Thomas Sackville 1st earl of Dorset

Thomas Sackville, 1st earl of Dorset 1536-1608, English statesman and poet. A barrister of the Inner Temple, Sackville entered Parliament in 1558, gained favor with Elizabeth I, and was created Baron Buckhurst in 1567. He was sent on several diplomatic missions to France and served as a commissioner of state trials. In 1586 he told Mary Queen of Scots of her sentence of death. Elizabeth was angered at his conduct in a mission (1587) to the Low Countries, but he soon regained her favor and rose rapidly in rank. He was made lord treasurer (1599) and lord high steward (1601). After the accession of James I, he was appointed lord treasurer for life and created earl of Dorset (1604). Sackville is important in English literature as the author, with Thomas Norton and others, of Gorboduc (first acted 1561), a drama in blank verse, generally considered the earliest English tragedy. His most important poems are the "Induction" and the "Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham," which were included in the second edition (1563) of The Mirror for Magistrates, a collection of verse tragedies in the form of dramatic monologues. His works were edited by Reginald Sackville-West (1859).

Bibliography: See Gorboduc, ed. by I. Cauthen, Jr. (1970); J. S. Farmer, ed., The Dramatic Writings of Richard Edwards, Thomas Norton, and Thomas Sackville (1966).

Dorset, Thomas Sackville, 1st earl of (c.1536–1608). Thomas Sackville was the son of Sir Richard Sackville, under-treasurer at the Exchequer 1559–66, a wealthy lawyer and administrator, who was Anne Boleyn's first cousin. A member of the Inner Temple, Sackville was returned to Parliament in 1558 when he was just of age. His interests at that time were literary rather than political. In 1559 he wrote the introduction to A Mirror for Magistrates and, with Thomas Norton, was author in 1561 of the tragedy Gorboduc, put on at the Inner Temple. In 1567, soon after his father's death, he was made Baron Buckhurst. He served Elizabeth in a number of ambassadorial posts, was given the Garter in 1589, and from 1599 to his death was lord treasurer. James I advanced him in 1604 to the earldom of Dorset. He died at the council table in April 1608. He was granted the reversion of the estate of Knole in Kent, though he did not gain possession until much later, and in the last years of his life began rebuilding the medieval house.

J. A. Cannon