William Godolphin (Warden of the Stannaries)

Sir William Godolphin (ca.1486 – ca.1570) was a 16th-century English Member of Parliament.

He was the son of John Godolphin, who was High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1505, and his wife Margaret, daughter of John Trenouth.^[1]

He sat as Member for Cornwall during the reign of Henry VIII and possibly also of Edward VI, and also served as High Sheriff of Cornwall and Warden of the Stannaries. He seems to have been confused with his eldest son, also Sir William (1515 – 1570), not least in Burke's Extinct Peerage which conflates the two, so that is not clear which offices were held by the elder and which by the younger. Sir William lived to an advanced age, dying at around the same time as his son, which may have been the original cause of the confusion. He married Margaret Glynn, and they had four children:

• Sir William Godolphin (1515 – 1570), who had three daughters but no sons
• Thomas Godolphin (born 1520), married Katherine Bonithon,^[2] Captain (governor) of the Isles of Scilly, through whom the male line of the family was continued
• Elizabeth Godolphin (born 1522), married John Langdon
• Honor Godolphin (born ca. 1524), married William Melton

References

1. A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland, and Scotland By John Burke
2. The Visitations of Cornwall http://ukga.org/england/Cornwall/visitations/index.html

Further reading

• Burke's Extinct Peerage (London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, 1831)
• Collins' Peerage of England (London, 1768)
• 'The Scilly Islands', Magna Britannia: volume 3: Cornwall (1814), pp. 330–337.