GOODRICKE, Francis (d. 1673), of Manby, Lincs. and Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx.

The Goodrickes had moved to the West Riding from Lincolnshire after purchasing the manor of Ribston in 1542; and by the 1630s they had become one of Yorkshire’s leading families.26Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 53-4; Goodricke, Goodricke Fam. 2, 12. Goodricke’s father, Sir Henry Goodricke, was a senior member of the council of the north and a deputy lieutenant and magistrate for the West Riding.27Add. 28082, f. 81; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 55; W. Riding Sessions Recs. ed. J. Lister (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. liv), 21, 249; R. Reid, Council in the North, 498; Goodricke, Goodricke Fam. 15. Evidently a man of strong moral principles, Sir Henry sent both Francis and his elder brother (Sir) John† to Aberdeen university on the grounds that discipline there was stricter than in English universities. Besides being strict disciplinarians, the academics and ministers of Aberdeen also came to be noted for their opposition to the Covenanters, and it was probably the outbreak of the bishops’ wars that caused Goodricke to return to Yorkshire early in 1639, having spent less than a year at Aberdeen.28CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 317, 543. According to his mother, he had ‘no mind to return from that happy place of learning’, but circumstances dictated otherwise.29CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 317. In July 1641, the same month that his father died, Goodricke was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, and it is likely that he remained in London for much of the 1640s.30LI Admiss.; CCAM 737; CCC 1138. Sir John Goodricke served as an officer in the king’s northern army until he was taken prisoner early in 1643, and he spent the remainder of the war incarcerated in the Tower.31SP23/177, p. 241; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir John Goodricke’.

Probably royalist in sympathy, Goodricke held no state-appointed offices before 1660 and was legal representative to several Yorkshire gentlemen – including his brother Sir John, Sir George Wentworth II* and Francis Nevile* – during the late 1640s and early 1650s who had been fined by the Committee for Advance of Money* for having signed the Yorkshire royalist ‘engagement’ in 1643.32CCAM, 912, 919, 930; Notts. RO, DD/SR/221/94/43; Sotheby’s sale, London 14 Dec. 1993, Fairfax collection, lot 53: Francis Nevile to Sir John Goodricke, 22 Jan. 1656. The fact that he was able to pursue an active legal career, however, suggests that he was not as openly or as strongly royalist as Sir John Goodricke, who served under the commander of the king’s northern army, the earl of Newcastle, during the early part of the war.33Goodricke, Goodricke Fam. 18. Indeed, Goodricke appears to have been liked and trusted by his uncle Lieutenant-colonel William Goodrick and his cousin Major William Goodrick*, both of whom were parliamentarian officers. Goodricke’s uncle left him money in his will for a mourning ring, whilst Major Goodrick made Goodricke one of the trustees of his estate.34PROB11/316, f. 31; PROB11/322, f. 277v. In the summer of 1651, Goodricke assisted his parliamentarian relatives in their purchase, by debenture, of the manor and palace of Richmond, in Surrey. Goodricke, it seems, worked with Captain Adam Baynes*, the northern brigade’s London agent, in handling the London end of the purchase.35Add. 21426, ff. 126, 128; Add. 21425, f. 52. Goodricke also acted as an attorney during the early 1650s for Baynes’s friend, the Yorkshire republican Martin Lister*, who was a brother-in-law of Major-general John Lambert*.36Add. 21421, f. 7.

Goodricke was returned for Aldborough in 1659, probably on the interest of his elder brother, whose estate at Great Ribston lay some ten miles south of Aldborough. Goodricke himself resided on the family’s estates in Lincolnshire. He was named to eight committees in this Parliament, including those for settling a godly ministry in the northern counties – to which he was named in first place – and to draw up an impeachment against Major-general William Boteler* for his conduct as a Cromwellian major-general.37CJ vii. 595a, 600a, 600b, 609a, 614b, 622b, 637a. He was a regular contributor to debate, usually siding with the Presbyterian or court interest in the House. His first recorded speech on the floor of the Commons was on 5 February, when he denounced as treasonous a pamphlet attacking the protectorate and questioning the succession of Richard Cromwell*.38Burton’s Diary, iii. 78. In a debate on 14 February concerning the bill of recognition (confirming Richard Cromwell as lord protector), Goodricke clashed with the prominent commonwealthsmen (republicans) Henry Neville and Thomas Scot I over the constitutional implications of the use of the word ‘recognize’.39Burton’s Diary, iii. 144, 275. Five days later (19 Feb.), he supported Richard Knightley’s call for the Commons to recognise the Cromwellian Other House as a de facto House of Lords. ‘I am against building with rotten timber’, he declared, ‘but not against building with old timber if it be sound’.40Burton’s Diary, iii. 352. He was also among those members who favoured the admission to the Other House of the hereditary peers who had supported Parliament in the civil wars, although he suggested that they first be approved by the Commons and the protector.41Burton’s Diary, iii. 420; iv. 21. Before the question was put on 28 March of whether to transact with the Other House as a House of Parliament, he declared himself ‘against bounding [limiting the powers of the Other House], but for approving [and] I am not satisfied that those are the persons his highness did approve of ... I would have a list of them, otherwise I can neither give negative nor affirmative to the question’.42Burton’s Diary, iv. 282. He was less equivocal in the debates on whether the Scottish and Irish Members had a legal right to sit in the House. On 9 March, he opposed a motion favoured by the republicans that the Scottish MPs should withdraw from the House immediately prior to any vote as to their constitutional status. And on 17 March, he opened the debate on the Scottish Members by urging the House to recognise their right to sit, calling down a curse upon any who sought to separate what God had united – that is, England and Scotland as a single parliamentary unit.43Burton’s Diary, iv. 108, 163; Schilling, thesis, 223-4.

Although Goodricke insisted that he was not at Westminster to ‘plead for delinquents’, he consistently spoke in favour of those whom the republicans wished to exclude or punish for their alleged malignancy.44Burton’s Diary, iii. 240. When Matthew Alured, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and other prominent Members moved that Edmund Jones be ordered to withdraw from the House as a former royalist (12 Feb.), Goodricke proposed that his case be referred to a committee for further consideration.45Burton’s Diary, iii. 233-40. At a meeting of the committee of privileges on 22 February, he was among those who supported Thomas Streete, one of the Members for Gloucester, whom some of the city’s inhabitants had petitioned the Commons against as a cavalier and a ‘common swearer’.46Burton’s Diary, iii. 70, 435. Similarly, Goodricke backed Sir George Boothe and Sir Richard Temple in their insistence that Henry Wroth, who had been imprisoned by the House for assaulting the army officer William Packer*, was a person of ‘great worth’ and should be released on his word alone and not have to give bond (4 Mar.).47Burton’s Diary, iii. 436-7; iv. 6. During a debate on the Malton election dispute, on 7 March, Goodricke joined Sir Walter Erle, John Maynard, Richard Knightley and other ‘moderates’ in urging the House to approve the return of George Marwood* and Philip Howard* rather than that of their rivals, the republicans Major-general Robert Lilburne* and Luke Robinson*.48Burton’s Diary, iv. 42, 45. No great friend of the army, it seems, he seconded a motion by the pro-Cromwellian William Cartwright on 9 April ‘to examine what lands have been bought by the officers, trustees etc., whether in their own or other’s names, contrary to their trusts’.49Burton’s Diary, iv. 385. Goodricke backed calls on 12 April for the impeachment of Major-general Boteler – although this was as much an attack upon the Cromwellian regime as upon the army and, as such, it attracted the support of several leading commonwealthsmen.50Burton’s Diary, iv. 403-4, 409-12. And Goodricke and Cartwright teamed up again on 15 April to move that a declaration for the continuance of the excise – a major source of army pay – be read again because of the thinness of the House.51Burton’s Diary, iv. 434. It was provocative actions such as these by the army’s opponents at Westminster that led a group of pro-republican officers to dissolve Parliament less than a week later.

Goodricke was returned for Aldborough to the 1660 Convention and was marked by Philip, 4th Baron Wharton as well-disposed to a Presbyterian church settlement.52G.T.F. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 345. An active member of this Parliament, he was named to numerous committees and spoke frequently in debate, where he generally sided with the voices of reconciliation in seeking a broad-based political and religious settlement. Thus he opposed proposals requiring protectoral officials to return their salaries and for penalising the major-generals, decimators and any who had sat on high courts of justice during the interregnum or had enriched themselves from church property. Similarly, in matters of religion he took a moderate Anglican line, backing calls in July for referring the church settlement to a committee of the whole House with the advice of a synod of divines.53HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Francis Goodricke’. ‘I pray God keep us from new embroilments upon an ecclesiastical account’, he confided to Sir John Goodricke, ‘which certainly nothing but a well composed synod of moderate and learned men to prepare a form of church government to be approved by Parliament, can prevent’.54Sotheby’s sale, London 14 Dec. 1993, Fairfax collection, lot 53: Francis Goodricke to Sir John Goodricke, 1660. He also favoured a proposal that any settlement should be based upon the Thirty-Nine Articles as well as biblical injunctions. Returned for Knaresborough again to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, he was identified as an adherent of the court party, and by 1670 he was closely associated with the duke of York (the future James II). His legal career flourished after the Restoration, most notably in the duke’s service.55HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Francis Goodricke’.

Goodricke died in the late summer of 1673 and was buried on 21 August at St Mary-le-Bow, Durham.56St Mary-le-Bow, Durham par. reg. In his will, he asked to be buried ‘without any pomp or ceremony’ and stipulated that part of his estate be sold for raising £3,000 to pay off his debts. He bequeathed the remainder of his estate, excluding his widow’s jointure lands, to his nephew John – a son of Sir John Goodricke.57PROB11/344, ff. 117v-118. Having died childless, Goodricke was the last of his line to sit in Parliament.