'He was a Man of the clearest Head, the calmest Temper, and the most incorrupt of all the Ministers of State I have ever known. After having been thirty Years in the Treasury, and during Nine of those Lord Treasurer, as he was never once suspected of Corruption, or of suffering his Servants to grow rich under him, so in all that time his Estate was not increased by him to the Value of 4000l. He served the Queen with such a particular Affection and Zeal, that he studied to possess all People with great personal esteem for her: And she herself seemed to be so sensible of this for many Years, that if Courts were not different from all other Places in the World, it might have been thought that his wise Management at home, and the Duke of Marlborough's glorious Conduct abroad, would have fixed them in their Posts, above the little Practices of an artful Favourite.'

But Courts are different from other places; and we have seen that in the Court of Anne, the memory of Godolphin's virtues was 'written on water.' Had he lived but two years longer he might, like Marlborough, have once more been restored to Royal favour at the Court of George I., and in yet another reign have been again the First Minister of the Crown of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[146] From 1504 to 1638 the Sheriff of Cornwall was frequently a Godolphin. One of them was also Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and two other members of the family were Vice-Wardens.

[147] Notably in the adjoining parish of St. Hilary, where, in the S.E. corner, forming the floor of a pew, is, or rather was, a Godolphin monument inscribed with a turgid Latin epitaph consisting mainly of a play upon the word 'delphinus.'

[148] Lipscombe, in his 'History of Buckinghamshire,' says of him that 'he was very ingenious, and entertained a Dutch mineral man, by whose instructions he practised a more saving way of making tin. He also undertook the coinage of silver out of the mines of Wales and Cornwall.'

[149] No doubt Carew here refers to Sir Francis's invention of mine stamps for crushing the ore. An earlier Godolphin seems to have also given attention to this branch of mining, for Leland says: 'From Mr. Godolcan's to Trewedenek about a 4 miles. Wher Thomas Godalcan (yonger) sun to Sir Willyam buildith a praty House, and hath made an exceeding fair blo House Mille in the Rokky Valley thereby.' In fact the neighbourhood of Godolphin seems to have been the birthplace of many important mining inventions. Near here the first steam-engine for draining the mine was put to work, early in the present century, at Wheal Vor; and the following is recorded in the Register of Breage Church: 'James Epsley senr of Chilchampton Parish Bath and Wells Summersetshire he was the man that brought that rare invention of shooting the rocks (viz., blasting them with gunpowder) which came heare in June 1684 and he died at the Bal (the mine) and was buried at breage the 16th day of September in the yeare of our Lord Christ 1689.'

[150] According to a passage in the 'Epistolary Curiosities of Rebecca Warner,' the House of Commons voted an address to the King praying for the recall of Sir William Godolphin on a charge of high treason, 'for he is one of the plotters,' and Godolphin was accordingly recalled in 1678 or 1679.

[151] For information as to one of these Godolphins I am indebted for the following notes to a source to which I am under the deepest obligations—the 'Bibliotheca Cornubiensis':

'Letter from John Verney to sir R. Verney.