GODOLPHIN, William (1605-63), of Spargor, St Mabyn, Cornw.

William Godolphin was a member of a cadet branch of the Godolphins of Godolphin in western Cornwall, and a cousin of the head of the family, Francis Godolphin I*.18Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 184, 187. Little is known of William’s early career. He succeeded his father in 1619, and by 1630 had married a daughter of the dean of the arches, Sir John Lambe of Coulston in Wiltshire.19Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 187. He may have been the William Godolphin commissioned by his cousin, who was the vice-admiral of the Scilly Isles, to command a Spanish ship captured off the Cornish coast.20CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 8-9. It was presumably his cousin who secured his return for the family seat of Helston in the Short Parliament elections of the spring of 1640. Nothing is known of his involvement in the brief session that followed.

In June 1642 Godolphin was appointed as a commissioner of array for Cornwall, and by early August he was raising a regiment of volunteers from Penwith Hundred in the far south west of Cornwall, paid for in part by his cousin, Francis I.21Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; Cornw. RO, B/35/219; Newman, Royalist Officers, 159-60. Godolphin’s active service was brief, but distinguished. In January 1643 his regiment joined that of Sir Bevill Grenvile* in seizing Topsham, during the attempt on Exeter, and they held it during a fierce counter-attack.22Mercurius Aulicus no. 1 (1-7 Jan. 1643), 7 (E.244.30); Bellum Civile, 27. Later in the same month Sir Ralph Hopton’s* attack on Saltash, which had been fortified by parliamentarians from Plymouth, was led by the ‘voluntary regiments’ of Warwick, 2nd Baron Mohun and Colonel Godolphin.23Clarendon, Hist. ii. 456; Bellum Civile, 31. Shortly afterwards Godolphin was involved in an abortive attempt to agree a local truce between the two sides, accompanying Hopton and Lord Mohun to Ham House, near Plymouth, ‘for the composing of things’ with the parliamentary commander in the south west, Henry Grey, 1st earl of Stamford.24Cornw. RO, B/35/220; Harl. 164, f. 289v. In March Godolphin’s regiment was rested, and paid, and in the following month it again saw action, repulsing the parliamentarian attack across the Tamar at Polston Bridge.25Cornw. RO, B/35/59, 72; Coate, Cornw. 60. At the battle of Stratton, in May, Godolphin was joint commander of one of the columns of foot that assaulted Stamford’s army entrenched on the hill top.26Bellum Civile, 42; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 70. In July he served under William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, during the assault on Bristol.27Mems. Prince Rupert, ii. 257. Godolphin was rewarded with a place on the Cornish commission of the peace, from October 1643, and a knighthood, conferred on him at Oxford in May 1644.28Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 78; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 217. Soon afterwards, he was entrusted with a very different role, as financial broker for the queen, using Cornish tin as collateral.29Coate, Cornw. 184.

In May 1645 Henry Lord Jermyn* told George Lord Digby* that he had hopes that Godolphin would be able to arrange a loan from the duc d’Epernon in Paris, even though there was on this occasion no security except for Godolphin’s word.30CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 449, 514. He also noted that Godolphin was buying arms and other supplies in France for the royal cause.31CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 514. Godolphin remained in France during the collapse of the king’s war effort and only made his peace with Parliament in September, when the Scilly Isles surrendered. Among the articles was one promising that Godolphin should be able to take advantage of them if he returned to England within two months.32LJ ix. 92a. On 10 November, just within the time limit, Godolphin petitioned to compound, and in March 1647 he was fined £330. He was apparently living in Exeter in the summer of 1648, when the Devon county committee tried to have him banished from the city, only to be overruled by the Committee for Compounding.33CCC 1559. On 7 October 1648 the ordinance for Godolphin’s composition was at last passed by the House of Lords.34LJ x. 532a.

Godolphin, like his cousin Francis I, was held in deep suspicion by the commonwealth regime. In October 1650 the Cornish county committee alleged that Godolphin was among those who had concealed the true value of their estates, and he was forced to petition the council of state, who then wrote to Colonel Robert Bennett* and the Cornish commissioners, asking whether his suit should be granted or not.35CCC 336; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 378. Bennett was willing to advance Godolphin’s cause, and in December received a letter from Godolphin at Boconnoc, thanking him for his ‘civility shown us at your own home. The little use you can make of a person in my condition renders me jealous of offering you fruitless services in recompense’, but he nevertheless promised not to be ‘ungrateful’.36FSL, X.d.483 (69). It was embarrassing that in the same month an intercepted letter led to Godolphin’s arrest by Bennett, along with his cousin Francis Godolphin I. Godolphin protested his innocence, telling Bennett that the incriminating evidence, contained in ‘a letter of mine lately written to my cousin of Godolphin, being of dangerous consequence’ was in fact a ‘great mistake’.37FSL, X.d.483 (75-7). Both men were released soon afterwards, but remained under suspicion. In April 1651 ‘Black William Godolphin’ was listed among those Cornish gentlemen ‘that will engage’ if a royalist rising took place.38HMC Portland, i. 583. There was soon firmer evidence against Godolphin’s son, Francis, who was arrested in the autumn of 1651, and only freed in the spring of 1652 on taking the Engagement and providing a bond from his father.39CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 76, 171. Godolphin was also fined £150 in the same period, although he managed to have the amount reduced in January 1652 after an appeal to the council of state.40CCAM 1372.

Later in the 1650s, Godolphin seems to have been on reasonably good terms with the authorities. In 1652 the Scilly Isles were surveyed, and an attempt was made to evaluate the rival claims to the crown lands there, asserted by Godolphin, his cousin Francis I, and John Seyntaubyn*, although the result of this investigation is not known.41CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 72; Parl. Surv. Duchy Cornw. ii. 138, 149-50. In June of the same year Godolphin was granted a pass to travel abroad, and this suggests that he was still pursuing his commercial activities.42CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 568. In November 1656 Secretary John Thurloe* was told that Godolphin was organising ‘a considerable part of those chiefly interested in Cornwall, that the business of tin may again be settled as formerly’, to the profit of the government as well as the Cornish.43TSP v. 581. It was no doubt in Paris that Godolphin made friends with the British ambassador there, Sir William Lockhart*; in May 1657 Lockhart wrote with his condolences at the death of Godolphin’s first wife, while also advising him that Thurloe would help him in his business interests.44CCSP v. 736.

After the Restoration, Godolphin was nominated as a knight of the royal oak in the unfulfilled scheme to recognise former royalists.45Burke’s Commoners, ii. 688. Locally, he was made vice-admiral of North Cornwall and deputy lieutenant of the county.46CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 540; Vice-Admirals of the Coast, 6. Godolphin’s main concern during the early 1660s was to recoup his financial losses from the civil wars, which he claimed amounted to £10,000.47Cornw. Hearth Tax, 44; CTB 1660-7, p. 40. The lord treasurer, Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton, took a dim view of this, saying that he could not accept such a large personal claim, but in November 1660 the king authorised the payment of a reward from £6,000 worth of lands ‘detained’ from the crown, and discovered by Godolphin, in recognition of his service in the wars.48CTB 1660-7, p. 40; CSP Dom. 1660-1, 370. Godolphin died at Mabyn in October 1663 in an outbreak of disease – possibly plague – that also killed his second wife and their maidservant.49St Mabyn par. regs. His sons included William Godolphin†, who sat for Camelford in 1665.50HP Commons 1660-1690.