SACKVILLE, Richard, Lord Buckhurst (1622-77), of Dorset House, London, and Knole, Kent.

The Sackville family, which had resided at Buckhurst House, near East Grinstead, since the twelfth century, rose to prominence during the sixteenth century, through marriage into the Boleyn family. Sackville’s great-grandfather, Thomas Sackville†, served as lord treasurer under Elizabeth I and James I, and was ennobled as earl of Dorset.35HP Commons 1558-1603; CP. However, the wealth he had accumulated was frittered away in the early seventeenth century, largely due to the profligacy of Richard Sackville, the 3rd earl, who reportedly died (in 1624) leaving debts of £60,000. Family fortunes began to recover under the 4th Earl (Edward Sackville†), who was chamberlain to Queen Henrietta Maria from 1628.36HP Commons 1604-1629; CP; ‘Edward Sackville’, Oxford DNB.

As Dorset’s heir, Richard Sackville was known by the courtesy title of Lord Buckhurst. He probably grew up at court, where his father’s prominence led to his participation in February 1626, aged only three, in the procession at the coronation of Charles I.37Birch, Court and Times of Charles I (1894), i. 80. His tutor was the poet Joseph Rutter, a close friend of the playwright Ben Jonson and of Sir Kenelm Digby. The young Buckhurst may have helped Rutter translate Corneille’s ‘The Cid’, published in 1637; in 1638 he contributed verse to a volume in Jonson’s memory.38‘Edward Sackville’, Oxford DNB; Ionsonus Virbius (1638), 10. In January 1641 Dorset brought to fruition negotiations to marry his eighteen-year-old son to the daughter of the disgraced former lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, 1st earl of Middlesex, securing the promise of a portion of £10,000.39Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/E72/1; U269/A390/1; U269/E298/1; Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles, 111-12.

Buckhurst was already an MP, despite being a minor. Through his father’s power as lord lieutenant of Sussex and his family’s long-standing influence over the borough, in the autumn of 1640 he secured the seat at East Grinstead previously occupied (since 1601) by Dorset’s old friend Sir Henry Compton*. Buckhurst was also elected for Steyning, but before the double return had been resolved, on 6 November he was named to the privileges committee.40CJ ii. 21a. Three days later he opted to sit for East Grinstead, and his election was ratified on 16 November.41CJ ii. 23a, 30a. Nevertheless, confusion as to whether he or Thomas Leedes* would sit for Steyning persisted until the middle of February 1641.42Procs. LP ii. 453.

Buckhurst had very promptly received two more nominations, to joint committees with the Lords to discuss the prospective fast day (9 Nov.) and alleged breaches of privilege by some MPs (with other sons of peers, 10 Nov.).43CJ ii. 23b, 25b. Liaison with the Lords was to be the characteristic of much of his limited parliamentary activity, and this and his age suggest that his primary role was as his father’s eyes and ears in the Commons. Importantly, he was listed among those who on 21 April 1641 voted against the attainder of the king’s chief minister in Ireland, Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford.44Procs. LP iv. 51. In the meantime, he had not been visible in the Journal. Surfacing to take the Protestation – several weeks late – on 8 June, he next appeared on 27 July, when he was among MPs added to the committee to consider disbanding the army during further revelations about the ‘army plot’.45CJ ii. 171a, 226a.

He then vanished from view until 16 December when, following the king’s failure to respond to the Grand Remonstrance, Buckhurst was named to a joint committee to attend Charles with representations regarding parliamentary privileges.46CJ ii. 346b. The surviving portion of his parliamentary diary suggests frequent attendance in the House during December 1641 and January 1642.47Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/F3/1, ff. 1v-8v. After the king’s abortive attempt to arrest the Five Members and his departure from London, Buckhurst was on the joint committees which considered Charles’s answer to the propositions of the Scots commissioners (27 Jan.), and delivered to him a request that the Tower of London and other forts be placed under the control of parliamentary nominees (2 Feb.).48CJ ii. 400a, 410a; PJ i. 258, 264.

While this might have seemed to betoken commitment to further reformation, the Sackvilles were coming under suspicion in certain quarters. In February, when certain letters being carried by one of the earl of Dorset’s Catholic servants were intercepted and referred to the committee for informations (later known as the Committee for Examinations), Buckhurst himself was added to that body for the purpose (21 Feb.).49PJ i. 430; CJ ii. 446a. About this time, he drafted a speech setting out his opposition to a ‘long’ Parliament, on the grounds of the corruption which would arise, and the development of factional interests, although it is unclear whether this was ever publicly delivered.50Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/F3/6, f. 33. Although a member of the committee for plundered ministers in Sussex, on 7 March he revealed more conservative religious views when he was a teller with James Compton*, Lord Compton – and against future parliamentarian grandees Oliver Cromwell* and John Blakiston* – for the majority who rejected a motion recommending puritan preacher Thomas Coleman to the vacant lectureship at St Giles-in-the-Fields.51Sawyer, ‘Procs. CPM Suss.’, Suss. Arch Coll. xxxi. 171; CJ ii. 470b.

That was to be his last contribution to Commons proceedings. As civil war loomed, Buckhurst was identified as a royalist sympathizer. He was named as a commissioner of array for Kent, and in July and August attended the king at York and at Nottingham.52Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A4/1, 2 unfol. There is no evidence of that he actually fought for Charles, but that November parliamentarian soldiers arrested him at Mile End, with his father-in-law the earl of Middlesex and Sir Kenelm Digby, on suspicion of having raised troops for the royalist cause.53Two Speeches Spoken at the Councell Table (1642), 7 (E.83.19); A Exact and True Relation (1642), 6-7 (E.12.8); Phillips, Sackville Fam. i. 344, 347. By January 1643, however, Buckhurst had been released, and during the early 1640s he remained in London or Essex.54Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A4/1, 2, unfol. From there he maintained a correspondence with leading royalists like Digby, but apparently avoided open commitment to the king by not attending the Oxford Parliament – perhaps because he feared for his family’s property.55Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/C84/1. On 5 February 1644 he was disabled from sitting in the House of Commons.56CJ iii. 389b; C231/6, p. 20.

Despite reports that he had fled to the continent, Buckhurst remained in England to protect his estates from the sequestrators.57Claydon House, Verney Pprs., Reel 5, unfol. (15 Feb., 16 May 1644). Assessed at £1,500 that July, he borrowed money from friends like Sussex grandee and moderate parliamentarian Sir Thomas Pelham*.58CCAM 435; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A4/1, unfol. A year later he secured a pass for his wife to go to Oxford to secure the settlement of her jointure.59LJ vii. 588b. Although Buckhurst’s father Dorset was a leading royalist counsellor, the family was protected to some extent by the position of his mother as governess to the king’s children. In July 1643 the countess of Dorset had been granted both Dorset House and Knole, and at her death in May 1645, when she was granted a public funeral in Westminster Abbey, the issue of the estate was referred to the parliamentary committee for the king’s children (21 May).60CJ iv. 150b. Although portions of Dorset’s property were seized by the sequestrators that summer, Buckhurst successfully petitioned (3 Nov.) that their sale should be delayed, and that he should be granted a fifth part of the estate.61LJ vii. 675a; CJ iv. 331b; SP20/1, p. 1092. When the goods were eventually sold, Buckhurst purchased at least some of them himself.62Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/010/1-2. He later secured protection for the estates in Sussex and for Dorset House.63LJ viii. 163a, 164b, 167b; CJ iv. 440b; CKS, U269/O8/3; U269/A4/2, unfol. Buckhurst evidently visited Oxford in June 1646, shortly before the city surrendered to Parliament; following the earl of Dorset’s composition upon the Oxford articles later in the year, the two men made arrangements for payment of the fine imposed by the commissioners for compounding.64CCC, 1509; CJ iv. 734b; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A4/2, unfol.; U269/F3/3.

Buckhurst played no discernible part in the political events of the late 1640s and early 1650s, even after succeeding as 5th earl of Dorset upon his father’s death in July 1652. He continued to employ the latter’s secretary, John White I*.65Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A4/3, p. 32. Through control of his inheritance, and through the final payment of his wife’s portion by 1654, Buckhurst’s financial position was made secure.66Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/F3/1, ff. 24, 24v, 26v, 27; Brighton, Preston Manor, ES/FQ/1. He repaid his debts to Pelham and others, and his annual income during the later part of the decade was recorded at around £2,500.67Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A182/2, unfol.; U269/A4/3, pp. 2, 31, 56. Nevertheless, although he remained on friendly terms with Rumpers like John Goodwyn*, suspicions regarding his political allegiance persisted, and posed a continual threat to his estate.68Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/C74/1-2. In January 1656 he complained that property in Derbyshire and Staffordshire had been seized, on mistaken information regarding his delinquency. An investigation ordered by the protectorate council forced Buckhurst to cancel a planned journey to France, for which he had secured a pass through the good offices of his brother-in-law Edmund Sheffield, 2nd earl of Mulgrave.69CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 92, 579; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/C86/2. It seems likely that the case against Buckhurst was discharged on the recommendation of the council’s president, Henry Lawrence* (22 Apr.).70CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 288. Buckhurst eventually left for the continent in late March 1657, with conciliar approval and assistance, and stayed with Sir Kenelm Digby in Paris until returning to England in July.71CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 314, 337; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A4/3, pp. 33-6; U269/F5; U269/C12; U269/C84/5; U269/C70/4-5; U269/O41.

Thereafter, Buckhurst once more avoided political embroilment. With the exception of John Earle of Tarring Neville, who was to be ejected in 1662, all the clergymen he appointed to livings during the decade appear to have been uncontroversial men willing to conform after the Restoration.72Calamy Revised, 176; Add. 39530, ff. 41v, 83v, 88v, 101; Add. 39531, f. 11v. Buckhurst was interested in the intellectual debates of the period, however, and having been an early reader of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, was reported to have been a member of the Rota club in the late 1650s.73Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/F3/1, f. 21v; Pepys diary ed. Latham and Matthews, i. 61. He made no visible effort to resist the government, and appears to have been assiduous in paying his taxes, such as for the militia in August 1659.74SP28/335/81. But in March 1660 Buckhurst wrote to Charles II at Breda declaring his support, while also advising the king to grant a widespread amnesty, and to purchase, rather than seize, those crown lands sold by the commonwealth.75HMC 4th Rep. 280; Phillips, Sackville Fam. i. 397-8. During the Convention, Buckhurst was appointed to its committee of safety (27 Apr.).76LJ xi. 5b. On 22 June he signed the address of the Kentish peers and gentry welcoming King Charles upon his return to England.77Phillips, Sackville Fam. i. 400.

Although Buckhurst had not played a prominent part in the royalist war effort during the 1640s, he was quickly granted a pardon by Charles II, appointed to the commission for the trial of regicides, and given lucrative trading privileges.78CKS, U269/O42; Eg. 2549, f. 102; Eg. 2551, f. 114. He also served as sewer at the coronation banquet for Charles II.79Phillips, Sackville Fam. i. 402. Following the destruction of Dorset House in the Great Fire of London, however, he probably lived in quiet retirement in Kent and Sussex, except for a period in France (Nov. 1674-Aug. 1675).80CKS, U269/O43. Buckhurst died in August 1677 and was buried in the family vault at Withyham, where an elaborate memorial was built by his widow, who later married Henry Powle†, master of the rolls.81Phillips, Sackville Fam. i. 413, 415-22. Buckhurst was succeeded by his eldest son, Charles Sackville†, who had represented East Grinstead in the Cavalier Parliament. Another son, Edward Sackville† (1644-78), was involved in the Popish Plot.82HP Commons 1660-1690.