GOOGE, Barnaby (1540-94), of Staple Inn and Alvingham, Lincs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. 11 June 1540 (St. Barnabas’s day), 1st s. of Robert Googe by his 1st w. Margery, da. of Sir Walter Mantell of Heyford, Northants. educ. Christ’s, Camb. May 1555; ?New Coll. Oxf.; Staple Inn. m. 5 Feb. 1564, Mary, da. of Thomas Darrell of Scotney, Lamberhurst, Kent, 7s. 2da. suc. fa. 1557.

Offices Held

?Gent, pens. c.1563; ‘Intelligencer’ in Ireland for Lord Burghley Jan.-July 1574; provost marshal, presidency court of Connaught Aug. 1582-5.

Biography

Googe had no known connexion with Aldborough. As a relative of Lord Burghley, however, he could have had little difficulty in finding a parliamentary patron. Sir Ralph Sadler, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, may have recommended him, or his patron may have been Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, president of the council in the north, who was asked by the Privy Council before the 1571 election to see that suitable Members were returned for Yorkshire constituencies. If Strype’s statement that Googe was a gentleman pensioner be correct, Sussex, the captain of the band, is the likelier patron. By the time of his only appearance in Parliament, Googe was already known as an anti-Catholic polemicist. He was always chronically short of money. His family estates were subject to the life interest of a stepmother— as he put it to Burghley in 1582: ‘I have in England a lewd mother-in-law living, whose life keepeth from me the greatest part of my poor inheritance’, and his marriage to an heiress was followed by the birth of nine children to provide for. Again to Burghley (from Ireland 1583):

My poor wife I have left in England, who, besides the charge of divers of my children that she keepeth at grammar school and abroad, is greatly charged with a couple of them at the university.

Thus Googe was driven to accept first an unofficial assignment, then a salaried post in Ireland, which produced £40 p.a., diet at the lord president’s table, and considerable perquisites. It was not a success. His duties as provost marshal, which included oversight of the prison and supervising executions, cannot have been congenial, and in November or December 1582 he suffered a ‘mischance’ to his leg. Then his salary fell into arrears and he was too proud to accept £10 from the lord president of Connaught, though he admitted that he needed the money. He took a long leave in England from September 1583 to the early summer of 1584. The death of his stepmother induced him to sell his Irish job; this occasioned a quarrel with the lord deputy who wished to put in a nominee of his own, and successful appeals to Burghley and Walsingham. Presumably Googe then retired to Lincolnshire, being buried at Cockerington in February 1594. He died intestate, and administration was granted to his widow. The heir, his eldest son Matthew, was 28 when he succeeded to the property.

DNB; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. li), 408-9; J. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, iv. 326, 330; Lansd. 7, f. 79 seq.; CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 231-2; T. Barrett-Lennard, Fams. of Lennard and Barrett, 68-76; C142/113/56, 238/73; Strype, Parker (1821), i. 286-9; HMC Hatfield, ii. 522; CSP Ire. 1509-73, 1574-85, passim; Add. 48018, f. 294d; Christ’s Coll. Reg. ed. Peile; N. and Q. (ser. 3), iii. 181-4, 241-3, 361-2; PCC admon. act bk. 1593-4, f. 86.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes