[Godfrey of Bouillon], a renowned Crusader, eldest son of Eustace II., Count of Boulogne; he served with distinction under the Emperor Henry II., being present at the storming of Rome in 1084; his main title to fame rests on the gallantry and devotion he displayed in the first Crusade, of which he was a principal leader; a series of victories led up to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, and he was proclaimed "Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre," but declined to wear a king's crown in the city where his Saviour had borne a crown of thorns; his defeat of the sultan of Egypt at Ascalon in the same year confirmed him in the possession of Palestine (1061-1100).
[Godiva, Lady], wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia and Lord of Coventry, who pled in vain with her husband on behalf of the inhabitants of the place for relief from heavy exactions he had laid upon them, till one day he relented and consented he would grant her prayer if she would ride through Coventry on horseback naked, which, with his leave, she at once undertook to do, and did, not one soul of the place peering through to look at her save Peeping Tom, who paid for his curiosity by being smitten thereafter with blindness.
[Godolphin, Sydney Godolphin, Earl of], a celebrated English statesman and financier, born at Godolphin Hall, near Helston, Cornwall; at 19 was a royal page in the Court of Charles II., and in 1678 engaged on a political mission in Holland; in the following year entered Parliament and was appointed to a post in the Treasury, of which, five years later, he became First Commissioner, being at the same time raised to the peerage; under James II, was again at the head of the Treasury, and at the Revolution supported James, till the abdication, when he voted in favour of a regency; on the elevation of William to the throne was immediately reinstated at the Treasury, where he continued eight years, till the Whig ascendency brought about his dismissal; for six months in 1700 he once more assumed his former post, and under Anne fulfilled the duties of Lord High-Treasurer from 1702 to 1710, administering the finances with sagacity and integrity during the great campaigns of his friend Marlborough, and in 1706 he was created an Earl (1645-1712).
[Godoy, Manuel de], minister of Charles IV. of Spain, born at Badajoz; played a conspicuous part in the affairs of Spain during the French Revolution and the Empire; received the title of Prince of Peace for an offensive and defensive treaty he concluded with France in 1796, in opposition to the general wish of the nation; lost all and died in Paris (1767-1851).
[Godwin], Earl of the West Saxons, a powerful English noble of the 11th century and father of Harold II.; first comes into prominence in the reign of Cnut; was created an earl previous to 1018, and shortly afterwards became related to the king by marriage; he was a zealous supporter of Harthacnut in the struggle which followed the demise of Cnut; subsequently was instrumental in raising Edward the Confessor to the throne, to whom he gave his daughter Edith in marriage; continued for some years virtual ruler of the kingdom, but in 1051 his opposition to the growing Norman influence brought about his banishment and the confiscation of his estates; in 1052 he returned to England and was received with so great popular acclaim that the king was forced to restore to him his estates and offices; d. 1054.
[Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft], an English authoress, and first to publicly assert the Rights of Women, born at Hoxton, of humble Irish parentage; at 19 she began to support herself by teaching, and continued to do so till 1788, when she established herself in London to push her way as a writer, having already published "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters"; in 1791 she replied to Burke's "Reflections," and in the following year appeared her famous "Vindication of the Rights of Women"; while in Paris in 1793 she formed a liaison with an American, Captain Imlay, whose cruel desertion of her two years later induced her to attempt suicide by drowning; in 1796 she became attached to William Godwin, a friend of five years' standing, and with him lived for some months, although, in accord with their own pronounced opinions, no marriage ceremony had been performed; in deference to the opinions of others, however, they departed from this position, and a marriage was duly celebrated five months before the birth of their daughter Mary (Shelley's second wife); contemporary opinion shows her to have been generous and gentle of nature, and animated throughout by a noble zeal for the welfare of humanity (1759-1797).
[Godwin, William], a political writer and novelist, the son of a Presbyterian minister, born at Wisbeach, Somersetshire; was educated for the Church, and was for five years in the ministry; during this period his opinions on politics and religion underwent a radical change, and when in 1787 he threw up his holy office to engage in literature, he had become a republican in the one and a free-thinker in the other; various works had come from his pen, including three novels, before his celebrated "Political Justice" appeared in 1793, "Caleb Williams," a novel, and his best-known work, being published in the following year; in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft (see preceding), who died the same year, and four years later he married a widow, Mrs. Clement; to the close of his long life he was a prolific writer on literary, historical, and political subjects, but his carelessness and lack of business habits left him little profit from all his literary activity; his writings are clear and vigorous in the expression, if visionary and impracticable in theory (1756-1836).
[Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von], a great poet and wise man, the greatest, it is alleged, the world has seen since Shakespeare left it, and who, being born in Frankfort-on-the-Main 10 years before Robert Burns, died in the small duchy of Weimar the same year as Sir Walter Scott; was the son of an imperial chancellor, a formal man and his pedagogue in boyhood, and of Elizabeth Textor, daughter of the chief magistrate of the city, a woman of bright intelligence, who was only eighteen at the time of his birth. Spiritually and bodily he was the most perfectly formed, symetrically proportioned, justly balanced, and completely cultivated man perhaps that ever lived, whose priceless value to the world lies in this, that in his philosophy and life there is found the union in one of what to smaller people appears entirely and absolutely antagonistic, of utmost scientific scepticism and highest spiritual faith and worth. "He was filled full with the scepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions of his time, till his heart was like to break; yet he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly, by word and act, showed others that came after how to do the like." Carlyle, who is never done recalling his worth, confesses an indebtedness to him—which he found it beyond his power to express: "It was he," he writes to Emerson, "that first proclaimed to me (convincingly, for I saw it done): 'behold, even in this scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be Man.'" "He was," says he, "king of himself and his world;... his faculties and feelings were not fettered or prostrated under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly union under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of chaos were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together, under its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation." His life lies latent in his successive works, above all in "Goetz," in "Werter," in "Faust," and in "Meister"; but as these have not been duly read it has not yet been duly written, though an attempt is being made to do so in the said connection. Of the last of the four works named, Carlyle, who has done more than any one else yet to bring Goethe near us, once said, "There are some ten pages of that book that, if ambition had been my object, I would rather have written than all the literature of my time." "One counsel," says Carlyle, "he has to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy, 'Think of living! Thy life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own, it is all thou hast to front eternity with.'" "Never thought on thinking," he has said, Nie ans Denken gedacht. "What a thrift," exclaims Carlyle, "of faculty here!" Some think he had one weakness: he lived for culture, believed in culture, irrespective of the fact and the need of individual regeneration. And Emerson, who afterwards in his "Representative Men" did Goethe full justice, in introducing him as, if not a world-wise man, at all events as a world-related, once complained that "he showed us the actual rather than the ideal." To which Carlyle answered, "That is true; but it is not the whole truth. The actual well seen is the ideal. The actual, what really is and exists; the past, the present, and the future do all lie there" (1749-1832).
[Goetz von Berlichingen] (of the Iron Hand), a German knight of the 16th century; was involved in turbulent movements, and lost his right hand at the siege of Landshut, which he replaced by one of his own invention made of steel; spent his life in feuds, and left an autobiography which interested Goethe, who dramatised his story, "to save," as he said, "the memory of a brave man from darkness," a drama that had the honour of being translated by Sir Walter Scott.
[Gog and Magog], names that occur in the Bible of foes of Israel, and designative in the Apocalypse of enemies of the kingdom of God, as also of a Scythian tribe N. of the Caucasus. The names are applied likewise to two giants, survivors of a race found in Britain by Brute of Troy, effigies of whom stood at the Guildhall Gate, symbolic defenders of the city.