Add MS 78307

EVELYN PAPERS. Vol. CXL (ff. 165). Correspondence with Margaret (Blagge) Godolphin, [1672?]-1678, her husband Sidney Godolphin, afterwards Baron and 1st Earl of Godolphin, 1676-1704, and their son Francis, afterwards 2nd Earl of Godolphin, 1690-1702; 1673-1704. Evelyn's letters are drafts or copies; several of Margaret Blagge's letters are copies in Evelyn's hand, possibly made when she requested their return of in anticipation of her marriage and kept back some of the originals, telling him he could `take out what ever you like of them without out putting any marke upon them whos they were' (see her letters of June-July [1674], ff. 41, 45-46). For a further letter from Evelyn, see Add. MS 15950, ff. 106-107; for instructions compiled by Mary Evelyn and written out by her husband as guidance for Margaret Godolphin in setting up and keeping house on an income of £500 a year, [1676-1677] see Add. MS 80766.

Margaret Blagge (1652-1678) was the daughter of Col. Thomas Blagge, royalist and groom of the bedchamber to Charles II. On 16 October 1672, while she was maid of honour to Queen Catherine of Braganza, Evelyn made a pact of spiritual friendship with her, as he describes in his Diary, III, p. 628, and in his comemorative `Life of Mrs Godolphin'. At the time she was debating with herself and with Evelyn whether she should fulfil her long-standing engagment to Sidney Godolphin or pursue her religious vocation in a single life. Many of her letters are undated, but most can be dated from internal evidence, at least so as to make the sequence clear; many belong to the period 1673-1674, when the friendship was at its most intense and she was undecided about her future. For the devotional works they also exchanged during this period, see Add. MSS 78372-78392 below. In May 1675 she married Godolphin in secret and died on 9 September 1678, immediately after the birth of her first child. Evelyn's friendship with Sidney Godolphin and with the son, Francis, who survived his mother, continued after her death, and in 1705 his grandson and heir married Sidney Godolphin's niece, Anne Boscawen.

Many of Margaret Godolphin's letters bear multiple endorsements by Evelyn, in the form of symbols (chiefly the pentacle which he used to designate her), numeration (sometimes more than one sequence) and other comments. The numeration does not appear to have a clear connection with the chronology of the letters, but may be connected with the writing of his `Life of Mrs Godolphin'. This work was completed in 1684 and circulated amongst her family and friends, but not published for the first time until 1847; see The Life of Mrs Godolphin, ed. Harriet Sampson (1932), which discusses the earlier printed editions. Evelyn quoted or paraphrased some of the present correspondence in this work, including several letters of Margaret Godolphin which no longer survive in manuscript. The two manuscripts of the `Life', one a scribal copy presented to her friend Lady Sylvius in 1684, and the other an autograph version of it presented to Sidney Godolphin in 1702, are both now in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

In his later years Evelyn kept the Godolphins' letters by him `in the Scrittore in my Closett next the Bedchamber at Wotton' (see the list in Add. MS 78404 below). He transcribed a few of his retained copies and drafts to them into his letterbooks (Add. MSS 78298-78299), but endorsements on his letters to Sidney Godolphin of 8 April 1679 (`These copies should be transcribed with the rest of mine to Mr Godolphin') and 9 Sept. 1680 (`Let these be Copyed & kept') suggest that he may have intended a separate transcribed sequence of these.

Many of the present letters are printed in W. G. Hiscock, John Evelyn and Mrs Godolphin (1951) and John Evelyn and his Family Circle (1955). His reading of the friendship in these works was based on the conjectural dates he supplied and also pencilled on the letters themselves while they were on deposit at Christ Church. These remain on the letters, but are not always reliable; an example is the letter referring to Margaret's concern for James Hamilton, fatally injured in a naval battle in June 1673 (f. 15), which bears Hiscock's pencilled date `[1674?]'. See also F. Harris, Transformations of Love: the Friendship of John Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin (Oxford, 2003).