The History Behind Godiva
WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN seldom make history—or legend. This story of misbehaving women combines historical fact with the stuff of legend.
EDGIFU (Edgiva)
Edgifu’s real-life tale does not end happily. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that in 1046, “went Earl Sweyn into Wales. . . . As he returned homeward, he ordered the Abbess of Leominster to be fetched him; and he had her as long as he list, after which he let her go home.”
In fact, she did not go home—at least, not to Leominster Abbey. She stayed with Sweyn about a year and bore him a son named Hakon. Then the Church intervened (Worcester lore claims Bishop Lyfing “rescued” her, but this cannot be, as he had died by then). She was sent to Fencote, a small farm outside Leominster village. The abbey was closed, and Edgifu spent the next forty years there, outside the sway of politics or religious power (i.e., by my lights, under house arrest), dying at Fencote in 1086. There is no record of her ever seeing her son or Sweyn again. Hakon was a hostage (in the sense of a political pawn) during the intrigues that led up to the Norman Invasion. Nothing further is known about him with any certainty.
Historians disagree on whether Sweyn took Edgifu against her will or she ran off with him by choice. (My curiosity about that spawned a much earlier and very different version of this novel.)
Sweyn was banished for abducting her and lost his lands and title; these were restored to him upon his father’s intervention, but his continued rashness got him into further trouble. He was banished for murdering his cousin, and then Edward exiled the entire Godwin clan in 1051. Sweyn went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and died on his way home in 1052.
Sweyn’s younger brother Harold (who—not to coin any conspiracy theories—happened to benefit greatly from both of Sweyn’s banishments) eventually and briefly became king of England, but lost the title to a fellow from Normandy we now call William the Conqueror, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
GODGIFU (Godiva)
Godgifu was the wife of Earl Leofric of Mercia; the dates of her birth and death are uncertain, but she was considerably younger than Leofric, and was probably his second wife (and possibly Alfgar’s stepmother). She and her husband were the prime benefactors of Leominster Abbey while Edgifu was the abbess there.
Coventry is on record as being an estate of Godgifu’s, but the story of her infamous ride is not mentioned in print until nearly two hundred years after her death. In the thirteenth century, Roger of Wendover wrote the following remarkable (but historically impossible) account of Godgifu’s ride:
The countess Godiva [sic] . . . longing to free the town of Coventry from the oppression of a heavy toll, often with urgent prayers besought her husband, that . . . 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 ever more 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 that 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 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; for Earl Leofric freed the town of Coventry and its inhabitants from the aforesaid service, and confirmed what he had done by a charter.
And thus was born the legend.
It’s a great story. It’s also, as I said, historically impossible. It contains one central error: Coventry belonged to Godgifu, not to Leofric. Under the law of the day, the only person with the power to tax Coventry was Godgifu herself. Since Leofric could not have been taxing Coventry, the legend sadly falls apart . . .
. . . Unless there were some other tax Godgifu might have been protesting. But that could not have been something Leofric had power over; it could only have been the heregeld, the one national tax in existence at the time. I am not the first to suppose this might be the basis of the legend. (Edward finally repealed the heregeld in 1051.)
An interesting note: the couple’s relationship in Roger of Wendover’s version makes Leofric very much lord over Godgifu. This depiction suits the era in which the anecdote was written, but not the era in which the couple actually lived. Among the gentry of the thirteenth century, Norman rule had disenfranchised and disempowered women. But Leofric and Godgifu were Anglo-Saxon, and in their era, women had political and personal power that their female descendants lost after the Norman Conquest. It takes a Norman writer to affectionately trivialize Godgifu’s stubbornness, and to depict Leofric’s response to his wife’s strength as “rebuking her foolishness” that she “never ceased to exasperate her husband.” In the story, he punishes her for the insubordination of talking back to him. That may reflect a Norman perception of gender roles in marriage, but not an Anglo-Saxon one.
The story of Godiva’s ride has been retold many times over the last eight hundred–odd years, each time with slight amendments or twists that reflect the era or the teller. Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend, by Daniel Donaghue, is an entertaining survey of all these variations (including the addition of the original Peeping Tom, who was invented six hundred years after the first written tale).
AND:
The demarcation between paganism and Christianity was murky in the eleventh century. The Land Ceremony Charm—one of the happiest surprises of any research I’ve ever pursued—was committed to writing around this time. I have slightly altered it, as recorded in the entrancing Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic, by Bill Griffiths.
SO:
Two powerful, accomplished women, each the survivor of a shockingly prurient anecdote subject to misinterpretation—and these two women knew each other! It was too tempting not to intertwine their stories . . . especially in a novel about the relationship between what is known and what is just suspected, what is truth and what is pretext, what is reported and what is merely rumored.
Reading Group Guide
1. Discuss Godiva’s use of flirtation as a political tactic. Do you find this to be a positive or a negative trait? Why?
2. If you’ve addressed the first question from a twenty-first-century vantage point, address it from the eleventh-century perspective, or vice versa. Is there a difference?
3. Discuss Godiva’s friendship with Edgiva. They are quite critical of each other regarding their (significant) differences, but they retain a deep bond. What does each of them get out of it?
4. Have you ever been in a friendship with a similar dynamic? Which character did you more resemble?
5. Whom do you find to be the most and least sympathetic characters in the story? Why?
6. Consider the Land Ceremony ritual, which clearly blended paganism and Catholicism in the eleventh century. Why do you think the Church rejected pagan elements over the following centuries? What aspects of paganism has Christianity retained? Why those elements and not others?
7. Do you agree with Godiva’s decision to make the ride? Why or why not?
8. Have you ever found yourself similarly pushed into making a choice in a “no-win” situation? How did you decide what choice to make?
9. What decision about her future do you think Edgiva would have made if Godiva had not shown up at Leominster?
10. What do you think of Leofric’s relationship with Godiva? Would he have shunned her if she had been excommunicated? Why or why not?
11. Godiva and Edgiva are fairly vocal about what changes they’d like to see in each other, but if each could change one thing about herself, what do you think it might be?