No. 79.
SIR HENRY SIDNEY.
Full length. Black dress. White ruff. High hat on table.
HE was the son of Sir William Sidney, Chamberlain to Henry VIII., and was born at Penshurst, a royal grant from Edward VI. to the family.
Henry became the bosom friend of the young King, who knighted him, and sent him as Ambassador to France when only twenty-one. Sir Henry was much admired and esteemed at the Courts of France and England. His friend, King Edward, expired in his arms. He also found favour in the eyes of Queen Mary, after whose husband he named his son Philip. She made him Vice-Treasurer and general governor of the royal revenues in Ireland, also Lord Deputy of that country, where his administration was more than commonly popular, considering the state of the times. In the reign of Elizabeth he was appointed Lord President of Wales, and he placed his son Philip at school at Shrewsbury, so as to be near him. The boy was delicate in health, and extant letters prove his father’s tender solicitude for the bodily and mental education of his first-born. Sir Henry Sidney married Lady Mary Dudley, the daughter of the Duke of Northumberland—a woman of ‘rare merit.’ Later on in years, when leading ‘a quiet and contented life at home,’ a proposal was made to him to resume the government of Ireland, on which subject he consulted his son Philip: would he accompany him with the hope of succeeding to the post when he should vacate it? etc. etc., but he made so many stipulations and conditions to the Queen, dependent on his acceptance, that the matter fell through, probably from the fact of Elizabeth declining to be dictated to, though here we speak without book. Sir Henry Sidney shone in domestic as in public life, and his wife was worthy of her husband. They both died in 1586, within a few months of each other, Sir Henry being buried at Penshurst, though his heart was lodged at Ludlow.
No. 80.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.