Blue Plaque Wisbech

I was I will admit a little surprised on visiting Wisbech at the weekend to find a couple of blue plaques awaiting me. Wed gone hoping (well Marie had gone hoping) to watch the new A-Team film at the lovely little Luxe cinema. Sadly the cinema was sold out, even sadder the one at Peterborough wasnt; cue two hours of lack of plot, intellegence, wit and charactorization. A film with absolutely no redeeming points is a rare thing indeed, but this was one of them.
However I digress, Wisbech was after the draining of the Fens a major inland port transporting produce from the area. Its still an incredibly fertile area and has some lovely Georgian architecture which has featured in a couple of recent costume dramas. The blue plaque opposite the Luxe is dedicated to William Godwin (1756-1836) a proto-anarchist and father of Mary Wollstonecraft who I must confess I'd never heard of. He was born and rasied as a strict Calvinist and went into the priesthood and wrote An enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness in 1793 at the full flood of the French Revolution in part as a response to Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Godwin saw government and social institutions such as property monopoly, marriage and monarchy as restraining the progress of mankind. He however did not advocate violence believing change would come gradually and that violence was unnecessary. A deserved blue plaque to my way of thinking...