[3] In 1566 Sackville travelled to Rome, where he was arrested and detained as a prisoner for fourteen days, for reasons not clear, but at the time there was great tension between England and the Papacy.

In 1587 he went as ambassador to the United Provinces, upon their complaint against the Earl of Leicester; but, although he performed his trust with integrity, the favourite had sufficient influence to get him recalled; and on his return, he was ordered to confinement in his own house, for nine or ten months.

Sackville wrote on 21 June 1603 that he and the Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton were travelling "to do our duties to the Queen, the Prince, and Princess, all the world flying beforehand to see her".

[10] In August 1605 Dorset recommended "Mr Thorpe" to survey and make "plots" for the rebuilding of Ampthill for Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry.

[11] In April 1607 he wrote to George More of Loseley asking him to influence the Countess of Cumberland to arrange the marriage of her daughter Lady Anne Clifford to his grandson Richard Sackville.

With Thomas Norton, he was an author in 1561 of the first English play to be written in blank verse, Gorboduc, which deals with the consequences of political rivalry.

Sackville's first important literary work was the poem Induction, which describes the poet's journey to the infernal regions, where he encounters figures representing forms of suffering and terror.

He was an advocate of stronger enforcement of the sumptuary laws, which regulated the types of clothing allowed to be worn by the various social classes, within the military.

The finely etched, blued and gilt armour, a garniture for the field, is one of the finest and best-preserved examples of the Greenwich school of armour-making.

[15] Another, similar, suit of armour, featuring the same construction and decorative scheme, which belonged to Sir James Scudamore, can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

His funeral took place at Westminster Abbey, and he is buried in the Sackville family vault at Withyham Parish Church, East Sussex.