Stoneland Lodge (Buckhurst Park), Sussex, on the 26th of August 1785.
SACKVILLE, MORTIMER SACKVILLE-WEST, 1st Baron (1820–1888), was descended from Sir Richard Sackville, a Kentish gentleman, and a cousin of Ann Boleyn. A member of parliament and courtier under Henry VIII., Richard Sackville became chancellor of the court of augmentations in 1548 and was knighted in 1549. He amassed a great deal of wealth, and Sir Robert Naunton said his name should be “fill-sack,” rather than “Sack-ville.” He was on friendly terms with Roger Ascham, whom he advised to write his Scholemaster. In 1604 his son Thomas was created earl of Dorset, and from him the
earls and dukes of Dorset (q.v.) of the Sackville family were descended.
Mortimer Sackville-West was a younger son of George John Sackville-West, 5th Earl de la Warr (See De la Warr): his mother, Elizabeth, Baroness Buckhurst, being a daughter of John Frederick Sackville, 3rd duke of Dorset. When in 1873 his elder brother, Reginald Windsor, became 7th Earl de la Warr, Mortimer succeeded by arrangement to, the extensive estates of the Sackvilles, including Knole Park, their beautiful Kentish residence, which had come to his family through his mother. In 1876 he was created Baron Sackville of Knole, and died on the 1st of October 1888.
His brother, Lionel Sackville-West (1827–1908), succeeded as 2nd baron. He had a long career in the diplomatic service. From 1872 to 1878 he was ambassador to the Argentine Republic; from 1878 to 1881 he represented his country at Madrid-, and from 1881 to 1888 at Washington. His retirement was due to an unfortunate interference in American domestic politics, or what was taken as such, which caused some stir. He died in September 1908 and was succeeded by his nephew Lionel Edward (b. 1867) as 3rd baron. By a Spanish dancer, Josefa Duran de Ortega, known also as Pepita de Oliva, Mr Sackville-West, as the 2nd baron then was, had several children, and soon after his death one of these, calling himself Ernest Henri Jean Baptiste Sackville-West, claimed to be a lawful son and his father’s heir. He asserted that between 1863 and 1867 Sackville-West had married his mother. The case came before the English courts of law in 1909–1910, and it was decided that the children of this union were all illegitimate, as Pepita's husband, Jean Antonio Gabriel de Oliva, was alive during the whole period of his wife's connexion with Sackville-West.
SACO, a city of York county, Maine, U.S.A., on the Saco river,
and the Atlantic Ocean, opposite Biddeford, with which it is
connected by bridges, and 14 m. S.W. of Portland. Pop. (1890),
6075; (1900) 6122 (903 foreign-born); (1910) 6583. It is served
by the Boston & Maine railway, and is connected with Portland
by an electric line. The actual municipal limits include an area
of about 40 sq. m., but much of this is sparsely settled, and the
centre of settlement, or city proper, is about 5 m. above the
mouth of the Saco. The city has a public park (Pepperrell Park)
of 30 acres, the Dyer Library (1790), containing in 1908 16,000
volumes, and York Institute (established in 1866 and incorporated
in 1867), with a library of 5000 volumes in 1908; and is the seat
of Thornton Academy (co-educational), incorporated in 1181 1,
opened in 1813, but closed during 1848–1889 after the burning
of the old building. Old Orchard Beach, in the vicinity, extending
along the shore front of the township of Old Orchard (pop.
in 1900, 964) and part of the shore fronts of Saco and Scarboro,
is a popular summer resort; in August 1907 nearly all the hotels
were burnt, but others have since been built. At Saco the river
falls about 55 ft. and provides excellent water-power. The
city's principal manufactures are cotton goods and cotton-mill
machinery. Saco was settled as early as 1631, and was the
seat of the Gorges government from 1636 to 1653, when it
passed under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Until 1762
Saco and Biddeford formed one town or plantation—until
1718 under the name of Saco, and from 1718 to 1762 under
the name of Biddeford. In 1716 Sir William Pepperrell
acquired title to the principal part of what is now Saco,
in 1752 this was made a separate parish, and ten years later
it was incorporated as a separate township under the name of
Pepperellboro. In 1.779 the Pepperrell property was confiscated
as that of a loyalist, and in 1805 the name of the township was
changed to Saco. In 1867 Saco was chartered as a city.
SACRAMENT, in religion, a property or rite defined in the
Anglican catechism as “an outward and visible sign of an inward
and spiritual grace”; if the grace be allowed to be inherent
in the external symbolic thing or act as well as in the faithful
who 'receive or do it, this definition holds good not only for the
Latin Church, but for more primitive religions as well. In the
Greek Church the equivalent word is μυστήριον, a mystery, a
usage which is explained below.
The Latin word sacramentum originally meant any bodily or sensible thing, or an action, or a form of words solemnly endowed with a meaning and purpose which in itself it has not. Thus the money deposited by each of two litigants in a sacred precinct or with a priest, was 'called a sacrament. The winner of the suit got back his deposit, but the loser forfeited his to the god or to the winning party. In Livy it signifies the oath (q.v.) which soldiers' took among' themselves not to run away or desert. Pliny uses it similarly of the oath by which the Christians of Bithynia bound themselves at their solemn meetings not, to commit any act of wickedness. Tertullian (c. 160–240) uses it in both senses, of an oath, as in the passage of his treatise. About Spectacles, where he says that no Christian “passes over to the enemy's camp without throwing away his arm a without abandoning the standards and sacraments of his chief.” In the treatise To the Nations, i. 16, he speaks of “the sacraments of our religion,” intending, it would appear, the love-feast and Eucharist. So in the Apology, ch. vii., he speaks of “the sacrament of infanticide and of the eating of a murdered child and of incest following the banquet,” the crimes of which the Christians were commonly accused. In the work Against Marcion, iv. 34, he speaks of the sacrament of baptism and Eucharist. In the work against the Jews, ch. xi., he speaks of the letter Tau set in ink on the foreheads of the men of Jerusalem (Ezek. ix. 4), as “the sacrament of the sign,” i.e. of the cross; and in chap. xiii. of the same work he dwells on the sacrament of the wood prefigured in 2 Kings vi. 6. The stick with which Elisha made the iron to swim in that passage, and the wood which Isaac carried up the mountain for his own pyre “were sacraments reserved for fulfilment in the time of Christ.” In other words they were types, things which had a prophetic significance. In the same work, chap. x., he speaks of “the Sacrament of the Passion foreshadowed in prophecies.” In his work On the Soul, chap. xviii., the aeons and genealogies of the Gnostics are “the sacraments of heretical ideas.” In the work About the Crown, chap. iii., he describes how the faithful “take the sacrament of the Eucharist also in their meetings held before dawn.” Elsewhere he speaks of “the sacraments of water, oil, bread.” In the work Against Valentinians, chap. xxxix., he speaks of the “great sacrament of the name,” here rendering the Greek word μυστήριον, mystery. In, the tract On Monogamy, chap. xi., he speaks of “the sacrament of monogamy.” Elsewhere he talks of the “sacrament of faith,” and “of the Resurrection,” and “of human salvation,” and “of the Pascha,” and “of unction,” and “of the body of Christ.” Later Latin fathers use the word with similar vagueness, e.g. Augustine speaks of the salt administered to catechumens before baptism and of their exorcism as sacraments; and as late as 1129 Godefrid so calls the salt and water, oil and chrism, the ring and pastoral staff used in ordinations. But by this time the tendency was in the West to restrict the sense of the word. Thus Isidore Hispalensis, c. 630, in his book of Origins, vi. 19, recognized as sacraments baptism and the chrism, and the Body and Blood, and he writes thus: “Under the screen of corporeal objects a divine virtue of the sacraments in question secretly brings about salvation; wherefore they are called sacraments from their secret or sacred virtues.” Bernard (In coen. Dom. § 4, op. ii. 88) calls the rite of washing feet a sacrament, because without it we have no portion with Christ (John xiii.,8), and therefore it is necessary to salvation. Hugo de St Victor, c. 1120, in his work On the
