John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset

In 1784, Dorset moved to Paris to serve as British ambassador to France. His official role was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.^[5][6]

On 16 July 1789, two days after the

There is no official record of Dorset's recall but he is known to have been in Paris from the beginning of 1789 until 8 August that year when he left on leave and returned to England.[6] He did not return to France and was temporarily replaced by his Embassy Secretary, Lord Robert Stephen FitzGerald (1765–1833; son of James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster), as Minister Plenipotentiary. New credentials were delivered by Dorset's official successor, Earl Gower, on 20 June 1790. Dorset's credentials were terminated on 29 June 1790.^[6]

There is a story that, as the revolution began, Dorset was planning what might have become the first international cricket tour by forming an England team to play matches in France.^[8] His team, said to have been captained by William Yalden, reportedly assembled at Dover on 10 August but met the Duke coming the other way and the tour was cancelled.^[9][10] According to John Major in More Than A Game, "the whole story is nonsense".^[11] Dorset had written to Leeds on 16 July and had already warned other British residents to leave Paris so, as Major points out, he would hardly have invited a cricket team to come to France at the time of such a crisis.^[12]

Back in England, Dorset's public life continued in the post of

Dorset was a notorious womaniser. He had an affair with Anne Parsons, the influential mistress of the Prime Minister, who had divorced his own wife for adultery and planned to marry Parsons until he discovered her infidelity with Dorset.^[14][15]

Dorset's best-known and most enduring mistress was the Venetian ballerina

In 1790, after returning from France, Dorset married twenty-three-year-old Arabella Diana Cope (1767–1825), daughter and co-heiress of Sir Charles Cope, 2nd Baronet, and stepdaughter of Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool.^[22] Dorset and Arabella had one son together, George John Frederick, who was born on 15 November 1793, and two daughters, Lady Mary Sackville, born on 30 July 1792, and Lady Elizabeth Sackville, born on 11 August 1795. The Duke died in 1799, aged 54, and left a life interest in his estates and free disposition thereof (in case of the death of their young son) to his wife. At his death, Arabella was thus a very wealthy heiress and from 1799 until her own death in 1825, Arabella, Duchess of Dorset (as she preferred to be known) controlled the Sackville estates and wealth in trust for their son. She remarried his friend, Charles Whitworth, in 1801, who became 1st Earl Whitworth, but had no further issue.

George John Frederick became the 4th Duke of Dorset on his father's death at the family seat,

Lady Mary Sackville had married firstly Other Windsor, 6th Earl of Plymouth (1789–1833) on 5 August 1811 and secondly her first husband's stepfather William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst on 25 May 1839. She died childless on 20 July 1864, leaving her estates to her sister Countess De La Warr and her heirs male.

The Countess De La Ware was created Baroness Buckhurst in her own right (a title later inherited by a younger son Reginald who is ancestor of the present Earl De La Warr). Another line stemming from this lady is that of the

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