the manager, refused to repeat them. Whereupon ‘the audience demolished the inside of the house and reduced it to a shell’ (Walpole, Reign of George II, i. 389; Gent. Mag. 1754, p. 141).
Alarmed by the discontent which had been aroused, the English government determined at last to make terms with Boyle, and to appoint Lord Hartington in Dorset's place. In February 1755 Dorset was informed that he was to return no more to Ireland. According to Horace Walpole, ‘he bore the notification ill,’ and hoped that, ‘if the situation of affairs should prove to be mended,’ he might be permitted to return (Walpole, Reign of George II, ii. 10). Dorset was appointed master of the horse on 29 March 1755, a post in which he was succeeded by Earl Gower in July 1757. During the riots occasioned by the Militia Bill in 1757, he was attacked at Knole, near Sevenoaks, by a mob, but was saved ‘by a young officer, who sallied out and seized two-and-twenty of the rioters’ (ib. iii. 41). On 5 July 1757 Dorset was constituted constable of Dover Castle and lord warden of the Cinque ports for the term of his natural life. He died at Knole on 9 Oct. 1765, aged 76, and was buried at Withyham, Sussex, on the 18th.
Dorset, says Lord Shelburne, was ‘in all respects a perfect English courtier and nothing else. … He had the good fortune to come into the world with the whigs, and partook of their good fortune to his death. He never had an opinion about public matters. … He preserved to the last the good breeding, decency of manners, and dignity of exterior deportment of Queen Anne's time, never departing from his style of gravity and ceremony’ (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 1875, i. 341). According to Horace Walpole, Dorset, in spite of ‘the greatest dignity in his appearance, was in private the greatest lover of low humour and buffoonery’ (Reign of George II, i. 98). Swift, in a letter to Lady Betty Germain, an intimate friend of Dorset, writes in January 1727: ‘I do not know a more agreeable person in conversation, one more easy or of better taste, with a greater variety of knowledge, than the Duke of Dorset’ (Works, 1824, xix. 117).
Dorset was appointed a Busby trustee (14 March 1720), custos rotulorum of Kent (12 May 1724), vice-admiral of Kent (27 Jan. 1725), high steward of Tamworth (6 May 1729), governor of the Charterhouse (17 Nov. 1730), and lord-lieutenant of Kent (8 July 1746). He also held the office of high steward of Stratford-on-Avon, and was a member of the Kit-Cat Club. He was created a D.C.L. of Oxford University on 15 Sept. 1730, and acted as one of the lords justices of Great Britain in 1725, 1727, 1740, 1743, 1745, 1748, and 1752. He married, in January 1709, Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant-general Walter Philip Colyear, and niece of David, first earl of Portmore. She was maid of honour to Queen Anne, and became first lady of the bedchamber to Caroline, the queen consort, both as princess of Wales and queen. She was also appointed groom of the stole to the queen on 16 July 1727, a post which she resigned in favour of Lady Suffolk in 1731. By this marriage Dorset had three sons, viz. (1) Charles Sackville, second duke of Dorset [q. v.]; (2) Lord John Philip Sackville, M.P. for Tamworth, whose only son, John Frederick, became third duke of Dorset [q. v.]; (3) Lord George Sackville Germain, first viscount Sackville [q. v.]; and three daughters, Lady Anne Sackville, who died on 22 March 1721, aged 11; (2) Lady Elizabeth Sackville, who was married on 6 Dec. 1726 to Thomas, second viscount Weymouth, and died on 9 June 1729; and (3) Lady Caroline Sackville, who was married to Joseph Damer, afterwards first earl of Dorchester, on 27 July 1742, and died on 24 March 1775. The duchess died on 12 June 1768, aged 81, and was buried at Withyham on the 18th.
Matthew Prior dedicated his ‘Poems on Several Occasions,’ London, 1718, fol., to Dorset, out of gratitude to the memory of his father. Some of Dorset's correspondence is preserved among the manuscripts of Mrs. Stopford Sackville of Drayton House, Northamptonshire. Among the collection are several letters addressed to Dorset by Swift (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. iii.).
Portraits of Dorset, by Kneller, are in possession of the family. There are numerous engravings of Dorset by Faber, McArdell, and others, after Kneller.
