Lady Godiva

Did Lady Godiva ride naked through Coventry? Matt Lewis welcomes Annie Whitehead to delve into the legendary tale of Lady Godiva, uncovering the true historical figure behind the myth. They explore primary sources, the political landscape of 11th-century Mercia, and Godiva's significant role as a landholder and patron, as one of many independent and influential of Anglo-Saxon women. MORE Legends of Robin Hood Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legends-of-robin-hood/id1564113746?i=1000708298627 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2tLzhQrtde6INLRw925dRk Murder in Anglo-Saxon England with Annie Whitehead Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-in-anglo-saxon-england/id1564113746?i=1000689923011 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/3tY5EpapySkL68sn0t6EKs Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Max Carrey, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

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• 0:42Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 1:21Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 2:02Matt Lewis?

  In the year of our Lord, 1057, having founded this monastery by the advice of his wife, the noble Countess Godiva, Laerfrich, at the prayer of a religious woman, placed monks therein, and so enriched them with lands, woods, and ornaments, that there was not found in all England a monastery with such an abundance of gold and silver, gems, and costly garments. The Countess Godiva, who was a great lover of God's mother, longing to free the town of Coventry from the oppression of a heavy toll, often with urgent prayers, besought

• 2:42Matt Lewis?

  her husband, that from regard to Jesus Christ and his mother, he would free the town from that service, and from all other heavy burdens. And when the Earl sharply rebuked her for foolishly asking what was so much to his damage, and always forbade her evermore to speak to him on the subject. And while she, on the other hand, with a woman's pertinacity, never ceased to exasperate her husband on the matter, he at last made her this answer: “Mount your horse, and ride naked before all the people, through the market of the town, from one end to the

• 3:24Matt Lewis?

  other, and on your return you shall have your request.” On which Godiva replied: “But will you give me permission, if I am willing to do it?” “I will,” said he. Whereupon the Countess, beloved of God, loosed her hair and let down her tresses, which covered the whole of her body like a veil, and then mounting her horse, and attended by two knights, she rode through the market-place, without being seen, except her fair legs. And having completed the journey, she returned with gladness to her astonished husband, and obtained of him what she had asked.

• 4:07Matt Lewis?

  For Earl Laerfrich freed the town of Coventry and its inhabitants from the aforesaid service, and confirmed what he had done by charter.

• 4:23Matt Lewis?

  Lady Godiva is one of those names that many people know. And perhaps you also know the story that you just heard, which the chronicler Roger of Wendover gave us. Godiva has become steeped in myth and mystery. And so Gone Medieval has set out to dispel the fake news and find the real Lady Godiva. Did she exist? Did she ride through Coventry naked? What else do we know about her? What can she tell us about the roles and the perceptions of Anglo-Saxon women? Well, to help me dig deeper, I'm delighted to be joined by Annie Whitehead, author of Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, and a friend of Gone Medieval.

• 5:05Matt Lewis?

  Welcome back to Gone Medieval, Annie. It's great to have you back again.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  It's lovely to be here. Thanks for asking me back again.

• 5:11Matt Lewis?

  We're going to, we're going to get into the weeds of a story that probably lots of people think they know, might have heard. And we're going to try and get to the bottom of how true some of it may or may not be. And we're going to get to the most famous thing that people know about Lady Godiva in a little bit. But first off, I wanted to try and establish whether we're even talking about a real person from history. Did Lady Godiva exist?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  She did, very much so.

• 5:36Matt Lewis?

  Brilliant. We've got an episode. We don't, we don't have to stop now.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. In Old English, her name is, it's Godgifu, but it's pronounced Godiva, which then in turn developed into Godiva. And yeah, she was a real person. She really existed mainly in the 11th century, but she might just have been born in the 10th century. So yeah, real person, very wealthy woman as well, wealthy in her own right. But that's of course, as you say, that's not what people generally know about her, of course.

• 6:05Matt Lewis?

  No. And before we get to, to that part of the story, how much do we know about her family? Is she born into the nobility?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  We don't actually know whether she was born into the nobility. It seems like she probably came from North West Mercia, so she had land holdings in likes of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, a bit of Warwickshire. It does look like she was a very, very wealthy woman in her own right. So yeah, we're going to guess that she was from a noble family. But she married into an extraordinarily famous, in retrospect, obviously not at the time, really, really wealthy, influential, powerful family because she married the elderman or latterly known as the Earl of Mercia, Layer Fritsch, and he was part of a family that was, I think I'm right in saying, unique.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Because although originally the office of Earl or elderman wasn't technically hereditary, by this stage in the 11th century, it had become so. But his family was unusual in that four generations from that family were Earls of Mercia. And nobody topped that, not even the Godwinsons. So a hugely influential, very, very powerful family and she married into that. So yeah, they were a kind of 11th century power couple, really.

• 7:24Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, medieval Midlands power couple. Sounds great. And presumably, you know, that again gives weight to the idea that she must have been from some kind of noble family to to have been an acceptable bride for someone like Layer Fritsch. It must have been something that was politically advantageous to both sides.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yes, it does seem to look as if, although he was mainly in charge of the western portion of the Ersuall Kingdom. It's a good political marriage, isn't it? If she's got lands in the North East and he's influential in the West, sorry, North West. And he's in the the south and east of the of the county, I suppose. Then she's bringing lots into that marriage and essentially he's expanding his land holdings. And in this period, land is everything. Land is power, land is wealth. So the more you've got, the better off you are, literally.

• 8:15Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And what kind of primary sources are we looking at when we're dealing with Godiva's life? What are the the kind of the strengths and what are the limitations of the the sources that we have that talk about her?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Well, this is the problem. We don't have very much at all in the way of actual. Proper primary sources, because the the main primary source that we rely on for this era is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and she's not mentioned in it. Because, and we'll we'll get round to that, no spoilers, but she hasn't really done enough to warrant a mention, because they are just recording the the big facts of the of the days of the years as they see it. We have a few charters that mention her name, but the majority of what we know about her really does come from slightly later sources that we maybe can still call them primary sources, but we're looking at people writing in the 12th, 13th century.

• 9:09Matt Lewis?

  Which is starting to ring little alarm bells.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Exactly so, exactly so. She is mentioned in Doomsday as a landholder in her own name, in her own right. Doesn't necessarily mean that she was still alive at the time of Doomsday, but we do think that she was still alive after 1066. Think she died at a good old age, and she is recorded in Doomsday, named, you know, as one of the very few English women named in the Doomsday survey as holding lands in their own right. So we've got that as well, but it's, yeah, it's it's not a great deal.

• 9:43Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, that's pretty incredible, isn't it? I was going to say, you know, is that an uncommon thing for a a woman landowner to be named in Doomsday? So if she's one of the very few, again, it points to her being quite an important figure.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  It does, it does. And of course, the one of the main things by this stage, she would have been known as being the grandmother of, who was technically the last English queen, because her granddaughter was Illyjeith, who was Harold Godwinson's second and last wife. So there was this royal connection, which would have been known about then. Obviously, at the time when Godiva was a a younger woman, no nobody knew what was going to happen. But, yeah, she she was known posthumously as the grandmother of of the last English queen.

• 10:23Matt Lewis?

  Wow. And I guess from the sounds of it, from the the limited source material that we have, it makes it quite difficult to use any of that sort of real primary source material to get anywhere near a personality for Godiva. If she's just cropping up as a name in charters and things, presumably we don't see much of of her character.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  No, and I think this is a problem generally with this period because again, people aren't really interested in what people were like. We do have evidence about what her husband was like, incidentally. It seems that he was quite a staid, very religious person. There's a story about him that while all his men and his friends, his half troops, his half companions were carousing late into the night, he took himself off somewhere quiet to pray and get an early night. That little snippet might be relevant to what we're gonna go on to talk about later. So he comes across as a very, don't rock the boat, just get on with the job, be very sensible,

• 11:22Speaker 02

  very staid and steady kind of person. So was she like that too? They do both seem to have been very religious, endowing a lot of religious communities and particularly Coventry, which was, you know, their foundation. So I'm guessing she probably, and again, this this might inform what we're gonna talk about in a wee while, probably just a very well behaved, orderly, rich, conforming kind of member of the aristocracy, we have to assume, but we'll we'll talk some more in a moment, I'm sure.

• 12:01Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, we need to get there now, don't we? So what most people think they know about Lady Godiva is this idea that she took a naked ride through the city of Coventry. So I want to kind of pick our way through this story a little bit. So can you talk us through, if that hasn't emerged from the kind of the primary source material that gives us charters and things like that, when and where does that story first make an appearance?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  So this comes from Roger of Wendover, who is a monk writing in, I can't remember his exact date, 13th century. I mean, I can read you a little bit of it because he tells us that it was Layer Fitch who founded the monastery at Coventry, but on the advice of his wife. So there you go, this is the religious couple. She's saying, I've got a great idea here. And he's saying, yeah, let's do this. So he endowed the foundation with apparently so much land, woods and ornaments that, quote, "There was not found in all England a monastery with such an abundance of gold and silver, gems and costly garments." So this is, this is quite the endowment. But we're told that Godiva was keen to free the town of Coventry from financial burden.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And when she spoke to her husband about it, he told her, and this is a quote from the story, "Mount your horse and ride naked before all the people through the market of the town from one end to the other, and on your return you shall have your request." Whereupon she loosed her hair, let down her tresses, which covered the whole of her body like a veil. She rode through the marketplace without being seen except her fair legs. And having completed the journey, returned with gladness to her astonished husband, who then apparently committed all this to a charter and said, right, you know, the townspeople are free from the burden. So, you know, it it sounds pretty true, doesn't it? The way it's written. We have no other source that corroborates this story at all.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  There were a lot of monk chroniclers writing during this period. None of them mentions this story. William of Malmesbury was another. He was an incorrigible gossip. He has all the juicy stories that you can imagine, but not a word about this. He just talks about her being quite famous. But he doesn't doesn't suggest that there's anything sort of salacious about that fame. This is it. This is what the whole story is based on. One thirteenth century chronicle, and it's amazing how this story has just blown up and blown up. You know, even in the days before social media.

• 14:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, it's we've been through chroniclers like, you know, Audric Vitalis, who was keen on reporting kind of almost everything in the universe. And we've got people like Walter Mapp, who, you know, is again terrible, terrible gossip and would report anything even remotely salacious. So it's striking how many people we can look at that haven't noted this story of Lady Godiva. So I guess, you know, the big drum roll moment, do you think it's true or not?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I mean, it's probably no surprise that I don't think it's true at all. No. And it's interesting that you mention Audric Vitalis because he does talk about Godiva. He doesn't mention the story. So he's obviously aware of her and of her existence. And he doesn't say anything about this. I don't believe it's true.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  I have a few reasons for this. As I mentioned earlier, Leifrich comes across as very staid, very steady. He's very important. At the peak of his career, he's one of only three leading eldermen or earls who are advising the king. You can see him working with Godwin, Harold Godwinson's father. He's a very, very important man. I think, given that by this stage of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, early on, it's just one, one line. There's a particular thing happened in one year, and that's all we get. You get into this period, the ten forties, the ten fifties, the ten sixties, there are pages and pages of one year.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  You've also got at roughly the same time, the fighting that went on when King Canute died. And his two ex-wives or his two widows were fighting for the rights of their sons to succeed. And it's Queen Emma and the fever of Northampton. They are in an absolute propaganda war. Lots has been written about them. I think if somebody almost as important did something like this, I'm absolutely convinced the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would have mentioned it. Because it has an effect on Leifrich's standing, I think. You know, it's, it would have been scandalous.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I get, you know, they say she, she was, she went unseen, by which Roger Wendover means that nobody saw her body apart from her pale legs. But even so, this is quite, this is not something that people were doing on a daily basis. It's, it's newsworthy. You know, it would be the headline, wouldn't it, in the, the red top papers? I just don't, I don't believe it. And Roger Wendover, like all of these later chroniclers, say that they are using older sources. They don't always name them, but they say they're using them. If you read something like that, you'd repeat it, wouldn't you? And the fact that nobody does, nobody else has got this story, and it just,

• 17:29Speaker 02

  it doesn't have the slightest ring of truth about it, as far as I'm concerned, but I know a lot of people do disagree.

• 17:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it definitely smells a bit funny, doesn't it? So do you have a sense of then why this story is told? Is Roger trying to get some point across? Or does he just think he's reporting old gossip? Is there some kind of, you know, moral tale behind what he's doing? Do we have any sense of why he records this story?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Well, that's a really interesting question because he also has lots of gossip about other royal women. Godiva wasn't royal, but she was important. He's the one that gives us the story that when Ophir, the great of Mercia, had a rival king killed, it was actually all the fault of Ophir's wife. And again, nobody else really says that. I tend to think that when you look at these later, these 12th, 13th century chronicles, you find that the women by and large are getting a very, very bad press. They are being blamed for a lot. Edward the Martyr's stepmother famously was accused of being involved in his murder,

• 18:38Speaker 02

  but only by the later chronicles. And I mean, you said this yourself, the 12th century attitudes, church attitudes towards women change. You know, we've gone a long way from the early part of the Anglo-Saxon era, where royal abbeuses were founding abbeys. They were in charge of huge monastic institutions. They were in charge of the monks as well as the nuns. But the 12th century, there seems to be a shift in church attitudes and women are not tolerated quite as much. And we've got all these awful stories about them. But this isn't one of them. This isn't really her doing anything wrong.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  This is almost her championing the poorer people. She's doing something really quite noble. And I can't really get to the bottom of why he would say this. And what point, as you ask, is he trying to get across? It's almost like he's decided that this, this one particular noble woman is worthy of a bit of praise when he's not that kind about the other notable women of the era. So it remains a little bit of a mystery and I can't understand exactly what he's trying to say with all this.

• 19:59Matt Lewis?

  It's frustrating, isn't it? Because you could see that he could easily turn this into a story of a salacious story of, you know, an incorrigible woman who is riding through the streets naked to the shock and disgust of everybody. Except that, as you say, it's almost like a charitable act in the story, isn't it? She's getting things for other people by being forced to do this. So it kind of doesn't fit with the attitudes and the roles for women more generally in those sources, does it? Where, as I've said before, your church attitudes are changing. It's the idea that women are all daughters of Eve and, you know, the font of original sin. Godiva is being given this weird story in which she's taking all of her clothes off, which could feel like it's going to move

• 20:41Matt Lewis?

  into something salacious and sexual, but it just doesn't. It moves into what is in effect a charitable act. It's odd.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  It is. It is very, very strange. There may be some kind of sort of folklore root to the story. There's a tradition of women riding naked on horses that might be peculiar to this particular area. It's not a million miles away, in fact, it's considerably less than that, from Banbury and Oxfordshire where we've got, you know, the lady riding on the white horse and all that. There's a suggestion that it might go right back to the idea of the god Teal, after he in the Tuesday is named, and this idea that he rode horses. But I can't find much information about that. And it doesn't seem to be something that's

• 21:32Speaker 02

  that's sort of carried through. So we have this sort of possible ancient folklore sort of myth attached to it. And then just this one story. And again, if that were the root of it, why don't we have more of these types of stories? That's the puzzling thing for me. I mean, the person who comes out of this worst of all is poor old Leifrich, you know, who's coming across as a sort of Scrooge, who's taxing the people.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  He may have been like that, but no more so than any other noble, I'm sure, because, you know, that's, that's what they did, wasn't it? It was, it was tough being a peasant in any age of history. And there's, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why Layer Fritsch would be singled out, you know, as, as being the, the, the baddie of the, the story. So it's, yeah, it's an enduring mystery. It's very odd.

• 22:31Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, because you, you almost end up in a situation in which it, it becomes a tale about you being careful what you demand of people. Layer Fritsch is behaving quite badly, maybe. And it's like, oh yeah, I'll, I'll stop this if you ride naked through the streets. And his wife goes and does this, which would presumably have been, you know, embarrassing for him to have his wife ride naked through the streets of Coventry. And maybe, maybe it's more to do with, unfortunately, maybe more to do with the man than it is to do with the woman and kind of be careful what you ask for or wish for or demand or whatever else, because you just might get it.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. Well, I mean, there, there definitely is an element of that in the story, isn't there? But it's, it's just remarkable how it's, it's grown. And then of course it does, you know, the, the morality elements do come into it later. Because obviously we've got associated with Godiva, the story of Peeping Tom. And this is much later, this is 18th century, but you know, Peeping Tom was, was one who did actually sit and, and watch her. And that's, that's a morality tale, isn't it? Because I think he goes blind, doesn't he? Um, as a result. So that, but this is 18th century, this is much later. And it's a different moral code in a way. It's a different set of sensibilities.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  But the story grows and it grows. And then for, for years, I think it's been reinstated recently, this, you know, the annual parade and, and somebody riding as Godiva through the streets of Coventry. So it's, it's a myth that's endured and people love it. But when you actually drill down, it isn't actually even that much of a story. Is that, you know, we don't have much detail about it. We don't really know the, the whys and the wherefores. It, it's just Roger Wendover giving us this tale. And even he doesn't comment on it, doesn't say what his thoughts are, just, just tells us what he thinks or wants us to believe happened. It's, it's, yeah, it's so unusual.

• 24:25Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And Peeping Tom is a, an interesting addition because he comes so much later. And yet, it's almost that in this story, the man is still the bad guy. You know, there's still no criticism of Godiva for what she's doing. She's trying to cover herself up as she's riding naked. He's the bad guy because he's kind of trying to be a lech and trying to get a look when he shouldn't. And he pays the price for that. So again, it revolves around the idea that the woman is not doing anything particularly wrong. It's the man who's at fault there again with peeping Tom.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, she comes across as very, very pure, very virginal. And you're right, you know, he's, he's the sinner for casting his eyes, you know, with, and nobody's suggesting that, you know, if she hadn't done it in the first place, then he wouldn't have been, you know, wouldn't have been there watching. But it's, it's a remarkable story and, and why? You know, it's, it's an odd thing to say, isn't it? You know, it's, it's a weird kind of domestic argument. I, you know, husband, I don't like the fact that you're taxing all our poor people. Okay, we'll just ride naked through the streets. I mean, that's, it's very bizarre. It really is.

• 25:46Speaker 01

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• 26:20Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipsum and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty. From Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:03Matt Lewis?

  Right, well, I mean, having sort of put that to bed and said that we probably don't think it's very true, other people can argue with us if they like, I'd like to try and get back to a bit more about the real Godiva then, you know, let's talk about what we do know about her and what she might have actually done. So we've mentioned that she's married to the the eldum and the earl of Mercia. So I wonder if you give us a sense of where Mercia is politically at the time that Godiva is around. How important is Mercia?

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Oh, hugely, hugely. So it's, as I mentioned earlier, it used to be a kingdom. By this stage, you've really got four separate parts of what had become England by then. So you've got Northumbria, obviously in the north, you've got Wessex in the south and east, East Anglia, obviously in the east, and then Mercia in the Midlands. And it's not as big as it was earlier on. I mean, at its height, under King Ophir in the eighth century, it's sort of covered everything from the River Humber down, including London. But it's much reduced now. It's the borderlands with Wales, which is also important politically.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  And Leifrich sort of inherited the eldum from his father. So he's already second generation. And it's really, I think, when when Canute became king, he kept Wessex for himself. So for a long while, there wasn't an Earl of Wessex. So you've got these three leading Earls and the king, of whom Leifrich was one. And they're really, I mean, you can have more than one right hand man, I suppose. They really are the king's right hand men. And they are controlling these vast areas of land. They've got men underneath, they're the top rank, and then there are lower ranking nobles underneath administering the the

• 28:57Speaker 02

  shires and what have you for them. But hugely politically important, whenever any major decisions are taken, you know, the the king is there, obviously, but so are these leading Earls. So they can be very influential.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  They can be very partisan, they can be very self-serving. Leifrich doesn't seem to have been, he just seems to have quietly got on with things. His son, Elfgaard, got into a lot of disputes with the Earls of the other side of the country, which by and large, all Godwins. And they caused him to be banished twice. And he allied with Wales to get his power base back, which is why it's so important that it was on the borderlands, because he had somewhere else to go, somewhere else to ask for help. And that alliance was sealed when

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Elfgaard's daughter, Elgith, I've mentioned before, before she was married to Harald Godwinson, she was married to Griffith, who was King of Wales. So you've got this massive powerhouse in the West versus the Godwins in the South and East. But Leifrich does seem to have stayed a much more steady, gentle course. He's not ruffling any feathers politically, just getting on with the job. But this family is so powerful, so important. And as I say, his, his son Elfgaard was a little bit more disputatious and a bit more confrontational. But Leifrich, let's say, pretty, pretty, just your average middle of the road, leading nobleman.

• 30:35Matt Lewis?

  So we're, we're still in a situation then, maybe where although England is now a single kingdom, you can sometimes see those tensions between what used to be the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are sort of still pushing against each other and rubbing up against each other, even if Leifrich isn't particularly participating in that.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I think so. And, and again, you know, if you're, and we see this so many times in history, don't we? It might not be the patriarch. It's the sons, the grandsons, who may be jostling for a bit more power, or, or they can see the way the wind is blowing, you know, that this, this situation might change. So they need to sort of make a grab while they can. And this certainly happened with, with Leifrich's sons and even more so, I suppose, with his grandsons, who were Edwin and Morcar, who famously got sort of, you know, tangled up in 1066 and all that. But yeah, I think it was hugely important. By this stage, the people who were in charge of the, the Earldoms, the Earls of Wales kingdoms, were not necessarily from that area.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  But I think in Leifrich's case, he probably was. And so they they really, you know, the where they were governing was also their home. Whereas over on the other side of the country, the Godwins were just being awarded land left, right and centre. At one point, Alf Gull was actually, he had responsibilities over in East Anglia, but he was kind of sort of squeezed out and isolated by the Godwins all around him and he didn't inherit something that he thought he was going to get because it was given to a Godwin. So there's a lot of, you know, these are, these are two really mighty families locking horns. But yeah, Layer Fritsch, I think probably just probably quite old when he died and

• 32:21Speaker 02

  I don't know whether he just wasn't dynamic enough to see what was happening with these upstart Godwins, you know, and may genuinely not have cared terribly much. I think he was just happy doing his own thing, but immensely powerful and deeply religious. It does look like he, you know, they they endowed an awful lot of uh religious organisations, institutions, as I said. But that's nothing unusual because we've got to remember at this period in time, everybody is very religious, you know, um. Even if they're doing it slightly cynically, you know, the the more you give to the monastic institutions, the more you give to the church, the more guaranteed you are a place in heaven.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  But that in itself shows a sign of very, very strong belief. You know, that that there is heaven, there is hell, and there's only one place that I want to end up. So, you know, even that cynicism is is rooted in in deep religious belief and we shouldn't ever forget that these people were hugely religious, even if, you know, they perhaps used it for their own self-serving means sometimes.

• 33:32Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Are there specific religious houses that we know Godiva is is tied to? Obviously, the the story that everybody sort of knows about uh connects to Coventry, but are there specific religious places that she's endowing that we can see in the charters?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  There are, I can't remember them off the top of my head, I'm afraid, but Coventry is the main one. When you look at all the different sources, for example, as I said, Roger Wendover said that it was Layerfritsch who endowed Coventry, but it was Godiva's idea. Other sources say that it was a joint enterprise. It's possible, in fact, I think it's probable. What happened was that Layerfritsch, it's the charters in his name, there are a couple of spurious charters as well that were clearly forgeries. You know, this happened a lot. Abys just making things up to to claim, you know, to establish ownership, even if it wasn't

• 34:27Speaker 02

  true. But I think probably what happened with Coventry and probably elsewhere is that it was Layerfritsch's grant, but it was Godiva's lands. So these were her own lands in Coventry, and I think that's why she's so heavily associated with Coventry. As I said, there were other foundations, they're just, one of those things has just completely slipped my mind. As soon as we stop chatting, I will remember them, of course.

• 34:54Matt Lewis?

  Of course. And do we see her operating on her own in those charters as well, or is it generally with or through her husband?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  I think it's through her husband. It's very, very rare. It's not not unheard of for women to issue charters in their own name, but I I could be wrong. There'll be somebody out there who'll correct me, I'm sure. But I think all the charters were issued jointly.

• 35:21Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And if it's possible that Godiva was still alive at the time of the Norman conquest in ten sixty six, do we know what impact it has on Mercia and on Godiva?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it already had started to have an impact because by the time the Godwins were sort of in control, what was happening was that key places, Hereford, for example, people were being sort of parachuted in, and some of those were Normans, you know, because by the time I was a confessor, we've got Normans in the English court. And there was a Michael Ralph, he was Norman in origin, he was sort of operating within Mercia. So there's already this huge tension.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  By this time, I imagine that Godiva, if she was still alive, she's gonna be quite elderly. She's got adult grandchildren for a start. She's probably watching with a sense of despair. I, I, I get the impression that this family was, was very strong together. And very sort of partisan, as I say, they, they weren't just governing somewhere they'd been appointed to. This, this was their home. And I think they, they fought very keenly to protect it. And I think she must have just been staggered at what was happening. Because everything did fall apart very, very quickly. Alfgar died.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Incidentally, one of the reasons that we think she might still have been alive in ten sixty six is because some of the lands, some of her lands, I should say, that should have passed to her son actually passed directly to her grandsons. So the suggestion is that she outlived Alfgar, who died in, I think, ten sixty two, ten sixty three. So it's perfectly possible. The, the date we usually settle with for her death is ten sixty seven. So she would just have seen it. In which case, she saw everything unravel. Because her granddaughter Elgith had been married to Griffith of Wales, who was then killed probably by his own men or by the Welsh.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  But they then sent his head to Harald Godwinson. Elgith was then married to Harald Godwinson. And I mean, we're not told how she felt about that, but probably not that great. Harald Godwinson needed the Mercens on side. And this, this gives you an idea of how powerful they were. Because Edwin and Morcar, we think, were only teenagers in ten sixty six, so very, very young. But suddenly their father, Alfgar, who was very, very strong, very belligerent. He'd been banished twice. He came back both times with Welsh and I think at one point Irish troops. He's gone.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Mercia is now in the hands of a teenage boy. So he's no real threat to Harold Godwinson and yet, you know, both the brothers, one's Earl of Northumbria, one's Earl of Mercia, they can rally an awful lot of troops between them. So Harold then arranges this political marriage to marry their sister Iljith. Ten sixty-six didn't go well for any of them, as we all know. Edwin and Morcar did survive, but not for long. Morcar ended up fighting alongside Herod the Wake, which is another interesting detail about Godiva. There are some legends that suggest that she was Herod, Herod the Wake's mother.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  But Morcar ended up imprisoned for a long time, fighting with Herod the Wake. Edwin, having pledged allegiance to William, because, you know, it made sense to, then sort of renounced that oath of homage and was fighting, you know, in the resistance, but was then also killed by his own men, whether it was sort of turned in for a reward is possible. So Godiva would have seen a lot of that happening. And it would have been a terrible turnaround from when she started, you know, this young power couple, herself and Lea Frith, presiding over a largely peaceful period.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  And then suddenly to see it all unravel and, and to see the effect that it had on, on her grandchildren must have been particularly poignant and very upsetting for her, I'd have thought.

• 39:54Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah, you can imagine. I mean, and she's lived through a fair bit of, you know, relatively peaceful, I guess, but a lot of change in the, the 11th century too. She's, she's seen a lot of kings come and go and, and you can imagine if she was around in ten sixty-six, on the ground, it must have felt very different to anything that had happened before.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, I mean, she was, you know, if if we're assuming, and I I think it's safe to assume that she was still alive until ten sixty seven, and she's kept her lands. And and we did talk about this earlier, how few English women are mentioned in doomsday, but the the thing is that it was incredibly rare. Very few of these women did keep their lands. And the ones who are named are really important people. So Edgith, her granddaughter, in theory, kept her lands, although we're not sure what happened to her. But ownership of the land wasn't transferred.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  And Queen Edith, Harold Gobson's sister, so the widow of Edward the Confessor, also kept her lands. Whether there's this sense that William stopped short of taking lands away from these women, I don't know. I mean, he doesn't come across, you know, in my view, as somebody's particularly chivalrous. But the fact that that Godiva was still a landlady in her own right would have given her a bit of a safety net, of course. Clearly, she's left alone, she's left unmolested. She's far too old, I imagine, by this stage, to worry about being forcibly married

• 41:31Speaker 02

  to the next Norman lord, which obviously did happen to a lot of the widows of ten sixty six. So, yeah, she she's probably, you know, retiring quietly. I mean, I have this picture of her just sort of sitting as an old woman, just alone with all these memories of what life used to be like and how drastically it changed. And of course, it it did for everybody living in England, but she has seen so much and and seen so many kings come and go. And, you know, to see her family destroyed, a lot of it sort of almost deliberately, you know, the way her son was was banished twice, both times on trumped up charges. You know, this was just politically motivated.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  And, you know, although she is a very, very powerful, wealthy woman, she's powerless to stop that sort of thing going on. Because women were influential, but not really politically, unless you were actually a queen. Not that much political agency, really, unfortunately.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Sizan Ilipskam, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 43:57Matt Lewis?

  When you were talking, then I couldn't help wondering whether actually William was being the opposite of Chevalric and thinking, you know what, if I leave these lands in the hands of older widowed women, they're far less likely to raise an army than the man I might give it, give the lands to if I take them off them. So it's almost easier to just leave it there and think, you know, they won't pose a problem for me. Whereas if I take those lands off them and have to grant them to somebody else, that person might cause me a problem.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's a very interesting point. Yeah, it's, they're no threat. That's for sure. You know, the likes of Godiva, she's not going to suddenly raise a rebellious army. I suppose the only thing is that she could give sanctuary to her rebellious grandsons, but they've, they've really disappeared off the scene. I say, Morcar was imprisoned. I think he was taken to Normandy for a while. Hereward, the Wake, obviously disappeared. There is absolutely no truth in this idea that Hereward was Godiva's son. This is, it comes from a 15th century genealogy, and it was commissioned by the Wake family. And it's thought that it was just a likely way of bolstering their credentials, really,

• 45:03Speaker 02

  is that mine and ability, the wake family by this stage. So, you know, any forbears they can find that were really important and would have helped. But there's no other evidence, you know, and when when we're looking at things that don't appear until the 15th century, you've got to be dubious. You know, there's there's no supporting evidence that Heriwood was, I mean, they, he was pally with Morcar because they were fighting together. But there's no suggestion from the earlier sources that they were, well, they wouldn't even been brothers, would they? They'd have been uncle and nephew, something like that.

• 45:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd be dubious of them being connected to Heriwood at all themselves, although he gets remembered as as Heriwood the wake, slightly obsessed with Heriwood, absolutely love his story. So, yeah, so it's great to be able to to crop him up in this story, too. I wondered if we could think about as we we come to the end, what Godiva's life can tell us about the role of Anglo-Saxon aristocratic women, you know, should we think about her exercise of power and and her position of authority as an exemplar of the period of of senior aristocratic women? Or is she something of an outlier? Is she unusual?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  No, I don't think she's unusual. I think what's probably a bit special about her is that she had so much land in her own right, and that there were very few women who did so. Possibly comparable was the lady that everybody remembers as Edith Swanneck. That wasn't actually her name. Her name was Edyeva, which is a completely different name, although it sounds similar. She also had extensive lands in her own right. And I suppose this is the thing that perhaps would surprise anyone who doesn't know that much about the period, is that Anglo-Saxon women were allowed to hold land in their own right, in their own

• 46:53Speaker 02

  name. They were allowed to bequeath it to whomsoever they wished. When they married, you know, all their goods and chattels did not transfer to their husbands. So they kept whatever they took into the marriage. And if they separated, divorced, they could take it out with them as well. You know, their, her lands were hers. And Lea French had very little say over what she did with those lands. You know, if she decided she wanted to sell them, he can't stop her. You know, the idea that the wife and all her worldly goods become property of the husband. This is not Anglo-Saxon, this is later, this is something that the Normans introduced.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  You know, it's a completely different culture. Anglo-Saxon women had a lot more say than their Norman and later medieval counterparts. It's not to say that they had vast amounts of freedom, but comparatively they did. And in that, Godiva, I think, is a really, really good example of that. They did have a lot of dealings with the church and, you know, the monastic establishments. More so in the earlier part, as I said, you know, royal abbotesses were the ones who were founding the very early, the first monasteries. This was all royal women who were doing that, not the men. Um. So they played an important part in, in sort of, you know, establishing the Christian church, really, in England.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  But yes, Godiva, I think, is a classic example of how much Anglo-Saxon women didn't have to shut up. You know, they, they didn't necessarily have an awful lot of political influence. But they also didn't have to just stay at home and do their embroidery. You know, they, they were landlords in their own right, which gives you a certain amount of financial freedom. They were allowed to get divorced, you know, they, they could end marriages, they got to keep the children. So I think this is something that sounds really remarkably modern compared with what we think we might know about the medieval period.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  So, so, yeah, for that reason alone, I think, you know, we should talk about Godiva an awful lot more, but. Maybe not so much on the horseback.

• 49:14Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, it sounds like she's a really good example of just how much things changed with the Norman conquest, you know, the the before and after, the snapshot that we can have of the the authority, the Anglo-Saxon women and the, I don't want to say independence, but you know, you know, that kind of sense of slightly more independence that they were able to enjoy, you know, that is sort of swept away in the wake of 1066. And and there is this this real change in society. So Godiva gives us a really good snapshot of before. And we've got quite a lot of snapshots of after, but we probably don't think about before very much.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And and they were, I mean, there's there's a famous 10th century will of a noblewoman who gives us an idea that A, her request is stuffed full of books, so she could obviously read, you know, literacy is a thing, these women were literate. And it seems like a lot of them, when they got to widowhood, rather than just, you know, off you go to a convent, sort of established, like religious settlements, but in their own houses. So other women would come and live with them. And they're living a sort of quasi religious life, just quietly getting on with things, you know, there were laws in place that said you cannot force a widow to remarry if she doesn't want to.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  So they would just take themselves off to their estates and and live very quietly. Not that going to a convent or an abbey was a bad life, it wasn't. But you know, there wasn't this same idea that all of their life had to be dictated by a man, you know, that they were nothing if they didn't have a husband. So not true prior to 1066, less so after 1066, sadly.

• 50:57Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, it's been fascinating because I think we sort of ripped away a bit of a carpet from underneath people saying that probably she didn't do this naked ride through Coventry. But in many ways, the truth about her is far more interesting than that. You know, that's a kind of a little bit of a novelty that we're not even sure what it might have meant if it did happen. But here is a woman who can really demonstrate for us the structure of the society in which she lived and the ways in which she was able to operate within that, and the patronage that she's able to dispense, and the way that she's able to control land. I mean, it's one of those where the, you know, the truth is far more interesting than the fiction.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, if we say, okay, she did it. Actually.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  I I can see her doing it, you know, I don't think she'd have any qualms, but I think she probably wouldn't have gone about it in the same way. I think if she if she disagreed with the taxes that Lea Fritsch was levying, I think she'd have just told him so. And from what we can gather from his personality and his character, he might have just, you know, rather than saying, oh, you know, I'll listen to you if you get on a horse naked. I think she he probably just would have listened to her anyway. So it's it it is, it's a really, as you say, a an outlandish way of demonstrating that actually. She did have a lot of say in the affairs of of, you know, the local system and the, you know, what was going on in terms of local administration.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  And I don't think she would have been afraid to tell him if she disagreed with him.

• 52:27Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, although, again, I I'm thinking as well, even if it is true, if we if we say that she might have have undertaken this ride through Coventry naked, even if that is true, it's still. From what we've been talking about, it's still far from the most interesting thing about her anyway.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, because that story in and of itself just kind of set her up as, you know, we we were searching for meaning in it, you know, it's it's some kind of allegory, it's it's it's there to to demonstrate something. And that kind of isolates her and makes her all about that and diminishes the person that she really was and the power that she really had. And that of her family as well. So, yeah, to sort of shine a light on that is to put everything else that she did in shadow, really.

• 53:14Matt Lewis?

  Hmm. Maybe that's what Roger was doing. Terrible medieval chroniclers, yeah. Annie, this has been absolutely fascinating. It it sounds like, you know, we we definitely need to remember Lady Godiva today, but we need to not focus on. That story of her riding through Coventry, we need to focus about on what she can tell us about Anglo Saxon society and what we can find out about the ways in which she. And perhaps her other contemporaries were able to operate in Anglo Saxon society, because that, it seems to me, is is a far better legacy for us to focus on. And something that can tell us far more than whether she did or didn't ride a horse naked through the streets.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  I totally agree, yeah.

• 53:53Matt Lewis?

  Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Annie. It's been absolutely fascinating, as always.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

• 54:01Matt Lewis?

  I hope you found this episode interesting. So what do you think? Did Lady Godiva ride through the streets of Coventry naked in 1057? Or is it a myth? And does it matter either way? I'm not sure it's what we should be focusing on anyway. You can find Annie's books, which include Women of Power in Anglo Saxon England, Mercia: Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, and Murder in Anglo Saxon England, Justice, Wergild and Revenge, wherever you get your books. You can also find Annie's previous visits to Gone Medieval to talk about the Kingdom of Mercia and about murder in Anglo Saxon England in our back catalogue, if you'd like to immerse yourself further in early medieval English history. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday,

• 54:45Matt Lewis?

  so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com/subscribe. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just Gone Medieval with History Hit.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 55:45Speaker 05

  And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.