Godiva, Lady (flourished about 1040-80), Anglo-Saxon noblewoman, wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia (flourished 1005-57). She is known to have persuaded her husband to found monasteries at Coventry (1043) and Stow. According to legend, she obtained a reduction in the excessive taxes levied by her husband on the people of Coventry by consenting to ride naked through the town on a white horse. Only one person disobeyed her orders to remain indoors behind closed shutters; this man, a tailor known afterward as Peeping Tom, peered through a window and immediately became blind. The oldest form of the legend is in the 13th-century Flores Historiarum (Flowers of the Historians). A festival in her honor was instituted as part of Coventry Fair in 1678.
Source: 'The World Book Encyclopedia', 1968, p G235. 'Godiva, Lady,' Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation