(Francis), successively bishop of Llandaff and Hereford, was born in 167. He was eminent for his learning and abilities; being a good mathematician, an excellent philosopher, a pure Latinist, and an accurate historian. He understood the true theory of the moon's motion a century before it was generally known. He first started those hints afterwards pursued by Bishop Wilkins, in his "Secret and swift messenger;" and published "A catalogue of the lives of English bishops." He has nevertheless been accused as a great simoniac, for omitting no opportunity of disposing of preferments in order to provide for his children. He died in 1648.

Godwin (Thomas), a learned English writer born in 1517, was master of the free-school at Abington in Berkshire; where he educated a great many youths, who became eminent both in church and state. His works show him to have been a man of great learning: such as, Historia Romanae antiqua, Synopsis antiquitatum Hebraicarum, Moses & Aaron, Florilegium Phraecon, &c. He died in 1642.

Goodwin Sands, famous sand-banks off the coast of Kent, lying between the N. and S. Foreland; and as they run parallel with the coast for three leagues together, at about two leagues and a half distant from it, they add to the security of that capacious road, the Downs: for while the land shelters ships with the wind from south-west to north-west only, these sands break all the force of the sea when the wind is at east south-east. The most dangerous wind, when blowing hard on the Downs, is the south south-west. These sands occupy the space that was formerly a large tract of low ground belonging to Godwyn earl of Kent, father of King Harold; and which being afterward given to the monastery of St Augustin at Canterbury, the abbot neglecting to keep in repair the wall that defended it from the sea, the whole tract was drowned, according to Salmon, in the year 1105, leaving these sands, upon which so many ships have since been wrecked.