The fact that Godolphin became recorder of Helston implies that he received some legal training, but no details of his education survive. He entered Sir Robert Cecil’s† service around 1602, but transferred to Prince Henry’s Household by March 1604. His father, who in 1608 bequeathed him only the remaining term in two Cornish leases, presumably expected him to make his way at Court, and indeed Godolphin was granted an annual pension of £100 once Prince Henry came into his estates.
Like many of his forebears Godolphin became expert in mining technology, winning the accolade of ‘great mineralist’ from Sir Francis Bacon*. In 1621 he and a neighbour leased from the Society of Mines Royal all its workings in Breage and two adjacent parishes, though it is not clear how profitable this venture proved. Two years later he was sent with Sir Thomas Stafford* to assess new methods being employed in the royal mines in Cardiganshire for extracting silver from lead. Godolphin was back in Cornwall by the autumn of 1623, and is said to have entertained Prince Charles and Buckingham when they stopped at Scilly on their return from Spain.
The mid-1620s saw a significant shift in west Cornish politics in Godolphin’s favour. In those parliamentary elections which had been held since 1604, his family seems to have backed Killigrew nominees at Helston and St. Ives, the boroughs closest to Godolphin House. Following the death of Sir William Killigrew in 1622, however, Godolphin began to assert his own interests. In 1624 he was himself returned at St. Ives, while Helston provided seats for two colleagues from the prince’s Household, his nephew Francis Carew and Thomas Carey. Godolphin was at least in part following a personal agenda; although he rescued one of Charles’s local nominees, Carey, who had been rejected at Grampound, he simultaneously wrecked the chances of another, Sir Julius Caesar*, at St. Ives. His one committee nomination during this Parliament related to a bill which sought to clear brewhouses away from Prince Charles’s main residence, St. James’s Palace (19 May). However, he also attended the legislative committee concerned with abuses in levying private debts in the king’s name.
In December that year Godolphin complained to his kinsman Jonathan Rashleigh* that he found his new task of collecting Privy Seal loans ‘unpleasing’, but for all his protestations he was assiduous in his duties. The fact that the money was used to relieve the burden of the troops billeted around Plymouth apparently made the Crown’s demands more acceptable to the county and, with his fellow collector William Coryton, Godolphin was chosen to represent Cornwall in the 1626 Parliament. At Helston he again provided a seat for Carew, partnering him with Francis Godolphin, who was about to reach his majority. As in the previous year no details survive of his Commons activities.
The outbreak of war with Spain in 1625 had highlighted the inadequacies of the Scilly forts, and the government’s decision to fund the necessary reinforcements and repairs out of local Forced Loan payments guaranteed Godolphin’s enthusiasm for the levy. He took over from Sir George Chudleigh* as Cornwall’s treasurer in May 1627, and three months later proposed Privy Council intervention to speed up the collection process.
Throughout the following decade Godolphin continued to press for improvements to the Scilly defences, but in a time of peace and retrenchment it proved even harder to secure government action, let alone regular payment of wages. The rumour circulating in 1636 that he had been captured by Turkish pirates was apparently unfounded.