who was Lady Godiva?

Answer 1

She was a lady of the land...

Lady Godgifu (Godiva) was an noblewoman who, is said to have rode naked through the streets of Coventry in England in order to gain a remission of the oppressive toll imposed by her husband on his tenants.

She appealed over and over to her husband, who refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her nagging (and thinking he would stop it), he said he would grant her request if she would ride naked through the streets of the town.

She took him at his word and issued a proclamation requesting that all persons should keep within doors or shut their windows when she rode through, clothed only in her long hair.

One person in the town, a tailor disobeyed her request, and boasted about her beauty. As his name was Tom, he was ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, and that's where we get name from.

Answer 2

Lady Godiva, Protesting Equestrian

Born: c. 1040
Birthplace: Near Coventry, England
Died: c. 1070
Best Known: woman who rode through town naked on horse

Lady Godiva (Godgyfu or Godgifu in its original spelling) was married to Leofric, the Earl of Mercia, in what is now the United Kingdom.

Around the time of 1057, she and Leofric got in a dispute over the taxes he had levied on the growing city of Coventry, and he challenged her to ride naked through the marketplace, promising to ease the tax burden if she did so.

Lady Godiva took the challenge and became a local legend. At least, that's how the story goes, a story that began to circulate a century after her death.

In the 17th century, the detail was added that Lady Godiva had instructed the townsfolk to stay indoors during her ride, but that a man named Tom peeked at her anyway, hence the term "peeping tom."

Not sure if you have seen the painting or not, but she was breath-taken-ly beautiful with a long slender body as sweet as candy (Godiva chocolates was also named after her).

History with a Twist

Lady Godiva is also the most successful frisbee team in the history of the US.

Since their inception in 1987, Boston's Lady Godiva continues to be an elite women's ultimate frisbee team. Godiva has lost only once prior to the semi-finals at the US National Championship Tournament, held each year, and they won a Gold Medal at the 1998 World Championship

Answer 3

Lady Godiva
The wife of Earl Leofric of Mercia, and a devout and generous patron of churches and abbeys, she was Lady of Coventry in her own right. She died in 1067 and about a 100 years after her death, Roger of Wendover, a monk of St Alban's, told how this ‘saintly countess… beloved of God’, inspired by the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin, begged her husband to free Coventry from tax, until, angry at her persistence, he told her that if she rode naked across the crowded market-place, he would grant her request. She agreed, but let her hair hang loose, so that ‘her whole body was veiled except her fair white legs’. Her husband ‘counted this a miracle’, and lifted the tax. Later versions, beginning in the 16th century, switch the emphasis from holiness to cleverness; Godiva, it was now said, asked the magistrates to make everyone stay indoors with closed windows as she rode by, which they did, so ‘her husband's imagination [was] utterly disappointed’. By 1659, a new character had been added to the legend: Peeping Tom, struck blind for trying to see the naked Godiva.

Historians are agreed that Godiva and Leofric were real people, who may well have remitted some unpopular tax, but the tale shows influence both from saints' legends (pious wife contrasted with cruel husband, modesty miraculously protected), and from folklore motifs. There are several other English local traditions in which some grant or privilege is said to have been won for the community by a great lady's willingness to undergo a humiliating ordeal: to walk barefoot, or ride naked, or crawl on hands and knees round a piece of land which she wishes her husband to donate to charity, for example at Tichborne (Hampshire) and St Briavels (Gloucestershire). These may of course be imitations of the Godiva tale, being recorded far later; however, the motif of a clever woman who fulfils seemingly impossible or intolerable conditions by a trick is old and international. So too is the punishment of curiosity by blinding.

During the Middle Ages Coventry held an annual eight-day fair in Corpus Christi week, which included miracle plays and a procession; after the Reformation, this was replaced by a civic pageant at Midsummer, which was suppressed during the Commonwealth but lavishly revived in the reign of Charles II. From 1678, there are records of a ‘Lady Godiva’ appearing in the pageant; at first the role was taken by a boy, but from 1765 there was a real woman (fully dressed) on a white horse. Meanwhile, a life-size wooden figure of a man in Tudor armour, the original function of which is unknown, had become famous as ‘Peeping Tom’; it was carried in the annual procession, and between whiles displayed in various houses and hotels. It is currently in the Cathedral Lane Shopping Centre. The rowdiness and ribald humour of the occasion drew Victorian disapproval, but parades continued intermittently until the 1960s, and were revived in 1996.

The story of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom is a great favourite, not merely in Coventry but as a part of English popular culture, the combination of virtue, sexual titillation, and earthy humour having proved irresistible-

Answer 4

a unique "lady" who used to like justice, horses, and i think chocolate...

Answer 5

She rode on a horse NAKED!!!