But statelier figures are about to appear upon the scene: the solemn, silent Minister, in whose breast were locked the State secrets and intricate policies of a succession of English monarchs, and his devout and spotless wife, who, 'a saint at Court,' verily walked in the flames of 'the fiery furnace, and felt no hurt, neither did the smell of fire pass upon her.' Of Margaret, John Evelyn's exquisite 'Life' is familiar to many; but for her husband's career we have to search the annals of the Courts of Charles II., of his brother, James, of William and Mary, and of Anne: favoured and trusted by them all; until at length his sturdy resistance to the growing tendency of the last of the Stuarts to accept the counsel of irresponsible advisers instead of that of the Ministers of her Crown, caused the final rupture between the Queen and her Lord High Treasurer.
Born about the year 1630, of great natural abilities, educated at Oxford, and sprung from a family who were loyal to the backbone, Sidney Godolphin, when only about fifteen years old, was made, on the Restoration, first Page, then Groom of the Bedchamber. 'Never in the way, and never out of the way,' as the witty King said of him. In the following year, and during every Parliament of Charles's reign, he sat in the House of Commons as Member for Helston, an old coinage-town, and then the nearest place of importance to the family seat in Cornwall. In Parliament, though rarely opening his mouth, he was soon looked upon as a great authority, not only on all questions of trade and finance, but in matters of high policy as well. In 1668, he accompanied his brother William on a mission to Spain. Twice, in 1678, was he an envoy to Holland on the question of the 'separate' peace proposed by France; and his services on that occasion, when he received the valuable assistance of Sir William Temple, were rewarded in the following year by an appointment to the post of Fourth Commissioner of the Treasury, in the room of the Earl of Derby. It was about this time that Pepys first became acquainted with him; and Pepys thus records his impressions:
'February 5th, 1667-8.—Moore tells me what a character my Lord Sandwich hath sent over of Mr. Godolphin, as the worthiest man, and such a friend to him as he may be trusted in any thing relating to him in the world; as one whom, he says, he hath infallible assurances that he will remain his friend: which is very high, but indeed they say the gentleman is a fine man.
'10th Feby, 1667-8.—Made a visit to Mr. Godolphin at his chamber; and I do find him a very pretty and able person, a man of very fine parts, and of infinite zeal to my Lord Sandwich; and one that says, he is (he believes) as wise and able a person as any prince in the world.'
Indeed, Pepys seems to have been on intimate terms with the Godolphins; witness the following charming account of a dinner-party which he gave them:
'January 23rd, 1668-9.—To the office till noon, when word brought me that my Lord Sandwich was come; so I presently rose, and there I found my Lords Sandwich, Peterborough, and Sir Charles Harbord; and presently after them comes my Lord Hitchingbroke, Mr. Sidney and Sir William Godolphin. And after greeting them and some time spent in talk, dinner was brought up, one dish after another, but a dish at a time; but all so good, but, above all things, the variety of wines and excellent of their kind I had for them, and all in so good order, that they were mightily pleased, and myself full of content at it: and indeed it was, of a dinner of about six or eight dishes, as noble as any man need to have, I think; at least, all was done in the noblest manner that ever I had any, and I have rarely seen in my life better anywhere else, even at the Court. After dinner my Lords to cards, and the rest of us sitting about them and talking, and looking on my books and pictures, and my wife's drawings, which were commended mightily: and mighty merry all day long with exceeding great content, and so till seven at night, and so took their leaves, it being dark and foul weather. Thus was this entertainment over, the best of its kind and the fullest of honour and content to me that ever I had in my life; and I shall not easily have so good again.'
Shortly after his appointment to the Treasury, Godolphin was made a Privy Councillor; and, with the Earl of Sunderland and Mr. Hyde, formed that triumvirate which was so greatly in the confidence of the King:—indeed he may be said to have already become one of the moving spirits of the age. Charles was particularly anxious that Sidney Godolphin should convey to the House of Commons his determination never to consent to the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession; but there was an old, wise head upon Sidney's young shoulders, and, adroitly evading the task, Sir William Temple became his cat's-paw on that occasion. For a few months, in April, 1684, he succeeded Sir Lionel Jenkins, now grown very old and infirm, as a Secretary of State; and in the August of that year, on the retirement of the Earl of Radnor (whom the Earl of Rochester succeeded as President of the Council) our Sidney became First Commissioner of the Treasury. On the 8th of the following month, he was raised to the peerage, with the title of Baron Godolphin of Rialton, in Cornwall.
Rialton is an old manor-house on the banks of the little stream which finds its way into the sea at St. Columb Porth. It formerly belonged to the Priory of Bodmin, was for a long time in the possession of the family of Munday, and was granted to Sir Francis Godolphin in 1663. A great part of it was destroyed by fire towards the close of the last century, and the remains of it are now occupied as a farm-house. It was built by the haughty Thomas Vivian, last Prior of Bodmin, whose initials and arms may still be traced on various parts of the picturesque remains: C. S. Gilbert, in his 'History of Cornwall' (vol. ii. p. 673), gives a view of the S.E. entrance.
On the accession of James II., the well-known means by which that King essayed to bring over to his own creed those by whom he was surrounded were employed upon Lord Rochester, amongst others. He was made First Commissioner, in the place of Lord Godolphin, to whom was confided, in lieu, the post of Chamberlain to the Queen. But James's tactics failed; and it was not long before the skilled financier was again at the Treasury—this time as Second Commissioner, with, for his colleagues, two Roman Catholic noblemen, Lord Bellasis and Lord Dover—a conjunction which the High Church party could not, for a long time, forgive their Protestant colleague. What would they have said had they known that, on the approach of the Prince of Orange, Godolphin was the man whom James selected to carry on his affairs during the King's temporary absence in the west; and that to this trusted Minister, together with the Marquis of Halifax and the Earl of Nottingham, were confided the proposals for an 'accommodation' which James sent to William, at Hungerford, on December 8th, 1688? That these proposals failed in their object is matter of history; but it is, perhaps, not so generally known that the exiled King, pressed for money whilst at Rochester, was obliged to have recourse to his Minister for a gift of a hundred guineas! He is said to have accompanied James to the coast, and to have kept up a correspondence with that monarch until his death. Sidney Godolphin was no man of 'mere abstract ideas.' He moved entirely in the sphere of practical politics; and, notwithstanding his intimacy with the Stuarts, and his having been one of those who, in the Convention Parliament, had been in favour of a Regency—perhaps, indeed, partly because of all this—he soon found favour with the new King of England.