Notes
Note N3933
Index
Sir Richard Herbert (d. 1469) of Coldbrook Park, near Abergavenny was a 15th-century Welsh knight, and the lineal ancestor of the Herberts of Chirbury.
He was the son of William ap Thomas of Raglan Castle and Gwladys ferch Dafydd Gam, and the brother of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. He married Margaret, sister of Sir Rhys ap Thomas.[1] They had two sons: Sir William Herbert of Coldbrook, and Sir Richard Herbert of Powys.[2] His great-grandson, Edward Herbert, was raised to the peerage in 1629.
Like his brother, he was a supporter of the House of York during the Wars of the Roses. He fought alongside his brother at the Battle of Edgecote Moor (a Lancastrian victory), where he was captured and executed. He is interred with his wife at Abergavenny Priory, near other members of his family.[3]
References
[1]Dwnn & p. 293.
[2]Wilkins & p.99.
[3]Coxe & p. 172
Bibliography
Tour Through Monmouthshire . Hereford: Davies & Co.
Dwnn, Lewys (1613). Heraldic Visitations of Wales and Part of the Marches Between 1586 and 1613 . Llandovery: Welsh MSS. Society.
Wilkins, Charles (1884). The Red Dragon: The National Magazine of Wales (vol. 5) . Cardiff: Daniel Owen & Co.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Herbert_of_Coldbrook [2017-03-12]
==========
Notes
Note N3934
Index
While on a deer-hunting expedition in his own Forest of Dean, Sibyl's husband was accidentally shot in the chest by an arrow which killed him on 24 December 1143.
Notes
Note N3935
Index
Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Aelfgar, Earl of Mercia)
Ælfgar (died c. 1062) was the son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, by his well-known wife Godgifu (Lady Godiva).[1] He succeeded to his father's title and responsibilities on the latter's death in 1057.
Ælfgar gained from the exile of Earl Godwin of Wessex and his sons in 1051. He was given the Earldom of East Anglia, which had been that of Harold, son of Godwin. Earl Godwin and King Edward were reconciled the following year, so Harold was restored to his earldom-but not for long. At Easter 1053 Godwin died, so Harold became Earl of Wessex, and the earldom of East Anglia returned to Ælfgar.[2][3]
Ælfgar seems to have learned from the tactics Godwin used to put pressure on King Edward. When he was himself exiled in 1055, he raised a fleet of 18 ships in Ireland and then turned to Wales, where King Gruffydd agreed to join forces with him against King Edward. Two miles from Hereford, on 24 October, they clashed with the army of the Earl of Herefordshire, Ralph the Timid. The Earl and his men eventually took flight, and Gruffydd and Ælfgar pursued them, killing and wounding as they went, and enacting savage reprisals on Hereford. They despoiled and burnt the town, killing many of its citizens. King Edward ordered an army mustered and put Earl Harold in charge of it. This was more formidable opposition, and Ælfgar and Gruffydd fled to South Wales. However the issue was resolved by diplomacy and Earl Ælfgar was reinstated.[4]
Ælfgar is known to have had at least four children. One son, Burgheard, predeceased his father, expiring while returning from Rome early in 1061 and was buried at Reims.[5] This led Ælfgar to give to Reims Abbey lands in Staffordshire and Shropshire, which became the endowment for Lapley Priory. He was survived by three children, two sons, Edwin, later Earl of Mercia, and Morcar, later Earl of Northumbria, and a daughter Ealdgyth, who was first married to Welsh king Gruffydd ap Llywelyn and later to Harold Godwinson, King of England.[2]
Notes
1. Patrick W. Montague-Smith Letters: Godiva's family tree The Times, 25 January 1983
2. a b Ann Williams, ‘Ælfgar, earl of Mercia (d. 1062?)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 , accessed 18 April 2008
3. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
4. The Chronicle of John of Worcester ed. and trans. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk and J. Bray (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1995), pp.576-79; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
5. Baxter, Stephen (2008), "The death of Burgheard son of Ælfgar and its context", in Fouracre, Paul; Ganz, David, Frankland. The Franks and the world of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in honour of Dame Jinty Nelson, Manchester University Press, pp. 266-284, ISBN 978-0-7190-7669-5
Notes
Note N3936
Index
Lady Godiva
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 2014-05-02
Godiva (fl. 1040-1067) (/ɡəˈdaɪvə/; Old English: Godgifu[1]), known as Lady Godiva, was an 11th-century Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to a legend dating back at least to the 13th century, rode naked through the streets of Coventry 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.
Historical figure
Godiva was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. They had one proved son Aelfgar, Earl of Mercia.[3]
Godiva's name occurs in charters and the Domesday survey, though the spelling varies. The Old English name Godgifu or Godgyfu meant "gift of God"; Godiva was the Latinised version. Since the name was a popular one, there are contemporaries of the same name.[4][5]
If she is the same Godiva who appears in the history of Ely Abbey, the Liber Eliensis, written at the end of the 12th century, then she was a widow when Leofric married her. Both Leofric and Godiva were generous benefactors to religious houses. In 1043 Leofric founded and endowed a Benedictine monastery at Coventry[6] on the site of a nunnery destroyed by the Danes in 1016. Writing in the 12th century, Roger of Wendover credits Godiva as the persuasive force behind this act. In the 1050s, her name is coupled with that of her husband on a grant of land to the monastery of St Mary, Worcester and the endowment of the minster at Stow St Mary, Lincolnshire.[7][8][9] She and her husband are commemorated as benefactors of other monasteries at Leominster, Chester, Much Wenlock and Evesham.[10] She gave Coventry a number of works in precious metal made for the purpose by the famous goldsmith Mannig, and bequeathed a necklace valued at 100 marks of silver.[11] Another necklace went to Evesham, to be hung around the figure of the Virgin accompanying the life-size gold and silver rood she and her husband gave, and St Paul's Cathedral, London received a gold-fringed chasuble.[12] She and her husband were among the most munificent of the several large Anglo-Saxon donors of the last decades before the Conquest; the early Norman bishops made short work of their gifts, carrying them off to Normandy or melting them down for bullion.[13]
The manor of Woolhope in Herefordshire, along with four others, was given to the cathedral at Hereford before the Norman Conquest by the benefactresses Wulviva and Godiva - usually held to be this Godiva and her sister. The church there has a 20th-century stained glass window representing them.[14]
Her signature, Ego Godiva Comitissa diu istud desideravi [I, The Countess Godiva, have desired this for a long time], appears on a charter purportedly given by Thorold of Bucknall to the Benedictine monastery of Spalding. However, this charter is considered spurious by many historians.[15] Even so it is possible that Thorold, who appears in the Domesday Book as sheriff of Lincolnshire, was her brother.
After Leofric's death in 1057, his widow lived on until sometime between the Norman Conquest of 1066 and 1086. She is mentioned in the Domesday survey as one of the few Anglo-Saxons and the only woman to remain a major landholder shortly after the conquest. By the time of this great survey in 1086, Godiva had died, but her former lands are listed, although now held by others.[16] Thus, Godiva apparently died between 1066 and 1086.[4]
The place where Godiva was buried has been a matter of debate. According to the Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, or Evesham Chronicle, she was buried at the Church of the Blessed Trinity at Evesham, which is no longer standing. According to the account in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "There is no reason to doubt that she was buried with her husband at Coventry, despite the assertion of the Evesham chronicle that she lay in Holy Trinity, Evesham."[4]
Dugdale (1656) says that a window with representations of Leofric and Godiva was placed in Trinity Church, Coventry, about the time of Richard II.[17]
Legend
The legend of the nude ride is first recorded in the 13th century, in the Flores Historiarum and the adaptation of it by Roger of Wendover; despite its considerable age, it is not regarded as plausible by modern historians,[citation needed] nor mentioned in the two centuries intervening between Godiva's death and its first appearance, while her generous donations to the church receive various mentions. According to the typical version of the story,[18][19] Lady Godiva took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband'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 strip naked and ride through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word and, after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. Just one person in the town, a tailor ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, disobeyed her proclamation in one of the most famous instances of voyeurism.[20] In the story, Tom bores a hole in his shutters so that he might see Godiva pass, and is struck blind.[21] In the end, Godiva's husband keeps his word and abolishes the onerous taxes.
Some historians have discerned elements of pagan fertility rituals in the Godiva story whereby a young "May Queen" was led to the sacred Cofa's tree perhaps to celebrate the renewal of spring.[22] The oldest form of the legend has Godiva passing through Coventry market from one end to the other while the people were assembled, attended only by two knights.[23] This version is given in Flores Historiarum by Roger of Wendover (died 1236), a somewhat gullible collector of anecdotes, who quoted from unnamed earlier writers.
Other attempts to find a more plausible rationale for the legend include one based on the custom at the time for penitents to make a public procession in their shift, a sleeveless white garment similar to a slip today and one which was certainly considered "underwear". Thus Godiva might have actually travelled through town as a penitent, in her shift. Godiva's story could have passed into folk history to be recorded in a romanticised version. Another theory has it that Lady Godiva's "nakedness" might refer to her riding through the streets stripped of her jewellery, the trademark of her upper class rank. However, both of these attempts to reconcile known facts with legend are weak; in the era of the earliest accounts, the word "naked" is only known to mean "without any clothing whatsoever".[24]
A modified version of the story was given by printer Richard Grafton, later elected MP for Coventry. According to his Chronicle of England (1569), "Leofricus" had already exempted the people of Coventry from "any maner of Tolle, Except onely of Horsse (sic.)", so that Godiva ("Godina" in text) had agreed to the naked ride just to win relief for this horse tax. And as a pre-condition, she required the officials of Coventry to forbid the populace "upon a great pain" from watching her, and to shut themselves in and shutter all windows on the day of her ride.[25] Grafton was an ardent Protestant and sanitized the earlier story.[22]
The ballad "Leoffricus" in the Percy Folio (ca. 1650)[26][27] conforms to Grafton's version, saying that Lady "Godiua" performed her ride to remove the customs paid on horses, and that the town's officers ordered the townsfolk to "shutt their dore, & clap their windowes downe," and remain indoors on the day of her ride.[28][29]
References
Notes
1. Pronounced [ɡodˈjivu], meaning "God's gift", making it equivalent to the name Dorothy.
2. Douglas, Alton; Moore, Dennis; Douglas, Jo (February 1991). Coventry: A Century of News. Coventry Evening Telegraph. p. 62. ISBN 0-902464-36-1.
3. a b Patrick W. Montague-Smith Letters: Godiva's family tree The Times, 25 January 1983
4. a b c Ann Williams, ‘Godgifu (d. 1067?)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 accessed 18 April 2008 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
5. "Lady Godiva, the book, and Washingborough", Lincolnshire Past and Present, 12 (1993), pp. 9-10.
6. "Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1226". Anglo-saxons.net. 1981-04-13. Retrieved 2014-01-30.
7. "Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1232". Anglo-saxons.net. Retrieved 2014-01-30.
8. "Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1478". Anglo-saxons.net. Retrieved 2014-01-30.
9. In the Stow charter, she is called "Godgife" (Thorpe, Benjamin (1865). Diplomatarium anglicum aevi saxonici: A collection of English charters 1. London: MacMillan. p. 320.)
10. The Chronicle of John of Worcester ed. and trans. R.R. Darlington, P. McGurk and J. Bray (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1995), pp.582-583
11. Dodwell, C. R.; Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective, 1982, Manchester UP, ISBN 0-7190-0926-X (US edn. Cornell, 1985), pp. 25 & 66
12. Dodwell, 180 & 212
13. Dodwell, 220, 230 & passim
14. "flickr.com". flickr.com. 2007-08-11. Retrieved 2014-01-30.
15. "Anglo-Saxons.net, S 1230". Anglo-saxons.net. Retrieved 2014-01-30.
16. K.S.B.Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A prosopography of persons occurring in English documents 1066-1166, vol. 1: Domesday (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, Suffolk 1999), p. 218
17. Dugdale, William (1656). Antiquities of Warwickshire. London.
18. Joan Cadogan Lancaster. Godiva of Coventry. With a chapter on the folk tradition of the story by H.R. Ellis Davidson. Coventry [Eng.] Coventry Corp., 1967. OCLC 1664951
19. French KL (1992). "The legend of Lady Godiva". Journal of Medieval History 18: 3-19. doi:10.1016/0304-4181(92)90015-q.
20. Lady Godiva, Historic-UK.com
21. "The Historical Godiva", Octavia Randolph
22. a b c d Marina Warner. When Godiva streaked and Tom peeped The Times, 10 July 1982
23. "Lady Godiva (Godgifu)", Flowers of History, University of California San Francisco
24. "The Naked Truth". BBC News. 24 August 2001.
25. Grafton 1809, volume 1, p.148. Grafton, Richard (1809). Grafton's chronicle, or history of England: to which is added his table of the bailiffs, sheriffs and mayors of the city of London from the year 1189, to 1558, inclusive : in two volumes 1. London: P. Johnson. p. 148.
26. Hales, John W.; Furnivall, Frederick J., eds. (1868), "Leoffricus", Bishop Percy's folio manuscript: Ballads and romances (London: Trübner) 3: 477-, pp.473-
27. A variant of this ballad is in Collection of Old Ballads (1723-5)
28. Hales & Furnivall 1868, 3:473-, vv. 53-60
29. DNB 1890 thus was inaccurate in stating that "This ballad first mention the order..", since Grafton had printed it earlier.
30. Reader, W. (1826). "Peeping Tom of Coventry and Lady Godiva". Gentleman's Magazine 96: 20., ib., "Show Fair at Coventry described". p.22- (with a sketch of Peeping Tom wooden statue)
31. Reader 1826, p. 22 "yet no one, including the late Sir W. Dugdale, even hints at the circumstance in question. We may safely, therefore, appropriate it to the reign of Charles II".
32. Reader 1826, p. 22 "In 1677 ... the Procession at the great Fair was first instituted."
33. Hartland, E. Sydney, Science of Fairy Tales, (1890), p.75, taken down from the Annals of Coventry, ms. D:"31 May 1678, being the great Fair at Coventry.. and Ja. Swinnertons Son represented Lady Godiva"
34. DNB 1890, "That one person disobeyed the order ... first stated by Rapin (1732) ... Pennant (Journey from Chester to London)(1782) calls him 'a certain taylor.' The name 'peeping Tom' occurs in the city accounts on 11 June 1773 when a new wig and fresh paint were supplied for his effigy."
35. Paul M. Rapin de Thoyras; N. Tindal Thomas (tr.) (1732). The History of England 1 (2nd ed.). J., J. and P. Knapton. p. 135.
36. a b c Pennant, Thomas, The Journey from Chester to London 1811 edition, p.190
37. DNB 1890, "Poole quotes from the 'Gentleman's Magazine' a letter from Canon Seward (ca. before 1700) which makes the peeper 'a groom of the countess,' named Action (?Actæon)"
38. Leman Rede, "Peeping Tom", The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, (1838), Part the First, p. 115: "Tradition adds, that the people resolved to close up their houses ... but ... that one, whose name has not survived, looked forth upon her, and was stricken blind, as some affirm, by the vengeance of Heaven; or, according to others, was deprived of sight by the inhabitants." (A quote from a source merely identified as "a modern writer".)