By Vandyck.
IT has been well said of this beautiful and exemplary woman, that she is even (like the old Italian masters of painting) better known to posterity by her sobriquet than her name, for there were more than one Lady Sunderland, but only one ‘Saccharissa.’ The poet, therefore, may lay better claim to the title of godfather than the sponsors who held the infant Dorothy at the font. She was the eldest of the eight daughters of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, of that name, by Dorothy, daughter of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Lord and Lady Leicester bore a high character for ‘integrity and refinement of breeding at the Court of Charles the First, while in private life they shone a bright example of domestic harmony.’ Lady Leicester was a provident as well as a tender mother, and she entertained early projects in the matter of an advantageous marriage for her daughter, while Dorothy was still very young. At sixteen the girl was renowned for her beauty, and already surrounded by suitors. There appears to have been a talk at Court of the probability of a match with my Lord Russell, the heir of the house of Bedford; and Lady Leicester writes from the country to her lord at Court, in 1635:
‘It would rejoice me much to receave some hope of that lord’s addresses to Doll, that you writt of to me, for next to what consarns you, I confess she is considered by me above any thing of this world.’
This marriage, however, was not to be, and there was shortly after a talk of the Earl of Devonshire, which, by Lady Leicester’s correspondence, appears to have had some let or hindrance, through the interference of meddling interferers; beside, she considered his mother and sister were ‘full of decaite and jugling,’ professing to desire the union. The next aspirant to the fair hand of the beautiful daughter of Penshurst was no other than the celebrated Lord Lovelace, of whom her mother thus writes: ‘I find my Lord Lovelace so uncertaine and so idle, so much addicted to mean companie, and easily drawn to debaucherie, it is now my studie to brake off with him. Many particulars I could tell you of his wildnesse, but the knowledge of them would be of no use to you, as he is likely to be a stranger to us. For tho’ his estate is goode, his person pretie enowfe, his witte much more than ordinarie, yet dare I not venture to give Doll to him.’ Lady Leicester concludes her letter to her husband by saying, ‘My deere hart, let not these cross accidents trouble you, for we do not know what God has provided for her.’
The poet Waller now came forward and laid himself at the feet of the high-born beauty; he had been left a widower when quite young, and had gifts of nature and fortune to recommend him, but Dorothy’s parents looked for noble birth in a suitor for their daughter’s hand, and it is to be feared the poor poet was dismissed with some disdain. He was not inconsolable, however; he sought solace from his Muse, and, better still, in his union shortly afterwards with a willing bride.
A marriage was at length concluded ‘for dear Doll,’ which was calculated to satisfy the best expectations of her parents, and to ensure her own happiness.
Henry, Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, the first-born son of the second lord, by Penelope, daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, was born at Althorp, his father’s country house, in 1620. To that father’s titles and large estates the young man succeeded in 1636, and in 1639 he was married at Penshurst, Lord Leicester’s beautiful home in Kent, to that nobleman’s eldest and most beloved daughter, Lady Dorothy Sidney. Lord Leicester was at the time Ambassador to the Court of France, and immediately after the marriage the happy young couple hurried off to join the bride’s father in Paris, where they remained for two years, that is to say, until Lord Leicester’s diplomatic mission was at an end. On their return, Lord Spencer took his seat in the House of Lords, and soon made himself an object of esteem and commendation by his talents and general good conduct. These qualities, added to his high position and large property, naturally made him an object worth contending for by the two adverse parties that were now beginning to convulse England. Lord Spencer had liberal views in the literal acceptation of the word, and stoutly opposed many measures which he considered arbitrary that emanated from the Throne; and the Parliament, which was now beginning to assume the executive, had great hopes of the young lord, and believed that they had bound him to their side when he accepted the Lord-Lieutenancy of his native county which they offered him. But Lord Spencer came of a loyal stock, and there is little doubt he cherished the hope of mediating between the King and his Parliament, in which expectation he had many sharers amongst the nobility and gentry of the land. He strove all he could to be a ‘daysman’ between the two factions, but finding that his admonitions to the Parliament when they broke out into open rebellion were of no avail, he proclaimed himself stoutly for the King; and in the early and blissful days of his married life he tore himself from the embrace of his beautiful wife and the calm happiness of his ancestral home, to mix in the noise, turmoil, and danger of a camp, in company with his kinsman and countyman, the gallant Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, who was destined to fall at Hopton Heath. Lord Spencer joined the King at York, and when the royal standard was unfurled at Nottingham, he took the field as a volunteer. In his constant letters to his ‘dearest harte,’ he gives a melancholy picture of the perplexed and unsatisfactory state of affairs in the royal army. He says: ‘The discontent that I and other honest men receive dayly is beyond expression,’ and he declares ‘that were it not for the punctilio of honour’ he would not ‘remaine an howre.’
Lord Spencer was with the King at Edgehill, and with Prince Rupert at Bristol, etc. etc., and in 1643 he was raised to the dignity of Earl of Sunderland. He writes a long and most loving letter to his sweetest Doll from before Gloucester, and thanks her for her letters, ‘writing to you and hearing from you being the most pleasant entertainment I am capable of receiving in anie place, but especially here, where, but when I am in the trenches (which are seldom without my company), I am more solitarie than ever I was in mie life.’ In another letter written from Oxford in September 1643, he thus speaks of his little daughter: ‘Pray bless Popet for me, and tell her I would have writt to her, but on deliberation I deem it uncivil to return an answer to a ladie in anie other characters but her own, and that I am not learned enough to do.’ Alas! the brave soldier was never more destined to enjoy his wife’s dear company, or clasp his sweet Popet to his heart. Four days after that letter was penned, the writer was struck down by a cannon ball on the field of Newbury, in company with his friend and brother in arms, ‘the incomparable Falkland,’ and many other brave and loyal spirits. For twelve months Lord Sunderland had fought beside the King, as a volunteer, for he never would accept a commission. There is a most touching letter extant from Lord Leicester to his widowed daughter, which our limited space alone prevents our inserting here. The fair hopes contained in her old admirer Waller’s letter, written at the time of her marriage, to her sister, Lady Lucy Sidney, were far from being fulfilled. After wishing the couple every happiness, he says, ‘May her lord not mourn her long, but go hand in hand with her to that place where is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, but being divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her.’ There spoke the disappointed and jealous lover. Lady Sunderland was with child of a daughter at the period of her lord’s untimely death, who scarcely survived its birth. She retired to her husband’s estate in Northamptonshire, where she made herself generally beloved. ‘She is not to be mentioned,’ says Lloyd in his Memoirs of the Loyalists, ‘without the highest honour, in the catalogue of sufferers, to so many of whom her house was a sanctuary, her interest a protection, her estate a maintenance.’ Influenced, it is said, by her father’s wishes, she contracted a second marriage in 1652 to Sir Robert Smythe, of the family of the Lords Strangford, a gentleman of Kent, but was again left a widow; she survived Sir Robert some time, and, we are told, she continued to see her old flame Waller, to whom she one day put the dangerous question—‘Pray, Master Waller, when will you write such pretty verses to me again?’ Was it the sting of old mortification which prompted the cruel answer, ‘When your ladyship is young and beautiful again’? By her first husband Lady Sunderland had two children, Robert, the second Earl,—the Minister of whom the anecdote is told that when Addison intrusted Edmund Smith with the task of writing a history of the Revolution of 1688, the proposed author asked the staggering question, ‘What shall I do with the character of Lord Sunderland?’ and a daughter, Dorothy, who married Sir George Saville, afterwards Marquis of Halifax. By her second husband she had an only child, Robert, Governor of Dover Castle. Lady Sunderland lies buried by the side of her dearly loved Henry in a beautiful monument, in the Spencer chapel, in the church of Brington, hard by Althorp House, and in that house her name is still a household word; and Saccharissa’s bed, the curtains of which, having her embroidered monogram of S twisting round columns, may still be seen in one of the principal guest-chambers.