Arthur Golding - Biography

Biography

Arthur Golding was born in East Anglia, before 25 May 1535/36, the second son of John Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halstead, Essex, an auditor of the Exchequer, and his second wife, Ursula (d. c. 1564), in a family of eleven children (four from John Golding's first wife, Elizabeth). In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Golding family had prospered in the cloth trade, and by marrying heiresses had become fairly wealthy and respectable by the time of Arthur's birth, probably in London. When Golding was 11, his father died. In 1548 his half-sister Margery, by John's first wife, became the second wife of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, one of the richest peers in England, and by 1552 his brother Henry was steward for his brother-in-law's household.

By 1549 Arthur was in the service of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector. He matriculated as a fellow commoner at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1552. Henry was elected to Parliament in 1558, probably because of Oxford's influence, and from the later 1550s Arthur worked on a translation of Pompeius Trogus that he planned to dedicate to Oxford. But Oxford died in August 1562, and his son Edward, the 17th earl, became a ward in the house of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in The Strand. Cecil appears to have employed Golding as his nephew's receiver for several years, for two of his dedications are dated from Cecil House, and in 1567 he dated a dedication from Barwicke, one of the de Vere manors near White Colne, Essex.

Golding married Usula (d. 1610), daughter of John Roydon of Chilham, Kent, sometime before 1575. They had eight children. The death in 1576 of an older brother, Henry, left him with some property, but it was heavily encumbered with debt and litigation with the heirs of his brother's widow proved expensive. Golding borrowed heavily in the 1580s and was in debtors prison in the early 1590s. He died in May 1606 and was buried on 13 May at St Andrew's Church, Belchamp St Paul.