Of steady soul when public storms were high;
Whose conduct, while the Moor fierce onsets made,
Secured at once our honour and our trade.—P. [343.]
General Edward Sackville, a gentleman of good quality, related to the Dorset family, who had served at Tangier with great reputation, both for courage and judgment. Being a particular friend of the Duke of York, he expressed himself very contemptuously concerning the Popish conspiracy, saying, "they were sons of whores who believed there was a plot, and he was a lying rogue that said it." The Commons, being then in the very height of their fermentation on this subject, not only expelled Sackville from the House, but prepared an address to the king, that he might be made incapable of holding any office. He was committed to the Tower, but shortly afterwards set free, and restored to his military rank, though not to his seat in the House. After noticing Dartmouth, Sackville, and the other real friends of the Duke of York, the poet stigmatizes those concealed enemies, who now affected to congratulate his return:
——Those who sought his absence to betray,
Press first their nauseous false respects to pay;
Him still the officious hypocrites molest,
And with officious duty break his rest.
A marginal note on Luttrell's copy points out the Earl of Anglesea as particularly concerned in this sarcasm. In a prologue, spoken before the duke at his first appearance at the theatre after his return, Dryden is equally severe on these time-serving courtiers:
Still we are thronged so full with Reynard's race,