Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne
Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (15361608)Critical Introduction by Richard William Church
[Thomas Sackville was born in 1536 at Buckhurst in Sussex, where his family had been settled since the Conquest. After some time spent at Oxford and Cambridge, he entered parliament (1557–58), and in the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign he became known as a poetical writer. Between 1557 and 1563 he took part in The Tragedy of Gorboduc, and also planned a work called The Mirror of Magistrates, a series of poetical examples, showing ‘with how grievous plagues vices are punished in Great Princes and Magistrates, and how frail and unstable worldly prosperity is found, where fortune seemeth most highly to favour.’ He wrote the Induction, a preface, and the Story of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. But he soon threw himself into the risks of public life. On the whole he was successful. In 1567 he was created Lord Buckhurst. He experienced the fitful temper of the Queen in various public employments. He sat on several of the great state trials of the time—those of the Duke of Norfolk, Mary Queen of Scots, the Earl of Essex. In 1599 he was made Lord High Treasurer. James I created him Earl of Dorset in 1604. In 1608 he died, ‘while sitting at the council table at Whitehall.’]