Philip Sidney 1554-1586

Sir Philip Sidney was born in 1554 in Penshurst, Kent. He was born into one of the noblest families of England. His father, Sir Henry Sidney, was the governor of Ireland. His mother was the sister of the earl of Leicester. Philip was named after his godfather, Philip II, the king of Spain.

When Sidney was 10 years old he entered Shrewsbury School, a public boarding school for boys. After that he went to Oxford and studied there, but he left the university without a degree. To complete his education he traveled through Europe. Here, he met many of the most important people of that time. When he was in France, he witnessed the massacres on St. Bartholomew’s Day (24 August 1572). Within a month almost 50.000 French protestants (Hugenots) were killed by French Catholics. Sidney, who came from a protestant family, became even more protestant and wanted to save Europe from this Roman Catholic menace. He wanted to be a man of action, whose deeds would affect the future of his country. When he got back to England, he went to Queen Elizabeth I straight away and asked her to do something about the religious situation in Europe. The Queen, however, found him a bit too zealous and sent him on diplomatic missions. In 1580 he was even sent away from the court. The reason probably was that he had publicly opposed Queen Elisabeth when she was making marriage arrangements with the (Catholic) Duke of Anjou (later: Henry III of France).

Besides being a diplomat and statesman, Sidney was also interested in literature. He was a well known patron of famous poets like Edmund Spenser. But, Sidney himself was also a poet and writer. When, in 1580, he lived with his sister for a while, he wrote The Arcadia. It was a prose romance that he wrote for his sister, Mary Herbert, the countess of Pembroke. Around this time he also wrote The Defense of Poesy, a strong argument for the dignity and high moral value of imaginative literature, whether verse or prose. He also wrote a sonnet cycle, Astrophil and Stella. These sonnets are probably based on his relationship with Penelope Devereux, a woman he wanted to marry in 1576. However, they could not marry because this marriage was no good for the family interests and Penelope soon married someone else.

In 1585, Sidney was appointed governor of Flushing, in the Low Countries. Here he helped the Low Countries in their war against Spain. So Sidney was fighting against his own godfather who was then still the king of Spain. During the Battle of Zutphen in 1586, he was shot and was taken to Arnhem to recover. But his injuries were too severe and within a month he died. Sir Philip Sidney was then 32 years old. Directly after his death, stories about his heroic actions on the battlefield started to spread. The whole of England mourned for him. He was very famous and beloved among the English people and was given a very impressive funeral procession. He is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.