Charles Sackville

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset and 1st Earl of Middlesex, KG (24 January 1643 – 29 January 1706) was an English poet and courtier.

Sackville was born 24 January 1643, son of Richard Sackville, 5th Earl of Dorset (1622–1677). His mother was the former Lady Frances Cranfield, sister and heiress of the 3rd Earl of Middlesex, to whose estates he succeeded in 1674, being created Baron Cranfield, of Cranfield in the County of Middlesex, and Earl of Middlesex in 1675. He succeeded to his father's estates and title in August 1677.

He was educated privately, and spent some time abroad with a private tutor, returning to England shortly before the Restoration. In King Charles II's first Parliament he sat for East Grinstead in Sussex. He had no taste for politics, however, but won a reputation as courtier and wit at Whitehall.

He bore his share in the excesses for which Sir Charles Sedley and Lord Rochester were notorious. In 1662 he and his brother Edward, with three other gentlemen, were indicted for the robbery and murder of a tanner named Hoppy. The defence was that they were in pursuit of thieves, and mistook Hoppy for a highwayman. They appear to have been acquitted, for when in 1663 Sir Charles Sedley was tried for a gross breach of public decency in Covent Garden, Sackville, who had been one of the offenders, according to Samuel Pepys was asked by the Lord Chief Justice "whether he had so soon forgot his deliverance at that time, and that it would have more become him to have been at his prayers begging God's forgiveness than now running into such courses again."

Something in his character made his follies less obnoxious to the citizens than those of the other rakes, for he was never altogether unpopular, and Rochester is said to have told Charles II that "he did not know how it was, my Lord Dorset might do anything, yet was never to blame". In 1665 he volunteered to serve under the Duke of York in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. His famous song, To all you ladies now at Land, was written, according to Prior, on the night before the victory gained over foggy Opdam off Harwich (3 June 1665). Dr Johnson, with the remark that seldom any splendid story is wholly true, says that the Earl of Orrery had told him it was only retouched on that occasion.

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