Also I think Algernon Sidney would, if made to understand it, be very pleased that the brief illness of a learned lady should be passed in writing a pamphlet (closest 17th century approximation to a Tumblr post) celebrating his life and principles.
Tell us about Algernon Sidney. Is he like Philip Sidney?
He is his great-nephew and people said they looked alike! You be the judge:
I have been reading articles about what they have in common: they shared a similar ideal of what it meant to be an English gentleman (and, yeah, no prizes for guessing where Algernon picked it up). But they lived in very different times, and impulsive heroism was arguably less rewarded in the 17th century.
He doesn't look red-headed in this picture but he was sometimes described as such; I think it must have been sort of auburn. (Philip does though!)
Cut for very long post, and also for unfiltered though outdated political opinions. Although some of 'em I wish were less relevant today.
Also I will be using the word republican, with a lowercase r, in the sense it has borne since the Romans first looked after the public thing--a word to which no party of autocracy and strongmanship will ever have any legitimate claim; please do not be confused.
Also I attempt to use New Style dating throughout but am not in a condition for mathematics, so who knows really.
Since you are acquainted with Sir Philip, I'll begin with the Sidney family. The family tree in the front of Algernon's biography, The Porcupine, reads like a roll-call of English history, a multi-generational, intermarried tangle of Sidneys, Dudleys, Percies, Spencers (with a C, as in Diana), Nevilles, etc. etc. The famous Sir Philip was the elder brother of Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester. Not to be confused with the famous Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favorite of Elizabeth I, who may or may not have pushed his wife down the stairs; he died without an heir and the title was re-created for Robert Sidney, who was Dudley's sister's son. (Philip and Robert's sister Mary is remembered in literary history as the Countess of Pembroke, poet and translator.)
This Robert Sidney was a politician, soldier, and intellectual, patron of poets and musicians at the family home, beautiful Penshurst Place (celebrated in verse by Ben Jonson, and in film by apparently quite a lot of period dramas). Robert had eleven children, including another literary Mary, Lady Mary Wroth. Upon Robert's death in 1626, he was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, also named Robert. This Robert, second Earl of Leicester, was also a politician/statesman/diplomat, and like other members of his family was a person of wide reading and thought.
I'm laying so much emphasis on the Sidney family because Algernon's father (and, to some extent, his grandfather) were particularly important figures in his intellectual development; for instance, a commonplace-book of notes and reflections on topics such as Roman history and government was passed down across the three generations. And also because I want you to understand just how privileged these people are: political power, courtly glamor, aesthetic taste, intellectual cultivation--Penshurst had these like other houses have mice. (Penshurst probably also had mice.) That's where Algernon is coming from. The idea that he, personally, should have a say in the direction of the nation came very naturally; the generalization from himself to the People (however abstract) was a step not everyone took.
Robert the Second Earl married Lady Dorothy Percy (daughter, as I mentioned in the other post, of the great Northumberland family) and they had eleven surviving children. The eldest son, born in 1619, was Philip (I told you these people reuse names!), who I have just learned had an illegitimate daughter named Philadelphia Shrimpton. (I am unfair: her maiden name was Saunders; she voluntarily chose to marry a Colonel Shrimpton.) The second son, born in 1623, was our Algernon. Although not the heir, he seemed to have a particularly close bond with his father, with whom he shared intellectual interests, and I've always wondered if this fact shaped his distrust of monarchical primogeniture. No proof though. It did definitely shape his relationship with his elder brother: they did not get along at all. Philip seems to have been quite hard to like, although I admit that I see him mostly through Algernon's eyes.
Algernon grew up in an England (and a Britain) increasingly divided by politics and religion. The Sidneys were historically staunchly Protestant and more or less Puritan-leaning, but in Algernon's early youth this by no means prevented the Earl his father from being politically influential. In fact he was made ambassador to Paris in 1636, and took Philip and Algernon with him--which must have contributed to their education and certainly shaped Algernon's understanding of diplomacy and statecraft. Besides this education in life, he did not attend a school or university but was probably tutored by the rector of Penshurst, who of course was intelligent and distinguished. Neighbors included the Vane family, of whom Henry Vane the Younger (ten years older than Algernon) will pop up again, and one Sir Robert Filmer, of whom much more anon.
All this was during the period of the King's Personal Rule (1629-1640). I cannot give a full history of the English Civil War here--or the English Revolution, as historians who are not cowards call what it led to--but suffice it to say King Charles I spent several years ruling without calling a Parliament (not at this time a fully representative body by any means, but often a check on royal power) and doing all the things you'd expect a King with unchecked power to do. Although not raising taxes: not legally at least, since only Parliament could do this, although you can bet Charles dug up every obscure source of income he could think of (and you can also probably work out for yourself just how popular this was with those invited to pay). Charles leaned High Church--which of course in the minds of his detractors meant he was practically Catholic, which meant all sorts of no good to Protestant England. More repugnant to modern sensibilities was his effort to impose religious uniformity on his whole realm, especially on Scotland, where he eventually came to enforce unpopular liturgy with an army. Here we rejoin Algernon's father, advising the King not to do this. It did not go very well, and with a Scottish army coming into England, the King was forced in 1640 to call another Parliament. This one would not be dismissed so easily: it came to be known as the Long Parliament. Algernon Sidney was 17.
Civil war now divided England, the King against his Parliament, and Algernon took up arms on behalf of what he believed to be the source of authority within this political pairing--the Parliament. He quickly became a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry, and was seriously wounded at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, a Parliamentarian victory not far from York. Perhaps due to these wounds (although I don't know this for sure), he soon left soldiering and was elected in 1646 to the ongoing Long Parliament. Although a courageous and reasonably successful soldier, it was as a politician--a man of words--that Algernon really made his mark.
The Wikipedia biography here has three consecutive sentences of which the main verb is "opposed." Algernon opposed compromise with the King; why shed so much blood only to accept an unsatisfactory settlement? He opposed Pride's Purge, which (contrary to what everyone who hears of it for the first time thinks) was named after its main proponent, Thomas Pride, who was genuinely called that; this action "purged" the Long Parliament of those moderates who were ready to negotiate with the King, leaving what was referred to as the Rump Parliament. Although not one of these moderates, it seems Sidney saw the action for what it was, the beginnings of a military coup by the increasingly influential Oliver Cromwell and his associates. They planned and carried out the trial of King Charles, in a special court upon the unprecedented charges of treason against the English people. Charles was found guilty and, on 30 January 1649, executed by beheading. Sidney opposed this too, apparently concerned that it was not legal, as well as that it was simply a bad idea. (And indeed it did put republican England immediately at odds with almost all its neighbors.) Nevertheless, once the deed was done Sidney would defend it for the rest of his life, calling it "the justest and bravest action that ever was done in England, or anywhere."
England was declared a commonwealth on 19 May, with the House of Commons as its sole authority, although from a practical perspective the increasing influence of Cromwell and the army quickly became obvious. Algernon Sidney was now a citizen of a republic, and he was the most devoted and passionate citizen imaginable. As an MP he used his youthful experience in foreign affairs in aid of England's war with Holland (ironically one of the few other republics in Europe). In 1653, as Sidney's neighbor and friend Henry Vane the Younger was preparing a plan to prolong the Parliament and somewhat to reform elections (for instance getting rid of rotten boroughs), Cromwell decided the Parliament had sat long enough and dismissed it by force. Sidney had to be physically thrown out.
Now effectively a military dictator, Cromwell governed England until his death in 1658. Sidney considered his rule illegitimate and remained aloof from politics during this period. His first surviving writing, "Of Love" (in which he waxes so eloquent about Platonism that he feels the need to stop and explain that he is in fact heterosexual), dates from this period. According to Wikipedia he also put on a production of Julius Caesar in which he played Brutus, the reluctant yet noble tyrannicide (against, note, not a king but a warlord). Algernon Sidney was not a famously subtle man.
In 1659, after the death of Oliver Cromwell and a brief attempt to rule by his less effectual son Richard, the Rump Parliament--including Sidney--reconvened and got right back to work. Sidney was appointed to a diplomatic delegation to make peace between Denmark and Sweden (which apparently involved England somehow), where his blunt and hotheaded manner upset many of his diplomatic colleagues--but achieved a peace favorable to England. At this period too he wrote a Latin motto in the visitor's book of the University of Copenhagen: Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam cum libertate quietem. "This hand, enemy to tyrants, seeks by the sword quiet peace with liberty." Sidney arguably lived up to parts of this motto better than others. The latter half of it, incidentally, became and remains the motto of the State of Massachusetts.
Sadly for Sidney, while he was promoting the Commonwealth's glory abroad, it was coming to an end at home. The exiled son of the former King looked to many like an increasingly good alternative to the changeable Parliament, and military leaders such as George Monck declared their support for him. Just days after the signing of the Baltic treaty, on 29 May 1660, Charles II, now proclaimed rightful King of England, was welcomed back to London.
Sidney, still abroad, now had to decide: was it safe to return to England, or must he remain in exile? In theory it could be safe. With the exception of "the regicides" who had signed Charles I's death warrant--and Sidney, remember, had refused to become involved--the new government was initially inclined to forgive and forget. The mere act of serving the Parliament was not necessarily a crime... as long as one repented of it. Sidney was willing to acknowledge the King; after all, Parliament had acknowledged him, and as England's true authority they could appoint a king if they wanted. But he learned that, in order to be included in the indemnity, he would have to confess that his previous actions had been wrong and ask the king's pardon.
And this was a line that Sidney could not cross. He believed he had done right throughout, serving lawful authority with honor, and he refused to confess otherwise. As he wrote to his father (quoted in the Foreword to Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West):
I know the titles that are given me of fierce, violent, seditious, mutinous, turbulent. . . . I know people will say, I strain at gnats, and swallow camels; that it is a strange conscience, that lets a man run violently on, till he is deep in civil blood, and then stays at a few words and compliments. . . . I cannot help if I judge amiss; I did not make myself, nor can I correct the defects of my own creation. I walk in the light that God hath given me; if it be dim or uncertain, I must bear the penalty of my errors. I hope to do it with patience, and that no burden shall be very great to me, except sin and shame.
So Sidney lived in exile for almost twenty years, wandering over Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and France, "poor, and known only to be a broken limb of a shipwrecked faction," as he described himself--although his continued existence alarmed the royalist government enough that he was twice attacked by assassins. Exile turned out to be a good idea, as his friend Henry Vane, although like Sidney not a regicide, was nevertheless excepted from the Act of Indemnity and executed in 1663. About this time Sidney left another Latin motto in another visitors' book, this one in Geneva: Sit sanguinis ultor justorum--let there be an avenger for the blood of the just. Perhaps he was thinking of Vane, and the other fellow-citizens now dead on the gallows or the block, as well as those in prison and in exile like himself.
Sidney attempted for a couple of years to live in quiet retirement, as he had done during Cromwell's tyranny. But it did not seem to take this time. Active among the (admittedly somewhat fragmented--like any other political exiles they squabbled, and Sidney was a born squabbler) network of exiled English republicans and their continental colleagues, he approached any government that seemed even the slightest bit receptive, from republican Holland to absolutist France, asking for help overthrowing Britain's monarchy and establishing a republic. His experience with England's actual republic, it seems, had only made him more committed to the theory of this form of government: by consent of the governed, delegated to (ideally) the most virtuous and fit to rule, cultivating civic participation. Is that what England's republic ever was? Maybe not, but Sidney saw what it could have been had it not been smothered in its cradle; and even a sliver of it beats absolute monarchy all hollow, in my book, and in Sidney's. (Specifically, in his dialogue Court Maxims, Discussed and Refelled, intended to rouse Dutch support for an English republican restoration.)
The leaders of Europe were--perhaps justifiably--uncertain of Sidney's ability to bring this enterprise to fruition. He did occasionally receive money from the King of France, ostensibly to support his revolution but in the King's mind basically to keep England in chaos. This wasn't known until long after his death, and at one point considerably impaired his reputation as a republican martyr; however, he does seem to have taken the money in all good faith for the benefit of the Cause, and presumably believed he was getting one over on the King of France. The American revolutionaries received support from France on not dissimilar grounds (keeping England busy), and nobody says they sold out; they just had the good fortune to be successful. So I'm just not that cut up about the French money; Sidney could be a hardheaded pragmatist in his means, but he was a hotheaded idealist in his ends. It wasn't always a good combination but it was a very honest one at heart.
He never married, but may have had a long-term relationship in France, possibly resulting in a daughter; very little is known about this family if they were his.
In 1677, Sidney received permission at last to return to England in safety. His purposes in returning were, in theory, purely personal; his father had just died, leaving a significant inheritance to Algernon which his brothers refused to pay him. He spent several years engaged in the ensuing litigation, in which he was eventually successful (making the perhaps familiar-sounding argument that his elder brother's mere primogeniture did not give him the right to everything their father had left). He also, unsurprisingly, began to find his feet in the new world of English politics. Republicanism was effectively a back number, but the Whig party had taken shape as the opposition to Charles II's court policies, and at least acted as the successor to the "Good Old Cause" of English anti-monarchism. Many Whigs believed--on often quite conspiracist grounds--that Charles, and even more so his openly Catholic brother and heir James, intended to overthrow England's institutions and impose a French-style absolute monarchy, together with Catholicism as state religion. Charles does not seem to have actually planned anything like that--he was a canny operator whose number one principle was not to get the family overthrown again--but he did make movements in the direction of autocracy, and like any king was always on the lookout to increase his power. So the Whigs opposed him at every turn. In 1680 the issue on the table was Parliament's plan to exclude James from inheriting the throne, giving its name to the "Exclusion Crisis." (Quick glance forward: they would not succeed in excluding James at this point and he would inherit upon Charles' death, but Parliament soon deposed him, replacing him with his daughter Mary and son-in-law William. Supporters of James and his heirs were the Jacobites, whom we have encountered on this blog before. But all this would happen after Sidney's own death--although it would open the way for a new valuation of his legacy.)
Remember Sir Robert Filmer, the Sidneys' neighbor in Kent? Although dead many years, he had left a manuscript called Patriarcha--a mind-boggling, in my opinion extremely stupid defense of absolute divine-right monarchy, and I mean absolute. Like "the king can kill anyone for no reason at any time if he wants" absolute. All the subject can do is sit there and put up with it. Filmer argues that since fathers have absolute power over their children (according to him), so Adam had absolute power over the whole human race as his descendants, a right which descended to his eldest son, and so on, leading to the absolute power of kings today. It is a little hard for me to see how this was ever taken seriously. But sometimes propaganda works better when it's outrageous. In any case, Filmer's defense of absolutism was dusted off and printed, applied to this new situation of 1680. I guess if a king can do literally whatever he wants forever, he can certainly change the state religion to Catholicism and raise taxes or whatever.
Sidney evidently thought Patriarcha was about as stupid as I do. Yet, since it had made a splash, he (like others, including John Locke, whose First Treatise of Government is a response to Patriarcha) felt the need to rebut it. And rebut it he did, in Discourses Concerning Government, a lengthy manuscript--almost 600 pages in a modern print edition. He points out, among other obvious flaws, that if Filmer's theory is correct, we should owe submission not to Charles Stuart but to the heir by primogeniture of Noah--whoever that might be! Although Filmer's argument is easy to undermine--Sidney could have done it in ten pages if he'd wanted--he continues to follow Filmer through his argument, refuting every point and critiquing his understanding of history, scripture, law, literature, and language. Sidney seems to have taken the rebuttal of Filmer as an opportunity to articulate and make the case for his own political views (which, despite the shift of the Whigs in the direction of limited monarchy, remained staunchly republican). His writing is learned, usually clear, and often quite snarky. Very keen to expose Filmer's inherent paradoxes as well as, quite touchingly, to remember the ill-fated republic which he briefly but honorably served (and to think of the glorious one that still could be).
In 1681 King Charles dismissed Parliament, indicating he did not intend to summon another; Sidney must have felt history repeating itself. With other Whigs, republicans, and commonwealthsmen--including John Locke--he became involved in what was known as the Rye House Plot. Evidently the plan was to assassinate both Charles and James, with the support of some kind of armed uprising in England and rebellion in Scotland. It's unclear exactly what was planned, and not all of the conspirators seem to have gotten on quite the same page before they were, in any case, betrayed. Locke escaped England, but Sidney (with others) was arrested in 1683.
In a reasonably long and tumultuous life Sidney had had many opportunities to make his views known, but perhaps none with the publicity of his own treason trial. This trial was conducted by the infamous Judge Jeffreys, the "Hanging Judge" whose memory is still reviled in the West Country for the "Bloody Assizes" of 1685. You perhaps begin to get a sense of Jeffreys' typical conduct on the bench. Accordingly, Sidney's trial was peppered with illegalities--ineligible jurors, inaccurate dates in the indictment. Most striking was the fact that the government had only one witness, who testified he had heard Sidney planning to contact Whigs in Scotland (not a good look at the time, but not exactly covered by the law of treason); convictions for treason required two. Jeffreys took as his second witness, contrary to all law and custom, a few pages of Sidney's own unfinished Discourses Concerning Government, which he caused to be read out at the trial. Jeffreys ruled that scribere est agere--"to write is to act"--and that Sidney's theory of popular sovereignty, argued for in those pages, implied action against the king's sovereignty. (The Discourses do get pretty seditious in spots, but Jeffreys didn't even have the worst bits!) Sidney asked that, if the Discourses must be taken as evidence, the whole 500+ page manuscript be read into the record; this was, as he probably expected, refused. Although he spoke courageously in his own defense, Sidney was predictably enough condemned to execution.
He made no speech on the scaffold, but left a written final testimony in the hands of a friend. He tipped the executioner, then received the blow quietly. Nothing but death could silence Algernon Sidney--not even death, for that final testimony was published almost at once. His modern biographer John Carswell comments:
It was the best thing he ever wrote, and the solemn personal note struck by the words 'That Old Cause in which I was from my youth engag'd', introduced chivalry into the Parliamentarian tradition. After a career of almost uniform failure the man who had made heroes of others became a hero himself, and was to have a long and adventurous posthumous existence.
After the "Glorious Revolution" unseated King James and gave the Whigs--now the party of constitutional monarchy, more or less--the upper hand, Sidney was treated as a martyr of Liberty, however one defined it. He was an ideological model and frequent namesake in newly independent America. But he was more idealized than studied. As his sharp edges--his inability to compromise, his countervailing propensity for intrigue, his ideal government that actually varies quite significantly from that of the victorious Whigs or even the American republic--became more evident (and as the needs of political discourse have changed), biographers--and, increasingly, literary scholars like me--have begun to see Sidney the man. And I can't help it: I like him. I admire him. I don't think he did everything right, or was right about everything, but I admire his Cause and the dedication--the chivalry, as Carswell says--with which he held to it. And I also admire his passion for writing it all down.
When I was first writing about Sidney I was also just getting into the Sixth Doctor Big Finish audios. It occurred to me at one point that the historical figure and the fictional character were oddly alike in some ways: privileged in origin, principled, warm-hearted, quick-tempered, arrogant, verbose, exiled, defendant in a trial notorious for the ludicrously inadmissible evidence presented. I don't have anywhere to go with that observation other than that maybe I have a type. But you really do get a strong sense of Sidney's personality, both from his biography and from his own writings. Wherever a lover of liberty and justice puts their foot down, and especially wherever they get a little bit annoying about it, Algernon Sidney lives on.
I may have asked this before but is Algernon a relation of my friend Philip?
Yes, he is Philip’s great-nephew and some people say they looked a bit alike! (I can’t really see it but then I never can.) This is why it’s so hard for me not to bring him up in Spenser group, where Sir Philip is frequently mentioned.
By one of those accidents that sometimes do happen, Algernon had the long horsey face one would expect of an Algernon, augmented with the red hair one would expect of a firebrand, both of which he was.
There were not a lot of Algernons in the seventeenth century, but his mother was a Percy (the same Northumberland nobility as my Shakespeare blorbo, Henry “Hotspur” Percy) and they only ever seemed to name their children Henry or Algernon, or Henry Algernon, or Algernon Henry. They were early adopters of the middle name in England, I assume for this reason. I don’t think Algernon Sidney had a middle name though. His parents had several sons, they had to spread the names out.
