Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/692

GOD of his right to the throne. Along with the other ministers of Charles, he was deeply implicated in the disgraceful negotiations with, the French court for a renewal of the subsidy which Louis had paid to the English sovereign. In the fierce dispute for supremacy which took place between Halifax and Rochester in 1684, Godolphin preserved a cautious neutrality, devoting his attention exclusively to the affairs of his own department. On the 14th of April, in the same year, he was appointed one of the principal secretaries of state; and a few months later he was placed at the head of the treasury, and raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Godolphin of Rialton in the county of Cornwall. On the accession of James II., Godolphin, though he had voted for the exclusion bill, was too useful to be dismissed. He was therefore retained in office, though in a subordinate position in the treasury, and was made chamberlain to the queen, whom, with his usual obsequiousness, he made no scruple in accompanying to mass. Along with Rochester and Sunderland, he formed what has been called the interior cabinet of James; and together with his colleagues, was implicated in the mean and disgraceful negotiations for the continuance of the subsidy from the French court. In the struggle for supremacy which took place between Rochester and the jesuitical cabal, Godolphin, true to his policy, remained neutral; and on the triumph of the latter, and the expulsion of the brothers Hyde from office, he consented to retain his situation, and to act along with, and to supply the defects of, the Roman catholics who were introduced into the ministry. At the Revolution he voted for a regency, but consented to hold under William the office of one of the lords of the treasury; and his colleagues, Mordaunt and Delamere, soon saw, to their great annoyance, that "the king considered him more than them both; for as he understood the treasury business well, so his calm and cold way suited the king's temper." He was from the first the real head of the treasury; and in November, 1690, after a brief retirement from office, he was appointed first lord. In 1695 Godolphin was nominated a member of the council of regency, appointed to govern the kingdom during the absence of William on the continent. He enjoyed a large share of the confidence of that monarch, and received from him many tokens of his favour; but in spite of all this, he had the baseness to enter into a treasonable correspondence with the exiled king, and while eating the bread of his master, secretly to betray his trust. His treason was not known, and was probably not suspected, for several years; but at length, in 1697, his name was mentioned in the confession made by Sir John Fenwick, and he was in consequence compelled to retire from office. He was recalled, however, and placed again at the head of the treasury in 1700. Shortly after the accession of Anne, in 1702, a tory administration was formed, and Godolphin was made lord high treasurer—an office which had lain dormant since the Restoration. He had for many years acted along with Marlborough, whose eldest daughter and heiress married the treasurer's eldest son; and he was now largely indebted for his influence to the support of the great general and the attachment of the queen to the celebrated Sarah, duchess of Marlborough. In 1704 Godolphin was made a knight of the garter; and two years later he was elevated to the rank of an earl. He had hitherto been closely connected with the tory party; but he had been gradually withdrawing from his original associates, and about this period openly attached himself to the whigs. A struggle for power now began between Godolphin and Harley, who had at the outset been a zealous whig, but was now the leader of the tories, though he held the office of one of the principal secretaries of state. Godolphin demanded the dismissal of his rival from office, and was supported in his demand by Marlborough. The queen was reluctantly constrained to yield (1710); but her alienation from her ministers was steadily increased by the intrigues of Harley and Mrs. Masham, and at length, taking advantage of the public excitement caused by the impolitic prosecution of Dr. Sacheverel in 1710, Anne ventured to gratify her antipathy to Marlborough and the whigs by their summary ejection from office. Godolphin was treated with marked rudeness; and the notice of his dismissal was sent to him (8th August) by the hands of a livery servant. He survived this event only about two years, having died on the 15th of September, 1712. On the death of his only son in 1766, the titles became extinct. In financial knowledge and habits of business, Godolphin had few equals among his contemporaries. He was cautious, taciturn, clear-headed, and indefatigably laborious; but he appears to have had no fixed principles of any kind, and never suffered his opinions to stand in the way of his interests. At the same time it must be stated that, unlike most of his associates, he was utterly inaccessible to a bribe. He acted without hesitation in concert with both the great political parties as his own interest seemed to dictate. He had no strong passions, was willing to serve any government, and preserved a cautious neutrality during the most exciting political struggles of his day. He was never in the way, Charles II. declared, and never out of the way. In spite of his grave and decorous deportment, he was a keen gambler and horse-racer, and spent much of his time in card-playing and cock-fighting. His treasonable correspondence with James, while he was the prime minister of William and in the full enjoyment of his confidence, has left an indelible stain upon Godolphin's memory.—J. T.  GODOY,, Prince of Peace, the favourite of Charles IV. of Spain, and a leading actor in the political events of his reign, was born at Badajoz on the 12th May, 1767. His family was respectable, if not noble, and his education was carefully attended to; but at the age of seventeen we find him a simple soldier in the regiment of guards. With the assistance of his brother Louis, he obtained the notice of the queen, Maria Louisa, but the story of his having done so by means of his musical talents seems apocryphal. There can be little doubt that, from the first, the relation of the favourite to the queen was of a less innocent nature. The weak king was fascinated with the genius for intrigue which the young guardsman displayed, and resolved to have near him a creature on whom he might rely to carry out his absolutist views. The new favourite rose rapidly to the place of first minister (15th November, 1792), and his first act was to declare war against the French convention, a policy which, two years afterwards, he was glad to reverse by concluding the treaty of Basle, 22nd July, 1795. This treaty obtained for him the title of Prince of Peace, the order of the golden fleece, and an estate of 60,000 piastres of revenue. He followed it up by a treaty offensive and defensive with the republic, and took advantage of the peace to increase the naval and military armaments of Spain. His private wealth, increased not only by the munificence of the sovereign, but by more disgraceful means, excited the disgust of a people then suffering under the burdens of the war, and of the expenditure of which they regarded him as the author. Among other scandals, the most notorious was his liaison with Doña Josefa Tudo, the daughter of an officer of merit, who had long solicited in vain the notice which his services deserved, but who, on presenting himself at court with his attractive and amiable daughter, was made governor of the royal palace called the Retiro. Here Godoy was a frequent visitor, and was secretly married to the lady. This, however, did not prevent the king from forcing on him, as his avowed wife, Theresa de Bourbon, then aged fifteen. Godoy was not long left in undisturbed possession of his good fortune, for in 1789 he was driven from office by a French intrigue. On his return to power he found the state of affairs materially changed. Lucien Bonaparte, then the envoy-extraordinary of the first consul at Madrid, compelled him to declare war against Portugal in 1800, which was terminated by the payment of 25,000,000 francs by Portugal to France, and the cession of an important territory to Spain. The peace of Amiens, in 1802, closed for a while the contest with England; but in 1804 it was recommenced, contrary to the desire of Godoy, and of the heir-apparent, afterwards Ferdinand VII. Godoy, in 1806, issued a proclamation calling the nation to arms, against what enemy it was easy to understand. But after the battle of Jena he was compelled to follow the policy imposed on him by the conqueror. Napoleon held out to the favourite the hope of a separate sovereignty, consisting of the Algarves and Almentago. Such, at least, was one of the provisions of the treaty of Fontainebleau in 1807. But the fall of the dynasty was approaching. Ferdinand, becoming desperate in his attempts to grapple with the favourite's power, addressed his famous letter to Napoleon (see VII.), and was preparing a last effort to overthrow the influence of Godoy, when the popular outburst of the 17th March, 1808, compelled the latter to hide for his life, and he was only rescued from an ignominious fate by the intervention of the prince, in whose favour Charles IV. was compelled to abdicate on the 19th. The arrival of Murat in Madrid followed, and Godoy was transported to Bayonne, where he assisted in preparing the second abdication of Charles IV. in favour of Napoleon. From this time his 