He was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and
President of Wales, a person of
Great parts, and of no mean grace
with the Queen; his mother was sister to my Lord of Leicester, from
whence we may conjecture how the father stood up in the sphere of
honour and employments, so that his descent was apparently noble on
both sides; and for his education, it was such as travel and the
University could afford none better, and his tutors infuse; for,
after an incredible proficiency in all the spheres of learning, he
left the academical for that of the Court, whither he came by his
uncle's invitation, famed after by noble reports of his
accomplishments, which, together with the state of his person,
framed by a natural propensity to arms, soon attracted the good
opinions of all men, and was so highly praised in the esteem of the
Queen, that she thought the Court deficient without him; and
whereas, through the fame of his desert, he was in election for the
kingdom of Pole, {58} she refused to further his preferment, it was
not out of emulation of advancement, but out of fear to lose the
jewel of her time. He married the daughter and sole heir of Sir
Frances Walsingham, the Secretary of State, a lady destined to the
bed of honour, who, after his deplorable death at Zutphen, in the
Low Countries, where he was at the time of his uncle Leicester's
being there, was remarried to the Lord of Essex, and, since his
death, to my Lord of St. Albans, all persons of the sword, and
otherwise of great honour and virtue.
They have a very quaint conceit of him, that Mars and Mercury fell
at variance whose servant he should be; and there is an
epigrammatist that saith that Art and Nature had spent their
excellences in his fashioning, and, fearing they could not end what
they had begun, they bestowed him up for time, and Nature stood mute
and amazed to behold her own mark; but these are the particulars of
poets.
Certain it is he was a noble and matchless gentleman, and it may be
said justly of him, without these hyperboles of faction, as it was
of Cato Uticensis, that he seemed to be born only to that which he
went about, VIR SATILIS INGENII, as Plutarch saith it; but to speak
more of him were to make them less.
WALSINGHAM.
Sir Francis Walsingham, as we have said, had the honour to be Sir
Philip Sidney's father-in-law; he was a gentleman at first, of a
good house, and of a better education, and from the University
travelled for the rest of his learning. Doubtless he was the only
linguist of his times, how to use his own tongue, whereby he came to
be employed in the chiefest affairs of State.
He was sent Ambassador to France, and stayed there LEGAR long in the
heat of the civil wars, and at the same time that Monsieur was here
a suitor to the Queen; and, if I be not mistaken, he played the very
same part there as since Gondomar did here.
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