Part 22

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

+---------------------+ | PHIL^A MOLESWORTH | | | | 1620 | +---------------------+

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 [Greek: Synêgoros Thalassios], 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 y^e 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:

'Carolvs Redvx' 'Chronagramme {haVD Ita te a MIsso LVget HIspania, {Vt I repossesso pLa gestIt AngLIa. Insolita Angligenas admittere gaudia mentes. Hesperiam mæstos cogis inire modos.

'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:

'Nullum adeò ingenium sterile est, vel barbara Musa, Cui non materiem gaudia tanta darent. Hesperiam, _Princeps_, alienumq; æthera, tardo, Ast fortunato, CAROLVS exit equo. Et postquam mores multorum vidit, & vrbes, Spe maior, famâ clarior, en redijt. Quiq; comes fecum fidissimus exijt, & dux, Maximus, ae moritò. Dux redit ille Comes. Hæc inter tantam cecinit mea Musa catervam, Quâ doctæ magis, haud lætior vna, canunt.

'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, An^{o.} Regni 26^{o.} 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.