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Mario de la Fuente Under the reign of Edward III, known as The Confessor, the small village of Coventry, in the centre of Great Britain, was suffering a huge crisis due to the abussive taxes and fees that the major, Leofric the Earl of Mercia, has imposed to the inhabitants of the city. Leofric was known to be a hard and greedy man, whose main interest was to have more and more money. In fact, when the coventrians asked him for a reduction in those taxes, instead of reducing or mainteining, he raised them.
However, the wife of Leofric, Godgifu, was much more kind and friendly than his husband. For that reason, when she saw how the people of Coventry were begging for some bread to eat, Godgifu asked Leofric to reduce the taxes that the coventrians should pay. At the beginning, his husband said no repeatedly, but his wife kept trying to convince him, until one day Leofric acceded to reduce the taxes from the people of Coventry if his wife carried out this offer: she had to walk by his horse totally naked through the village of Coventry the next market day. Unexpectedly, Godgifu accepted the proposal, but before accomplishing the task, she concluded a deal with the conventrians by which all the people of Coventry would stay in his houses with the blinds down at the day and hour agreed. However, one of the tailors of the city didn’t respect that deal, and when Godgifu went past his house, he looked through one of the holes of his blind. After this, he became purblind of his right eye, and the people of Coventry nicknamed him as Peeping Tom, what gave origin to the expressions voyeur and peep. Apart from this curiosity, the fact is that Leofric, impressed with the act of goodness that his wife had accomplished, reduced the taxes and fees imposed to the coventrians and became a more kind major until his death. Therefore, Godgifu was known from that point on as Godiva, which mean “gift of god”, and the inhabitants of the city financed a equestrian statue to remember his rescuer.
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