translated into English. The stuff about Leofric and Godiva are based on early records about their lives, none of which mention the ride.

Helen. hi, But that was long after Leofric and Godiva. Don't want to sound to smug but after spending two years in the Holy Land it was only natural that I would want to visit the Vatican a few times, the Hub of Christianity, which I did in the fifties. They did not recognise Christianity for three hundred years, and then only vaguely. The saints that came from Palestine were quickly done away with, including St Peter - the Vatican was built around his tomb. The building wasn't started till the middle of the 800s after the Saracens had sacked the place, and buildings didn't start rising until 1150, but most of it was not built till the 16th century. Around the Piazza there are 140 statues of saints that had been executed, the Piazza is slightly concave for a better view of the Pope. So I can't see how Godiva could have been a Christian, in 900 odd.

Morning Kaga. She may or may not have been born a Christian but she certainly died one. Leofric and Godiva are recorded donating riches to various Christian establishments. They endowed and/or founded the original St Mary's. A small Anglo Saxon church would not have taken long to build and they were purported to have been buried in the 'porches' by which they apparently meant side aisles. He died in 1057 and she died between 1067 and 1087. Coventry was near the boundary between the Viking north and the Anglo-Saxon south. Read about Lady Godiva... ...and Leofric ...and then tell me they weren't Christian. And read about the Catholic Church in England I envy you your fantastic travels and recognise that what we see today is not the same as the early 1000s but there wasn't nothing.