Leofric Earl of Mercia

Leofric (d.1057), Earl of Mercia, was one of the three great earls who dominated late Anglo-Saxon England, a steady counterweight to Godwin of Wessex in the councils of Edward the Confessor. With his wife Godgifu he founded and endowed the abbey of Coventry; and it is this Godgifu whom legend remembers as Lady Godiva, riding through Coventry against her husband's taxes. The story is late; the marriage, the piety and the power are contemporary fact. Our line runs through their son Ælfgar.