This Sir Richard was the founder of the family fortune, which was to be increased by his son and squandered after that by nearly all his descendants in succession. It was he who bought, in 1564, for the sum of £641 5_s._ 10½_d._, “the whole of the land lying between Bridewell and Water Lane from Fleet Street to the Thames.” This property, now of course of almost fabulous value, included the house then known as Salisbury House, having belonged to the see of Salisbury, which presently became Dorset House in 1603, and presently again was divided into Great Dorset House and Little Dorset House, as the London house of the Sackvilles. A wall enclosed house and gardens from the existing line of Salisbury Court south to the river, and shops and tenements in and near Fleet Street from St. Bride’s to Water Lane (Whitefriars Street). These were not the only London possessions of the Sackvilles. Later on they overflowed into the Strand, and another Dorset House sprang up, on the site of the present Treasury in Whitehall, to take the place of the older house in Salisbury Court, which had been destroyed in the Great Fire. It is idle and exasperating to speculate on the modern value of these City estates.
Sir Richard Sackville died in 1566, when his son Thomas was already thirty years of age. Very little is known about Thomas’ early life; we only know that he went for a short time to Oxford (Hertford), and subsequently to the Inner Temple. While at Oxford he attracted some attention as a poet and writer of sonnets, but I have only been able to find one of these early sonnets, written for Hoby’s translation of the _Courtier of Count Baldessar Castilio_ (published in 1561), and which I quote, not so much for its worth as for its interest as a little-known work from the pen of one who, as the author of our earliest tragedy, has a certain renown:
_These royal Kings, that rear up to the sky Their palace tops, and deck them all with gold: With rare and curious works they feed the eye, And show what riches here great princes hold. A rarer work, and richer far in worth, Castilio’s hand presenteth here to thee: No proud nor golden court doth he set forth But what in court a courtier ought to be. The prince he raiseth huge and mighty walls, Castilio frames a wight of noble fame: The King with gorgeous tissue clads his halls, The court with golden virtue decks the same Whose passing skill, lo, Hoby’s pen displays To Britain folk a work of worthy praise._