Knole in the Reign of James I
RICHARD SACKVILLE
3rd
Earl _of_ Dorset
_and_
LADY ANNE CLIFFORD
§ i
It so happens that a remarkably complete record has been left of
existence at Knole in the early seventeenth century—an existence
compounded of extreme prodigality of living, tedium, and perpetual
domestic quarrels. We have a private diary, in which every squabble and
reconciliation between Lord and Lady Dorset is chronicled; every gown
she wore; every wager he won or lost (and he made many); every book she
read; every game she played at Knole with the steward or with the
neighbours; every time she wept; every day she “sat still, thinking the
time to be very tedious.” We have even a complete list of the servants
and their functions, from Mr. Matthew Caldicott, my Lord’s favourite,
down to John Morockoe, a Blackamoor. It would, out of this quantity of
information, be possible to reconstruct a play of singular accuracy.
The author of the diary was a lady of some fame and a great deal of
character: Lady Anne Clifford, the daughter and sole heiress of George,
Earl of Cumberland, and wife to Richard, Earl of Dorset. Cumberland was
himself a picturesque figure. He was Elizabeth’s official champion at
all jousts and tilting, a nobleman of great splendour, and in addition
to this display of truly Elizabethan glitter and parade he had the other
facet of Elizabethan _virtù_: the love of adventure, which carried him
eleven times to sea, to the Indies and elsewhere, “for the service of
Queen Elizabeth,” says his daughter in the life she wrote of him, “for
the good of England, and of his own person.” She gives an account of her
own appearance:
I was very happy in my first constitution both in mind and body, both
for internal and external endowments, for never was there child more
equally resembling both father and mother than myself. The colour of
mine eyes were black, like my father, and the form and aspect of them
was quick and lively, like my mother’s; the hair of my head was brown
and very thick, and so long that it reached to the calf of my legs
when I stood upright, with a peak of hair on my forehead and a dimple
in my chin like my father, full cheeks and round face like my mother,
and an exquisite shape of body resembling my father.
After this description, more remarkable for exactness perhaps than for
modesty, she adds:
But now time and age hath long since ended all these beauties, which
are to be compared to the grass of the field (_Isaiah_ xl., 6, 7, 8;
_1 Peter_ i., 24). For now when I caused these memorables of my self
to be written I have passed the 63rd year of my age.
Having put this in by way of a saving clause, she proceeds again
complacently:
And though I say it, the perfections of my mind were much above those
of my body; I had a strong and copious memory, a sound judgement, and
a discerning spirit, and so much of a strong imagination in me as that
many times even my dreams and apprehensions beforehand proved to be
true; so as old Mr. John Denham, a great astronomer, that sometime
lived in my father’s house, would often say that I had much in me in
nature to show that the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the bands
of Orion were powerful both at my conception and my nativity.
She was innocent of unnecessary diffidence. Yet she was not without
gratitude:
I must not forget to acknowledge that in my infancy and youth, and a
great part of my life, I have escaped many dangers, both by fire and
water, by passage in coaches and falls from horses, by burning fevers,
and excessive extremity of bleeding many times to the great hazard of
my life, all which, and many cunning and wicked devices of my enemies,
I have escaped and passed through miraculously, and much the better by
the help and prayers of my devout mother, who incessantly begged of
God for my safety and preservation (_Jas._ v., 16).
To her mother she seems to have been excessively devoted; and indeed, in
the midst of this stubborn and peremptory character, the most vulnerable
spot is her tenderness for her relations; those of her relations, that
is to say, with whom she was not at mortal enmity.
The death of Queen Elizabeth, which occurred when Anne Clifford was a
girl of thirteen, was a disappointment to her in more ways than one, for
“if Queen Elizabeth had lived she intended to prefer me to be of the
Privy Chamber, for at that time there was as much hope and expectation
of me as of any other young lady whatsoever,” and moreover “my Mother
and Aunt of Warwick being mourners, I was not allowed to be one, because
I was not high enough, which did much trouble me then.” She was not even
allowed the privilege of watching by the great Queen’s body after it had
come “by night in a Barge from Richmond to Whitehall, my Mother and a
great Company of Ladies attending it, where it continued a great while
standing in the Drawing Chamber, where it was watched all night by
several Lords and Ladies, my Mother sitting up with it two or three
nights, but my Lady would not give me leave to watch, by reason I was
held too young.” It is to be regretted that the writer, who possessed so
vivid and unself-conscious a pen, should have been thus defrauded of
setting upon record the scene in which the old Queen, stiff as an
effigy, and blazing with the jewels of England, lay for the last time in
state, by the light of candles, among the great nobles whom in her
lifetime she had bullied and governed, and whom even in death the
rigidity of that bejezabelled presence could still overawe.
Although she had not been allowed to see the dead Queen, Lady Anne was
taken to see the new King, but did not find the court to her liking:
We all went to Tibbalds to see the King, who used my Mother and Aunt
very graciously, but we all saw a great change between the fashion of
the Court as it is now and of that in the Queen’s time, for we were
all lousy by sitting in the chamber of Sir Thomas Erskine.
This unpropitious introduction was the first she had to James I, but it
was by no means her last meeting with him, for she relates several later
on which might more properly be called encounters.
About two years after Elizabeth’s death Lord Cumberland died, “very
patiently and willingly of a bloody flux,” leaving Anne Clifford his
only surviving child and heiress, then being aged about fifteen years.
Her father cannot have been much more than a name to her, for although
“endowed with many perfections of nature befitting so noble a personage,
as an excellent quickness of wit and apprehension, an active and strong
body, and an affable disposition and behaviour,” he “fell to love a lady
of quality,” which created a breach between himself and his wife, and
“when my Mother and he did meet, their countenance did show the dislike
they had one of another, yet he would speak to me in a slight fashion
and give me his blessing.... My Father used to come to us sometimes at
Clerkenwell, but not often, for he had at this time as it were wholly
left my Mother, yet the house was kept still at his charge.” All this
early part of her life, I ought to explain, is related by her in the
Lives of her parents and herself, which she compiled in her old age; and
partly from a diary of reminiscences, a transcript of which is at Knole,
and which she appears to have written at the same time as the more
detailed Diary which she was then (1616–1619) keeping from day to day.
She had a happy childhood with her mother, and cousins of her own
age—“All this time we were merry at North Hall. My Coz. Frances Bouchier
and my Coz. Francis Russell and I did use to walk much in the garden,
and were great with one another. I used to wear my Hair-coloured Velvet
every day, and learned to sing and play on the Bass-Viol of Jack
Jenkins, my Aunt’s boy.”
The Diary at Knole jumps without any warning or transition from the
reminiscences of youth to 1616. It begins with a sad little hint of the
weariness that was to follow: “All the time I stayed in the country I
was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, as I had news from London.” She
had then been married for seven years to Richard Sackville, third Earl
of Dorset, grandson to Queen Elizabeth’s old Treasurer, who was himself
anxious for the match, writing to Sir George Moore about “that virtuous
young lady, the Lady Anne Clifford,” and soliciting Moore’s good offices
with Lady Cumberland.
[Illustration:
RICHARD SACKVILLE, 3RD EARL OF DORSET, K.G.
_From the miniature by_ ISAAC OLIVER _in the Victoria and Albert
Museum_
]
There were, in all, five children of the marriage: three little boys,
who all “died young at Knole where they were born,” and two little
girls, of whom Margaret, born in 1614, figures largely in the Diary and
is the only one to concern us, since Isabel was not born till some years
after Lady Anne had ceased to keep the Diary. Lady Anne’s mother
travelled to London from the North in order to be present at the birth
of Margaret, the first child; but by a strange mischance the journey was
rendered vain, for, having gone “into the Tower of London to see some
friends there, where, the gates being shut up by an accident that
happened, she was kept there till after her daughter was delivered of
her first child, though she had made a journey purposely from Appleby
Castle, in Westmoreland, to London.” Not only does the Diary contain
constant references to this little girl, but Lady Anne’s letters to her
mother, now at Appleby, are rarely without some comment—
she begins to break out very much upon her head, which I hope will
make her very healthful [a curious theory]. She hath yet no teeth come
out, but they are most of them swelled in the flesh, so that now and
then they make her very froward. I have found your Ladyship’s words
true about the nurse had for her, for she hath been one of the most
unhealthfullest women that I think ever was, and so extremely troubled
with the toothache and rheums and swelling in her face as could be,
and one night she fell very ill, and was taken like an ague so as she
had but little milk left, and so I was enforced to send for the next
woman that was by to give my child suck, whom hath continued with her
ever since, and I thank God the child agrees so well with her milk as
may be, so I mean not to change her any more. It is a miracle to me
that the child should prosper so well. She is but a little one, I
confess, but a livelier and merrier thing was there never yet seen.
Dorset also was fond of the little girl, for in other letters to her
mother Anne says, after apologising for her bad writing, which she terms
“scribbling,” “my Lord is as fond of her as can be, and calls her his
mistress”; and again, “My Lord to her is a very kind, loving, and dear
father, and in everything will I commend him, saving only in this
business of my land, wherein I think some evil spirit works, for in this
he is as violent as possible, so I must either do it next term or else
break friendship and love with him”; and Dorset was, on his side, of the
same opinion, for in a letter written to her at Knole, which begins
“Sweet Heart,” and sends messages to the child, he adds to his wife,
“whom in all things I love and hold a sober woman, your land only
excepted, which transports you beyond yourself, and makes you devoid of
all reason.” It would appear that but for this unfortunate question of
the lands and money they might have lived happily together, affection
not lacking, and on Anne’s part at any rate good will not lacking
either, as witness her constant defence of him, even to her mother:
It is true that they have brought their matters so about that I am in
the greatest strait that ever poor creature was, but whatsoever you
may think of my Lord, I have found him, do find him, and think I shall
find him, the best and most worthy man that ever breathed, therefore,
if it be possible, I beseech you, have a better opinion of him, if you
know all I do, I am sure you would believe this that I write, but I
durst not impart my mind about when I was with you, because I found
you so bitter against him, or else I could have told you so many
arguments of his goodness and worth that you should have seen it
plainly yourself.
They were married when she was nineteen and he was twenty, and two days
after their marriage he succeeded to his father’s titles and estates:
“We have no other news here but of weddings and burials, the Earl of
Dorset died on Monday night leaving a heaire [?] widow God wot, and his
son seeing him past hope the Saturday before married the Lady Anne
Clifford.” In spite, however, of all they had to make life
pleasant—their youth, their wealth, and the privileges of their
position—they spent the succeeding years in making it as unpleasant as
they possibly could for one another.
I hardly think that it is necessary or even interesting to go into the
legal details of the long dispute over Lord Cumberland’s will. The
interest of Anne and Richard Dorset is human, not litigious. It may
therefore be sufficient to say that by the terms of his will Lord
Cumberland bequeathed the vast Clifford estates in Westmoreland to his
brother Sir Francis Clifford, with the proviso that they should revert
to Anne, his daughter, in the event of the failure of heirs male, a
reversion which eventually took place, thirty-eight years after his
death. What he does not appear to have realized was that the estates
were already entailed upon Lady Anne; and that he was, by his will,
illegally breaking an entail which dated back to the reign of Edward II.
It is easy to judge, from this broad indication, the infinite
possibilities for litigation amongst persons contentiously minded. Such
persons were not lacking. There was Lady Cumberland, Anne’s mother, bent
upon safeguarding the rights of her daughter. There was Francis, the new
Earl of Cumberland, equally bent upon preserving what had been left to
him by will. There was Richard Dorset, whose own fortune was not
adequate to his extravagance, and who, having married an heiress, was
determined for his own sake that that heiress should not be defrauded of
her inheritance, or that, if she was to be defrauded, he at least should
receive ample compensation. And finally there was Anne herself, who was
more resolved than any of them that she and the North of England should
not be parted. Dorset’s part, of the four, was the most elaborate and
the most discreditable. He would have been willing for his wife to
renounce some of her claims in return for the compromise of ready cash.
Anne, however, remained single-hearted throughout: she was the legal
heiress of the North, and the North she would have; and in the midst of
the otherwise sordid and mercenary dispute, in which Dorset used every
means of coercion, she remains fixed in her perfectly definite attitude
of obstinacy, unswayed by her husband, his relations, her own relations,
their friends, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the King himself, their
remonstrances, their threats, their vindictiveness, and the actual
injuries she had to endure over a long stretch of years. In the end she
got the better of them all, and the last picture of her left by the
“Lives” is that of a triumphant and imperious old lady, retired to the
stronghold of her northern castles, where her authority could stand
“against sectaries, almost against Parliaments and armies themselves”;
refusing to go to court “unless she might wear blinkers”; moving with
feudal, with almost royal, state between her many castles, from Appleby
to Pendragon, from Pendragon to Brougham, from Brougham to Brough, from
Brough to Skipton; building brew-houses, wash-houses, bake-houses,
kitchens, stables; sending word to Cromwell that as fast as he should
knock her castles about her ears she would surely put them up again;
endowing almshouses; ruling over her almswomen and her tenants;
receiving, like the patriarchal old despot that she was, the generations
of her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren.
[Illustration:
LADY ANNE CLIFFORD
WIFE TO RICHARD SACKVILLE, 3RD EARL OF DORSET
_From the portrait at Knole by_ _Mytens_
]
Before she could reach these serene waters, however, she had many storms
to weather, and to bear the “crosses and contradictions” which caused
her to write “the marble pillars of Knole in Kent and Wilton in
Wiltshire were to me oftentimes but the gay arbours of anguish.” Richard
Sackville in his own day was a byword for extravagance, and was bent on
extorting from his wife for the purposes of his own pleasure the utmost
resources of her inheritance. His portrait is at Knole, a full-length by
Van Somer; he has a pale, pointed face, dark hair growing in a peak, and
small mean eyes, and is dressed entirely in black with enormous silver
rosettes on his shoes. There is also the very beautiful miniature of him
by Isaac Oliver in the Victoria and Albert Museum, showing the richness
of his clothes, his embroidered stockings, and his hand resting upon the
extravagantly-plumed helmet on the table beside him.
His life is an empty record of gambling, cock-fighting, tilting; of
balls and masques, women and fine clothes. “Above all they speak of the
Earl of Dorset,” says a contemporary letter, after describing the
lavishness of some of the costumes worn in a Court masque in which he
was taking part, “but their extreme cost and riches make us all poor,”
and Clarendon says of him, “his excess of expenditure, in all the ways
to which money could be applied, was such that he so entirely consumed
almost the whole great fortune which descended to him, that when he was
forced to leave the title to his younger brother he left, in a manner,
nothing to him to support it.” The enormous estates which he inherited,
the careful accumulation of the old Lord Treasurer, he sold in great
part, in order to squander the proceeds upon his amusements; before he
had been in possession for three years he had sold the manor of
Sevenoaks, and had “conveyed” Knole itself to one Henry Smith
(retaining, however, the house at a rent of £100 a year for his own
use), and in the course of rather less than ten years he had sold
estates, including much of Fleet Street and the Manor of Holborn, to the
value of £80,616, or nearly a million of modern money.
In Aubrey’s _Bodleian Letters_ there is an anecdote concerning him, not
devoid of humour:
He [Sir Kenelm Digby] married that celebrated beauty and courtesan,
Mrs. Venetia Stanley, whom Richard, Earl of Dorset, kept as his
concubine, had children by her, and settled on her an annuity of £500
per annum; which after Sir Kenelm Digby married her was unpaid by the
Earl: Sir Kenelm Digby sued the Earl, after marriage, and recovered
it. Venetia Stanley was a most beautiful and desirable creature ...
sanguine and tractable, and of much suavity.
In those days Richard, Earl of Dorset, lived in the greatest splendour
of any nobleman of England.
After her marriage she [Venetia Stanley] redeemed her honour by her
strict living. Once a year the Earl of Dorset invited her and Sir
Kenelm to dinner, where the Earl would behold her with much passion,
yet only kiss her hand.
Later on in his life a certain Lady Peneystone appears, who considerably
complicated the already difficult relations between Anne and himself.
Anne Clifford herself, in spite of all that she had to endure at his
hands, gives a charitable account of him.
This first lord of mine was in his own nature of a just mind, of a
sweet disposition, and very valiant in his own person.
He was ... so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as that with an
excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth that were in
distress, he did much to diminish his estate, as also with excessive
prodigality in housekeeping, and other noble ways at court, as
tilting, masqueing, and the like, Prince Henry being then alive, who
was much addicted to these exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.
What his wife says of his being a great lover of scholars is borne out
by his friendship with and patronage of Beaumont, Ben Jonson, Fletcher,
and Drayton. Nothing else remains to his credit. He is utterly
eclipsed—weak, vain, and prodigal—by the interest of that woman of
character, his wife, knowing so well to “discourse of all things, from
predestination to slea[2] silk,” and by the faithful picture that is her
Diary.
§ ii
She is living (1616) principally at Knole, sometimes in London,
sometimes making an expedition into the North to join her mother, who in
all her difficulties was her counsellor and ally. The perpetual topic of
the diary is the dispute with her husband:
“My Coz: Russell came to me the same day, and chid me, and told me of
all my faults and errors, he made me weep bitterly, then I spoke a
prayer of Owens, and came home by water where I took an extreme Cold.”
The Archbishop [of Canterbury] my Lord William Howard, my Lord Rous,
my Coz: Russell, my brother Sackville, and a great company of men were
all in the gallery at Dorset House, where the Archbishop took me aside
and talked with me privately one hour and half, and persuaded me both
by Divine and human means to set my hand to their arguments. But my
answer to his Lordship was that I would do nothing until my Lady [her
mother] and I had conferred together. Much persuasion was used by him
and all the company, sometimes terrifying me and sometimes flattering
me.
Next day was a marvellous day to me, for it was generally thought that
I must either have sealed the argument or else have parted from my
Lord.
She then starts for the North—a hazardous journey—to confer with her
mother.
We had two coaches in our company with four horses apiece and about
twenty-six horsemen. I came to my lodgings [at Derby] with a heavy
heart considering how many things stood between my Lord and I.
We went from the Parsons’ House near the Dangerous Moors, being eight
miles and afterwards the ways so dangerous the horses were fain to be
taken out of the coach to be lifted down the hills. This day Rivers’
horse fell from a bridge into the river. We came to Manchester about
ten at night.
Dorset was not above subjecting her to petty annoyances and
humiliations, for he sends messengers after her with “letters to show it
was my Lord’s pleasure that the men and horses should come away without
me, so after much falling out betwixt my Lady [her mother] and them, all
the folks went away, there being a paper drawn to show that they went
away by my Lord’s direction and contrary to my will.[3] At night I sent
two messengers to my folks to entreat them to stay. For some two nights
my mother and I lay together, and had much talk about this business.”
In order to get back to London she has to borrow a coach from her
mother, from whom she takes a “grievous and heavy parting.” Arrived at
Knole, “I had a cold welcome from my Lord,” and a day or two later he
takes his departure for London, sending constant messengers and letters,
to know whether she will give way to his demands. “About this time,” she
sadly writes—it is April, spring at Knole, and she then aged
twenty-six—“about this time I used to rise early in the morning and go
to the Standing in the garden, and taking my prayer book with me beseech
God to be merciful to me and to help me as He always hath done.”
Meanwhile Dorset’s threats increase in virulence: on the first of May he
sends Mr. Rivers to tell her she shall live neither at Knole nor at
Bolbrook; on the second he sends Mr. Legg to tell the servants he will
come down once more to see her, which shall be the last time; and on the
third he sends Peter Basket, his gentleman of the horse, with a letter
to say “it was his pleasure that the Child should go the next day to
London ... when I considered that it would both make my Lord more angry
with me and be worse for the Child I resolved to let her go; after I had
sent for Mr. Legg and talked with him about that and other matters I
wept bitterly.”
On the fourth “... the Child went into the litter to go to London.”
There is no comment. It must have been a pathetic little departure.
On the ninth she received, besides the news that her mother was
dangerously ill, “a letter from my Lord to let me know his determination
was the Child should go to live at Horsley, and not come hither any
more, so as this was a very grievous and sorrowful day to me.” An
unusual bitterness escapes from her pen:
All this time my Lord was in London where he had all and infinite
great resort coming to him. He went much abroad to Cocking and Bowling
Alleys, to plays and horse races, and commended by all the world. I
stayed in the country, having many times a sorrowful and heavy heart,
and being condemned by most folks because I would not consent to the
agreement, so as I may truly say I am like an owl in the desert.
And a few days later:
My Lord came down from London, my Lord lying in Leslie Chamber and I
in my own. My Lord and I after supper had some talk, we fell out and
parted for that night.
There was worse to come, for at the end of the month her mother died,
“which I held as the greatest and most lamentable cross that could have
befallen me,” and, mixed up with this sorrow, which is evidently
genuine, is the fear that she may be definitely dispossessed of the
inheritance of her forefathers. She found, however, that she had the
disposal of the body, “which was some contentment to my aggrieved soul.”
Her sorrows begin to lighten. Dorset, probably perceiving his bullying
to be worse than useless against a woman of her mettle, tries a
different tack: “My Lord assured me how kind and good a husband he would
be to me”; they patch up a reconciliation, and she makes over to him
certain of her Cumberland estates in default of heirs; they agree that
Mrs. Bathurst, apparently a bone of contention, should “go away from the
Child ... so that my Lord and I were never greater friends than at this
time ... and my Lord brought me down to the coach side where we had a
loving and kind parting.” He even joined her in the North, and she
records how at Appleby Castle she set up the “green velvet bed where the
same night we went to lie there,” and how “in the afternoon I wrought
stitchwork and my Lord sat and read by me.”
She gives many particulars of how she spent her days in the North. I
fancy she was a good deal happier there, and more at home, and
consequently more lighthearted, than at Knole. At the same time she was
anxious to go back to London to rejoin Dorset, but this for some reason
he was not disposed to allow. She consoled herself with innocuous
occupations:
This month I spent in working and reading. Mr. Dunbell read a great
part of the _History of the Netherlands_.... Upon the 1st I rose by
times in the morning and went up to the Pagan Tower to my prayers, and
saw the sun rise.... Upon the 4th I sat in the Drawing Chamber all the
day at my work.... Upon the 9th I sat at my work and heard Rivers and
Marsh read Montaigne’s _Essays_, which book they have read almost this
fortnight.... Upon the 12th I made an end of my cushion of Irish
stitch, it being my chief help to pass away the time at work.... Upon
the 21st was the first day I put on my black silk grogram gown....
Upon the 20th I spent most of the day in playing at Tables. All this
time since my Lord went away I wore my black Taffety night-gown[4] and
a yellow Taffety waistcoat and used to rise betimes in the morning and
walk upon the leads and afterwards to hear reading. Upon the 23rd I
did string the pearls and diamonds left me by my mother into a
necklace.
At last the summons came, and “upon the 24th Basket set out from London
to Brougham Castle to fetch me up. I bought of Mr. Cleborn who came to
see me a clock and a save-Guard [= cloak] of cloth laced with black lace
to keep me warm on my journey.” Dorset sent in the retinue to fetch her,
moreover, a cook, a baker, and a Tom Fool.
Her arrival in London was auspicious: Dorset and a company of relatives
came out to meet her at Islington, so that there were in all ten or
eleven coaches, and when she arrived at Dorset House she found the house
“well dressed up against I came,” and the Child met her in the gallery.
Moreover, “all this time of my being at London I was much sent to and
visited by many” (the young heiress, whose matrimonial disputes had
raised so much dust at Court, was an object of interest and curiosity),
and she made friends: “My Lady Manners came in the morning to dress my
head. I had a new black wrought Taffety gown which my Lady St. John’s
tailor made. She used often to come to me, and I to her, and was very
kind one to another.” Such troubles as she had were but slight: “I dined
above in my chamber and wore my night-gown because I was not very well,
which day and yesterday I forgot that it was fish day and ate flesh at
both dinners. In the afternoon I played at Glecko[5] with my Lady Gray
and lost £27 odd money.” So far, so good. She gave a sweet-bag to the
Queen for a New Year’s gift, and was kissed by the King. She went to see
the play of the Mad Lover; she went to the Tower to see Lord and Lady
Somerset, lying there since their arraignment; she went to the Court to
see Lord Villiers created Earl of Buckingham; she ate a “scrambling
supper” and went to see the Masque on Twelfth Night. She betrays with an
unsophisticated and rather charming ingenuity her delight in these
things. But the storm scowled at her over the rim of the horizon, and
presently it broke. The first entries are like the splash of the first
big rain-drops: “We came from London to Knole; this night my Lord and I
had a falling out about the land.” Next day she has Mr. Sandy’s book
about the government of the Turks read aloud to her, but “my Lord sat
the most part of the day reading in his closet.” Next day his sulks
materialized, and he “went up to London upon the sudden, we not knowing
it till the afternoon.”
Six days later—there are no entries in the diary to record the suspense
of these six days—she is sent for to London to see the King, a higher
test for her strength of mind, even, than the former persuasions of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Will she capitulate at last? or will she come
out with her flag still flying? the tongues of London wagged. The
interview is best given in her own words:
Upon the 17th when I came up, my Lord told me I must resolve to go to
the King next day. Upon the 18th being Saturday, I went presently
after dinner to the Queen to the Drawing Chamber where my Lady Derby
told the Queen how my business stood, and that I was to go to the
King, so she promised me she would do all the good in it she could.
When I had stayed but a little while there I was sent for out, my Lord
and I going through my Lord Buckingham’s chamber, who brought us into
the King, being in the Drawing Chamber. He put out all those that were
there, and my Lord and I kneeled by his chair side, when he persuaded
us both to peace and to put the whole matter wholly into his hands,
which my Lord consented to, but I beseeched His Majesty to pardon me
_for that I would never part from Westmoreland while I lived upon any
condition whatsoever_, sometimes he used fair means and persuasions
and sometimes foul means, but I was resolved before, so, as nothing
would move me, from the King we went to the Queen’s side, and brought
my Lady St. John to her lodging and so we went home.
There is a little note at the side of this entry: “The Queen gave me
warning not to trust my matters absolutely to the King lest he should
deceive me.”
The affair was not allowed to rest there. Two days later she was again
summoned before the King, and a sour, unedifying spectacle the majesty
of James I must have presented, thus confronted with the young obstinacy
of the heiress of Westmoreland:
I was sent for up to the King into his Drawing Chamber, where the door
was locked and nobody suffered to stay here but my Lord and I, my
Uncle Cumberland, my Coz: Clifford, my Lords Arundel, Pembroke and
Montgomery, Sir John Digby. For lawyers there were my Lord Chief
Justice Montague, and Hobart Yelverton the King’s Solicitor, Sir
Randal Crewe that was to speak for my Lord and I. The King asked us
all if we would submit to his judgement in this case, my uncle
Cumberland, my Coz: Clifford, and my Lord answered they would, but I
would never agree to it without Westmoreland, at which the King grew
in a great chaff. My Lord of Pembroke and the King’s solicitor
speaking much against me, at last when they saw there was no remedy,
my Lord, fearing the King would do me some public disgrace, desired
Sir John Digby would open the door, who went out with me and persuaded
me much to yield to the King. Presently after my Lord came from the
King, when it was resolved that if I would not come to an agreement
there should be an agreement made without me.
After these encounters she retired to Knole, while Dorset remained in
London, “being in extraordinary grace and favour with the King.” She,
poor thing, resumed at Knole the pitiful monotony of her country
existence, which to a mind so vigorous must have been irksome in the
extreme, and the Diary becomes again the record of her small occupations
threaded with the worry and sorrow of her dissensions with her husband.
It is illuminating that she never criticizes him; there are references
to his “worth and nobleness of disposition”; her spirit, although high
and emancipated enough to stand out against the King in the defence of
Westmoreland, could not conceive revolt against the subjection of
matrimony. It is an idea which never once enters her head. She even
writes him a letter to give him “humble thanks for his noble usage
toward me in London”; but a very little while after this “Thomas
Woodgate came from London and brought a squirrel to the Child, and my
Lord wrote me a letter by which I perceived my Lord was clean out with
me, and how much my enemies have wrought against me.”
Conscientious as she is, she no longer finds enough events to justify a
daily entry. Perhaps—who knows? for my part I strongly suspect it—her
fighting spirit preferred even the ordeals and excitements of London to
the tedium of Knole. She has very little to tell: only the gowns she
wore, the books she read, the games she played with the steward, and the
ailments of the Child.
At this time I wore a plain green flannel gown that William Pinn made
me and my yellow taffety waistcoat. Rivers used to read to me in
Montaigne’s _Essays_, and Moll Neville in the _Fairy Queen_. The Child
had a bitter fit of her ague again insomuch I was fearful of her that
I could hardly sleep all night and I beseeched God Almighty to be
merciful and spare her life.
This ague of the Child’s is a constant preoccupation. I suppose that it
was a kind of convulsion, for which the cure was a “salt powder to put
in her beer.” On certain days a return of it appears to have been
confidently expected, for I find: “upon the 4th should have been the
Child’s fit, but she missed it,” and two days later she has “a grudging
of her ague.” There is a good deal about the Child—never referred to
under any other designation until she attains her 5th birthday, after
which she is promoted to “my Lady Margaret.” The portrait of her which
is here reproduced hangs over the fireplace in Lady Betty Germaine’s
sitting-room; her ring dangles on a ribbon round her neck, and her hair
is done in an elaborate manner which defied all my efforts, when I was
the same age, to do my own in the same way.
She was an amusement and a consolation, as well as a source of anxiety,
to her mother. Her garments are carefully noted:
The 28th was the first time the Child put on a pair of whalebone
bodice.... The Child put on her red bays coat.... I cut the Child’s
strings from off her coats and made her use togs alone, so as she had
two or three falls at first but had no hurt with them.... The Child
put on her first coats that were laced, with lace being of red
bays.... I began to dress my head with a roll without a wire. I wrote
not to my Lord because he wrote not to me since he went away. After
supper I went out with the child who rode a pie-bald nag. The 14th,
the Child came to lie with me which was the first time that ever she
lay all night in a bed with me since she was born;
and another time she speaks of “the time being very tedious with me, as
having neither comfort nor company, only the Child.”
For the rest, she was thrown back upon her own resources. Dorset came
and went, and in between whiles there are small, vivid pictures of
existence at Knole:
[Illustration:
LADY MARGARET SACKVILLE
DAUGHTER OF RICHARD SACKVILLE, 3RD EARL OF DORSET, AND LADY ANNE
CLIFFORD
“THE CHILD”
_From the portrait at Knole by_ MYTENS
]
After supper I walked in the garden and gathered cherries, and talked
with Josiah [the French page] who told me he thought all the men in
the house loved me.
And again:
About this time [April 1617] my Lord made the steward alter most of
the rooms in the house and dress them up as fine as he could and
determined to make all his old clothes in purple stuff for the Gallery
and Drawing Chamber.
_March 1617. 5th._ Couch puppied in the morning.
_8th._ I made an end of reading _Exodus_. After supper I played at
Glecko with the steward as I often do after dinner and supper.
_9th._ I went abroad in the garden and said my prayers in the
standing.
_10th._ I was not well at night, so I ate a posset and went to bed.
_11th._ The time grew tedious, so as I used to go to bed about 8
o’clock I did lie a-bed till 8 the next morning.
_14th._ I made an end of my Irish stitch cushion.
_15th._ My Lord came down to Buckhurst. This day I put on my mourning
grogram gown and intend to wear it till my mourning time is out,
because I was found fault with for wearing such ill clothes.
_22nd._ I began a new Irish stitch cushion.
_24th._ We made Rosemary cakes.
Two days later Dorset arrived from Buckhurst, and they walked together
in the park and the garden. “I wrought much within doors and strived to
sit as merry a face as I could upon a discontented heart”; but in spite
of this entry they seem to have remained on fairly friendly terms until
Easter.
_30th._ I spent in walking and sitting in the park, having my mind
more contented than it was before my Lord came from Buckhurst.
_5th April._ My Lord went up to my closet and said how little money I
had left contrary to all they had told him, sometimes I had fair words
from him and sometimes foul, but I took all patiently, and did strive
to give him as much content and assurance of my love as I could
possibly, yet _I told him I would never part with Westmoreland_. After
supper, because my Lord was sullen and not willing to go into the
nursery, I had Mary bring the Child to him in my chamber.
_7th._ My Lord lay in my chamber.
_13th._ My Lord supped privately with me in the Drawing Chamber, and
had much discourse of the manners of the folks at court.
By the _17th_, My Lord told me he was resolved never to move me more
in these business because he saw how fully I was bent;
but evidently he did not stick to this good resolution, because, on
April 20th, Easter-day, “My Lord and I had a great falling-out,” and a
few days later, “This night my Lord should have lain with me, but he and
I fell out about matters.”
By the next day, however, they were friends again; they played at Burley
Break upon the lawn; and “this night my Lord came to lie in my chamber.”
The next day, too, was spent in peace, and she “spent the evening in
working and going down to my Lord’s closet, where I sat and read much in
the Turkish history, and Chaucer.”
So it goes on. It becomes, perhaps, a little monotonous, save that it is
always so human, and so modern. One sympathizes with her in her
weaknesses even more than in her defiance; when, for instance, she
writes amicable letters to all her relations-in-law, sending them locks
of the Child’s hair, being “desirous to win the love of my Lord’s
kindred by all the fair means I could,” in reality stealing a march upon
Dorset in order to get them on her side. One day she chronicles, “This
night I went into a bath,” but whether this event was of such rarity as
to deserve special mention is not explained. At Whitsuntide they all
went to church, but “my eyes were so blubbered with weeping that I could
scarce look up,” and in the afternoon of the same day they again “fell
out.” But she consoles herself with new clothes—or was that an
additional penance? for she was never given to personal vanity—“I
essayed on my sea-water green satin gown and my damask embroidered with
gold, both which gowns the tailor which was sent from London made fit
for me to wear with open ruffs after the French fashion.” Little
peace-offerings came from time to time from Dorset; on one occasion he
sends “half a buck, with an indifferent kind letter,” and on another
occasion “My Lord sent Adam to trim the Child’s hair, and sent me the
dewselts of two deer and wrote me a letter between kindness and
unkindness.” “Still working and being extremely melancholy” is the entry
of one summer day, and a day later, “Still working and sad.” A little
after this she “rode on horseback to Withyham to see my Lord Treasurer’s
tomb, and went down into the vault, and came home again [to Knole]
weeping the most part of the day.” This is perhaps not very surprising.
I have been down into that vault myself, and it is not a cheerful
expedition. In a small, dark cave underground, beneath the church, among
grey veils of cobwebs, the coffins of the Sackvilles are stacked on
shelves; they go back to the fourteenth century, and are of all sizes,
from full-grown men down to the tiny ones lapped in lead. But, of
course, when Anne Clifford went there there were not so many as there
are now; the pompous ones were not yet in their places, with their rusty
coronets, save those of the old Treasurer and his son; and their blood
did not run in the veins of Lady Anne, so on the whole she had less
reason to be impressed than I.
The Diary continues in very much the same strain until it comes to an
end with December 1619, the year 1618 being entirely missed out. By that
time both Dorset and Anne were in bad health; but whereas he was to die
five years later, at the age of thirty-five, she, made of tougher stuff,
was to survive him by fifty-two years. His last letter to her, written
to her on the very day of his death, shows all the affection which was
so undermined by that question of her lands:
_26th March, 1624._
Sweet Heart,
I thank you for your letter. I had resolved to come down to Knole, and
to have received the Blessed Sacrament, but God hath prevented it with
sickness, for on Wednesday night I fell into a fit of casting, which
held me long, then last night I had a fit of fever. I have for my
physician Dr. Baskerville and Dr. Fox. I thank God I am now at good
ease, having rested well this morning. I would not have you trouble
yourself till I have occasion to send for you. You shall in the
meantime hear daily from me. So, with my love to you, and God’s
blessing and mine to both my children, I commend you to God’s
protection.
Your assured loving husband
RICHARD DORSET.
“His debts,” says one Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, “are
£60,000, so that he does not leave much.” In his will he bequeaths to
his “dearly beloved wife all her wearing apparel and such rings and
jewels as were hers on her marriage, and the rock ruby ring which I have
given her,” also “my carriage made by Mefflyn, lined with green cloth
and laced with green and black silk lace, and my six bay coach
geldings.”
[Illustration:
THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR’S BEDROOM
]
§ iii
Her portraits change as her years advance, and the lines of
determination harden about her mouth. Her true life—the life for which
she was most truly fitted—only began after she had passed her fiftieth
year, when with the death of her kinsman Lord Cumberland the northern
estates passed calmly and naturally into her hands at last. All the
quarrels and litigation and anxiety of her youth were left behind her;
she had buried Lord Dorset; she had buried Lord Pembroke after a second
marriage as disastrous and as contentious as the first; she had borne
Sackville children and Herbert children; she had been long-suffering
though adamant, submissive though immovable; she had moped in the
sumptuous prisons that were Knole and Wilton; now she was free to turn
tyrant herself over her own undisputed realm. She wasted nothing of the
opportunity. Away from London, away from the influence of the Court,
entrenched in her numerous castles in the North, she ruled
autocratically over her servants, her tenants, her neighbours, and the
generations and ramifications of her family. No detail of comings and
goings, no penny of expenditure escaped her vigilant eye or her
recording pen; and her diary, that document of intimacy, autocracy,
piety, and exactitude, carries its entries down to the very day before
her death. With public or political events she scarcely ever concerned
herself, but on the other hand no detail of her own private life or of
the existence of those around her was too small to excite her comment.
Whether her laundry-maids went to church, whether she pared her finger
and toe nails, whether her dog puppied, whether she received letters,
whether she washed her feet and legs (this is on the 22nd of February,
the last occasion being on the 13th of December preceding), whether she
kissed the sempstress—all is noted with the same precision and gravity.
No anniversary or coincidence is allowed to pass unobserved. That
amazing memory extended back over threescore years; and, moreover, she
had the immense volumes of her notebooks for reference, date for date.
Her past was ever present to her, the agreeable and the disagreeable
merged into one landscape of consonant tone, and whether she observes
that this day sixty years ago she travelled with her blessed mother, or
fell out with Dorset, it is with the same complacency and satisfaction
at having the tiny anniversary to record. This vigorous mind was not,
perhaps, planned on a very broad scale. It was self-centred and
self-sufficient; severe but not reckless; no fine carelessness endears
her to us, or surprises; even her acts of generosity, and they were
numerous, are recorded with the same scrupulous accuracy. She could not
give two shillings to a child without setting it down. Her generosity,
like all her other acts, was methodical; she rewarded her servants for
definite services with extra wages; she kept ready to hand a supply of
little presents, because it was contrary to her ideas of hospitality
that any visitor, however humble, should go away empty-handed, and was
careful to consider what particular gift would be most acceptable to the
recipient, frequently choosing something of practical utility, such as
gloves or lengths of cloth for women, money or ruffles for men; and
these idiosyncracies run true all through her character, for,
conversely, although she was prepared to be generous in her treatment of
others, she was equally determined that she herself should be fairly
treated by them, and frequent are the entries in her diary to this
effect: “In the morning did I see Mr. Robert Willison of Penrith paid
for a rundlet of sack, but I was very angry with him because I thought
it too dear, and told him I would have no more of him, and then he
slipped away from me in a good hurry.” She would always pay cash too,
and bullied her special almswomen, whom she would not allow to ask for
credit with the tradesmen of Appleby.
Her rights were her rights, and she had always had a great idea of them.
One recognizes the spirit that told the King she “_would never be parted
from Westmoreland_,” in the old litigant that went unhesitatingly and
repeatedly to law over niceties connected with small portions of her
estates, content to spend large sums of money in lawyers’ fees if only
she could succeed—as she invariably did—in proving her point. There is
one story which illustrates both her tenacity and her humour—the story
of a certain tenant whose rent included a hen due yearly to the lady of
the manor. This tribute he neglected to hand over. Lady Anne instantly
had the law on him, spent £400 in enforcing her claim, won her case,
received the hen, invited her defeated opponent to dinner with her, and
caused the bird to be cooked for them both as the staple dish of the
meal.
So the tranquil and crowded years spun themselves out for her, and she
grew to be an old woman and a contented one, for she had attained at
last the existence and occupations best suited to her. Her life was
full: the things which filled it were small things, perhaps, but if they
satisfied her who should cavil? Her journeyings alone occupied much of
her time: those extraordinary progresses from castle to castle, she
herself travelling in her horse-litter, her ladies in the coach-and-six,
her menservants on horseback, her women in other coaches, and a rabble
of small fry following, so that the miniature army which accompanied her
amounted sometimes to as many as three hundred. Often this retinue would
include members of her family, or some of her neighbours; they travelled
over the moors of the North, by rough roads, “uncouth and untrodden,
those mountainous and almost impassable ways,” stopping on the way in
those highland villages which had not yet been honoured by a visit from
the great old lady or received her bounty, and, coming at the end of the
journey to Brougham, to Brough, to Barden, to Skipton, to Pendragon, or
to Appleby, Lady Anne would receive her dependants one by one in her own
chamber, give her hand to the men, kiss the women, and dismiss them
again to their own homes. Her health was no longer very good, but that
was never allowed to deter her from her plans: her courage and vigour
triumphed always over the treacherous flesh, greatly to the concern of
those about her. On one occasion, travelling from Appleby to Brougham,
she was delayed at the start by a “swounding fit,” when she had to be
carried to a bed and laid there near a “great fire”; much persuasion was
used that she “would not travel on so sharp and cold a day, but she,
having before fixed on that day, and so much company being come
purposely to wait on her, she would go.” As she reached her litter,
however, she fainted again, “Yet as soon as that fit was over she went.”
Arrived at Brougham she fainted for the third time, but on being
upbraided by her friends and servants for her stubbornness in making the
journey, she replied that she knew she must die, and it was the same
thing to her to die on the way as in her house, in her litter or in her
bed, and furthermore would not acknowledge any necessity why she should
live, but saw every necessity for keeping to her resolution. “If she
will, she will, you may depend on’t,” they said of her, “if she won’t,
she won’t, and there’s an end on’t.”
Now that there was no one to reproach her, as Dorset had been accustomed
to reproach her, for her lack of finery and absence of proper vanity,
she dressed always in rough black serge, she shaved her head, her fare
was of the plainest, and her personal economy was pushed to the length
of such small eccentricities as using up every stray scrap of paper for
her correspondence. One luxury, indeed, she permitted herself: she
smoked a pipe. Into all the details of her household she looked with a
careful eye; already in the days when she was living at Knole she had
used up Richard Dorset’s old shirts to make clouts, now at Appleby she
saw to the preserving of fruit, she had her cheeses made at Brougham,
sixteen at a time, she got her coal from her own pits, she had all
delinquents into her own room and scolded them till they were probably
thankful to be dismissed. At the same time she never forgot those that
had served her faithfully; she would send her own coach to bring some
old retainer to visit her; the marriages, morals, and vicissitudes of
her meanest servant were a matter of interest to her; their marriage
portions she made her own affair. Besides her servants, her own family
gave her much food for thought and preoccupation: it is true that of her
seven children only two—her two Sackville daughters—had lived to grow
up, but they by now had produced a cohort of grandchildren, whose visits
to Lady Anne were a source of infinite pleasure to the old lady. It is,
altogether, a pleasant and seemly end to such a life. She had attained
the great age of eighty-six; her diary was filled with religious
references; she never dwelt upon her death, but it is clear that she can
never for one moment have dreaded it. She had lived up consistently to
her principles and to her motto: “Preserve your loyalty, defend your
rights,” and was ready to go whenever the call should come. “I went not
out all this day,” is the last entry in her diary, and the next day
(22nd of March 1676), there is an entry in another hand, “The 22nd day
the Countess died.”
A Catalogue
_of the Household, and Family of the Right Honourable_ RICHARD, EARL
_of_ DORSET, _in the year of our Lord 1613; and so continued until the
year 1624, at Knole, in Kent_.
_At_ MY LORD’S TABLE
My Lord
My Lady
My Lady Margaret
My Lady Isabella
Mr. Sackville
Mr. Frost
John Musgrave
Thomas Garret
_At_ THE PARLOUR TABLE
Mrs. Field
Mrs. Willoughby
Mrs. Grimsditch
Mrs. Stewkly
Mrs. Fletcher
Mrs. Wood
Mr. Dupper, _Chaplain_
Mr. Matthew Caldicott, _my Lord’s favourite_
Mr. Edward Legge, _Steward_
Mr. Peter Basket, _Gentleman of the Horse_
Mr. Marsh, _Attendant on my Lady_
Mr. Wooldridge
Mr. Cheyney
Mr. Duck, _Page_
Mr. Josiah Cooper, _a Frenchman, Page_
Mr. John Belgrave, _Page_
Mr. Billingsley
Mr. Graverner, _Gentleman Usher_
Mr. Marshall, _Auditor_
Mr. Edwards, _Secretary_
Mr. Drake, _Attendant_
_At_ THE CLERKS’ TABLE IN THE HALL
Edward Fulks and John Edwards, _Clerks of the Kitchen_
Edward Care, _Master Cook_
William Smith, _Yeoman of the Buttery_
Henry Keble, _Yeoman of the Pantry_
John Mitchell, _Pastryman_
Thomas Vinson, _Cook_
John Elnor, _Cook_
Ralph Hussie, _Cook_
John Avery, _Usher of the Hall_
Robert Elnor, _Slaughterman_
Benjamin Staples, _Groom of the Great Chamber_
Thomas Petley, _Brewer_
William Turner, _Baker_
Francis Steeling, _Gardener_
Richard Wicking, Gardener
Thomas Clements, _Under Brewer_
Samuel Vans, _Caterer_
Edward Small, _Groom of the Wardrobe_
Samuel Southern, _Under Baker_
Lowry, _a French boy_
THE NURSERY
Nurse Carpenter
Widow Ben
Jane Sisley
Dorothy Pickenden
_At_ THE LONG TABLE IN THE HALL
Robert Care, _Attendant on my Lord_
Mr. Gray, _Attendant likewise_
Mr. Roger Cook, _Attendant on my Lady Margaret_
Mr. Adam Bradford, _Barber_
Mr. John Guy, _Groom of my Lord’s Bedchamber_
Walter Comestone, _Attendant on my Lady_
Edward Lane, _Scrivener_
Mr. Thomas Poor, _Yeoman of the Wardrobe_
Mr. Thomas Leonard, _Master Huntsman_
Mr. Woodgate, _Yeoman of the Great Chamber_
John Hall, _Falconer_
James Flennel, _Yeoman of the Granary_
Rawlinson, _Armourer_
Moses Shonk, _Coachman_
Anthony Ashly, _Groom of the Great Horse_
Griffin Edwards, _Groom of my Lady’s Horse_
Francis Turner, _Groom of the Great Horse_
William Grynes, _Groom of the Great Horse_
Acton Curvett, _Chief Footman_
James Loveall, _Footman_
Sampson Ashley, _Footman_
William Petley, _Footman_
Nicholas James, _Footman_
Paschal Beard, _Footman_
Elias Thomas, _Footman_
Henry Spencer, _Farrier_
Edward Goodsall
John Sant, _the Steward’s Man_
Ralph Wise, _Groom of the Stables_
Thomas Petley, _Under Farrier_
John Stephens, _the Chaplain’s Man_
John Haite, _Groom for the Stranger’s Horse_
Thomas Giles, _Groom of the Stables_
Richard Thomas, _Groom of the Hall_
Christopher Wood, _Groom of the Pantry_
George Owen, _Huntsman_
George Vigeon, _Huntsman_
Thomas Grittan, _Groom of the Buttery_
Solomon, _the Bird-Catcher_
Richard Thornton, _the Coachman’s Man_
Richard Pickenden, _Postillion_
William Roberts, _Groom_
The Armourer’s Man
Ralph Wise, _his Servant_
John Swift, _the Porter’s Man_
John Atkins, _Men to carry wood_
Clement Doory, _Men to carry wood_
THE LAUNDRY-MAIDS’ TABLE
Mrs. Judith Simpton
Mrs. Grace Simpton
Penelope Tutty, _the Lady Margaret’s Maid_
Anne Mills, _Dairy-Maid_
Prudence Bucher
Anne Howse
Faith Husband
Elinor Thompson
Goodwife Burton
Grace Robinson, _a Blackamoor_
Goodwife Small
William Lewis, _Porter_
KITCHEN AND SCULLERY
Diggory Dyer
Marfidy Snipt
John Watson
Thomas Harman
Thomas Johnson
John Morockoe, _a Blackamoor_