Tu regere imperio populos [Sackville] memento,
and concludes by dating his letter “the 22nd [I think I may say the 23rd, for I am sure it is morning, and I think it is day] of December 1642,” thus proving that he has sat up all night in prison with Sir Thomas Browne—and who in this generation could with truth make such a boast?
§ 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,