Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/124

 L'Orient. He and his men were sent on to Rennes, and thence to Espinal; from which place he made his escape, in company with one of his officers. After many hardships and adventures they reached the Rhine, succeeded in crossing it, and so making their way to Berlin, whence they were sent on to England.

On the beginning of the war with Spain Goodall again obtained command of a privateer, and in her captured a treasure-ship from Vera Cruz. He afterwards touched at St. Domingo, and having made some acquaintance with Christophe, one of two rival black presidents, he was induced to put his ship and his own services at the disposal of Christophe in the civil war that was raging between the two. His assistance seems to have turned the scale definitely in Christophe's favour; but Goodall was considered by the governor of Jamaica to have acted improperly, and was therefore sent home in 1808. On his arrival he was released, and shortly after returned to Hayti; coming home again in 1810 and again in 1812. He is said to have remitted to his agent in England—an attorney named Fletcher—very large sums of money, to the amount of 120,000l. The amount was probably exaggerated, but that he had remitted considerable sums seems established. He now, however, found himself a bankrupt by the chicanery of Fletcher, who had not only robbed him of his fortune but also of his wife, who, although the mother of eight children by Goodall, six of whom were living, had become Fletcher's mistress. It was deposed on the trial that during her husband's imprisonment and absence from home Mrs. Goodall had supported her family by her theatrical profession; but there was no whisper of any misconduct or even levity on her part, till she yielded to the seductions of Fletcher; and the jury before whom the case was tried, taking this view of the matter, awarded the injured husband 5,000l. damages.

Of Goodall, nothing further is known; but as his name does not occur in the later history of Hayti (, Relation des événements, &c.), it would seem probable that he lived in privacy till his death, which is said to have taken place in 1832 (, Catalogue of Engraved Portraits, 1836).

[European Mag. (May 1808), liii. 323. This biographical sketch would appear to have been furnished by Goodall himself, and is therefore liable to suspicion of exaggerating a romantic career: so far as they go, it is corroborated by the pay-books of the Triton and the Nemesis, now in the Public Record Office. General Evening Post, 23 April, 14 May 1808; Report of the Trial between Thomas Goodall (Plaintiff) and William Fletcher (Defendant), 1813, 8vo.]  GOODALL, WALTER (1706?–1766), apologist of Mary Queen of Scots, was the eldest son of John Goodall, a farmer in Banffshire. He was educated at King's College, Old Aberdeen, which he entered in 1723, but left without taking a degree. In 1730 he obtained employment in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and in 1735 became sub-librarian. He aided the principal librarian, Thomas Ruddiman, in the compilation of the catalogue of the library, printed in 1742, which has now been entirely superseded. In 1753 Goodall edited a new issue of the garbled ‘Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland,’ originally published by David Crawford [q. v.] His interest in the ‘Memoirs’ arose from the favourable representation they contained of the career of Queen Mary. Goodall at this time purposed to write a life of Queen Mary, and as a preliminary published in 1754, in two volumes, an ‘Examination of the Letters said to be written by Mary Queen of Scots to James, Earl of Bothwell.’ The work may be regarded as the inauguration of the apologist epoch of the literature relating to the unhappy queen. It shows acuteness and diligence, and many of his arguments are still made to do service in vindication of Mary, although others have been discarded, and his researches have been supplemented by means of a more thorough examination, especially of the internal evidence bearing on the genuineness of the letters. In 1754 he also published an edition, with emendations, of Scot of Scotstarvet's ‘Staggering State of Scots Statesmen,’ and an edition of Sir James Balfour's ‘Practicks,’ with preface and life. He assisted Bishop Keith in the preparation of his ‘New Catalogue of Scottish Bishops,’ for which he supplied the preliminary account of the Culdees. The historical value of this dissertation is impaired by Goodall's violent national prejudices. Not content with endeavouring to deny that the Scotia of the early writers was Ireland, not Scotland, and that those first termed Scoti were really emigrants from Ireland, he affirmed that Ireland's other ancient name, Ierne, belonged also to Scotland. The ‘glacialis Ierne,’ which, according to Claudian, wept for her slain Scots, was in his opinion the brilliant and exquisite valley of Strathearn, the seat of an ancient Celtic earldom. Goodall published in 1759 an edition of Fordun's ‘Scotichronicon,’ with a Latin introduction on the antiquities of Scotland, and a dissertation on the marriage of Robert III. An English trans-