On one side of the hall is a
chapel; by it a large room or "bower" for the ladies; behind the hall a
round tower, seemingly the strong place of the whole house; on the other
side a kitchen; and stuck on to bower, kitchen, and every other principal
building, lean-to after lean-to, the uses of which it is impossible now to
discover. The house had grown with the wants of the family,--as many good
old English houses have done to this day. Round it would be scattered
barns and stables, in which grooms and herdsmen slept side by side with
their own horses and cattle; and outside all, the "yard," "garth," or
garden-fence, high earth-bank with palisades on top, which formed a strong
defence in time of war. Such was most probably the "villa," "ton," or
"town" of Earl Leofric, the Lord of Bourne, the favorite residence of
Godiva,--once most beautiful, and still most holy, according to the
holiness of those old times.
Now on a day--about the year 1054--while Earl Siward was helping to bring
Birnam wood to Dunsinane, to avenge his murdered brother-in-law, Lady
Godiva sat, not at her hall door, dealing food and clothing to her
thirteen poor folk, but in her bower, with her youngest son, a two-years'
boy, at her knee. She was listening with a face of shame and horror to the
complaint of Herluin, Steward of Peterborough, who had fallen in that
afternoon with Hereward and his crew of "housecarles.
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