Sir Henry Goodricke & Lady Mary Goodricke1694.
The Rt, Honourable Sir Henry Goodricke Knt & Second Bart, Lieut General of the Ordnance, was only son of Sir John Goodricke, Bart. by his first wife Catherine Norcliffe. He was born 24th October 1642, & His Wife The Honourable Lady Mary Goodricke1694.
Sir Henry Goodricke, (1642–1705), diplomatist, eldest son of Sir John Goodricke by his first wife Catherine Norcliffe, was born 24 Oct. 1642, (created baronet by Charles I, for whom he suffered severely in estate during the civil wars). He was returned to parliament for Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, on 7 Nov. 1673 and again on 14 March 1678–9. He first served in the army, and obtained the command of a regiment of foot, which was disbanded in 1679. He was appointed, 28 Nov. 1678, envoy extraordinary to the court of Madrid. His instructions are printed in Charles Alfred Goodricke's ‘History of the Goodricke Family,’ p. 25. In June 1682 he made, on behalf of Charles II, an offer of mediation in the war between France and Spain. He was, however, soon afterwards expelled from Madrid, in consequence of the anger of the Spanish court at the policy of Charles II, he exasperated the situation further by insisting that the British flag should fly over the embassy, he was taken and lodged in a neighbouring convent of Hieronymites. He escaped and returned to England via Paris in the following February. He was actively concerned in securing York for the Prince of Orange (19–22 Nov. 1688; Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, p. 412), and was rewarded (26 April 1689) by the post of lieutenant-general of the ordnance to the Tower of London, which he held until 29 June 1702. On 13 Feb. 1689–90 he was sworn of the Privy Council. On 11 July 1690 he was placed on a commission appointed to investigate the behaviour of the fleet, and particularly of Lord Torrington, who was accused of supineness in a recent engagement with the French off Beachy Head. He represented Boroughbridge in parliament from 1688–9 until his death. His speeches in the House of Commons were not very frequent, but were usually brief and very much to the point, and purpose. He died on 8 March 1704–5, and was buried in the family vault at Ribston,Yorkshire.
Arms. Argent on a fess gules between two lions passant guardant Sable a fleur de lis or between two crescents argent.
Crest A demi Lion Ermines armed and languid gules issuing out of a Ducal Coronet or, holding in his paws a Battleaxe proper helved or.
Supporters. Two naked boys, which are on the Monument of Richard Goodricke Esq. High-sheriff of Yorkshire in 1579.
Sir Henry Goodricke married, in 1668, Mary, daughter of Colonel William Legg, and sister to George, lord Dartmouth, (*see foot notes) by whom he had no issue.
From "An Essay to Heraldry" by Richard Blome. London 1684. p247/248. (Very Early Arms).
There are some Baronets that besides the Augmentations of a hand by a peculiar Grant doth bear supporters for example I will make use of the Honourable Sir Henry Goodrick of Ribston Park Yorkshire Kt, Bart His majesties Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Spain, Anno Domini 1682/3 who beareth Argent, on a Fess Gules, between two Lyons passant gardant, Sable, a Flower de lis or, between two crescents Argent: for his Crest on a helmet and wreath of his colours a Demy Lyon Sable, holding a Pole Axe Argent Mantled Gules double Argent for his supporters two naked boys proper and or his Motto in an Escarole FORTIOR LEONE JUSTUS.
Fortor Leone Justus
From a pedigree of Sir Henry Goodricke (believed to be by Kapon) this is the original Crest Arms and motto for Sir Henry 2nd Bart, before changes to the Crest and motto.
Wotton's Baronetage, ii. 260; Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. App. 289 a, 6th Rep App. 321 b, 7th Rep. App. 277, 282, 283 a, 361 b, 382 a, 391 a, 420 b, 495 a, 9th Rep. App. 378, 11th Rep. App. (pt. ii.) 80; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs, i. 530, ii. 15, 74, v. 528; Beatson's Polit. Index; Parl. Hist. vols. iv. v.; C. A. Goodricke's Hist. of the Goodricke Family, 1885; Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. Cartwright.
Foot Notes
*George, lord Dartmouth.
George Legge, first Baron
Dartmouth (c.1647–1691), naval officer, was
the eldest son of
Colonel William Legge
(1607/8–1670) and his wife, Elizabeth, née Washington (c.1616–1688).
He was educated at Westminster School and at King's College, Cambridge. In 1666
he served as a volunteer in the fleet during the Four Days' Battle, in that year
he witnessed powers of attorney granted by John Kempthorne, Legge's first naval
patron. He became captain of the Pembroke on 4 April 1667. The duke of
York's subsequent remark that Legge ‘was, he knows not how, made a captain after
he had been but one voyage at sea’ (Pepys, Diary,
9.39–40) this was prompted by the fact that after barely a month in the command,
Legge lost the Pembroke in collision with the Fairfax in Torbay on
11 May 1667, and in later years Legge himself regretted his lack of early
training. In November 1667 Legge married Barbara (1649/50–1718), daughter of Sir
Henry Archbold of Abbots Bromley. And had issue an only son of eight children,
William Legge,
was born in 1672.
By 1668 York's opinion of him had improved sufficiently for Legge to become one
of the duke's grooms of the bedchamber, and in October 1669 he became captain of
a company in the Tower of London. In 1670 he became lieutenant-governor of
Portsmouth in succession to his father. Legge became captain of the Fairfax
on 13 January 1672, took part in Sir Robert Holmes's attack on the Dutch Smyrna
convoy in March, and on 28 May fought at the battle of Solebay. His next command
on 18 July 1672, was that of the York after a month he returned ashore
August 1672. For the 1673 campaign, he commanded the Royal Katherine,
fighting in the second battle of the Schooneveld (4 June) and at the Texel (11
August), where he defended Prince Rupert's shattered flagship Royal Prince
for three hours. Legge was heavily involved in the faction-fighting within the
officer corps in 1673, a consequence of the failure to secure a decisive
victory, and sought to moderate the more extreme criticisms of Prince Rupert's
appointments and tactics made by some of the duke of York's other clients.
The period of the Third Anglo-Dutch War also saw Legge gain a succession of important positions on land. In 1672 he became lieutenant-general of the ordnance, in 1673 master of the horse to the duke of York and governor of Portsmouth, and in February 1673 he was elected MP for Ludgershall, becoming identified as a staunch supporter of the court. In May 1678 he was appointed general of artillery with the English army in Flanders, although the intended French war never broke out. During the exclusion crisis, Legge spoke on a number of occasions in parliament (to which he was elected for Portsmouth twice in 1679 and again in 1681) in support of himself and the duke of York, thereby scandalizing the earl of Shaftesbury and whig opinion. ‘I am the duke of York's servant, and I will serve him affectionately, but … I will live and die a Protestant, and am as loyal as my family has always been’, he stated on 12 May 1679, while on 11 November 1680 he cried ‘if my master the duke be popish, God's curse be on him that was the cause of it’ (A. Grey, Debates of the House of Commons, 10 vols., 1769, 263, 454–5). He again spoke against exclusion at Oxford on 26 March 1681, shortly after his appointment as master of the ordnance. While the duke was in exile in Brussels and Edinburgh, Legge was one of his chief correspondents, informing him of political developments in London. His high-profile support of the duke led to growing pressure for him to surrender one of his major posts, the mastership of the ordnance and the governorship of Portsmouth. York felt that the loss of one of the posts would be a direct attack on him:
I am glad you have Portsmouth still, and wish his majesty had but a few more like your self, that considered his service as you do, and venture as frankly as you do … if they have you part with Portsmouth, there is no remedy. (Dartmouth MSS, 1.65, 72)
In the event, Legge was forced to ‘part with Portsmouth’,
but he was quickly compensated, becoming a privy councillor on 3 March 1682 and
being elevated as Baron Dartmouth on 2 December of the same year. Between these
events, on 6 May he survived the wreck of the Gloucester on the Lemon and
Oar Sands off Cromer. The ship was carrying York back to Scotland to settle his
affairs there, and Legge, with sword drawn, held back a crowd which might have
overturned the longboat to ensure that the duke could get away in it. Legge
himself was saved by the Katherine yacht. He served as master of Trinity
House from 1683 to 1685, then as an elder brother until his death.
In 1683 Charles II and his ministers decided to evacuate and demolish
Tangier, an English colony since 1661, as a cost-cutting exercise. Dartmouth was
involved in the discussions from an early stage, thwarting the duchess of
Portsmouth's suggestion that the colony should be sold to France. He was
appointed admiral on 2 August 1683, flying his flag in the Captain, and
with additional commissions and instructions to act as general of land forces
and governor of Tangier. Samuel Pepys, who had been counted one of Dartmouth's
enemies as recently as 1679, joined the expedition as his secretary, and the
fleet sailed from Spithead on 19 August, arriving at Tangier on 14 September.
Dartmouth's time at Tangier was taken up with a succession of problematic tasks:
the physical demolition of the town and the great breakwater or mole, the
settling of compensation claims by the inhabitants, and the need to convince the
alcaïd of Alcazar that the English forces were strong enough to resist a
Moorish attack (a feat accomplished partly by bluff, when seamen were dressed as
soldiers at Dartmouth's first meeting with the alcaïd on 28 September).
Moreover, Dartmouth was all too aware that his many factional opponents at court
would use his absence to denigrate him, and criticism of the length and expense
of his stay did indeed increase. Pepys's diary of the period, published under
the title Tangier Papers, gives a revealing insight
into Dartmouth's problems and personality at this time. He was determined to
remedy what he perceived as the abuses in the navy, encouraged by the Admiralty
commission of 1679–84 and his rival Arthur Herbert (the previous admiral in the
Mediterranean), and attempted to introduce new rules governing officers'
seniority. He swung between on the one hand the optimistic beliefs that the duke
of York's return to the Admiralty would remedy all, and that the king would
support him against his enemies at home, and on the other a melancholic
pessimism:
The king would do him right in it … adding that he must and would do the thing though it cost him his life and the laying of his bones here, so that the work might be well done (2 Oct 1683) … the king and the duke of York were very good at giving orders and encouragement to their servants in office to be strict in keeping of good order, but were never yet found stable enough to support their officers in the performance of their orders when they had done (7 March 1684) … talking with him of the present differences between him and Herbert, upon which he talks very melancholy and as one that is weary of the service and would rather retire than have any more to do with it (if he could … pay his debts, which he says do not exceed £10,000 and that his estate is and will be really £4,000 a year). (Tangier Papers, 35, 221, 245)
Dartmouth abandoned Tangier on 6 February 1684, firing the last mine himself, and his fleet arrived back in Plymouth Sound on 31 March. He was received warmly by the king at Windsor on 11 April. The reception, far better than Dartmouth himself had expected, was partly because his former enemies the earl of Sunderland and the duchess of Portsmouth now sought his friendship as part of their plan to outmanoeuvre the marquess of Halifax. In May and June, Dartmouth attempted to use his seemingly strong position to launch a new faction, opposed to France and popery, but his erstwhile ally Sunderland rapidly thwarted him, and Dartmouth was in ill health for some time.
On James II's accession, Dartmouth became master of
the horse, constable of the Tower of London, and colonel of the Royal Fusiliers,
and was in regular attendance on the king during his reign—accompanying him, for
example, to the midlands in the late summer of 1687. He was one of the witnesses
to the birth of the prince of Wales in June 1688, and was generally regarded as
one of the king's leading Anglican advisers. Throughout this period
contemporaries noted the ongoing factional struggle between, on the one hand,
himself and his close friend the Catholic Sir Roger Strickland, and, on the
other, Arthur Herbert and his friend John Churchill. On 24 September 1688
Dartmouth was appointed to command the fleet which had been mobilized to defend
against an expected invasion from the Netherlands, and joined his flagship on 3
October. He superseded Strickland, who remained his vice-admiral, and prepared
to confront Herbert, appointed by William III to command the invasion fleet. The
personal animosity between Dartmouth and Herbert had even led to an offer by the
former in September to meet his enemy at Ostend ‘at what time and with what
arms’ he chose (BL, Egerton MS 2621, fols. 9–10). The fleet moved to the
Gunfleet anchorage off Harwich in mid-October. While it lay at anchor, Dartmouth
struggled to suppress Williamite sentiment in the fleet: many of his officers
owed their early promotion to Herbert, or else had close links with the
conspiracy in the army headed by John Churchill. He was well aware of
‘caballing’ among his captains and especially of the activities of Lord Berkeley
of Stratton, whom he moved into the next ship to his to keep a closer watch on
him, and of the duke of Grafton, who was involved in a shadowy and abortive
scheme to kidnap and supplant Dartmouth. At councils of war on 26 and 28 October
the captains of the fleet decided not to cross to the Dutch coast. An attempt to
sail on the 30th was thwarted by the wind, and when the Dutch left
Hellevoetsluis on 1 November, the stiff north-easterly that favoured them kept
Dartmouth's fleet at the Gunfleet. He finally got out on 3 November, too late to
prevent William's landing at Torbay, and another council of war, on 5 November
off Beachy Head, resolved not to attack what was believed to be a much larger
Dutch fleet. Dartmouth returned to the Downs, attempted to sail west again on 16
November, but was driven by storms into Spithead.
Dartmouth's failure to intercept the invasion fleet seems to have caused
him genuine agony, although he did not see what else he could have done: ‘I take
myself for the most unfortunate man living … I am not conscious to myself of any
wrong step I have made unless it be too much assurance of my own success’
(Dartmouth to James, 5 and 7 November 1688, Dartmouth MSS,
3.264, 266). James II, whose often contradictory orders and advice had done
little to ease Dartmouth's task, publicly exonerated him of any blame, but
privately came to suspect that his admiral had been implicated in the
conspiracy. In turn, Dartmouth's attitude to the king changed during November
and December. On 28 November he wrote to James imploring him to summon a free
parliament, and opposed the king's plan to send the prince of Wales to France
from Portsmouth, arguing that such an act would make him guilty of treason and
would inevitably lead to war with France. One of his captains, Matthew Aylmer,
smuggled a letter (dated 29 November) from William of Orange into his toilet,
where he found it on 12 December. The letter proposed that Dartmouth join his
fleet to Herbert's. Knowing that James had already made one attempt to leave the
country, Dartmouth responded positively, effectively surrendering the fleet to
William's control on 13 December. However, it is impossible to reconstruct
completely his motives and correspondence in this period: two pages of his
letter-book, covering the crucial period from 7 to 10 December, were cut out by
his wife (NMM, Dar/16, pp. 44–7). His subsequent letters reveal apparently
genuine grief at the king's departure and concern for his own future, despite
William's reassurances. Dartmouth remained in command of the fleet until 10
January 1689, when William ordered him to come to his presence. He was stripped
of his other offices in the revolution, but took the oath of allegiance to
William and Mary on 2 March 1689. Early in 1691 he was accused by Viscount
Preston of sending intelligence to the Jacobites about the fleet and Portsmouth,
and of being the putative commander of a Jacobite fleet. For some months, the
ministry debated whether or not there was sufficient evidence against him, but
on 12 July he was arrested at his country house, Holt. On 14 July he was
examined by a panel of ministers headed by his old schoolfriend the earl of
Nottingham. Dartmouth vigorously denied Preston's accusations, although he had
to admit meeting Preston briefly during his last visit to London. He was
committed to the Tower at the end of July, and died there of apoplexy on 25
October 1691. He was buried with his father at Holy Trinity Minories, London.
Dartmouth's command of the fleet that failed to prevent William of Orange's
invasion, and thereby the ‘glorious revolution’, has guaranteed his place in
history, if only as one of history's losers. In the 1850s Macaulay's attempt to
portray him after that revolution as an out-and-out Jacobite spurred his
descendants to publish many of his papers in an attempt to vindicate him, and
subsequent publication of primary sources, especially of Pepys's
Tangier Papers, has enabled still more rounded
assessment of Dartmouth to be made. Although he undoubtedly handled the Tangier
expedition competently, the personality traits that he revealed at that time,
and in his subsequent short-lived political career, indicate how unsuited he was
to command in 1688, when strength of character and decisiveness were required.
Dartmouth was comparatively inexperienced at sea, having spent twenty-three
months there in the preceding twenty-two years, and certainly wholly
inexperienced in command of a fleet at war; he was naturally indecisive,
alternated between self-doubt and exaggerated self-belief, and was unable to
impose himself on a divided, factious fleet. Ultimately, James II's early doubts
about the competence of the young Captain Legge proved prophetic.
The manuscripts of the earl of Dartmouth, 3 vols., HMC, 20 (1887–96), vols. 1, 3 · NMM, Dartmouth MSS · Staffs. RO, Dartmouth papers, D(W) 1778 · F. Devon, A vindication of the Right Honourable the first Lord Dartmouth from the charge of conspiracy or high treason, brought against him in the year 1691, and revived by Macaulay in his ‘History of England’, 1855 (1856) · J. D. Davies, ‘James II, William of Orange, and the admirals’, By force or by default? The revolution of 1688–1689, ed. E. Cruickshanks (1989), 82–108 · J. D. Davies, Gentlemen and tarpaulins: the officers and men of the Restoration navy (1991) · Seventh report, HMC, 6 (1879) · Report on the manuscripts of the marquis of Downshire, 6 vols. in 7, HMC, 75 (1924–95), vol. 1 · E. B. Powley, The English navy in the revolution of 1688 (1928) · The Tangier papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. E. Chappell, Navy RS, 73 (1935) · R. C. Anderson, ed., Journals and narratives of the Third Dutch War, Navy RS, 86 (1946) · Report on the manuscripts of Allan George Finch, 5 vols., HMC, 71 (1913–2003), vol. 3 · correspondence of James II with Dartmouth, 1679–89, BL, Add. MS 18447 · P. M. Cowburn, ‘Christopher Gunman and the wreck of the Gloucester’, Mariner's Mirror, 42 (1956), 113–26, 219–29 · Pepys, Diary · HoP, Commons, 1660–90, 2.724–6 · P. Le Fevre, ‘Another false misrepresentation’, Mariner's Mirror, 69 (1983), 299–300 · BL, Egerton MS 928, fol. 12 [powers of attorney granted by John Kempthorne, 1666] · Memoirs of Thomas, earl of Ailesbury, ed. W. E. Buckley, 2 vols., Roxburghe Club, 122 (1890) · BL, Egerton MS 2621, fols. 9–10 · GEC, Peerage J. D. Davies ODNB.