Knole and the Sackvilles

by V. Sackville-West

All things considered, I think that they showed commendable restraint in their behaviour:

The hurt done at KNOLE HOUSE the 14 Day of August 1642 by the COMPANY OF HORSEMEN brought by CORNELL SANDYS:

There are above forty stock locks and plated locks broken, which to make good will cost £10.

There is of gold branches belonging to the couch in the rich gallery as much cut away as will not be made good for £40.

And in my Lord’s chamber 12 long cushion-cases embroidered with satin and gold, and the plumes upon the bed-tester, to ye value of £30.

They have broken open six trunks; in one of them was money; what is lost of it we know not, in regard the keeper of it is from home. They have spoiled in the Painter’s Chamber his oil, and other wrongs there to the value of £40.

They have broke into Sir John his Granary and have taken of his oats and peas, to the quantity of three or four quarters £4.

The arms they have wholly taken away, there being five waggon-loads of them.

Nor was this the last time that the Parliamentarians came to Knole. Three years after these events Cromwell’s commissioners were installed there as the headquarters of the Court of Sequestration for Kent, and held their sessions in the Poets’ Parlour, when the Sackvilles were, for a short time, deprived of the property. On this occasion there is no record of any definite damage to the contents of the house, although a House of Commons notice for January 1645 ordered that “two-thirds of the goods and estates of the Earl of Dorset not exceeding the sum of £500 now at Knole in the county of Kent, and lately discovered there, shall be employed for the use of the garrison at Dover Castle, towards the pay of their arrears.”

Among the papers in the Muniment Room I find a letter of a later date from Sir Kenelm Digby to Lord Dorset, referring to some stolen pictures which he has been endeavouring to trace in Paris, and recommending to Lord Dorset a certain M. La Fontaine for “the much pains and running about he hath used,” suggesting that he should be rewarded with 20s. and recommended to good customers to sell his “powders and cigeours.” I wonder inevitably whether the loss of these pictures had been due to any action of Cromwell or his commissioners? Sir Kenelm’s letter, which is long, rambling, and rather illegible, does not make any mention of the cause or date of the disappearance. Sir Kenelm is himself of greater interest, perhaps, than his letter or the pictures. An intimate friend of Lord Dorset’s, the author of several housewifely little treatises, such as The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby and Choice and Experimental Receipts, he was incidentally the husband of that Venetia Stanley whose lover Richard Sackville had been. (It has, I may mention, been suggested that Edward Sackville, not Richard, was the lover of Lady Digby; and having regard to what I know of Sir Kenelm’s character I should think it not inconsistent, even if this were so, that he should remain on most friendly terms with the former lover of his wife. He had, after all, not scrupled to sue Lord Dorset, whether Richard or Edward, for the continuance after marriage of Lady Digby’s pension of £500 a year.) Sir Kenelm’s portrait by Vandyck is at Knole in the Poets’ Parlour; he is a chubby little man, with a fat outspread hand, and dimples in the place of knuckles. At one period of the Civil War he suffered imprisonment, when Lord Dorset, wishing to beguile his friend’s tedium, advised him to read the recently published Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne: Sir Kenelm took his advice, and was so much impressed as to embody his observations in a long letter to Lord Dorset, which was subsequently printed (1643) by “R. C. for Daniel Frere, to be sold at his shop at the Red Bull in Little Britain.” I happen to have the first editions of the Religio Medici and the little companion volume of Sir Kenelm’s Observations: the former is heavily scored or commented by some appreciative reader, and attention is called in the margin to favourite passages by the drawing of a tiny hand with pointing finger, the wrist encircled by a cuff of point de Venise. Sir Kenelm esteemed his friend’s taste, and the “spirit and smartness” of the author, who set out upon his task so excellently poised with a happy temper. Towards the end of his discourse Sir Kenelm quite loses his sense of proportion in his enthusiasm over Lord Dorset’s discernment, and exclaims: