Folger Shakespeare Library
CELM

Thomas Sackville

First Earl of Dorset

1536–1608

Introduction

Thomas Sackville's reputation as a poet rests largely on the Induction and Complaint of Buckingham which he contributed to A Myrrour for Magistrates. By good fortune the original manuscript of an enlarged version of this composition survives (*SaT 1). This manuscript can now be supplemented by two other manuscript poems which have come to light in recent years. One is a contemporary copy of the 236-line poem Sacvyles olde age, unknown until 1989 (SaT 1.8). The other, possibly autograph, is a twenty-line elegy On Sir Philip and Sir Thomas Hobby, not seen since J.P. Collier allegedly found it in a friend's portfolio in 1849 until it resurfaced, as indeed a genuine manuscript, not one of Collier's forgeries, in 2004 (*SaT 1.5).

Sackville's most celebrated literary work was the tragedy of Gorboduc (1565), the result of a collaboration with Thomas Norton. This is represented below by an eye-witness account of the first performance in 1561-2 (SaT 2.5), besides an extract from a printed source (SaT 2).

Letters and Documents

Many other autograph manuscripts and documents signed by Sackville survive in the form of letters, official papers and signed legal documents, chiefly products of his active political career, which culminated in his advancement to the office of Lord High Treasurer. His miscellaneous papers, not given entries below, can be found chiefly in the British Library (Additional, Cotton, Harley and Lansdowne MSS), in the National Archives, Kew; in the Folger and Pierpont Morgan Libraries; in the Robert H. Taylor Collection at Princeton; in Lambeth Palace (Talbot Papers); in he Free Library of Philadelphia; and in various collections recorded in the HMC reports.

Other documents of Sackville have appeared from time to time in booksellers' and auction catalogues. Some of Sackville's letters are printed in The Works of Thomas Sackville, ed. Reginald W. Sackville-West (London, 1859), and a number are cited in Paul Bacquet, Un contemporain d'Elisabeth I: Thomas Sackville (Geneva, 1966). Sackville's letter to Lord Burghley, 30 November 1586 (Lansdowne MS 50, f. 67r), is reproduced in facsimile in Greg, English Literary Autographs, Plate XXXIII(b), and a facsimile of Sackville's letter to Sir Richard Verney, 6 August 1605, appears in British Literary Manuscripts Series I, ed. Verlyn Klinkenborg et al. (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1981), No. 15.

Verse

The Complaint of Henry Duke of Buckingham ('Who trustes to much in honours highest trone')

The Induction and The Complaint of...Buckingham first published in A Myrrour for Magistrates, 2nd edition (London, 1563).

*SaT 1
Autograph

A MS, chiefly autograph, partly in the hand of an amanuensis, mainly a fair copy with revisions, partly a first draft, of a 192-stanza poem incorporating The Induction and The Complaint of Henry Duke of Buckingham (published in 1563), plus an unfinished draft of what is possibly an Epilogue to the poem (beginning Be this phaeton whirled within his cart).

c.1557

Additional passages in the MS first published in Marguerite Hearsey, The MS. of Sackville's Contribution to the Mirror for Magistrates, RES, 8 (1932), 282-90. The whole MS edited, with facsimiles of three pages, by Marguerite Hearsey (New Haven, 1936). Facsimiles of two pages in Croft, Autograph Poetry, I, 10-11, and in DLB, vol. 132, Sixteenth-Century British Non-Dramatic Writers. First Series, ed. David A. Richardson (Detroit, 1993), pp. 260-1.

St John's College, Cambridge (MS L. 7 (James 364))
The Induction ('The wrathfull winter proching on apace')

See SaT 1.

On Sir Philip and Sir Thomas Hobby ('Two woorthie knightes, and Hobbyes both by name')

A twenty-line elegy, originally inscribed c.1567 on the Hoby monument in the parish church of All Saints Bisham, in Berkshire. First published in John Payne Collier, On Norton and Sackville, the authors of Gorboduc, the earliest blank verse Tragedy in our language, The Shakespeare Society's Papers, IV (London, 1849), 123-8.

*SaT 1.5 c.1567
Autograph

MS, in a cursive secretary hand, possibly autograph, with alterations, subscribed T. B., on one page of a pair of conjugate folio leaves.

Later owned by John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), politician and writer, and given by him to Lord Londesborough.

Edited from this MS in Collier. Discussed in Jessica L. Malay, Thomas Sackville's Elegy to Thomas and Philip Hoby: The Discovery of a Draft Manuscript, N&Q, December 2009, 513-15.

A collection of autograph manuscripts, compiled in the 19th century.

Once owned by the Enys family of Cornwall. Bonham's, 28 September 2004 (Enys sale), lot 392.

Bodleian Library, other MSS (MS Eng. c. 7065 f. 124r)
Sacvyles olde age ('fraunces that arte the Iewell and renowne')

A poem of 236 lines, first published in Rivkah Zim and M.B. Parkes, Sacvyles Olde Age A Newly Discovered Poem by Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (c.1536-1608), RES, NS 40 (February 1989), 1-25.

SaT 1.8

Copy, in a single hand, with corrections.

Edited from this MS in Zim and Parkes.

A MS comprising one poem and two sets of memoranda relating to financial and estate matters in 1653-6 and 1457-1532, written in different hands at different times, 107 leaves, in contemporary blind-tooled leather.

Late 16th century

Phillips, London, 18 September 1986, in lot 305.

McMaster University Library (MS 93 ff. [7r-11v])

Dramatic works

Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex

First published in London, 1565. Edited by Irby B. Cauthen, Jr (University of Nebraska Press, 1970).

SaT 2

Twenty-four extracts, transcribed from a edited edition.

This MS recorded in The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William Ringler (Oxford, 1962), p. 541.

A tall folio miscellany of verse and prose, including a series of Pithie sentences and wise sayinges, largely in a secretary hand, iv + 120 leaves (including blanks), in contemporary dark brown calf on wooden boards (rebacked), with remains of brass clasps.

Compiled principally by William Briton (1564-1637), of Kelston, Somerset.

c.1586-1605

Once owned by members of the Harington family, including John Harington, MP (d.1654). Acquired by Quaritch in 1932 and in their centenary sale catalogue (1947), item 198. Booklabel of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr (1906-90), American businessman and collector. Christie's, 12 June 1980 (Houghton sale), lot 427.

SaT 2.5 1562

An anonymous courtier's eyewitness report of the first performance of Gorboduc at the Inner Temple, Christmas 1561/62, in a secretary hand, among a series of memoranda on events between 1548 and 1562.

This MS edited and discussed, with a facsimile (location erroneously cited as Add. MS 40823), in Norman Jones and Paul Whitfield White, Gorboduc and Royal Marriage Politics: An Elizabethan Playgoers's Report of the Premiere Performance, ELR, 26/1 (Winter 1996), 3-16, and see also Henry James and Greg Walker, The Politics of Gorboduc, EHR, 110 (1995), 109-21.

A folio composite volume of state tracts and papers, some relating to Thomas Norton, in various hands, iv + 390 leaves.

Yelverton MS 26, among the papers of Robert Beale (1541-1601), Clerk of the Privy Council, descending to Sir Henry Yelverton (1566-1629), Justice of the Common Pleas, and his family.

Annotations in Printed Books and Manuscripts

Fabyan, Robert. The Chronicle of Fabyan (London, 1542)
*SaT 3
Autograph

A folio volume, gilt-edged, in blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, signed on the title-page Thomas Sakevile, with occasional marginal annotations in Latin (especially pp. 259-301) in more than one hand.

It is not clear whether this is the early signature of the future Earl of Dorset or another Thomas Sackville.

Bookplates of Archibald Acheson (1806-64), Earl of Gosford, and of James Toovey (1814-93), bookseller, Burnham Abbey, Buckinghamshire.

The Pierpont Morgan Library (2970 (W. 03. D))

Documents

Contents