Sir Francis Godolphin (1540–1608) was an English politician, knight, and Member of Parliament.
The nephew of Sir William Godolphin (1515–1570), who left no male issue, he succeeded to his uncle's estates early in Queen Elizabeth's reign.
He was one of the leading citizens of Cornwall, described by that county's 17th-century historian, Richard Carew, as one "whose zeal in religion, uprightness in justice, providence in government, and plentiful housekeeping, have won him a very great and reverent reputation in his country".
On royal instructions, he improved the defences of the islands which were, in Carew's words "reduced to a more defensible plight by him, who with his invention and purse, bettered his plot and allowance, and therein so tempered strength and delight, and both with use, as it serveth for a sure hold, and a commodious dwelling".
He was also an innovative manager of Cornwall's tin mines, his inventions greatly increasing their productivity by extracting metal from material; that would previously have been discarded as refuse, so materially improving both the prosperity of Cornwall and the revenue that the Crown derived from it.