parliament of 1536, but he was soon at variance with the powerful family of the Butlers and with some of the privy councillors.
He did not relax his energy in seeking to restore order, but he was accused, probably with truth, of favouring the family of the Geraldines, to whom he was related, and the quarrel with the Butlers became fiercer than ever. Returning to England in 1540 he was thrown into prison and was condemned to death for treason. He was beheaded on the 28th of July 1541 (see R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, vol. i., 1885).
Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset (1477–1530), the eldest son of the 1st marquess, fled to Brittany with his father in 1484; after receiving several marks of the royal favour and succeeding to the title, he was imprisoned by Henry VII., and remained in prison until 1509. He was on very good terms with Henry VIII., who in 1512 appointed him to command the English army which was to invade France in conjunction with the Spanish forces under Ferdinand of Aragon. In spite of the failure which attended this enterprise, Dorset again served in France in the following year, and in 1516 he was made lieutenant of the order of the Garter. Later he was at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and he was warden of the eastern and middle marches towards Scotland in 1523 and the following years. He received many other positions of trust and profit from the king, and he helped to bring about the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, under whom he had probably been educated. He was famous for his skill in the tournament. He died on the 10th of October 1530.
His eldest son Henry Grey, 3rd marquess of Dorset, was in 1551 created duke of Suffolk (q.v.). A younger son, Lord Thomas Grey, was beheaded in April 1554 for sharing in the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat; another son, Lord John Grey, was also sentenced to death for his share in this rising, but his life was spared owing to the efforts of his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne. Under Elizabeth, Lord John, a strong Protestant, was restored to the royal favour, and he died on the 19th of November 1569. In 1603 his son Henry (d. 1614) was created Baron Grey of Groby, and in 1628 his great-grandson Henry was made earl of Stamford.
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (c. 1530–1608), English statesman and poet, son of Sir Richard Sackville and his wife Winifrede, daughter of Sir John Bruges or Bridges, lord mayor of London, was born at Buckhurst, in the parish of Withyham, Sussex. In his fifteenth The Sack-ville line.or sixteenth year he is said to have been entered at Hart Hall, Oxford; but it was at Cambridge that he completed his studies and took the degree of M.A. He joined the Inner Temple, and was called to the bar. He married at the age of eighteen Cicely, daughter of Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst, Kent; in 1558 he entered parliament as member for Westmorland, in 1559 he sat for East Grinstead, Sussex, and in 1563 for Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. A visit to the continent in 1565 was interrupted by an imprisonment at Rome, caused by a rash declaration of Protestant opinions. The news of his father’s death on the 21st of April 1566 recalled him to England. On his return he was knighted in the queen’s presence, receiving at the same time the title of baron of Buckhurst. With his mother he lived at the queen’s palace of Sheen, where he entertained in 1568 Odet de Coligni, cardinal de Châtillon. In 1571 he was sent to France to congratulate Charles IX. on his marriage with Elizabeth of Austria, and he took part in the negotiations for the projected marriage of Elizabeth with the duke of Anjou. He became a member of the privy council, and acted as a commissioner at the state trials. In 1572 he was one of the peers who tried Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, and in 1586 he was selected to convey the sentence of death to Mary, queen of Scots, a task he is said to have performed with great consideration. He was sent in 1587 as ambassador to the Hague “to expostulate in favour of peace with a people who knew that their existence depended on war, to reconcile those to delay who felt that delay was death, and to heal animosities between men who were enemies from their cradles to their graves.”[1] This task was further complicated by the parsimony and prevarication of Elizabeth. Buckhurst carried out under protest the foolish and often contradictory orders he received. His plain speaking on the subject of Leicester’s action in the Netherlands displeased the queen still more. She accused him on his return of having followed his instructions too slavishly, and ordered him to keep to his own house for nine months. His disgrace was short, for in 1588 he was presented with the order of the Garter, and was sent again to the Netherlands in 1589 and 1598. He was elected chancellor of the university of Oxford in 1591, and in 1599 he succeeded Lord Burghley as lord high treasurer of England. In 1601 as high steward he pronounced sentence on Essex, who had been his rival for the chancellorship and his opponent in politics. James I. confirmed him in the office of lord treasurer, the duties of which he performed with the greatest impartiality. He was created earl of Dorset in 1604, and died suddenly on the 19th of April 1608, as he was sitting at the council table at Whitehall. His eldest son, Robert, the 2nd earl (1561–1609), was a member of parliament and a man of great learning. Two other sons were William (c. 1568–1591), a soldier who was killed in the service of Henry IV. of France, and Thomas (1571–1646), also a soldier.
It is not by his political career, distinguished as it was, that Sackville is remembered, but by his share in early life in two works, each of which was, in its way, a new departure in English literature. In A Myrroure for Magistrates, printed by Thomas Marshe in 1559, he has sometimes been erroneously credited with the inception of the general plan as well as with the most valuable contributions. But there had been an earlier edition, for the editor, William Baldwin, states in his preface that the work was begun and partly printed “four years agone.” He also says that the printer (John Wayland) had designed the work as a continuation of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes derived from the narrative of Bochas. Fragments of this early edition are extant, the title page being sometimes found bound up with Lydgate’s book. It runs A Memoriall of such princes, as since the tyme of Richard the seconde, have been unfortunate in the realme of England, while the 1559 edition has the running title A briefe memorial of unfortunate Englysh princes. The disconnected poems by various authors were given a certain continuity by the simple device of allowing the ghost of each unfortunate hero “to bewail unto me [Baldwin] his grievous chances, heavy destinies and woefull misfortunes.” After a delay caused by an examination by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Worcester, the book appeared. It contained nineteen tragic legends by six poets, William Baldwin, George Ferrers, “Master” Cavyll, Thomas Chaloner, Thomas Phaer and John Skelton. In 1563 appeared a second edition with eight additional poems by William Baldwin, John Dolman, Sackville, Francis Segar, Thomas Churchyard and Cavyll. Sackville contributed the Complaint of Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, to which he prefixed an Induction. This was evidently designed as an introduction to a version of the whole work, and, being arbitrarily transposed (1610) to the beginning by a later editor, Richard Niccols, led to the attribution of the general design to Sackville, an error which was repeated by Thomas Warton. The originators were certainly Baldwin and his “printer.” In 1574 Thomas Marshe printed a series of new tragedies by John Higgins as the Firste parte of the Mirour for Magistrates. . . . From the coming of Brute to the Incarnation. The seventh edition (1578) contained for the first time the two tragedies of Eleanor Cobham and Humphrey duke of Gloucester. In 1587, when the original editor was dead, the two quite separate publications of Baldwin and Higgins were combined. The primary object of this earliest of English miscellanies was didactic. It was to be a kind of textbook of British history, illustrating the evils of ambition. The writers pretended to historical accuracy, but with the notable exceptions of Churchyard and Sackville they paid little attention to form. The book did much to promote interest in English history, and Mr W. J. Courthope has pointed out that the subjects of Marlowe’s Edward II., of Shakespeare’s Henry VI., Richard II. and Richard III. are already dealt with in the Myrroure.
Sackville’s Induction opens with a description of the oncoming of winter. The poet meets with Sorrow, who offers to lead him to
- ↑ J. L. Motley, Hist. of the United Netherlands (vol. ii. p. 216, ed. 1867).
