permitted egress to the smoke. A stone Staircase (indicated in the appended print) leads from the Hall to the Picture Gallery and the State Apartments. They are filled with family Portraits, all of which possess considerable interest, although few are of much worth. Among them are several of Sir Philip and Algernon Sidney; one of Sir Philip’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, to whom he addressed the “Arcadia,” and who is immortalised by Ben Jonson in his famous Epitaph to “the subject of all verse;” and one, by Lely, of the “Sacharissa” of the muse of Waller. A small Chamber in the Mansion contains, however, a few treasures of rarer value than all its copies of “fair women and brave men.” Among some curious family relics and records, is a lock of Sir Philip Sidney’s hair; it is of a pale auburn. A lock of the hair of the ill-fated Algernon is also with it; in tint it nearly resembles that of his illustrious great uncle.
But “Penshurst Place” is interesting chiefly because of its associations; and these are indeed of a high order. Our history of the family is, necessarily, brief. Until the reign of Edward the Sixth, the Manor of Peneshurste[62] had received a rapid succession of lords. In the reign of Edward the First, it was in the possession of Sir Stephen de Peneshurste, or Pencestre—“a very learned man,” according to Harris, and a “famous warden of the Cinque Ports.” In that of Edward the Second, it was the property of Sir John de Pulteney, who “had licence to embattle it,”—and who was four times Lord Mayor of London. In that of Richard the Second, it was sold to the Regent Duke of Bedford. On his death, his brother, “the good Duke Humphrey,” inherited; and on his death—by murder, at Bury, in 1446—the estate reverted to the Crown, and was granted by Henry the Sixth to his kinsman, Humphrey de Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. In his family it remained until the reign of Henry the Eighth, when, by the attainder of Edward Duke of Buckingham, it fell again to the Crown. By Edward the Sixth, it was given to Sir Ralph Fane; but on his execution, as an accomplice of the Protector Somerset, it was by letters patent granted to Sir William Sidney (one of the heroes of Flodden Field) and his heirs—Sir William being lineally descended from Sir William Sidney, Knight, Chamberlain to the Second Henry, “With whom he came out of Anjou.” In 1553, his son, Sir Henry, inherited. Sir Henry was from infancy bred at Court, being “a companion, and many times a bedfellow,” to the young Prince, afterwards Edward the Sixth, by whom he was knighted. He was twice Lord Deputy of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth—a period of trouble and continual danger; during which he discharged his duty as an energetic soldier, a sound practical reformer, and a merciful man. The Historians of his time describe him as “of a very public spirit, of great abilities, modest, pious, and patient; and in his younger years, for comeliness and beauty, the ornament of the Court.”
Sir Philip Sidney—styled “the Incomparable”—was his eldest son; and at Penshurst he was born, on the 29th of November, 1554. His life was one scene of romance from its commencement to its close. His early years were spent in travel; and on his return, he was married to the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, a lady of many accomplishments, and of “extraordinary handsomeness;” but his heart was given to another. The Lady Penelope Devereux won it, and kept it until he fell on the field of Zutphen. Family regards had forbad their marriage; but she was united to the immortal part of him, and that contract has not been yet dissolved. She is still the Philoclea of the “Arcadia,” and Stella in the Poems of Astrophel. It is unnecessary to follow, in detail, the course of Sir Philip Sidney’s life. There is no strange inconsistency to reason off, no stain to clear, no blame to talk away. We describe it when we name his accomplishments. We remember it as we would a dream of uninterrupted glory. His learning, his beauty, his chivalry, his grace, shed a lustre on the most glorious reign recorded in the English annals. England herself, “by reason of the wide-spread fame of Sir Philip Sidney,” rose exalted in the eyes of foreign nations. He was the idol, the darling, of his own. For, with every sort of power at his command, it was his creed to think all vain but affection and honour, and to hold the simplest and cheapest pleasures the truest and most precious. The only displeasure he ever incurred at Court, was when he vindicated the rights and independence of English Commoners in his own gallant person, against the arrogance of English Nobles in the person of the Earl of Oxford. For a time, then, he retired from the Court, and sought rest in his loved simplicity. He went to Wilton; and there, for the amusement of his dear sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, he wrote the “Arcadia,” between the years 1579 and 1581.[63] Again, however, he returned to Court, and his Queen seized every opportunity to do him honour. He received her smiles with the same high and manly gallantry, the same plain and simple boldness, with which he had taken her frowns. In the end, Elizabeth—who, to preserve this “jewel of her crown,” had forcibly laid hands on him when he projected a voyage to America with Sir Francis Drake, and laid her veto on his quitting England, when he was offered the crown of Poland—could not restrain his bravery in battle, when circumstances called him there. At Zutphen, on the 22nd of September, 1586, he received a mortal wound.[64]
We may place implicit faith in the testimony of all the contemporaries of Sir Philip Sidney—and by all of them he is described as very near perfection; their praises must have been as sincere as they were hearty; for his fortune was too poor to furnish him with the means to purchase them with other than gifts of kindly zeal, affectionate sympathy, cordial advice, and generous recommendations to more prosperous men. From Spenser himself we learn, that Sidney
“First did lift my muse out of the floor.”
In his dedication of the “Ruins of Time” to Sidney’s sister, he speaks of her brother as “the Hope of all learned men, and the Patron of my young Muse.”—“He was,” writes Camden, the great glory of his family, the great hope of mankind, the most lively pattern of virtue, and the darling of the learned world.” Sir Philip dying without issue, he was succeeded by his brother, Sir Robert, created Lord Sidney of Penshurst, and afterwards Earl of Leicester, by James I. He died at Penshurst in July 1626, and was succeeded by his son, Robert. “Though never of their faction,” he remained in retirement at Penshurst during the domination of the Parliament and the rule of the Protector, and died there in November 1677, in the 82nd year of his age. His eldest son succeeded to the title and estates, and lived in troubled times the life of an easy gentleman. Not so the second son—the famous scion of the Sidneys, whose name is scarcely less renowned in history than that of his great-uncle, Sir Philip. Algernon Sidney was born at Penshurst in 1621. He had scarcely reached the age of manhood when he was called upon to play his part in the mighty drama then acting before the
