GODOLPHIN, Francis I (1605-67), of Godolphin, Breage, Cornw.

The Godolphins of Godolphin were among the richest families in Cornwall in the early seventeenth century, with an estate near Helston (including lucrative tin mines), long term leases from the crown of the Isles of Scilly, and, by marriage, further lands as far away as Norfolk. The family also enjoyed good connections with the courts of Elizabeth and James, assisted by their kinsman Robert Cecil†, 1st earl of Salisbury, and they had traditionally served the crown as receivers of the duchy revenues in Devon and Cornwall and as military governors of the Scilly Isles. The untimely death of Sir William Godolphin† in 1613, and the confused state of his will, severely compromised the early fortunes of his seven-year-old heir, Francis, who did not gain complete control of the various estates, offices and interests traditionally controlled by the family until the late 1630s.29HP Commons 1604-1629. In June 1636 he was granted the lease of the Scilly Isles, formerly held by his father, for 50 years.30CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 423-4; Coventry Docquets, 357. In August of that year he was appointed stannator of the tin producing areas of Penwith and Kerrier.31Bodl. Add. C.85, p. 19. In September 1637 he was made sheriff of Cornwall, and apparently made every effort to raise Ship Money, even though local opposition made him the subject of pressure and criticism from the privy council, and his account was only settled many months after he had relinquished office.32PC2/49, pp. 309, 466, 576, 599; PC2/50, p. 260; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 429; 1639, pp. 62-4; 1639-40, pp. 423. By 1640 Godolphin had become receiver of the crown revenues in Devon and Cornwall.33T. Rymer, Foedera, ix. Pt 3, p. 38; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 107-8. In the spring of the same year he took on an even more important role, as governor of the Scilly Isles – a post which had recently fallen vacant on the death of his uncle.34HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 241. These posts not only established Godolphin as a key figure in the Cornish administration, they also reinforced his sense of his family’s traditional loyalty to the crown.

In the elections for the Short Parliament, Godolphin was returned as knight of the shire for Cornwall, perhaps with royal approval. Godolphin had already served as MP for Helston in 1626 and St Ives in 1628, but there is no evidence that he played any part in the proceedings of either Parliament, and his performance in the spring of 1640 was equally undistinguished.35HP Commons 1604-1629. His only known appointment was to the privileges committee on 16 April 1640.36CJ ii. 4a. In the Long Parliament elections he was returned for the family seat of Helston, alongside his younger brother, Sidney. During the session that followed, Godolphin was again inactive, and many of the references to ‘Mr Godolphin’ probably refer to Sidney. He was roused from his torpor only by the proceedings against Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, writing to a friend of his concern that the London mob had besieged Whitehall and Westminster, and his fears that Archbishop William Laud would be ‘degraded and hanged’, noting that the king ‘shed many tears this day, and is extremely sad’.37Cornw. RO, RP/1/11. Like his brother, Godolphin voted against the earl’s attainder on 21 April 1641.38Procs. LP iv. 42. He went on to take the Protestation on 6 May, but then apparently relapsed into inactivity, eventually being granted leave to go into the country on 16 July.39CJ ii. 136b, 213b. Procs. LP iv. 227; v. 666. He returned to Westminster briefly in February 1642, when the Commons debated the payments that should be made to important forts and castles, including the defences on the Scilly Isles, and in the same month he sent a letter home with news of the exclusion of the bishops from the Lords and the queen’s imminent departure to the continent.40PJ i. 377, 411, 413; Cornw. RO, RP/1/12. At the call of the House on 16 June Godolphin was listed as absent, but the fine of £100 imposed on him was rescinded on 30th, perhaps because his duties on Scilly provided a reasonable excuse.41PJ iii. 153, 482.

Godolphin was excused absence from Parliament only a day after he was appointed as royalist commissioner of array for Cornwall.42Northants RO, FH133, unfol. At the outbreak of civil war in the late summer of 1642, he funded a regiment of foot, commanded by his cousin, William Godolphin*, and was up-beat that ‘all the gentry [were] in a manner standing for the king’.43Newman, Royalist Officers, 159; Cornw. RO, RP/1/13. Godolphin did not play an active role in the fighting that followed, and in early June went to Scilly, taking charge of the islands for the king.44Cornw. RO, RP/1/19, 22. He attended the Oxford Parliament in January 1644, signing the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, of 27 January, and in the same month he was formally disabled from sitting as an MP at Westminster, ‘for deserting the service of the House, and being in the king’s quarters’.45Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; CJ iii. 374a. Godolphin’s letters from this period show his concern at the Scottish intervention in the war, the lack of money and arms for the king’s army, and refusal of Parliament to enter peace negotiations. As he complained, ‘all the king’s offers and demands are answered with saying, the trust reposed in us by the country will not suffer us to admit of such conditions’.46Cornw. RO, RP/1/15, 16, 17, 23. He remained in Oxford until early March, when he returned to Scilly, armed with orders from the king that the garrison would be increased by 200 men, with future pay being taken from sequestered estates, including those of Francis Godolphin II* of Treveneage.47Cornw. RO, B/35/26; B/35/224, RP/1/17; HMC 2nd Rep. 99. In August 1645 Godolphin took charge of the disgraced James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, sent to Scilly by the king.48CCSP i. 273. He continued to hold the islands during the winter of 1645-6, as the royalist cause crumbled, and in April 1646 he was one of the entourage that escorted the prince of Wales from the Scilly Isles to Jersey.49Coate, Cornw. 214.

In June 1646 Godolphin returned to Scilly to arrange for a shipload of tin to be taken to France, apparently to raise money for his private use. The cargo was then seized by the captain of the vessel, leading Godolphin to complain bitterly to Sir Edward Hyde* of perfidy of his ‘friends abroad’, as well as the harshness of the parliamentarians, who ‘have repented their charitable intentions’ and demanded the payment of a fine of £330 in three weeks – a threat that had encouraged Godolphin to ‘resolve to let them take all, and depend upon God Almighty’s providence wholly for our subsistence’.50S.E. Hoskins, Charles II and the Channel Islands (2 vols. 1854), i. 356, 400-2; CCSP i. 317, 321-2. Despite his brave words, and his sojourn in the Normandy town of Caen with other exiles during the next few weeks, Godolphin soon returned to Scilly, and started negotiating a deal with the parliamentarians.51CCSP i. 322, 324. On 11 September he signed articles surrendering the isles to Parliament.52CCSP i. 332. Included in the terms was an article allowing Godolphin pardon, discharging him from any fines, and deeming his whole estate to have been compounded for, in return for the bloodless surrender of the islands. This agreement, confirmed by the Commons on 5 January 1647 and by the Lords on 13 January, was presumably struck with the king’s consent, but it damaged Godolphin’s reputation in the eyes of some royalists.53CJ v. 41b-42a, 52a; LJ viii. 670a, 671a. Hyde, for example, was unimpressed, writing in March that he had lost confidence in Godolphin’s ‘integrity’.54CCSP i. 367. And parliamentarians outside Westminster were also unconvinced, with the county officials in both Cornwall and Norfolk retaining his name on their lists of delinquents as late as the spring of 1648.55CCC 115, 117.

After his submission, Godolphin lived quietly in western Cornwall, where he met the water poet, John Taylor, during his travels in 1649. Taylor was impressed by the hospitality that he received at the ‘stately ancient palace’ of Godolphin House, and by the welcome of its owner, who took him to see ‘his mines of tin, and a house where his workmen were refining and melting of tin, which is a rich commodity. So at my taking leave of him, he put ten shillings in my hand, which came to me in an acceptable time’.56J. Taylor, John Taylor’s Wandering to see the Wonders of the West (1649), 14 (E.573.12). Godolphin’s rural retreat was soon to be disturbed by reports that he was plotting against the commonwealth regime, however. In May 1650 the council of state ordered Colonel Robert Bennett* to arrest Godolphin and search his house, fearing that he was an active royalist.57CSP Dom. 1650, p. 149. In December 1650 he was again arrested and sent to St Michael’s Mount. As Godolphin protested to Colonel Bennett on this occasion, ‘if I had conceived that my meeting of Sir Arthur Bassett at that time and place, in that manner and upon that occasion, would have given the least offence, I should by no means have so done’. He was, he claimed, ‘a person that have not the least unquiet thought, but wholly confined to the care of my family’, and that he still adhered to the engagement he had made with Sir Henry Vane II* ‘at my last coming to London’ that he would not do anything to the prejudice of the new regime. He also insisted that two compromising letters he had received from his cousin Sir William Godolphin and his wife’s kinsman Sir Henry Berkeley, ‘contain nothing but words’.58FSL, X.d.483 (75). Bennett accepted that Godolphin was innocent, and in a magnanimous gesture made sure that he was home in time for Christmas.59FSL, X.d.483 (78). This did not mean that Godolphin was entirely above suspicion during future scares. On 28 August 1651, as Charles II marched south at the head of a Scottish army, Bennett ordered that the usual suspects, including ‘Mr Godolphin’, be arrested once more.60FSL, X.d.483 (97). Thereafter, Godolphin’s relations with the commonwealth regime appear to have improved. In September 1652 parliamentary commissioners surveyed the Scilly Isles, and investigated Godolphin’s claim to continue to enjoy their profits – a claim that was challenged by his neighbour, John Seyntaubyn*, and was now referred to the trustees for the sale of crown lands and the surveyor-general, to adjudicate.61Parl. Surv. Duchy Cornw. ii. 149-50.

Little is known of Godolphin’s career during the protectorate. He seems to have travelled to France fairly often throughout the interregnum, presumably to sell tin, and it was from Dieppe that in January 1655 he wrote to the future archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, with news of the royalists he had met there, with whom he intended to journey to Paris.62CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 546; Bodl. Tanner 134, f. 62. In February 1655 Godolphin was in London, and told Sancroft that ‘we are still wearied and tormented with the expectation of a plot against his highness, not knowing perfectly who should be the bloody disturbers of our peace’ this time, now that Thomas Harrison I*, Nathaniel Rich* and the ‘Levellers’ had been apprehended.63Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 138. Such remarks may reflect Godolphin’s weariness of being accused of involvement in royalist plots, or simply his concern that trade might be disrupted; but his lack of enthusiasm for opposition to ‘his highness’ is nonetheless suggestive.

At the Restoration, Godolphin made great play of his earlier faithfulness to the Stuarts, he was duly regranted all his major offices, including the governorship of the Scilly Isles, and was made knight of the Bath in 1661. In November of that year he contributed £100 to the ‘free and voluntary present’ to the new king, matching the sums provided by such staunch royalists as Richard Arundell* of Trerice.64Cornw. Hearth Tax, 250. Godolphin made his will in June 1665, leaving bequests of at least £1,000 to his five unmarried daughters, and annuities and mortgage interests to his younger sons.65PROB11/325/41. His eldest son, Sir William†, succeeded to the estate and to the governorship of Scilly, but his third son, Sidney†, achieved the greatest fame as 1st earl of Godolphin.66HMC Le Fleming, 46; HP Commons 1660-1690.