GODOLPHIN, Sidney (1610-43), of Godolphin, Breage, Cornw. and Wighton, Norf.

A younger son from an influential west Cornwall family, Sidney Godolphin was also a landowner in his own right, as while still a small child he had inherited estates in Norfolk from his mother. He was educated at Oxford, returned for the family seat of Helston in 1628 at the age of 18, and thereafter embarked on an extensive foreign tour, joining the entourage of his relative Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, ambassador to Denmark, in 1632.14HP Commons 1604-1629. From 1635 Godolphin was a gentleman of the privy chamber and soon afterwards he established a reputation as a poet and intellectual, being drawn into the Great Tew circle, where he made friends with such diverse characters as Viscount Falkland (Lucius Cary*), Sir Edward Hyde*, Edmund Waller* and Thomas Hobbes.15Oxford DNB; H.R. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Great Tew Circle’, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (1987), 167, 170, 185; Corresp. of Thomas Hobbes ed. N. Malcolm (Oxf. 1994), ii. 913. The diminutive Godolphin was a popular figure in the later 1630s. Hyde claimed that ‘there was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room, so large an understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body’; while Sir John Suckling*, more succinctly, called him ‘Little Sid’.16Coate, Cornw. 49; Clarendon, Life, i. 51-2. It was no doubt as part of the fashionable court set, rather than as a serious soldier, that Godolphin accompanied the king’s army north to the first bishops’ war in the summer of 1639.17SP16/427/38, ii and v.

Godolphin was again elected for Helston, on his family’s interest, in the Short Parliament elections in the spring of 1640, and during the brief session he apparently only spoke once, to ask for clarification on double returns in the debate of 16 April.18Procs. 1640, 144-5. He was returned for the same seat in the autumn, and over the next 18 months emerged as an active supporter of the king. He was named to three committees in March 1641; on 12 April he joined Hyde in trying to defend the dean of the arches, Sir John Lambe, against the attacks of Sir John Clotworthy* and other opponents of the government; and on 21 April he voted against the attainder of the king’s chief minister, the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).19CJ ii. 95b, 101a, 108a; Procs. LP ii. 594, 693, 806; iv. 42; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 539. Godolphin took the Protestation on 3 May, although he opposed the drawing up of heads for ‘the defence of the king and the church’ as likely to ‘occasion a jealousy’ among the people’.20CJ ii. 133b; Procs. LP iv. 181. On 21 May Godolphin and Sir Nicholas Slanning* were given leave to attend a committee of the Lords to consider ‘the forts of the kingdom’, presumably as representatives of the Cornish MPs.21CJ ii. 153b; Procs. LP iv. 503. Godolphin played little further part in parliamentary proceedings until December, when he countered John Pym’s* attempt to reduce the power of the House of Lords, warning that ‘the minor part of the Commons would join with the major part of the Lords and enter into a protestation against them that did it’; and for his pains he was ordered to withdraw from the House until the penalty for his ‘delinquency’ could be considered.22D’Ewes (C), 228. Over the next few days, the Commons tried to find time to discuss ‘the offence now given by words spoken by Mr Godolphin’, but the matter was not pursued after 9 December.23CJ ii. 330b, 335a, 337a.

Although no further action had been taken, Godolphin seems to have absented himself for the next few months. In April 1642 he was back in the Commons. On 26th he and Sir Edward Alford were tellers against moves to censure Sir John Hotham* for garrisoning Hull, and on 9 May he also opposed attempts to put the troop of William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison, under a different commander.24PJ ii. 224, 294; CJ ii. 564a. On 14 May he again courted controversy by objecting to the wording of a declaration that apparently elevated the power of Parliament, and on 3 June he was teller against seizing the money raised by the king from the pawning of the crown jewels.25PJ ii. 318; iii. 6; CJ ii. 602a. Godolphin remained in the Commons until 25 July, when he moved to take into consideration a last ditch attempt to prevent conflict, and one diarist noted that ‘he is for an accommodation’.26PJ iii. 265. Godolphin left the Commons soon afterwards, his parting shot being a warning ‘that by a war the Parliament would expose itself to unknown dangers: for when the cards are once shuffled, no man knows what the game will be’.27Somer’s Tracts, vi. 574.

Godolphin’s role in the early months of the civil wars was not as great as has been claimed. On leaving London, he travelled west, meeting his old commander, Sir Ralph Hopton, on the Somerset/Dorset border in August, and joining his flight west to Cornwall in September.28Coate, Cornw. 35; Bellum Civile, 11, 18. Godolphin’s local influence was, however, fairly limited. He had not been named as a commissioner of array in July, although he seems to have been co-opted by October, when he signed letters from that body.29Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; Buller Pprs. 82, 84. Instead, he seems to have been little more than a gentleman companion to Hopton, following him to Saltash in November, Braddock Down in January, and promoting the local cessation of arms at the end of the month.30Bellum Civile, 28, 31; Coate, Cornw. 46-7. Hopton was charmed by Godolphin and another hanger-on, Henry Killigrew*, describing them as giving ‘great assistance, being all of the council of war and very ready with their persons in all occasions’, although they ‘had no particular commands’.31Bellum Civile, 31. It was as a supernumerary that Godolphin accompanied the advance of the royalist army into Devon in early February 1643, and he was with the troops of his kinsman Sir John Berkeley* when they entered Chagford on the 8th of the month. There they met unexpected resistance, and a sniper shot Godolphin in the thigh, ‘with which (without saying any word more than “Oh God! I am hurt”) he fell dead from his horse’.32Clarendon, Life, i. 53; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 457.

The royalist elite was united in its grief. Hopton wrote later of the ‘never to be forgotten Mr Sidney Godolphin, of whom may be said in brief, that he was as perfect, and as absolute a piece of virtue as ever our nation bred’.33Bellum Civile, 33. Sir Bevill Grenvile* told his wife that Godolphin’s loss was ‘invaluable’, as he was ‘as gallant a gentleman as the world has’.34Coate, Cornw. 47. Hyde professed himself inconsolable that Godolphin, ‘by too brave a pursuit of the enemy’ had been killed so young, adding that his demise was ‘to the excessive grief of his friends, who were all that knew him, and the irreparable damage of the public’.35Clarendon, Life, i. 53. Against such hyperbole should be set the report of the royalist newsbook, Mercurius Aulicus, which stated that Godolphin’s death was through recklessness, not heroism: ‘somewhat too valiantly entering into Chagford before the passages were gained and the rebels scattered’.36Mercurius Aulicus no. 8 (19-25 Feb. 1643), 101 (E.246.41). As the last comment makes plain, despite the plaudits, there is little reason to consider Godolphin as a ‘leader’ of the Cornish, alongside such proven military figures as Sir Bevill Grenvile, Sir Nicholas Slanning or John Trevanion*.37cf. Coate, Cornw. 180; Keeler, Long Parliament, 188.

Godolphin wrote his will on 23 June 1642. As he was unmarried, he left his main estate in Norfolk and his leases on the Scilly Isles to his brother Francis I, who was his executor. He also left £200 to ‘my worthy friend, Mr Thomas Hobbes’, and £1,000 to ‘my dear cousin, Mrs Jane Berkeley’.38PROB10/641/70; CCSP i. 354. Godolphin’s will was proved at Oxford by his brother in March 1644, and the probate confirmed in London in January 1647.39PROB10/641/70; PROB11/199/170.