Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/61

 , and, and for an exhaustive examination of authorities , Norman Conquest, ii. 598–602). Soon after his restoration the earl fell sick. At Easter the next year (1053) he was with the king at Winchester, and on 11 April, while he and his sons Harold, Tostig, and Gyrth sat at meat with the king, he fell from his seat speechless and powerless. His sons bore him into the king's chamber, where he lay in the same state until he died on Thursday the 14th. He was buried in the Old Minster. This is the simple account given of his death by the chronicle writers and Florence of Worcester. An illness of some months evidently ended in a fit of apoplexy. Florence, indeed, adds that after his seizure he suffered miserably, which seems unlikely. His death became the subject of legends, the earliest of which relate how while Godwine sat at meat with the king they talked of the death of Ælfred (Gesta Regum, i. 335) or of past treason against the king (, p. 760); Godwine prayed that if he was guilty the next morsel he ate might choke him, and he was accordingly choked and fell dead. Of about the same date is the well-known embellishment of the cupbearer who slipped, and remarked as he recovered his footing ‘So brother helps brother’ (, col. 395). The tale is repeated and developed by later writers (for an examination of the growth of the legend see Norman Conquest, ii. 608, and Fortnightly Review, May 1866).

Godwine seems to have had seven sons by Gytha: Swegen d. on pilgrimage 1052, Harold d. 1066, Tostig d. 1066, Gyrth d. 1066, Leofwine d. 1066, Wulfnoth living in 1087 (, ii. 20), and probably Ælfgar, a monk at Rheims (, p. 502), and three daughters, Eadgyth, the queen of the Confessor [see ], Gunhild d. at Bruges in 1087, and perhaps Ælfgifu (Norman Conquest, ii. 552–5, iii. 221, 228, iv. 159, 705).

[Freeman's Norman Conquest, vols. i. and ii. contains a full account of Earl Godwine, to which all later accounts must necessarily be indebted; his view of the earl is perhaps too favourable. Green's Conquest of England, which contains some valuable remarks, especially on the earl's political aims, takes the opposite view. Kemble's Codex Dipl. iv. and v.; Anglo-Saxon Chron. and Vita Eadwardi, cited as Vita, in Lives of Eadward the Confessor (both Rolls Ser.); Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (both Engl. Hist. Soc.); William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and Orderic, in Hist. Normann. Scriptt., Duchesne; Henry of Huntingdon, Mon. Hist. Brit.; Saxo, Hist. Danica, ed. 1644; Encomium Emmæ, in Pertz, Monumenta Hist. Germ.]  GODWIN, CATHERINE GRACE (1798–1845), poetess, younger daughter of Thomas Garnett, M.D. [q. v.], was born at Glasgow 25 Dec. 1798. Her mother died at her birth, and after the premature death of her father in 1802 she, with her sister, was brought up by her mother's intimate friend, Miss Worboys. They resided at Barbon, near Kirkby Lonsdale in Westmoreland, where Catherine continued to live after her marriage in 1824 to Thomas Godwin, formerly of the East India Company's service. She had already published ‘The Night before the Bridal, and other poems,’ to which ‘The Wanderer's Legacy’ succeeded in 1829. This volume attracted the favourable notice of Wordsworth, who honoured the authoress with exceptional attention and praise. His letter to her, printed by her biographer, conveys his opinion of the Spenserian stanza in Byron's hands, and of what he considered the corruption of the English language from the popularity of Scott's poems and novels. Mrs. Godwin's poems will hardly be thought to justify his high opinion. They indicate a highly refined and sensitive nature, but have more fluency than force, and in general merely reflect the style of Byron, of Wordsworth, or of Mrs. Hemans. After the death of her sister in 1832 Mrs. Godwin's health declined, and she wrote little more, except fugitive poems in albums and stories for the young. A volume of letters from the continent was published after her death, which took place in May 1845, after long suffering from spinal irritation. Her poetical works were collected and published in a handsome illustrated volume in 1854, with a memoir by A. Cleveland Wigan. She is described as persevering, discriminating, and endowed with a keen sense of the ludicrous. She had acquired considerable proficiency in painting; the portrait prefixed to her poems is from a miniature by herself.

[Memoir, by A. Cleveland Wigan, prefixed to the Poetical Works of Catherine Grace Godwin, 1854.]  GODWIN, EDWARD WILLIAM (1833–1886), architect, was born in Old Market Street, Bristol, on 26 May 1833. From his father, who was in business as a decorator, he inherited a taste for architectural and archæological studies, and before leaving school mastered Bloxam's ‘Gothic Architecture.’ He received his professional training in the office of Mr. W. Armstrong, architect, of Bristol, and afterwards practised for some years in that city, at first alone, and subsequently in partnership with Mr. Henry Crisp. The firm had an office in London, and