THE GODOLPHINS OF GODOLPHIN,
STATESMEN, JURISTS, AND DIVINES.
'A Godolphin was never known to want wit; a Trelawny, courage; or a Grenville, loyalty.'—Old Cornish Saying.
'Certes ,' says Hals, 'from the time that this family was seised of Godolphin, such a race of famous, flourishing, learned, valiant, prudent men have served their prince and country, in the several capacities of members of parliament, justices of the peace, deputy-lieutenants, sheriffs,[146] colonels, captains, majors, and other officers, both military and civil, as scarce any other family this country hath afforded; which I do not mention (for that my great-grandmother on the one side, the wife of Sir John Arundell, of Tolverne, knight, was daughter of Sir Francis Godolphin, knight, sheriff of Cornwall, 21st Elizabeth), but as their just character and merit; and I challenge the envious justly to detract from the same.'
Without stopping to inquire whether or not Hals's great-grandmother was not Ann the sister of Sir Francis Godolphin (instead of his daughter), that gossiping historian's claim on behalf of his ancestry may at once be conceded; indeed, it is very singular that he did not specify one of the family who lived much nearer his own time, and whose illustrious name makes those of the other Godolphins 'pale their (comparatively) ineffectual fires.' We shall, however, come to treat in his proper place of Sidney Godolphin, the friend of Marlborough, the trusted Prime Minister (for so he might be called) of James II., of William III. and of Anne, and for many years the moving though almost silent spirit of English politics.
It will be convenient to commence our remarks by a description of the family seat where they had settled for so long a period that Colonel Vivian, in his genealogical table, has been obliged to commence the pedigree with John, Lord of Godolphin, 'sans date;' but probably he flourished about the time of Henry III. or Edward I.
Godolphin, which gives its name to a high hill about half-a-mile to the south-west of the house, is situated in the parish now called Breage; and in the parish church, so named after the Irish St. Breaca, as well as in numerous other churches and churchyards of western Cornwall,[147] lie the bones of many a Godolphin, while their helmets—one of them surmounted by the 'canting' crest of a dolphin—hang rusting 'in monumental mockery' over some of the tombs. The remains of the mansion (now occupied as a spacious and comfortable farmhouse), the many roads of approach to it, the antique gardens, and the broad, terraced hedges, still testify to its ancient importance. For a place of much consideration it evidently was, even down to the time of Sidney Godolphin, and later. Those were days when the only newspaper which came to so remote a corner of England—and which was procured weekly, together with his despatches (whilst he was in Cornwall), by the Lord Treasurer's own special messenger to Exeter—lay on the table in the hall at Godolphin, now called the King's Room, for the benefit of the neighbouring clergy and gentry. Dr. Borlase gives a more or less conjectural view of the house in its glory, surrounded by its park and groves; and what is supposed to have been a view of it was found on a panel in Pengerswick Castle; but its glories have long departed. Yet, although Godolphin has not vanished from off the face of the earth, like Killigrew, the early abode of the Killigrews in St. Erme, and the two Stows, the residence of the Grenvilles of Kilkhampton, sufficient remains to indicate to the passerby that here may once have lived a family as distinguished as that to whom Hals so proudly refers. The surface of the surrounding landscape is now scarred by mines and clay-works; and the little stream, crossed just below the house by Godolphin Bridge, is discoloured by mine-refuse, disfiguring instead of beautifying the scene.
'No greater Tynne Workes yn al Cornwal then be on Sir Wylliam Godolcan's ground,' wrote Leland, and his statement long held true. It was remarked by the late W. J. Henwood in 1843, that in eighteen years Wheal Vor, an adjacent mine, had raised tin to the value of a million and a quarter sterling, of which £100,000 was profit to the adventurers. To be a steward of the Godolphins was held to be a sure method of attaining wealth and influence; indeed, there is a humorous story told of one of the Godolphin ladies' excusing her late appearance at the dinner-table one day by saying that she had been down to the smelting-house 'to see the cat eat the dolphin;' the allusion being to the respective marks on the Godolphin tin and that smelted at the same time by Coke, the steward, who bore cats on his coat-of-arms. The Godolphin of the period thereupon introduced some much-needed reforms in the management of his tin business.
About a mile to the south of the house, and rising nearly 600 feet high—a considerable elevation in western Cornwall—rises Tregoning (or more properly, Treconan) Hill—the dwelling of Conan—from whose summit, looking to the south-west, the eye commands a vast stretch of waters, over which the sailor might pass to the West Indies without seeing land, unless he chose to touch at the Azores. Nearer at hand, and seeming almost under our feet, lie the noble curves of the Mount's Bay, with, for a central feature, the rocky islet—'both land and island twice a day,' as Carew says—on which stand the Castle and Chair of St. Michael—'Kader Mighel'—still looking
'Tow'rd Namancos and Bayonas' hold.'
Turning our gaze towards the north-west, we see sapphire waves roll on the golden sands which fringe the shores of St. Ives Bay; and, towards the west, the Land's End district so melts into the grey haze of the Atlantic, that it would be as hard to say where the land ended and the sea began, as it would be now to gather the whole truth as to the lost land of Lyonesse, traditionally reported to have been submerged between Bolerium and the Isles of Scilly.
Such were the surroundings of Godolphin. The building itself, originally a castle or fortified residence of some sort, was in ruins in the days of Edward IV. William of Worcester, in 1478, says of it:
'Castellum Godollon dirutum in villa Lodollon'; and Leland, in the days of Henry VIII., describes it in the following words:
'Carne Godolcan on the Top of an Hille, wher is a Diche, and there was a Pile and principal Habitation of the Godolcans. The Diche yet apperith, and many Stones of late Time hath beene fetchid thens. It is a 3 Miles from S. Michael's Mont by Est North Est.'
Rebuilt as Godolphin Hall in the days of Elizabeth, it appeared as a quadrangular mansion, with a fine portico of white granite along the north front, constructed by Francis, the second Earl; but this was the last flickering of its lamp. The rooms over the portico were, it is said, never fitted up, and the mansion of the Godolphins is now occupied by Mr. Rosewarne, a zealous guardian of its crumbling walls.
Concerning the etymology of the name there has been much dispute. Some have claimed for it a Phœnician origin, and said that the word signifies 'a land of tin'—certainly a not inappropriate derivation. Hals is not very dogmatic (as he often is) as to the meaning. He thinks it may mean 'God's Downs,' an 'altogether wooded down or place of springs,' and utterly repudiates Carew's suggestion that it means 'a white eagle.' Others have suggested 'Goon Dolgan'—Dolgan's Down. This, at least, is clear, that the name, as applied to persons, has had more than one narrow escape of becoming extinct. Once, towards the close of the fourteenth century, or early in the fifteenth century, when Ellinor Godolphin married John Rencie; but her husband assumed the patronymic of his wife. Up to that time, and, indeed, for many generations afterwards, we constantly find the Godolphins intermarrying with good old Cornish families, many of whom are now extinct. I find in their family tree such names as Trevanger, Trewledick, Antrewan, Prideaux, Tremrow, Carminowe, Erisey, Bevill, Killigrew, Trenouth, Cararthyn, Carankan, Tredeneck, Pendarves, Carew, Grenville, Arundell, St. Aubyn, Boscawen, Hoblyn, Molesworth, etc. In short, there are very few Cornish families of any distinction in whose veins the blood of the Godolphins of Godolphin did not mingle.
The first Godolphin of note (although, according to Lipscombe, they came in with the Conqueror) would seem to have been one who also bore the ill-omened name of Knava; and who, in 1504, was, as Hals tells us, 'struck Sheriff' of Cornwall. King Henry VII., Hals goes on to say, 'declared his great liking of that gentleman in all circumstances for the said office, but discovered as much dislike of his name after the English,—not understanding the import thereof in Cornish,—and so further said, that as he was pater patriæ, he would trans-nominate him to Godolphin, whereof he was lord; and accordingly caused or ordered that in his letters-patent under the broad seal of England, for being Sheriff of Cornwall, he should be styled or named John Godolphin of Godolphin, Esqre, and by that name he accounted at the year's end with that King for his office in the exchequer, and had his acquittance from thence, as appears from the record in the Pipe office there.' Another Cornish gentleman who bore the name of Erisey was, it will be remembered (see the story of the Killigrews), also considered, by James I., to be unfortunate in his patronymic; but in his case the family name remained unchanged until it became extinct.
Sheriff John's son, Sir William, Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, was also sheriff of the county in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth. He was a warrior of note, and a favourite of bluff King Hal, 'who,' Polwhele says, 'for his services conferred on him the honor of knighthood, and constituted Sir William warden and chief steward of the Stannaries. He lived to a great age, and was several times chosen one of the Knights of the Shire for Cornwall in the Parliaments of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. He likewise acquired much fame by his conduct and intrepidity in several military commands, particularly at the siege of Bologne.' Carew ranks Sir William among the Worthies of Cornwall, saying: 'He demeaned himself very valiantly beyond the seas; as appeared by the scars he brought home; no less to the beautifying of his fame, than the disfiguring of his face.' Thomas Godolphin, his brother, was also present at the above-named siege, 'and on Thursday, the 14th August, 1544, he, Mr. Harper, and Mr. Culpepper were hurt with one shot from the town.'
Whether it was this Sir William, or his son (who bore the same name and title), who distinguished himself by his 'valiant carriage' against the Irish rebels towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, is not quite clear; but I am inclined to think it must have been the latter, as the first Sir William was gathered to his fathers in the year 1570, and was buried at Breage.
It was the former Sir William's brother Thomas who took for his first wife a Grenville, and from them descended, for three generations, those Godolphins who probably led happy lives—for (so far as I am aware) they have 'no history'—and whose Christian name at least would imply their peaceful careers,—for there were three Gentle Godolphins in succession. But from Thomas's second union, with Katherine Bonython, sprang the more famous members of the family. One of these was Sir Francis,[148] Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, who was knighted in 1580: he was with his father and uncle at Boulogne, and was the contemporary and friend of Richard Carew, whom he helped in writing the 'Survey of Cornwall.'
Carew thus refers to his colleague:
'This Hill (Godolphin) hath, for divers descents, supplied those gentlemen's bountiful minds with large means accruing from their tin-works, and is now possessed by Sir Francis Godolphin, knight, whose zeal in religion, uprightness in justice, providence in government, and plentiful house-keeping, have won him a great and reverent reputation in his country; and these virtues, together with his services to Her Majesty, are so sufficiently known to those of highest place, as my testimony can add little light thereunto: but by his labours and inventions[149] in tin matters, not only the whole country hath felt a general benefit, so as the several owners have thereby gotten very great profit out of such refuse works, as they before had given over for unprofitable; but Her Majesty hath also received increase of her customs by the same, at least to the value of £10,000. Moreover, in those works which are of his own particular inheritance, he continually keepeth at work 300 persons, or thereabouts; and the yearly benefit, that out of those his works accrueth to Her Majesty, amounteth, communibus annis, to £1000 at least, and sometimes to much more.'
And there is one other little episode of Cornish history with which the name of Sir Francis Godolphin will always be associated: the repulse of the Spaniards from Penzance in 1595.
There was an old Cornish prophecy which ran thus:
signifying that there should land upon the rock of Merlyn (at Mousehole), those that would burn Paul Church, Penzance, and Newlyn. And so it fell out that, during a fog, at dawn on the 23rd July, four Spanish galleys landed 200 men, armed with pike and shot, who burnt all the houses at Mousehole as they passed, and at length set fire to Paul Church itself. The peaceable inhabitants, being then only about 100 in number, and 'meanly weaponed,' as Carew says, 'fled on the approach of the buccaneers, but were rallied by Sir Francis Godolphin on Penzance Western Green, and proceeded to attack the enemy, who, however, managed to regain their boats, in which they now anchored off another little fishing-village—Newlyn. Here they landed 400 pike and shot, and marched upon Penzance, Sir Francis endeavouring to intercept them. But the flanking fire from the galleys was too galling for the poor Cornish folk, and (though none were seriously hurt) they gave way, dispersing in various directions, and some of them flying into the town of Penzance. At the market-place, which is in about the centre of the town, Sir Francis ordered them to make their stand—'himself staying hindmost, to observe the enemy's order, and which way they would make their approach:'—but only about a dozen men could be got together, and Sir Francis had to take to flight, the Spaniards setting fire to Penzance also, and then again returning to their galleys. Meanwhile, the story of the attack got wind, and increased numbers of Cornishmen assembled on the open spaces near Marazion, when they drove the Spanish galleys from the shore. Succours from Plymouth arrived on the 25th July; and the English ships, having also heard of what had happened, were on the look-out; but a favourable breeze from the N.W. set in, and the enemy were unluckily enabled to make good their retreat.
Like his father, Sir Francis married twice: his second wife was Margaret Killigrew, and thus he became identified more closely than ever with Royalist interests. The Godolphins had obtained from Elizabeth a lease of the Scilly Isles, and more than one member of the family had acted as a sort of little viceroy there; 'Dolphin Town, as it is now called, on the island of Trescaw, still bears witness to their former sway. Here, at Elizabeth Castle, on St. Mary's Island, Charles II. found shelter when he sorely needed it; and from the Scilly Isles the Godolphins and the Grenvilles conducted many a bold exploit during the Civil War; until at length the fleet of the Commonwealth compelled the desperate Knights to surrender,—as we shall see further in the history of the Grenvilles.
The next few years saw a great number of deaths in the Godolphin family. Sir Francis, the Penzance hero, died, and was buried at Breage in 1608—his son, Sir William, following him four years afterwards. In 1619 John, who succeeded his father as Captain of Scilly, died too; and in 1640 the last of the brothers, the second Sir Francis, Recorder of Helston, a borough with which the Godolphins kept up a parliamentary connexion, of the old style, for many years.
The story of the Godolphins now conveniently divides itself into two parts, viz.: first, the history of the descendants of the above-named John; and secondly, that of the more celebrated line which descended from his brother Sir William.
John, 'Captain of Scilly,' had married a lady bearing the singular name of Judith Amerideth, and had by her three sons, and I think as many daughters. Of their offspring, Sir William and John alone claim our attention; and the former, solely on account of his being the father of another Sir William who was Ambassador at Madrid. The Ambassador was one of John Locke's most intimate friends when they were schoolboys together at Westminster, but was 'no great scholar;' he went to Oxford, and only got his M.A. degree by nomination of the Crown, for, truth to tell, he was too busy about politics to attend to his studies. In politics, however, he seems to have achieved some distinction, for he was Lord Arlington's secretary and right-hand man, and was always a staunch adherent of the Stuarts. He went to Madrid with the Earl of Sandwich, as his 'assistant;' and Locke joined the Embassy as secretary, through Godolphin's interest, in March, 1666.
He died without issue, and it was suspected that his religious views had been tampered with in his latter days,[150] and that he had left his property to 'superstitious uses;' whereupon the Act 10 William III. was passed for 'confirming and establishing the administration of the goods and chattels of Sir William Godolphin, Knight, deceased.' It recites, that he lived at Madrid 'surrounded by Fryers, Priests, and Jesuits, as he lay Bedrid,' and that on the 30th March, 1696, he made a will appointing four of such persons his 'Testamentoros,' and leaving them legacies. The Act declares this document to be null and void; and refuses to recognise the clause in which Sir William declares his soul to be 'his Universal Heir.' But the four testamentoros were to get their legacies, and the property was then duly allotted amongst those to whom Sir William had intended it should be left, before he departed from England, viz., to his brother Francis, of Coulston, and his nephew Charles. To the poor of Camelford he left £20, and £10 each to the poor of Liskeard, and of St. Mabyn. The Godolphin school at Salisbury was founded out of the proceeds of Sir William's estate. The whole of the details of this transaction may be read in the 'Extractum ex extractu pacis,' preserved in the British Museum ((514,k.25)/2).
During two or three succeeding generations, this branch of the family continued to give Governors and Deputy-Governors to the Isles of Scilly,[151] until at length the male line died out, and the Godolphin blood became perpetuated by intermarriages with, amongst others, the eleventh Earl of Huntingdon, and (within the last few years) by the marriage of the Vicar of Sydenham, in Kent, the Rev. H. W. Yeatman, with Lady Barbara Caroline Legge, daughter of the fourth Earl of Dartmouth. At Acton Church, near Ealing, were the tombs of Sir John Godolphin (1679), and of his daughter and heir Elizabeth, maid-of-honour to Queen Katharine of Braganza.
One is tempted to linger somewhat longer over John 'of Doctors' Commons, Doctor of Laws,' the third son of John and Judith Amerideth. He was born at Godolphin, in Scilly, on 29th November, 1617, and entered at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, in 1632, taking his Bachelor's degree in 1636, and that of Doctor in 1642-43. I believe that if he did not at any time reside at St. Kew, in Cornwall, at least he must have had some thoughts of doing so, for he held, for some time, Tretawne,[152] an old Jacobean seat of the Molesworths in this parish; and he married Honor, a lady of that old Cornish family. A granite stone, about twelve inches square, let into the wall of the back kitchen, and inscribed
commemorates the connexion of the Molesworths with their quondam residence of Tretawne.
Polwhele says that Dr. John 'was at first puritanically inclined, but afterwards took the engagement,' and in conjunction with Dr. William Clarke and C. G. Cock, Esq., was, in 1653, constituted a Judge of the Admiralty. He seems to have always had a leaning in the direction of polemics, notwithstanding his being a member of the legal faculty, and his having been made one of the King's 'Advocates' at the Restoration; certainly his works on Divinity are more numerous than those on Law. His 'Orphan's Legacy, or Testamentary Abridgment,' which is in three parts—the first treating of Last Wills and Testaments, the second, of Executors and Administrators, and the third of Legacies and Devises—was, no doubt, a useful hand-book of the period; and his 'Repertorium Canonicum' (1687)—'an abridgment of the Ecclesiastical Laws of this Realm consistent with the Temporal: wherein the most material points relating to such persons and things as come within the cognizance thereof are succinctly treated'—is a laborious attempt to exhibit in their legal bearings the relations of Church and State, especially asserting the King's Supremacy.
But probably he will be better remembered by his 'Holy Limbeck, or a Semi-Century of Spiritual Extractions,' and by his 'Holy Arbour' than by either of the foregoing works, or by his 'Συνηγορος Θαλασσιος, or a view of the Admiral's Jurisdiction.' The title of the 'Holy Arbour' runs as follows, in the fantastical, metaphorical style of the time:
'The Holy Arbour—contayning ye whole Body of Divinity, or A Cluster of Spirituall Grapes, gathered from the Vines of certaine Moderne and Orthodox Laborers in the Lord's Viniard; Pressd For the Spirituall delight and benefit of all such as thirst after Righteousness.'
And the Dedication, in similar vein, commences thus:
'To the Truly Honorable, the Poor in Spirit.
'Right Humble,
'The mighty Nazarite's Riddle, Out of the Eater came Meat, and out of the Strong came Sweetness (Judg. xiv. 14) was the second course served in at his Marriage Feast; which by way of Allusion may not unaptly be applied to you. Came not the Spirit of God upon you at the Conquest of that devouring Lyon, in the fierce Assults of his ingenious Temptations? At your return from which Spiritual Combat, began you not to feed on the Peace of Good Consciences, when the Word of the Lord became as Honey in your mouthes? Is not this a Riddle to the Uncircumcised of the World?
'In congratulation of which no common Victory, is this Address no less properly then humbly prostrated to you onely, as the most faithful Guardians of this Holy Arbor; whose unfenced Ambulage, when spiced at your approach by the fragrancy of your Innocency, craves the Subterfuge of your Prayers.'
Our author died in 1678, in or near Fleet Street, and was buried in the north aisle of St. James's Church, Clerkenwell, leaving one son, Francis, who died in 1695, and who was buried with his wife, Grace, at St. Columb Major: down to within the last hundred years their descendants have hovered round the neighbourhood, and found like resting-place for their remains.
We must now revert to that branch of the family which comprises, as I have said, its more distinguished members, and which sprang from the union of Sir William Godolphin (who died and was buried at Breage in 1613) with Thomasine Sidney, of Wrighton in Norfolk, a lady who bequeathed her maiden surname to many of her descendants down to the present day.
One of their sons, Sidney, uncle of a yet more illustrious namesake, was killed in a skirmish during the Civil War, on Dartmoor, in February, 1643.[153] The Parliamentary forces had been defeated at Boconnoc, and Hopton thereupon 'flew with a party volant' towards Plymouth. His army, however, received a temporary check at Chagford; but Sir John Berkeley at length drove out the Parliamentary forces who quartered in that little village; and here the brave young Sidney Godolphin was slain.
He was, says Clarendon, 'a young gentleman of incomparable parts, who, being of a constitution and education more delicate, and unacquainted with contentions, upon his observation of the wickedness of those men in the House of Commons, of which he was a member, out of the pure indignation of his soul against them, and conscience to his country, had, with the first, engaged himself with that party in the west; and though he thought not fit to take a command in a profession he had not willingly chosen, yet, as his advice was of great authority with all the commanders, being always one in the council of war, and whose notable abilities they had still use of in their civil transactions, so he exposed himself to all action, travel, and hazard; and by too forward engaging himself in this last, received a mortal shot by a musket, a little above the knee, of which he died in the instant, leaving the misfortune of his death upon a place which could never otherwise have had a mention to the world.' And Clarendon gives yet another and more elaborate portrait of him ('Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,' vol. i. p. 51):
'Sidney Godolphin was a younger brother of Godolphin, but by the provision left by his father, and by the death of a younger brother, liberally supplied for a very good education, and for a cheerful subsistence, in any course of life he proposed to himself. There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room; so large an understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body; so that the Lord Falkland used to say merrily, that he thought it was a great ingredient into his friendship for Mr. Godolphin, that he was pleased to be man; and it may be, the very remarkableness of his little person made the sharpness of his wit, and the composed quickness of his judgment and understanding the more notable. He had spent some years in France, and in the Low Countries; and accompanied the Earl of Leicester in his ambassage into Denmark, before he resolved to be quiet, and attend some promotion in the Court, where his excellent disposition and manners, and extraordinary qualifications, made him very acceptable. Though everybody loved his company very well, yet he loved very much to be alone, being in his constitution inclined somewhat to melancholy, and to retire amongst his books; and was so far from being active, that he was contented to be reproached by his friends with laziness; and was of so nice and tender a composition, that a little rain or wind would disorder him, and divert him from any short journey he had most willingly proposed to himself; insomuch as, when he rid abroad with those in whose company he most delighted, if the wind chanced to be in his face, he would (after a little pleasant murmuring) suddenly turn his horse and go home. Yet the civil war no sooner began (the first approaches toward which he discovered as soon as any man, by the proceedings in Parliament, where he was a member, and opposed with great indignation) than he put himself into the first troops which were raised in the west for the King; and bore the uneasiness and fatigue of winter marches, with an exemplar courage and alacrity; until by too brave a pursuit of the enemy, into an obscure village in Devonshire, he was shot with a musket; with which (without saying any word more than, Oh, God! I am hurt) he fell dead from his horse; to the excessive grief of his friends, who were all that knew him; and the irreparable damage of the public.' In fact the first Sidney Godolphin would seem to have been a universal favourite.
In the 'Select Funeral Memorials,' pp. 10, 11, by Sir K. J. Egerton Brydges, Bart., occurs the following passage concerning him:
'He was a person of excellent parts, of an incomparable wit and exact judgment, did love Hobbes of Malmesbury, in some respects and exhibited to him, and was entirely beloved by him, who not undeservedly gave him this character[154] after he had unexpectedly received a legacy from him of £200: "There is not any virtue that disposeth a man either to the service of God or to the service of his country, to civil society or to private friendship, that did not manifestly appear in his conversation, not as acquired by necessity, or affected upon occasion, but inherent and shining in a generous constitution of his nature." In another place also' (p. 390, in his 'Review and Conclusion of the Leviathan') 'Hobbes speaks thus of him: "I have known clearness of judgment, and largeness of fancy, strength of reason, and graceful education; a courage for the war, and a fear for the laws, and all eminently in one man; and that was my most noble and honoured friend, Mr. Sidney Godolphin, who, hating no man, nor hated of any, was unfortunately slain in the beginning of the late civil war, in a public quarrel, by an undiscerned and undiscerning hand, etc."' And to the foregoing we may add that his elegy was written by Dr. Donne.
The following lines may serve as an example of his ingenuity whilst, in 1623, a student at Oxford—and it may be added that he also translated from Virgil 'The Passion of Dido for Æneas,' which Waller published:
'Sidney Godolphin,
Equitis aurati filius è Coll. Exon.'
The gallant young Sidney had a brother named William, who was colonel of a regiment for Charles I., and who died in 1636, aged twenty-four; and another brother, Francis, who was knighted at the Coronation of Charles II., in recognition, no doubt, of the 'many acceptable remittances' which Le Neve tells us he had made to the King when in exile, as well as of the loyal spirit which his family had always shown. His loyalty even displayed itself whilst he was yet a student at Exeter College, Oxford; as is evinced by the following copy of verses which I find in the same volume as the above:
'Fra. Godolphin,
Equit. Aur. fil. nat. max. è Coll. Exon.'
Sir Francis (to whom Hobbes dedicated his 'Leviathan') was Member for the little Cornish Borough of St. Ives in 1640. He married Dorothy Berkeley, and had seven children, most of whom (and their children likewise) were buried in Westminster Abbey. Three only of Sir Francis's offspring are, however, known to fame—Sir William, created by Charles II. 552nd baronet of England, who died unmarried in 1710, leaving £5,000 a year to his more illustrious younger brother, the celebrated Sidney; and Henry, who became Dean of St. Paul's and Provost of Eton, dying at Windsor in 1733. We shall get glimpses of the three brothers in the pages of Evelyn and of Pepys. The Dean and Sidney each married a Margaret. Dr. Henry's spouse was his cousin, the only daughter of the first Sidney Godolphin who fell at Chagford; while the great Minister of State was blessed with the hand of that sweet Margaret Blagge whose saintly fame has been perpetuated in the pious Evelyn's 'Life of Margaret Godolphin.'
Before, however, proceeding to sketch the career of the more prominent Sidney, let us look at the memorials preserved of the good Dean. He was the fourth son of Sir Francis, and was educated first at Eton, and then at Wadham, and All Souls' Colleges, Oxford. Of the latter College he became a Fellow, and he took his degree of D.D. in 1685. Ten years after, having been for some time Vice-Provost, he was made Provost of Eton, of which he was, according to Maxwell Lyte, 'a kind ruler;' and on the 23rd of April, 1696, we find Evelyn visiting him there, and dining with him. A few years before, Evelyn had been to St. Albans with the two brothers, William and Henry, to see the library of the Archdeacon, Dr. Cartwrite: 'a very good collection,'—especially in divinity—as might have been expected. The party visited the Abbey—which Evelyn calls 'the greate church,' and which, he adds, was 'now newly repair'd by a public contribution.' Nor had the pleasant diarist omitted to attend on the sacred ministrations of his friend, for we find it duly recorded that, on March 15th, 1684, 'At Whitehall preached Mr. Henry Godolphin, a prebend of St. Paules, and brother to my deare friend Sydnie, on Isaiah lv. 7.' On the 18th July, 1707, Dr. Godolphin was installed Dean of St. Paul's; and he lived long to enjoy his dignities, for he reached the good old age of ninety—or, according to other accounts, eighty-four. He was a most pious and charitable man, and gave £4,000 to Queen Anne's Bounty—a charity in which the Godolphins seem to have, from the first, taken much interest. He was moreover, and so were some others of his family,[155] munificent benefactors and restorers of Eton College;—the Provost's Monument, which is on the south side of the chapel, has a long and highly eulogistic Latin inscription recounting his munificence and his virtues.
Ecton, in his account of Queen Anne's Bounty ('Thesaurus Eccles.,' 4to., Lond., 1742), mentions that Dean Godolphin gave, in conjunction with others, 'the sum of £3,910 for the augmentation of small livings upon the plan of that bounty.' ... 'He gave a £1,000 towards the alterations of the chapel as it is at present, the which alteration (made about the year 1700) is widely different from the original plan given by the Founder, Ano. Regni 26o. With this money the organ, it is said, was purchased, as being charg'd at about that sum. He adorn'd the outer court with a statue of the Royal Founder, cast in copper; placed on a marble Pedestal, and fenc'd in with Iron Palisades. Further, he bequeathed by his last Testament the sum of £200 for the buying books to the use of the College Library. He built the Alms Houses for 10 poor women.'—(Huggett's MSS., Sloane, No. 4843, f. 102, 103.) He also built, or rather rebuilt, in 1695, the extensive brick mansion of Baylis, or Baillis, near Stoke Pogis.
It was reported at the time, according to Luttrell, that on the death of Dr. New, in 1706, Dean Godolphin was to have succeeded him as Bishop of Exeter, but this promotion he never received.
The Provost of Eton left two sons and one daughter. Francis, one of his descendants, and third baron, succeeded to the title of Baron Godolphin, of Helston, in 1766, on the death of the second earl, when the earldom became extinct; and as Francis Baron Godolphin died without issue in 1785, the barony also failed.
But statelier figures are about to appear upon the scene: the solemn, silent Minister, in whose breast were locked the State secrets and intricate policies of a succession of English monarchs, and his devout and spotless wife, who, 'a saint at Court,' verily walked in the flames of 'the fiery furnace, and felt no hurt, neither did the smell of fire pass upon her.' Of Margaret, John Evelyn's exquisite 'Life' is familiar to many; but for her husband's career we have to search the annals of the Courts of Charles II., of his brother, James, of William and Mary, and of Anne: favoured and trusted by them all; until at length his sturdy resistance to the growing tendency of the last of the Stuarts to accept the counsel of irresponsible advisers instead of that of the Ministers of her Crown, caused the final rupture between the Queen and her Lord High Treasurer.
Born about the year 1630, of great natural abilities, educated at Oxford, and sprung from a family who were loyal to the backbone, Sidney Godolphin, when only about fifteen years old, was made, on the Restoration, first Page, then Groom of the Bedchamber. 'Never in the way, and never out of the way,' as the witty King said of him. In the following year, and during every Parliament of Charles's reign, he sat in the House of Commons as Member for Helston, an old coinage-town, and then the nearest place of importance to the family seat in Cornwall. In Parliament, though rarely opening his mouth, he was soon looked upon as a great authority, not only on all questions of trade and finance, but in matters of high policy as well. In 1668, he accompanied his brother William on a mission to Spain. Twice, in 1678, was he an envoy to Holland on the question of the 'separate' peace proposed by France; and his services on that occasion, when he received the valuable assistance of Sir William Temple, were rewarded in the following year by an appointment to the post of Fourth Commissioner of the Treasury, in the room of the Earl of Derby. It was about this time that Pepys first became acquainted with him; and Pepys thus records his impressions:
'February 5th, 1667-8.—Moore tells me what a character my Lord Sandwich hath sent over of Mr. Godolphin, as the worthiest man, and such a friend to him as he may be trusted in any thing relating to him in the world; as one whom, he says, he hath infallible assurances that he will remain his friend: which is very high, but indeed they say the gentleman is a fine man.
'10th Feby, 1667-8.—Made a visit to Mr. Godolphin at his chamber; and I do find him a very pretty and able person, a man of very fine parts, and of infinite zeal to my Lord Sandwich; and one that says, he is (he believes) as wise and able a person as any prince in the world.'
Indeed, Pepys seems to have been on intimate terms with the Godolphins; witness the following charming account of a dinner-party which he gave them:
'January 23rd, 1668-9.—To the office till noon, when word brought me that my Lord Sandwich was come; so I presently rose, and there I found my Lords Sandwich, Peterborough, and Sir Charles Harbord; and presently after them comes my Lord Hitchingbroke, Mr. Sidney and Sir William Godolphin. And after greeting them and some time spent in talk, dinner was brought up, one dish after another, but a dish at a time; but all so good, but, above all things, the variety of wines and excellent of their kind I had for them, and all in so good order, that they were mightily pleased, and myself full of content at it: and indeed it was, of a dinner of about six or eight dishes, as noble as any man need to have, I think; at least, all was done in the noblest manner that ever I had any, and I have rarely seen in my life better anywhere else, even at the Court. After dinner my Lords to cards, and the rest of us sitting about them and talking, and looking on my books and pictures, and my wife's drawings, which were commended mightily: and mighty merry all day long with exceeding great content, and so till seven at night, and so took their leaves, it being dark and foul weather. Thus was this entertainment over, the best of its kind and the fullest of honour and content to me that ever I had in my life; and I shall not easily have so good again.'
Shortly after his appointment to the Treasury, Godolphin was made a Privy Councillor; and, with the Earl of Sunderland and Mr. Hyde, formed that triumvirate which was so greatly in the confidence of the King:—indeed he may be said to have already become one of the moving spirits of the age. Charles was particularly anxious that Sidney Godolphin should convey to the House of Commons his determination never to consent to the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession; but there was an old, wise head upon Sidney's young shoulders, and, adroitly evading the task, Sir William Temple became his cat's-paw on that occasion. For a few months, in April, 1684, he succeeded Sir Lionel Jenkins, now grown very old and infirm, as a Secretary of State; and in the August of that year, on the retirement of the Earl of Radnor (whom the Earl of Rochester succeeded as President of the Council) our Sidney became First Commissioner of the Treasury. On the 8th of the following month, he was raised to the peerage, with the title of Baron Godolphin of Rialton, in Cornwall.
Rialton is an old manor-house on the banks of the little stream which finds its way into the sea at St. Columb Porth. It formerly belonged to the Priory of Bodmin, was for a long time in the possession of the family of Munday, and was granted to Sir Francis Godolphin in 1663. A great part of it was destroyed by fire towards the close of the last century, and the remains of it are now occupied as a farm-house. It was built by the haughty Thomas Vivian, last Prior of Bodmin, whose initials and arms may still be traced on various parts of the picturesque remains: C. S. Gilbert, in his 'History of Cornwall' (vol. ii. p. 673), gives a view of the S.E. entrance.
On the accession of James II., the well-known means by which that King essayed to bring over to his own creed those by whom he was surrounded were employed upon Lord Rochester, amongst others. He was made First Commissioner, in the place of Lord Godolphin, to whom was confided, in lieu, the post of Chamberlain to the Queen. But James's tactics failed; and it was not long before the skilled financier was again at the Treasury—this time as Second Commissioner, with, for his colleagues, two Roman Catholic noblemen, Lord Bellasis and Lord Dover—a conjunction which the High Church party could not, for a long time, forgive their Protestant colleague. What would they have said had they known that, on the approach of the Prince of Orange, Godolphin was the man whom James selected to carry on his affairs during the King's temporary absence in the west; and that to this trusted Minister, together with the Marquis of Halifax and the Earl of Nottingham, were confided the proposals for an 'accommodation' which James sent to William, at Hungerford, on December 8th, 1688? That these proposals failed in their object is matter of history; but it is, perhaps, not so generally known that the exiled King, pressed for money whilst at Rochester, was obliged to have recourse to his Minister for a gift of a hundred guineas! He is said to have accompanied James to the coast, and to have kept up a correspondence with that monarch until his death. Sidney Godolphin was no man of 'mere abstract ideas.' He moved entirely in the sphere of practical politics; and, notwithstanding his intimacy with the Stuarts, and his having been one of those who, in the Convention Parliament, had been in favour of a Regency—perhaps, indeed, partly because of all this—he soon found favour with the new King of England.
Can it be believed that throughout a career so rapid and so brilliant, the powerful Minister was sighing for repose, and retirement to the old home in Cornwall? Evelyn[156] assures us that such was the case with his 'deare friend,' at any rate, during the brief years of his happy married life. But Margaret—his well-beloved Margaret—had died in giving birth to Francis, their only son.
And now that we have seen her illustrious husband reach the pinnacle of his ambition, we may turn for a while to the story of his wife. She was descended from a good family out of Norfolk,[157] and her father was a Colonel Blagge, Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles I. and II. She was born on 2nd August, 1652, and reluctantly came to the court of the then Duchess of York—Anne Hyde—when only about fifteen years of age, leaving it for that of the Queen on the death of the Duchess in 1671. She was always of a pious and retiring—not to say melancholy—disposition, and would have infinitely preferred the quiet innocence of a country house to the tumult and dissipation of such a Court as that to which she was now introduced. As an instance of the almost morbid tendency of her mind, Evelyn's description of her attitude in the portrait which she gave him may be cited: