Thomas Sackville's Biography

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536 – April 19, 1608) was an English statesman and poet, son of Richard Sackville, a cousin to Anna Boleyn. Thomas Sackville married Cicely Baker in 1555. and had seven children. He was a Member of Parliament and Lord High Treasurer. He died suddenly at the council table, in consequence of a dropsy on the brain [stroke]. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Thomas Sackville was by no means a prolific poet. Only four of his poems have survived and one of those was only very recently discovered.

Thomas Sackville was the author, with Thomas Norton, of the play Gorboduc (1561), the first English drama to be written in blank verse and deals with the consequences of political rivalry. He and also contributed to 1563 edition of Mirror for Magistrates, with the poem Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham. Sackville's first important work was the poem Induction which describes the poet's journey to the infernal regions, where he encounters figures representing forms of suffering and terror. The poem is noted for thepower of its allegory and for its sombre stateliness of tone.

In the year 1572 he was one of the Peers that sat on the trial of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. In 1586 he was selected to convey to Mary Queen of Scots the sentence of death confirmed by the English Parliament. In 1587 he went as ambassador to the United Provinces, upon their complaint against the Earl of Leicester; but, though he performed his trust with integrity, the favourite had sufficient influence to get him recalled; and on his return, he was ordered to confinement in his own house, for nine or ten months. He incurred her displeasure by what she called his shallow judgment in diplomacy.

In the year 1591 he was chosen Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He succeeded William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Lord Treasurer for life in 1599, and was a capable, if uninspired, financial manager. In 1604 Sackville bought Groombridge Place in Kent. His houses, Knole House, at Knole in Kent, and Michelham Priory are celebrated

He was created Baron Buckhurst, of Buckhurst in the County of Sussex, in 1567, and Earl of Dorset in 1604. Sackville acquired a large fortune through his real estate dealings in many counties, as well as his investments in the iron foundry business. His personal financial dealings earned him, perhaps unflatteringly, the sobriquet of "Sir John Fillsack."

Queen Elizabeth I acquired Bexhill Manor in 1590 and granted it to Thomas. Thomas was also the last Sackville to be Lord of the Manor of Bergholt Sackville (named after the Sackville family) and Mount Bures in Essex when he sold them in 1578 to Mrs Alice Dister. Both estates had been in the family for 459 years.

He was an ancestor of Vita Sackville-West, who was a friend of Virginia Woolf and the subject of Orlando.