Godwin,

Godwin, FRANCIS, was born at Hannington in Northamptonshire in 1562, son of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Elected a junior student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1578, he graduated in 1580, next took orders, and was in succession rector of Sampford and vicar of Weston-Zoyland, both in Somersetshire. With Camden he journeyed through Wales in 1590. Already sub-dean of Exeter in 1587, he was made in 1601 Bishop of Llandaff for his Catalogue of the Bishops of England, and was translated to Hereford in 1617. He died in 1633. His name is now remembered, not for his Rerum Anglicarum Annales (1616), but for his fanciful story, The Man in the Moon, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales. It was translated into French and imitated by Cyrano de Bergerac, who in his turn undoubtedly influenced the voyage to Laputa episode in Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Godwin's Nuncius Inanimatus in Utopia (1629, but soon suppressed) must have suggested Wilkins' well-known Mercury, or Swift and Secret Messenger.