estates. His health was latterly enfeebled by guttering of long standing from stone, and his death is said to have been hastened by his efforts to be in his place in the House of Lords at the discussion of certain 'propositions' sent up by the Irish parliament. He died at his residence, Stoneland Lodge, Sussex (now included in Buckhurst Park), on 26 Aug. 1785, in the seventieth year of his age (Gent. Mag. lv. pt. ii. 667, 746).
Sackville married, in September 1754, Diana, second daughter and coheiress of John Sambroke, only brother of Sir Jeffreys Sambroke, bart., of Gubbins, Hertfordshire. She died on 15 June 1778, at the age of seventyfour, leaving two sons and three daughters. In person Sackville was tall, robust, and active. Although haughty and distant in manner in public, he was agreeable in private intercourse. His abilities appear to have been much above the average; his experience of public life and affairs was exceptionally wide and varied; he was quick in the despatch of business, and Walpole describes him as one of the best speakers in the House of Commons (Letters, iv. 194). He had no pretensions to scholarship, and those who knew him best declare that, although possessing a fine library, he rarely opened a book. There is no evidence of the 'transcendent abilities' as a statesman which have been sometimes claimed for him. Richard Cumberland, the dramatist [q. v.], his neighbour at Stoneland, describes him in his declining years, riding about his estate, followed by an aged groom, who had grown grey in his service, taking an intelligent interest in the welfare of his cottagers and retainers, or in the village church, in quaint Sir Roger de Coverley style, nodding approval of the sermon or rating the rustic choir for singing out of tune. A portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds has been engraved.
[Collins's Peerage (1812 ed.), vi. 308–17; Doyle's Official Baronage, iii. 205; Rich. Cumberland's Character of the late Viscount Sackville (1785, 8vo), a pamphlet of which there are several copies in the British Museum. A biography of Sackville is given in Georgian Era, ii. 53. The Memoirs of the Rev. Percival Stockdale (London, 1809), i. 428–40, contains an account of Sackville at Brompton Camp and elsewhere. The statement at p. 433 should be compared with the rather apocryphal story in Colburn's United Serv. Mag. 1830, ii. 475. In the British Museum, among the printed books catalogued under ‘Sackville, afterwards Germain,’ will be found copies of Sackville's Address to the Public (London, 1759, fol.), and his vindication of himself in a letter to Colonel Fitzroy (1759, 8vo); also copies of the court-martial proceedings, printed ‘by authority.’ Among the maps is (30520[1]) an ingenious one of the battle of Minden, showing the successive movements of the troops from 27 July to 2 Aug. 1759, which was prepared by Captain (afterwards General) Roy, and laid before the court-martial. Reference may also be made to J. Jaques's Hist. of Junius (London, 1843); Walpole's Letters, under ‘Sackville’ and ‘Germain;’ Wraxall's Memoirs, passim; Rich. Cumberland's Memoirs (ed. 1807), pp. 484–96. This, the quarto edition, contains a well-engraved portrait. Sackville's more important speeches will be found in Parliamentary History, vols. xvi–xxvi. His papers are now at Drayton House, Northamptonshire, and are the subject of a very full report forming Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. iii. They include three series of Irish papers, papers relating to Cherbourg and St. Malo, Minden papers, and Sackville's correspondence when secretary of state for the colonies, 1775–82. This collection also includes a large bundle of letters from Sackville to his friend General Sir John Irwin, by whose widow they were sold to the Duke of Dorset. They cover the period 1761–84. Other letters and papers in various private collections are indexed under ‘Sackville’ or ‘Germain’ in other Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports; but the Sackville Family MSS., reported on in Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep., contain no papers of so late a date. Besides numerous papers in the Public Record Office, Dublin, and in the Home and Colonial Series in the Public Record Office, London, the following papers exist in the British Museum: Sackville's Correspondence with Amherst and others, Addit. MS. 21697; with General Haldimand, Addit. MSS. 21702–4; Letters to General Grant, 1778–1779, Eg. MS. 2135, ff. 45, 52; to Lord Lisburne, 1779, Eg, MS. 2136, ff. 142, 145; to Governor Burt, Eg. MS. 2135, f. 79; Correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton, Addit. MS. 24322, ff. 47, 71: and with General Vaughan, Eg. MS. 2135 ff. 83–179.]
GERMAIN, Sir JOHN (1650–1718), soldier of fortune, passed as the son of a private soldier in the life guards of William II, prince of Orange. His mother, who was very handsome, is stated to have been that prince's mistress, and Germain is said to have assumed 'as his seal and armorial bearing' a red cross, implying pretensions to exalted parentage. His military qualities, independently of this supposititious relationship, endeared him to William III, whom he accompanied to England in 1688, and with whom he served in later years in Ireland and Flanders. His personal appearance and courage won favour with women, and his relations with Lady Mary Mordaunt, only surviving child of Henry, earl of Peterborough, and wife of Henry, seventh duke of Norfolk, made his name notorious. They were charged with having committed adultery in 1685,1690, and 1691, and the duke introduced into the House of Lords a bill for a divorce in 1691 and 1692,
