Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset, 13th Great-Grandfather

January 2, 2015 — Britain, Catholic, history ancestors, Tudor

Dorset Coat of Arms

Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset, served in the House of Commons.  Like the Downton Abbey family, the Sackvilles have two last names..Dorset is the name for the Earldom and Sackville is the family name.  It is confusing, but the entire peer business is hard to understand. This family was heavily entwined with royalty at a dangerous time to be so.  His wife was suspected of being crypto-Catholic, a very highly punishable offense in Tudor times.  She survived by hiding her religion.

Robert Dorset (1525 – 1609)
is my 13th great grandfather
Lady Ann Dorset (1552 – 1680)
daughter of Robert Dorset
Robert Lewis (1574 – 1645)
son of Lady Ann Dorset
Robert Lewis (1607 – 1644)
son of Robert Lewis
Ann Lewis (1633 – 1686)
daughter of Robert Lewis
Joshua Morse (1669 – 1753)
son of Ann Lewis
Joseph Morse (1692 – 1759)
son of Joshua Morse
Joseph Morse (1721 – 1776)
son of Joseph Morse
Joseph Morse III (1752 – 1835)
son of Joseph Morse
John Henry Morse (1775 – 1864)
son of Joseph Morse III
Abner Morse (1808 – 1838)
son of John Henry Morse
Daniel Rowland Morse (1838 – 1910)
son of Abner Morse
Jason A Morse (1862 – 1932)
son of Daniel Rowland Morse
Ernest Abner Morse (1890 – 1965)
son of Jason A Morse
Richard Arden Morse (1920 – 2004)
son of Ernest Abner Morse
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Richard Arden Morse

Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset (1561–1609) was an English aristocrat and politician, with humanist and commercial interests.
Life
He was the eldest son of Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, by Cecily, daughter of Sir John Baker. His grandfather, Sir Richard Sackville, invited Roger Ascham to educate Robert with his own son, an incident inn 1563 that Ascham introduced into his pedagogic work The Scholemaster (1570) as prompting the book. He matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, 17 December 1576, and graduated B.A. and M.A. on 3 June 1579; it appears from his father’s will that he was also at New College.
He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1580 but not called to the bar, and was elected to the House of Commons in 1585 as member for Sussex, aged 23, by his father’s influence. In 1588 he sat for Lewes, but represented the county again in 1592–3, 1597–8, 1601, and 1604–8. He was a prominent member of the Commons, serving as a chairman of several committees. At the same time he engaged in trading ventures, and held a patent for the supply of ordnance.
He succeeded to the earldom of Dorset on the death of his father on 19 April 1608. He inherited from his father manors in Sussex, Essex, Kent, and Middlesex, the principal seats being Knole and Buckhurst. Dorset survived his father less than a year, dying on 27 February 1609 at Dorset House, Fleet Street, London. He was buried in the Sackville Chapel at Withyham, Sussex, and left money for the building and endowment of Sackville College.
Family
Dorset married first, in February 1580, Lady Margaret, only daughter of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, then suspected as a crypto-Catholic. By her he had six children, including:
Richard who became third earl;
Edward, fourth earl;
Anne, married Sir Edward Seymour, eldest son of Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp,
Cecily, married Sir Henry Compton, K.B.
Lady Margaret, in fact a devout Catholic, died on 19 August 1591; Robert Southwell, who never met her, published in her honour, in 1596, Triumphs over Death, with dedicatory verses to her surviving children.
Dorset married, secondly, on 4 December 1592, Anne (d. 22 September 1618), daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorp, and widow of, first, William Stanley, 3rd Baron Monteagle, and, secondly, Henry Compton, 1st Baron Compton. In 1608–9 Dorset found reason to complain of his second wife’s misconduct, and was negotiating with Archbishop Richard Bancroft and Lord Ellesmere for a separation from her when he died.
Notes
^ Lawrence V. Ryan, Roger Ascham (1963), pp. 252–3.
^ J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (1963), p. 63 and p. 293.
^ Scott R. Pilarz, Robert Southwell and the Mission of Literature, 1561-1595 (2004), p. 204.
Attribution
This article incorporates text from the entry Sackville, Robert in the Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900), a publication now in the public domain.
Political officesPreceded by
The Earl of NottinghamThe Earl of NorthumberlandLord Lieutenant of Sussex
1608–1609Vacant
Title next held by
The 3rd Earl of DorsetPeerage of EnglandPreceded by
Thomas Sackville Earl of Dorset
1608–1609Succeeded by
Richard Sackville