GODSALVE, John (by 1505-56), of London and Norwich, Norf.

John Godsalve may have owed his early advancement to his father, registrar of the Norwich consistory court and later a monastic visitor in East Anglia, but he soon obtained more powerful patrons. In June 1531 Stephen Gardiner, who as secretary had charge of the signet office in which Godsalve had recently become one of the four clerks, recommended him to Cromwell. A namesake and possible kinsman who had been in the household of Wolsey may have been a further source of influence and he was later to claim kinship with a fellow clerk of the signet, Thomas Wriothesley.Edmund Grey. Unaffected by the fall of Cromwell, Godsalve may have been re-elected to the Parliament of 1542, when only the christian name of the junior Member for Norwich is known: on both occasions he could have been countenanced by the 3rd Duke of Norfolk— a John Godsalve witnessed the returns for Horsham to the Parliaments of 1545 and 1547 and a ‘Mr. Godsalve’ had a chamber at Kenninghall in the latter year. Godsalve was employed to carry bills from the Lords to the Commons in the Parliaments of 1542, 1545, 1547 and 1555 and served as a receiver of petitions in the Lords in five out of the six Parliaments between 1547 and 1555.Sir John Williams of the freehold of the house in Old Fish Street, London, where he already lived. An account for 1547-8 of his property, which included 49 houses in Norwich, shows him possessed of a landed income of some £195 a year. His local standing was recognized in Edward VI’s reign by his appointment to the Norfolk bench. (It was to be acknowledged in a different way by the Norfolk rebels of 1549, who took prisoner his younger son Thomas and used him to compose their written pronouncements, an activity amounting to misprision of treason for which the youngster afterwards sued out a pardon.) Godsalve was knighted at the coronation and retained his offices, adding to them in June 1548 the comptrollership of the Tower mint. His four years’ tenure of this post coincided with the last period of the debasement of the coinage begun by Henry VIII in 1544 and he was among the officials who sued out a pardon in that connexion in June 1552. He received a pension of £60 on surrendering the comptrollership but seems to have retained some interest in mint affairs since he and Thomas Egerton are credited with devising the coins showing the ‘double face’ of Philip and Mary issued in 1554. In 1552 he sought Cecil’s help in obtaining a chamberlainship of the Exchequer.Acts and Mons. v. 714; vi. 195; APC, ii. 527; Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 375-7; Strype, Eccles. Memorials, iii(1), 173; J. A. Muller, Stephen Gardiner and Tudor Reaction, 354; PCC 3 Noodes." style="color:red;" class="drupal_footnote

Nothing is known of any part Godsalve may have played in the struggle for the succession to the throne in the summer of 1553; he sued out a pardon on the accession of Mary but he had done the same on that of Edward VI. He continued in office and in June 1555 received £20 ‘for his pains taken in writing the submission and other instruments’ sent to the pope. Moreover, his second marriage to a sister of Robert White brought him into a Catholic circle connected with Gardiner: relatives whom he appointed feoffees for his London property in March 1556 included, besides his brother-in-law, Sir Francis Englefield, Sir Edward Waldegrave and (Sir) Thomas White II. He made his will on 6 Nov. 1556, asking to be buried near his father in St. Stephen’s church, Norwich, and died at Norwich on the following 20 Nov.: his elder son William was then aged 26 and more. He named his wife and his younger son Thomas executors and Englefield and Dr. Miles Spencer, a Norfolk cleric, supervisors. A miniature, a drawing and a painting of Godsalve survive; the last, attributed to Holbein and executed in 1528, shows him with his father.