SACKVILLE, Thomas (c.1536-1608)

The Sackvilles were descended from Herbrand de Sackville (fl.1066-1086) who owned the manor of Sauqueville in Normandy and came to England shortly after the Conquest. Herbrand’s descendant, Jordan de Sackville (d. c.1175), married a Sussex heiress, whose properties included the manor of Buckhurst, which became the family seat.93 Oxford DNB, viii. 527. The first member of the family to come to national prominence was Sackville’s father, Sir Richard, whose mother was a Boleyn. As chancellor of the Court of Augmentations under Edward VI, he was in a prime position to acquire the best former monastic properties. Sir Robert Naunton^‡ recorded that he became known as ‘fill-sack, by reason of great wealth, and the vast patrimony which he left to his son’. When Sir Richard’s cousin, Elizabeth I, came to the throne in 1558 he was appointed under treasurer of the Exchequer and a privy councillor.94 R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia ed. E. Arber (1870), 55; HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 314-15.

Elizabethan background, religious views and financial policies, 1566-1603

Sackville first made his reputation as a poet, contributing to the Mirror for Magistrates which went through numerous editions in the Elizabethan period, as well as co-writing Gorboduc, the first English blank-verse tragedy, with Thomas Norton^‡. However, after his father’s death in 1566 and his elevation to the peerage the following year, he chose to abandon poetry and turn, instead, to public affairs. Nevertheless, he continued to see himself as a writer and this influenced the way he conducted himself as a politician and administrator.95 R. Zim, ‘Poet in Pols.: Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst and First Earl of Dorset (1536-1608)’, HR, lxxix. 200, 202. In his long and very personal will, Dorset referred to ‘the living speech of my pen, which never dieth’.96 PROB 11/113, f. 15v. Naunton noted the ‘excellency of his pen’, stating that ‘his secretaries did little for him’ when it came to writing, as ‘they could seldom please him, he was so facete and choice in his phrase and style’.97 Naunton, 55-6. His skills went beyond the literary, though, for according to Sir Julius Caesar^‡, a generally unsympathetic observer of the earl, Dorset produced ‘divers laborious and exact tables of his own device and writing, more timely and far more perfectly representing that [which] I wished to be known [the parlous state of the royal finances], than myself had or could express’.98 BL, RP 1176(2), Caesar’s memorandum, 20 Feb. 1607.

In his will Sackville of 1607, recalled that in his ‘younger years’ he was ‘by her particular choice and liking selected to a continual private attendance’ on Queen Elizabeth. However, there is no evidence that he ever held a formal position in the royal household.99 PROB 11/113, f. 12. Nevertheless, having been advanced to the peerage as Lord Buckhurst in 1567, he subsequently served as a diplomat, privy councillor and, from 1599, lord treasurer.

Despite inheriting great wealth, Buckhurst gained a reputation for corruption.100 Naunton, 55; Manningham Diary ed. R.P. Sorlien, 235; G. Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, i. 204; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 492. He may have regarded bribes as recompense for his lavish expenditure on his official duties. As early as 1571, when he was sent as ambassador to France, it was commented that he ‘spares no cost’ in the service of the queen. Moreover, according to his funeral sermon, he ‘bountifully feasted’ the queen, his fellow nobles and foreign ambassadors, kept a huge household and was ‘magnificent … in solemn entertainments’.101 Compleat Ambassdor ed. D. Digges (1655), 47; Abbot, 14, 16-17. His expenses increased after he secured possession of Knole in Kent in 1604. After acquiring the freehold of the property from the crown the following year he rebuilt and redecorated the house, turning it into the family’s principal seat and spending, according to his grandson, more than £30,000 in the process. However, such was his income, licit and illicit, that this did not put a massive strain on his finances; indeed, he was also able to buy additional lands during that period. It has been suggested that by the end of his life perhaps as much as a quarter of his income, which totalled more than £20,000 a year, came from gifts and bribes.102 Ward, 24-5; Town, 78, 82-3, 119-20, 122; C54/1822. However, although Buckhurst probably had few qualms about taking money from the innumerable suitors with whom he dealt as lord treasurer, that does not mean he embezzled money from the crown. According to Sir Richard Baker^‡, his own Exchequer officials thought ‘there was never a better treasurer, … for the king’s profit’, while Sir Roger Wilbraham^‡ complained that, if anything, Buckhurst was ‘too great a husband of the interest of the crown’.103 Town, 82; R. Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of Eng. (1653), 596; ‘Jnl. of Sir Roger Wilbraham’, 99.

In the Elizabethan period Buckhurst could rely on his kinship to the queen to keep him in royal favour.104 Naunton, 56. However, there is reason to suspect that he quickly established a good relationship with her successor, James I, with whom he shared a pacific tendency. In his will he praised the king for keeping England ‘within the port and haven of flourishing peace, so often blessed even by God himself’, and avoiding ‘the storms and tempests of hellish war’.105 PROB 11/113, f. 15. He was also frequent and lavish in his praise of the new monarch. However, his remarks should not necessarily be taken at face value, as he undoubtedly saw himself as an emollient courtier and used his literary skills to that end. Indeed, he wrote a sonnet which was published together with the translation by Sir Thomas Hoby^‡ of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier.106 Zim, 205. When, in 1603, a Venetian diplomat described Dorset as ‘a man of singular gentleness’ he was probably paying tribute to his refined gentility and courtly manners rather than his kindness.107 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 94.

It is also likely that Buckhurst and James shared similar views on religion. Like James, Buckhurst was hostile to puritans, whom he described as ‘proud and uncompromising’. At a meeting of the Privy Council in September 1604, he is reported to have stated that he would rather Catholics increased in number than puritans because they were ‘a peaceful people’.108 A.J. Loomie, ‘Toleration and Diplomacy’, Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. n.s. liii. 56; PROB 11/113, f. 3. This preference for Catholics over puritans, which also owed something to the revenue in fines they might yield, may help to explain why Buckhurst was widely rumoured to be Catholic himself.109 A. Davidson, ‘Conversion of Bishop King: a Question of Evidence’, Recusant Hist. ix. 242-3. Another factor was his close links with a number of Catholics, among them his younger son, Thomas, and his son-in-law, Anthony Maria Browne^*, 2nd Viscount Montagu. However, Buckhurst had little sympathy for recusancy. He was furious with Montagu when the latter wished to arrange a secret Catholic baptism for Buckhurst’s granddaughter.110 M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern Eng. 236. He also disagreed with Montagu over the trial of Philip Howard^†, 20th (or 13th) earl of Arundel, who had refused to conform to the established Church and who died in the Tower in 1595. Indeed, in what should probably be regarded as a warning to his son-in-law not to make the same mistake, Buckhurst told Montagu that Arundel had wanted ‘wisdom and discretion’.111 Ven. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel ed. J.H. Pollen and W. MacMahon (Cath. Rec. Soc. xxi), 331. Not unnaturally, Buckhurst was more inclined to be sympathetic to his son, Thomas, whom he described as ‘rapt with the meditation of heaven’, but he refused to have dealings with Thomas’ friends among the exiled Catholic community, whom he described, in 1607, as ‘known or suspected to be practisers against the state’.112 Stowe 169, ff. 160, 174.

It seems likely that Buckhurst, like the king, was a Calvinist. His will includes a Calvinist preamble and, since the rest of the text was evidently his own, he probably wrote it himself. Moreover, he patronized conformist Calvinist clerics such as Thomas Ravis^*, who became bishop of London, and George Abbot^*, later archbishop of Canterbury. Indeed, the latter was his chaplain and preached his funeral sermon. Nonetheless, in his will, Buckhurst admitted to possessing a ‘jewel of gold made into the fashion of a cross or crucifix’, which I keep and reserve … to mine own private use’, which may suggest that his religious practices were more traditional than his theology.113 PROB 11/113, ff. 2, 3v, 15v.

Buckhurst was alarmed by the puritan agitation which followed the presentation of the Millenary Petition in 1603. However, as a religious conservative he thought it the responsibility of the bishops, rather than of a layman like himself, to defend the established Church. Consequently, when writing to John Whitgift^†, archbishop of Canterbury, he apologized for having ‘taken upon me your place and office in complaining to his majesty against the seditious and dangerous proceedings of these puritans’. Nevertheless, he criticized the bishops for being ‘quiet and silent’, and thought that exemplary punishment of the ‘better sort’ would ‘easily reform the inferiors’.114 Add. 28571, ff. 177, 179.

Soon after becoming lord treasurer in 1599, Buckhurst started the process of reforming the management of the crown estates through tighter administrative control: abrogating the privileges of crown tenants and searching for concealed lands. However, bringing rents up to economic levels would require a lengthy and expensive series of surveys and would not, therefore, bring much short-term benefit.115 R. Hoyle, ‘“Shearing the hog”: the reform of the estates’, Estates of the English Crown ed. R.W. Hoyle, 204, 208, 212, 220-8, 233. This was disappointing, as the continuing war with Spain and costs associated with Ireland created immense strain on royal finances during the late Elizabethan period. In March 1603, shortly before the death of Elizabeth, it was rumoured that Buckhurst had fallen out of favour for telling the queen that her coffers were empty.116 CSP Dom. 1601-3, p. 299. James’s accession made matters worse: not only was the new king incurably open-handed but there was also the expense of a royal family to add to the burden. Moreover, 1603 saw a major plague outbreak. In July 1603 Buckhurst complained that there was ‘no money in the king’s coffers’, while the army in Ireland was ‘ready to famish’ and the officers of the household ‘cry out daily for their wages’. He stated he had already ‘sufficiently told the king the state of his treasure’, probably the first of a number of fruitless conversations on that subject. Nevertheless, it is possible that Buckhurst’s courtliness inhibited him from expressing himself with sufficient force on the subject.117 SP14/2/45.

On 7 Aug. 1603 Buckhurst presented to the Council a series of propositions to increase crown revenues. The most important of these was a scheme to persuade copyholders on crown manors to buy the freehold to their properties, which ‘he thought the readiest way’. This suggests that he had given up hope of raising copyhold rents to realistic levels. However, there was an inherent contradiction in his policy: crown tenants would only be willing to pay large sums to have their properties converted to freehold if they feared higher rents, but if Buckhurst was able to increase rents he would not need to raise money by selling freeholds. At the same meeting Buckhurst’s friend Robert Cecil^*, Lord Cecil (later 1st earl of Salisbury), the master of the Court of Wards, presumably acting in concert with the lord treasurer, proposed converting wardship into a fixed annual revenue.118 ‘Jnl. of Sir Roger Wilbraham’, 62-3. These proposals show that Buckhurst was willing to work with Cecil to promote wide-ranging reforms. However, they also suggest that he thought the scope for real improvements for revenue from crown lands was limited.

In September 1603 Buckhurst noted that projected expenditure on the royal households for the following year was more than double that spent on the Elizabethan establishment.119 LS13/168, ff. 22-3v. The following month he drew up lists of economies in an attempt to re-impose the austerity of the deceased queen’s court, and may well have been responsible for the proposal put forward to replace the traditional ‘diets’ courtiers received with cash payments which probably easier to control and would not automatically rise with inflation. Meanwhile, by early October, the immediate lack of money had become so serious that Buckhurst announced ‘that all wages, pensions and allowances whatsoever must be at a stay for a time’. However, Buckhurst failed to secure the backing of the king or council for his economy drive at court, and consequently it came to nothing.120 Ibid. 5-17, 80-1, 86-8v; P.R. Seddon, ‘Household Reforms in the Reign of Jas. I’, BIHR, liii. 45; P. Croft, ‘Parl., Purveyance and the City of London’, PH, iv. 12; HMC Buccleuch, i. 44. In November an alarmed Dudley Carleton^* (later Viscount Dorchester) wrote that ‘the coffers are so empty that household officers are unpaid and the [gentleman] pensioners and guard are ready to mutiny’.121 Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 44. It was perhaps at around this time that Buckhurst drew up a series of proposals for reducing government expenditure, including cutting £6,000 from the annual budget of the Ordnance Office. However, since England was still technically at war with Spain, he was opposed by Cecil, who pointed out the ‘continual issue’ required from that office.122 SP14/5/53; C. Russell, King James VI and I and his English Parls. 165-6.

The 1604 session

The crown’s continuing financial problems do not seem to have undermined James’s faith in Buckhurst for, on 13 Mar. 1604, four days before the first Jacobean Parliament was due to meet, the latter was created earl of Dorset. Buckhurst’s predecessor as lord treasurer, William Cecil^†, 1st Lord Burghley, had once proposed making Buckhurst earl of Lewes, presumably because Buckhurst owned part of the lordship of the borough and much of his property was situated in east Sussex. However, Buckhurst evidently preferred to take his title from a county, even if it was one with which he had no connection.123 SP12/222/21. The new title necessitated the issuing of a new writ of summons, which was sent to Dorset the day after his creation.124 Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/O3, writ dated 14 Mar. 1604.

The new earl may have helped secure the return of 13 members of the lower House in the elections to the first Jacobean Parliament. Most of his electoral influence was in Sussex, where his eldest son, Robert Sackville^* (subsequently 2nd earl of Dorset), was returned as a knight of the shire. This was partly because he maintained two households in Sussex, at Buckhurst and at Lord’s Place, a former priory on the outskirts of Lewes, which his father had acquired in 1559. However, it was also because his prominence as lord treasurer made him particularly useful to the inhabitants of his native county. Writing to the Sussex bench about purveyance in March 1605, he promised he would do all he could for the county ‘my duty to his Majesty reserved’ and undertook, if the county petitioned the board of green cloth, to personally attend the meeting of that body ‘and then will deal for the country [i.e. county] all I may’. Dorset’s patronage also extended to boroughs in Surrey and to Ipswich in Suffolk. At the latter, where he was high steward, he succeeded in getting the borough to accept both his nominees, his son-in-law, Sir Henry Glemham^‡, and Sir Francis Bacon^*, later Viscount St Alban.125 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 385, 398. 401, 403, 406, 408, 411-13, 418; Town, 68; Harl. 703, f. 134.

Dorset was marked as present at 62 of the 71 sittings of the 1604 session (87 per cent), an impressive record. Most, if not all, of his absences appear to have been necessitated by his official duties. On 7 June, for instance, he was excused by the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley), ‘upon some special occasion of his Majesty’s service’, and, on the morning of 26 June, Dorset himself explained that ‘other important service of his Majesty’ made it impossible for him to attend the House that afternoon.126 LJ, ii. 315a, 329b. Writing on 14 May, Dorset complained of the ‘infinite affairs now come upon us daily’.127 SP14/8/19. Six days later he attended the first of several meetings at Somerset House to conclude a peace treaty with Spain.128 H.V. Jones, ‘Jnl. of Levinus Munck’, EHR, lxviii. 252.

At the start of the session Dorset was appointed a trier of petitions from Gascony and England’s overseas territories by the king (a largely nominal position) and was named to 33 of the 77 committees established by the upper House. He is known to have addressed the House 24 times and made two further speeches at conferences with the Commons. It is possible that Dorset may have sought to restrict his number of committee appointments because, as lord treasurer, he was one of the most senior members of Lords, and committees of the upper House were commonly chaired by the highest ranking member. This meant that a committee appointment was potentially more burdensome for Dorset than for more junior members of the House.129 E.R. Foster, House of Lords 1603-49, p. 93.

Dorset was the senior peer on 15 of the 18 legislative committees to which he was appointed, the exceptions being three committees to which the lord chancellor was also named. The lord treasurer almost certainly chaired 13 of the bill committees on which he ranked highest, and is recorded as having taken custody of eight bills when they were committed. Moreover, when he excused himself, on 26 June, he had two bills in his hands, one concerning church courts and the other to confirm letters patent, although neither had been noted as specifically consigned to his care. As he was unable to attend the committees, they were delivered to other members. Nevertheless, it was Dorset who reported the letters patent bill on 28 June.130 LJ, ii. 329b, 332b. In total, he is known to have reported 13 measures, including two, concerning plague regulations and the continuance and repeal of temporary statutes, which he had not been formally appointed to consider.131 Ibid. 332a, 339b-40a.

Only twice was Dorset appointed to consider a bill that was not entrusted to his care or which did not fall to him to report. The first was the measure against Catholic books, which was committed on 19 May. This was a redrafted version of a bill which he had reported to be defective. Although this measure was committed to the same lords who had been appointed on the 3rd, it was another privy councillor, Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury, who reported the new bill on 26 May. Shrewsbury was described as ‘the first of the committees’, even though Dorset, who outranked Shrewsbury, was recorded as present on both 19 May and the 26th. Possibly Dorset passed over the chairmanship of the committee to Shrewsbury in order to share out the burden of the legislative business of the House more fairly. Dorset may have taken the chair for a second measure, a bill to confirm a lease made by the dean and chapter of Westminster, as he certainly attended the committee. However, there is no record of the text having being delivered to any member of the upper House, and it was never reported.132 Ibid. 290a, 297a, 301b, 306a, 311a; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 145-6.

On 26 Mar. Dorset was appointed to confer with the Commons that afternoon about wardship, purveyance and respite of homage. The last topic was one of the issues which Dorset himself had raised at the Privy Council in August 1603, and this meeting was engineered by Cecil to further the reform programme that he and Dorset had already started to outline. At this gathering Dorset announced that ‘all convenient means [was] daily thought on, for relief and ease of the subject’ concerning purveyance, but warned the Commons not to ‘decry or dismiss the king of his prerogative’.133 LJ, ii. 266b; CJ, i. 155a, 937a; N. Tyacke, ‘Wroth, Cecil and the Parliamentary Session of 1604’, BIHR, l. 122-3. Purveyance, the right of the crown to purchase provisions and services for the court compulsorily at heavily discounted prices, aroused a storm of complaints in the Commons, leading to a further conference, which Dorset was appointed to attend, on 3 May. Two days later, he reported back to the Lords the proposal of a joint committee of both Houses ‘to consider of some further order to be taken for reformation of the abuses complained of’, to which he himself was promptly appointed. On 8 May he informed the Lords that the joint committee had drawn up a proposal for an annual tax of £50,000 to replace purveyance; however, this proposal foundered in the Commons.134 LJ, ii. 290b, 292a, 294b-5a; Croft, ‘Parl., Purveyance and the City of London’, 19.

Dorset naturally took a close interest in all money bills. When the bill for assigning money to pay for the royal household was committed on 14 May, it was entrusted to Dorset, who reported it the following day.135 LJ, ii. 298a, 299b; CJ, i. 240b. On 18 June Dorset intervened during the commitment of the tunnage and poundage bill, announcing that ‘having perused and considered of the said bill’ he had ‘found some omission or imperfection’ in it. He then successfully moved for a conference with the Commons, to which he was named to attend. It may have been Dorset who also proposed that the conference should be used to press the lower House to vote a subsidy to the king ‘to supply his present necessities’.136 LJ, ii. 322b-323a. However, as a direct appeal by the Lords for a grant of taxation would have risked a constitutional clash with the lower House, Dorset, at the conference the next day, confined himself to outlining to the Commons the extent of ‘his Majesty’s necessities’. In the last year, he said, the king had spent £200,000 in ‘diminutions in revenue, rewards’ and various charges, and, if not supplied he would have to sell lands. In addition, he complained that ‘subsidies [were] not duly paid’.137 B.R. Dunn, ‘CD 1603/4’ (Bryn Mawr Coll. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 1100. However, the Commons showed little enthusiasm for a vote of direct taxation. On 23 June Dorset reported to the Lords that, after consulting the judges, the committee for the tunnage and poundage bill had concluded that the measure ‘might pass as it was, without inconvenience, or prejudice to his Majesty’, despite the defects he had previously identified. This suggests that the real reason for the conference had been to enable Dorset to spell out the crown’s indebtedness to the Commons.138 LJ, ii. 326b.

It is likely that Dorset played a significant role in drawing up the bill to create an entail of part of the crown lands that was rushed through the Lords on 4 July. Although the earliest reference to this measure is to be found in Cecil’s papers, the crown lands were the responsibility of Dorset, who subsequently attached considerable significance to this scheme, which was designed, in large part, to prevent the notoriously open-handed James from alienating too much of his estate.139 R. Hoyle, ‘Introduction: Aspects of the Crown’s Estate’, Estates of the English Crown ed. R.W. Hoyle, 21. In all probability Cecil’s involvement merely demonstrates that he and Dorset worked together to find solutions to the crown’s financial problems. The two men were certainly appointed to confer with the Commons about this measure the following day. However, the bill ran into opposition and it was resolved to let it sleep until the next session.140 LJ, ii. 339b-340a, 341a; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 244; CJ, i. 253b.

As a leading privy councillor, Dorset naturally seconded Ellesmere when the lord chancellor moved to confer with the Commons about the Union on 14 April. Named to attend this meeting himself, he was appointed to discuss this same subject with the Commons seven days later. He was also nominated (in absentia) one of the commissioners for the Union on 10 May.141 LJ, ii. 277b, 284a, 296a. Nevertheless, Dorset, like Cecil, may have covertly sought to undermine the Union. On 26 May his servant, John Tey^‡, then sitting in the Commons thanks to Dorset’s nomination, attacked a tract recently written by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol (subsequently bishop of Worcester), rebutting the lower House’s objections to the Union. Dorset was subsequently named to attend two conferences with the Commons about Thornborough’s book, but is not known to have commented on the matter himself. He presumably preferred to work through a client rather than risking endangering his relations with the king.142 HP Commons, 1604-29, vi. 502-3; JOHN THORNBOROUGH; LJ, ii. 309a, 332b.

It may have been while wearing his government hat that Dorset was appointed to consider the bill against the export of artillery on 26 April. However, he also had a personal interest in this measure as he had significant investments in the Wealden iron industry, and his eldest son, Robert, had been granted a patent for exporting artillery in the 1590s.143 LJ, ii. 285a; H. Cleere and D.W. Crossley, Iron Industry of the Weald, 149-50, 172. However, meetings of the committee were successively deferred. On 24 May Dorset successfully moved the House to order the committee to meet six days later and, on 4 June, he obtained a further order for a meeting on the 7th. However, by then pressure of business forced him to hand over the bill to Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk, who reported it on the 11th.144 LJ, ii. 285a, 305b, 313a, 315a, 318a.

Dorset also took an interest in the bill for garbelling spices. This measure provided that all spices sold in London should be cleaned of refuse by the official garbeller, who was authorized to enter all commercial premises used in the spice trade. The right to appoint the garbeller was disputed by the king and the City of London, though this was not mentioned in the version of the bill which finally reached the statute book. Dorset moved to commit the measure on 14 June, when he was appointed to the committee, and reported it on the 26th, with a proviso. The latter was read the following day, when Dorset was absent, whereupon the bill was sent back to committee. On that occasion it was entrusted to Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), but it was Dorset who reported it again on 20 June, when it was approved by the House.145 Ibid. 320b, 329b, 331a, 335a; SR, iv. 1036-7; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 107.

It is possible that Dorset was responsible for the sudden arrest of Henry Wriothesley^*, 1st (formerly 3rd) earl of Southampton, on 24 June. During the 1604 session a Sussex recusant informed Dorset’s eldest son, now known by the courtesy title of Lord Buckhurst, that Southampton was one of the leaders of a plot involving both puritans and Catholics, and Buckhurst passed on the information to his father. However, Southampton was released the following day and there were no further proceedings.146 HENRY WRIOTHESLEY; SP14/8/126.

Dorset was richly rewarded by the Spanish king for his work as one of the commissioners for the peace treaty, which was concluded after the session was prorogued on 7 July 1604. As lord treasurer, he was the highest ranking member of the English delegation and was given a ‘ring of gold with … a great table diamond’ and a ‘chain of gold Spanish work … with a 144 diamonds’ by the king of Spain. A member of the Spanish delegation also recommended that he should receive a secret pension and a cash gift. However, Dorset probably needed little inducement to support the peace; as well as his general aversion to the war he had argued, in 1602, that continuance of the war would ‘exhaust’ England and make it ‘dry and barren’. Moreover, he thought that Spain could be trusted to treat England favourably, as he believed ‘it is a truth infallible’ that amity between the two kingdoms ‘shall not only bring safety to themselves [the Habsburgs] and their estates, but make them also both famous and formidable ever to all foreign prince’s whatsoever’. For Dorset, therefore, alliance with Spain was a firm foundation on which James could build his foreign policy.147 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 239; PROB 11/113, f. 12v; Loomie, 31, 37, 52, 55; ‘Jnl. of Sir Roger Wilbraham’, 49.

In the aftermath of the session, Dorset sought to raise money, first by soliciting loans from the privy councillors, to which he himself contributed £2,000, and then by means of a privy seal loan. However, as these were necessarily only temporary expedients he soon turned his attention to the customs.148 Add. 11402, f. 94v; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 179-80, 182. In a paper, composed in about July 1604, he claimed that ‘this happy and blessed peace’ would inevitably see customs revenue ‘much increased and enriched’. However, he argued that the only way to guarantee that customs were collected efficiently was to ensure that those responsible had a financial stake in the receipts. He therefore proposed farming out almost all the duties to a single syndicate. Farming the customs was not new but it had never been envisaged on such a large scale. He probably also thought that farming would have the additional benefit of establishing a fixed predictable income from the customs, which would aid financial planning.149 SP14/8/134; F.C. Dietz, Eng. Public Finance 1485-1641 (1964) ii. 120, 329; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 192.

In order to secure the best possible bid, Dorset initiated the first comprehensive revision of customs rates since the reign of Mary, resulting in the 1604 Book of Rates. He conducted a protracted process of negotiations with London merchants, with whom he had close connections, his mother being the daughter of a London alderman. He put together a syndicate to bid for the farm, probably that led by his first cousin, William Garway. However, he also encouraged other privy councillors to create rival syndicates, presumably in order to drive up the biding. Dorset certainly used the tactic of encouraging rival groups of merchants, including ‘my cousin Garway’, to bid against each other when he subsequently farmed the pre-emption of tin. In the event, the farm was let to the syndicate backed by Cecil (by now Viscount Cranborne), which had made a better offer; however, it was quickly amalgamated with Garway’s group.150 SP14/12/54; Dietz, 330-2; A.P. Newton, ‘Establishment of the Great Farm of the Customs’, TRHS, ser. 4, i. 148-53; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 319; Vis. London (Harl. soc. i), 79; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 304; Add. 36767, ff. 97-100v.

In October Dorset participated in the negotiations of the commissioners for the Union with their Scottish counterparts, and made one of the opening speeches. Whatever his private opinion may have been, publicly he praised the project, and was appointed to the committee to consider ways of reconciling differing trading privileges enjoyed by the two countries in foreign lands.151 Add. 26635, ff. 3, 6v. The following month the Venetian ambassador reported that he had raised objections to a substantial gift of money to a Scottish courtier, ‘either because there is such a scarcity of money or because of the ill-humour of the English at these large presents to Scots’, but had been overruled by the king.152 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 192.

Writing to the earl of Shrewsbury on 24 Dec., Dorset described farming the customs and the creation of a royal entail as ‘the two great causes’. This indicates that he had not abandoned the latter proposal; it also suggests that he saw the two proposals as linked.153 LPL, ms 3201, f. 249. Like farming the customs, an entail would provide the crown with a predictable income as the rents from the lands included would not be diminished by sales. In February 1605 James issued a proclamation announcing his intention to proceed with a bill to entail crown lands at the next session. The following month an indenture drawn up by the Council, detailing those lands to be entailed, was delivered to Dorset.154 Stuart Royal Proclamations I: Jas. I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 105-6; Add. 11402, f. 98.

In August Dorset was in Oxford for the king’s visit to the university, of which Dorset was chancellor; according to John Chamberlain he ‘kept open house a whole week at New College, and was every way so bountiful, that men doubt the chancellor of Cambridge [Cecil, by now earl of Salisbury] will scant follow his example’.155 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 208. In the same month it was reported that Dorset had attempted to secure the nomination of a vacant Commons seat at Newcastle-under-Lyme, but had been rebuffed. He may have seeking the election of his secretary, Robert Bowyer^‡, returned for Evesham in the autumn, probably at the nomination of the high steward of the borough, Sir Thomas Chaloner^‡. As governor of Prince Henry’s household, Chaloner had dealings with Dorset about his departmental budget and may have acted on the lord treasurer’s instigation.156 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 358; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 461.

The 1605-6 session

Dorset was present on 5 Nov. at the opening of the second session, hastily adjourned following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. He was recorded as attending 71 of the 85 daily sittings of the 1605-6 session, 84 per cent of the total. This was an impressive record, but it may understate his true attendance; on 14 Feb. he spoke at a conference with the Commons in the afternoon despite having apparently missed the morning session in the Lords, and, on 25 Feb. he reported two bills, despite being recorded as absent. Unlike 1604, when most of his absences were probably occasioned by official business, it seems likely that, in this session, they were mainly caused by illness. On 1 Mar. Ellesmere gave ‘want of health’ as the reason for Dorset’s non-attendance; his presence was not recorded again until 6 Mar. (although he received two committee appointments on the 3rd). He was again excused by Ellesmere ‘for want of health’ on the 10th, and was not recorded as attending again until ten days later, although he had been appointed to three committees in the interim.157 LJ, ii. 385a, 392a. He subsequently attended every sitting until the session ended in May.

In this session, Dorset held the proxy of Edward Stafford^*, 4th Lord Stafford, although there was no known connection between the two men. Surprisingly, for a senior privy councillor, this was the only proxy Dorset was given in this period; Suffolk, who was the lord chamberlain, received four in this session alone.158 Ibid. 355b. Dorset was also appointed to 56 of the 72 committees named by the upper House and made 26 recorded speeches in the Lords, plus three further speeches at conferences between the two Houses. He continued to be very active in the committee work of the House, taking custody of at least 12 bills and reporting 18. These included several private measures, including bills to settle the debts of Henry Windsor^*, 5th Lord Windsor, which he reported on 25 Feb., and a similar measure concerning a servant of Suffolk’s, Edward Downes of Buckenham Castle, Norfolk, reported on 8 May.159 Ibid. 382a, 427b; Norf. RO, WLS XVII/2, 410X5, f. 3v-4. When he fell ill at the start of March he had six bills on his hands which he sought to have reassigned, although he was still in possession of two of them on the 10th.160 LJ, ii. 385a, 392a. On the 25th he complained that he had four bills on his hands but that committees appointed to consider them had failed to convene; he successfully moved the House to set fresh dates for the committees to meet.161 Ibid. 399b.

Dorset was appointed, on 28 Jan., to the committee for a measure to secure payment of fines and forfeitures to the crown. This issue was obviously of importance to the lord treasurer, which probably explains why the Journal subsequently describes him as the first member of the committee even though Bancroft (by now archbishop of Canterbury), who had also been appointed, outranked him. This bill was one of the ones Dorset returned to the House when he fell ill on 1 March. The rest of the committee was ordered to meet nine days later, but, as late as 25 Mar., Bancroft reported that there had been no further proceedings. By then Dorset had returned to the House and, on 13 May, reported that the bill was ‘not meet to be proceeded in’. For this reason the committee had drafted a new one. This fresh bill was given two readings and committed to the same lords (with one addition) as its predecessor, but there were no further recorded proceedings.162 Ibid. 364a, 400a, 431b; HMC 3rd Rep. 11a.

On 12 Feb. Dorset was appointed to attend a conference requested by the Commons about purveyance and was instructed by the Lords to ‘make relation … of his Majesty’s necessities, for relief to be granted’.163 LJ, ii. 373a. The Commons had already agreed to vote two subsidies and two fifteenths, but Dorset undoubtedly believed that that sum was inadequate.164 Bowyer Diary, 31. When he came to speak at the conference two days later, he aimed to be conciliatory, acknowledging the justice of the Commons’ complaints against purveyance. Moreover, he admitted that some of the fault for the crown’s financial problems lay with the king himself, who was ‘apt … to give even where small desert is upon mere instance’, which he justified as ‘not strange at the first coming of a prince’. However, he must have realized that this excuse was starting to wear thin. He laid the chief blame for the king’s debts, which amounted to £734,000, on the late Elizabethan wars which, he claimed, had left the king with liabilities totalling £400,600. He also claimed that the continued military costs of Ireland meant that ‘the king had only the name of peace’ and not the benefit.165 CJ, i. 269a; Bowyer Diary, 42-5.

He repeated his arguments, with more detailed figures, at a further conference, on 19 Feb., when he stated that James ‘begins to have a feeling understanding of the lack of his own means’. He also prophesied, somewhat optimistically, that as a result, the ‘incessant and importunate suitors will soon vanish away’. He again argued that the king had not received the benefits of peace, whereas his subjects had enjoyed increased trade and fewer local military charges. Finally, he held out the prospect that, if the Commons voted a large supply, the privy seal loans of 1604 would be repaid. The Commons ultimately voted three subsidies and six fifteenths, a remarkable political triumph as multiple subsidies had only previously been granted during the late Elizabethan wars. Nevertheless this grant of supply was insufficient to reverse the deterioration in the finances of the crown.166 Bowyer Diary, 85, 371-5.

On 5 Apr. Dorset was appointed to consider the purveyance bill. This measure, which had been introduced in the Commons by John Hare^‡, was intended to abolish the right of the crown to buy goods at a discount. It naturally alarmed Dorset, who persuaded the House that it should first be considered by the judges and king’s counsel. Dorset’s tactics were successful, as the legal assistants argued that the bill encroached on the royal prerogative, and the measure was blocked by the upper House.167 LJ, ii. 407b; Croft, ‘Parl., Purveyance and the City of London’, 23, 29-30. Earlier, on 22 Feb, he moved to revive the bill to confirm letters patent that had failed to emerge from committee in the Commons the previous session. This measure was almost certainly intended to confirm the patents granted to landowners who had compounded for defective title deeds. He was appointed to the committee after the bill was given a second reading on 13 Mar., but the measure was never reported.168 LJ, ii. 379a, 393b. Dorset was also named to consider the revived bill for entailing part of the crown’s lands on 12 Apr. 1606. However, this time the measure provoked objections from several landowners, such as Henry Grey^*, 6th earl of Kent, who were hoping to recover former family properties which had passed to the crown. Dorset was evidently opposed to making any exceptions, and, by 29 Apr., the committee appears to have resolved that the measure should sleep.169 Ibid. 413a; LPL, ms 3202, ff. 40, 49.

Dorset was involved in the passage of three bills concerning Oxford University, where he was chancellor, although only two became law. The first of these was to confirm the incorporation of Corpus Christi College. On 11 Feb. he was named to the committee and took delivery of the text. On 22 Feb. he reported the bill, which was subsequently enacted.170 LJ, ii. 371b-2a, 379a. The second bill was to confirm letters patent issued for the maintenance of a reader in divinity in the university. The Journal records that he was among those instructed to consider this bill, on 3 Mar., although it fails to record his presence on that day and states that the measure was entrusted to Shrewsbury. Nevertheless, this was one of the measures in Dorset’s hands by 25 Mar., when he announced there had been no proceedings in the matter. Though the committee was instructed to meet the following day, the bill was never reported.171 Ibid. 386b, 399b. The final measure was the bill to confirm letters patent to Oriel College, which Dorset reported on 10 May.172 Ibid. 429a.

In view of the importance of customs receipts to the royal finances, it is unsurprising that Dorset was heavily involved in measures concerning trade. On 8 Apr. he was given custody of two bills which had been referred to a single committee: one concerning the export of unfinished cloth and the other the regulation of the wine trade. The latter was not heard from again, but Dorset reported the former on 15 May, when he stated that he and his colleagues had heard the interested parties ‘at great length’ and had concluded that the bill was ‘utterly unfit to be further proceeded in’.173 Ibid. 410b, 433b-4a. He also took an interest in the bill to permit the export of beer, which he was named to consider on 1 May; 11 days later he moved the upper House for a conference with the Commons about the measure, which Dorset opened on 14 May. The outcome of the meeting was evidently satisfactory to the Lords and Dorset reported the measure with amendments, and a proviso, on 23 May.174 Ibid. 422a, 430b, 440a; CJ, i. 310b.

Dorset’s power as a committee chairman should not be overstated. In April 1606 he tried to persuade his colleagues on the committee for the bill to regulate the trade in Welsh cottons to throw out the measure. The bill was promoted by the Shrewsbury Drapers’ Company to resolve their dispute with Dorset’s client, Tey, the deputy alnager of London, who had been seizing their wares claiming that they were defective. Dorset had a financial interest in the dispute as alnage in London was farmed to his steward, Michael Heydon, in trust for the lord treasurer. However, on 10 Apr. he was forced to report to the House that the rest of the committee desired that the measure ‘might have good passage’. He nevertheless asked for the right to ‘reserve some speech on the same till the third reading’, which took place on 3 May. If he spoke on that occasion it was to no avail, as the bill was subsequently enacted.175 LJ, ii. 412a, 423a; Salop RO, 1831/14, unfol.; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 340-1; vi. 502-3; E112/94/475; CSP Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 457.

In the summer of 1606, following the prorogation, Dorset was increasingly desperate to find new sources of revenue for the king.176 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 162-3, 248; Harl. 4712, f. 268. This may have led him to take a particular interest in Bate’s Case, which came to a hearing in the Exchequer in July. John Bate was a London merchant who had contested the legality of an additional, unparliamentary, levy imposed on the import of currants. Unlike his friend Salisbury, who shared the profits from the farm of the duty with Suffolk, Dorset had no personal financial interest in the levy but was eager to establish the legality of the impost. As early as September 1605 he had written that, if the question was resolved in favour of the king, ‘then the imposition of currants and consequently all other impositions were settled for ever’, which he thought ‘most profitable for the crown and the commonwealth’.177 Hatfield House, CP112/65; P. Croft, ‘Fresh Light on Bate’s Case’, HJ, xxx. 529, 532-1.

On the morning before the hearing, on 7 July, Dorset privately discussed the case with the judges. There was apparently little need for him to bring pressure to bear upon them as Dorset told Salisbury that ‘their judgements are resolute for the king’; the discussion, instead, centred around Salisbury’s wish that the ruling be restricted to the facts of the case or, alternatively, as the judges preferred, to the wider question of the king’s power to levy impositions. The judges wanted to make a wider ruling for legal reasons and Dorset concurred with them, as ‘being so done and reported, it will be forever a settled and an assured foundation for the k[ing’s] impositions for ever’. Salisbury was brought into agreement with Dorset and the full judgement was duly issued, which Dorset thought would ‘prove the best … and clearest for the crown that ever was’. However, Dorset made no immediate attempt to levy additional impositions, possibly because he feared that Bate would appeal.178 Hatfield House, CP118/143, 144; Croft, ‘Bate’s Case’, 535-6.

In July 1606 Sir Julius Caesar^‡ was appointed chancellor of the Exchequer. Caesar was horrified by the state of the royal finances and, in August, urged Dorset to inform the king. Experience may have taught Dorset that this would have little effect but, nevertheless, promised to see James. The following month, Dorset wrote to Salisbury wanting to show him ‘what course I have taken to be imparted to his Majesty and the lords’. However, if he did present the king with the state of the crown’s finances, nothing came of it. On the 23rd of that month, Caesar wrote that the king should replace Dorset with ‘a man of understanding and wisdom, some religious wise, irreproveably honest, uncorrupt, stout, and chaste minded Joseph’, qualities he evidently felt the lord treasurer lacked.179 L.M. Hill, Bench and Bureaucracy, 118-19; BL, RP 1176(2), Caesar’s memorandum, 20 Feb. 1607; Hatfield House, CP117/110; Lansd. 164, f. 419.

Dorset had not abandoned the idea of creating a royal entail. In the summer of 1606, he instructed the officials of the Exchequer to compile a schedule of lands to be included. On 2 Nov. he ordered the officers, ‘considering that the beginning of the Parliament is near at hand’, to produce the schedule within the next 12 days. This suggests that Dorset was planning to introduce a new bill to create a bloc of inalienable crown property in the forthcoming third session, which started on 18 November. However, the session was dominated by the issue of the Union, and probably as a consequence the measure was never read in either House.180 LR9/102, Dorset to the auditors of the exchequer, etc., 2 Nov. 1606.

The 1606-7 session

Dorset was recorded as present at 87 of the 106 sittings of the upper House in the 1606-7 session, 82 per cent of the total. Initially, he was very assiduous in his attendance, missing only one sitting, on 20 Feb., between the opening of the session in November 1606 and 4 May following. However, thereafter he became seriously unwell and was forced to retire to his house in West Horsley in Surrey. He subsequently wrote in his will that, by the beginning of June, he ‘lay in such extremity of sickness as it was a common and constant report over all London that I was dead’.181 PROB 11/113, f. 11v.

The collapse in Dorset’s health can be linked to the deterioration in the crown’s finances. In February 1607 Caesar drew up a memorandum in which he expressed his fear that he and Dorset would be attacked in Parliament because of the government deficit. In late April he presented his concerns to Dorset and Salisbury at a meeting held at the former’s London residence, pressing for measures to cut costs and raise revenue.182 BL, RP 1176(2), Caesar’s memorandum, 20 Feb. 1607. Either because of Caesar’s warning, or because of his own awareness of the poverty of the Exchequer, it was around this time that Dorset refused to pay money which James wished to give to the Scottish courtier, James Hay^*, Lord Hay (subsequently 1st earl of Carlisle). The king believed that Dorset’s refusal arose from ‘contempt for the Scots’, no doubt a very sensitive subject at this time when the Union was being debated in Parliament. According to the Venetian ambassador, ‘the temper of the king and of the treasurer [i.e. Dorset] as well, did much harm to the health of the latter’, suggesting that in the ensuing argument Dorset suffered some form of stroke. However, the lord treasurer experienced no lasting royal displeasure; on the contrary, while he lay ill in the country James sent him ‘a ring set with twenty diamonds’, with a message affirming his favour.183 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 8; J. Hunter, Hallamshire, 123; PROB 11/113, f. 11v.

Dorset was recorded as attending the Lords on only five occasions between 4 May and the middle of June. In addition, he received three committee appointments on days when he was apparently absent: namely for bills for the true making of woollen cloth (29 May), the confirming of a rent charge for mending highways (6 June) and the abolition of hostile laws between England and Scotland (8 June). The second of these appointments was almost certainly made during his absence as, on that day, 6 June, he wrote to Salisbury from Horsley returning a Privy Council order sent to him for his signature. After returning to the House on 15 June, he only missed one further sitting, on 22 June, before the session was prorogued in early July.184 LJ, ii. 514b, 529b, 520a; HMC Hatfield, xix. 150. In total, Dorset was named to 23 out of the 41 committees appointed by the Lords, and made nine recorded speeches in the session, including one at a conference with the Commons. He was recorded as taking custody of four bills and reported six back to the House.

One of Dorset’s earliest appointments was on 24 Nov. 1606, when he was appointed to consider a bill concerning levying fines in Westminster courts. Although not the first on the committee list, he was given custody of the measure. The following day, he moved for the first meeting of the committee to be delayed. No report of the measure is recorded in the Journal, although amendments were read and approved on 4 December. The bill then received a third reading the next day but was rejected.185 LJ, ii. 452b, 453b, 459a-b.

Dorset was among those instructed to consider the bill to confirm defective titles on 16 Feb. 1607. This measure was to ensure the validity of letters patent, issued to those who had compounded with the crown for defects in the titles to their properties, even if they contained clerical errors. On 21 Mar. he reported that the committee had decided the measure was ‘unmeet to proceed’ and drafted a replacement, entitled ‘an act for confirmation of letters patents, to be made upon composition with the king’s Majesty’. The same committee was instructed to consider the new measure two days later; Dorset reported it, with amendments, on 28 Mar., and it was subsequently approved by the House. Writing to Salisbury on 27 May, Dorset ranked the measure second only to the Union in its importance to the crown, presumably because he hoped it would encourage compounding for defective titles, but it failed to pass the Commons.186 Ibid. 471b, 493a, 494a, 496b; HMC 4th Rep. 118; HMC Hatfield, xix. 140. When he returned to the Lords on 15 June, Dorset was appointed to consider another bill to confirm letters patent, this time those granted to copyholders on crown manors. It was probably Dorset who put forward this measure, which would further his 1603 scheme for raising money. It was entrusted to his care and he reported it on 27 June. However, it too failed to pass the Commons.187 LJ, ii. 524b, 531a.

In his letter of 27 May, Dorset asked Salisbury to move the House to instruct the committee ‘for the bill of the archbishop of Canterbury’ to meet on 30 May because, despite his ill health, he intended to attend it ‘if alive’. This measure, which he had been appointed to consider on 2 May, was intended to confirm an exchange of land belonging to the archdiocese of Canterbury for tithes and other ecclesiastical property belonging to the crown. This exchange had taken place 50 years earlier but had since been invalidated due to a legal technicality. The measure was opposed by Bancroft, but Dorset thought it ‘so just, honourable and so reasonable ... for the see of Canterbury’ that the Lords would support it once they understood the details. He also regarded it as ‘most important to the crown’ as the land involved was worth £1,300 a year. Furthermore, he argued that if Bancroft succeeded in blocking the bill ‘this might give encouragement to others’. To drive home the point, he reminded Salisbury that the Hertfordshire manor of Hatfield, which the latter had recently obtained from the king, ‘is resumed bishops’ lands’. He did not mention, though it was clearly relevant, that his own house at Knole had been episcopal property until it was surrendered to the crown at the Reformation.188 Hatfield House, CP193/110; LJ, ii. 503b; Town, 127.

There is no record that the committee was ordered to meet at the time requested, although Dorset did apparently attend the House on the 30th before returning to Horsley. One month later, on 29 June, Bancroft reported that the bill was ‘unmeet’ and presented another, entitled ‘an act for confirmation of resumption’. This new measure was given a second reading the following day, when it was committed to the same Lords who had been appointed to consider the previous bill, but it was not reported.189 LJ, ii. 532a-b.

On 24 Nov. 1606 Dorset was named to attend a conference concerning the Union, at which he criticized the Commons for only giving their members permission to hear what the Lords had to say, and not allowing them to debate the issue freely.190 Ibid. 542b; Bowyer Diary, 192. Following a further conference on 7 Mar. 1607, about the issue of naturalization, Dorset was named to a subcommittee to prepare a report to the upper House and, on 8 June, apparently in his absence, he was appointed to the committee for the bill to abolish the hostile laws between England and Scotland.191 LJ, ii. 485b, 520a.

Parliament was prorogued on 4 July 1607. Dorset subsequently attended further prorogation meetings on 16 Nov. 1607 and 10 Feb. 1608 in his capacity as a prorogation commissioner, but no further sessions of Parliament were held in his lifetime.192 Ibid. 540a, 541a. Illness undoubtedly weighed heavily on his mind when he made his will on 11 Aug. 1607. He made bequests to most of the senior privy councillors of his day, but in doing so he called the archbishop of Canterbury ‘John’, which is curious as Richard Bancroft had replaced John Whitgift three years previously. He singled out his ‘most special and dearest friend the earl of Salisbury’, to whom he gave a lengthy tribute, ‘most chiefly ... in regard of his public merit both towards his majesty and this commonwealth’, and praised the ‘great dexterity, sincerity and judgement’ with which he performed his duties.193 PROB 11/113, ff. 2, 14-15.

According to Salisbury’s subsequent account to Parliament in July 1610, Dorset proposed a general extension of the impositions in the autumn of 1607 ‘among many other projects to raise money’. However, this proposal was rejected by the Council.194 Parl. Debates 1610 ed. S.R. Gardiner, 156. Salisbury’s words should be treated cautiously; he was perhaps, as Dudley Carleton (later 1st Viscount Dorchester), wrote ‘excusing himself for the invention of this means to raise money upon the last lord treasurer’.195 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 274. On the other hand, Dorset was certainly looking into a variety of means to raise money and restrain expenditure during the last months of his life. A list of his proposals, compiled shortly after his death, includes a scheme to create ‘knights on a new device’, which may have been the origins of the baronetcies. However, no mention is made of impositions.196 Lansd. 165, ff. 106, f. 111r-v.

In his last years, Dorset’s principal dynastic ambition was to secure good marriages for his grandsons, Richard^* and Edward^*, who would subsequently succeed him as the third and fourth earls of Dorset. He was already, in April 1607, keen to arrange a match between Richard and Anne Clifford, the daughter and heir of George Clifford^*, 3rd earl of Cumberland, although rumours that he had secretly come to terms with Anne’s mother aroused opposition from Suffolk and other members of the nobility.197 Surr. Hist. Cent. LM/COR/4/22.

The following month, Edward married the daughter of Sir George Curzon of Croxall, who had a claim to the estate of her uncle, Sir Richard Leveson^‡, located in Shropshire and Staffordshire. This led Dorset into conflict with another claimant to the estate, Sir Richard’s cousin, Sir John Leveson^‡, who claimed that the lands had been bequeathed to his son. Sir John protested at Dorset’s intervention in the dispute, whereupon Dorset complained to the Privy Council that he had been libelled by Leveson. On 18 Apr., while searching through his papers on the case at the Council table, Dorset suddenly died.198 HP Commons, 1604-29, v. 103-4; ‘Jnl. of Sir Roger Wilbraham’, 98-9. According to a correspondent of William Trumbull^‡ he ‘went away … unperceived … as though he had slumbered’, having spoken ‘as well and temperately as ever he did’.199 HMC Downshire, ii. 55. His brain was later found to contain ‘certain bags of water’.200 Baker, 596.

Dorset’s funeral took place at Westminster Abbey on 26 May; it was attended by Anne of Denmark and a sermon was preached by George Abbot. His body was then taken to Withyham, the parish church of Buckhurst, where he was buried, according to his wishes, with his ancestors in the family chapel.201 HMC 4th Rep. 180; ‘Camden Diary’ (1691), 6; Ath. Ox. ii. 33; Sutton, 74; PROB 11/113, f. 2. His eldest son, Robert, succeeded as 2nd earl of Dorset. A libel subsequently circulated that in Death’s place Dorset would have ‘taken a bribe’ to spare someone’s life and that ‘with gold and wit’ he had ‘injured law, and almost conquered it’.202 J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 210-11. Other verdicts were more charitable: Lady Anne Clifford stated he was ‘held one of the wisest men of that time’ and Sir Richard Baker, who was related to Dorset’s wife, described him as ‘of excellent parts’ and ‘exceeding industrious’ as lord treasurer.203 A. Clifford, Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-19 ed. K.O. Acheson, 231; Baker, 596.