SIDNEY GO DOLPHIN. SIDNEY GODOLPHIN, second son of Sir William Godolphin of Godolphin in the county of Cornwall, (who died in 1613,) by Thomasine, daughter and heir of Thomas Sidney of Wrighton in the county of Norfolk, Esq.;* was born about the year 1609. His elder brother, Sir Francis, was father of Sidney Godolphin, who, though a second son, was in 1684 created Lord Godolphin, and was afterwards lord high treasurer in the reign of queen Anne. The amiable and accomplished person who is the subject of this memoir, (says lord Clarendon in his own life) 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 chearful 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 found in his company, where he was the properer 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 every body loved his company very well, yet he loved very much to be alone, being in his constitution inclined somewhat to melancholy and to retirement among his books; and was so far from being active that he was contented to be reproached by his friends with *From a MS. in the College of Arms, 2 D 14. + The owners of this estate, though not ennobled, were, from the Conquest, called Lords of Godolphin. 39 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 had 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 to 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 exemplary courage and alacrity; and 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 publick." This event, with some little variation, is thus recorded by the same writer in his history of the rebellion: "In those necessary and brisk expeditions, in falling upon Chagford, a little town in the south of Devon, before day, the king lost Sidney Godolphin, a young gentleman of incomparable parts, who being of a constitution 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 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 his person 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. -This happened about the end of January [1642-3.]” He was buried in the chancel of the church of Okehampton in Devonshire, on the 10th of February following. Sidney Godolphin became a commoner of Exeter college in Oxford in the beginning of the year 1624, from whence, after remaining there for three years, he removed to one of the inns of court, the common mode of education at that time even for those that did not mean to pursue the law as a profession: he afterwards (as lord Clarendon has mentioned) travelled into foreign countries, and after his return was elected member for Helston in Cornwall, in the parliament which began April 13th, 1640, and again in the long parliament, which met in November in the same year. Though of very different sentiments from the famous Thomas Hobbes, he lived in intimacy with him, and by his last will bequeathed the sum of £200 to that celebrated philosopher, who in the preface to his Leviathan, pays this grateful tribute to his memory: "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." And in another place he thus speaks of him: "I have known clearness of judgment, and largeness of fancy, strength of reason and graceful elocution; a courage for the war and a fear for the laws, and all eminently in one man; and that was my most noble 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." This high eulogy so exactly suits a deservedly respected character of the present day, (the member for Norwich,) whose manly and disinterested So highly is Mr. Windham respected, and such an addition has the part which he has acted at a very critical conjuncture made to the reputation which all his former publick conduct and his private virtues had acquired, that in the present session, it was a matter of debate whether he was not one of the first characters in Europe; and the public voice, both within and without the House, has decided the question in the affirmative. M conduct in parliament, in opposition to French principles and the worst of all despotisms, the despotism of the mob, has justly endeared him to all his countrymen, that had not the author and the occasion been mentioned, it should seem to have been written expressly to delineate him. It cannot but preserve the memory of Sidney Godolphin to all future time, and make us lament that the world should have been deprived of such a man at the early age of three and thirty. Lest however any inference should be drawn to his prejudice, as if there were any similarity of principles between him and the philosopher of Malmsbury, the noble historian, already quoted, has taken care in his observations on the Leviathan, to guard against such a conclusion. "I would be very willing (says he) to preserve the just testimony which he [Hobbes] gives to the memory of Sidney Godolphin, who deserved all the eulogy that he gives of him, and whose untimely loss in the beginning of the war was too lively an instance of the inequality of the contention, when such an estimable treasure was ventured against dirty people of no name, and whose irreparable loss was lamented by all who pretended to virtue. But I find myself tempted to add, that of all men living there were no two more unlike than Mr. Godolphin and Mr. Hobbes, in the modesty of nature and integrity of manners; and therefore it will be too reasonably suspected that the freeness of the legacy rather put him in mind of that noble gentleman to mention him in the fag-end of his book very improperly, and in a huddle of many unjustifiable and wicked particulars, when he had more seasonable occasion to have mentioned him in many other parts," &c.* In a small tract of the last age, entitled A narrative of some Passages relating to the Long Parliament,+ we find a saying of this gentleman, which every man who wishes to maintain and preserve our excellent constitution, will approve; and which may teach those who are so clamourous for change and innovation, not to risk the loss of the many blessings they possess, by aiming at imaginary and unattainable perfection. When Sir John Hotham had seized on the town of Kingston upon Hull, the king (says the writer abovementioned)" was retired to the city of York, as a place of more * View and Survey of Mr. Hobbes's Leviathan, 1676. + 12mo. 1670. |