495 



SIDNEY, ALGERNON. 



SIDNEY, ALGERNON. 



The displaced minister however made no attempt to form a parly 

 against his successor. He would probably indeed have admitted as 

 readily as any one else that Mr. Pitt was the preferable person of the two 

 to be at the head of affairs at such a moment, now that he was willing 

 to accept the post upon the condition namely, the abandonment of 

 the question of Roman Catholic emancipation which he had formerly 

 rejected ; but which the king, and, it must be added, the great majority 

 of the country and of both houses of parliament, regarded as indis- 

 pensable. The resumption of office by Pitt in May 1804 was a con- 

 cession on his part of a great point and a groat principle, and a decided 

 victory obtained by George III. and his friend Addington. The new 

 government was from the first supported by Addington, who in January 

 1805 again took office as president of the council, being at the same 

 time made a peer by the title of Viscount Sidmouth. It is said that 

 he accepted this elevation, which removed him from the House of 

 Commons, with much reluctance. He resigned the presidency in July 

 of the same year in which he accepted that office. The causes are 

 thus stated in~the ' Annual Register,' in the relation of the proceedings, 

 so distressing to -Pitt, which were this year taken against Lord Melville : 

 " During the whole of these proceedings the new president of the 

 council and his adherents separated from the minister, and took an 

 eager and an active part in bringing Lord Melville to the bar of public 

 justice ; conduct which must have been considered as a defection from 

 the government of which they formed a part, and, as such, must have 

 been deeply resented by the minister. It was also rumoured that other 

 causes of distaste and disagreement existed between Mr. Pitt and Lord 

 Sidtnouth at this period ; that the former was jealous of the influence 

 which the latter maintained in a certain quarter, which had lately 

 been manifested in the conferring of high ecclesiastical dignities : and 

 that, instead of gaining an useful ally, Mr. Pitt had only exposed 

 himself to the machinations of a dangerous rival. Whether these 

 reports were founded in truth it is not our province to decide, 

 but certain it is that on the 10th day of July the Viscount Sid- 

 mouth and the Earl of Buckinghamshire resigned their respective 

 offices." 



When Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville succeeded to power in February 

 1806, after the death of Pitt, Lord Sidmouth was made lord privy 

 seal ; and when the ministry was reconstructed in October, he was 

 replaced in his former post of president of the council, which he held 

 till the breaking up of Lord Grenville's government in March following. 

 After this he remained out of office for about five years. Then in April 

 1812, in the last moments of Mr. Perceval's administration, he was 

 appointed president of the council for the third time. In June of the 

 same year, when Lord Liverpool assumed the premiership after the 

 assassination of Mr. Perceval, Lord Sidmouth became secretary of 

 state for the home department. 



This office, which for the first time gave him much of a real share 

 in the business of government, he continued to hold for the next ten 

 years. His conduct on several occasions, as, for instance, on that of 

 the great meeting for reform, held at Manchester in August 1819, 

 exposed him to a good deal of popular outcry and obloquy ; but he 

 was never charged with being deficient in decision and fearlessness, 

 and he at least succeeded in very difficult times in preventing the public 

 safety from ever being seriously endangered. He resigned his office in 

 1822, but at the earnest request of Lord Liverpool he retained his seat 

 in the cabinet for two years longer. He finally retired from official 

 life in 1824 ; but he continued for some years to attend frequently in 

 the House of Lords, though he seldom spoke. He had at no time 

 indeed been accustomed to come forward much in debate. He 

 survived till the 15th of February 1844, when he died at his residence, 

 the White Lodge, in Richmond Park, of which he was deputy ranger. 

 Lord Sidmouth was twice married; first in 1781, to Ursula Mary, 

 daughter of Leonard Hammond, Esq., of Cheam, in the county of Surrey, 

 who died in 1811, after bringing him four sons and four daughters; 

 secondly, in 1823, to the honourable Marianne, widow of Thomas 

 Townshend, Esq., of Honington Park, in the county of Warwick, and 

 only daughter of Lord Stowell, who died also before him in 1842. 



SIDNEY, or SYDNEY, ALGERNON, was the second surviving 

 son of Robert, second earl of Leicester of that creation, and of his 

 wife Dorothy, eldest daughter of Henry, earl of Northumberland. 

 He is supposed to have been born in 1621 or 1622. When his father 

 went as ambassador to Denmark in 1632, he took his son Algernon 

 with him ; and four years after he likewise accompanied his father 

 on his embassy to France. His first entrance upon public life was 

 in 1641, when, upon the breaking out of the rebellion in Ireland, 

 he went over to that country, of which his father was then lord- 

 lieutenant, and commanded a troop of horse in the earl's regiment. 

 Both he and his elder brother, the Lord Viscount Lisle, distinguished 

 themselves by their gallantry in the campaigns of that and the 

 following year. 



Returning to England in August 1643, the two brothers, who pro- 

 fessed to be on their way to the king at Oxford, were seized as they 

 landed in Lancashire, by order of the parliament; an incident which 

 lost them the favour of Charles, who believed that their capture was 

 of their own contrivance. On this they both joined the parliamentary 

 party, and Algernon received a commission as captain of a troop of 

 horse in the regiment of the Earl of Manchester. In April 1645 

 Fairfax raised him to the rank of colonel, and gave him a regiment ; 



and in 1646, his brother Lord Lisle having become lieutenant-general 

 of Ireland, he was made lieutenant-general of the horse in that king- 

 dom, and governor of Dublin. In the beginning of the same year he 

 had been returned member for Cardiff, in the room of William 

 Herbert, Esq., who two years before had been disabled from sitting, 

 for siding with the king, and who had in the interim been killed at 

 the battle of Edgehill. In May 1647, having come over to his native 

 country, he received the thanks of the house of Commons for hia 

 services in Ireland, and was appointed governor of Dover. In 1648 

 he acted as one of the judges at the trial of the king, although he 

 was not present when the sentence was passed, nor did he sign the 

 warrant for the execution. On the establishment of the protectorate 

 however be retired from public affairs, and he appears to have con- 

 tinued to reside at the family seat of Penshurst in Kent, and at other 

 places in the country, during the government of Cromwell and 

 his son. 



But on the restoration of the long parliament in May 1659, Sidney 

 again came forward, and on the 13th of tbat month was nominated 

 one of the council of state. On the 5th of June following he was 

 sent, along with Sir Robert Honeywood and Mr^ Borne, to Denmark, 

 to negociate a peace between that country and Sweden ; and he was 

 absent upon this mission when the king returned. In a letter written 

 to him by his father shortly after the Restoration, and published in 

 ' Familiar Letters, written by John, late earl of Rochester, and several 

 other persons of honour' (8vo, Loud., 1697), the earl mentions a 

 report which he had heard, that when the University of Copenhagen 

 brought Sidney their album, and desired him to write something in 

 it, he wrote 



" . . . . Manus hecc inimica tyrannis 



Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem," 



and signed the verses with his name. This anecdote is confirmed by 

 Lord Molesworth, who, in the Preface to his ' Account of Denmark ' 

 (first published in 1694), tells us, that even while Sidney was still at 

 the Danish court, " M. Terlon, the French ambassador, had the confi- 

 dence to tear out of the ' Book of Mottoes ' in the kmg's library " the 

 above lines, " which Mr. Sidney, according to the liberty allowed to 

 all noble strangers, had written in it." " Though M. Terlon," adds 

 Lord Molesworth, " understood not a word of Latin, he was told by 

 others the meaning of that sentence, which he considered as a libel 

 upon the French government, and upon such as was then setting up 

 in Denmark by French assistance or example." His father intimates 

 that this and some other things he had heard of him made him hesi- 

 tate about speaking to the king in his behalf, as he intended to do. 

 " It is also said," continues the earl, " that a minister who hath 

 married a Lady Laurence here at Chelsea, but now dwelling at Copen- 

 hagen, being there in company with you, said, ' I think you were none 

 of the late king's judges, nor guilty of his death,' meaning our king. 

 ' Guilty ! ' said you. ' Do you call that a fault ? Why it was the 

 justest and bravest action that ever was done in England, or anywhere 

 else ; ' with other words to the same effect. It is said also that, you 

 having heard of a design to seize upon you, or to cause you to be 

 taken prisoner, you took notice of it to the King of Denmark himself, 

 and said, ' I hear there is a design to seize upon me; but who is it that 

 hath that design ? Est ce notre bandit ?' by which you are understood 

 to mean the king. Besides this, it is reported that you have been 

 heard to say many scornful aud contemptuous things of the king's 

 person and family, which, unless you can justify yourself, will hardly 

 be forgiven or forgotten ; for such personal offences make deeper 

 impressions than public actions, either of war or treaty." 



The reports were probably not to be gainsayed. Indeed Sidney, in 

 his answer to his father says, " That which I am reported to have 

 written in the book at Copenhagen is true ; and, never having heard 

 that any sort of men were so worthily the objects of enmity as those I 

 mentioned, I did never in the least scruple avowing myself to be an 

 enemy unto them." Accordingly, instead of coming home, he pro- 

 ceeded first to Hamburg, whence he went to Frankfurt, and from 

 tlience to Rome, where he proposed to take up his residence. About 

 the middle of the year 1661, however, he was forced to remove to 

 Frascati ; and he is afterwards traced to various places in Germany, 

 France, and the Low Countries. In 1665 he was at the Hague, 

 actively employed, along with other English exiles of the same prin- 

 ciples, in urging the states of Holland to invade this country ; and the 

 next year he is found at Paris, impressing upon Louis XIV. the 

 advantage France would derive from the establishment of a republic 

 in England : a project in favour of which he engaged, in a memorial 

 to the king, to procure a rising, if he were allowed a grant of 100,000 

 crowns. From this time he appears to have resided in Gascony, till 

 at last, in 1677, a pardon and permission for him to return home 

 were obtained from Charles II., on the plea that he was anxiously 

 desirous to see his aged father once more before he died. The earl 

 died that same year, and, although he had never approved of the 

 course his son had taken, left him a legacy of 5,1001., with which, he 

 says, in his ' Apology,' dated on the day of his death, he would have 

 immediately returned to Gascony, if he had not been detained by a 

 long and tedious suit in Chancery, m which he was involved by his 

 elder brother, now Earl of Leicester, choosing to dispute his father's 

 will. Before this, Sidney appears to have been only assisted by his 



