[Footnote 35: Camden, _Britannia_ (Gibson), 67. I am indebted to Mr Addy for this reference; _cf._ the story of the Tichbourne dole, Chambers, _Book of Days_, i. 167.] [Footnote 36: _Coventry Standard_, Jan. 15-16, 1909. The MS. (1684-1833) has passed into private hands, and I have never been able to see it.] [Footnote 37: Sir Lawrence Gomme explains the black Godiva by a reference to Pliny's account of the woad-stained British women, but see Chambers, _Mediæval Stage_, i. 125.] [Footnote 38: _Science of Fairy Tales_, 71-92. Mr Hartland was the first folklorist to submit the story to scientific investigation. He gained his local knowledge of the Southam black Godiva from the late W.E. Fretton of Coventry.] [Footnote 39: See _Dict. Nat. Biog._, _s.v._ "Godiva."] [Footnote 40: Hartland, _op. cit._, 77.] [Footnote 41: See _Dict. Nat. Biog._, _s.v._ "Godiva."] CHAPTER II _The Benedictine Monastery_ The Benedictine house was built in part upon the northern slope of a low hill, in part in the hollow through which the river Sherbourne flows. This was a situation well adapted for the building of a monastery; there was rich soil in the neighbourhood, good roads--both the Watling Street and the Foss Way ran within a few miles from the spot--and running water. The Sherbourne is but a small stream nowadays, but it was a more important watercourse in earlier times, and in the fifteenth century many precautions had to be taken "in eschewing peril of floods." The monks could stock Swanswell Pool[42] with fish, and plant their orchards or vineyards in or near the hollow in which the monastery lay. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL RUINS] Little remains of the minster save the bases of a few clustered pillars of the thirteenth century, the remains of the west end by the Blue Coat School at the north end of S. Michael's Churchyard, and the fragment of the north-west tower, now incorporated in a dwelling-house in New Buildings. Under the gardens and pleasant red brick eighteenth and nineteenth century houses of Priory Row, which give the churchyard the look of a cathedral close, diggers often come upon fragments of ancient masonry, showing how the cathedral stretched down the slope of the hill. Between the cathedral and the southern bank of the Sherbourne were the Priory buildings, with the cloister garth, locutorium or parlour, synodal chamber and grammar school,[43] which last had an endowed existence as early as 1303. [Illustration: CARVED MISERERE SEAT, S. MICHAEL'S CHURCH]