Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/168

126 THE EDITOR. Mr. Sidney Godolphin must be considered as the most eminent statesman and politician of this county, not excepting Lord Chatham, if his birth at Boconnoc should be deemed sufficient to make him a Cornish man.

Advanced to the honour of Earl of Godolphin, decorated with the Garter, and placed in high office as Lord High Treasurer, he mainly conducted the great national affairs at home, while the Duke of Marlborough vindicated, by splendid victories in the field, the religious and civil liberties of the world.

Victorque volentes Per populos dat jura; viamque affectat Olympo.

To Lord Godolphin we are also indebted for conducting to a successful conclusion a measure most beneficial to this whole island, the Union with Scotland; and the whole tenour of his administration procured for him, with the consent of all parties, the appellation of Wise.

In an ode inscribed to the Earl of Sunderland on his receiving the Garter, is this stanza:

In after times, as Courts refined, Our patriots in the list were join'd, Not only Warwick stain'd with blood, Or Marlborough near the Danube's flood, Here in their crimson crosses glow'd; But, on just law-givers bestow'd, Those emblems Cecil did invest, And gleam'd on Wise Godolphin's breast.

Sidney Earl of Godolphin died in 1712, and was succeeded by his son Francis, then called Lord Rialton, who had married Henrietta Churchill, eldest daughter of the Duke of Marlborough.

This lady became Duchess of Marlborough on the decease of her father in 1722, under the provision of a special Act of Parliament, but dying in 1733 without issue, the Dukedom and property devolved on her ne-