Godgifu, daughter of Æthelred the Unready

This page is for the English princess, for the Neopagan name for the Goddess see Robert Cochrane (witch).

Goda of England or Godgifu; (French: Godjifu; the Old English name Godgifu or Godgyfu meant "gift of God", Godiva was the Latinised; version; 1004 – c. 1047^[1]) was the daughter of King Ethelred the Unready and his second wife Emma of Normandy, and sister of King Edward the Confessor. She married firstly Drogo of Mantes, count of the Véxin, probably on 7 April 1024,^[2] and had sons by him:

• Ralph the Timid, earl of Hereford.
• Walter III, Count of the Vexin (d.1063), married Biota (d.1063), daughter of Herbert I of Maine, they both died in suspicious circumstances in the captivity of William Duke of Normandy, who in 1066 defeated Harold Godwinson and became William I of England.
• Fulk (d.1068)

She married secondly Eustace II, Count of Boulogne in 1035. This marriage was childless.

After the Norman conquest of England by William the Conqueror, the lands owned by Goda in Buckinghamshire were given to the Flemish-Norman knight Bertram de Verdun, lord of Farnham Royal, and the Breton knight Raoul, count of Fougères.

Notes

1. Tanner, Heather J. (2004). "Eustace (II) , count of Boulogne (d. c.1087)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/52359. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
2. Elisabeth van Houts, 'Edward and Normandy', in Richard Mortimer ed., Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend, The Boydell Press, 2009, p. 65. She dates Godgifu's death c.1056.

References

• Hynde, Thomas (ed). The Domesday Book: England's History Then and Now. (1995)