Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/77

 orator, and publicly delivered two Latin orations of his own composition, one at the funeral of William Goodwin [q. v.], dean of Christ Church, in the cathedral in 1620, and another, in the Theological School at Oxford, on the death in 1622 of Sir Henry Savile. Both were published (Oxford, 1620 and 1622, 4to). Besides these Goffe published some verses on the death of Queen Anne of Denmark in 1619. He wrote plays, not published till after his death, but his three principal tragedies were acted after 1616, while he was still at the university, by the students of Christ Church. Besides his tragedies, which are absurdly bombastic, he wrote a tragi-comedy, ‘The Careless Shepherdess.’ It was acted with applause before the king and queen at Salisbury, but not published till 1656 (London, 4to). At the end it contains an alphabetical catalogue, which is, however, very incorrect, of ‘all such plays as ever were printed.’ At the end of his life Goffe, who was ‘a quaint preacher and a person of excellent language and expression,’ took to sermon writing, but only one, entitled ‘Deliverance from the Grave,’ which he preached at St. Mary Spittle, London, 28 March 1627, seems to have been published (London, 1627, 4to). He was a woman-hater and a bachelor, until finally inveigled into marrying a lady at East Clandon, who pretended to have fallen in love with his preaching. She was the widow of his predecessor, and she and her children by her first husband so persecuted poor Goffe that he died shortly after his marriage, and was buried, 27 July 1629, in the middle of the chancel of East Clandon Church. According to Aubrey, one of his Oxford friends, Thomas Thimble, had predicted the result of his marriage, and when he died the last words he uttered were: ‘Oracle, oracle, Tom Thimble!’ (, Hist. of Surrey, iii. 259).

Goffe left various plays in manuscript. Three were afterwards published, viz. ‘The Raging Turk, or Bajazet the Second,’ London, 1631, 4to; ‘The Couragious Turk, or Amureth the First, a Tragedie,’ in five acts and in verse, London, 1632, 4to; ‘The Tragedie of Orestes,’ in five acts and in verse, London, 1633, 4to. In 1656 one Richard Meighen, a friend of the deceased poet, collected these plays in one volume, under the title of ‘Three excellent Tragedies,’ 2nd edit., London, 1656, 8vo. ‘The Bastard,’ another tragedy published under Goffe's name in 1652, seems to have been by Cosmo Manuche. Two other plays have been wrongly ascribed to Goffe: ‘Cupid's Whirligig,’ a comedy by E. S., and ‘The Emperor Selimus,’ a tragedy published in 1594, when Goffe was a child of two. On the title-page of one of the copies of his only extant sermon, in the Bodleian Library, a manuscript note states that Goffe became a Roman catholic before his death, but the source quoted for this statement, the ‘Legenda Lignea’ (in the Bodleian Library), refers to Stephen Goffe [q. v.]

[Authorities above cited; Gent. Mag. xlviii. 558; Baker's Biog. Dram.; Langbaine's Dramatick Poets, p. 233; Brayley's Hist. of Surrey, ii. 51, &c.; Oxf. Univ. Reg. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.); Welch's Alumni Westmonast. 79; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), ii. 463; Wood's Fasti, i.]  GOFFE or GOUGH, WILLIAM (d. 1679?), regicide, was the son of Stephen Goffe, rector of Stanmer in Sussex. He was apprenticed to a London salter named Vaughan, and in 1642 was imprisoned by the royalist lord mayor for promoting a petition in support of the parliament's claim to the militia (Old Parliamentary History, xi. 330; Harleian Miscellany, ed. Park, iii. 483;, Athenæ, ed. Bliss, vol. iii.) In 1645 Goffe's name appears in the list of the new model as a captain in Colonel Harley's regiment (, Army Lists, p. 103). It is also attached to the vindication of the officers of the army (27 April 1647), and he was one of the deputation which presented the charge against the eleven members (6 July 1647) (, vi. 471, 607). Goffe was a prominent figure in the prayer meeting of the officers at Windsor in 1648, when it was decided to bring the king to a trial (, A Faithful Memorial of that Remarkable Meeting at Windsor, Somers Tracts, ed. Scott, vi. 501). He was named in the following December one of the king's judges, sat frequently during the trial, and signed the death-warrant (, Trial of Charles I, p. 93). Goffe commanded Cromwell's own regiment at the battle of Dunbar, ‘and at the push of pike did repel the stoutest regiment the enemy had there’ (, Cromwell, Letter cxl.). He also commanded a regiment at Worcester (Cromwelliana, p. 114). After the expulsion of the Long parliament he continued to be a staunch supporter of Cromwell, and in December 1653 aided Colonel White to turn out the recalcitrant remnant of the Barebones parliament (, i. 637). In July 1654 he represented Yarmouth, in the following March was active in attempting to suppress Penruddock's rising, and was in December 1655 appointed major-general for Berkshire, Sussex, and Hampshire (ib. iii. 237, 701, iv. 117; Official Return of Members of Parliament, i. 501). A large amount of his correspondence as major-general is printed in the fourth and fifth volumes of the Thurloe Papers, and proves that while active on behalf of the government, he was less arbitrary