GODIVA, a Saxon lady, who, according to the legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry to gain from her husband a remission of the oppressive toll imposed on his tenants. The story is that she was the beautiful wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia and lord of Coventry. The people of that city suffering grievously under the earl’s oppressive taxation, Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, who obstinately refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would ride naked through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word, and after issuing a proclamation that all persons should keep within doors or shut their windows, she rode through, clothed only in her long hair. One person disobeyed her proclamation, a tailor, ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom. He bored a hole in his shutters that he might see Godiva pass, and is said to have been struck blind. Her husband kept his word and abolished the obnoxious taxes.
The oldest form of the legend makes Godiva pass through Coventry market from one end to the other when the people were assembled, attended only by two soldiers, her long hair down so that none saw her, “apparentibus cruribus tamen candidissimis.” This version is given in Flores historiarum by Roger of Wendover, who quoted from an earlier writer. The later story, with its episode of Peeping Tom, has been evolved by later chroniclers. Whether the lady Godiva of this story is the Godiva or Godgifu of history is undecided. That a lady of this name existed in the early part of the 11th century is certain, as evidenced by several ancient documents, such as the Stow charter, the Spalding charter and the Domesday survey, though the spelling of the name varies considerably. It would appear from Liber Eliensis (end of 12th century) that she was a widow when Leofric married her in 1040. In or about that year she aided in the founding of a monastery at Stow, Lincolnshire. In 1043 she persuaded her husband to build and endow a Benedictine monastery at Coventry. Her mark, “
Ego Godiva Comitissa diu istud desideravi,” was found on the charter given by her brother, Thorold of Bucknall—sheriff of Lincolnshire—to the Benedictine monastery of Spalding in 1051; and she is commemorated as benefactress of other monasteries at Leominster, Chester, Wenlock, Worcester and Evesham. She probably died a few years before the Domesday survey (1085-1086), and was buried in one of the porches of the abbey church. Dugdale (1656) says that a window, with representations of Leofric and Godiva, was placed in Trinity Church, Coventry, about the time of Richard II. The Godiva procession, a commemoration of the legendary ride instituted on the 31st of May 1678 as part of Coventry fair, was celebrated at intervals until 1826. From 1848 to 1887 it was revived, and recently further attempts have been made to popularize the pageant. The wooden effigy of Peeping Tom which, since 1812, has looked out on the world from a house at the north-west corner of Hertford Street, Coventry, represents a man in armour, and was probably an image of St George. It was removed from another part of the town to its present position.
GODKIN, EDWIN LAWRENCE (1831-1902), American publicist, was born in Moyne, county Wicklow, Ireland, on the 2nd of October 1831. His father, James Godkin, was a Presbyterian minister and a journalist, and the son, after graduating in 1851 at Queen’s College, Belfast, and studying law in London, was in 1853-1855 war correspondent for the London Daily News in Turkey and Russia, being present at the capture of Sevastopol, and late in 1856 went to America and wrote letters to the same journal, giving his impressions of a tour of the southern states of the American Union. He studied law in New York City, was admitted to the bar in 1859, travelled in Europe in 1860-1862, wrote for the London News and the New York Times in 1862-1865, and in 1865 founded in New York City the Nation, a weekly projected by him long before, for which Charles Eliot Norton gained friends in Boston and James Miller McKim (1810-1874) in Philadelphia, and which Godkin edited until the end of the year 1899. In 1881 he sold the Nation to the New York Evening Post, and became an associate editor of the Post, of which he was editor-in-chief in 1883-1899, succeeding Carl Schurz. In the ’eighties he engaged in a controversy with Goldwin Smith over the Irish question. Under his leadership the Post broke with the Republican party in the presidential campaign of 1884, when Godkin’s opposition to Blaine did much to create the so-called Mugwump party (see [Mugwump]), and his organ became thoroughly independent, as was seen when it attacked the Venezuelan policy of President Cleveland, who had in so many ways approximated the ideal of the Post and Nation. He consistently advocated currency reform, the gold basis, a tariff for revenue only, and civil service reform, rendering the greatest aid to the last cause. His attacks on Tammany Hall were so frequent and so virulent that in 1894 he was sued for libel because of biographical sketches of certain leaders in that organization—cases which never came up for trial. His opposition to the war with Spain and to imperialism was able and forcible. He retired from his editorial duties on the 30th of December 1899, and sketched his career in the Evening Post of that date. Although he recovered from a severe apoplectic stroke early in 1900, his health was shattered, and he died in Greenway, Devonshire, England, on the 21st of May 1902. Godkin shaped the lofty and independent policy of the Post and the Nation, which had a small but influential and intellectual class of readers. But as editor he had none of the personal magnetism of Greeley, for instance, and his superiority to the influence of popular feeling made Charles Dudley Warner style the Nation the “weekly judgment day.” He was an economist of the school of Mill, urged the necessity of the abstraction called “economic man,” and insisted that socialism put in practice would not improve social and economic conditions in general. In politics he was an enemy of sentimentalism and loose theories in government. He published A History of Hungary, A.D. 300-1850 (1856), Government (1871, in the American Science Series), Reflections and Comments (1895), Problems of Modern Democracy (1896) and Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy (1898).
See Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin, edited by Rollo Ogden (2 vols., New York, 1907).
GODMANCHESTER, a municipal borough in the southern, parliamentary division of Huntingdonshire, England, on the right bank of the Ouse, 1 m. S.S.E. of Huntingdon, on a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2017. It has a beautiful Perpendicular church (St Mary’s) and an agricultural trade, with flour mills. The town is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 4907 acres.
A Romano-British village occupied the site of Godmanchester. The town (Gumencestre, Gomecestre) belonged to the king before the Conquest and at the time of the Domesday survey. In 1213 King John granted the manor to the men of the town at a fee-farm of £120 yearly, and confirmation charters were granted by several succeeding kings, Richard II. in 1391-1392 adding exemption from toll, pannage, &c. James I. granted an incorporation charter in 1605 under the title of bailiffs, assistants and commonalty, but under the Municipal Reform Act of 1835 the corporation was changed to a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Godmanchester was formerly included for parliamentary purposes in the borough of Huntingdon, which has ceased to be separately represented since 1885. The incorporation charter of 1605 recites that the burgesses are chiefly engaged in agriculture, and grants them a fair, which still continues every year on Tuesday in Easter week.