Everything about Charles Sackville 6th Earl Of Dorset totally explained
Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset and 1st Earl of Middlesex (
24 January 1638 –
29 January 1706) was an English poet and courtier, son of the
5th Earl of Dorset (1622–1677).
His mother was the former
Lady Frances Cranfield, sister and heiress of the
3rd Earl of Middlesex, to whose estates he succeeded in 1674, being created
Baron Cranfield, of Cranfield in the County of Middlesex, and
Earl of Middlesex in 1675. He succeeded to his father's estates and title in August 1677.
He was educated privately, and spent some time abroad with a private tutor, returning to England shortly before the
Restoration. In
King Charles II's first Parliament he sat for
East Grinstead in
Sussex. He had no taste for politics, however, but won a reputation as courtier and wit at
Whitehall.
He bore his share in the excesses for which
Sir Charles Sedley and
Lord Rochester were notorious. In 1662 he and his brother Edward, with three other gentlemen, were indicted for the robbery and murder of a tanner named Hoppy. The defence was that they were in pursuit of thieves, and mistook Hoppy for a highwayman. They appear to have been acquitted, for when in 1663 Sir Charles Sedley was tried for a gross breach of public decency in
Covent Garden, Sackville, who had been one of the offenders, was asked by the
Lord Chief Justice whether he'd so soon forgot his deliverance at that time.
Something in his character made his follies less obnoxious to the citizens than those of the other
rakes, for he was never altogether unpopular, and Rochester is said to have told Charles II that
he didn't know how it was, my Lord Dorset might do anything, yet was never to blame. In 1665 he volunteered to serve under the
Duke of York in the
Second Anglo-Dutch War. His famous song,
To all you ladies now at Land, was written, according to Prior, on the night before the victory gained over foggy
Opdam off
Harwich (
3 June 1665).
Dr Johnson, with the remark that seldom any splendid story is wholly true, says that the
Earl of Orrery had told him it was only retouched on that occasion.
In 1667
Pepys laments that Sackville had lured
Nell Gwyn away from the theatre, and that with Sedley the two kept merry house at
Epsom. Next year the king was paying court to Nell, and her Charles the Second, as she called him (
Charles Hart, a former lover, being her Charles the First), was sent on a sleeveless errand into France to be out of the way.
His gaiety and wit secured the continued favour of Charles II, but didn't especially recommend him to
James II, who could not, moreover, forgive Dorset's
lampoons on his mistress,
Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester. On James's accession, therefore, he retired from court. He concurred in the invitation to
William of Orange, who made him a
Privy Counsellor,
Lord Chamberlain (1689), and
Knight of the Garter (1692). During William's absences in 1695–1698 he was one of the Lord Chief Justices of the realm.
He was a generous patron of men of letters. When
Dryden was dismissed from the
laureateship, he made him an equivalent pension from his own purse.
Matthew Prior, in dedicating his
Poems on Several Occasions (1709) to Dorset's son, affirms that his opinion was consulted by
Edmund Waller; that the
Duke of Buckingham deferred the publication of his
Rehearsal until he was assured that Dorset wouldn't rehearse upon him again; and that
Samuel Butler and
Wycherley both owed their first recognition to him. Prior's praise of Dorset is no doubt extravagant, but when his youthful follies were over he appears to have developed sterling qualities, and although the poems he's left are very few, none of them are devoid of merit. Dryden's
Essay on Satire and the dedication of the
Essay of Dramatick Poesie are addressed to him.
Walpole (
Catalogue of Noble Authors, iv.) says that he'd as much
wit as his first master, or his contemporaries Buckingham and Rochester, without the royal want of feeling, the duke's want of principles or the earl's want of thought; and
Congreve reported of him when he was dying that he slabbered more wit than other people had in their best health. He was three times married, his first wife being Mary, widow of
Charles Berkeley, Earl of Falmouth. He died at
Bath.
The fourth act of
Pompey the Great, a tragedy translated out of French by certain persons of honor, is by Dorset. The satires for which Pope classed him with the masters in that kind seem to have been short lampoons, with the exception of
A faithful catalogue of our most eminent ninnies (reprinted in
Bibliotheca Curiosa, ed. Goldsmid, 1885).
The Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscommon and Dorset, the Dukes of Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, &c., with Memoirs of their Lives (1731) is catalogued (No. 20841) by
H. G. Bohn in 1841. His poems are included in Anderson's and other collections of the British poets.
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