Timeline of Influential Women

1000-1099

Lady Godiva

~Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who lived from 1040 to 1080.

~Inspired husband to establish monasteries in Coventry for the benefit of the people ("Godiva, Lady").

~Desired to free Coventry from heavy taxes imposed by her husband, Eric Leofric of Chester.

~Although her husband enjoined her from mentioning the subject of taxes again, she stubbornly persisted.

~Frustrated, her husband said, "Get on your horse and ride naked through the market place in front of all the people. If you do that I shall grant your request."

~Lady Godiva replied, "If I am willing to do this do I have your permission?" Her husband consented.

~Out of compassion for her people, Lady Godiva met her husband's challenge. She draped her hair over her body so only her legs were seen and rode through the town, escorted by two knights.

~Stunned, her husband kept his word and freed the town from all taxes.

~Hundreds of years later, Roger of Wendover documented the story and added a touch of his own, the infamous Peeping Tom. While all the other townspeople supposedly went indoors to give the Countess privacy, Tom spied on her (Deary 29).

~Born in 1122 in France, she was Queen of France (1137-1152) and Queen of England (1154-1204).

~Married King Louis VII in 1137, and begat two daughters with him. Adventured with him on the second Crusade and took three hundred women to fight and provide medical care for the soldiers. Agreed to annul marriage in 1152.

~Married King Henry II, with whom she bore five sons and three daughters, and gave England her land inheritance in France, causing a contention between England and France that lasted through the Middle Ages.

~Two sons, Richard I (the lion-hearted) and John I, became English kings.

~When her two sons, Richard and John, combated the King, she sided with them against her unfaithful husband. When they were unsuccessful, however, she was incarcerated until his death in 1189.

~When let out of jail, she became a powerful and influential person at court, for she granted amnesty to the imprisoned and secured Richard's succession to the throne.

~When Richard left to fight in the Third Crusade, Eleanor ruled in his place and put down John's attempt to assist the French in defeating the English.

~In 1194, she arbitrated peace between her two sons and included John in the line of succession to the throne.

~She influenced culture and education by bringing "famous poets, scholars, and musicians to her court," as well as founding "educational institutions."

~In order to establish peace with several countries in Europe, she betrothed five of her daughters to men in those respective lands.

~She retired to the Abbey of Fontevault in 1201 and died there in 1204 at the age of eighty-two (Rolka 19).

~Born in 1156, she reigned the feudal kingdom Georgia, whose boundaries were the Black Sea on the West, the Caspian Sea on the East, the Caucasus Mountains on the North, and the Armenias Mountains on the south.

~In 1178, her father, King Giorgi III promoted her to co-ruler and gave her the appellation "Mountain of God"

~She married Giorgi Bogolyubski in 1187 to produce an heir, but when they had no children, she sent him into exile. For the next twenty years, he led revolts against her, but each time he was caught, she took compassion on him and merely sent him back into exile.

~After she married David Sosland and bore two children, she focused on developing Georgia into a mighty nation.

~From 1200 to 1212, she led a series of successful military campaigns including the Battle of Basiani in which the Sultan of Turkey surrendered to her, and she then appointed her son, Giorgi, governor of the land she acquired from the Sultan's defeat.

~During the many battles she won, she made Christian Byzantanium a protectorate, "expanded her kingdom north beyond the Caucasus Mountains," and caused Geogia to develop arts and letters (Rolka 20).

~Born in 1353, she married Haakon VI of Norway at the age of ten and in 1370, begat a son, Olaf V.

~In 1375 Olaf became Denmark's king, in 1380 he became Norway's king, but died in 1387. Upon his death, his mother seized the throne.

~She annexed the country of Sweden to her growing kingdom when she defeated and imprisoned its German king, Albert of Mecklenburg.

~In order to gain support for the crown, she set up province sheriffs who locally governed their native territories.

~After reforming Denmark's currency, she built up the treasury through taxation and reclamation of estates that had once belonged to the throne.

~Her foreign affair policy was primarily neutrality, except when gaining lost Danish territory.

~Her ultimate goals were to create a unified and maintain "Scandinavian sovereignty" against expansion of the Germans.

~The union she contracted between the three countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark lasted 136 years, while the union between Sweden and Norway lasted over 400 years (Rolka 21).

~Born in 1412, she spent her childhood in the small town of Domremy in eastern France, which was constantly plundered by the Burgundians, Frenchmen allied with the English during the Hundred Years War.

~She first heard the voices of the Archangel Michael, and the martyrs Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret in her garden when she was eight years old. They commanded her to, "Go to church, be upright in all your ways, and you can rely on God's protection."

~She kept the voices secret for four years until they told her it was time to bring the Dauphin Charles to his anointing and lift the siege at Orleans.

~When the country was in despair, Captain Baudricourt finally relented and gave the horses and soldiers she asked for (Johnston).

~In 1429, she led the battle against the English around Orleans. During the battle, Joan was wounded in the shoulder by an arrow, which she had predicted the night before.

~In 1430, Joan joined the campaign and was captured by the English who in turn handed her over to a church for trial.

~After fourteen months, she was pronounced guilty of heresy, among many other things, and condemned to burn at the stake in a town square (Rolka 22).

~See text for more details.

~Born in Greenwich in 1533 to King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, she was given an extravagant Christening and her birth was celebrated with bonfires, although she was a girl.

~Her mother was beheaded on May 19, 1536 by an expert swordsman from France rather than an English ax-man. She was then considered illegitimate since the marriage was annulled (Bush 20).

~In 1544, her succession to the throne was restored by Parliament and she became queen in 1558.

~She solved religious unrest by forming the Church of England by the Elizabethan Compromise of 1559.

~Her many accomplishments included currency reforms, employment laws, and poverty relief.

~In order to maintain a balance of power between France and Spain, she did not marry a representative of either country and thus became known as the Virgin Queen.

~During her reign of peace, England developed industrially and economically, also increasing its colonial possessions.

~Literature and Arts flourished during her reign, with renowned writers and actors such as William Shakespeare and James Burbage (Rolka 26).

~See text for more information.

~Born around 1595, the youngest daughter of Powhatan, the Chief of the Algonquin Confederation of Indian tribes.

~When she was twelve years old, she prevented John Smith from being clubbed to death after he was taken prisoner by her father's warriors during one of John's journeys to map the surroundings of Jamestown.

~After establishing trade between Jamestown and the Indians, she was captured in 1612 by Captain Samuel Argall.

~During her captivity, she learned the English language, was baptized into Christianity, and married John Rolfe in 1614.

~In 1616, she accompanied her husband to England. During the trip, she was brought to King James I, proving that the natural inhabitants of the Americas could be civilized.

~On the night designated for her to return to America in 1617, she died from small pox and was buried in Gravesend, England.

~Today, many people claim that their ancestry is linked to Pocahontas and John's son, Thomas Rolfe (Rolka 28).

~She was born on May 2, 1729, the daughter of a minor German prince.

~In 1745, her father arranged an unhappy marriage between Catherine and Duke Peter of Holstein, who inherited the Russian throne in 1762.

~After causing dissent among his nobles, he was removed from the throne on July 9, 1762, and replaced by Catherine.

~To win the support of the nobles, she allowed them to avoid military service, granted them privileges, and gave gifts of land and service (Encarta 98).

~She improved Russia by extending the popularity of education, book publishing, journalism, architecture, and drama.

~In the area of education, she established an elementary school system and supported the first school for girls in Russia.

~After the Pugachav rebellion of 1773 to 1774, she instituted a local system of government and strengthened the power of local landlords with the Charter to the Nobility to prevent another peasant uprising.

~During her reign, she fought two wars with Turkey, hoping to conquer the Muslim Turks and set up an Orthodox Christian Empire. However, she died in 1796 before she could accomplish this goal (Compton's).

~She was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. In 1827, she moved Battenville, New York, and in 1845, she finally settled in Rochester ("Anthony, Susan Brownell").

~She taught school from ages fifteen to thirty.

~Participating in the temperance movement from 1848-53, she founded in New York the first Temperance Society in America in 1852.

~She was most renowned for the ability to gather many people from both genders for a common goal.

~During the Civil War, she was active in the Anti-Slavery Society and the Women's Loyal League for slave emancipation (Rolka 52).

~Despite many insults and jokes directed toward her, she adamantly worked for woman's rights. She even asked every president from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt for help.

~In 1872 she registered and voted in the presidential election. She refused to pay the one hundred dollar fine saying, "Taxation without representation is tyranny."

~During her lifetime she accomplished many things for the rights of women such as higher educational opportunities, the ability to work at almost any occupation, permission to control property and children, the right to hold public office, and suffrage ("Anthony, Susan B.").

~In 1888, she helped found the International Council of Women with representatives from forty-eight countries. She also helped write the first three volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage.

~She spoke at conventions until her death in 1906 in Rochester, New York.

~In 1878, Senator A. A. Sargent proposed the Susan B. Anthony amendment, which was ratified on August 26, 1920, as the nineteenth amendment.

~On July 2, 1979, the U.S. government issued the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, honoring her achievements and making her the first American woman with her picture on a circulated coin (Rolka 52).

~Born in 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, to Roman Catholic Albanian parents as Agnes Gonxha Bejaxhia.

~Her father was murdered when she was only seven years old (Chua-Eoan 88).

~Even after he was dead, Agnes often remembered her father's advise: "My daughter, never take a morsel of food that you are not prepared to share with others" (Clucas 21)

~When she was eighteen years old, she left her family to join the Roman Catholic Loretta Order in Dublin, Ireland.

~In 1929, she began her high school teaching career in the Loretta Convent in Calcutta, India. From her window, she could see daily the suffering of the people outside the convent walls.

~While riding on a train to her annual retreat in Darjeeling on September 10, 1946, she believed she received a calling from God to live with and minister to the impoverished people of Calcutta.

~After the pope granted her permission to quit the convent, she established a new order called the Missionaries of Charity.

~Mother Teresa and her followers believed that "the poor symbolized Christ and that by serving them, [they] were serving Christ" (Rolka 95)

~She never kept anything nice for herself: when the pope gave her a car, she sold it to build a community for lepers outside the city of Calcutta (Lee 36).

~After establishing the Nirmal Hriday Home for Dying Destitutes in the city of Calcutta, she focused on extending her work worldwide.

~Among many recognitions from many countries, she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 from the United States.

~Sadly, Mother Teresa died in September 1997, at the age of eighty-seven (Rolka 95).

~See text for more details

Introduction