Godolphin's character has thus been sketched by another hand; and with it the name and the fame of Sidney Godolphin will always be indissolubly joined: 'He was of quick apprehension and wonderful dispatch; almost unerring judgment ... of few words, but great Truth: few promises but strict performance ... by nature grave, reserved and taciturn, but without arrogance or scorn of others; and when he most relaxed and let himself into the greatest freedoms, they were such as might be told abroad without any hazard of his fame or Virtue.' Bishop Burnet has thus summed up his character and career: 'He was a Man of the clearest Head, the calmest Temper, and the most incorrupt of all the Ministers of State I have ever known. After having been thirty Years in the Treasury, and during Nine of those Lord Treasurer, as he was never once suspected of Corruption, or of suffering his Servants to grow rich under him, so in all that time his Estate was not increased by him to the Value of 4000_l_. He served the Queen with such a particular Affection and Zeal, that he studied to possess all People with great personal esteem for her: And she herself seemed to be so sensible of this for many Years, that if Courts were not different from all other Places in the World, it might have been thought that his wise Management at home, and the Duke of Marlborough's glorious Conduct abroad, would have fixed them in their Posts, above the little Practices of an artful Favourite.' But Courts _are_ different from other places; and we have seen that in the Court of Anne, the memory of Godolphin's virtues was 'written on water.' Had he lived but two years longer he might, like Marlborough, have once more been restored to Royal favour at the Court of George I., and in yet another reign have been again the First Minister of the Crown of England. FOOTNOTES: [146] From 1504 to 1638 the Sheriff of Cornwall was frequently a Godolphin. One of them was also Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and two other members of the family were Vice-Wardens. [147] Notably in the adjoining parish of St. Hilary, where, in the S.E. corner, forming the floor of a pew, is, or rather was, a Godolphin monument inscribed with a turgid Latin epitaph consisting mainly of a play upon the word 'delphinus.' [148] Lipscombe, in his 'History of Buckinghamshire,' says of him that 'he was very ingenious, and entertained a Dutch mineral man, by whose instructions he practised a more saving way of making tin. He also undertook the coinage of silver out of the mines of Wales and Cornwall.'