May 31, 1678, Lady Godiva rode

[beth]

May 31st 1678

Lady Godiva rode naked through Coventry in a protest of taxes



Lady Godiva by John Collier, c. 1897

Godiva (Old English: Godgifu, "god gift"), often referred to as Lady Godiva (fl. 1040–1080), was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry, in England, in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants. The name "Peeping Tom" for a voyeur originates from later versions of this legend in which a man named Tom had watched her ride and was struck blind or dead.

wiki

[trubble]

Beautiful choice of painting.

[Erasmus]

In Dorothy Dunnett's novel King Hereafter she and husband Leofric (probably pronounced Lievrich) are shown as friends of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney, King MacBeth of Alba becoming recognisable Scotland. I don't remember details of a dense 900-page novel set in a complicated age but the background to the ride story (also set in Banbury - A fine lady upon a white horse) is the awful (and suspiciously short) rule of King Harold I Harefoot, a young twenties delinquent who thought himself a Viking with a penchant for arbitrary taxation and gang terror raids with his mates.

At this time, the Earldoms still retained much of the independence of the old Seven English Kingdoms and the King of the English was more of a High King (Bretwalda).

Coventry probably comes into it because they had rebuilt it with added monastery and nunnery after Harold's father Knut (he of the demonstration that kings do not control tides) destroyed it in 1016 and it was drawing business, thus highly taxable (in both senses). It was also politically sensitive because Mercia was the former leading earldom seen as an English rallying point since Earl Godwin of its successor Wessex supported the Danish conquest, therefore worth knocking back a bit, especially if it was making friends through Scotland with Ireland, Norway and to some extent Normandy where the best chance for an English king of the English was maturing (Edward the Confessor)

The background seems to be that Leofric and Godgifu were good popular charitable rulers and tried to ameliorate the taxation from their own resources. Harald just said how much, not how to raise it. So its most likely origin is Demanding the clothes off our backs next.

One possibility is that she actually did include most of her regalia of rank as part of the taxation, or innn a huge donation she made to founding a religious House. It is only recorded for the year 1057 a couple of centuries later by a chronicler known for his credulity, by which time it has had time to grow and the aristocratic language has changed. He might not have a full grasp of ancestral Brummie (The modern version is hard enough!). Since Leofric died that year it is not likely that he was doing much of anything, including raising taxes! She might of course had made some notably excessive demonstration of mourning that led to it.