Sidney Godolphin (poet)

Sidney Godolphin, (1610 (baptised) – 1643), was an English poet and courtier.

Godlophin was baptized on 15 January 1610 at Breage, Cornwall, the second of the four children of Sir William Godolphin (d. 1613) of Godolphin, Cornwall, and his wife, Thomasine (d. 1611/12), daughter and heir of Thomas Sidney of Wrighton, Norfolk. Sir William, who owned mines at Godolphin, was, like his father and brother, nationally renowned for his mining expertise. In his will, dated 2 and 4 September 1613, he made provision for "‘the honest and seemely mayntaynannce and educacon of my children’" and bequeathed to three-year-old Sidney, at his majority, his late mother's Norfolk estate in fee tail. So, "‘liberally supplied for a very good education, and for a cheerful subsistence, in any course of life he proposed to himself’" (Life of … Clarendon, 1.46), on 25 June 1624, aged fourteen, Sidney was admitted a commoner to Exeter College, Oxford. Three years later he may have entered one of the inns of court before travelling to France, to the Low Countries, and, in the earl of Leicester's embassy, to Denmark.

After his travels Godolphin took up residence at court, ‘where his excellent disposition and manners, and extraordinary qualification, made him very acceptable’ (Life of … Clarendon, 1.46), and between 1634 and 1641 he was a gentleman of the privy chamber extraordinary. One of a circle of minor poets at court, Godolphin's complete works comprise thirty short poems and 454 lines of a translation of The Aeneid, book 4. His poems, which are varied in form and include songs and epitaphs, sonnets and epistles, a meditative chorus, and a hymn, were not collected during his lifetime but were edited by G. Saintsbury in 1906 and by W. Dighton in 1931. The hymn, ‘Meditation on the Nativity’, and the songs "‘Or love me less, or love me more’" and "‘Fair friend, 'tis true your beauties move/My heart to a respect’" also feature in more recent anthologies. His poems are characteristic productions of the Jonson circle (lines attributed to Godolphin are included in the volume of memorial verse for Jonson): they have poise, grace, and a neatly turned wit. His Virgil translation "‘The Passion of Dido’", which he undertook in conjunction with Edmund Waller, marks a significant stage in the development of the heroic couplet. A member of Falkland's set at Great Tew, ‘Little Sid’ (as he was affectionately named by Suckling because of his small frame) included among his friends Thomas Hobbes (who commended him in the dedication, ‘Review’, and conclusion of Leviathan) and Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon. Clarendon described Godolphin as shy, sensitive, and inclined to melancholy but universally admired, reflecting 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’" (ibid.).

In May 1639 Godolphin was present on the Scottish border with Sir Ralph Hopton's troop of the royal bodyguard. Returned for Helston in both elections of 1640 (as in 1628), he was one of only five indigenous Cornish MPs to vote against Strafford's attainder. On 3 December 1641 he opposed Pym's strategy to control the Lords, declaring that if this were implemented ‘then the Myner part of the Commons would joyne with the Major part of the Lords and enter into a protestation against them that did’. He was ordered to withdraw from the Commons until the house ‘had time to consider of his delinquencie’ but the matter was taken no further (The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. W. H. Coate, 1942, 228 and n.). Sidney was one of the last royalist members to leave the house, warning on his departure that ‘When the cards are shuffled, no man knows what the game will be’ (Coate, 52).

Civil war

Once war was declared, ‘out of the pure indignation of his soul and conscience to his country’ Godolphin joined the king's cause in the west (Clarendon, Hist. rebellion, 6.251). An active commissioner of array, in September 1642 he accompanied Hopton on his march through north Devon and into Cornwall. Though ‘he thought not fit to take command in a profession he had not willingly chosen … [his] advice was of great authority with all the commanders’ (ibid.). He was a member of Hopton's council of war and was with Hopton's forces at Braddock Down on 19 January 1643 and in the subsequent advance that drove Ruthin's parliamentarian army across the Tamar into Devon. Early in February 1643 he was among a party of volunteers led by Sir John Berkeley that set out from Plympton in pursuit of the enemy. On 8 February, heading from Okehampton towards Totnes, the party was ambushed at Chagford by a parliamentarian force led by Sir John Northcott. As Godolphin rode through the town a chance shot ‘from an undiscerned and undiscerning hand’ (T. Hobbes, Leviathan, 4th edn, 1894, 316) struck him above the knee, and crying "‘O God, I am hurt’" (Life of … Clarendon, 1.47) he fell dead from his horse. Sir Bevil Grenville repined to his wife, "‘One losse we have sustained that is unvalluable, to witt Sidney Godolphin is slaine in the attempt, who was as gallant a gent as the world had’" (R. Granville, History of the Granville Family, 1895, 251), while Hopton reflected that Sidney was ‘as perfect, and as absolute piece of vertue as ever our Nation bredd’ (Hopton, 33).

Sidney was reputed to have married shortly before his death and to have left one daughter, Margaret. If so, he made no mention of either his wife or daughter in his will, made on 23 June 1642 and proved by his brother Francis at Oxford on 11 March 1643. In the will he resigned his soul to God, ‘expecting salvation thorough the meritts of Jesus Christ’, and bequeathed £200 to ‘my worthy friend Mr Thomas Hobbs’. He left his Norfolk estate, plus his interest in the Isles of Scilly (the gift of his late younger brother William), to Francis, whom he appointed sole executor. Sidney Godolphin was buried in the chancel of Okehampton church on 10 February 1643.

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