Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester

“ Then there is Leicester Hospital, founded in the time of Richard II., as two guilds, in honour of the Virgin and St. George the Martyr, which, after the Reformation, was re-established under its present name by Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, as an almshouse for a master and twelve brethren, “being impotent or infirm men.” These last have been, in consequence of the improved value of the trust-funds, increased to twenty, and receive each an allowance of £80 per annum: the master has £400. ”

“ The first of Sidney's correspondents, whose letters are now offered to the public, in point of age, is his sister, the Dowager Countess of Sunderland, the eldest daughter of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and of Dorothy, the daughter of Henry, Earl of Northumberland. ”

“ She was the eldest of the eight daughters of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, of that name, by Dorothy, daughter of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Lord and Lady Leicester bore a high character for ‘integrity and refinement of breeding at the Court of Charles the First, while in private life they shone a bright example of domestic harmony.’ Lady Leicester was a provident as well as a tender mother, and she entertained early projects in the matter of an advantageous marriage for her daughter, while Dorothy was still very young. ”

“ His nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, and Count Maurice of Nassau, with a body of troops and a great procession of civil functionaries; were in readiness to receive him, and to escort him to the lodgings prepared for him.
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was then fifty-four years of age. There are few personages in English history whose adventures, real or fictitious, have been made more familiar to the world than his have been, or whose individuality has been presented in more picturesque fashion, by chronicle, tragedy, or romance. ”

“ His Unkle Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester (a man almost as much hated as his Nephew was loved) was sent over into the Low-Countries, with a well appointed Army, and large Commission, to defend the United Provinces against the Spanish Cruelty. Under him went Sir Philip Sidney, who had the Command of the cautionary Town of Flushing, and Castle of Ramekius, a Trust which he so faithfully discharged, that he turned the Envy of the Dutch Townsmen into Affection and Admiration. ”

“ He was to bring with him from that country a thousand men to serve against the Scots, and was himself named lieutenant-general under the Earl of Northumberland, who was to take command of the invading army. Before leaving for Dublin Strafford supported the claims of Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester [q. v.] , to the secretaryship about to be vacated by Sir John Coke, but Charles refused his request, and appointed the elder Vane. Strafford's advocacy of Leicester's candidature is mainly noticeable as a sign of his desire to be on good terms with the queen, who also favoured it. ”

“ Adieu unkind, where Skill is nothing worth.
He wrote moreover a witty Poem, entituled, The White Herring and the Red; and two Comedies, the one called Summer's last Will and Testament, and See me and see me not.
Sir PHILIP SIDNEY.
Sir Philip Sidney, the glory of the English Nation in his time, and pattern of true Nobility, in whom the Graces and Muses had their domestical habitations, equally addicted both to Arts and Arms, though more fortunate in the one than in the other. Son to Sir Henry Sidney, thrice Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Sisters Son to Robert Earl of Leicester ”

“ Mary Sidney is well enough. We will think over the matter. Command her to come to Court for this Whitsuntide, there is a chamber at her service. Now, I must to business. Stay if it suits you; you have more wits than all the rest of us put together. Yes, that is Leicester's step and voice.'
Philip knew better than to remain without express invitation to do so from his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. ”

“ He shared the literary and cultivated tastes of his family, without possessing the statesmanship of his uncle Sir Philip Sidney; his character was lacking in decision, and, as commonly befalls men of moderate views in times of acute party strife, he failed to win the confidence of either of the opposing parties. ”

“ When Leicester married the widowed Countess of Essex, the queen had him confined in a small fort in Greenwich Park, and would probably have sent him to the Tower, but that the Earl of Sussex dissuaded. Later, when Essex married Sir Philip Sidney's widow, [Pg 427] Walsingham's daughter, Elizabeth showed rage and chagrin in a degree only less than in the case of Leicester. One of her attendants wrote, "Yet she doth use it more temperately than was thought for, and, God be thanked, doth not strike at all she threats." ”

“ His son and heir Robert, fourth earl of Leicester, was born in 1649, summoned to the House of Lords as Baron Sidney of Penshurst by William III (11 July 1689) , and died 10 Nov. 1702 (Collins, i. 176) .
[Collins's Letters and Memorials of State, &c., 1746, 2 vols. fol. (commonly called the Sydney Papers) ; Doyle's Official Baronage, ii. 349.] ”

“ It was, perhaps, only natural that the elder man should be jealous of the younger, who had, when scarcely four-and-twenty, already gained a reputation for statesmanship at home and abroad. Brilliant as Leicester was, he was secretly conscious that there were heights which he had failed to reach, and that [Pg 107] his nephew, Philip Sidney, had won a place in the favour of his sovereign, which even the honest protest he had made against this marriage with the Duke of Anjou had failed to destroy ”

“ In 1578 the earl of Leicester entertained Elizabeth at Wanstead, Essex, with a masque, The Lady of the May, written for the occasion by Philip Sidney. But though Sidney enjoyed a high measure of the queen’s favour, he was not permitted to gratify his desire for active employment. He was already more or less involved in the disgrace of his uncle Leicester, following on that nobleman's marriage with Lettice, countess of Essex, when, in 1579, he had a quarrel on the tennis-court at Whitehall with the earl of Oxford. Sidney proposed a duel, which was forbidden by Elizabeth. ”

“ He set forth the condition of affairs in language that stripped truth of all dissembling, and implored her Majesty and her officers to let him do the work for which he had been sent. Like the king of the forest in the narrow confines of a cage, Sidney's fierce soul raged against the orders that kept his sword idle while the Spanish were wasting the land. [Pg 283] There is not a more pathetically tragic figure in history than that of the heroic Sidney in the power of the unworthy Queen of England and of the doubly unworthy Earl of Leicester. ”

“ He was nephew and presumptive heir to the earl of Leicester, by whom he was in a manner adopted; and thus patronized, his rapid advancement was anticipated as a matter of course.
It was the practice of that day for parents in higher life to dispose of their children in marriage at an age now justly accounted immature [75] ; and no sooner had young Sidney completed his fourteenth year than arrangements were made for his union with Anne Cecil, daughter of the secretary. Why the connexion never took place we do not learn: sir Henry Sidney in a letter to Cecil says, with reference to this affair ”

“ Sir Henry Sidney himself, the deputy whom she most favored and trusted, and continued longer in office than any other, supported as he was at court by the potent influence of Leicester and the steady friendship of Burleigh, had many causes offered him of vexation and-49-
-vol ii- discontent; and those who held inferior commands, and were less ably protected from the attacks of their enemies, experienced almost insupportable anxieties from counteractions, difficulties and hardships of every kind. Of these the unfortunate earl of Essex had his full share. ”

“ There never was a mother more anxious to settle her daughter in life than Lady Leicester, and many and most amusing are the passages in which, writing to her absent Lord, who was the Ambassador at Paris, she communicates her speculations, hopes, and disappointments on this subject: [2] and happy indeed she must have been, when at length one of the best and noblest youths of England, the young Lord Spencer, afterwards created Earl of Sunderland, declared himself her suitor. ”

“ Many persons deposed on oath to the Esher marriage. But Lettice, Leicester's widow, was unwilling that the lawfulness of her marriage should be questioned, and Robert Sidney, son of Leicester's and Warwick's sister Mary (wife of Sir Henry Sidney) , also resisted the claim. An information was filed in the Star-chamber charging Dudley, Sir Thomas Leigh (his father-in-law) , Dr. ”

“ In 1586, after an attempt (after Alençon's fashion) to seize the government for himself, Leicester returned to England, having accomplished nothing. What Elizabeth did not do was done by a crowd of young Englishmen who pressed over to the Netherlands to fight as volunteers for Dutch freedom. The best known of these was Sir Philip Sidney, whose head and heart alike seemed to qualify him for a foremost place amongst the new generation of Englishmen. Unhappily he was slain in battle near Zutphen. As he lay dying he handed a cup of water untasted to another wounded man. ”

“ Leicester did not encourage him to take service in the field. Nevertheless, on 6–7 July Sidney, with his friend Prince Maurice, effected a raid on Axel, a village in the Spaniards' hands only twenty miles from Flushing. The attack was made by night and in boats. Sidney showed great courage and alertness, and the garrison surrendered without striking a blow. After providing for the government of the town, Sidney joined the main body of the army, which was with Leicester at Arnhem, but he was soon ordered back to his post at Flushing. ”

“ In 1585, when Elizabeth resolved to support with an army the united provinces in their struggle with Spain, Sidney accompanied his brother Philip to Flushing (November) . His uncle, Leicester, the commander-in-chief, soon appointed him captain of a company of horse, and he saw much active service. Next year he was present at the battle outside Zutphen, when his brother Philip was fatally wounded, and he spent much time with Philip at Arnhem up to the time of his death, on 17 Oct. 1586. Leicester knighted him on 7 Oct., and he acted as chief mourner at his brother's funeral at St. ”

“ At the end of October Sidney had returned to court, apparently after promising to abstain from protests against the French marriage. Money was still scarce with him, and, with a view to increasing his narrow resources, his uncle Leicester procured for him at the end of 1580 the stewardship to the bishopric of Winchester. Subsequently he begged Lord Burghley to induce the queen to grant him 100l. ”

“ Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who soon acquired the chief ascendency in the administration, entered upon public life with all the advantages of birth and fortune. His father fell in the royal army, at the battle of Newbury, with those melancholy forebodings of danger from the victory of his own party, which filled the breasts of the more generous royalists, and which on the same occasion saddened the dying moments of Lord Falkland. His mother was Lady Dorothy Sidney, celebrated by Waller under the name of Saccharissa. ”

“ The grief which Sidney's death evoked has been rarely paralleled. It was accounted a sin for months afterwards for any gentleman of quality to wear gay apparel in London. From all classes came expressions of dismay. The queen was overwhelmed with sorrow, although she afterwards complained that Sidney invited death by his rashness (Naunton, p. 19) . ‘What perfection he was born unto, and how able he was to serve her majesty and his country, all men here almost wonder,’ wrote his uncle Leicester to Walsingham from the Hague eight days after his death. ”

“ Sidney at once handed it to the dying man with the famous words, ‘Thy necessity is yet greater than mine’ (Greville, p. 145; cf. Motley, ii. 50 seq., where the dates, given in the new style, are ten days later) .
From the camp Sidney was carried in Leicester's barge down the Yssel and the Rhine to Arnhem, and lodged in the house of a lady named Gruithuissens. His wife, although far advanced in pregnancy, hastened from Flushing to nurse him, and his brother Robert was a frequent visitor to the sick-chamber. The wound failed to heal, and ultimately mortified. ”

“ Leicester never appears in an amiable light except in connexion with his nephew, for whom his affection was not only sincere but ardent. A few extracts from a letter written by him to sir Thomas Heneage, captain of the queen's guards, giving an account of the action in which Sidney received his mortal wound, will illustrate this remark, while it records the gallant exploits of several of his companions in arms. ”

“ To the same period may doubtless be referred his poem in ‘dispraise of a courtly life’ (Davison, Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Bullen, i. 34) .
On 18 Oct. 1580 Sidney was at Leicester House, and thence addressed to his younger brother Robert, who was travelling abroad, an elaborate letter of counsel, in which he sketched a sensible method of studying history (Sydney Papers, i. 283–5; reprinted in Profitable Instructions for Travellers, 1633) . ”

“ On the opposite side stood Sir William Cecil, the advocate of an alliance with the Archduke Charles of Austria, and when, in the spring of 1561, the suspicious death of Leicester's wife threw a cloud over Leicester's prospects, Cecil seized the opportunity to remove Sidney from court, under a pretext that his presence was required in Wales. But his seclusion was of short duration. In April 1562 Sidney was despatched on a diplomatic mission to the court of France, with the object of mediating between the contending factions of Guise and Condé. ”