Family and Education

b. 1665, 2nd s. of Michael Godfrey of London, merchant, by Anna Maria, da. of Sir Thomas Chamberlain of Woodford, Essex. m. (lic. 29 Oct. 1692, aged 27), Catherine (d. 1706), da. of Thomas Goddard, merchant, of Nun’s Court, Coleman St., London, director of Bank of England 1694-1700, sis. of John Goddard, 6s. 1da.; (2) Catherine, da. of Sir Thomas Pennyman, 2nd Bt., of Ormsby, Yorks., s.p. suc. bro. Michael 1695.

Offices Held

Director, Bank of England 1695-8, New E.I. Co. 1698-9, E.I. Co. 1710-14, 1715-18.

Biography

Godfrey was the nephew of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the magistrate who was murdered after receiving Titus Oates’s depositions concerning the Popish plot. His elder brother, Michael, was one of the founders and the first deputy governor of the Bank of England. Defeated at London in 1713 on the anti-French commercial treaty platform, he was returned there in 1715, classed as a Whig in the list of the Parliament prepared for George I, but as a Tory by Sunderland c.1718-19.1 He voted against the Government in all recorded divisions. In November 1721 he presented unsuccessfully a petition from the proprietors of the redeemables asking that the 2 millions owing to the Government by the South Sea Company should be used to compensate them for their losses;2 and in January 1722 he supported a motion for the repeal of the clauses of the Quarantine Act giving emergency powers to the Government.3 Re-elected in 1722, he died 10 Nov. 1724.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. List of Tories, Sunderland (Blenheim) mss.
• 2. Pol. State, xxii. 511, 513.
• 3. Hist. Reg. 1722, chron. pp. 105-6.