Editing William Godwin (section)

==Later years and death==
Godwin was awarded a [[sinecure]] position as Office Keeper and Yeoman Usher of the Receipt of the Exchequer,<ref>{{cite web|title=Events|url=http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/pu0282.html|website=William Godwin's Diary|publisher=Bodleian Library|access-date=17 October 2017|archive-date=4 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181004021524/http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/pu0282.html|url-status=live}}</ref> which came with [[grace and favour]] accommodation in [[New Palace Yard]], part of the complex of the [[Palace of Westminster]], i.e. the Houses of Parliament.<ref>{{cite book|title=An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice|date=2013|publisher=OUP|edition=Oxford World Classics}}</ref> One of his duties was to oversee the [[chimney sweep|sweeping of the chimneys]] of these extensive buildings. On 16 October 1834, a fire broke out and most of [[Burning of Parliament|the Palace burned down]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Events|url=http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/pu0283.html|access-date=2022-02-06|website=godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk|archive-date=6 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220206205230/http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/pu0283.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Literary critic [[Marilyn Butler]] concluded her review of a 1980 biography of Godwin by comparing him favourably to [[Guy Fawkes]], joking that Godwin was more successful in his opposition to the status quo.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Butler|first=Marilyn|date=1980-04-03|title=The Professor|language=en|volume=02|work=London Review of Books|issue=6|url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n06/marilyn-butler/the-professor|access-date=2022-02-06|issn=0260-9592|archive-date=6 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220206210717/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n06/marilyn-butler/the-professor|url-status=live}}</ref>

In later years, Godwin came to expect support and consolation from his daughter. Two of the five children he had raised had pre-deceased him, and two more lived abroad. Mary responded to his expectations and she cared for him until he died in 1836.

In 1836, Harriet de Boinville described Godwin's death, in a letter to his daughter Mary, as "the extinction of a mastermind. ... Everything is interesting which relates to such a man, one of the gifted few under whose moral influences society is now vibrating."<ref>Harriet de Boinville, letter to Mary Shelley, June 11, 1836, preserved in the University of Oxford Bodleian Libraries Abinger Collection. The letter is quoted in full in Barbara de Boinville, ''The Center of the Circle: Harriet de Boinville and the Writers She Influenced During Europe's Revolutionary Era'' (New Academia Publishing, 2023), pp. 243–246. </ref>