GODDARD, Guybon (1612-1671), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx., King’s Lynn and Brampton, Norf.

The Goddards of Stanhoe were allegedly descended from Godardus who had received a grant of crown lands in Norfolk in 1241 and one ancestor, William Goderede, had been a judge of king’s bench under Henry VI.26Blomefield, Norf. vi. 437; J. Sainty, Judges of Eng. (Selden Soc. x. 1993), 27. The MP’s maternal family, after whom he took his Christian name, had owned land in North Lynn since the early fourteenth century, and one of them, Thomas Guybon†, sat for Castle Rising in the 1597 Parliament.27Blomefield, Norf. viii. 538-9. Goddard’s father, Thomas, died in 1613, when Guybon was barely a year old.28Blomefield, Norf. vii. 41. His grandfather, Thomas, then settled the manor of Bagthorpe on his daughter-in-law, Guybon’s mother, for life and then on Guybon himself.29WARD7/78/110. Goddard subsequently inherited the rest of the family estates on his grandfather’s death in 1627. Called to the bar in 1639, he began practising as a barrister.30LI Black Bks. ii. 345. He married the daughter of an eminent lawyer, John Greene, on the eve of the civil war, and thus became the brother-in-law of Edward Bysshe II*, subsequently Garter king of arms.31London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 555. In February 1643 Goddard and Greene’s son, John junior, were taking lessons in astronomy in London.32E.M. Symonds, ‘The diary of John Greene’, EHR xliii. 391.

King’s Lynn was only about 12 miles from Goddard’s estate at Bagthorpe and he was soon to become closely associated with the town. In June 1644 he and his wife travelled to King’s Lynn after spending two months in London.33Symonds, ‘Diary of John Greene’, 599. His formal connection with the town’s corporation dated from December 1644 when he was appointed counsel to the borough.34King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, f. 147. The following May he became the deputy governor under the new parliamentarian governor, James Hobarte.35Hillen, King’s Lynn, 361. Soon he was serving as deputy to the recorder, Miles Corbett*, and in May 1646 he was admitted as a freeman.36King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/9, ff. 168v, 187v. Goddard later succeeded as recorder on Corbett’s resignation in January 1651.37King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, f. 303.

In September 1645 Goddard, who was clearly considered one of Parliament’s supporters in the county, was added to the Norfolk commission of the peace.38C231/6, p. 18. The surviving Norfolk quarter sessions order book from the early 1650s shows that he was an active attender of the quarter sessions under the republic and later under the protectorate.39Norf. QSOB, 21-70. In August 1654 he and another magistrate, Thomas Drury, took the witness depositions against a Harpley shoemaker, Christopher Hall, who had been accused of witchcraft.40D.E.H. James, ‘Rex versus Hall – a case of witchcraft, 1654’, Norf. Arch. xxx (1952), 172-3, 175. From 1652 Goddard was also one of the Norfolk assessment commissioners.41A. and O.

Elected to Parliament for King’s Lynn on 10 July 1654, Goddard arrived in London on 2 September for the opening of the session the following day.42Burton’s Diary, i. p. xvii. He seems to have lodged with Bysshe at the College of Arms.43Burton’s Diary, i. p. xxxii. A man of antiquarian interests, he kept a private journal of proceedings which, despite its imperfections, is the only account of debates in the chamber from this Parliament known to survive.44Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, pp. 7-79; Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xvii-cxxii. Its opening entries imply that he thought the scruples of some MPs about holding the opening day (3 Sept.) on the sabbath to be faintly absurd.45Burton’s Diary, i. p. xviii. That Thomas Goodwin, the president of Magdalen College, Oxford, who preached one of the sermons the next day, was originally from King’s Lynn was duly noted by him.46Burton’s Diary, i. p. xix. Named to the privileges committee on 5 September, Goddard attended its first meeting that same afternoon.47CJ vii. 366b; Burton’s Diary, i. p. xxii.

The opening days of the session were dominated by the debates on reforming the government. Goddard’s notes give a vivid sense of passions involved without initially giving much indication of his own views.48Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xxii-xxxiii. On the basis of rumours passed on to him by Bysshe, Goddard turned up at Westminster on 12 September expecting to find that Parliament had been dissolved; finding the doors of the chamber locked, he then listened to the address by Oliver Cromwell* to MPs in the Painted Chamber in which the lord protector told them that they would be only re-admitted if they took an oath to recognise his authority.49Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xxxii-xxxiv. Goddard and most of the other Norfolk MPs agreed to take this oath only after dining together to mull over their options. Goddard certainly felt that this was consistent with their election indentures and that, as they had little choice in the matter, going along with this demand would be the best way of preserving civil peace.50Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xxxv-xxxvi. Goddard probably had doubts about government by a single lord protector after all. He welcomed the arrest of Thomas Harrison I* on 12 September, however, believing that Harrison aimed to lead the ‘discontented party’.51Burton’s Diary, i. p. xxxvii. Goddard left London for five days on 16 September to visit his brother-in-law, John Greene, in Essex.52Burton’s Diary, i. p. xl.

Over the next three months Parliament continued to debate the constitutional settlement. As before, Goddard’s notes aimed to be even-handed, affording the significant benefit that he frequently recorded both sides of the arguments. But, even so, his own views can be detected. Suspicious of the protector’s powers, he saw himself as an opponent of the ‘court party’, aligned with the Presbyterian or ‘country’ interest.. Thus, his notes on the debate of 2 October on the power to declare war make it plain that he believed that this should only be exercised by the lord protector with the consent of Parliament. He considered the argument that this might hamper the lord protector in responding to unexpected foreign invasions to be ‘frivolous’ and he was impressed by the idea that parliamentary consent would ensure the unity of the nation against any such invasion.53Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xliv-xlvi. He ‘took physic’ for three days from 14 October and was absent during the debates of the following week on whether the office of lord protector should be hereditary.54Burton’s Diary, i. pp. li-liii. He nevertheless entered into his diary at length the arguments as to whether future lord protectors should be elected by Parliament or by the council.55Burton’s Diary, i. pp. liii-lviii.

Goddard was sympathetic to the view that the lord protector should not have the power of veto over legislation, as he thought that those who opposed it on 10 November had argued ‘with reason’ that Parliament ‘could never be too jealous of every power that might, at any time, invade or infringe either our liberty or our religion.’56Burton’s Diary, i. p. lxiv. The argument that restrictions on the power of veto undermined the protectorate was one he evidently considered to be overwrought.57Burton’s Diary, i. pp. lxvi-lxvii, lxxiv. He agreed with those who the next day argued that the government rested on the consent of the governed, even if he did think it unnecessary to debate this point at such length.58Burton’s Diary, i. pp. lxvii-lxxi. On 18 and 20 November he supported those who thought that Parliament alone should decide the future of the army following Cromwell’s death.59Burton’s Diary, i. pp. lxxx-lxxxiv. His account of the discussions on 2 December as to who should nominate the council is remarkably balanced, although his comment that it would be ‘strange’ if the council and the protector nominated each other implies that his own view was that Parliament, not the protector, should nominate the council.60Burton’s Diary, i. pp. civ-cvii.

These constitutional debates tended to crowd out other business, but they were never the sole focus of Goddard’s interest. He was added to the committee on the bill for the relief of creditors and poor prisoners on 25 October.61CJ vii. 378b. At about the same time the civil lawyers thought that he might support the petition they presented to Parliament.62Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 10. He was also appointed to the committee to consider abuses of writs of certiorari and habeas corpus on 3 November.63CJ vii. 381b. On 21 November he supported the decision limiting the monthly assessments for the army and the navy to £60,000.64Burton’s Diary, i. pp. lxxxii-lxxxix.

By early December 1654 there are hints in the diary that Goddard may have been wearying of his task. At the end of the debates on 6 December, when the House had managed to reach agreement on several of the articles for the settlement of the government, Goddard gloomily noted that this had been the ‘day of the greatest dispute of business that I had known in the whole Parliament.’65Burton’s Diary, i. p. cxii. On 9 and 11 December, when the House considered the enumeration of heresies, Goddard merely recorded that fact and made no attempt to outline what had been argued in those debates.66Burton’s Diary, i. p. cxiii. Finally, on 18 December his note-taking broke off.67Burton’s Diary, i. p. cxxii. Nothing else is known of his activity in the Parliament before the premature dissolution a month later.

Back in Norfolk his duties as recorder of King’s Lynn continued to keep him busy. In March 1656 he was asked to write to the local major-general, Charles Fleetwood*, to seek permission for the corporation to set up brew-houses to raise money to support the poor.68King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, f. 479. Shortly thereafter he was also closely involved in the borough’s efforts to secure a new charter. On 23 May 1656 the corporation instructed him to surrender the old charters into the hands of the lord protector, which he had done by 3 July when the council of state considered their request for a replacement. The council approved the new charter later that same month.69King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, ff. 482v, 485, 486; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 5, 22.

Goddard might therefore have expected that the corporation would re-elect him as its MP just a month later. It had more ambitious ideas, however, and chose John Disbrowe* and Philip Skippon*. The freemen disputed this and submitted a second return naming Disbrowe and Goddard, but that was declared void on 20 October.70CJ vii. 428a, 441b-442a. A by-election was still necessary, as Disbrowe had decided to sit elsewhere, but the corporation, whose right to make the return had been confirmed, now had little reason to favour Goddard, who quite possibly did not even try to stand. This also explains why Goddard looked beyond King’s Lynn at the next parliamentary elections in 1659. Meanwhile, in November 1657, he was promoted to become a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.71LI Black Bks. ii. 419; E.M. Symonds, ‘The diary of John Greene’, EHR xliv (1929), 115.

According to his own account, Goddard was elected in absentia for Castle Rising on 19 January 1659 ‘by a free and unanimous voice of almost all the free burgesses without any seeking or soliciting of mine and against the endeavours of Mr Howard who represented the lord of the manor’.72Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 85. After a poll which took place in great confusion, he was sent up on a double return. He did not reach London until 27 January, the day the Parliament began, and he was then informed by the clerk of the Commons, John Smythe, that he would not be allowed to take his seat until the House had resolved the election dispute.73Burton’s Diary, iii. 6-7n. The next day, however, the commissioners for tendering oaths to MPs decided that, as he was named on both returns, he could take his seat at once after all.74Burton’s Diary, iii. 11n. He was then named to the committee of privileges.75CJ vii. 594b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 15n. Six days later the Commons confirmed that the return naming John Fielder* with Goddard was valid.76CJ vii. 598a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 51, 51n.

As in 1654, Goddard kept a diary during this Parliament. This covers its first five weeks.77Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, pp. 86-163. Confusingly, all the dates throughout February 1659 are wrong, being one day behind the correct date, although these can easily be corrected using the Journal and the diaries of Thomas Burton* and Sir John Gell*. Selections from it were printed by John Towill Rutt in his edition of Burton’s diary, but only in a most unsatisfactory manner.78Burton’s Diary, iii-iv. Rutt, who only had access to a later copy, began by printing the more important entries as footnotes to Burton, with the source clearly indicated. However, from the second week of February, mostly extracts were silently inserted into the main text. Furthermore, Rutt sometimes conflated Goddard’s notes on a speech with those by Burton. Other passages were never printed. Rutt’s edition therefore makes it impossible for the reader to know what Goddard actually wrote. This is unfortunate, because, although often less detailed than Burton’s, Goddard’s diary is an important record of the 1659 Parliament in its own right.

Almost at once, Goddard despaired that ‘it began plainly to appear that the Commonwealth party and the protector’s or court party began to vie stakes and pecked on one another in their light skirmishes.’79Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 90; Burton’s Diary, iii. 35n. On 5 February he was ‘sick and took physic’.80Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 94. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he made a note on 7 February of the decision that Lewis Audley*, who had been imprisoned after threatening Bysshe, was to be released from the Tower.81Burton’s Diary, iii. 86n. That same day he thought the speech by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* opposing the bill to recognise Richard Cromwell as lord protector ‘a very long harangue’, but he nevertheless recorded it in considerable detail.82Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, pp. 97-102; Burton’s Diary, iii. 87-9n, 99n. Goddard continued the diary until 5 March, when, for no obvious reason, it breaks off.83Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 163.

The death of Sir Lislebone Long* created a vacancy in the position of recorder of London which was filled by the appointment of Goddard’s brother-in-law, John Greene. On 24 March 1659 Greene recommended Goddard to the court of aldermen as his successor as judge of the sheriffs’ court. Although he was, in his own words, ‘very much a stranger and unknown to most of the court’, Goddard’s appointment was approved, in part because it was backed by two former lord mayors, Sir Thomas Atkin* and Sir John Dethick, despite opposition from one of the sheriffs, Anthony Bateman. Later, when he met Theophilus Biddulph* at Westminster, he was warned that some of the common council were also unhappy with his appointment.84Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 3.

By early April the committee for privileges had revisited the issue of the Castle Rising election and on 6 April the Commons overturned its earlier decision. Goddard therefore now faced the prospect of a new election to regain his seat.85CJ vii. 626b. Sir William Doyly* told John Buxton* that he hoped that Goddard would be re-elected because he was ‘an honest and a stout man’.86CUL, Buxton pprs. 34/12. The dissolution of Parliament later that month meant that this new election never took place. The following month the Rump included Goddard on the new commission of oyer and terminer for London.87CJ vii. 658a.

Goddard retained his position as commissioner of oyer and terminer in London after the Restoration, suggesting that he continued to serve as a judge of the sheriffs’ court.88C181/7, pp. 3-565. In November 1669 he was promoted by Charles II to become a serjeant-at-law.89Baker, Serjeants at Law, 194, 409, 444; HMC Hastings, ii. 313. Revealingly, the two patrons he selected to be the parties in his fictitious first case as a serjeant were the secretary of state, Lord Arlington (Sir Henry Bennet†), and 1st Baron Crofts of Saxham. Crofts’ sister Mary was married to Goddard’s son and heir, Thomas, while Arlington was their cousin.90Vis. Norf. 1664, 83; London Vis. Peds. 1664, 68. Such connections had quite possibly helped recommend Goddard for this appointment in the first place.

Goddard died intestate at Brampton on 29 May 1671 and administration was granted to his widow.91Blomefield, Norf. vi. 438; PROB6/46, f. 87v. He was buried in the Brampton family chapel in the local church, which he had previously helped to restore.92Blomefield, Norf. vi. 436-8. Goddard had been something of an antiquary and some of his collections later passed to Peter Le Neve (1661-1729), the first president of the Society of Antiquaries. Those items may have included an early-seventeenth century transcript of the Norfolk entries from Domesday Book, which may previously have been owned by Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, and a volume on the history of King’s Lynn, which included his own speeches as recorder.93Bodl. Gough Norfolk 1; Gough Norfolk 29. Some of these manuscripts later formed the basis for parts of Francis Blomefield's multi-volume Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (1805-6).94Blomefield, Norf. vi. 438.