and lands of Penshurst, in Kent, famous in the hands of his descendants. But Sir William Sidney's progress, though surer and more honest, was less rapid and brilliant than that of John Dudley, his associate in King Henry's service, and his junior by nineteen years. John Dudley so successfully pushed his fortunes under Henry that in 1543 he was made Baron de L'Isle and Lord High Admiral of England; and in 1547 he was appointed one of the executors under the King's will, to administer the affairs of the realm during Edward's minority. Of the other executors Lord Hertford was chief, and when Hertford contrived to be made Lord Protector and Duke of Somerset, Dudley aided his ambitious schemes on condition that he also should be raised in rank and invested with much arbitrary power. Dudley was created Earl of Warwick. How his show of friendship with Lord Protector Somerset soon gave way to open feud and desperate intrigue, until by Somerset's overthrow he acquired absolute control in 1550, and made himself Duke of Northumberland in 1551, need not be detailed. Here it mainly concerns us to remember that for a while he was the most powerful man in England, labouring most unscrupulously for his own aggrandisement and, in so far as selfish ambition left room for fatherly affection, for the advancement of his sons and daughters. Of these, besides one who died young, there were seven-John, Ambrose, Robert, Guildford, Henry, Mary, and Catherine-whose ages in 1547 ranged His Parents and Other Kinsfolk. 9 from nineteen to eleven. Edward the Sixth was not yet ten when in that year he became king. His sister Elizabeth was fourteen, and the other sister, Mary, was one-and-thirty. Henry the Eighth's younger children and the children of Dudley had been playmates; and close friendship continued after the change of monarchs, especially, it would seem, between little Lady Mary Dudley, who was to be the mother of Sir Philip Sidney, and the Princess Elizabeth. There was yet closer intimacy between this princess's brother and Philip's other parent. Sir Henry Sidney, who was born on the 20th of July, 1529, tells us that at the age of nine he was appointed henchman to King Henry, and he adds: "I was by that most famous king put to his sweet son, Prince Edward, my most dear master, prince and sovereign; my near kinswoman being his only nurse, my father being his chamberlain, my mother his governess, and my aunt by my mother's side in such place as, among meaner personages, is called a dry-nurse-for, from the time he left sucking, she continually lay in bed with him, so long as he remained in women's government. As the prince grew in years and discretion, so grew I in favour and liking of him." Henry Sidney's mother, it may be noted, was Anne, a daughter of Sir William Pagenham, who died in 1543. Henry was the only son, but he had four sisters, all of whom married well. Mary, the eldest, became the wife of Sir William Dormer. The husbands of the other three, Lucy, Anne, and Frances, were Sir James Harrington, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and Thomas Rat LUDLOW CASTLE, SHROPSHIRE (FROM AN GRAVING). THE BARONIAL HALL OF PENSHURST PLACE EDMUND SPENSER (FROM AN ENGRAVING BY W. B. SCOTT, 1839) 196 THE MINSTRELS' GALLERY IN THE BARONIAL HALL MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (FROM FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (FROM AN ENGRAV 66 66 . OLD EN ING IN LODGE'S PORTRAITS"). THE GATE AT WHITEHALL (FROM AN ENGRAVING BY G. VERTUE) SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (FROM THE MINIATURE BY ISAAC AMBROSE DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK (FROM AN CENTRAL TOWERS, NONSUCH HOUSE HEARTH IN THE OLD HALL AT PENSHURST ROBERT DEVEREUX, SECOND EARL OF ESSEX (FROM . PAGE 150 178 186 198 210 220 232 276 282 320 322 335 340 · 350 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: TYPE OF ENGLISH CHIVALRY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY. T HE chivalry that grew up in Europe as part of the feudal system, giving it much of its strength and most of its adornment, was never so firmly established in England as in France or in some other countries. And among Englishmen the mediaval institution was broken down during the Wars of the Roses, about a century before Sir Philip Sidney was addressed by Edmund Spenser, and honoured by all whose honour was worth having in his day, as the president Of nobless and of chivalry. The chivalry of the Elizabethan age, of which Sidney was the most complete and conspicuous type, was in some respects out of date, in others immature. It strove to conform to traditions and to follow methods unsuited to the altered and altering arrangements of society in sixteenth-century England. Adapting itself as best it could to these arrangements, it found or sought its ideals in the past; yet all its dignity came from the efforts of its heroes to help on the great change from mediæval to modern ways of thought and action, and to reshape the old ideals in forms proper for the future. Its successes and failures, its illusions and exploits, are as distinctly characteristic of the transition period in English history during which it showed itself as were the political and religious crises, the intellectual and literary upheavals, contemporary and intimately connected with it. The earlier chivalry was the crown of feudalism. The military service that sovereigns claimed as a mere matter of duty from their tenants and vassals was in it supplemented by the like or the more laborious and more ennobling service that knights and courtiers voluntarily rendered, in excess of loyalty to their masters or of fondness for martial deeds and for the fame thus won. The knight's devotion to his immediate lord was the first motive, and thereby kingdoms and principalities were set up and enlarged, or crippled and overturned. In England, all that chivalry did in this direction was to maintain and expand the power |