GODBOLD, John (1583-1648), of Southolt, Suff.

At the time of John Godbold’s birth in July 1583, his family was living at Tannington in north-east Suffolk. Of its previous history nothing is known. Godbolds were still based at Tannington in December 1584 when John’s sister, Agnes, was born, but at some stage thereafter the family moved several miles westwards to Southolt, where John Godbold’s father, Thomas Godbold, established himself as a yeoman farmer.28Tannington par. reg., ff. 4v, 5; Wills of Archdeaconry of Suff. 1620-4, 202-3. Besides his sister, Agnes, there were two younger brothers, Thomas and William.29Wills of Archdeaconry of Suff. 1620-4, 202-3; Gent. Mag. n.s. xviii. ii. 45-6; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 82. Godbold attended school in the next village, before progressing to Cambridge, where he became a scholar at Gonville and Caius.30Venn, Biographical Hist. i. 169; Al. Cant.

After Cambridge, Godbold was admitted first to Barnard’s Inn (one of the inns of chancery) and then to Gray’s Inn.31Foss, Judges, vi. 318; GI Adm. By the 1620s he had become a respected barrister with a large practice in the London courts.32PBG Inn, 246, 276; Foss, Judges, vi. 318. One of his professional colleagues and close associates may well have been his brother-in-law, Thomas Waller*.33PROB11/151/673; Baker, Serjeants at Law, 439. During the 1620s Godbold and his family were living with the Wallers in Bartlett’s Close on the south side of Holborn, close to Gray’s Inn.34St Andrew Holborn par. reg. Godbold evidently had dealings with the Fishmongers’ Company, for he was able to use his influence with them in 1640 to secure the appointment of Thomas Witherley as schoolmaster at Holt.35GL, MS 5570/3, p. 452. The decision by the inn’s renowned preacher, Richard Sibbes, to appoint Godbold as one of his executors in 1635 suggests that the two of them were close friends and that Godbold shared his godly brand of Protestantism.36PROB11/168/423; Works of Richard Sibbes ed. A.B. Grosart (Edinburgh, 1862-4), i. pp. cxxix-cxxx. A figure with rather different religious views was Francis White, the traditionalist bishop of Ely. By 1636 White had nevertheless appointed Godbold as chief justice of the liberty of Ely.37Ely Episcopal Recs. 119. This was an important position, because by tradition it was the bishop’s chief justice, rather than the royal judges on circuit, who conducted the assizes within the liberty. Godbold chose White to take part in the ceremonies attendant on his appointment as a serjeant-at-law in January 1637. Godbold’s admission into those select ranks was an acknowledgement that he was a leading member of his profession and, in addition to White, the 21st earl of Arundel, 3rd Baron North and the chief justice of king’s bench, Sir John Bramston, all lent their names to his first (fictitious) action as a serjeant.38Baker, Serjeants at Law, 186, 376-83, 439.

Although Godbold’s principal residence was in London, he may have retained lands in Suffolk which his father had given him during his lifetime.39Wills of Archdeaconry of Suff. 1620-4, 202-3. It is unsurprising that the handful of clients for whom Godbold acted who can be identified (including Sir Edmund Moundeford* and Sir Robert Crane*) were from East Anglia.40Eg. 2715, f. 474; Eg. 2716, f. 47; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA85/2593/95; Univ. Chicago, Bacon coll. 4253, 4255; Coventry Docquets, 594, 649. One of the major landowners in the area was Sir William Russell†, treasurer of the navy, and in 1639 Godbold headed the list of trustees appointed to manage Sir William’s estates.41Cambs. RO, R.55.7.7.5. From about 1624 Godbold’s wife and their young family were living in Bury St Edmunds and before long Godbold was acting as the town’s recorder.42St Mary, Bury St Edmunds par. reg.; Suff. RO (Bury), HD921/1; HD12/1(b). On 26 March 1640 the freemen of Bury honoured him for this long service by returning him to Parliament in the junior Bury seat.43C219/42/2, no. 21; HMC 4th Rep. 24.

Godbold spoke several times during the debates in the Short Parliament. He made his maiden speech on 20 April 1640 when the Commons debated whether to complain to the king about the dissolution of the previous Parliament in 1629. In so far as can be judged from the brief notes taken by Sir Thomas Aston*, he probably defended the king. Later in the session, when the Commons discussed whether to withhold supply in order to win concessions, Godbold counselled moderation. On 23 April he argued that the king’s demands for supplies were modest and seems to have suggested that they should not make too much of an issue of Ship Money.44Aston’s Diary, 20, 41. A fortnight later he did support the idea of informing the king of their objections to it, but his point was probably that there was a link between their grievances and supply, in the sense that a generous supply was the best way to win concessions on Ship Money. He agreed that the money already collected that year should count towards any supplies they granted.45Procs. Short Parl. 190, 207; Aston’s Diary, 123. Godbold may have been sceptical about claims that Ship Money, as such, was illegal, perhaps feeling that most of his fellow MPs were unqualified to judge this point. This still left the option of abolishing it by statute. Quite apart from the fact that the proposal was a tactic to avoid an immediate vote on its illegality, that consideration would explain why, on 4 May, Godbold favoured the creation of a committee to draft a bill abolishing Ship Money.46Aston’s Diary, 135, 139. One of the reasons Godbold had given for granting supply to the king was the need to suppress the Scottish rebellion and, in the months following the dissolution, he assisted in the marshalling of those troops mustered in Suffolk for the renewed Scottish campaign.47Procs. Short Parl. 190; Add. 39245, f. 189.

Godbold probably made no attempt to stand in the parliamentary elections at Bury St Edmunds in late 1640, allowing the Jermyns to secure both seats, and so it was instead as a lawyer that Godbold made his small contribution to the proceedings of the Commons during the Long Parliament. In December 1640, as part of its attack on the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), the Commons prepared to impeach Sir George Radcliffe, who had been legal adviser to Strafford in Ireland in the 1630s. On 4 January 1641Godbold was the most senior of the five lawyers appointed by the House of Lords to be counsel for Radcliffe’s defence.48LJ iv. 123b. It was the impeachment of Strafford, however, which was the Commons’ priority and no further proceedings against Radcliffe were taken.

The outbreak of the civil war placed Godbold in a difficult position. On 26 August 1642 an attempt was made at the Ely assizes to read the king’s proclamation declaring Parliament’s captain-general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, to be a traitor. As chief justice, Godbold gave permission for the town cryer to proclaim it at the market cross.49J. Whinnell, Matters of great Concernement (1646), 15, 46-7 (E.334.11). He would doubtless have been aware that his employer, Bishop Matthew Wren, would approve of this action. At about the same time he was included by the king in his commission of array.50Northants. RO FH133, unfol. His failure to lend money to Parliament on the Propositions later prompted the Committee for Advance of Money to proceed against him.51CCAM 393. All this suggests that Godbold was siding with the king. In 1645 an attempt was made to sequester him and evidence was gathered that June and July to prove his involvement in the reading of the anti-Essex proclamation at Ely.52Whinnell, Matters of great Concernement, 15, 46-7.

This was probably an attempt to block his appointment as the assize judge to preside at the Suffolk witch trials. As such, Godbold headed the commission of oyer and terminer sent into Suffolk in the summer of 1645 in the wake of the investigations by the energetic witchhunter, Matthew Hopkins. At the Bury St Edmunds assizes he handed down death sentences on the 68 individuals found guilty of witchcraft.53Suff. ed. Everitt, 73; J. Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witch-Craft (1648), sig. A2v, p. 11; The Lawes against Witches and Conjuration (1645, E.307.11); A True Relation of the Arraignment of eighteene Witches (1645, E.301.3); C. L’Estrange Ewen, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials (1929), 291-313; S. Clark, The Lives of sundry Eminent Persons (1683), 172b; F. Hutchinson, An Hist. Essay concerning Witchcraft (1718), 59-72. While travelling through Sudbury, he was entertained by the corporation at the house of John Fothergill*.54Suff. RO (Bury), EE501/2/7: accts. of William Abbot, 1644-5. There are hints that he was more sceptical than some involved in the process. During the Bury trials he forbade the use of the swimming test and later, in 1646 and 1647, he presided over witch trials at Ely that resulted in acquittals.55M. Gaskill, Witchfinders (2005), 156-8, 235-6, 265-7.

The successful completion of the high-profile 1645 trials enhanced Godbold’s reputation and proved to be the route to a permanent appointment. The following year he and Henry Rolle† were the assize judges on the Western circuit (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset) and in October 1646 he was one of many names considered as possible commissioners of the great seal.56Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 235-7, 239-41; W.D. Christie, A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury (1871), i. p. xxxvii; Harington’s Diary, 42. He was again named as an assize judge in early 1647, although this decision may not have been a foregone conclusion. Initially, the Speakers, William Lenthall and the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†), nominated John Wylde* as one of the two judges for the Lincolnshire circuit, only for the Independents to vote against his appointment (6 Feb. 1647). Godbold’s name was then put forward but the House voted to reject that by 101 votes to 86. Instead, another serjeant-at-law, Henry Clarke, was assigned to the Lincolnshire circuit, but the Commons went on to name Godbold and Rolle as the judges to go on the more lucrative Western assizes.57CJ v. 76a-b; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 244-8, 251-2, 255-7; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. p. xli.

The appointment of Godbold as a full-time judge in May 1647 was, at least in part, a result of the continuing dispute between the Lords and the Commons over whether to recall Sir John Bramston. During the early years of the Long Parliament Bramston had come close to being impeached for his 1637 ruling on the legality of Ship Money and had lost his place as chief justice of king’s bench. In an attempt at conciliation, the Commons had twice in early 1647 proposed Bramston as one of the commissioners of the great seal, only for the Lords to block that appointment on both occasions. When the Commons tried a third time to restore Bramston to office, by proposing his appointment as a judge of common pleas, the Lords responded on 28 April 1647 by proposing Godbold. Although the Commons continued to press the case for Bramston, Godbold’s appointment was quickly approved. The Commons took the precaution of insisting that he was appointed during good behaviour rather than during the king’s pleasure.58LJ ix. 159a, 161a-b, 163a, CJ v. 157b, 158a; Sainty, Judges, 76. Godbold was immediately added to the commission which was exercising the judicial functions of the office of lord chancellor.59LJ ix. 170a, 171a; CJ v. 159b, 160a. A further consequence of his elevation to the bench was that the House of Lords summoned him to attend on them as one of their assistants.60LJ ix. 170a; HMC 7th Rep. 17, 29, 46. It was in this capacity that he twice acted as a messenger from the Lords in the summer of 1648, informing the Commons that the Lords disapproved of the Commons’ three preconditions for negotiations with the king (the recall of the royal declaration critical of Parliament, a three-year experiment with Presbyterian church government and control of the militia by Parliament for ten years).61CJ v. 617b, 627a. During his brief period as a justice of common pleas, Godbold continued to be appointed by Parliament as an assize judge.62CJ v. 236b, 451a, 534b, 598a, 603b; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 258-64, 267-71, 274-8; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. pp. xliii-xliv, xlvii.

Godbold died on 3 August 1648 at his house in High Holborn and was buried the next day in the local church, St Andrew’s.63St Andrew’s Holborn par. reg.; Musgrave’s Obituary ed Armytage, 41. Although no will by him has been traced, his wife claimed to be his executrix when she petitioned the House of Lords in October 1648 for fees still due to him.64HMC 7th Rep. 58; LJ x. 558b. His brother-in-law Thomas Waller was later appointed by Parliament as his successor as chief justice of the Isle of Ely.65CJ vi. 84a, 86b. Over the years Godbold had accumulated a large collection of manuscript law reports and these passed to Waller.66Add 35965, ff. 2, 3; Add. 36076, f. 2. Other notes eventually found their way into the collection of the antiquary, William Petyt.67Inner Temple, Petyt MS 538/56. (Godbold’s early fourteenth-century copy of Bracton’s Liber de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae had long before been presented by him to Gray’s Inn.)68H. de Bracton, Liber de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae ed. G.E. Woodbine (New Haven, 1915-42), i. 16-17; B.N. Lee, Early Printed Book Labels (1976), 52. Perhaps coincidentally, an edition of law reports published four years later came to be known as ‘Godbolt’s reports’. They were in fact edited by the prolific Gray’s Inn lawyer, William Hughes, and the extent of Godbold’s involvement probably did not extend beyond sanctioning its June 1648 imprimatur.69W. Hughes, Reports of Certain Cases (1652), 451. Three months after Godbold’s death, his eldest son, John, was called to the bar by his old inn.70PBG Inn, i. 369. Justice Godbold’s term as a Member of the Short Parliament was the only occasion on which any member of his family sat in either House. The claim that the Godbolds of Hatfield Peverel and Terling in Essex were descended from him is erroneous.71H.P. The Grandeur of the Law (1684), 270; Vis. Essex 1664-8 ed. J.J. Howard (1888),