ur 



OODOLPHIN, SIDNEY, EARL OF. 



QODUNOV, BORIS. 



works written in Latin, instructed himself in that language. Jamei 

 Locan. who had tome reputation u a mathematician, having treated 

 him with kindness and lent him hooka, he pmented to that pcntle- 

 iran in 1730 a paper describing an improvement of the quadrant. In 

 1782 Logan wrote a letter to Dr. Hallry, in whirh lie gave an account 

 of Godfrey's invention, but no aniwer waa returned. Meantime, in 

 1731, Mr. Hadley bad communicated to the Roynl Society of London 

 a paper in which he described an improvement of the quadnnt 

 similar to that of Godfrey. The claims of both parties were afterwards 

 investigated by the Royal Society, and it ws decided that they were 

 both entitled to the honour of the invention. The value of 200/. was 

 sent to Godfrey by the Roynl Society, not in money, but in furniture, 

 on account of his intemperate habits. The instrument however is 

 still known'by the name of Hadley's quadrant. Dr. Benjamin Franklin 

 says " I continued to board with Godfrey, who lived in port of my 

 house with bis wife and children, and had one side of the shop for 

 his glazier's business, though he worked but little, being always 

 absorbed in mathematics." He died in 1749. 



Godfrey had a son, Thoma*, who died in his 27th year. He wrote 

 some poems, and is distinguished as the author of the first drama 

 written by an American ; it is a tragedy, called ' The Prince of 

 Parthia." (Entvclopadia Americana.} 



GODOLPHIN, SIDNEY GODOLPHIN, EARL OF, was a younger 

 brother of a family said to have been settled at Godolphin, or, as it 

 was anciently called, Qodolcan, in Cornwall, before the Norman 

 conquest. HU father was Francis Godolphin, who was made a Knight 

 of the Bath at the Coronation of Charles II., 23rd of April 1661. The 

 date of Sidney Godolphin's birth is not stated, but he was very young 

 when he was firtt introduced in (1645) to Charles II., then Prince of 

 Wales, and acting as general of the royal army in the west of England. 

 On the Restoration he was brought to court, and appointed one of tbo 

 grooms of the bedchamber. The first political business in which we 

 find him employed was the management of a confidential correspondence 

 between the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) and the Prince of 

 Orange (afterwards William III.) in the beginning of the year 1678, 

 the object of which was to unite England and Holland in a war 

 against France. (See Appendix to Sir John Dalrymple s ' Memoirs of 

 Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 144 156.) The duke's anti-gallican 

 zeal soon cooled, and the projected war never took place, but 

 Godolphiu's services were rewarded the following year by his appoint- 

 ment (26th March 1679) as one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 

 this office he soon acquired much reputation for ability and habits of 

 business and he also ingratiated himself so greatly with the king, that 

 on the dismissal, in September 1679, of the Duke of Monmouth and 

 Lord Salisbury, he was, along with Lord Vifcount Hyde (afterwards 

 Earl of Rochester) and the Earl of Sunderlond, entrusted with the 

 chief management of affairs. Godolphin remained in power when 

 Sundrrland was dismissed in 1680, and went along with the king 

 and the other ministers in the disgraceful secret negotiations entered 

 into in 16S3 with Louis XIV.. for a renewal of the former de- 

 pendent connexion of Charles with the French king. On the 14th 

 April 16S4, he was transferred from his seat at the treasury-board 

 to be one of the principal secretaries of state; but on the 9th 

 September of the game year he was brought back to the treasury 

 and placed at its head, having the day before been ennobled by the 

 title of Boron Godolphin of Rialton, in the county of Cornwall. On 

 the accession of James II., although his conduct in regard to the 

 exclusion bill, a few years before, had not manifested much zeal for 

 the interest of that prince, he was continued in office, but only in a 

 subordinate place at the treasury-board. The letters of Barillon, the 

 French ambassador, however, represent him as one of the chief of the 

 confidential advisers of the new king, and as taking on active part in 

 the negotiations which were immediately opened for continuing the 

 same system of pecuniary obligation to France, and entire subservi- 

 ency to that power, which had been established in the latter part of 

 the preceding reign. During this short reign he also held the office of 

 chamberlain to the queen. After the Prince of Orange had landed in 

 England, Godolphiu was sent to negociate with him on the part of 

 King Jamep, along with the Marquis of Halifax and the Earl of 

 Nottingham : the commissioners submitted their proposals to his 

 highness at Hungerford in Berkshire, on the 7th of December, and 

 having received his answer returned with it to the king. Godolpbin 

 however bad long been connected \\ ith the Prince of Orange, and on 

 the establishment of the new government he was continued as one of 

 the lords of the treasury, to the great grief, according to Tindal, of 

 the Earl of Monmouth (afterwards Earl of Peterborough), the first 

 lord, and Lord Delamere (afterwards Earl of Warrington), the Chan- 

 cellor of the Exchequer, " who soon saw," says the historian, " that 

 the king considered him more than them both ; for, as he understood 

 the treasury business well, BO his calm and cold way suited the king's 

 temper." He was left out of the new commission issued 18th March 

 1690, when the king took an opportunity of dismissing Monmouth and 

 Delamere ; but this was merely a temporary arrangement, and on the 

 15th November following he was appointed first lord. Ho held this 

 situation till May 1697, when, in one of those adjustmiuts by wlmh 

 King William was constantly modifying his cabinet with the view of 

 preserving the balance of parties, he was replaced by Mr. Charles 

 Montagu (afterwards Earl of Halifax). At this time Godolphin was 



looked upon as one of the lory party, and when a strong detachment 

 of that party waa brought into the ministry through the medium of 

 the Karl of Rochester, in the end of the year 1700, he was recalled 

 and again placed at the head of the treasury. He again went out 

 with his friends about a year after, but his exclusion this time did not 

 last long. The accession of Queen Anne in March, 1702, was imme- 

 diately followed by the first exclusively tory administration that had 

 existed since the Revolution ; and on the 8th of May, Godolphin was 

 made lord-high-treaturer, being the first person who had held that 

 eminent office since the Restoration. He was in great part indebted 

 for the importance which he now acquired to his intimate conn 

 with the Earl (afterwards the great Duke) of Marlborougb, whose 

 eldest daughter and successor in the dukedom afterwards married the 

 son and heir of the lord-treasurer. The attachment of the queen to 

 Marlborough's wife, the celebrated Duchess Sarah, opened for the 

 duke at this moment the door to favour aud power; but, as Tiudal 

 observes, neither Godolphin nor Marlborough himself woul'. have 

 obtained so great a share of the royal regard and confidence, if they 

 had not been considered to be tones. 



Godolphin, who was created Viscount Rialton and Earl of Godolphin, 

 29th of December 1706, having also in 1704 been made a kui-ht of 

 the garter, continued to hold the office of lord-high-treasurer, and as 

 such to take the chief part in the direction of affairs, till tho interest 

 of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough was effectually suppi 

 by that of Mrs. Marsham and Harley in 1710. From tho first how- 

 ever both Marlborough and Godolphin had taken a moderate course, 

 and the latter especially continued to approximate more and more 

 towards the whigs, as that party acquired strength in the country and 

 in the House of Commons. From about the beginning of the year 

 1706, Godolphiu is to be considered as having openly attached himself 

 to the whig party. Soon after this a struggle for the chief power 

 commenced between him and Harley, which was put a stop to for a 

 time by the queen's reluctant dismissal of Harley, on the distinct 

 declaration of Godolphin and Marlborough that they would leave her 

 service unless that step were taken, but the contest was not terminated 

 by that ejection of one of the two rivals from the cabinet. Harley 

 did not rest till, taking advantage of the ferment excited in the public 

 ujiud in the summer of 1710, by the conduct of the ministry in the 

 case of Sacheverel, he succeeded in emboldening the queen to venture 

 upon the measure for which his intrigues hud long given her a 

 vehement inclination. The premier Godolphiu was suddenly and 

 rudely dismissed on the 8th of August : it is affirmed that the letter 

 intimating the queen's commands was sent to him by the hands of a 

 livery servant. He survived his loss of power about two years, having 

 died on the 15th of September 1712. Lord Godolphin left an only 

 son, Francis, on whose death, without any surviving male issue, in 

 1766, the titles became extinct. A new barony however of Uodolphin 

 of Helston, which had been granted to this Francis in 1735, was 

 inherited by Francis Godolphiu, the son of his uncle Henry; but on 

 his death in 1 785 it also became extinct. 



GODOONOFF. [GoDuuov]. 



GODUNOV, OB GODOONOFF, BORIS, tzar of Moscow, was born 

 in 1552, of a noble family of Tartar descent. Having married the 

 daughter of Maloota Skooratoff, a favourite of the tzar of Moscow, 

 Ivan Vossilevich the Terrible, he was attached to the court of the tzar 

 at the age of twenty-two, where he soon distinguished himself by such 

 prudent conduct that, although in favour with the tjrant, he avoided 

 taking the. least part in the cruelties which disgraced that reign, and 

 of which his own father-in-law was the principal agent. The marriage 

 of his sister Irene with the heir of the throne, Prince Fedor, in 

 increased his influence, and, in 1582, he was nominated by Ivan 

 Vassilevich one of the five members of the supreme council of Mate, 

 and became the first favourite of Ivan's successor, Fedor, who threw 

 all the burthen of the government upon him. He received the 

 highest titles that a subject could attain, and such enormous estates 

 that his fortune amounted to 150,0002. a year. 



Fedor had no children, aud his wretched state of health gave no 

 prospects of his having any; but he had a brother called Demetrius, 

 sprung from Ivan Vassilevich, by a seventh marriage, who was, at the 

 time of his father's death, two years old. This infant prince was sent 

 with his mother to the town of Uglich, where they lived in a kind of 

 honourable exile. 



Godunov ruled the empire in the name of Fedor with an absolute 

 sway. The country was satisfied with the wisdom of his administra- 

 tion, and he conciliated the friendship of foreign powers. The court 

 as well as the first officers of the empire were filled with his creatures, 

 and all attempts to overthrow him were repressed and severely 

 punished. Yet this grandeur was held by a very precarious tenure, 

 the life of a monarch weak in mind and body. In 1591 the young 

 prince died however under the circumstances described in the article 

 i:ius, vol. ii. coL 660. Under the supposition that the young 

 prince had been murdered, the inhabitants of Uglich, where the prince 

 resided, rose against certain members of the prince's household, who 

 it was reported had been suborned by Godunov, and massacred them. 

 Goduuov sent a commission to investigate this affair, who diclan . 1 that 

 the young prince committed suicide in a fit of madness, and that the 

 individuals who were massacred by the inhabitants of Uglich as the 

 murderers of the prince were innocent Fedor was satisfied with this 



