what in his situation was most difficult, he never permitted himself to have recourse to the more prevailing, and as it is believed safer, form of that vice, dissimulation. Like Marlborough, Godolphin, when asked to confer favours, softened his refusals with a kindness and frankness which propitiated even the disappointed. The notions of economy, which this great minister adopted, not grounded on a passion for wealth which sullied the brightness of the great Churchill’s virtues, were applied with the same rigid care to the public means, as to the expenditure of his own private fortune. Grave even to sternness, he won universal esteem from his inflexible justice, and in society was the object of affection, no less than of respect. Disfigured in countenance by the small-pox, and severe in expression, there was yet something bright and penetrating in his eye, something engaging in his smile, which procured him the favour of the female sex,—to whom, with all his profound experience of men and manners, with all his infallibility of judgment, and his gravity of deportment, Lord Godolphin was, during the whole of his life, passionately devoted.[179] The name of Godolphin (signifying a white eagle) was of ancient origin. His immediate progenitors, country gentlemen of the county of Cornwall, were distinguished for their loyalty to the Stuarts during the civil war.[180] According to Dean Swift, who mentions the circumstance in that casual, careless way which answers the intentions of malice without wearing its aspect, Godolphin was intended for some trade, until his friends procured him the office of a page at the court of Charles the Second.[181] From this humble station he rose rapidly into political consequence; for he sat in the first Parliament after the Restoration, as member for Helston in Cornwall, and was shortly afterwards employed in various high offices, until appointed to the commissionership of the Treasury, at the same time that he was called to the House of Peers. During the reign of James the Second, Godolphin enjoyed the favour of Queen Mary, to whom he was chamberlain, and of James, who reappointed him one of the Lords of the Treasury. Educated in high church tenets, Godolphin, like his friend Lord Marlborough, became a Whig when the Protestant succession was in danger. Yet, whilst he managed, with consummate prudence, to act as one of the commissioners appointed by James to treat with William at his landing, and was so skilful and so fortunate as to retain his situation of Treasury Lord upon the accession of William,—Godolphin, courageous, and, like most courageous men, tender-hearted, was among the few of the deposed monarch’s courtiers who gave him the solace of their attendance and sympathy. He accompanied the abdicated King to the sea-side when he quitted England, and maintained a correspondence with him until his death.