Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 1 (of 2)

An engraving of this picture is prefixed to the edition of Evelyn to which I have just referred. It quite embodies the spirit of Tennyson's lines to another Margaret:

It may be easily imagined that with such a temperament she bent her mind with extreme difficulty to what she considered her duty—namely, to be in the Court, and yet not of the Court—faithfully discharging all the duties allotted to her, and preserving a cheerful face, though her heart was aching at the recklessness and sensuality with which she was surrounded. And yet, says Evelyn, 'Arethusa pass'd thro' all those turbulent waters without soe much as the least staine or tincture in her christall; with her Piety grew up her Witt, which was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment and Eloquence soe exterordnary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing and lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that after few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Constellation of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles.'

But her release from her uncongenial duties was at length, with difficulty, obtained; and she retired to her friends, Lord and Lady Berkeley (relatives of her future husband), at Berkeley House.[158] Evelyn, writing in his usual rapturous way whenever he had anything to say of his exquisite Margaret, gives the following pretty picture of her flight from the Court:

She afterwards moved to lodgings which Evelyn himself built for her, 'over against his Majestie's wood-yard in Scotland Yard,' at Whitehall; settling here, as he says, 'with that pretty and discreete oeconomye soe naturall to her; and never was there such an household of faith, never Lady more worthy of the blessings she was entering into, who was soe thankfull to God for them.' Her housekeeping and the mode in which she kept her faultless accompts are all lovingly dwelt upon; and, indeed, she seems to have been a bright example of the Wordsworthian line, of

'Pure religion, teaching household laws.'

At length, after many tormenting misgivings as to whether she was justified before God in so doing, she married Sidney Godolphin, 'that singular and silent lover,' whose gravity and temper at Court all knew so well, on 16th May, 1675, at the Temple Church. The marriage was a private one, for reasons which are by no means clear, and for which even Evelyn can hardly quite forgive her; though he says, 'If ever two were created for each other, and marriages, as they say, made in heaven, this happy paire were of the number.' Two or three years after their marriage she was brought to bed at Whitehall, of her first-born son, Francis—to the great joy of herself and her husband. But shortly afterwards a fever with alarming symptoms set in, causing the following touching letter to be written by her husband to Evelyn:

The immovable man was moved to bitter agony now; and worse was to come: for 'sweet, pale Margaret' soon passed away to a world more worthy of her than that in which her lot had been cast. Evelyn says:

I doubt whether there is anything more tender and dolorous in our literature than the following letter which she addressed to her husband—her 'deare man,' 'the husband that above all living I vallue,' as she used affectionately to call him. The letter was not found till after her death:

It is scarcely necessary to say that her last wish was religiously complied with, and in Breage Church her remains lie, under a plain marble slab, awaiting the Resurrection of the Just.[161] Her husband, with some of his brothers and sisters, attended the funeral (the cost of which is said to have been about £1000), and on her coffin was soldered a copper plate, thus inscribed:

While I write, I hear of an intention to dedicate the funds collected at this year's (1881) Harvest Festival at St. Breage, towards the cost of a spire to surmount the church tower, in memory of the saintly Margaret Godolphin, and her Ruth-like devotion to her husband and her husband's people.

But to return to her solemn and now solitary husband—who never married again—and whom we left installed in the favour of a King almost as taciturn as his great ancestor, or as the Minister himself. More troubled times were at hand for him. Party spirit, and, above all, jealousy at his rise and his secure position close to the throne, were at work; and we accordingly find him assailed in the House of Commons by Hambden and others; but, whatever he may have felt, rarely condescending a reply. He was made Third Commissioner of the Treasury in 1689, and First Commissioner in each of the three following years; and, the King, on the death of Mary his consort, going across the sea to head the Confederate Army in the Netherlands, Godolphin was made one of the Nine Justices for managing the affairs of the Realm; still, however, retaining his post at the Treasury. This state of things continued, with slight variations, till the close of William's reign, when the astute statesman left his post for a while, in order, as it was supposed, to facilitate his re-appointment on the accession of Anne.

In 1702, only a few days after she ascended the throne, the Queen made Godolphin Lord High Treasurer of England. He accepted the post reluctantly—yet he 'conducted the Queen,' says Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 'with the care and tenderness of a father, or a guardian, through a state of helpless ignorance'—'the weight of affairs now lying chiefly on his shoulders;' and those were times when wariness and courage were as essential as at almost any period in the history of our country. One of his first steps was to induce Anne, out of her somewhat scanty resources, to subscribe £100,000 towards the expenses of the new war; to abolish the sale of Places; and to settle her firstfruits and tenths for the augmentation of small benefices (the origin of the well-known Queen Anne's Bounty)—steps which, though they of course involved heavy pecuniary sacrifice, were highly popular with the nation, and tended to enthrone a Queen in the hearts of her people.

He was much interested in endeavouring to carry out the Treaty for the Union with Scotland, and his brother Charles, now M.P. for Helston, and First Commissioner of Customs, was one of the Commissioners appointed for the purpose; but their efforts for the time failed; the weight of the English National Debt, and the repugnance of the Scotch to Episcopacy, being the main difficulties in the way.

It would occupy too much space to describe in detail—even if it were now possible to do so—the intricate policy of Lord Godolphin and his firm friend, the great Marlborough—another West-country man, born at Ashe in Devonshire—at this juncture. Suffice it to say, that the famous warrior absolutely refused the command of our armies unless Sidney Godolphin was at the Treasury: he was the only man in England, Marlborough said, on whom he could implicitly rely for being punctually furnished with the indispensable 'sinews of war.' Nor would it be profitable to enter very deeply into the party politics of the time. The difficulties which the great general and the skilled financier had to contend with were legion. Rochester, the Queen's maternal uncle, had to be got rid of; and afterwards 'the careless Harley,' who yearned to be independent of Godolphin—a far more difficult task, and for succeeding in which, I believe, Anne never forgave him. On this occasion Godolphin wrote to his quondam colleague, 'I am sorry to have lost the good opinion I once had of you; but I must believe my own senses. I am very far from having deserved this of you. May God forgive you for it!' The bitter feelings which these transactions produced may be seen in the 'Secret History of Arlus (Harley),' and in John Lydgate's 'The Beasts in Power.'[162] Again, in 1705, Charles Cæsar attacked Godolphin in the House of Commons for keeping up, together with Marlborough and others, a treasonable correspondence with the Court of St. Germains; and the speaker used language so intemperate that he was committed to the Tower for the remainder of that session. The fact was that the correspondence had taken place—at least so it has been said—with the full privity and sanction of William, who is even reported to have expressed his admiration of the results of Godolphin's 'coquetting' with the exiled James and his French Court.

Attacks upon his consistency and his principles all failed; for, as Bishop Burnet has observed, 'The credit of the nation was never raised so high in any age, nor so sacredly maintained:' and so a new mode of annoying him was invented in an attempt to depreciate his abilities. He was thus satirized in 'Faction Displayed':

But, notwithstanding all this, the great Minister pursued his successful career—as a huge mastiff passes on his way regardless of the yelping curs at his heels. His honours increased. In 1704 he was made a Knight of the Garter;[164] in the following year he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of his native county, in the room of John, Lord Grenville; and about the same time his son, (whose birth, as we have seen, had cost his mother her life,) being now seven-and-twenty years of age, became Lord Warden of the Stannaries.

Congratulatory addresses were from time to time sent up to the Throne on the success of the English arms on the Continent. In some of them reference is specially made to Godolphin's share in the national triumph; and when the victory of Ramillies on the 23rd May, 1706, was celebrated, Godolphin was selected to accompany the Queen to the thanksgiving service at St. Paul's on the 27th of the following month. That great battle, which caused the French to evacuate Flanders, and secured the best part of the Spanish Netherlands to Austria, compelled France to offer terms of peace, which Godolphin wisely rejected; for three or four successful sieges were necessary in order to secure Flanders. But this, too, like almost every other action of his life, was afterwards brought forward by his enemies as a charge against him. And here is perhaps a convenient place to refer to another of his acts as a War Minister. It will be remembered that at the beginning of the eighteenth century all the seaboard of America north of the St. Lawrence was in French possession. But in 1710 Godolphin granted six ships and a few hundred soldiers, with a sort of general commission, to one Nicholson, who, in May of that year, compelled the garrison at Port Royal (afterwards known as Annapolis) to surrender; thus acquiring for England the whole peninsula of Nova Scotia, and giving to the then capital of the province a name which will always associate the place with the memories of Queen Anne and her illustrious chief Minister of State. It cannot be supposed from his silence under attack—and he almost invariably held his tongue—that he did not writhe under his oppressors. 'Oh!' he wrote to Marlborough, 'a slave in the galleys is in paradise compared with me!'

Another object, and one worthy of the great statesman's ambition, was at length happily accomplished about this time—the union of England and Scotland;[165] a matter in which he manifested unusual zeal and activity. The Commissioners, wisely selected by Godolphin—holding their meetings at his official residence, which stood on the site of Henry VIII.'s cock-pit at Whitehall—at length happily brought it about 'to her Majesty's great satisfaction.' It was on the occasion of giving her assent to this Bill that Anne uttered the noble words, which may have been penned for her by Godolphin himself, 'I desire and expect from my subjects of both nations that henceforth they act with all possible respect and kindness to one another, that so it may appear to all the world that they are heartily disposed to become one people.'

It is pleasant to be able now to quote a friendly critic, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of inserting the following lines by Dr. Garth, apparently in reply to an attack made upon Godolphin, entitled 'Arlus and Odolphus,' in which the real names of those alluded to are easily seen through their thin disguise:

We must pass briefly over his share in the Occasional Conformity Bill, in which he was said by some to have felt in one way and voted in another; and also his unfortunate attempt to provide for some poor Palatines both in London and at Godolphin Town in Scilly: at the latter place he proposed to maintain them as soldiers for the garrison. But, notwithstanding that the project was abandoned, it raised a hornets' nest about his ears. Some of his accusers (see the Medley, 11th June, 1711) asserted that Ministers had appropriated to their own use some of the thirty-five millions voted by Parliament; and more than one hot-brained partizan even clamoured that Godolphin's head should pay the price of the maladministration of his office. The Weekly Examiner (No. 47) stated that the Ministry had borrowed money at 5 per cent., whilst they charged the unhappy creditors upon the bills assigned to them from 20 to 40 per cent. These and other similar lying accusations were some of them pronounced by both Houses of Parliament to be 'false and scandalous;' whilst others were promptly and thoroughly disposed of in a pamphlet written by Walpole; but the slanderous scribblers, and still more the irresponsible advisers and gossips round Anne's toilet-table and at her music-parties, on whom the Queen had latterly taken a fancy for relying, did to some extent attain their end by discrediting for a while her responsible Ministers.

And here it should be said that Godolphin, though a Tory at heart—for 'a Whig was his aversion'—at once discerned the rising genius of Walpole, favoured him with his protection, and recommended him to Marlborough; and, when our great statesman was dying, he said to the Duchess of Marlborough, who stood by his bedside, 'If you ever forsake that young man, and if souls are permitted to return from the grave to the earth, I will appear to you and reproach you for your conduct.'

Both Marlborough and Godolphin loudly and vehemently protested against the line of conduct which Anne had adopted in slighting their counsels, whilst she, with characteristic sturdiness, refused to listen to their reproofs and entreaties. Wyon gives a letter from Godolphin to the Queen on the subject of the appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury (the 'King of Hearts') vice the Marquis of Kent, as Chamberlain—the like of which, he thinks, can scarcely ever before have been addressed to a sovereign by one of her subjects, observing that 'He reproached her in round terms for permitting herself to be directed by a private ministry. Her conduct, he said, would draw ruin upon herself and the kingdom, and would force every man in the Council, except the Duke of Somerset, to run from it as he would from the plague. He put it to her what effect an entire change of Ministers was likely to have upon her allies abroad, and whether the war was likely to be carried on well by people who had been averse to it from the beginning.' Nevertheless, Godolphin loyally assured the Queen that, whatever course she determined to adopt, never would he in any way offer the least obstruction to her or to her Ministers.

Need it be added that after passages such as these the star of Godolphin paled? To what avail was it that, in 1706, he had been made Earl of Godolphin and Viscount Rialton? His life was a burden to him, as we have already seen; he was sick of the popularity which Sacheverell's[166] violent diatribes against the Government had secured for him; and he was weary of the intrigues of the discontented Whigs, and the taunts and sneers of the ultra-Tories. His nerves were shattered from constantly walking among many pitfalls; his mind was distracted by the irksome dilemmas with which he had for so long a time been compelled to deal; and he could no longer brook the black, unforgiving looks of his royal mistress. Yet he might have truly exclaimed, as Sir Robert Walpole did of himself afterwards, 'My crime is my long continuance in office: in other words, the long exclusion of those who now combine against me.' Was it a greater relief to him or to her when, in August, 1710, the Queen dismissed Godolphin from his post, and desired him, according to one account, that 'instead of bringing the Staff of Office to her, he would break it, as easier to them both.' Swift says that in doing so, the Earl flung the pieces into the fire, an act which greatly annoyed the Queen. And with Godolphin fell his son—then Cofferer to the Household—and his son's wife, the Lady Henrietta, one of the Ladies of the Queen's Bedchamber.

The time had come at length for Harley and St. John to reap the fruits of their triumph; and, though Marlborough[167] had more than once warded off the blow—not only for the sake of the friendship and the family ties[168] which had so long subsisted between him and the Minister, but for the sake of Queen and country—that blow fell at last. But the result was terrible also to the financial credit of England. The Treasury was put into commission; and vast was the commotion in Change Alley. Bank shares at once fell from 140 to 110, and soon to 106; whilst the Bank refused a loan of £400,000 to the new Government. 'That Godolphin should retire,' wrote Marlborough to his Duchess on 1st October, 1706, 'is impossible, unless it be resolved that everything must go ill abroad, as well as at home; for, without flattery, his reputation is as great in all Courts as well as at home; that such a step would go a great way with Holland, in particular, to make their peace with France, which at this time must be fatal to the liberties of Europe.'

Then came the Report of the Commissioners of Public Accounts (17th March, 1711-12), in which they stated, but did not dare to print their statement, that there were certain irregularities in the dealings of the English with the Scotch Treasury; and Godolphin's oath was confronted by another to the contrary from the Earl of Glasgow. Burnet describes this affair as an effusion of 'Tory malice,' and adds that 'the Earl of Godolphin's unblemished integrity was such that no imputation of any sort could be fastened upon him.'

To what could all this misery tend but to the breaking up of a constitution never one of the strongest,—and to the 'last scene of all, that ends this strange, eventful history'? Sidney Godolphin died, after a long and excruciating illness, at the Duke of Marlborough's house near St. Albans, on the 15th September, 1712, in the sixty-eighth year of his age; and his death so deeply affected Marlborough, that he left his native country, which had been as ungrateful to him as to his dearest friend, to live 'beyond sea.'

Four Dukes—namely, Richmond, Schomberg, Devonshire, and Marlborough—were the pall-bearers when the remains of one of our most illustrious Cornishmen were interred at night in Westminster Abbey. Here, in the south aisle of the nave, his monument was raised by his daughter-in-law, Lady Henrietta Churchill, who, in default of male issue, afterwards became Duchess of Marlborough, on her father's death in 1722, and who found a resting-place within the same venerable walls, twenty-one years afterwards.[169] Of her husband, Francis, the second and last Earl of Godolphin, there is nothing of much importance to record;[170] the history of the Godolphins may be said to end with that of the illustrious Sidney. Yet from the union, in 1698, of the second Earl and Lady Henrietta, some of our noblest families derive their ancestry. Anne, then Princess, offered in the most delicate terms to endow the bride with a marriage portion of £10,000, but could not prevail upon the Lady Henrietta's parents to accept more than half that sum; they contributing £5,000 themselves.

One daughter, named after her mother, Henrietta, married Thomas, Duke of Newcastle, but they had no offspring. The correspondence between the Duchess of Marlborough and Sir John Vanbrugh on the subject of the marriage between Lady Henrietta Godolphin and the Duke of Newcastle, forms an appendix to the second volume of Mrs. Thomson's 'Memoirs of the Duchess of Marlborough.' Lady Henrietta had £22,000 to her portion, procured by the Duchess, according to her own account. But for all sorts of small family gossip, often of an amusing nature, the Egerton and Additional MSS. in the British Museum should be consulted—especially Additional MSS. 28,052.

The Lady Mary Godolphin, eventually sole heiress of the family, married Thomas Osborne, fourth Duke of Leeds, and from them sprang an illustrious succession, which it hardly falls within my province to describe; a similar remark applies to members of other branches of the family. The name of Godolphin has, however, been carefully retained by those in whose veins Godolphin blood still flows; as in the cases of Francis, fifth son of the Duke of Leeds, and Baron Godolphin; Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, who died in 1861; and in those of more than one Duke of Leeds, including the ninth and present Duke, George Godolphin.

A portrait bust adorns Godolphin's marble cenotaph in the south aisle of the nave at Westminster; and there is also a fine portrait of the Great Minister, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, in the collection of the Earl of St. Germans, of which J. Smith has scraped a mezzotint. They both convey the impression which the story of his life would lead one to expect. Thoughtfulness, reserve mingled with sadness, and power, were the chief characteristics of his countenance as of his career. And a like reticence seems to have influenced biographical writers; for, so far as I am aware, there is no good monograph life of Sidney Godolphin. His gloomy expression was notorious; it procured for him more than one nickname, and has been handed down to us in grey-eyed, savage-faced, 'miserrimus' Swift's line:

'And wine cheers up Godolphin's cloudy face.'[171]

I do not, however, believe that there is any reason for supposing that he drank to excess. For literature and the fine arts he cared little; but he was a devoted and successful admirer of the fair sex—notwithstanding the personal drawback of his face being much disfigured by small-pox; and Swift tells us that Godolphin would 'sometimes scratch out a song in praise of his mistress, with his pencil and card.' His devoted and romantic admiration of Mary of Modena was a frequent subject of remark; and he was always sending her little presents 'such as ladies love.' Gamble, he certainly did; but it has been said, by himself as well as by Burnet, that he took to cards so much as he did, in order to avoid the necessity of talking—a thing which he detested having to do. Cock-fighting and horse-racing were very favourite amusements with him, as with so many others of that time; and at Newmarket, during the racing season, he used to keep open house. His son seems to have had a similar love for the turf; and to the latter we are indebted for the introduction into England of the famous Godolphin Arab. This horse had a curious history. He was presented by some Arab chief to Louis XIV., but was not admired by the French Monarch, and was ultimately condemned to cart-work; but the keeper of an English coffee tavern recognised the merits of the animal, brought him to England, and sold him to Godolphin.

The details of the great Minister's sporting expenditure were known only to himself; it was generally believed that he won, both on the turf and at the card-table; but this at least is certain, that, notwithstanding his long tenure of office, and his having been left £5,000 a year by his brother, Sir William, he died very poor; indeed, the Duchess of Marlborough endorsed on his letter of dismissal from his office, that Sidney Godolphin, Lord High Treasurer of England, left scarcely enough money to pay his funeral expenses. The following is the endorsement referred to:

It may not be out of place to note here, that Mrs. A. T. Thomson has vindicated, in a most spirited and successful manner, the charge, brought by some of the scandalmongers of the day, of a liaison between the Duchess and Godolphin.

And yet, notwithstanding his own poverty, so far as regarded the public weal hardly ever was there a statesman of more reliable, cool judgment, or a more skilled political economist; nor did anyone possess in a higher degree, says Mr. Wyon, the then rare virtue of incorruptible integrity.

Although Godolphin had been the trusted Minister of Sovereigns of so various temperaments—holding his own with them all—yet that he was no sycophant or hypocrite is clear from his having run counter to the wishes of both Charles II. and James II., by voting for the Exclusion Bill, and by favouring the suggestion of a Regency even when the accession of William III. seemed inevitable. Men seemed to have felt that in Godolphin's hands they were safe. We have seen the effect which his fall produced amongst the financiers of London; and in the concluding sentence of one of Evelyn's letters (addressed though it was to Godolphin himself) we find, what is no doubt a true echo of the regard in which he was generally held:

Well might Swift write in one of his letters to Stella, dated 18th Sept., 1712: 'The Whigs have lost a great support in the Earl of Godolphin. It is a good jest to hear the Ministers talk of him with humanity and pity, because he is dead, and can do them no more hurt.' Lady Henrietta Godolphin never forgave Swift for his way of writing about her father-in-law. She, as we have seen, cut him at a card-party at Lady Clarges', just as sturdy, honest Dr. Johnson cut him in the street.

Godolphin's character has thus been sketched by another hand; and with it the name and the fame of Sidney Godolphin will always be indissolubly joined: 'He was of quick apprehension and wonderful dispatch; almost unerring judgment ... of few words, but great Truth: few promises but strict performance ... by nature grave, reserved and taciturn, but without arrogance or scorn of others; and when he most relaxed and let himself into the greatest freedoms, they were such as might be told abroad without any hazard of his fame or Virtue.'

Bishop Burnet has thus summed up his character and career:

But Courts are different from other places; and we have seen that in the Court of Anne, the memory of Godolphin's virtues was 'written on water.' Had he lived but two years longer he might, like Marlborough, have once more been restored to Royal favour at the Court of George I., and in yet another reign have been again the First Minister of the Crown of England.

END OF VOL. I.

Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.