Knole and the Sackvilles

Some of the foregoing papers, then, account for his income; we have also some notes as to his expenses. To his servants he paid £8 to £10 a year for “ordinary men and maids.” For beef he paid 2s. a stone; for mutton, 3d. a pound; pullets were 6d. each; a goose was 1s. 8d.; a pheasant, 1s.; a hare, 8d.; a tongue, 1s.; a partridge, 9d.; a pigeon, 3d.; a turkey, 2s. 6d.; a calf’s head, 1s. 6d. A bushel of oysters cost him 4s. 6d.; a peck of damsons, 1s. Wheat cost him 7s. a bushel; salt, 5s. a bushel. For 130 walnuts he paid 1s. 6d., and for a dozen candles 5s. 6d.—a surprising price. We have also a detailed account of his cellar. For strong beer he paid 35s. a hogshead, and for small beer 10s. a hogshead. From July 1690 to November 1691 his total wine bill amounted to £598 19s. 4d., an alarming sum when we reflect that he was paying only 5s. 1d. for a gallon of red port, 6s. 8d. for a gallon of sherry, and 8s. for a gallon of canary. We are given the details entered in the cellar from August 1690 to January 1691; they are sufficiently formidable: 425 gallons of red port, 85 gallons of sherry, 72 gallons of canary, 63 gallons of white port, and a quart of hock. One wonders whether Lord Dorset was “laying down,” or whether this quantity was adequate only to the six months shown on the account book.

Lord Dorset seems to have carried large sums of money about on his person, for the steward’s account book at Knole shows a regular daily entry of 10s. for loose change to his Lordship, and when he was set upon by footpads near Tyburn they robbed him not only of his gold George, but also of forty or fifty pounds. This does not perhaps seem a very enormous sum for a wealthy man to carry, but it must always be remembered that in order to obtain the modern equivalent it is necessary to multiply by at least five.

Before leaving the Knole papers of this date—and there is much that I have regretfully discarded, many letters, for instance, regarding the election of Lord Buckhurst to the House of Commons, which throw interesting sidelights upon the methods of electioneering in the early days of Charles II—I should like to quote one letter of unknown authorship, relating to the Rye House Plot. The letter is addressed to Lord Dorset: it is unsigned and undated, but the date must be placed, by virtue of internal evidence, in July 1683, by reason of the reference to Captain Walcot who was tried on July 12th in connection with the plot.

The party that went for my Lord Essex found him in his garden gathering of nut-meg peaches, he was lodged in my Lord Feversham’s lodgings, in Whitehall, and the next day, having not made use of the favour of pen and ink, so well as my Lord Howard hath, he was sent to the Tower.

My Lord Howard runs like a spout, fresh, and fresh he hath writ enough to hang himself, and 1 hundred more, and cried enough to drown himself, he hath cast his lodgings in Whitehall.

Sir John Burlace was brought before the Council yesterday, upon sending intelligence to my Lord Lovelace that there was a warrant against him. He stayed one night in the messenger’s hands and was this morning bail for my Lord Lovelace, and both of them dismissed.

The enclosed is an account how far the Grand Jury hath proceeded, that little note hath the names of some of the Grand Jury.

None were tried this afternoon but Capt. Walcot who was cast by a most clear evidence being at several consults, the places all named, his raising of arms, his own letter to the King, and one of the consults was at the Vulture, Ludgate Hill, and Sheppard’s House, he had very little to say for himself, but that the witnesses swore away his life to secure their own, he excepted against all Jury men that were of the lieutenancy and behaved himself with a great deal of decency and resolution. They had a declaration ready drawn by Goodenough so soon as ever the King was killed, and particular men appointed to murder the most considerable persons. Borne by name was to kill this Lord Keeper, and refused it because it looked like an unneighbourly thing, my Lord pulled off his hat and said Thank you, neighbour.

I find also, dated 1690, this curious vocabulary of thieves’ slang scribbled on the back of some particulars relating to the appointment of a new incumbent for Sevenoaks. Unfortunately half the alphabet is missing:

§ iv

In 1685 Charles II died, and with him departed that devil-may-care existence into which Lord Dorset had fitted so readily and so well. He was no favourite with the new King; for one thing he had addressed verses in this vein to Lady Dorchester, mistress of James II:

He appears also at this time to have grown more serious in his outlook, for he disapproved of the new King so strongly as to have taken an active part in the accession of William III to the English throne. He was instrumental, indeed, in arranging the escape of Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne:

That evening [says Macaulay] Anne retired to her chamber as usual. At dead of night she rose, and, accompanied by her friend Sarah [Churchill] and two other female attendants, stole down the back stairs in a dressing-gown and slippers. The fugitives gained the open street unchallenged. A hackney coach was in waiting for them there. Two men guarded the humble vehicle. One of them was Compton, Bishop of London, the princess’ old tutor; the other was the magnificent and accomplished Dorset, whom the extremity of the public danger had roused from his luxurious repose. The coach drove instantly to Aldersgate Street ... there the princess passed the night. On the following morning she set out for Epping Forest. In that wild tract [it is amusing to think of Epping as a wild tract]—in that wild tract Dorset possessed a venerable mansion [Copt Hall], the favourite resort, during many years, of wits and poets ...

but Macaulay was evidently not in possession of, or else ignored (although it is difficult to believe that the incident would not have tempted his picturesque and vivid pen), the detail related by Dorset’s grandson, Lord George Sackville, that

one of her Royal Highness’ shoes sticking fast in the mud, the accident threatened to impede her escape; but Lord Dorset, immediately drawing off his white glove, put it on the Princess’ foot, and placed her safely in the carriage.

That Lord Dorset had no sympathy with popery is proved by this letter, which is among the Duke of Rutland’s papers:

Lord Dorset last night [27th January 1688] while at supper at Lady Northampton’s, received the following letter with cross on top:

’Twere pity that one of the best of men should be lost for the worst of causes. Do not sacrifice a life everybody values for a religion yourself despise. Make your peace with your lawful sovereign, or know that after this 27th of January you have not long to live. Take this warning from a friend before repentance is in vain;

and it is apparent that he had not lost touch with his old friends of the Court of Charles II, for we find, in 1688, that he placed Knole at the disposal of the Queen Dowager (Catherine of Braganza),

without any consideration of rent, besides the sole use of his park, and if she makes any alterations to have timber out of his woods for that purpose. The Queen Dowager will consider the repairs of the Lord Dorset’s house, which will amount to £20,000.

But whether she availed herself of the offer, for however short a period, I cannot say.

Lord Dorset was in favour with William III, and continued to hold his office of Lord Chamberlain until he resigned it in 1697. This was the date when he withdrew from all public life. His second wife had died six years before; Dorset himself was approaching sixty, and the excesses of his youth had long since begun to tell. The end of a life which opened with such gaiety and éclat offers a very sordid picture. From his portraits it is easy to see that he has grown heavy and apoplectic: his features are coarsened and swollen; his double chins hang in folds over his voluminous robes, his ruffles, and his ribbons. He could not hope to enjoy his life at both ends. Those must have been good days when he got drunk with Sedley, or kept house with Nelly at Epsom, or exchanged witticisms with the King in the passages at Whitehall, or sat after supper round the dining-room table at Knole with Dryden and Killigrew and Rochester; but after running up the account the debt had to be paid at last. It was all very well for Prior, who owed him everything, to get gracefully out of a difficulty by saying that he drivelled better sense than most men could talk: the remainder of the account is not pretty to contemplate. “A few years before he died,” is the story told by his grandson, Lord George Sackville, “he married a woman named Roche of very obscure connections, who held him in a sort of captivity down at Bath, where he expired at about sixty-nine.” There is a contemporary letter, which says, “My Lord Dorset owns his marriage with one of his acquaintances, one of the Roches. Do you think anyone will pity him?” “She suffered few persons to approach him during his last illness, or rather, decay,” Lord George’s account continues, “and was supposed to have converted his weakness of mind to her own objects of personal acquisition. He was indeed considered to be fallen into a state of such imbecility as would render it necessary to appoint guardians, with a view to prevent his injuring the family estate, but the intention was nevertheless abandoned. You have no doubt heard, and it is a fact, that with a view of ascertaining whether Lord Dorset continued to be of a sane mind, Prior, whom he had patronised and always regarded with predilection, was sent down to Bath by the family.” Having obtained access to the Earl, and conversed with him, Prior made his report in these words, “Lord Dorset is certainly greatly declined in his understanding, but he drivels so much better sense even now than any other man can talk, that you must not call me into court as a witness to prove him an idiot.” Congreve, appropriating the gist of the remark, observed after visiting Dorset on his deathbed, “Faith, he slabbers more wit dying than other people do in their best health.” Swift also, who was an intimate friend of Lady Betty Germaine and the Dorsets in the succeeding generation, remarks that Charles grew dull in his old age. Ann Roche, who guarded so jealously her ancient and mouldy bird of Paradise, managed to provide handsomely for herself under his will. He left her not only the house in Stable Yard, St. James, which was hers before her marriage, but also lands and messuages in Sussex, two beds with the furniture thereunto belonging in his house at Knole, the furniture of two rooms there, all the household linen there, and £500 to be increased to £20,000 if his son should die without issue. The marriage only lasted a short time, for in 1705 Lord Dorset died—old, enfeebled, and semi-imbecile.

It is not surprising to learn that he left a number of illegitimate children: we know of at least four for certain, and there was probably a fifth, a son, as it is difficult to account otherwise for the William Sackville who writes, signing a remarkably ungrammatical letter with a remarkably beautiful signature, to ask for money, as he has lately “gained the affection of a young lady,” and this, he promises, will be “the last trouble that ever I shall give your Lordship; it would come very seasonable to my present circumstances who has been harassed and ruined by the fate of war this four years past and have done the government good service, and never rewarded as those that deserved it less has.” The other four were daughters. There is a petition at Knole from one of them:

To the Right Hon. CHARLES Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, Lord Chamberlain of Their Majesties’ Household, the humble petition of MARY SACKVILLE:

That it having pleased ye Almighty to lay his afflicting hand on your petitioner’s husband and her two small children for a long time together, having nothing to live upon but his own hands’ labour, which failing him during his sickness all his family have suffered thereby and been put to great straights and having received much of your Honour’s charity, is now ... [illegible] but hopes that your Lordship will consider it is the hand of accident that is hard upon her.

Your petitioner therefore humbly prays that your Honour will be pleased to bestow something on her this time that she may undergo her calamity with a little more cheerfulness and alacrity.

According to the will of this Mary Sackville, her circumstances must have improved, for she leaves £1000 “for the benefit of Katherine Sackville my sister or reputed sister who was born of the body of Mrs. Phillipa Waldgrave, deceased, my late mother or reputed mother.” This will is dated 1684, so I should think the Katherine Sackville referred to is probably the “K. S.” who was buried at Withyham, aged fourteen, in 1690—humble little initials among the Lady Annes and Lady Elizabeths who surround her. She had been provided for in Lord Dorset’s will also:

To my natural daughter Katherine Sackville, alias Walgrave, £1000.

To my natural daughter Mary Sackville, alias Walgrave, £200, and £2000 before settled on her.

To my natural daughter An [sic] Lee, alias Sackville, the sum of £500.

It thus seems probable that these daughters were the children of two different mothers, Lee and Walgrave, Waldgrave, Waldegrave, as it was variously spelt. An agreement at Knole, dated 1674, provides for Phillipa Walgrave to receive interest on £1000 placed in Mr. Guy’s hands by Lord Dorset, the interest on it to be paid to her yearly, and after her death to Mary Sackville until her marriage or until the age of 21, but if Mrs. Walgrave marries, the £1000 is to be paid to her. Another natural daughter, also named Mary, married Lord Orrery, but I do not know who was her mother.

§ v

He had been one of the most notorious libertines of the wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the city watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Nell Gwyn, who always called him her Charles the First, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town. Yet, in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the distinction which the public made between him and them. “He may do what he chooses,” said Wilmot, “he is never in the wrong.” The judgment of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised. No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his good nature, such was the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties esteemed and caressed him, but politics were not much to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high and to wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him.... Like many other men who, with great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent, he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application. He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of acting, that the court could show. On questions of polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffee houses as without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first representation was supported by his single authority against the whole clamour of the pit and came forth successful at the second trial....

Macaulay thus summarises his career and character, and I am led quite naturally to the consideration of one aspect of his life on which I have scarcely touched, and that is his connection with the men of letters of his day. The often-quoted saying, that Butler owed to him that the court tasted his Hudibras, Wycherley that the town liked his Plain Dealer, and that the Duke of Buckingham deferred the publication of his Rehearsal until he was sure that Lord Buckhurst would not rehearse it upon him again—this saying had much truth in it. It is better, I think, to quote the disinterested opinion of Macaulay rather than the panegyrics of Prior or Dryden, or any of the contemporary authors who stood too greatly in Dorset’s debt for complete impartiality:

Such a patron of letters England had never seen [says Macaulay]. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each other by literary jealousy or difference of political opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been saved from ruin by Dorset’s princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior, who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public life; and the best comedy of Dryden’s mortal enemy, Shadwell, was written at Dorset’s country seat. The munificent earl might, if such had been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as those of Butler.

One can, perhaps, scarcely agree with Macaulay in this estimate of Dorset’s literary gifts. The songs he wrote are little more than easy specimens of conventional Restoration verse, and, for my part, I fail to find in them, with the exception of “To all you ladies now at land,” any merit which was not shared by all the numerous song-writers of the day. It certainly cannot be claimed for him that he had any of the vigour, originality, or true poetic impulse of his great-great-grandfather, the old Lord Treasurer, and although it may be argued that the age of Elizabeth and the age of the Restoration differed totally in poetic conception and spontaneity, I still do not admit that Dorset possessed those qualities which might have made up in one direction for those which were lacking in another, I have already quoted his sea-song, unquestionably the best thing he ever wrote, and, to give point to my argument, will quote two further songs, which may stand as typical examples, the first of his graceful but entirely artificial talent, the second of his satire which caused Rochester to say of him:

The fugitive character of his own verses does not, however, in any way detract from his splendour as a patron. It is well known that Matthew Prior as a boy was found by him reading Horace in a tavern in Westminster, when, struck by his intelligence, Dorset sent the boy at his own expense to school until his election as King’s Scholar. Prior in after years did not forget this kindness. His poems are dedicated to the son of his earliest patron, and there are, as students of Prior will remember, several amongst them especially written to members of Dorset’s family, notably the “Lines to Lord Buckhurst [Dorset’s son] when playing with a cat.” The many letters from Prior to Lord Dorset, now in Lord Bath’s possession, testify to the endurance of their friendship: one of these letters ends with a poem, which I quote, as I am under the impression that it is not included in any edition of Prior’s works:

It is perhaps less commonly known that Dryden also owed, in another way, much to Dorset. The account is thus given by Macaulay:

Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed his influence and patronage annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in encouraging genius and alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any papist among the servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a papist, but an apostate. He had, moreover, aggravated the guilt of his apostacy by calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement. He was removed; but he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn.

Dryden, apparently, despite this generosity, continued to lament his ill-fortune, and his contemporary Blackmore, in a poem called Prince Arthur, satirises him in the character of Laurus for his assiduity at Dorset’s doors—Dorset being the Sakil of the poem, Sackville in transparent disguise:

It is true that in his Essay on Satire, which, like his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, is dedicated in terms of the most outrageous flattery to Dorset, Dryden makes full acknowledgement of the obligation:

I must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your Lordship and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself; then your Lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief.

But I think there may be detected, even in this acknowledgment, the note of whining to which Macaulay, in the continuation of the passage I have quoted, draws attention. It is also related that Dryden, when dining with Dorset, found a hundred-pound note hidden under his plate. In a letter preserved at Knole, in Dryden’s beautiful handwriting, he makes further acknowledgement, after proffering a petition on behalf of a friend who wished to obtain rooms in Somerset House:

... if I had confidence enough, my Lord, I would presume to mind you of a favour which your Lordship formerly gave me some hopes of from the Queen; but if it be not proper or convenient for you to ask, I dare give your Lordship no further trouble in it, being on so many other accounts already your Lordship’s most obliged obedient servant,

We know that Dryden was a constant visitor at Knole; we have even an anecdote of one of his visits. It is related that someone proposed that each member of the party should write an impromptu, and that Dryden, when the allotted time had expired, should judge between them. Silence ensued while each guest wrote busily, or laboriously, upon the sheet of paper provided: Dorset scribbled a couple of lines and threw it down on the table. At the end of the time the umpire rose, and said that after careful consideration he awarded the prize to their host; he would read out what his Lordship had written; it was: “I promise to pay Mr. John Dryden or order five hundred pounds on demand. DORSET.”

It would be interesting to know who were the other members of the party; perhaps Tom Durfey, perhaps Lady Dorset, who is described as “jeune, belle, riche, et sage,” perhaps Rochester, whose portrait hangs in the Poets’ Parlour—and I imagine the Poets’ Parlour to have been the scene of this little incident, “a chamber of parts and players,” says Horace Walpole, “which is proper enough in that house”—a portrait of a young man in a heavy wig, labelled “died repentant after a profligate life,” as I, not understanding the long words, used to gabble off to strangers along with other piteous little shibboleths when showing the house. Certainly Shadwell was not there, for he and Dryden were at mortal enmity; Shadwell, his successor in the Laureateship, another friend and protégé of Dorset’s, described by Dryden as being

and who writes of Dorset that he was received by him as a member of his family, and furthermore, rather plaintively, in a letter at Knole, beseeching Lord Dorset’s intervention, as “they have put Durfey’s play before ours, and this day a play of Dryden’s is read to them and that is to be acted before ours too.”

Tom Durfey, whose portrait is upstairs in Lady Betty’s room, painted in profile, with surely the most formidable of all hooked noses, was almost a pensioner at Knole, having his own rooms over the dairy, and is guilty of these execrable verses in praise of his second home:

I do not think that Durfey can have been very greatly esteemed by his patron, nor yet on very intimate terms with him, but kept rather, contemptuously, as permanent rhymester to Dorset’s little court, for another picture, small, obscure, but entertainingly intimate, shows him in humble company in the Steward’s Room with Lowry, the Steward; George Allan, a clothier; Mother Moss, whoever she may have been; Maximilian Buck, the chaplain; and one Jack Randall. His name is certainly not one of the most illustrious among the many poets and writers represented on the walls of the Poets’ Parlour—Edmund Waller, Matthew Prior, Thomas Flattman, John Dryden, William Congreve, William Wycherley, Thomas Otway, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Samuel Butler, Abraham Cowley, Nicholas Rowe, William Cartwright, Sir Kenelm Digby, Alexander Pope. And with this last name I come to the final tribute paid to the splendid Dorset—Pope’s epitaph upon his monument in the Sackville chapel at Withyham: