succesive monarchs, and is placed by historians at the head of various great state transactions. By King Canute he was made Captain General of the royal forces. After the death of Canute he was chiefly instrumental in advancing to the Crown Harold, the son of that king. Edward the Confessor was principally indebted to Leofric for his elevation to the throne, and was subsequently protected, by his wisdom and power, from many of the turbulent machinations of Earl Godwyn. The Countess Godiva was sister to Thorold, sheriff of Lincolnshire, a man much imbued with the piety prevalent in that age, as appears by his founding the abbey of Spalding. She is said by Ingulphus to have been a-most beautiful and devout lady.

The monastery founded by this illustrious pair was for an abbot and twenty-four monks of the Benedictine order, and it surpassed all others in the county for amplitude of revenue and splendour of ornaments. Earl Leofric bestowed on it one half of the town in which it was situated, and twenty-four lordships in this and other counties. The king and the archbishop of Canterbury, with a long train of initred churchmen and powerful nobles, were witnesses to the act of endowment. Pope Alexander confirmed the grant, and added many privileges. In regard to its magnificence of embellishment Malmsbury observes" that it was enriched and beautified with so much gold and silver that the walls seemed too narrow to contain it; insomuch that Rob. de Limesie, bishop of this diocese in the time of King William Rufus, scraped from one beam that supported the shrines, 500 marks of silver." Among the reliques was an arm of St. Augustine, placed in a silver shrine, on which was an inscription purporting that it was purchased of the Pope by Agelnethus, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Earl Leofric died in a good old age, in the 13th of Edward the Confessor, at his house at Bromley, Staffordshire, and was buried in a porch of the monastery church which he had founded, The Lady Godiva appears to have been actuated by zealous and habitual piety. Besides founding the monastery of Stow, near

Lincoln,

WARWICKSHIRE.

Lincoln, she conferred numerous benefactions on the foundation at Coventry, "sending," says Dugdale, "for skilful Goldsmiths, who, with all the gold and silver she had, made crosses, images The period of her of saints, and other curious ornaments." death is not ascertained, but she bequeathed her whole treasure to this religious house, " and even at the point of death gave a rich chain of precious stones, directing it to be put about the neck of the blessed Virgin's image, so that those who came of devotion thither should say as many prayers as there were several gems therein." Her remains were interred in the other porch of the monastery church.

With the foundation of its monastic structure commenced the prosperity of Coventry. While the means of commercial interchange were difficult, no town, that had not in its vicinity such mineral veins as were light of access and were essential to the homely needs of a people who had few wants besides those which the sword and the ploughshare might supply, could hope to attract the tide of traffic, without the aid of superstitious fascination. Tribes of devotees; saintly feasts; and monastic largesses, vain-gloriously bestowed alike on the helpless and the indolent, now increased the trade and population of the place, and rendered its tolls and services objects of consideration. From the ge neral character of Earl Leofric, as given by early historians; and from the bountiful and pious disposition he evinced in the foundation of his monastery, it might be supposed that he would not exact these tolls and services, for to him, as lord of the town, they were due, with too rigorous a hand. But it seems the citi zens found them a grievance; and concerning the method in which they obtained relief from oppression is told a romantic "The tale, which we give in the words of Sir William Dugdale: Countess Godeva, bearing an extraordinary affection to this place, often and earnestly besought her husband that, for the love of God and the Blessed Virgin, he would free it from that grievous servitude whereunto it was subject; but he, rebuking her for importuning him in a manner so inconsistent with his profit, commande 1

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manded that she should thenceforth forbear to move therein; yet she, out of her womanish pertinacy, continued to solicit him, insomuch that he told her if she would ride on horseback naked from one end of the town to the other, in the sight of all the people, he would grant her request. Whereunto she returned, But will you give me leave so to do? And he replying Yes! the noble lady, upon an appointed day, got on horseback naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body but the legs, and thus performing the journey returned with joy to her husband: who thereupon granted to the inhabitants a charter of freedom. In memory whereof the picture of him and his said lady were set up in a south window of Trinity Church, in this city, about King Richard the Second's time, and his right hand holding a charter, with these words written thereon:

Luriche for the love of thee

Doe make Coventre tol-free.”

It is said by Rapin "that the Countess, previous to her riding, commanded all persons to keep within doors, and from their windows, on pain of death: but, notwithstanding this severe penalty, there was one person who could not forbear giving a look, out of curiosity; but it cost him his life."

This story appears legendary at the first and slightest glance. The females of the era at which Lady Godiva flourished accounted modesty of attire, and scrupulous secretion of person, virtues connected with religious merit; and we have evidence that the countess was habitually inclined to perform religious duty to an extremity of attention, and was, indeed, one of the most zealous devotees of the age. Is it then likely that religious feelings would allow her to commit such a strange act of indecency, for the mere exoneration from tolls and duties of a few hundreds of her husband's vassals? But, if we can believe that pious habits were not sufficiently powerful to confirm this lady in the modest reserves which appear born with the sex, and which quit it only

in the last stages of depravity, shall we venture to imagine that a husband ever existed who would allow "the winds of heaven" to visit so freely a beloved wife's person? And that Leofric was a fond and approving husband seems clear from the readiness with which he joined the name of Godiva with his own in the costly religious foundation at Coventry. The coarseness of his conduct, if we suppose him capable of so acting, cannot be attri buted to the prevailing barbarity of the age; for female modesty and connubial strictness of conduct were dearly prized at this pe riod, however deficient it might be in minor delicacies of sentiment and exterior polish. Leofric, then, must form an exception to the general feeling; but the man forming such an exception must be besotted, ignorant, and weak. Leofric, however, was neither; he was the counsellor of kings, the defender of thrones, and the patron of the clergy.

In some " doubts concerning the truth of this indecent transaction," communicated to Gough by Mr. Pegge, and printed in the additions to Camden, occurs the following notice of the different writers through whose hands the tale has passed: “Leofric died in 1057, and yet the story is not mentioned by any writer older than Matthew of Westminster, who did not flourish till 1307, 250 years after the fact. The more ancient authors, though they speak of Leofric's foundation at Coventry, and of Godiva's concurrence and benefactions to it, yet they take not the least notice of this circumstance: as, the author of the Saxon Chronicle; Ingulfus; Ordericus Vitalis; Henry of Huntingdon; Simeon Dunelmensis; Chron. Mailross; Florence of Worcester; John Abbas de Burgo; and William of Malmsbury; which last, particularly treating of the monastery at Coventry, had a fair opportunity of recording a circumstance so singular. As to Matthew of Westminster he transcribes Hoveden, who flourished A. 1204, as appears by his words and expressions. Hoveden, however, has not a syllable of Godiva's exploit; but Matthew, 100 years after, has added it at large; whence it follows that he was the first reporter, from some vulgar or legendary tradition. It may

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may be alledged, perhaps, in his favour that the transaction was représented in a window of Trinity Church, at Coventry; the effigies of Godiva and her husband, with an epigraphe expressing that the earl freed the town from tolls at the request of his wife. Bat, supposing it to exhibit all the particulars included in Matthew's legend, yet, as it was not made till Richard the Second's time, it might be grounded on the testimony of Matthew of Westminster, or Brompton, who likewise lived before Richard II. The same may be said of the processions, or cavalcades, which have long been used annually at Coventry, in commemoration of this event; since, in all appearance, they stand upon no better ground, and have been taken up by the inhabitants, without examination, from authors of little credit."

But, after consigning this tale to a quiet place among the fabulous crudities of an unlettered period, † Coventry has still cause to look with gratitude ou the memory of Lady Godiva. To the protection afforded by the countess and her husband the city is evidently indebted for its early consequence; and a fresh source of power and emolument speedily arose from their descendants. Shortly subsequent to the Norman conquest, the lordship of Coventry became vested, by the marriage of Lucia, grand-dangkter of Leofric, in the Earls of Chester. Ranulph, her husband, was a great benefactor to the city; and by the earls of this race was constructed, within the manor of Cheylesmore, on the south side of Coventry, a fortified mansion or castle. Earl Ranulph proba. bly resided much in this place, as he bestowed so much attention on the neighbourhood as to cause four chapels to be erected in as many adjacent hamlets. His son (commonly called Gernons)

Gough's Camden, Vol. II. p. 346.

took

♦ A traditional story of this complexion is not altogether confined to Coventry. The privilege of cutting wood in the Herdnolls, by the parishioners of St. Briavel's Castle, Gloucestershire, is locally said, by the garrulous and illiterate, to have been procured of some Earl of Hereford, then Lord of Dean Forest, on the same terms that Lady Godiva obtained the privileges for the citizens of Coventry. Rudder's Gloucestershire, p. 307, &c.