Perhaps you’ll think ’tis here no matter
That he’s an independent batter,
And, at the famous game of cricket,
Keeps the best guard before the wicket,
When match’d against the playing men
He beats nine of them out of ten
Making, if at the work he labours,
More runs and notches than his neighbours.
Tankerville’s time at the heart of cricket was far shorter than Horace Mann’s, but his role in promoting the game, especially during Mann’s frequent absences abroad, earns him an honoured place among those who embedded cricket as part of the English way of life. In 1805, when he was in his early sixties, he was described by Thomas Creevey as a ‘haughty, honourable man … communicative and entertaining with a passion for clever men, of which he considers himself to be one, though certainly unjustly’. Lady Tankerville, the former Emma Colebrooke, fares rather better: she was credited with being very clever, and with having ‘as much merit as any woman in England’, but ‘like her Lord, was depress’d and unhappy’. If true, it is a sad postscript.
The third Duke of Dorset, John Frederick Sackville (1745–99), was the finest cricketer of the later patrons. He was an instinctive ball-player, with a good eye and a fine temperament. His talent was evident at Westminster School, where he was regarded as ‘the best [player] of his time at cricket and billiards’. He also played tennis and fives to a high standard. As a man, he was well-made, five feet nine inches in height with a habit when at ease, according to John Nyren, of standing with his head tilted to one side. Despite his social position he was an empty-headed playboy, ‘not in possession of any brains’, according to contemporary opinion. But he was a kindly man. Like many aristocrats, he had assets aplenty but not much ‘ready money’. Nonetheless, he spent lavishly, sometimes on the poor, but more often on his own amusements.
Although not handsome, Dorset had pleasant features, an agreeable manner and a natural dignity. But Nathaniel Wraxall, in his Posthumous Memoirs (1836), concurs with his critics that he did not possess ‘superior abilities’ – except at cricket, where eye and wrist coordination made him the finest gentleman all-rounder of his time. Twice in 1773 he bowled out six batsmen in a single innings, and one year later hit 77 runs for Hampshire at the Vine, Sevenoaks. These were prodigious feats for the time, and John Burnby, the cricket- loving poet, was on hand to record them in ‘The Kentish Cricketers’:
His Grace the Duke of Dorset came,
The next enroll’d in skilful fame,
Equal’d by few, he plays with glee,
Nor peevish seeks for victory.
His Grace for bowling cannot yield,
To none but Lumpey in the field:
And far unlike the modern way,
Of blocking every ball at play,
He firmly stands with bat upright,
And strikes with his athletic might,
Sends far the ball, across the mead,
And scores six notches for the deed.
Burnby’s description suggests that Dorset, then twenty-eight, was an attacking batsman who stood upright at the crease with his bat raised from the blockhole, much as Victor Trumper and Graham Gooch were to do many years later. And if it is a true judgement that he yielded at bowling to ‘none but Lumpey’, he was certainly a pre-eminent all-rounder.
In 1768, as Lord John Sackville, he organised a game between the old boys of Westminster and Eton – for whom the diarist William Hickey was longstop. It was not one of Hickey’s finest hours. He failed to attend the pre-match practices, despite being informed of them, and awoke on the morning of the match with a nasty hangover in ‘a cheap lodging house near Drury Lane’. The contest was for a wager of twenty guineas a player, with the amount to be given by the losers to the poor of the parishes of Moulsey and Hampton – a generous gesture. Any player failing to turn up was to forfeit the same sum.
Hickey, feeling wretched but anxious to save his guineas, hurried home to change his clothes, collect his mare from the stables, and embark at a gallop to Moulsey Hurst. The wickets were due to be pitched at eleven o’clock, and Hickey had to ride twelve miles in forty-five minutes or forfeit his money. He made it with moments to spare, but noted that he had ‘a horrible headache and sickness’, the classic symptoms of over-indulgence. Having arrived barely in time to play, he did not distinguish himself, although after a hard match his team did win. It should have been less of a struggle. Hickey recalled:
the Westminsters insisted we should have won easier had I played as usual, but I was so ill at the time that I let several balls past me that ought not to have done so … When we adjourned – a magnificent dinner was prepared, no part of which could I relish, even Champagne failed to cheer me; I could not rally … The moment the bill was called for, and our proportions adjusted and paid, I mounted my mare, and in sober sadness gently rode to my father’s [house] at Twickenham.
One warms to Hickey for his unsparing account of his own shortcomings.
After succeeding to the dukedom at the age of twenty-four Dorset embarked on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe, and for two years played no cricket at all. He was accompanied by his mistress, Nancy Parsons, a strikingly attractive woman who either enjoyed cricket or thought it prudent to pretend to do so; in any event, upon her return from the tour she attended matches with the Duke, to the delight of the cricketers. Apart from her physical attractions, Nancy had something of a reputation – she was formerly the mistress of the Duke of Grafton – and the players were keen to gawp at her. John Nyren relates a tale which illustrates the easy relationship that the players enjoyed with the leading patrons.* Apparently his father Richard was eager to meet the lovely Nancy, and the Earl of Tankerville, who was present at a Hambledon game, cheerfully engaged her in conversation so that Nyren could join him. It was a kindness that Richard Nyren never forgot.
From early in his cricketing career the Duke of Dorset was a focus of interest to spectators. In a game in which Kent beat a combined Sussex and Hampshire team at Guildford in August 1772, great sums were wagered upon whether the Duke or an opponent, the cricketing vicar at Westbourne, the Reverend Edward Ellis, would score most runs: it was the Duke, who scored 21 in a single innings, while the Reverend Ellis made 16 in two innings.
As well as being a fine cricketer himself, Dorset employed top-class players to strengthen his teams. One, John Minchen, alias Minshull (1741–93),
was a capital hitter, and a sure guard of his wicket … however, not an elegant player; his position and general style were both awkward and uncouth; yet he was as conceited as a wagtail, and with his constantly aping what he had no pretensions to, was, on that account only, not estimated at the price at which he rated his own merits.
That at least was the view of Nyren, who was not an admirer of Minshull’s behaviour, even though he grudgingly conceded his cricketing ability. And well he might, for Minshull scored the first recorded century in cricket, 107 for Dorset’s XI against Wrotham on 31 August 1769. Six weeks later Dorset engaged him, nominally as a gardener, to work at Knole for eight shillings a week. Minshull
