_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?
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_,
_that lost in losing him, An eye, a tongue, a hand, or some choice limb_.
The author of this poem, A. Townsend, contributed also to the Knole papers a set of verses on the death of Charles I. “It is a shame,” he exclaims,
_those that can write in verse, Quite cover not with elegies his hearse_,
_Where are the learned sisters, whose full breast Was wont to yield such store of milk, unpressed?_
THE TWO SONS OF EDWARD, 4TH EARL OF DORSET:
RICHARD, LORD BUCKHURST; THE HON. EDWARD SACKVILLE
_From the portrait at Knole by_ CORNELIUS NUIE ]
.... _pious, temperate, and grave, Just, gentle, constant, merciful, brave. All this, and more, he was not pleased to be, Without the woman’s virtue, Chastity_,
.... _did incline To worship idols, for a concubine_.
Lord Dorset himself took an active part in the fighting. At Edgehill he recaptured the Royal Standard which had been lost to the enemy, and to his answer during the same battle James II later testified:
The old Earl of Dorset, at Edgehill [_he wrote_], being commanded by the King my father to carry the Prince [Charles II] and myself up a hill out of the battle, refused to do it, and said he would not be thought a coward for ever a King’s son in Christendom.