Sir Henry Goodricke, second
baronet (1642–1705), diplomat and politician, was born
on 24 October 1642, the eldest son of Sir John Goodricke, first baronet
(1617–1670), of Ribston, Yorkshire, who served in the duke of Newcastle's
royalist northern army in the civil wars, and his wife, Catherine Northcliffe (d.
before 1645). He travelled abroad in 1657 and 1658, visiting France. In 1668 he
married Mary (c.1647–1715), daughter of
William Legge (1607/8–1670),
groom of the bedchamber and lieutenant-general of the ordnance, and his wife,
Elizabeth Washington, and sister of George Legge (1648–1691), later Lord
Dartmouth.
Goodricke succeeded to the family estates on the death of his father in 1670,
and served in a variety of positions in local government in Yorkshire, most
notably as a JP for the West Riding from 1667 onwards, and was returned to
parliament for Boroughbridge in November 1673, retaining the seat (with only a
brief intermission during the exclusion crisis) until his death. Initially an
opponent of the court, Goodricke switched his support to the earl of Danby in
February 1677 and thereafter was closely associated with the earl's cause.
In 1678 and 1679 Goodricke served as colonel of one of the foot regiments
intended to serve in a war against France, fighting and winning a duel against
one of his captains who had resigned his commission. He was appointed
envoy-extraordinary to Spain on 12 June 1679, and set out after his defeat in
the August election. He found the posting expensive, claiming in March 1680 that
‘almost my entire credit is worn out, my way of living being as moderate as I
can make it’ (Goodricke to Clarendon, 6 March 1680, BL, Add. MS 17017, fol. 69).
As envoy Goodricke was involved in promoting Charles II's unsuccessful offer to
mediate in the dispute between France and Spain resulting from Louis XIV's
policy of annexing disputed border territories of the Spanish Netherlands.
Goodricke's mission ended controversially when two of his servants rescued a
woman accused by the Spanish authorities of selling meat illegally. The
government of King Carlos II protested, claiming Goodricke was exceeding his
diplomatic privileges, and he was ordered to leave the court. It was suggested
that the Spanish were glad of an excuse to get rid of him, having a ‘mean
opinion’ of his ‘public and private comportment’, although it was also suggested
that his zeal on behalf of English merchants in Spain was the real cause of the
dislike of him (Downshire MSS, 1.14–16). In any
event, the incident further soured relations between England and Spain, leading
to protests from King Charles II and a suspension of diplomatic relations.
Goodricke returned to England and had an audience with the king at Whitehall on
27 March 1683.
During the revolution of 1688 Goodricke acted as the earl of Danby's de facto
second-in-command in the north. His own anti-Catholicism, a consistent trait
over many years, had been reinforced by his temporary dismissal (from September
to November 1688) from the Yorkshire magistracy in favour of men of lower social
standing. Goodricke's seat, Ribston Hall—said at the time to be ‘one of the most
charming seats … in the north’—became a centre of Williamite plotting, and
Goodricke built a number of new fortifications in his gardens (Dartmouth
MSS, 1.138). Danby and another aristocratic conspirator, the earl of
Devonshire, both visited Ribston during November 1688. Goodricke summoned and
addressed a meeting of gentry at York on 22 November, ostensibly to draw up a
petition for a free parliament, but in reality a ploy to enable Danby and his
followers, notably his son Lord Dunblane, Lord Lumley (one of the seven
signatories of the letter of invitation to William), and Goodricke, to seize
control of York with the pretext of securing it from an alleged Catholic
uprising. With a hundred men of their own, and the support of the four troops of
militia in the city, the Williamites quickly overpowered the garrison and those
who remained loyal to James.
Goodricke was very active in the Convention Parliament which offered the throne
to William and Mary, chairing or sitting on several key committees. His reward
for his loyalty to the new regime was the post of lieutenant-general of the
ordnance, to which he was appointed on 26 April 1689 (serving until 29 June
1702). Goodricke quickly proved himself a hard-working and highly efficient
administrator in this position, regularly attending meetings, dispatching
business, and earning high praise: one admiral informed the secretary of state
that although he had written to the Board of Ordnance for a dispatch of nails,
‘if you would speak two words to Sir Henry Goodricke, we should have them’.
Appointed a privy councillor on 13 February 1690, on 11 July of the same year
Goodricke was appointed one of the commissioners investigating the naval defeat
at Beachy Head. Danby, by now marquess of Carmarthen (and subsequently duke of
Leeds), employed him as his chief manager and spokesman in the House of Commons
in the parliamentary sessions between 1690 and 1693. Goodricke was not entirely
successful in this position and was supplanted when Carmarthen's rival
Sunderland returned to prominence in 1693 and 1694, although he continued to be
an active MP, generally supportive of the court. He died at Brentford on 5 March
1705, three days after making a will in which he bequeathed his entire estate to
his wife, Mary. He was buried at Ribston, and was succeeded to the baronetcy by
his half-brother John, his marriage having been childless.
Goodricke's character was described most thoroughly in the memoirs of his friend
and fellow Yorkshire MP, Sir John Reresby: ‘this Sir Henry Goodricke was a
gentleman of fine parts naturally, and those improved by great reading and
travel … we always continued so kind friends that we [were] called brothers’ (Memoirs
of Sir John Reresby, 89). Reresby also called Mary Goodricke ‘the finest
woman, one of them, in that age’ (ibid., 148). However, Reresby was fooled by
Goodricke's dissimulation during the 1688 revolution, believing his denial of
any scheme to act against James II's interests, ‘to which (he being an open man)
I confess I gave credit more than I ought to have done; but friendship deceives
many’ (ibid., 526).
Sources
C. A. Goodricke, ed., History of the Goodricke family, rev. edn (1897) · Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. A. Browning, 2nd edn, ed. M. K. Geiter and W. A. Speck (1991) · Report on the manuscripts of Allan George Finch, 5 vols., HMC, 71 (1913–2003), vols. 2–4 · Seventh report, HMC, 6 (1879) [Sir Frederick Graham; MSS relating to Lord Preston] · Report on the manuscripts of the marquis of Downshire, 6 vols. in 7, HMC, 75 (1924–95), vol. 1, pp. 14–16 · HoP, Commons, 1660–90, 2.410–13 · ‘Goodricke’, HoP, Commons, 1690–1715 [draft] · will, PRO, PROB 11/481, fol. 50 · PRO, WO 47/17 [board of ordnance minutes, 1695–6] · PRO, WO 46/3 [ordnance letter bk, 1693–5] · H. C. Tomlinson, Guns and government: the ordnance office under the later Stuarts, Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 15 (1979) · BL, Egerton MS 3336, fols. 108, 118, 130 [Leeds papers] · letter to Clarendon, 6 March 1680, BL, Add. MS 17017, fols. 68–9 · letters to Sir R. Bulstrode, BL, Add. MS 47899 · The manuscripts of the earl of Dartmouth, 3 vols., HMC, 20 (1887–96), vol. 1, pp. 138, 249 · W. A. Shaw, ed., Calendar of treasury books, 7, PRO (1916), 1395–6 · N. Luttrell, A brief historical relation of state affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols. (1857) · The manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, HMC, 25 (1890), 215, 247, 278 · GEC, Peerage · G. M. Bell, A handlist of British diplomatic representatives, 1509–1688, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 16 (1990)