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The Sackvilles are supposed to have gone into Normandy in the ninth century with Rollo the Dane, and to have settled in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, in a small town called Salcavilla, from which, obviously, they derived their name. Much as I relish the suggestion of this Norse origin, I am bound to add that the first of whom there is any authentic record is Herbrand de Sackville, contemporary with William the Conqueror, whom he accompanied to England. Descending from him is a long monotonous list of Sir Jordans, Sir Andrews, Sir Edwards, Sir Richards, carrying us through the Crusades, the French wars, and the wars of the Roses, but none of whom has the slightest interest until we get to Sir Richard Sackville, temp. Henry VIII-Elizabeth—from his wealth called Sackfill or Fillsack, though not, it appears, “either griping or penurious,” a man of some note, and thus qualified by Roger Ascham: “That worthy gentleman, that earnest favourer and furtherer of God’s true religion; that faithful servitor to his prince and country; a lover of learning and all learned men; wise in all doings; courteous to all persons, showing spite to none, doing good to many; and, as I well found, to me so fast a friend as I never lost the like before”; and in this same connection I may quote further from Ascham’s preface to The Scholemaster, in which he records a conversation which took place in 1593 between himself and Sir Richard Sackville, when dining with Sir William Cecil: Sir Richard, after complaining of his own education by a bad schoolmaster, said, “But seeing it is but in vain to lament things past, and also wisdom to look to things to come, surely, God willing (if God lend me life), I will make this my mishap some occasion of good hap to little Robert Sackville, my son’s son; for whose bringing up I would gladly, if so please you, use specially your good advice.”... “I wish also,” says Ascham, “with all my heart, that young Mr. Robert Sackville may take that fruit of this labour that his worthy grandfather purposed he should have done. And if any other do take profit or pleasure hereby, they have cause to thank Mr. Robert Sackville, for whom specially this my Scholemaster was provided.”

This Sir Richard was the founder of the family fortune, which was to be increased by his son and squandered after that by nearly all his descendants in succession. It was he who bought, in 1564, for the sum of £641 5s. 10½d., “the whole of the land lying between Bridewell and Water Lane from Fleet Street to the Thames.” This property, now of course of almost fabulous value, included the house then known as Salisbury House, having belonged to the see of Salisbury, which presently became Dorset House in 1603, and presently again was divided into Great Dorset House and Little Dorset House, as the London house of the Sackvilles. A wall enclosed house and gardens from the existing line of Salisbury Court south to the river, and shops and tenements in and near Fleet Street from St. Bride’s to Water Lane (Whitefriars Street). These were not the only London possessions of the Sackvilles. Later on they overflowed into the Strand, and another Dorset House sprang up, on the site of the present Treasury in Whitehall, to take the place of the older house in Salisbury Court, which had been destroyed in the Great Fire. It is idle and exasperating to speculate on the modern value of these City estates.

Sir Richard Sackville died in 1566, when his son Thomas was already thirty years of age. Very little is known about Thomas’ early life; we only know that he went for a short time to Oxford (Hertford), and subsequently to the Inner Temple. While at Oxford he attracted some attention as a poet and writer of sonnets, but I have only been able to find one of these early sonnets, written for Hoby’s translation of the Courtier of Count Baldessar Castilio (published in 1561), and which I quote, not so much for its worth as for its interest as a little-known work from the pen of one who, as the author of our earliest tragedy, has a certain renown:

These royal Kings, that rear up to the sky

Their palace tops, and deck them all with gold:

With rare and curious works they feed the eye,

And show what riches here great princes hold.

A rarer work, and richer far in worth,

Castilio’s hand presenteth here to thee:

No proud nor golden court doth he set forth

But what in court a courtier ought to be.

The prince he raiseth huge and mighty walls,

Castilio frames a wight of noble fame:

The King with gorgeous tissue clads his halls,

The court with golden virtue decks the same

Whose passing skill, lo, Hoby’s pen displays

To Britain folk a work of worthy praise.

But for the rest concerning these early poems one must take his contemporary Jasper Heywood’s eulogy on trust:

There Sackville’s sonnets sweetly sauced

And featly finèd be.

A CONFERENCE OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH PLENIPOTENTIARIES AT SOMERSET HOUSE IN 1604

From the painting by Marc Gheerhardts at the National Portrait Gallery At the top right-hand corner, nearest the window, Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, K.G., Lord High Treasurer of England

It seems that Sackville’s works were all written in the first half of his life, and that later on, as honours came to him, he altogether abandoned what might have been a first-rate literary career for a second-rate political one—more’s the pity. “A born poet,” says Mr. Gosse, “diverted from poetry by the pursuits of statesmanship.” He is a very good instance of the disadvantage of fine birth to a poet. But for the fact that he was born the Queen’s cousin, through the Boleyns, and the son of a father holding various distinguished offices, he might never have entered a political arena where he was destined to have as competitors such statesmen as Burleigh, and such favourites as Leicester and Essex. Amongst his contemporary poets, Surrey and Wyatt both died while Sackville was still a child; when Spenser was born, Sackville was already sixteen; when Sidney was born, he was eighteen; when Shakespeare was born, he was a full-grown man of twenty-eight. He had thus the good fortune to be born at a time when English poets of much standing were rare, an opportunity of which he might have taken greater advantage had not the accident of his birth persuaded him to abandon poetry for more serious things as the dilettantism of his youth. For he was comparatively young when he wrote both Gorboduc and the Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates. Gorboduc was first performed by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple before the Queen in 1561, when Sackville was twenty-five, and the Induction was first published in 1563, when he was twenty-seven; but already in or about 1557, when he was only just over twenty, he had composed the plan for the whole of the Mirror for Magistrates, intending to write it himself, although subsequently from want of leisure he left the composition of all but the induction or introduction, and the Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham, to others.

By the age of twenty-one, however, responsibilities were already upon him. He was married; and he was a member of Parliament, not merely once but twice over, as appears from the journals of the House of Commons: “For that Thomas Sackville, Esq., is returned for the County of Westmoreland, and also for the Borough of East Grinstead in Sussex, and doth personally appear for Westmoreland, it is required by this House that another person be returned for the said borough.” How this double election can have come about I cannot explain. It seems to have done him no harm in his parliamentary career; not only was he returned member for Aylesbury in 1563, but he took an active part in introducing bills, etc. About this time he went to travel in France and Italy, where for some mysterious reason he got himself thrown into prison; the reason was probably pecuniary, for we are told that he was “of the height of spirit inherent in his house,” and lived too magnificently for his means; so I think the assumption is in favour of his having got temporarily into debt. If, indeed, he shared in any measure the tastes of his descendants, nothing is more likely. Back in England again, the successes of his career rushed upon him. His father was just dead; he was the head of his family; he inherited its wealth and estates; he was at the propitious age of thirty; he was related to the Queen; he was marked out to prosper. Within the next thirty years or so he was, successively, knighted and created Lord Buckhurst of Buckhurst, in the county of Sussex; given the house and lands of Knole by the Queen, that she might have him near her court and councils; sent to France and the Netherlands as special ambassador from Elizabeth; made a Knight of the Garter; Chancellor of Oxford, where he sumptuously entertained the Queen; made Lord High Treasurer of England in 1599; High Steward of England at the trial of Essex, where he sat in state under a canopy and pronounced sentence and an exhortation, says Bacon, “with gravity and solemnity.” By this time, I imagine, he had in very truth become the grave and solemn personage one sees in all his portraits—not that his mind, even in early youth, can have been otherwise than grave and solemn if at the age of twenty he had been capable of imagining a vast poem on so dreary and Dantesque a plan as the Mirror for Magistrates, devised, says Morley in his English Literature, “to moralise those incidents of English history which warn the powerful of the unsteadiness of fortune by showing them, as in a mirror, that ‘who reckless rules, right soon may hap to rue.’” Also, from a letter written by Lord Buckhurst to Lord Walsingham, it is clear that he had no sympathy with ostentation, but only with honest worth: “And, Sir, I beseech you send over as few Court captains as may be; but that they may rather be furnished with captains here [in the Low Countries], such as by their worthiness and long service do merit it, and do further seek to shine in the field with virtue and valiance against the enemy than with gold lace and gay garments in Court at home.” In 1586 Lord Buckhurst was one of the forty appointed on the commission for the trial of Mary Stuart, and although his name is not amongst those who proceeded to Fotheringay, nor later in the Star Chamber at Westminster when she was condemned to death, yet he was sent to announce the sentence to death, and received from her in recognition of his tact and gentleness in conveying this news the triptych and carved group of the Procession to Calvary now on the altar in the chapel at Knole.

He was, in fact, absent from none of the councils of the nation, and I have no doubt that he discharged his duties with all seriousness and honesty. Poetry—a frivolous pursuit—had long since been left behind. The poet had become the statesman. Nevertheless there were times when his very integrity was the cause of bringing him into disfavour with the intolerant mistress he served, notably on one occasion when he refused to take the part of Leicester and was indignantly confined to his house for nine or ten months by Royal mandate. And there was another occasion, amusing as showing the extreme simplicity in which even a man like Lord Buckhurst, who had the reputation of lavish living in his own day, conducted his daily life. Buckhurst, then being at the royal palace of Shene, was desired by the Queen to entertain Odet de Coligny, Cardinal of Chatillon, and did so, but with the result made clear in the following letter, of which I give extracts:

To the Right Honourable the Lords of her Majesty’s Privy Council be this delivered.

My duty to your Lordships most humbly remembered.

Returning yesterday to Shene, I received as from your Lordships how her highness stood greatly displeased with me, for that I had not in better sort entertained the Cardinal.

He goes on to speak of his “great grief” and his “sorrowful heart,” especially, he says, “being to her Majesty as I am,” and proceeds with the attempt to justify himself for his supposed niggardliness:

I brought them in to every part of the house that I possessed, and showed them all such stuff and furniture as I had. And where they required plate of me, I told them as troth is, that I had no plate at all. Such glass vessel as I had I offered them, which they thought too base; for napery I could not satisfy their turn, for they desired damask work for a long table, and I had none other but plain linen for a square table. The table whereon I dine myself I offered them, and for that it was a square table they refused it. One only tester and bedstead not occupied I had, and those I delivered for the Cardinal himself, and when we could not by any means in so short a time procure another bedstead for the bishop, I assigned them the bedstead on which my wife’s waiting women did lie, and laid them on the ground. Mine own basin and ewer I lent to the Cardinal and wanted myself. So did I the candlesticks for mine own table, with divers drinking glasses, small cushions, small pots for the kitchen, and sundry other such like trifles, although indeed I had no greater store of them than I presently occupied; and albeit this be not worthy the writing, yet mistrusting lest the misorder of some others in denying of such like kind of stuff not occupied by themselves, have been percase informed as towards me, I have thought good not to omit it. Long tables, forms, brass for the kitchen, and all such necessaries as could not be furnished by me, we took order to provide in the town; hangings and beds we received from the yeoman of the wardrobe at Richmond, and when we saw that napery and sheets could nowhere here be had, I sent word thereof to the officers at the Court, by which means we received from my lord of Leicester 2 pair of fine sheets for the Cardinal, and from my lord Chamberlain one pair of fine for the bishop, with 2 other coarser pair, and order beside for 10 pair more from London.

At which time also because I would be sure your Lordships should be ascertained of the simpleness and scarcity of such stuff as I had here, I sent a man of mine to the Court, specially to declare to your Lordships that for plate, damask, napery and fine sheets, I had none at all and for the rest of my stuff neither was it such as with honour might furnish such a personage, nor yet had I any greater store thereof than I presently occupied, and he brought me this answer again from your Lordships that if I had it not I could not lend it. And yet all things being thus provided for, and the diet for his Lordship being also prepared, I sent word thereof to Mr. Kingesmele and thereupon the next day in the morning about nine of the clock the Cardinal came to Shene where I met and received him almost a quarter of a mile from the house, and when I had first brought the Cardinal to his lodging, and after the bishop to his, I thought good there to leave them to their repose. Thus having accommodated his Lordship as well as might be with so short a warning, I thought myself to have fully performed the meaning of your Lordships’ letters unto me, and because I had tidings the day before that a house of mine in the country by sudden chance was burned... I took horse and rode the same night towards those places, where I found so much of my house burned as 200 marks will not repair....

This is not at all in accordance with his reputation for hospitality:

He kept house for forty and two years in an honourable proportion. For thirty years of these his family consisted of little less, in one place or another, than two hundred persons. But for more than twenty years, besides workmen and other hired, his number at the least hath been two hundred and twenty daily, as appeared upon check-role. A very rare example in this present age of ours, when housekeeping is so decayed.

I think that this reputation, and the enormous sums which he spent upon the enlargement and beautifying of Knole, make all the more remarkable the statements in the foregoing letter: that he had neither napery, plate, nor sheets, and that in order to provide his guest with a basin and ewer he was obliged to do without them himself. It is apparent also from his will that he indulged himself in the luxury of various musicians, “some for the voice and some for the instrument, whom I have found to be honest in their behaviour and skilful in their profession, and who had often given me after the labour and painful travels of the day much recreation and contatation with their delightful harmony.” “Musicians,” it was said, “the most curious he could have,” so that in these extravagances he was not parsimonious, although he disregarded the common comforts of life.

LEAD PIPE-HEADS

Put up by Thomas Sackville in 1605 Figs. 1 to 4, Stone Court. Fig. 5, Over King’s Bedroom Window. Figs. 6 and 7, South Front. Fig. 8, Stone Court. Fig. 9, Water Court.

In June 1566 Queen Elizabeth had presented him with Knole, but, because the house was then both let and sub-let, it was not until 1603 that he was able to take possession. Tradition says that the Queen bestowed Knole upon him because she wished to have him nearer to her court and councils, and to spare him the constant journey between London and Buckhurst, over the rough, clay-sodden roads of the Weald, at that date still an uncultivated and almost uninhabited district, where droves of wild swine rootled for acorns under the oaks. He does not appear to have spent very much time at Knole during the first years of his ownership, for in a letter written in September 1605, to Lord Salisbury, he says: “I go now to Horsley, and thence to Knole, where I was not but once in the first beginnings all the year, whence for three or four days to Buckhurst, where I was not these seven years.” This did not prevent him from spending a great deal of money on the house; unfortunately there is no record of what he spent between 1603 and 1607, but for the last ten months of his life alone there is a total, spent on buildings, material, and stock, for four thousand one hundred and seven pounds, eleven shillings, and ninepence—an equivalent, in round figures, to forty thousand of modern money. To account for these sums, it is known that he built the Great Staircase, transformed the Great Hall to its present state, and put in the plaster-work ceilings and marble chimney-pieces. He also put up the very lovely lead water-spouts in the courtyards.

The good fortune of Lord Buckhurst did not come to an end with the death of Queen Elizabeth. He was one of those who travelled to meet the new King on his journey down from the North, was confirmed by him in his tenure of the office of Lord Treasurer, and early in the following year was created Earl of Dorset. The illuminated patents of creation are at Knole, showing portraits of both Elizabeth and James I, not very flattering to either; and the Lord Treasurer’s chest is at Knole likewise, a huge coffer covered in leather and thickly studded with large round-headed brass nails. There is a warrant, signed by him as Lord Treasurer, for increasing the duty on tobacco, “That tobacco, being a drug brought into England of late years in small quantities, was used and taken by the better sort only as physic to preserve health; but through evil custom and the toleration thereof that riotous and disorderly persons spent most of their time in that idle vanity.” This warrant, which is dated 1605, shows how little time had elapsed since its introduction before tobacco established its popularity.

He was now advancing in years, and his own letters prove that his health was not very good. In one letter, written to Cecil, he complains that he cannot rest more than two or three hours in the night at most, also that he is constantly subject to rheums and cold and coughs, forced to defend himself with warmth, and to fly the air in cold or moist weathers. In another letter, also written to Cecil, he again complains of a cough, and says that he cannot come abroad for three or four days at least. But his devotion to his public affairs was greater than his attention to his health, for he says, “I have by the space of this month and more foreborne to take physic by reason of her Majesty’s business, and now having this only week left for physic I am resolved to prevent sickness, feeling myself altogether distempered and filled with humours, so as if her Majesty should miss me I beseech you in respect hereof to excuse me.” In 1607, when the old man was seventy-one, there was a report current in London that he was dead, but on the King sending him a diamond, and wishing that he might live so long as that ring would continue, “My Lord Treasurer,” says a letter dated June 1607, “revived again.” In the following year, however, he died dramatically in harness, of apoplexy while sitting at the Council table in Whitehall. His funeral service took place in Westminster Abbey, but his body was taken to Withyham, where it now lies buried in the vault of his ancestors.