Editing Lady Godiva (section)

== Historical figure ==
Godiva was the wife of [[Leofric, Earl of Mercia|Leofric]], Earl of [[Mercia]]. They had nine children; one son was [[Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia|Ælfgar]].<ref name="Mont">Montague-Smith Patrick W. Letters: Godiva's family tree. ''[[The Times]]'', 25 January 1983</ref> Godiva's name occurs in charters and the [[Domesday Book|Domesday survey]], though the spelling varies. The [[Old English]] name {{lang|ang|Godgifu}} or {{lang|ang|Godgyfu}} meant "gift of God"; 'Godiva' was the name's [[Latinisation of names|Latinised]] form. Since the name was a popular one, there are contemporaries of the same name.<ref name="ODNB">Williams, Ann. '[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10873, Godgifu (d. 1067?)]', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, October 2006, accessed 18 April 2008 {{ODNBsub}}</ref>

A woman named Godiva was recorded in the 12th century history (called "{{lang|la|[[Liber Eliensis]]}}") of [[Ely Abbey]]. If that "Godiva" were the same person as [the ''legendary figure''] 'Lady Godiva', then she would have been a widow when Leofric married her. Both Leofric and Godiva were generous benefactors to religious houses. In 1043, Leofric founded and endowed a [[Order of Saint Benedict|Benedictine monastery]] at Coventry<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1226 |title=Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1226 |publisher=Anglo-saxons.net |date=13 April 1981 |access-date=30 January 2014 |archive-date=7 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131207035101/http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1226 |url-status=live }}</ref> on the site of a nunnery destroyed by the Danes in 1016. Writing in the 13th century, [[Roger of Wendover]] credits Godiva as the persuasive force behind this act of generosity. In the 1050s, her name is coupled with that of her husband on a grant of land to the monastery of St. Mary, [[Worcester, England|Worcester]], and the endowment of the [[minster (church)|minster]] at [[Stow Minster|Stow St Mary]], [[Lincolnshire]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1232 |title=Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1232 |publisher=Anglo-saxons.net |access-date=30 January 2014 |archive-date=7 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131207031249/http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1232 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1478 |title=Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1478 |publisher=Anglo-saxons.net |access-date=30 January 2014 |archive-date=7 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131207025334/http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1478 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{efn|In the Stow charter, Godiva is called "Godgife".<ref>{{cite book| last = Thorpe| first = Benjamin| title = Diplomatarium anglicum aevi saxonici: A collection of English charters| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=02dnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA320| volume = 1| year = 1865| publisher = MacMillan| page = 320| author-link = Benjamin Thorpe| place = London| access-date = 16 April 2022| archive-date = 12 May 2023| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230512194339/https://books.google.com/books?id=02dnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA320| url-status = live}}</ref>}} She and her husband are commemorated as benefactors of other monasteries at [[Leominster]], [[Chester, England|Chester]], [[Much Wenlock]], and [[Evesham Abbey|Evesham]].<ref>''The Chronicle of John of Worcester'' ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk and J. Bray (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1995), pp. 582–583</ref> She gave Coventry a number of works in precious metal by the famous goldsmith Mannig and bequeathed a necklace valued at 100 [[Mark (money)|marks]] of silver.<ref>[[Charles Reginald Dodwell|Dodwell, C. R.]] (1982) ''[[iarchive:anglosaxonartnew00dodw|Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective]]'', Manchester UP, {{ISBN|0-7190-0926-X}} (US edn. Cornell, 1985), pp. 25 & 66</ref> Another necklace went to Evesham, to be hung around the figure of the [[Virgin Mary]] accompanying the life-size gold and silver [[rood]] she and her husband had donated, and [[Old St Paul's Cathedral|St Paul's Cathedral]] in the [[City of London]] received a gold-fringed [[chasuble]].<ref>Dodwell, 180 & 212</ref> Both Godiva and her husband were among the most munificent of the several large [[Anglo-Saxon]] donors of the last decades before the [[Norman conquest of England|Norman Conquest]]; the early Norman bishops made short work of their gifts, carrying them off to [[Normandy]] or melting them down for bullion.<ref>Dodwell, 220, 230 & ''passim''</ref> Nevertheless, the memory of Godiva and Leofric survived during the Norman reign and in 1122 their names were commemorated in the [[mortuary roll]] of [[Saint Vitalis of Savigny]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lewis |first1=C.&nbsp;P. |editor1-last=Insley |editor1-first=Charles |editor2-last=Wilkinson |editor2-first=Louise |editor3-last=Dalton |editor3-first=Paul |title=Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World |date=2011 |publisher=Boydell Press |isbn=978-1-84383-620-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FFgt22pS8igC |access-date=19 April 2023 |chapter=Communities, Conflicts and Episcopal Policy in the Diocese of Liechfield, 1050–1150}}</ref>

[[File:Godiva statue Broadgate Oct 2011.jpg|thumb|right|''Lady Godiva'', a statue by Sir [[William Reid Dick]] unveiled in 1949 in Broadgate, [[Coventry]], a £20,000 gift from W. H. Bassett-Green,<ref>{{cite book |last=McGrory |first=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b-cgCwAAQBAJ&q=lady+godiva |title=Secret Coventry |date=15 November 2015 |publisher=Amberley Publishing Limited |isbn=978-1-4456-4710-4 }}</ref> a Coventrian.<ref name = "AD News">{{cite book| last1 = Douglas| first1 = Alton| last2 = Moore| first2 = Dennis| last3 = Douglas| first3 = Jo| title = Coventry: A Century of News|date=February 1991| publisher = [[Coventry Evening Telegraph]]| isbn = 0-902464-36-1| page = 62 }}</ref> (pictured in 2011)]]

The manor of [[Woolhope]] in [[Herefordshire]], along with four others, was given to the cathedral at [[Hereford]] before the Norman Conquest by the benefactresses [[Wulviva]] and Godiva—usually held to be the Godiva of legend and her sister. The church there has a 20th-century [[stained glass]] window representing them.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/mymuk/1097578497 |title=flickr.com |publisher=flickr.com |date=11 August 2007 |access-date=30 January 2014 |archive-date=11 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131211061158/http://www.flickr.com/photos/mymuk/1097578497 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Her signature, {{lang|la|Ego Godiva Comitissa diu istud desideravi}} ("I, The Countess Godiva, have desired this for a long time"), appears on a charter purportedly given by Thorold of Bucknall to the Benedictine [[Spalding Priory|monastery of Spalding]]. However, this charter is considered spurious by many historians.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1230 |title=Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1230 |publisher=Anglo-saxons.net |access-date=30 January 2014 |archive-date=7 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131207040605/http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1230 |url-status=live }}</ref> Even so, it is possible that Thorold, who appears in the [[Domesday Book]] as sheriff of Lincolnshire, was her brother.{{efn|See [[Lucy of Bolingbroke]].}}

After Leofric's death in 1057, his widow lived on until her mid-fifties and died sometime between the [[Norman Conquest]] of 1066 and 1086.<ref>{{cite book |last=Donoghue |first=Daniel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-XVmBUVDXGwC |title=Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend |date=15 April 2008 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-470-77701-5 }}</ref> She is mentioned in the [[Domesday Book]] as one of the few Anglo-Saxons and the only woman to remain a major landholder shortly after the conquest.<ref>{{cite web |title=Countess Godiva {{!}} Domesday Book |url=https://opendomesday.org/name/countess-godiva/ |access-date=7 September 2024 |website=opendomesday.org}}</ref> By the time of this great survey in 1086, Godiva had died and her former lands are listed as held by others.<ref>[[Katharine Keats-Rohan|Keats-Rohan, Katherine Stephanie Benedicta]], (1999) ''Domesday People: A prosopography of persons occurring in English documents 1066–1166'', vol. 1: Domesday. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, p. 218.</ref>

The place where Godiva was buried has been a matter of debate. According to the {{lang|la|[[Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham]]}}, or ''Evesham Chronicle'', she was buried at the Church of the Blessed Trinity at Evesham, which is no longer standing. According to the account in the ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', "There is no reason to doubt that she was buried with her husband at Coventry, despite the assertion of the Evesham chronicle that she lay in Holy Trinity, Evesham."<ref name=ODNB /> Her husband was buried in [[St Mary's Priory and Cathedral]] in 1057.

According to [[William of Malmesbury]]'s {{lang|la|Gesta pontificum anglorum}}, Godiva directed in her will that a "circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly were to be placed on a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary,"<ref>"{{langx|la|...circulum gemmarum, quem filo insuerat, ut singularum contactu singulas orationes incipiens numerum non praetermitteret, hunc ergo gemmarum circulum collo imaginis sanctae Mariae appendi jussit."|italic=no}} – William of Malmesbury: {{lang|la|Gesta Pontificum Anglorum|italic=yes}}, 1125, Rolls Series 311.</ref> the oldest known textual reference to the use of a [[Rosary]]-like string of prayer-beads.

[[William Dugdale]] (1656) stated that a window with representations of Leofric and Godiva was placed in [[Holy Trinity Church, Coventry|Trinity Church, Coventry]], about the time of [[Richard II of England|Richard II]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Dugdale|first=William|author-link=William Dugdale|title=Antiquities of Warwickshire|url=https://archive.org/details/antiquitiesofwar00dugd|year=1656|location=London}}</ref>