Francis Godwin (1562 - 1633)

Born 1562 in Hannington, Northamptonshire, England

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English historian, science fiction author, divine, Bishop of Llandaff and of Hereford

Biography

Francis Godwin is Notable.

Francis Godwin was the author of "The Man in the Moone" (1638), a remarkable flight of fancy and work of science fiction that is said to have inspired the later writing of novelist Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels (and one of Godwin's relatives).

From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article "Godwin, Francis (1562 - 1633)."

English divine, son of Thomas Godwin, bishop of Bath and Wells, was born at Hannington, Northamptonshire, in 1562. He was elected student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1578, took his bachelor’s degree in 1580, and that of master in 1583. After holding two Somersetshire livings he was in 1587 appointed subdean of Exeter.

In 1590 he accompanied William Camden on an antiquarian tour through Wales. He was created bachelor of divinity in 1593, and doctor in 1595.

In 1601 he published his Catalogue 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 the bishopric of Llandaff. A second edition appeared in 1615, and in 1616 he published an edition in Latin with a dedication to King James, who in the following year conferred upon him the bishopric of Hereford. The work was republished, with a continuation by William Richardson, in 1743.

In 1616 Godwin published Rerum Anglicarum, Henrico VIII., Edwardo VI. et Maria regnantibus, Annales, which was afterwards translated and published by his son Morgan under the title Annales of England (1630).

He is also the author of a somewhat remarkable story, published posthumously in 1638, and entitled The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales, written apparently some time between the years 1599 and 1603. In this production Godwin not only declares himself a believer in the Copernican system, but adopts so far the principles of the law of gravitation as to suppose that the earth’s attraction diminishes with the distance. The work, which displays considerable fancy and wit, was translated into French, and was imitated in several important particulars by Cyrano de Bergerac, from whom (if not from Godwin direct) Swift obtained valuable hints in writing of Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa.

Another work of Godwin’s, Nuncius inanimatus Utopiae, originally published in 1629 and again in 1657, seems to have been the prototype of John Wilkins’s Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger, which appeared in 1641. He died, after a lingering illness, in April 1633.

Bibliography

• Catalogue of the Bishops of England since the first planting of the Christian Religion in this Island (1593)
• Rerum Anglicarum, Henrico VIII, Edwardo VI, et Maria regnantibus, Annales (1616)
• De praesulibus Angliae (1616)
• Nuncius inanimatus, published in Utopia (1629, and repulished in 1657)
• The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither (1638)

Sources

Encyclopedia Brittannica (1911) "Godwin, Francis"

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopedia_Britannica/Godwin,_Francis

Internet Archive "Works by or About Francis Godwin"

https://archive.org [enter the search term "Francis Godwin"]

See Also:

• Wikipedia: Francis_Godwin
• Wikipedia: The_Man_in_the_Moone