Part 24

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:

'Ingratitude's a Weed in every Clime, It thrives too fast at First, but fades in Time. The God of Day and your own Lot's the Same, The Vapours you have rais'd obscure your fame, But, tho' you suffer, and awhile retreat, Your Globe of Light looks larger as you set.'

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:

'Had not his elder brother happened to die, he had been in very low circumstances after having been in several reigns for more than twenty years, though he was a man that never made any great expenses, for he won at play, and mortally hated all kinds of show and grandeur, but he was very charitable and generous; and though he had lived so long, and had great employments, when he died he had not in the world but about £14,000 in tallies, of which sum seven was mine, three Mrs. Rundal's, a thousand Mrs. Curtis's (a woman that looked after my two elder children), and many other small sums that he took of helpless people who thought themselves safe in his hands; and when all his debts were paid there could hardly be enough to bury him.'

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:

* * * * *

'In such a tempest and overgrown a sea, everybody is concerned, and whose head is not ready to turne? I am sure, I should myselfe almost despaire of the vessel, if any, save your Lordship, were at the helme. But, whilst your hand is on the staff, and your eye upon the star, I compose myselfe and rest secure.

'Surrey Street, 16th June, 1696.'

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:

'He was a Man of the clearest Head, the calmest Temper, and the most incorrupt of all the Ministers of State I have ever known. After having been thirty Years in the Treasury, and during Nine of those Lord Treasurer, as he was never once suspected of Corruption, or of suffering his Servants to grow rich under him, so in all that time his Estate was not increased by him to the Value of 4000_l_. He served the Queen with such a particular Affection and Zeal, that he studied to possess all People with great personal esteem for her: And she herself seemed to be so sensible of this for many Years, that if Courts were not different from all other Places in the World, it might have been thought that his wise Management at home, and the Duke of Marlborough's glorious Conduct abroad, would have fixed them in their Posts, above the little Practices of an artful Favourite.'

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[146] From 1504 to 1638 the Sheriff of Cornwall was frequently a Godolphin. One of them was also Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and two other members of the family were Vice-Wardens.

[147] Notably in the adjoining parish of St. Hilary, where, in the S.E. corner, forming the floor of a pew, is, or rather was, a Godolphin monument inscribed with a turgid Latin epitaph consisting mainly of a play upon the word 'delphinus.'

[148] Lipscombe, in his 'History of Buckinghamshire,' says of him that 'he was very ingenious, and entertained a Dutch mineral man, by whose instructions he practised a more saving way of making tin. He also undertook the coinage of silver out of the mines of Wales and Cornwall.'

[149] No doubt Carew here refers to Sir Francis's invention of mine stamps for crushing the ore. An earlier Godolphin seems to have also given attention to this branch of mining, for Leland says: 'From Mr. Godolcan's to Trewedenek about a 4 miles. Wher Thomas Godalcan (yonger) sun to Sir Willyam buildith a praty House, and hath made an exceeding fair blo House Mille in the Rokky Valley thereby.' In fact the neighbourhood of Godolphin seems to have been the birthplace of many important mining inventions. Near here the first steam-engine for draining the mine was put to work, early in the present century, at Wheal Vor; and the following is recorded in the Register of Breage Church: 'James Epsley sen^r of Chilchampton Parish Bath and Wells Summersetshire he was the man that brought that rare invention of shooting the rocks (viz., blasting them with gunpowder) which came heare in June 1684 and he died at the Bal (the mine) and was buried at breage the 16th day of September in the yeare of our Lord Christ 1689.'

[150] According to a passage in the 'Epistolary Curiosities of Rebecca Warner,' the House of Commons voted an address to the King praying for the recall of Sir William Godolphin on a charge of high treason, 'for he is one of the plotters,' and Godolphin was accordingly recalled in 1678 or 1679.

[151] For information as to one of these Godolphins I am indebted for the following notes to a source to which I am under the deepest obligations--the 'Bibliotheca Cornubiensis':

'Letter from John Verney to sir R. Verney.

'"Capt: Godolphin, govenor of Scilly, was this week killed at the Cockpit ordinary in Drury Lane by Mr. Duncombe who also received 3 wounds. Godolphin was a wild young gentleman and tho' he usually came to church yet 'tis said as he lay dying none but papist priests were in his room 9 Nov 1682. (_MS. penes Sir Harry Verney, bart. Clayden house, Bucks._)"

'"The gentleman who killed Mr. Godolphin, governor of Scilly, is lately dead of his wounds which he received in that duel 11 Decr. 1682. (_News Letter MS. penes Sir F. Graham, bart., Netherby hall, Cumberland._)"'

Mr. Godolphin, Governor of Scilly, whose death is above spoken of, was possibly William, eldest son of Fras. Godolphin, of Coulston, Wilts.

[152] According to Sir J. Maclean, in his 'Deanery of Trigg Minor.'

[153] Sidney was born at Godolphin. He was M.P. for Helston, 1640, and supported Lord Strafford against the majority of the House. He wrote, amongst other poems, a song on Thos. Killigrew and Wm. Murray, so Wood says. He was buried at Okehampton.

[154] In his preface to the 'Leviathan,' which Hobbes dedicated to Sidney's brother, Francis.

[155] Cf. Lyte's 'Eton College,' p. 356. 'A legacy of £5,550 from Lord Godolphin did little to amend the fare of the unfortunate collegers, for only a part of the interest was annually expended in providing pudding on Sundays, the remainder of the money being allowed to accumulate for the benefit of a future generation.'

[156] Evelyn's 'Life of Mrs. Godolphin' is well worth the perusal of those who have not made its acquaintance. Enthusiastic it undoubtedly is, but it is full of interest; especially, to my mind, the share which his heroine so reluctantly took in the Court play of 'Calisto,' wherein she represented, with the most perfect grace and propriety, 'Diana, Goddess of Chastity.' Evelyn says the ladies 'were all cover'd with jewells.'