It would not be right to assume, however, that the greater prominence and influence of woman outside of her home was a sudden emergence from former conditions. In so unsettled an era it became, however, a more general, more pronounced feature. We may find an earlier indication of the interest of the great lady in the affairs of her lord and in the welfare of his dependants, as well as of the advance of chivalrous sentiments, in the story of Lady Godiva. It was in 1040 that Leofric, Earl of Mercia, was besought by his wife, who was remarkable for her beauty and piety, to relieve his tenantry of Coventry of a heavy toll. Probably little inclined to grant her request, he imposed what he may have thought impossible terms, when he consented to her plea on condition that she would ride naked through the town. To his amazement, doubtless, the Lady Godiva accepted the condition; and Leofric faithfully carried out his agreement. The lady, veiled only by her lovely hair, rode through the streets; and to the honor of the good people of Coventry, it is said that they kept within doors and would not look upon their benefactress to embarrass her. One person only is said to have peeped from behind the curtain of his window, and the story runs that he was struck blind, or, according to another version, had his eyes put out by the wrathful people. This curious person was the "Peeping Tom of Coventry," whose name has become proverbial. Society develops in strata, so that the elevation of the women of the castles did not enable the women of the hovels to profit by conditions out of the range of their lives. The lower classes, or villains, which included the grades of society styled, in the Anglo-Saxon period, the freemen and the serfs, were the social antitheses of the society of the castles. The women of the lower class benefited not at all by the new dignity that was acquired by the women of the castles during the feudal régime; in fact, they suffered the imposition of new burdens and the exactions of a feudal practice which took the form of tribute, based on the persistent idea of the vassalage of their sex. The great middle class, which was to play such an important part in the social and industrial history of England, had not emerged as a separate section of the people of the country. But what the lady of the Norman castle obtained for her class through one phase of feudalism, the woman of the guild aided in securing by another in the centuries which marked the rule of the Angevin kings; and in both Norman and Angevin times the influence of the Church was constantly on the side of the womanhood of the country, and was probably a more potent force than any other, for the exaltation of woman was the one policy which proceeded on fixed principles.