Francis Godwin (1562–1633) was an English historian, science fiction author andpriest, who wasBishop of Llandaff andof Hereford.
He was the son ofThomas Godwin,Bishop of Bath and Wells, born atHannington, Northamptonshire. He was the great-uncle of the writerJonathan Swift. He was elected student ofChrist Church, Oxford, in 1578, took his bachelor's degree in 1580, and that of master in 1583.
After holding twoSomerset livings he was in 1587 appointedsubdean ofExeter. In 1590 he accompaniedWilliam Camden on an antiquarian tour through Wales. He was created bachelor of divinity in 1593, and doctor in 1595. In 1601 he published hisCatalogue of the Bishops of England since the first planting of the Christian Religion in this Island, a work which procured him in the same year thediocese of Llandaff. A second edition appeared in 1615, and in 1616 he published an edition in Latin with a dedication toKing James, who in the following year conferred upon him thediocese of Hereford. The work was republished, with a continuation byWilliam Richardson, in 1743.
Godwin died, after a lingering illness, in April 1633 inWhitbourne,Herefordshire.
In 1616 Godwin publishedRerum Anglicarum, Henrico VIII., Edwardo VI. et Maria regnantibus, Annales, which was afterwards translated and published by his sonMorgan under the titleAnnales of England (1630). He is also the author of a somewhat remarkable story, published posthumously in 1638, and entitledThe Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales, written apparently some time in the 1620s. (On the date of composition, see John Anthony Butler's edition ofThe Man in the Moon [Dovehouse, 1995], pp. 14–15.) In this production Godwin not only declares himself a believer in theCopernican system, but adopts so far the principles of the law ofgravitation as to suppose that weight decreases with distance from the Earth. The work, which displays considerable fancy and wit, influencedJohn Wilkins'The discovery of a world in the Moone. Both works were translated into French, and were imitated in several important particulars byCyrano de Bergerac, from whom (if not from Godwin directly)Jonathan Swift obtained valuable hints in writing ofGulliver's voyage to Laputa.
Another work of Godwin's,Nuncius inanimatus, published In Utopia, originally printed in 1629 and again in 1657, seems to have been the prototype of John Wilkins'sMercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger, which appeared in 1641. Another work wasDe praesulibus Angliae (1616).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Godwin, Francis".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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| Preceded by | Bishop of Llandaff 1601–1618 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Bishop of Hereford 1617–1633 | Succeeded by |
