Sidney Godolphin

Sidney Godolphin, 14 January 1610 (baptised) to 8 February 1643, was a minor poet and courtier from Cornwall who sat in the House of Commons between 1628 and 1643. He served in the Royalist army during the First English Civil War and was killed in a skirmish near Chagford in Devon on 8 February 1643. Personal details Godolphin was baptised on 14 January 1610, second son of Sir William Godolphin (1567-1613) of Godolphin Estate, near Breage, Cornwall, and his wife, Thomasine (1581-1612). He had two brothers, Francis (1605-1667) and William (1611-1636), as well as a sister, Penelope (1607-1669), who married Charles Berkeley, 2nd Viscount Fitzhardinge. He never married and left no children. Career Orphaned by the time he was three, Godolphin inherited his mother's estates in Norfolk and had enough money to live independently. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, from 1624 to 1627, followed by a period acquiring the basic legal training then considered essential for members of the gentry. Elected along with his brother Francis as one of the two MPs for Helston to the 1628 Parliament, he played little part in its activities before it was dissolved in 1629, ushering in eleven years of Personal Rule. He spent the next few years travelling in France and the Low Countries, and in 1632 accompanied his distant relative Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester on a diplomatic mission to Denmark-Norway. On his return to England, Godolphin took up residence at court and became part of the Great Tew circle, a collection of writers and poets clustered around Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland. Other members included Edward Hyde and the political theorist Thomas Hobbes, who later dedicated Leviathan to his brother Francis.