Godwin, Francis

▪ English bishop and historian

born 1562, Hannington, Northamptonshire, Eng.

died April 1633, Whitbourne, Herefordshire

 bishop and historian who wrote the first story of space travel in English literature, The Man in the Moone: or A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger. The tale was begun in about 1603–06 and finished around 1621–30; it was published in 1638. By 1768 at least 25 editions had appeared in various languages.

      Godwin was a student at Christ Church, Oxford, at the time when the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was introducing his revolutionary ideas to the university. In his story Godwin accepts the new cosmology of Copernicus and Kepler and the new ideas of Galileo.

      After holding two Somerset livings he became subdean of Exeter (1587) and successively bishop of Llandaff (1601) and of Hereford (1617). His other writings include A Catalogue of the Bishops of England (1601; Latin translation, by Godwin, De Praesulibus Angliae, 1616, 1743), containing thumbnail character studies, and Rerum Anglicarum, Henrico VIII, Edwardo VI, et Maria regnantibus (1616; Eng. trans. 1630), chronicling the English Reformation in a detached manner for one with decidedly Puritan leanings.

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