With Spurs of Gold: Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds

by Frances Nimmo Greene; Dolly Williams Kirk

Throughout all his varied experiences, public and private, he did not once relinquish his double hope of aiding the Netherlands and crippling the overshadowing power of Spain. Still did he implore help for the oppressed. Long did he carry in his heart a picture of the queen—whom he adored in spite of her unworthiness—as the zealous and devoted champion of a great cause. But Elizabeth was no zealot, nor could she be made one. When Sidney at length realized that the queen could not be induced to move in the cause of the Netherlands, he made up his mind to go as a volunteer to the assistance of William, Prince of Orange, ruler of that country.

The idea had to be abandoned, however, for a while; for Sir Henry Sidney—still too honest to please the queen—was again having stormy times with her Majesty, and appealed to his son to assist him in bringing her to a right view of his Irish policy. Sidney espoused his father's cause with his characteristic boldness. Shortly after his arrival at court he was met face to face by the Earl of Ormond,—a bitter enemy to his father, and the man who had traduced Sir Henry to the queen. Ormond approached Sidney with a suave and condescending greeting, but the young courtier only stared at him coldly for a minute, then turned his back squarely on him. As Ormond was one of the peers of the realm, and Philip Sidney but a plain commoner, this was a most daring act. But this was not the limit of his daring. Incensed at the injustice done his father, Sidney indited a most memorable letter to the queen, which was at once a masterly defence of Sir Henry and a trenchant attack on the queen's favorite, Ormond. Strange to say, Queen Elizabeth seemed to be influenced by Sidney's plain and fearless statements, for she sometime thereafter treated his father with more consideration.

But a greater trouble than that in connection with his father's business now stirred the passionate Sidney to the depths. The Duke d'Alençon, who had become the Duke of Anjou, renewed his proposition of marriage to the English queen. Sidney despised the private character of the duke, and he had, besides, come to object to the proposed alliance for deep and patriotic reasons; so he opposed the projected union with all the fearless strength that was his.

As by far the greater number of Elizabeth's advisers approved of the match, and the queen herself inclined to it, Sidney's position soon made him unpopular with both queen and court. Another thing happened about this time that rendered his relations at court exceedingly strained. The Earl of Leicester's secret marriage with the widowed Countess of Essex, a twelvemonth before, now came out in a storm of gossip, and threw the jealous queen into a rage. Leicester was dismissed from court; and Philip Sidney, as his nephew, though not actually exiled from the queen's presence, received treatment at her hands that was far more galling to his proud spirit than would have been dismissal.

Nothing could have been more humiliating to Sidney's highstrung and sensitive temperament than to be kept dangling about a court where the queen turned but cold glances upon him, and where her nobles were permitted to slight him, after the usual manner of courtiers who "kick whom royalty kicks, and hug whom royalty hugs."

Philip Sidney was a most unusual courtier. He had more than once held out a manly hand to one who had come under her Majesty's disfavor, but whom he regarded as stanch and deserving; and he had not failed to condemn where she smiled, if he felt that condemnation was deserved.

With his great patron dismissed from royal favor, and London full of gay French and English courtiers who looked upon him as an enemy, Philip Sidney stood almost alone. Yet was he in no whit daunted, nor did he yield one hair's breadth of the high ground he had taken. His was that finer courage that can dare the whole world for a principle and stand alone upon the right.

As may be imagined, this independence of spirit was most distasteful to the vain and fickle queen; but Sidney's grace and talents and personal beauty rendered him a courtier with whom she was unwilling to dispense. The queen had favored him for these lesser gifts, but the great heart of the English people loved him for the chivalric spirit she valued not, and for the indomitable manliness that would not truckle—not even to the queen.

During this period of her Majesty's displeasure toward him, Sidney was often stung to the quick by petty slights from his fellow-courtiers, but on one occasion the offender went too far. The brutal but powerful Earl of Oxford—head of the party who favored the proposed marriage—had long been a rival of Sidney's in the queen's favor, and there was no love lost between them.

One day at Whitehall, as Philip Sidney and some of his friends were engaged in a game of tennis, the Earl of Oxford entered the court, uninvited, and demanded a part in the game. The presence of a number of French courtiers as lookers-on and listeners led him to assume a tone that was even more arrogant and offensive than was usual with him.