Catholic, Anglican or Puritan? Edward Sackville, Fourth Earl of Dorset and the Ambiguities of Religion in Early Stuart England

The religion of Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset, foxed his contemporaries, and he has proved an equally slippery customer for those modern historians who wish to see unbridgeable confessional gulfs opening up in the 1620s and 1630s. A detailed study of him reveals ambiguities of position that confused his contemporaries and confound modern categorisation. Those who knew Dorset differed dramatically in their perception of his religion. To one French ambassador, Tillières, he was ‘un puritain’; while to William Middleton, Lord Fielding's chaplain, he appeared ‘strong for Precisians’. By contrast, another French ambassador, Fontenay, believed that Dorset ‘n’est pas trop ennemy de nostre religion' and the papal agent Carlo Rossetti thought him ‘assai fautori nell’ intrinseco dei Cattolicci’. In 1641 Sir Walter Erle even opposed the re-enfranchisement of Seaford on the grounds that ‘the lord of the town [i.e. Dorset] [was] a papist'. Dorset was called everything from a puritan to a papist—and other things besides. In dedicating his ‘account of religion by reason’ to Dorset, Sir John Suckling wrote that the tract—which was widely condemned as Socinian—‘had like to make me an atheist at Court and your lordship no very good Christian’. Whereas Professor Hexter addressed ‘the problem of the Presbyterian-Independents’, contemporary images of Dorset present the even more bizarre spectacle of a puritan-papist-pagan. Where, that is, they mention his religion at all. For time and again we find that descriptions focus mainly on Dorset's courtly and chivalric qualities. Clarendon portrayed Dorset as ‘a man of an obliging nature, much honour, of great generosity, and of most entire fidelity to the Crown’; but made no mention of his religious attitudes. When authors dedicated their writings to Dorset they consistently highlighted these same secular traits: Sir Richard Baker praised his ‘publicke vertues’, Edward May his ‘noble nature’; and even John Bastwick called him simply ‘illustrissimus’.