The story of Coventry. Mary Dormer Harris
Th' eleven thousand maids chaste Ursula's command,"
who at departing,
"Each by her just bequest,
Some special virtue gave, ordaining it to rest
With one of her own sex";
which special virtues, the poet adds, were in aftertimes bestowed on Godiva, "that most princely dame," who freed Coventry from toll on the occasion of her famous ride.
But of all this history tells us nothing, even as it tells us nothing of Vespasian's visit to Exeter, or the founding of London by Brutus of Troy, in the days when the foundations of Rome were not laid. Coventry is not old in the sense wherein we apply the word to Colchester, York, Bath, or Winchester, and many towns dating from Roman or early Saxon times. If the site of the present city were ever occupied by the Romans—and the point is a doubtful one—their occupation left no permanent traces.[7] But just as families love to boast of a high and noble ancestry, so dwellers in cities and members of institutions delight to trace their origins back to a legendary past, and the fables of Brut, who came from Troy to London, or the story of Mempric, contemporary of David, and founder of the university of Oxford,[8] were once accepted as truth. We, however, are content to leave this record of obscure beginnings unexplored, confessing that we have, as Dugdale says, "so little light of story to guide us through those elder times."[9]
In truth, we hear nothing authentic concerning the Romans', and but rumours of the Danes', coming to Coventry. In 1016 the Northmen, led by Canute and the traitor Eadric Streona, laid waste the Midlands, and are said to have destroyed a nunnery on the spot founded by an obscure Saxon saint, the virgin Osburg, who probably came from the neighbouring house for nuns at Polesworth.[10] But S. Osburg is a shadowy figure, and the memory of her foundation has almost entirely passed away. The convent of the "convent town,"[11] did not gather together there until the middle of the eleventh century, when Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva, built a dwelling for an Abbot and twenty-four monks to live under the rule of S. Benedict. Thus was laid the first stone of a monastery which ranked with the Confessor's Abbey of Westminster, King Harold's College at Waltham, and the twin abbeys built by William I. and Matilda in their city of Caen, among the most famous foundations of that age. The monastery became the nucleus of a thriving town in later days, as was the case with Bury S. Edmund's, Abingdon, Reading, S. Alban's, and many other places in England.
It was a great time for the founding of religious houses, and the Confessor, as befitted one of known sanctity of life, greatly encouraged these pious deeds. "It behoves every man," … runs his charter to the monks of Coventry, "diligently to incline to almsgiving, whereby he may release himself from the bonds of sin. For our Lord in a sermon thus speaketh: 'Lay up for yourselves with alms-deeds a treasure-hoard in heaven, and a dwelling with angels.'[12] For which needful things I make known to you all that I grant with full permission that the same gift which Leofric and Godgyuæ have given to Christ, and His dear Mother, and to Leofwin, the abbot, and the brethren within the minster at Coventry, for their souls to help, in land and in water, in gold and in silver, in ornaments, and in all other things, as full and as forth as they themselves possessed it, and as they that same minster worthily have enriched therewith, so I firmly grant it. And furthermore, I grant to them also, for my soul, that they have besides full freedom, sac and soc,[13] toll, team,[14] hamsocne,[15] foresteall,[16] blodewite,[17] fihtwite,[18] weardwite,[19] and mundbryce.[20] Now I will henceforward that it ever be a dwelling of monks, and let them stand in God's peace, and S. Mary's and in mine, and according to S. Benedict's rule, under the abbot's authority. And I will not in any wise consent that any man take away or eject their gift and their alms, or that any man have there any charge upon any things, or at any season, except the abbot and his brethren for this minster's need. And whosoever shall increase this alms with any good the Lord shall increase unto him Heaven's bliss; and whosoever shall take them away, or deprive the minster of anything at any time, let him stand in God's anger, and His dear Mother's and mine. God keep you all."[21]
Thus the monastery was endowed by Leofric and Godiva with twenty-four lordships of land; and by the king with full rights of jurisdiction over the tenants dwelling in these various estates, privileges greatly valued by the monks. They laid the two generous founders, the husband in one porch, the wife in the other, of the minster in Coventry, when they came to die. As for this building, it was one of the glories of the age, and seemed too narrow, a chronicler tells us, to contain the abundance of treasure within its walls. Godiva paid the most famous goldsmiths of her day to visit the place, and make reliquaries and images of saints to beautify the church she loved; she also gave a rosary of gems to hang about the neck of an image of the Virgin, her chief patroness. The monks, too, gathered in a great store of relics, whereof the most famous was an arm of S. Augustine of Hippo, brought from Pavia by Archbishop Ethelnoth, having been purchased for the sum of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
Of this minster, however, nought remains, and its successor, the Gothic cathedral, was destroyed after the Reformation. The legend of its foundress has been more enduring. Vulgarised by later associations, the narrative, in its early forms, has a grandeur which still impresses the imagination. The story was a favourite one with Landor from his boyhood, though his Imaginary Conversation, and Drayton's brief lines are less popularly known than the poem of Tennyson. There is no contemporary evidence to guide us, for Roger of Wendover, whose account of the famous ride is probably the earliest we possess, died in 1237,[22] some hundred and fifty years after the noble lady herself. The chroniclers differ as to the motive which prompted the undertaking, some asserting that the Coventry folk were to be freed thereby from a grievous incident of villeinage; others again[23] connecting it with the local immunity from the payment of toll—except for horses, a special feature of the market of Coventry.[24] It is in the latter connection that the story has impressed itself on the local mind.
"I Lueriche for the love of thee
Doe make Coventre Tol-free,"
was written under a window placed in Trinity Church in Richard II.'s time in commemoration of the deed.[25]
"This cite shulde be free, and now is bonde,
Dame goode Eve made hit free,"
wrote a discontented burger poet of the fifteenth century, when a custom for wool had been laid on the people of the town.[26]
Roger of Wendover tells us how the countess besought her husband continually, with many prayers to free the people from the toll; and though he refused and forbade her to approach him with this petition, "led by her womanly pertinacity," she repeated the request, until he gave answer: "Ride naked through the length of the market, when the people are gathered