Knole and the Sackvilles

by V. Sackville-West

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’Twere pity that one of the best of men should be lost for the worst of causes. Do not sacrifice a life everybody values for a religion yourself despise. Make your peace with your lawful sovereign, or know that after this 27th of January you have not long to live. Take this warning from a friend before repentance is in vain;

and it is apparent that he had not lost touch with his old friends of the Court of Charles II, for we find, in 1688, that he placed Knole at the disposal of the Queen Dowager (Catherine of Braganza),

without any consideration of rent, besides the sole use of his park, and if she makes any alterations to have timber out of his woods for that purpose. The Queen Dowager will consider the repairs of the Lord Dorset’s house, which will amount to £20,000.

But whether she availed herself of the offer, for however short a period, I cannot say.

Lord Dorset was in favour with William III, and continued to hold his office of Lord Chamberlain until he resigned it in 1697. This was the date when he withdrew from all public life. His second wife had died six years before; Dorset himself was approaching sixty, and the excesses of his youth had long since begun to tell. The end of a life which opened with such gaiety and éclat offers a very sordid picture. From his portraits it is easy to see that he has grown heavy and apoplectic: his features are coarsened and swollen; his double chins hang in folds over his voluminous robes, his ruffles, and his ribbons. He could not hope to enjoy his life at both ends. Those must have been good days when he got drunk with Sedley, or kept house with Nelly at Epsom, or exchanged witticisms with the King in the passages at Whitehall, or sat after supper round the dining-room table at Knole with Dryden and Killigrew and Rochester; but after running up the account the debt had to be paid at last. It was all very well for Prior, who owed him everything, to get gracefully out of a difficulty by saying that he drivelled better sense than most men could talk: the remainder of the account is not pretty to contemplate. “A few years before he died,” is the story told by his grandson, Lord George Sackville, “he married a woman named Roche of very obscure connections, who held him in a sort of captivity down at Bath, where he expired at about sixty-nine.” There is a contemporary letter, which says, “My Lord Dorset owns his marriage with one of his acquaintances, one of the Roches. Do you think anyone will pity him?” “She suffered few persons to approach him during his last illness, or rather, decay,” Lord George’s account continues, “and was supposed to have converted his weakness of mind to her own objects of personal acquisition. He was indeed considered to be fallen into a state of such imbecility as would render it necessary to appoint guardians, with a view to prevent his injuring the family estate, but the intention was nevertheless abandoned. You have no doubt heard, and it is a fact, that with a view of ascertaining whether Lord Dorset continued to be of a sane mind, Prior, whom he had patronised and always regarded with predilection, was sent down to Bath by the family.” Having obtained access to the Earl, and conversed with him, Prior made his report in these words, “Lord Dorset is certainly greatly declined in his understanding, but he drivels so much better sense even now than any other man can talk, that you must not call me into court as a witness to prove him an idiot.” Congreve, appropriating the gist of the remark, observed after visiting Dorset on his deathbed, “Faith, he slabbers more wit dying than other people do in their best health.” Swift also, who was an intimate friend of Lady Betty Germaine and the Dorsets in the succeeding generation, remarks that Charles grew dull in his old age. Ann Roche, who guarded so jealously her ancient and mouldy bird of Paradise, managed to provide handsomely for herself under his will. He left her not only the house in Stable Yard, St. James, which was hers before her marriage, but also lands and messuages in Sussex, two beds with the furniture thereunto belonging in his house at Knole, the furniture of two rooms there, all the household linen there, and £500 to be increased to £20,000 if his son should die without issue. The marriage only lasted a short time, for in 1705 Lord Dorset died—old, enfeebled, and semi-imbecile.

It is not surprising to learn that he left a number of illegitimate children: we know of at least four for certain, and there was probably a fifth, a son, as it is difficult to account otherwise for the William Sackville who writes, signing a remarkably ungrammatical letter with a remarkably beautiful signature, to ask for money, as he has lately “gained the affection of a young lady,” and this, he promises, will be “the last trouble that ever I shall give your Lordship; it would come very seasonable to my present circumstances who has been harassed and ruined by the fate of war this four years past and have done the government good service, and never rewarded as those that deserved it less has.” The other four were daughters. There is a petition at Knole from one of them:

To the Right Hon. CHARLES Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, Lord Chamberlain of Their Majesties’ Household, the humble petition of MARY SACKVILLE:

That it having pleased ye Almighty to lay his afflicting hand on your petitioner’s husband and her two small children for a long time together, having nothing to live upon but his own hands’ labour, which failing him during his sickness all his family have suffered thereby and been put to great straights and having received much of your Honour’s charity, is now ... [illegible] but hopes that your Lordship will consider it is the hand of accident that is hard upon her.

Your petitioner therefore humbly prays that your Honour will be pleased to bestow something on her this time that she may undergo her calamity with a little more cheerfulness and alacrity.