Francis Godwin

Francis Godwin (1562– April 1633) was an English historian, science fiction author and priest, who was Bishop of Llandaff and of Hereford.

Life

He was the son of Thomas Godwin, Bishop of Bath and Wells, born at Hannington, Northamptonshire. He was the great-uncle of the writer Jonathan Swift. 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 Somerset 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 diocese 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 diocese of Hereford. The work was republished, with a continuation by William Richardson, in 1743.

Godwin died, after a lingering illness, in April 1633 in Whitbourne, Herefordshire.