Margaret Howard, 13th Great-Grandmother

June 30, 2016 — ancestors, calendar house, England, history, Margaret Howard, Tudors

Margaret Howard

Margaret Howard was the daughter of Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk (March 10, 1538-June 2, 1572) and his second wife, Margaret Audley (1539-January 10, 1564). Her father’s execution for treason when she was ten limited her choice of husbands but in February 1569 she married Robert Sackville of Bolbrooke and Buckhurst, Sussex and Knole, Kent (1561-February 27, 1609), later Lord Buckhurst and earl of Dorset. They had three sons and three daughters, including Richard (1590-1624), Edward (1591-1652), Anne, and Cecily. After her death, Robert Southwell published a small volume in her honor and Sackville described his late wife as “a lady . . . of as great virtue . . . as is possible for any man to wish to be matched withal.” He asked to be buried at Withyham “as near to my first dearly beloved wife . . . as can be” and ordered that £200 to £300 be spent on their tomb, with effigies of them both. A devout Catholic, she influenced his religious beliefs.

Robert Sackville and Margaret Howard

Margaret Howard (1561 – 1591)
13th great-grandmother
Lady Ann Dorset (1552 – 1680)
daughter of Margaret Howard
Robert Lewis (1574 – 1656)
son of Lady Ann Dorset
Robert Lewis (1607 – 1644)
son of Robert Lewis
Ann Lewis (1631 – 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 (1756 – 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, married first, in February 1580, Lady Margaret, by then only surviving daughter of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, then suspected as a crypto-Catholic. By her he had six children, including:
Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset (18 March 1589 – 28 March 1624)
Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset (1591 – 17 July 1652)
Anne, married Sir Edward Seymour, eldest son of Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, and, secondly, Sir Edward Lewis (d.1630) by whom she had issue
Cecily, married Sir Henry Compton, K.B.
Lady Margaret 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

My 15th great-uncle, Thomas Sackville, inherited a calendar house, Knole House, in Kent, where they, no doubt, all visited.  The house became famous:

Knole is an English country house in the town of Sevenoaks in west Kent, surrounded by a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) deer park. One of England’s largest houses, it is reputed to be a calendar house, having 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards. It is known for the degree to which its early 17th-century appearance is preserved, particularly in the case of the state rooms: the exteriors and interiors of many houses of this period, such as Clandon Park in Surrey, were dramatically altered later on. The surrounding deer park has also survived with little having changed over the past 400 years except for the loss of over 70% of its trees in the Great Storm of 1987.
In 1566, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it came into the possession of her cousin Thomas Sackville whose descendants the Earls and Dukes of Dorset and Barons Sackville have lived there since 1603 (the intervening years saw the house let to the Lennard family). Most notably, these include writer Vita Sackville-West (her Knole and the Sackvilles, published 1922, is regarded as a classic in the literature of English country houses); her friend and lover Virginia Woolf wrote the novel Orlando drawing on the history of the house and Sackville-West’s ancestors. The Sackville family custom of following the Salic rules of primogeniture prevented Sackville-West herself from inheriting Knole upon the death of her father Lionel (1867–1930), the 3rd Lord Sackville, and her father bequeathed the estate to his brother Charles (1870–1962).