# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Goode, William (1762-1816)

​GOODE, WILLIAM, the elder (1762–1816), divine, born 2 April 1762 at Buckingham, was the son of William Goode (d. 1780) of that town. At ten years of age he was placed at a private school in Buckingham, and in January 1776 at the Rev. T. Bull's academy at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, where he remained until Christmas 1777. In the summer of 1778, after making trial of his father's business, he went as a private pupil to the Rev. Thomas Clarke at Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire. He matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 2 May 1780, commenced residence on the following 1 July, graduating B.A. 20 Feb. 1784, M.A. 10 July 1787 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886, p. 537; Oxford Graduates, 1851, p. 264). On 19 Dec. 1784 he was ordained deacon by Thurlow, bishop of Lincoln. He took the curacy of Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, to which he added next year the curacy of King's Langley. At the end of March 1786 he became curate to William Romaine, then rector of the united parishes of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe and St. Anne, Blackfriars, at a salary of 40l. a year. On 11 June of the same year he was ordained priest by Bishop Thurlow. In February 1789 he obtained the Sunday afternoon lectureship at Blackfriars, and in December 1793 the Lady Camden Tuesday evening lectureship at St. Lawrence Jewry. At the former lecture he delivered between November 1793 and September 1795 a course of sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians. The second edition of Brown's ‘Self-interpreting Bible,’ published in 1791, was superintended by him. Not long after he undertook for a while the ‘typographic revisal’ of Bowyer's edition of Hume's ‘History of England,’ issued in 1806, but found his eyesight unable to bear the strain. On 2 July 1795 he was chosen secretary to the Society for the Relief of poor pious Clergymen of the Established Church residing in the Country. He had supported the society from its institution in 1788, and held the office till his death. He declined a salary, voted by the committee in 1803, preferring to accept an occasional present of money. In August 1795 he succeeded, on the death of William Romaine, to the rectory of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe and St. Anne, Blackfriars; and in December 1796 he resigned the Sunday afternoon lectureship at Blackfriars on his appointment to a similar lectureship at St. John's, Wapping, which he retained until his death. He was elected to the triennial Sunday evening lectureship at Christ Church, Spitalfields, in 1807, and in July 1810 to the Wednesday morning lectureship at Blackfriars. He thus preached never less than five sermons every week. In 1811 he published in two octavo volumes ‘An Entire New Version of the Book of Psalms,’ which reached a second edition in 1813 and a third in 1816. He was elected president of Sion College in the spring of 1813 and delivered the customary ‘Concio ad Clerum.’ In the autumn of 1814 Goode visited some of the principal towns in the north-western counties, and in 1815 Norwich and Ipswich, as the advocate of the Church Missionary Society. He died after a lingering illness at Stockwell, Surrey, on 15 April 1816, and was buried in the rector's vault in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, near the remains of William Romaine, as he had requested. By his marriage on 7 Nov. 1786 to Rebecca, daughter of Abraham Coles, silk manufacturer, of London and St. Albans, Hertfordshire, he had, with twelve other children, two sons, Francis (1797–1842) [q. v.] and William, the younger [q. v.] In the June before his death Goode completed a series of 156 essays on the Bible names of Christ, on which he had been engaged above thirteen years, besides delivering them as lectures on Tuesday mornings at Blackfriars. Of these eleven appeared in the ‘Christian Guardian’ between July 1813 and May 1816 and in September 1820. They were published in a collected form as ‘Essays on all the Scriptural Names and Titles of Christ, or the Economy of the Gospel Dispensation as exhibited in the Person, Character, and Offices of the Redeemer … To which is prefixed a memoir of the Author’ [by his son William], 6 vols. 8vo, London, 1822. The ‘Memoir’ was issued separately in 1828, with an appendix of letters. Goode also published several sermons. His portrait by S. Joseph was engraved by W. Bond.
[Memoir referred to; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, ii. 170.]
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