CHAPTER VII

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

No two lives could form a more striking contrast than those of Francis Bacon and Philip Sidney. The one, living to see the world's recognition and admiration, for which he had toiled so long and wearily, taken from him at the end, and to see his sun set, amid shadows of gloom and disappointment; the other basking from his childhood, throughout his short life, in such "favour with man" as has been rare in any age, and when his sun "set at noonday," leaving passionate love and admiration behind him as his heritage for ever.

In an old MS. Psalter, now in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, we find this entry of his birth: "The nativitie of Phillippe Sydney, sonne and heire of S Henrie Sydney, Knighte, and the Lady Marie his wyfe, eldest daughter of John, duke of Northumb., was one Fryday in the morning, Annis R. Regis Philippi et Marie R. Regine primo et secundo et anno D'ni, milesimo quinqentessimo, quinquagesimo quarto. His god

fathers were the greate King, Phillippe, King of Spaine, and the noble John Russell, erle of Bedford. And his godmother, the most vertuous Ladie Jane, Duchesse of Northum., his grandmother."

Fair as was the prospect that opened before the child, born of noble and high-minded parents, in the beautiful old house of Penshurst, among the pleasant hills of Kent, there were dark shadows of the past to which the last entry in the baptismal register bore witness.

"The most vertuous Ladie Jane," alike godmother and grandmother to the little Philip, had seen her husband, her son Guildford, and her gentle daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey, pass in turn to their doom upon the scaffold, only one short year before the birth of her little grandson.

No gentler, more gracious lady in Elizabeth's time appears before us than Lady Jane's daughter, the Lady Mary Sidney, child of the stricken house of Northumberland, and sister to the ill-fated Guildford, and to the brilliant Court favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Philip's love for his parents, for Sir Henry Sidney (his bluff, honest, independent father), and for his sweet and kindly mother, was strong throughout his life, and it is a part of the romantic and picturesque completeness of that life that

father, mother, and son passed away within six months of one another.

A kindly and unselfish life must have been that of Lady Mary, willingly spent in the service of husband, children, and queen, and sacrificing even her beauty for the sake of Elizabeth, whom she tended through a severe attack of small-pox, which left the devoted nurse badly marked for life.

Philip was the eldest of seven children, of whom two died in infancy, and one, Ambrozia, in girlhood. His two brothers, Robert and Thomas, were both serving with him in the Netherlands at the time of his death, and his sister Mary, to whom he was devotedly attached, and who seems to have resembled him in many ways, married Henry, the Earl of Pembroke.

His father, Sir Henry, was one of the most faithful and least courtier-like of Elizabeth's servants. He had been Governor and companion to Edward VI. when Prince of Wales, and the boyking had died in his arms. The Queen trusted him, for none could mistrust the righteous dealing of the sturdy old knight, but he possessed few of the elegant courtesies the Queen loved, and she never showed him much personal favour. He held the offices in turn of Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Lord