(1554-1586 A. D.)
When Mary Tudor was Queen of England, and after she had become the wife of Philip II. of Spain, there was born at "Penshurst Place," in the valley of the Medway, the immortal Philip Sidney.
His mother's family were the powerful house of Dudley, and were among the noblest in the land. The Sidneys were of high birth too,—not so exalted as the Dudleys in point of lineage, but of impregnable honor and integrity.
The little Philip's youth was spent under what would seem to have been very happy circumstances. While he was yet only four years of age, Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, and recalled the Sidneys from the social and political exile to which her sister Mary had condemned them.
Philip's father, Sir Henry Sidney, was made Lord Deputy of Ireland, and his mother became lady-in-waiting to the queen. Then, too, they owned the beautiful and historic home, Penshurst Place, and had powerful friends at court.
But there was another side to the picture. The Sidneys were not rich; and holding the high position they did, they were obliged to live in a way they could ill afford. This was bad enough; but, worse still, Philip's affectionate parents were forced to spend many years of their married life apart from each other and from their children. The mother was, for the most part, at Whitehall or at Hampton Court with the queen, and the father in turbulent, rebellious Ireland; while the children were, perforce, left at home in the care of servants.
Though his loving father and mother were rarely at Penshurst, the little Philip lived very happily there with his brothers and sisters.
He soon found other companions too,—companions who fired his young blood and filled his boyish heart with dreams that were forever to haunt him. Under the great trees at Penshurst he lay on the grass, by the hour, and pored over stories of bygone days of chivalry. As he lay thus and read, the present would fade from him, and the past with all its glamour and its romance would steal up about him and claim him for its own. The great trees that clashed their boughs together in the wind became warriors struggling with each other; the blast of a hunting-horn from the forest near by was Roland's call at Roncesvalles, while the echoes that repeated the strain again and again were the answering clarions of Charlemagne. Little delicate Philip Sidney no longer lay on the grass in sunny England; in coat-of-mail and golden spurs he followed the heroes of old,—now with the lion-hearted king at Arsur; now with triumphant Godfrey on the walls of Jerusalem!
But Philip could not always read and dream; in a short time came the reality of school-days and boyish struggles. But though he was called away from the chivalric companionship of the knights of old, the impression made upon his mind by their courage and fortitude and devotion to duty ever after ran, like a thread of gold, through the warp and woof of his character.
During the brief reign of Edward VI., Sir Henry Sidney had been nicknamed "the only odd man and paragon of the court." The same stanch virtues that made him "odd" in Edward's time rendered him a man apart at the fawning, flattering, self-seeking court of Queen Elizabeth.