GOLDSBOROUGH, Godfrey (1548-1604)

Goldsborough’s father, from a village of that name near Knaresborough, Yorkshire, settled in Cambridge, where Godfrey matriculated at Trinity College in 1560; he held a college fellowship during the mastership of John Whitgift^†. Goldsborough signed a petition against the 1570 university statutes (drafted by Whitgift), which assigned control of the university to the heads of house,19 Ath. Cant. ii. 388. but his career depended entirely upon Whitgift’s patronage: during the latter’s tenure as bishop of Worcester, Goldsborough was appointed to two archdeaconries, three cathedral livings and the rectory of Stockton, Shropshire. Thus when the puritan Giles Wigginton, another former Trinity fellow, encountered him at St Paul’s Cathedral (one of his prebends) in 1584, it was not simply jealousy which led him to slander Goldsborough as ‘corrupt, profane, proud, pluralist, pseudo-hierarchist…’ [sic].20 Fasti, i. 24; vii. 113, 119; x. 12; xiii. 48; CCEd; Second Part of a Register ed. A. Peel, ii. 246; P. Collinson, Eliz. Puritan Movement, 130.

Having remained at Worcester when Whitgift moved to Canterbury in 1583, Goldsborough was belatedly selected for promotion to the bishopric of Gloucester in August 1598. Because of the poverty of the see (valued at only £284 a year), it was initially agreed that he should hold the archdeaconry of Worcester in commendam. In fact, he surrendered both his archdeaconries, but kept his prebends at Hereford and Worcester for life, and Stockton rectory for a year, to assist in the payment of his first fruits. Whitgift also presented him to the rectory of Hartlebury, Worcestershire in February 1599, although he never took possession, as the living had previously been granted to Miles Smith^*, later bishop of Gloucester.21 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15) vi. 56; HMC Hatfield, viii. 320-1, 332; CCEd; MILES SMITH. At Gloucester, Goldsborough clashed with his diocesan chancellor, William Blackleech, whose quarrels with the previous bishop, John Bullingham^†, had disrupted the diocesan courts for almost a decade, despite Whitgift’s attempt to broker a compromise in 1592. To resolve this dispute, Goldsborough regularly attended the consistory court in person, and finally ousted Blackleech in 1600.22 F.D. Price, ‘Bp. Bullingham and Chancellor Blackleech’, Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xci. 191-8; K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 169-70.

By 1603, Goldsborough’s health was failing, although in his will, drafted on 24 Aug., he insisted he was in ‘some good strength of body’. When Parliament convened in March 1604, he assigned his proxy to Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), who took charge of the ecclesiastical agenda in Parliament following Whitgift’s death on 29 February. Goldsborough died at Gloucester on 26 May 1604, and was buried in the cathedral, where a tomb was subsequently erected.23 PROB 11/104, f. 123v; LJ, ii. 263a; Ath. Cant. ii. 389. He left an estate worth £1,300, which seems to have been less than the value of the bequests he made in his will, as he reduced some of his legacies in a codicil. The main beneficiaries were his wife Hester, assigned £550; his eldest son, who was to inherit a Gloucestershire manor and leasehold property in Worcestershire, and his two younger sons, who shared seven saltpans in Droitwich, Worcestershire; Trinity College was remembered with the gift of a silver gilt cup. The shortfall of the bishop’s assets may have persuaded one of the executors to renounce his role; the other, Robert Hill, archdeacon of Gloucester, had a dispute with the family shortly before his death in 1606, when administration was taken over by one of Goldsborough’s former servants, who later sued Hill’s widow for repayment of £200 loaned out at interest.24 PROB 11/104, ff. 123v-6; 11/105, ff. 335v-6; 11/125, f. 521; C142/672/184; Fasti, viii. 48; C2/Jas.I/N2/57; F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, 316. The bishop’s nephew John Goldsborough served as MP for Huntingdon in 1626.