Among statesmen must be noticed Sir John Eliot, born at Port Eliot in 1592, and at one time friend of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, with whom he later broke, and taking up a strong line in the Parliament of 1628 against arbitrary taxation helped to force the Petition of Right from Charles. He was ultimately committed to the Tower, where he died three years later in 1632. To give an adequate sketch of the life of Sidney Godolphin would be to give the history of the times of Charles II, James II, William of Orange and Anne, with each and all of whom he was closely implicated. An extraordinarily able financier, his character was such as to permit him to serve either party indifferently. "Sidney Godolphin," said Charles, "is never in the way and never out of the way." Lord High Treasurer under Queen Anne, he was made Earl of Godolphin, only to be disgraced in 1710 and die shortly after. Samuel Drew, the "Cornish Metaphysician," who was born at St Austell, had been a smuggler and a shoemaker in his earlier days, but developed into a Wesleyan preacher and became the author of an essay on the Immortality of the Soul. Of more normal mould was Humphrey Prideaux, born at Padstow in 1648, who wrote a _Life of Mahomet_, and _The Old and New Testament Connected_, which reached its 27th edition only a few years ago. He became Dean of Norwich and died in 1724. Cornwall has produced several local antiquaries, as the Rev. Richard Polwhele, who died in 1838; the Rev. William Borlase, d. 1772; William Hals, the historian of the Duchy; and William Sandys, who died in 1874. She has had but few true poets, but the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, though not actually born in Cornwall, spent all his life there and may certainly come under this heading. He became Vicar of Morwenstow in 1834, and remained there till his death in 1875, having during this time transformed his parishioners from a set of lawless wreckers to a decent community. His poems were almost all connected with Cornish subjects, and one of the best known of them is that on Bishop Trelawney's imprisonment--"A good sword and a trusty sword," with the refrain--"And shall Trelawney die? There's twenty thousand Cornishmen; Shall know the reason why." [Illustration: John Opie] "A wondrous Cornishman, who is carrying all before him" is Sir Joshua Reynolds' description of John Opie the painter, who was born the son of a poor carpenter near Truro in 1761, became an R.A. and portrait-painter of great note, and died in 1807. His second wife was Amelia Opie the novelist, daughter of the Norwich physician, Dr Alderson. Henry Bone, the enamellist, is also of sufficient distinction to deserve mention here.