GODWIN, JUDITH (d. 1746), one of Howel Harris's correspondents.
Her maiden name was Weaver, and it is often (but incorrectly) said that she was the daughter of John Weaver (d. 1712), Puritan minister at New Radnor and afterwards at Hereford; it is however very probable that she belonged to the same family and was born in Radnorshire. She m. (1) Samuel Jones (1680?-1719) (q.v.), of Tewkesbury, and (2) in 1721, Edward Godwin (1680?-1764), a prominent Independent minister in London. Of the second marriage there were two sons: Edward (1722-1748 or 1749), a Whitefieldian exhorter, and John (1723-1772), an Independent minister in East Anglia who became father of the writer William Godwin and grandfather of Mary Wollstonecraft, wife of the poet Shelley. Judith Godwin moved in the quasi-Methodist Nonconformist circle of her day in Wales, and was friendly with Vavasor Griffiths and Lewis Rees (qq.v.); she was also an early and close friend of Howel Harris and of his family — we have nearly forty letters which passed between her and Harris. She was pietistic, and was strongly prejudiced against John and Charles Wesley. She d. at Watford, Herts., 25 Jan. 1746.
Bibliography:
- Cylch. Cymd. Hanes M.C., 1943, iii and iv, and references given there.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D., F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor.
