Very little is known of his early years, but a nineteenth-century biography suggests that he was taught at home by one of the priests of the dissolved collegiate church at Ruthin.

Queen Elizabeth I reinstituted the establishment as a collegiate church with Dr Bill as Dean and Gabriel Goodman as twelfth prebendary.

Sometime in 1561 Goodman was promoted to the position of Dean and in January 1562 he was concerned in "a memorable convocation of the clergy of the Province of Canterbury wherein the matters of Church were to be debated and settled for the future regular service of God and establishment of orthodox Doctrine".

Notwithstanding the support of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, Goodman failed to gain the see of Norwich in 1575, Rochester in 1581, Chichester in 1585 and Chester in 1596.

In addition to signing a petition to the Countess of Warwick to arrange a new charter for the borough, Goodman had built a new School-house to the north of St Peter's Church.

Gabriel Goodman, Doctor of Theology, fifth Dean of this church, which he headed with great praise for 40 years; and at Ruthin in Denbighshire, where he was born, he founded a hospital and instituted a school.

Dear to God and good people for his holiness of life, he departed piously for the heavenly country on 17 June 1601, aged 73.In 1583 and 1598 Goodman gave two bells inscribed “Campanis Patrem Laudate Sonantibus Cultum.