§ iv
More tragical events than the desecration of his house or the imprisonment of his chubby friend marked for Lord Dorset the progress of the Civil War. His eldest son, Lord Buckhurst, was early taken prisoner at Miles End Green with Lord Middlesex and that same Sir Kenelm Digby, and his younger son, Edward, was also taken prisoner at Kidlington, near Oxford, and murdered in cold blood by a Roundhead soldier shortly after, at Abingdon. I know nothing of this Edward Sackville except that he was knighted at an early age, was reported to be “a good chymist,” and was deplored in an obituary poem as being
.... a lamp that had consumed
Scarce half its oil, yet the whole place perfumed
Wherein he lived, or did in kindness come,
As if composed of precious Balsamum,
and as being to his friends
that lost in losing him,
An eye, a tongue, a hand, or some choice limb.
The author of this poem, A. Townsend, contributed also to the Knole papers a set of verses on the death of Charles I. “It is a shame,” he exclaims,
those that can write in verse,
Quite cover not with elegies his hearse,
and asks:
Where are the learned sisters, whose full breast
Was wont to yield such store of milk, unpressed?
The two sons of Edward, 4th Earl of Dorset:
RICHARD, LORD BUCKHURST; THE HON. EDWARD SACKVILLE
From the portrait at Knole by Cornelius Nuie
The King, he says, was
.... pious, temperate, and grave,
Just, gentle, constant, merciful, brave.
All this, and more, he was not pleased to be,
Without the woman’s virtue, Chastity,
most unlike Solomon, who was wise, yet
.... did incline
To worship idols, for a concubine.
Lord Dorset himself took an active part in the fighting. At Edgehill he recaptured the Royal Standard which had been lost to the enemy, and to his answer during the same battle James II later testified:
The old Earl of Dorset, at Edgehill [he wrote], being commanded by the King my father to carry the Prince [Charles II] and myself up a hill out of the battle, refused to do it, and said he would not be thought a coward for ever a King’s son in Christendom.
I think also that one of his speeches is worth printing, made at the Council table in reply to one of Lord Bristol’s which urged the continuance of the war. It is honest, enlightened, bold, and, considering his personal grievances, very dignified:
The Earl of Bristol has delivered his opinion; and, my turn being next to speak, I shall, with the like integrity, give your Lordships an account of my sentiments in this great and important business. I shall not, as young students do in the schools, argumentandi gratia, repugn my Lord of Bristol’s tenets; but because my conscience tells me they are not orthodox, nor consonant to the disposition of the Commonwealth, which, languishing with a tedious sickness, must be recovered by gentle and easy medicines in consideration of its weakness rather than by violent vomits, or any other kind of compelling physic. Not that I shall absolutely labour to refute my Lord’s opinion, but justly deliver my own, which, being contrary to his, may appear an express contradiction of it, which indeed it is not; peace, and that a sudden one, being as necessary betwixt his Majesty and his Parliament as light is requisite for the production of the day, or heat to cherish from above all inferior bodies; this division betwixt his Majesty and his Parliament being as if [by miracle] the sun should be separated from his beams, and divided from his proper essence. I would not, my Lords, be ready to embrace a peace that would be more disadvantageous to us than the present war, which, as the Earl of Bristol says, “would destroy our estates and families.” The Parliament declares only against delinquents; such as they conjecture have miscounselled his Majesty, and be the authors of these tumults in the Commonwealth. But these declarations of theirs, except such crimes can be proved against them, are of no validity. The Parliament will do nothing unjustly, nor condemn the innocent; and certainly innocent men had not need to fear to appear before any judges whatsoever. And he, who shall for any cause prefer his own private good before the public utility, is but an ill son of the Commonwealth. For my particular, in these wars I have suffered as much as any; my house hath been searched, my arms taken thence, and my son-and-heir committed to prison. Yet I shall wave these discourtesies, because I know there was a necessity it should be so; and as the darling business of the kingdom, the honour and prosperity of the King, study to reconcile all these differences betwixt his Majesty and his Parliament; and so to reconcile them, that they shall no way prejudice his royal prerogative; of which I believe the Parliament being a loyal defender [knowing the subject’s property depends on it; for, if sovereigns cannot enjoy their rights, their subjects cannot] will never endeavour to be infringed; so that, if doubts and jealousies were taken away by a fair treaty between his Majesty and the Parliament, no doubt a means might be devised to rectify these differences—the honour of the King, the estate of us his followers and counsellors, the privileges of Parliament, and property of the subject, be infallibly preserved in safety: and neither the King stoop in this to his subjects, nor the subjects be deprived of their just liberties by the King. And whereas my Lord of Bristol observes, “that in Spain very few civil dissensions arise, because the subjects are truly subjects, and the Sovereign truly a Sovereign”; that is, as I understand, the subjects are scarcely removed a degree from slaves, nor the Sovereign from a tyrant; here in England the subjects have, by long-received liberties granted to our ancestors by their Kings, made their freedom resolve into a second nature; and neither is it safe for our Kings to strive to introduce the Spanish Government upon these free-born nations, nor just for the people to suffer that Government to be imposed upon them, which I am certain his Majesty’s goodness never intended. And whereas my Lord of Bristol intimates the strength and bravery of our army as an inducement to the continuation of these wars, which he promises himself will produce a fair and happy peace; in this I am utterly repugnant to his opinion; for, grant that we have an army of gallant and able men, which, indeed, cannot be denied, yet we have infinite disadvantages on our side, the Parliament having double our number, and surely [though our enemies] persons of as much bravery, nay, and sure to be daily supported, when any of their number fails; a benefit which we cannot bestow, they having the most populous part of the kingdom at their devotion; all, or most, of the cities, considerable towns and ports, together with the mainest pillar of the kingdom’s safety, the sea, at their command, and the navy; and, which is most material of all, an inexhaustible Indies of money to pay their soldiers, out of the liberal contributions of coin and plate sent in by people of all conditions, who account the Parliament’s cause their cause, and so think themselves engaged to part with the uttermost penny of their estates in their defence, whom they esteem the patriots of their liberties. These strengths of theirs and the defects of ours considered, I conclude it necessary for all our safeties, and the good of the whole Commonwealth, to beseech his Majesty to take some present order for a treaty of peace betwixt himself and his high court of Parliament, who, I believe, are so loyal and obedient to his sacred Majesty, that they will propound nothing that shall be prejudicial to his royal prerogative, or repugnant to their fidelity and duty.
It is, of course, not at all to my purpose to follow the course of the Civil War, but only to say that after the execution of the King Lord Dorset made a vow, which he is believed to have kept, that he would never again stir out of his house until he should be carried out of it in his coffin. He did not, in point of fact, survive the King by very many years, but died in 1652 and was buried at Withyham.