in 1854. At Oxford as a pupil of William Buckland he became deeply interested in geology, and soon afterwards becoming acquainted with De la Beche, he was inspired by that great master, and assisted him by making a geological map of the neighbourhood of Newton Abbot, which was embodied in the Geological Survey map. He also published an elaborate memoir “On the Geology of the South-East of Devonshire” (Trans. Geol. Soc. ser. 2, vol. viii.). His attention was next directed to the Cretaceous rocks of Surrey, his home-county, his estates being situated at Chilworth and Shalford near Guildford. Later he dealt with the superficial accumulations bordering the English Channel, and with the erratic boulders of Selsea. In 1855 he brought before the Geological Society of London his celebrated paper “On the possible Extension of the Coal-Measures beneath the South-Eastern part of England,” in which he pointed out on well-considered theoretical grounds the likelihood of coal-measures being some day reached in that area. In this article he also advocated the freshwater origin of the Old Red Sandstone, and discussed the relations of that formation, and of the Devonian, to the Silurian and Carboniferous. He was elected F.R.S. in 1849, and in 1862 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, on which occasion he was styled by Sir R. I. Murchison “pre-eminently the physical geographer of bygone periods.” He died at Shalford House near Guildford on the 25th of November 1884.
His son, Lieut.-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen (b. 1834), entered the army in 1851, and served for many years on the Trigonometrical Survey of India, retiring in 1877. He gave much attention to geology, but is more especially distinguished for his researches on the natural history of India and as the author of The Land and Freshwater Mollusca of India (1882–1887).
GODWINE (d. 1053), son of Wulfnoth, earl of the West-Saxons,
the leading Englishman in the first half of the 11th
century. His birth and origin are utterly uncertain; but he
rose to power early in Canute’s reign and was an earl in 1018.
He received in marriage Gytha, a connexion of the king’s, and
in 1020 became earl of the West-Saxons. On the death of Canute
in 1035 he joined with Queen Emma in supporting the claim
of Hardicanute, the son of Canute and Emma, to the crown of
his father, in opposition to Leofric and the northern party who
supported Harold Harefoot (see Hardicanute). While together
they held Wessex for Hardicanute, the ætheling Ælfred, son of
Emma by her former husband Æthelred II., landed in England
in the hope of winning back his father’s crown; but falling into
the hands of Godwine, he and his followers were cruelly done to
death. On the death of Hardicanute in 1042 Godwine was
foremost in promoting the election of Edward (the Confessor)
to the vacant throne. He was now the first man in the kingdom,
though his power was still balanced by that of the other great
earls, Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumberland. His
sons Sweyn and Harold were promoted to earldoms; and his
daughter Eadgyth was married to the king (1045). His policy
was strongly national in opposition to the marked Normanizing
tendencies of the king. Between him and Edward’s foreign
favourites, particularly Robert of Jumièges, there was deadly
feud. The appointment of Robert to the archbishopric of Canterbury
in 1051 marks the decline of Godwine’s power; and in the
same year a series of outrages committed by one of the king’s
foreign favourites led to a breach between the king and the earl,
which culminated in the exile of the latter with all his family (see
Edward the Confessor). But next year Godwine returned in
triumph; and at a great meeting held outside London he and
his family were restored to all their offices and possessions,
and the archbishop and many other Normans were banished.
In the following year Godwine was smitten with a fit at the
king’s table, and died three days later on the 15th of April 1053.
Godwine appears to have had seven sons, three of whom—King Harold, Gyrth and Leofwine—were killed at Hastings; two others, Wulfnoth and Ælfgar, are of little importance; another was Earl Tostig (q.v.). The eldest son was Sweyn, or Swegen (d. 1052), who was outlawed for seducing Eadgifu abbess of Leominster. After fighting for the king of Denmark he returned to England in 1049, when his murder of his cousin Beorn compelled him to leave England for the second time. In 1050, however, he regained his earldom, and in 1051 he shared his father’s exile. To atone for the murder of Beorn, Sweyn went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on the return journey he died on the 29th of September 1052, meeting his death, according to one account, at the hands of the Saracens.
GODWIT, a word of unknown origin, the name commonly
applied to a marsh-bird in great repute, when fattened, for the
table, and formerly abundant in the fens of Norfolk, the Isle
of Ely and Lincolnshire. In Turner’s days (1544) it was worth
three times as much as a snipe, and at the same period Belon
said of it—“C’est vn Oyseau es delices des Françoys.” Casaubon,
who Latinized its name “Dei ingenium” (Ephemerides, 19th
September 1611), was told by the “ornithotrophaeus” he visited
at Wisbech that in London it fetched twenty pence. Its fame
as a delicacy is perpetuated by many later writers, Ben Jonson
among them, and Pennant says that in his time (1766) it sold for
half-a-crown or five shillings. Under the name godwit two
perfectly distinct species of British birds were included, but that
which seems to have been especially prized is known to modern
ornithologists as the black-tailed godwit, Limosa aegocephala,
formerly called, from its loud cry, a yarwhelp,[1] shrieker or
barker, in the districts it inhabited. The practice of netting
this bird in large numbers during the spring and summer, coupled
with the gradual reclamation of the fens, to which it resorted,
has now rendered it but a visitor in England; and it probably
ceased from breeding regularly in England in 1824 or thereabouts,
though under favourable conditions it may have occasionally
laid its eggs for some thirty years later or more (Stevenson,
Birds of Norfolk, ii. 250). This godwit is a species of wide
range, reaching Iceland, where it is called Jardraeka (= earth-raker),
in summer, and occurring numerously in India in winter.
Its chief breeding-quarters seem to extend from Holland eastwards
to the south of Russia. The second British species is that
which is known as the bar-tailed godwit, L. lapponica, and this
seems to have never been more than a bird of double passage
in the United Kingdom, arriving in large flocks on the south
coast about the 12th of May, and, after staying a few days,
proceeding to the north-eastward. It is known to breed in
Lapland, but its eggs are of great rarity. Towards autumn
the young visit the English coasts, and a few of them remain,
together with some of the other species, in favourable situations
throughout the winter. One of the local names by which the
bar-tailed godwit is known to the Norfolk gunners is scamell,
a word which, in the mouth of Caliban (Tempest, II. ii.), has been
the cause of much perplexity to Shakespearian critics.
The godwits belong to the group Limicolae, and are about as big as a tame pigeon, but possess long legs, and a long bill with a slight upward turn. It is believed that in the genus Limosa the female is larger than the male. While the winter plumage is of a sober greyish-brown, the breeding-dress is marked by a predominance of bright bay or chestnut, rendering the wearer a very beautiful object. The black-tailed godwit, though varying a good deal in size, is constantly larger than the bar-tailed, and especially longer in the legs. The species may be further distinguished by the former having the proximal third of the tail-quills pure white, and the distal two-thirds black, with a narrow white margin, while the latter has the same feathers barred with black and white alternately for nearly their whole length.
America possesses two species of the genus, the very large marbled godwit or marlin, L. fedoa, easily recognized by its size and the buff colour of its axillaries, and the smaller Hudsonian godwit, L. hudsonica, which has its axillaries of a deep black. This last, though less numerous than its congener, seems to range over the whole of the continent, breeding in the extreme north, while it has been obtained also in the Strait of Magellan and the Falkland Islands. The first seems not to go farther southward than the Antilles and the Isthmus of Panama.
- ↑ This name seems to have survived in Whelp Moor, near Brandon, in Suffolk.
