GOODMAN, Godfrey (1583-1656)

Described by Thomas Fuller as ‘a harmless man, hurtful to none but himself’, Godfrey Goodman enjoys the unenviable reputation of being the only bishop of the Church of England in a century suspected of having converted to Rome.21 T. Fuller, Worthies of Eng. ed. J. Freeman, 697-8. His paternal grandfather, a mercer from Ruthin, Denbighshire, claimed descent from the pre-Conquest princes of Powys, but adopted an English surname in the early sixteenth century. His uncle, Gabriel Goodman, was tutor to the older children of William Cecil^† (later 1st Lord Burghley), and served as dean of Westminster for 40 years under Queen Elizabeth. Gabriel secured for his younger brother Godfrey, father of the bishop, the post of chapter clerk, in which capacity the latter served until his death in 1587.

Early life, 1583-1616

The Goodmans clearly profited from their religious conformity. However, Goodman’s mother had Catholic connections, serving the dowager countess of Southampton (widow of Henry Wriothesley^†, 2nd earl of Southampton) following the death of her second husband, Richard Vale, receiver general of the Westminster abbey estates. In about 1592 she married for a third time, taking as her new husband Edward Thelwall of Plas-y-Ward, Denbighshire, a kinsman of her first husband’s mother. The future bishop began his education in his stepfather’s household, alongside Edward Herbert^† (later 1st Lord Herbert of Chirbury) and William Salesbury^‡. He was subsequently entered at Westminster School, whose staff included William Camden, appointed second master with the support of Dean Goodman and Godfrey’s own father.22 Soden, 8-16, 26-38; Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 14-16.

At Easter 1599 Goodman went up on a Westminster scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge; at the end of his life, he insisted ‘that no society in England, whether of churchmen, lawyers or citizens did exceed them’. It was at university, he later claimed, that his theological views were formed by the anti-Calvinists Lancelot Andrewes^* (later bishop of Winchester), John Overall^* (later bishop of Norwich) and George Montaigne^* (later archbishop of York).23 Soden, 46, 53; G. Goodman, The Two Great Mysteries of Christian Religion (1653), sigs. A2v, a2v. In November 1603, just short of the canonical age of 21, Goodman was ordained deacon by Henry Rowlands^*, bishop of Bangor, and instituted to a portion of the sinecure rectory of Llansannan, Denbighshire by William Morgan^*, bishop of St Asaph; the latter’s successor, Richard Parry^*, presented him to several other sinecures in the diocese over the next 20 years. As well as these ecclesiastical preferments, Goodman held a reversion to his elder brother Gabriel’s post as prothonotary of the North Wales assize circuit, which he ultimately surrendered to William Wynn^‡. Finally, his uncle, Dean Goodman, founder of Ruthin hospital, granted him a right of nomination to the wardenship, which he exercised in favour of John Williams, dean of Bangor Cathedral.24 Ath. Ox. ii. 865; Soden, 59-60; Acts of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster ed. C.S. Knighton (Westminster Abbey Rec. Ser. ii), 215. Dean Williams should not be confused with JOHN WILLIAMS, the future bishop of Lincoln.

In December 1606, immediately after his ordination by another Welshman, Richard Vaughan^*, bishop of London, Goodman was appointed to the crown living of Stapleford Abbots, Essex, at the nomination of Trinity College.25 Soden, 60-1; Bodl., Tanner 179, f. 104v; CCEd. Goodman may have travelled abroad after proceeding MA in 1607: in the visitation records for that year the archdeacon of Essex, Samuel Harsnett^* (later archbishop of York) reported that Stapleford was being served by a curate, another Trinity man, who was cited for conducting services before his ordination, and for preaching without licence. Goodman’s foreign itinerary is unknown, but in his memoirs, he mentioned a visit to the Vatican library, an undertaking which would have landed him in trouble with both the English and the Roman authorities, had it become known.26 G. Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, i. 297; Soden, 63. Stapleford was a promising living for an ambitious young cleric: by Goodman’s own reckoning it was only three hours’ hard riding from London; it was also close to Theobalds, which passed to the crown in 1607 and became a regular resort for both James I and his wife, Anne of Denmark, who acquired it as part of her jointure. Although a covert Catholic, the queen attended Protestant services, and Goodman may have become one of her chaplains as early as 1608. However, his affiliation with Anne can only definitely be established from 1616, when he dedicated his first publication, The Fall of Man, to her. In the preface to this work, Goodman hailed James’s accession as the fulfilment of Henry VII’s vision for a united Britain, and praised Anne for her ‘bounty, charity and magnificence’. The text focussed on the innate sinfulness of man and the redemptive role of the sacraments rather than the preaching advocated by Calvinist divines, an approach later criticized by the Calvinist conformist George Hakewill, archdeacon of Surrey.27 G. Goodman, The Fall of Man (1616), sigs. A6-a4; Soden, 75-6, 83-91.

The search for preferment 1617-24

In 1617 Goodman was admitted a canon of Windsor, the reversion to which office he had been granted ten years earlier. Three years later, he exchanged Stapleford for West Ilsley, Berkshire, a living resigned in his favour by the dean of Windsor, Marc Antonio de’Dominis. Theologically, Goodman should have found common ground with the erstwhile Catholic archbishop, but his memoirs suggest that their relationship was not close. At Windsor, Goodman spent large sums on repairing his house, recalling nostalgically at the end of his life that ‘we had there all the means of devotion, as music and outward ceremonies’; he was also solicitous for the administration of the chapel’s revenues, and the welfare of its almsmen.28 Windsor Chapter Acts, 99, 104, 108, 119-20, 138, 162; Soden, 92-100; Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, i. 339-48.

In an autobiographical fragment written in 1651 for William Juxon^†, bishop of London, Goodman recalled that the publication of The Fall of Man had been merely the first part of a broader campaign, encouraged (he insisted) by King James, which aimed ‘to examine all the mysteries in Scripture, how far they agree with natural reason, and wherein they transcend’. He described this as a campaign against ‘Socinianism’, although in 1642 he expanded this term (conventionally used of those who aimed to de-mystify revealed religion) to include several of his colleagues on the Caroline bench of bishops. Much of this writing must have been undertaken during the early 1620s, but, as Goodman explained, most of his manuscripts were lost during the civil wars of the 1640s.29 Eg. 2182, ff. 7-8; Soden, 101-9. The only fruit of his labours to appear at the time was a brief tract, The Creatures Praysing God, published anonymously in 1622, which, in emphasizing the common ground shared by all Christians, was perhaps intended to establish Goodman’s pro-Spanish credentials. The preface asked ‘what can be more glorious to God, than that his praise should be set forth by all his creatures?’, while the text offered a critique of confessional divisions:

if in the course of Christianity, we cannot agree in the very fundamental points of religion, … yet it were to be wished, that our actions might be squared out by one moral law, which law … is as natural to man as is his own nature … for want then of religious piety and godliness, let this moral law be our guide.

A French edition, published in 1644, was ascribed to ‘Sieur Geoffroy Bon-Homme de Ruthin’, and the translator’s preface claimed that it contained nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine.30 G. Goodman, The Creatures Praysing God (1622), sig. A2v, pp. 33-4; Soden, 120-6.

In his memoirs of the Jacobean court, Goodman recalled that he had expectations of preferment in 1620. It was presumably at this time that Sir Christopher Parkins^‡, a master of Requests, offered to resign to him his sinecure as dean of Carlisle, only to be refused, because Goodman had greater prospects – perhaps the deanery of Salisbury, or Durham. However, these hopes for advancement were dashed after the king took some unspecified displeasure in him, and he had to settle for the deanery of Rochester, to which he was instituted in January 1621.31 Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, i. 329-30, 356; Fasti, iii. 55; Soden, 114-15. As dean, he apparently rescued the city’s St Bartholomew’s hospital from the depredations of the concealed hospitals patent granted to James Hay^*, Viscount Doncaster (later 1st earl of Carlisle), whose solicitor Sir John Townshend^‡ was investigated in the 1621 Parliament.32 Soden, 118-19; HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 546.

Goodman’s promotion to the episcopal bench in the autumn of 1624 was secured in the face of stiff competition, Gloucester being only the fourth bishopric to fall vacant in three years. Richard Montagu^*, another of the canons at Windsor (and later bishop of Chichester and Norwich), who had his own ambitions for the see, reported that Goodman sent to court upon hearing of the vacancy, but noted that there were other contenders, including the Oxford don John Prideaux^† (later bishop of Worcester) and Theodore Price, sub-dean of Westminster, who was backed by John Williams^*, lord keeper and bishop of Lincoln. The see was first offered to the puritan John Preston, master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (at the behest of the favourite, George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham), then to Joseph Hall^*, dean of Worcester (later bishop of Norwich), but both men declined it, leaving Goodman as third choice.33 Soden, 131-8; Corresp. of John Cosin ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 22, 24; JOSEPH HALL. The poorest of the English bishoprics, Gloucester was only valued at £284 per annum, for which reason Goodman was licensed to retain West Ilsley, his canonry at Windsor and the deanery of Rochester in commendam. In fact, he relinquished his deanery to Walter Balcanquhall, but two years later he acquired the Gloucestershire living of Kemerton, which he reckoned to be worth £200 a year. While hardly a loser by this settlement, Goodman later insisted that King James had promised ‘to remove him speedily to a better’.34 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; CCEd; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 587-8; Fasti, iii. 55; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., U269/1/CP51 (Goodman to Cranfield, 10 Mar. 1636/7); Soden, 281.

Bishop of Gloucester, 1625-33

Consecrated on 6 Mar. 1625, Goodman recalled that he was the last man to do homage to King James before the latter’s death. He remained in Windsor and London for the rest of the year, missing his own primary visitation in Gloucestershire,35 Goodman, Ct. of James I, i. 409; Soden, 143-5; Fincham, 321. and attended most of the Westminster sittings of the 1625 Parliament, in whose records he barely features. Aside from being recorded as taking the oath of allegiance at the start of the session, he was named to only one committee, on a bill to confirm the copyholds of the new king’s manor of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. When the plague forced an adjournment, Goodman retired to Windsor, where he entertained William Laud^*, bishop of St Davids and the Irish peer John Vaughan^‡ to dinner. However, as one of his servants died of the plague on the following day, he was required to keep quarantine, thus missing the Oxford sitting of Parliament.36 Procs. 1625, pp, 40, 52, 127; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 168. He belatedly arrived in his diocese just before Christmas 1625, in order to confiscate the arms of the crypto-Catholic peer Mervyn Tuchet^*, 12th Lord Audley, then resident at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire.37 SP16/12/40; 16/18/30.

Returning to Westminster for the opening of the 1626 Parliament, Goodman was present for all but two sittings of the lengthy session. He kept a low profile in a session dominated by impeachment proceedings against Buckingham, being included on only three bill committees: one to naturalize the son of a London Welshman; another to regulate proceedings against scandalous ministers; and a third for the enfranchisement of copyholds in the lordship of Bromfield and Yale, Denbighshire, where he held a sinecure. During the Parliament, complaint was made against him by John Holles^*, 1st earl of Clare, who observed that he had not remitted the money collected in his diocese for the relief of London’s plague victims, and moved that it might be assigned to charitable uses in Westminster.38 Procs. 1626, i. 210, 267-8, 327; Ath. Ox. ii. 865.

During the session, Goodman, preaching before the king on Passion Sunday in the Chapel Royal, made a serious blunder, when ‘he pressed so hard upon the point of the real presence, that he was supposed to trench too near the borders of popery’. Writing much later, William Prynne^‡ claimed that Goodman compounded his error by repeating his views in a recantation sermon, and at the time the controversy was discussed in Convocation. However, four bishops reported that, while his tone was incautious, ‘nothing was innovated by him in the doctrine of the Church of England’.39 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 186-7; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 95; P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 146; Soden, 159-61.

By 1627 Goodman had established himself at the Vineyard, his episcopal residence situated just outside Gloucester, but he returned to Westminster for the parliamentary session of 1628, attending the Lords almost every day. He was named to only half a dozen committees, including one for the Bromfield and Yale copyhold bill (which passed into law on this occasion), two for estate bills and two for naturalization bills.40 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 120, 554, 678, 684, 690. He expressed no recorded views on the Petition of Right which dominated the session but, as an aspiring courtier, he is likely to have been sympathetic towards the needs of the royal prerogative. He also attended most of the sittings of the brief 1629 session, but left no trace on its proceedings, beyond conveying excuses for absence on two occasions.41 LJ, iv. 9a, 15a.

As a diocesan, Goodman strove to avoid controversy, not always an easy task. His appointment at Gloucester embroiled him in an ongoing dispute over the bishop’s chancellor, his predecessor Miles Smith^* having appointed his son-in-law William Sutton to the post in 1623. As a piece of nepotism this was unremarkable, but royal orders required chancellors to be qualified as civil lawyers, whereas Sutton was a cleric.42 Gloucester Cathedral Chapter Act Bk. 1616-87 ed. S. Edward (Glos. Rec. Ser. xxi), 26-7; B.P. Levack, Civil Lawyers in Eng. 64-5, 268. Even before his consecration, Goodman was pressed by Secretary of State Sir Edward Conway^* (later 1st Viscount Conway) to appoint ‘Dr Gwyn’ as his chancellor, presumably the civil lawyer Thomas Gwynn. Goodman, who replied that King James had nominated Nathaniel Brent, may have suspected that a minor drafting error in the patent for restoration of his temporalities (i.e. episcopal estates) was Conway’s attempt to encourage his compliance.43 SP14/176/26; 14/182/21; 14/185/62; Soden, 140-2. The dispute revived in July 1626, when Sutton was cited into High Commission, and in October 1627 Goodman yielded so far as to issue a fresh patent appointing Sutton to hold the chancellorship in tandem with Francis Baber, who had taken over the functions of the office by 1629.44 Gloucester Cathedral Chapter Act Bk. 1616-87, pp. 46-8; Soden, 164-5.

As bishop, Goodman had little patronage at his command, but two of his relatives were installed in benefices – one became archdeacon of Gloucester in 1634 – while a third was appointed receiver of episcopal rents and fees. A fourth displaced Alderman John Jones^‡ of Gloucester as diocesan register.45 Gloucester Cathedral Chapter Act Bk. 1616-87, pp. 42-4; Fasti, viii. 48; Soden, 157-9. Goodman also welcomed a royal initiative to foster the growth of naval timber on episcopal estates, offering to plant 30 acres, and founded a library at the cathedral with gifts of his own books, while encouraging his clergy to make further contributions.46 CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 339, 523; SP16/78/68; Sloane 1199, ff. 92v-3; Soden, 167, 180-2.

The quest for further promotion, 1633-8

Laud’s promotion to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1633 offered Goodman some hope of further preferment: while the two men were never close, the new archbishop sought allies in his struggle against the Calvinist orthodoxy of the Jacobean Church. At the end of October 1633, a congé d’élire was issued, apparently at Laud’s recommendation, for Goodman’s promotion to the diocese of Hereford in place of Bishop Juxon, who had been translated to London. Valued at £692 per annum, Hereford was worth at least as much as the combined value of Goodman’s existing posts, many of which Goodman would have been expected to surrender.47 Fasti, xiii. 4; Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56. At London in December, awaiting an interview with the king, Goodman assured Secretary of State Sir Francis Windebank^‡ that he had no intention of haggling over the settlement of any debts due from his new diocese – probably first fruits, or outstanding arrears of clerical subsidies. However, his proposal to hold Gloucester in commendam with Hereford for a year offended Charles, and his translation was rescinded. Aghast at this misfortune, Goodman pleaded with Laud to be allowed to appoint a coadjutor to run his diocese, ‘having made myself unfit to reside in Gloucester, both in regard of my solemn leave which I took of my neighbours, as likewise because they will conceive I live in his Majesty’s displeasure’. Charles refused, and Laud advised Goodman to ‘repair to Gloucester … and look to your diocese’. The humiliation still rankled 18 months later, when Goodman threatened to quit, but Laud warned that the king would accept his resignation without offering him compensation for his financial loss.48 SP16/252/48; 16/259/49; Birch, ii. 229; Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 62-3, 88-90; Soden, 210-18.

Even before this fiasco Laud, a former dean of Gloucester, was so unimpressed by Goodman’s leadership that he started to intervene in diocesan affairs. In 1631, he convinced High Commission to remove the nonconformist vicar of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.49 Reps. of Cases in Star Chamber and High Commission ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxxix), 244, 269; Soden, 192-4. Two years later, during Goodman’s absence in London, the Privy Council, doubtless at Laud’s prompting, interrogated two members of Gloucester’s corporation over their recent confirmation of an annuity of £20 to the town preacher John Workman, shortly after Goodman had questioned the latter ‘for dangerous doctrine and refractory carriage to the Canons and established government of this church’. In 1635, following legal proceedings, Workman was suspended from his lectureship and excommunicated.50 PC2/43, f. 207; Glos. RO, GBR/B/3/2, pp. 12, 18, 23, 25-6, 121-2; Soden, 170-1, 178, 197-8, 202-8. By then, Goodman had been spurred into some semblance of action against nonconformity in his diocese. In 1634 he issued a greatly expanded set of visitation articles which followed a Laudian agenda: the use of the surplice and the cross in baptism; bowing and kneeling according to the rubric of the Prayer Book; providing for catechism and the churching of women; breaches of the 1633 book of Sports and the holding of church-ales. His diocesan report to Laud at the end of the year denied ‘there is any one unconformable man in all his diocese’, a claim the archbishop greeted with scepticism.51 Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church II ed. K. Fincham (C. of E. Rec. Soc. v), 50-2; Works of Abp. Laud, v. 330; Soden, 219. Nevertheless, on Goodman’s initiative, and after receiving a gift of £20, Gloucester’s corporation repaired the city cross in 1635. Goodman was also instrumental in securing the repair of the market cross at Windsor that same year.52 Glos. RO, GBR/B/3/2, pp. 39, 44; Soden, 237-40.

During the mid 1630s Goodman may have taken fresh heart from developments at court, where he forged links with the papal nuncio Gregorio Panzani, who was in England during 1634-6. A keen exponent of the possibility of reconciliation between Canterbury and Rome, Panzani found a sympathetic audience in Goodman, who, he insisted, expressed a desire to convert to Rome, and wished to have a priest join his household incognito – perhaps his cousin, the seminary priest John Goodman, then active in London. While the curia ultimately disowned the nuncio’s ambitious plans, Panzani provided Goodman with a conduit to royal favour which did not run through Laud.53 Soden, 224-35, 246-58; G. Albion, Chas. I and the Ct. of Rome, 413; G. Anstruther, Seminary Priests, ii. 132-3. In 1636, he solicited further advice about his prospects from the disgraced former lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex. As the death of Theophilus Field^*, bishop of Hereford, in June 1636 left that diocese vacant, Goodman spoke to the king about ‘removes of bishoprics’. During this discussion Charles promised that ‘he would be as good to me as he was to other bishops’, by which Goodman ‘did understand of a remove’.54 Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., U269/1/CP51 (21 Feb. 1636/7, Goodman to countess of Denbigh and n.d., probably enclosed in the former). Realizing that Laud would be of no use as an advocate, he sought to recruit the late duke of Buckingham’s sister, the wife of William Feilding^*, 1st earl of Denbigh, offering her the nomination to the vacancy his translation would create at his own rectory of Kemerton. In fact, Hereford was swiftly granted to George Coke^†, and the only vacancies which occurred in 1637 were Bangor, Bristol and Rochester, none of which was worth much more than Gloucester.55 Ibid. (numerous letters from 26 Oct. 1636 to 24 Jan. 1637/8); Fasti, xiii. 4.

Later years 1638-56

By the time Goodman abandoned his quest for preferment, in the spring of 1638, rumours about his conversations with Panzani were circulating at Rome and being reported back to England. After Secretary Windebank received intelligence that he had been visited at the Vineyard by the Catholic priest John Claybrooke, with a view to his conversion to Rome, his request to go abroad to Spa for his health was refused.56 Works of Abp. Laud, vi. 539; Anstruther, ii. 61; Soden, 272-86. Thereafter, relations between Goodman and Laud deteriorated to the point where Goodman objected to the new ecclesiastical Canons issued in May 1640, for which offence he was temporarily suspended from his functions.57 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 236, 287-91. Laud’s disgrace led to his rehabilitation, and in December 1641 he was one of the 12 bishops who petitioned against their exclusion from the House of Lords by the London mob. Nevertheless, at the outbreak of the Civil War he sought to live quietly in London, but he was arrested, then fled to North Wales, returning only after 1646. With his episcopal revenues confiscated, and West Ilsley under sequestration, he spent most of the last decade of his life in London, writing and keeping company with Catholic priests. In 1653 he published an attack on Socinianism, which he dedicated to Oliver Cromwell^‡, but two years later he had no success in petitioning the lord protector for the restitution of his living at West Ilsley – perhaps because he recommended that the recently instituted ‘triers’ for the ordination of ministers be replaced by a committee of academics.58 Goodman, Two Great Mysteries (1653), sig. A2; The Humble Petition and Information of Godfree Goodman (1655).

Goodman was widely reported to have been reconciled to Rome before his death on 19 Jan. 1655/6.59 Eg. 2182, ff. 3-8; Ath. Ox. ii. 864-5; Soden, 469-73. His will was characteristically evasive on this point, insisting ‘I die most constant in all the articles of our Christian faith, and in all the doctrines of God’s holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, whereof I do acknowledge the Church of Rome to be the mother church’. As well as making bequests to his relatives, he left tokens to several Catholics. He also established a trust to provide a dole for the poor of Ruthin, which he defiantly intended to be administered by the bishops of Bangor and St Asaph ‘when it shall please God that they shall be restored’.60 PROB 11/253, ff. 101v-3, analysed in Soden, 464-9.