(c.1705 - 74), diplomat; m. 1734 Philippia Vanbrugh (c.1717 - 77), niece of Sir John Vanbrugh; cons. Leghorn 1736 - 54, and Cadiz 1754 - 62.
1736 - 54 Leghorn
Goldsworthy arrived in Leghorn to take up his post as consul on 25 September 1736 and remained there for eighteen years.1 He and his wife were frequently and disparagingly mentioned by Horace Mann (a professional rival, whose post in Tuscany Goldsworthy had greatly coveted), but Mann was nevertheless considerate towards them. Soon after her arrival Mrs Goldsworthy ('la Belle Consulesse') met in Florence (in the house of the British resident, Charles Fane) General Wachtendonck, commander of the Grand Duke's troops at Leghorn, and their subsequent relationship caused much comment. Her picture, with that of Princess Triulzi, hung by his bed, and when the General died in August 1741 it was said he had been paying her 100 sequins per month for her services.2
By January 1742 Goldsworthy was badly in debt to Chamberlain Godfrey, an English merchant at Leghorn, and Mrs Goldsworthy talked of going to England with the three small children (b. c.1736, c.1737 and 1740; a fourth child b. 1739 d. in infancy and was buried in Leghorn3) 'to move compassion'.4 When an earthquake hit Leghorn in January 1742 Mann invited Mrs Goldsworthy and her children to stay with him while their house was being repaired; she stayed with him from February to April, and only her illiteracy amused her host (e.g. 'as words is what I have not the rhetoric to find out to thank you'); Mann thought her 'a horrid fool, such a little unconnected thing and so fiddle faddle'.5 She returned to England in August 1742, just after her husband had been appointed supply agent for the British fleet in the Mediterranean. In 1746 he was charged with establishing the Protestant cemetery at Leghorn; his name, with those of John Aitken, Francis Harriman and Henry Ragueneau, is inscribed on the cemetery wall as one 'Deputed by the Nation to Oversee the Work'. Mrs Goldsworthy had returned to Leghorn by 1747, and another child was born in January 1748. She finally left Leghorn in the spring of 1753, and in September 1754 her husband left to take up his new post of consul in Cadiz.
1. See W.H. Smith, Originals Abroad, 13 - 75, and Pagano de Divitiis. 2. HMC Denbigh, 5:212, 216. Wal.Corr., 17:186. 3. Leghorn Inscr., 34. 4. Wal.Corr., 17:262. 5. Ibid., 293, 306, 313, 316, 342, 381, 420.