I can only suppose that it was during one of his absences that Horace Walpole went to Knole and found it not at all to his liking, for he draws a picture of the place in a state of desertion which would surely not have been warranted had the duke and his household been in occupation:
I came to Knole [_he writes to Lady Ossory_], and that was a medley of various feelings! Elizabeth and Burleigh and Buckhurst; and then Charles [_he means Richard_] and Anne, Dorset and Pembroke, and Sir Edward Sackville, and then a more engaging Dorset, and Villiers and Prior, and then the old duke and duchess, and Lady Betty Germaine, and the court of George II.
The place is stripped of its beeches and honours, and has neither beauty nor prospects. The house, extensive as it is, seemed dwindled to the front of a college, and has the silence and solitude of one. It wants the cohorts of retainers, and the bustling jollity of the old nobility, to disperse the gloom. I worship all its faded splendour, and enjoy its preservation, and could have wandered over it for hours with satisfaction, but there was such a heterogenous housekeeper as poisoned all my enthusiasm. She was more like one of Mrs. St. John’s Abigails than an inhabitant of a venerable mansion, and shuffled about in slippers, and seemed to _admire_ how I could care about the pictures of such old _frights_ as covered the walls.
I have said that cricket as well as love affairs occupied the duke’s time, and in this he was only carrying on the tradition begun by his father and his uncle, who were both enthusiastic cricketers and took part in the first match recorded as having been played at Sevenoaks, in 1734, between Kent and Sussex, Lord John Sackville and Lord Middlesex playing, of course, for Kent. Six years later Sevenoaks played London on the famous Vine cricket ground at Sevenoaks—the first match recorded on the Vine. The young Duke of Dorset inherited his father’s taste, keeping in his employ professional cricketers such as Bowra, Miller, and Minskull, and we have endless details of the matches played, an old print of one match taking place on the Vine between the duke’s men and Sir Horace Mann’s men, which shows the players all wearing jockey-caps and finally a number of cricketing ballads, more noticeable for their enthusiasm than for their excellence: