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Politics

Sir Philip Sidney occupied himself with politics and art after returning to England in 1575. He defended his father's administration of Ireland and opposed the French marriage, quarreling with the Earl of Oxford over it. As a Protestant, Sidney argued for assaults on Spain in the 1570s and 1580s. In 1585 he was appointed governor of Flushing in the Netherlands, where he urged bold action against Spain. In 1586 he joined a battle and was fatally shot in the thigh while aiding another wounded soldier, becoming a symbol of English nobility before his death at age 31.

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86 views2 pages

Politics

Sir Philip Sidney occupied himself with politics and art after returning to England in 1575. He defended his father's administration of Ireland and opposed the French marriage, quarreling with the Earl of Oxford over it. As a Protestant, Sidney argued for assaults on Spain in the 1570s and 1580s. In 1585 he was appointed governor of Flushing in the Netherlands, where he urged bold action against Spain. In 1586 he joined a battle and was fatally shot in the thigh while aiding another wounded soldier, becoming a symbol of English nobility before his death at age 31.

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Politics

Returning to England in 1575, Sidney met Penelope Devereux, the future Lady Rich; though much younger, she would inspire his famous sonnet sequence of the 1580s, Astrophel and Stella. Her father, the Earl of Essex, is said to have planned to marry his daughter to Sidney, but he died in 1576. In England, Sidney occupied himself with politics and art. He defended his father's administration of Ireland in a lengthy document. More seriously, he quarrelled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, probably because of Sidney's opposition to the French marriage, which de Vere championed. In the aftermath of this episode, Sidney challenged de Vere to a duel, which Elizabeth forbade. He then wrote a lengthy letter to the Queen detailing the foolishness of the French marriage. Characteristically, Elizabeth bristled at his presumption, and Sidney prudently retired from court.

Military activity
Both through his family heritage and his personal experience (he was in Walsingham's house in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre), Sidney was a keenly militant Protestant. In the 1570s, he had persuaded John Casimir to consider proposals for a united Protestant effort against the Roman Catholic Church and Spain. In the early 1580s, he argued unsuccessfully for an assault on Spain itself. In 1585, his enthusiasm for the Protestant struggle was given a free rein when he was appointed governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, he consistently urged boldness on his superior, his uncle the Earl of Leicester. He conducted a successful raid on Spanish forces near Axel in July, 1586.

Injury and death


Later that year, he joined Sir John Norris in the Battle of Zutphen. During the siege, he was shot in the thigh and died twenty-six days later, at the age of 31. According to the story, while lying wounded he gave his water-bottle to another wounded soldier, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine".[2] This became possibly the most famous story about Sir Phillip, intended to illustrate his noble character.[2] Sidney's body was returned to London and interred in St. Paul's Cathedral on 16 February 1587. Already during his own lifetime, but even more after his death, he had become for many English people the very epitome of a courtier: learned and politic, but at the same time generous, brave, and impulsive. Never more than a marginal figure in the politics of his time, he was memorialised as the flower of English manhood in Edmund Spenser's Astrophel, one of the greatest English Renaissance elegies.

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