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The Impresa Portrait of Sir Philip Sidney in the National Portrait Gallery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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The impresa portrait of Sir Philip Sidney which hangs in the Tudor section of the National Portrait Gallery (no. 1862) in London, shows a strikingly handsome young man. (See Figure 1.) The warm gold of his hair is repeated in the braidings and buttons of his white satin dress, in sword-belt, and in the figures which make up the design of headgear and shield. A somewhat bungling painter has caught the sweet gravity of the poet who in the words of his friend was from childhood up never “other than a man.” But sunniness and glow are dominant. Inevitably one recalls Sir Henry's apt characterization of this son of his as Lumen familiae suae. As a matter of fact, the warmth of coloration is part of a general consonance. For the impresa in the upper left-hand corner is of a fire thrusting red and yellow points of life through crossed green boughs, with the “word,” Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam. And the design of the shield celebrates Apollo, the god of Fire and Light, of the golden sun and the tawny flame which like Youth itself must make or find a way.
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References
1 Fulke Greville, Life of Sir Philip Sidney (1652), edited by Nowell Smith (1907), p. 6.
2 Sidney, Works edited by Feuillerat, iv, 80. In the Folio of 1593, the passage appears in the First Ecloges (Works, ii, 210).
3 Reproduced from Numismatique du Béam by Gustave Schlumberger and Adrien Blanchet (1893), ii, Plate IX, number 12. For a discussion of the jeton see op. cit., ii, 52.
4 By virtue of the fact that Antoine of Bourbon was prince of the blood. Vide infra.
4a Nicholas West, Bishop of Ely (1515–1533) made use of the motto which in the form Gracia Dei Sum Id Quod Sum is worked into the ornamental iron gates and elaborate stone carvings of his chapel in Ely Cathedral.
5 Adrien Blanchet finds the origin of the motto in the words of Gaston-Phoebus: “Je tiens mon pays de Bierne de Dieu et de l'espée et de lignée” which are quoted in Froissart (Œuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 1871, xiii, 300). For his article on the subject see Le Moyen Age, Second Series, xxvi, 44 ff.
6 op. cit., ii, 52.
7 This would make the corpo an adaptation of the Aetna device, with which Sidney was evidently familiar to judge by his reference to a “Mounteyne of burning desyer” (Old Arcadia, in Works, iv, 103). For examples, see Giovio's Ragionamento (1555), in the translation of Samuel Daniel (1585), F4 recto, Ruscelli's Le Emprese Illustre (1566), 486 and Boschius, Symbolographia (1722) which lists fourteen of them. Personally I incline to the theory that the corpo may refer to the Burning Bush out of which the Lord spoke to Moses, saying in the words of the Vulgate (Biblia Magna, Lyons, 1525) ego sum quo d sum a phrase of particular appropriateness in view of the money motto. Illustrations of the Burning Bush show a fancy as various as it is fertile. The printer's mark (?) of J. Kingston (reproduced by McKerrow, Printers' and Publishers' Devices, 1913, 197) shows Jahveh in the midst of a large bush made up of six large tree-trunks. Again in G. Paradin, Quadrins Historiques de la Bible (1583), at H3 verso, God the Father with a beard, appears in a good-sized tree specially decked out for the occasion with a variety of leafforms. This second concept goes back to the Burning Bush of the Biblia Magna and the Great Cologne Bible. The appearance of thorns is a comparatively late development. They occur in a number of Jesuit devices (Le Moine, Devises Héroïques et Morales, 1649, 99; Menestrier, La Philosophie des Images, 1682, ii, 137; and Boschius, Ars Symbolica, 1722, ii, 10, 157 as well as iii, 22, 395 and iv, 9, 155). The Burning Bush which was adopted as the device of the Reformed Church in France with the excellent motto, Flagror non consumor, has thorns.
8 Martha Walker Freer, Life of Jeanne d'Albret, 1855 (another edition in 1862) i, 314; cf. also, ii, 346. Her account is practically repeated by Mrs. Bury Palisser, Historic Devices (1870) 152, who makes the fresh mistake, however, of calling the flame a flower.
9 A. Blanchet, Jetons de la famille de Henri II (1886), 8; cf. plate 3.
10 This is shown by the fact that coins struck after the death of Henri II of Beam, the father of Jeanne, appear in the name of both Jeanne and her husband and that the money motto takes the form: Sumus Qd Sumus. (Cf. Schlumberger-Blanchet, op. cit., ii, 19–21 for illustrations). Only after Antoine's death does Jeanne return to Sum id quot sum, as in the écu d'or of 1565, op. cit., ii, 21. The fact that the singular form is used in our jeton marks it clear that it was struck after Antoine repudiated his wife at the end of March, 1562.
11 This is, of course, a purely modern misunderstanding to which Philip Sidney would not have been open; for, though Montmorency in 1560 publicly deplored the fact that the Order of St. Michael had become too common an honor in France to have its original value (Le Laboreux, Additions to the Mémoires of Castelnau, 1731, i, 355), Sidney's uncle, the Earl of Leicester, became in 1566 one of only four Englishmen admitted to the order, the others being Edward VI, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
12 M. Blanchet in a letter to the author, March 11, 1930.
13 In the year of the jeton, the situation was crucial. Our best information comes from Chantonay, the representative of Philip II, from whom Antoine hoped to receive the kingdom of Sardinia in return for embracing Catholicism. In January, the Spanish ambassador reports a violent altercation between Jeanne and Antoine on the subject of religion, the Mareschal de Saint-André being witness (Arch. Nat. K 1497, no. 3). On February 3, Antoine seeks support and suggestions from Chantonay (idem, no. 8). Eight days later the pair have compromised after a furious battle, and it has been agreed that if Jeanne stays away from her prêches, she will not be forced to attend her husband's Mass (idem, no. 9). But on February 14, it is reported that Jeanne has the better of her husband, and again attends prêches (Mémoires de Castelnau, ed. Le Laboreux, i, 747). Shortly after, the despatches of the English ambassador, Throckmorton, inform Elizabeth that though Antoine is trying to rid himself of Jeanne, she holds her ground and redoubles her efforts to keep the boy, Henri, a Protestant (Cal. State Papers Foreign, 1562, 545). On March 6, Jeanne defies her husband by refusing to attend the christening of Chantonay's little son, and the Spanish envoy is highly irritated (idem). Presented with an ultimatum by Chantonay, Antoine at last orders his wife into Vendôme on March 25 (Arch. nat. K 1497, no. 17), and we learn from a letter of Theodore de Bèze three days later that the intrepid Queen of Navarre has left the court at Fontainebleau (Baum, Theodore Beza, 1851, Preuves, 176). It is only when we realize that Antoine had been trying to send her off since January 30, when he had first received his orders to that effect from Chantonay (Arch. nat. K 1497, no. 7), and had promised action within a week as far back as February 1 (idem, no. 8), that we can understand what a trial Jeanne was to her vacillating spouse. No wonder that her independence should so rankle in his bosom that when he lay dying at Andelys after one of his familiar bouleversements de conscience, and a Huguenot physician rebuked him for his treatment of Jeanne, Antoine should cite back to him this one verse of Scripture: Wives, obey your husbands!
14 There is a bare possibility that the jeton was issued by Henri de Béarn after his father's death in November, 1562. Nothing on the obverse of the counter is against the theory. For the evidence that Henri de Béarn had a right to the Collar of St. Michael from the summer of 1562 on, see note 19, the final paragraph.
15 The Earl of Lincoln, to whose suite our eighteen-year-old Philip was attached, reached Paris on June 7 (see the account of Hohensax, sub June 23 in Jahrbüch für schweizerische Geschichte, i, 109). Jeanne had been taken ill three days before, following a shopping expedition. She died on June 9, as Péréfixe states correctly “of a Tissick” (Historie of Henrie IV, translated by Dauncey, 1663, 24). But the conviction of the Huguenot group in which Sidney moved both before and after St. Bartholomew was that she had been poisoned. According to one tale, she had a deadly draught given her at a banquet tendered by the Duc d'Alençon (cf. Le Réveille Matin, Edimbourg 1574, reprinted in Cimber, Archives Curieuses, 1st series, vii, 179; the Dialogus of Eusebius Philadelphus, 1574, 35; and Le Tocsain, 1579, which is reprinted by Cimber, op. cit., vii, 38). Another account, as scandalous and ill-founded as the first, puts the blame upon poisoned gloves prepared by René, the Queen Mother's apothecary, and appears for the first time in the True and plaine report of “Varamundus” (1573), xxxv. Stubbe repeats it with gusto in his famous suppressed book The Gaping Gulf (1579) and Marlowe uses it in The Massacre of Paris. Elizabeth herself refers to the second of the legends in an undated letter written to Jeanne's son, Henri IV, when he escaped death in 1593: “I have no need to remind you of some shops where fine drugs are forthcoming!” Doubtless the hateful spirit of such a person as Madame de Nevers did something to substantiate the charges against the Catholics. The tale of her burlesque obeisance before the dead Queen of Navarre, as brutal an instance of bad taste as history has recorded, will be found in the Mémoires of Marguerite de Valois (edition of 1628, 45). And any tendency which Sidney might have had towards rationalism regarding the evidence on Jeanne's death, was destroyed by “les noces vermeilles” in the next month. As one who shared the “very sanctuarie” of Sir Francis Walsingham's house to which Timothy Bright refers (see his Dedication to the Abridgment of the Book of Acts, 1589, 3), Philip may have seen the verses Sur la Mort de la Royne de Nauarre which Walsingham sent home from Paris, with their veiled references to “ceste indigne Mort” and “sa mort inhumaine” (State Papers Foreign, sub April, 1572).
16 We have the evidence of Théodore de Bèze with regard to Jeanne's fanatic ardor: “La royne mère … taschoit de luy persuader de s'accomoder au roy son mari. A quoy finalement elle feit ceste response que plustost que d'aller iamais a la messe, si elle avoit son royaume & son fils en la main, elle les ietteroit tous deux au fond de la mer, pour ne luy estre en empeschement.” (Histoire Ecclésiastique des églises réformées au Royaume de France, the text of the 1580 edition, with notes by P. Vesson, 1882. i. 372).
17 They were:
1. The poet Du Bartas. Jeanne had suggested to him the subject of his epic poem of Judith, later dedicated to her. Sidney not only translated “the first septmane” (see Florio's dedication of Montaigne's Essayes, Book n) but won from Du Bartas the tribute of
le Milor Sydne, qui Cynge doux chantant
in the second Sepmaine (Edition of 1616, 484).
2. Walsingham. Sir Francis had been called into conference by Jeanne on March 14, 1572, with regard to the projected marriage of Henri de Béarn and the King's sister. The report of the advice given on that occasion by Walsingham and his colleague Smith is to be found in Cotton Vespasian F vi, 1.
3. Henri Estienne, the humanist printer. On May 21, 1566, the Queen of Navarre visited Estienne's establishment. He caused to be set up certain extempore verses which she at that time composed on the marvel of his presses. One of the placards on which they were struck off survives in the Coll. Dupuy 843, 143. (Mémoires et Poésies de Jeanne D'Albret, ed. Baron Ruble, 1893, 139). When Sidney and Estienne met as they did in Heidelberg, Strassburg, and Vienna during the months following Bartholomew, Sidney may have seen one of the placards or heard the story of the visit at first hand. Considering that at the time Estienne was busy with the preparation of his Discours merveilleux (1574), which carries one of the first stories of Jeanne's poisoning, this is all the more likely. It will be recalled that the printer dedicated to Sidney an edition of the New Testament in 1576, and in 1581 eight books of Herodian, and two of Zozimus which for the first time is printed in the original Greek.
4. Admiral Coligny The night before she died, Jeanne had a last conference with the great chief of the Huguenot group, whom Sidney “surely met” before his death (Wallace, Life of Sir Philip Sidney, 1915, 128). Around the neck of the murdered admiral there was found at St. Bartholomew one of the twelve medals of gold struck by Jeanne d'Albret at La Rochelle three years before with the legend ov victoire entiere, ov paix assevree. ov mort honneste. (Olhagaray, Histoire de Foix, Béarn et Navarre, 627.)
5. François de La Noue. During the amputation which gave him the name of Bras de Fer later, Jeanne d'Albret had held the arm of this captain of hers. (Cf. Cal. State Papers Foreign 1569–1571, 296, sub July 22, 1570). At the time of her death he was in Paris. Presumably Sidney met him then, as a letter of Languet, March 11, 1579, suggests, that La Noue's welcome of Robert Sidney was for his brother's sake. When Philip fell foul of the Earl of Oxford on the tennis court in August, 1579, he planned on service in the Low Countries under La Noue (cf. letters from Languet to Sidney dated November 14, 1579, and January 30 and March 12, 1580). But unless Odet La Noue, the captain's eldest son by his first marriage, made a visit to Wilton during his stay in England in late March, 1580, or Sidney took a trip to London at that time of which we know nothing, the young Englishman never met him; Mendoza records that both Leicester and Walsingham overwhelmed the lad with presents and caresses (Cal. State Papers Spanish, iii, 18, sub March 23, 1580).
6. Lodowick of Nassau. Sidney spent some time with him in 1573 (Sidney, Works, iii, 79 sub March 23) and wrote to Languet about him in May, 1574 (op. cit., iii, 92). Lodowick was among the Huguenot leaders who remained at the Hôtel de Condé, where they were within call during the last hours of Jeanne's life. (Freer, op. cit., ii, 333).
7. Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier, later Princess of Orange. The last letter of Jeanne's preserved was in her behalf, May 5, 1572 (Harl. MS. 1582, f. 367); from the beginning Jeanne had supported Charlotte in her adoption of the reformed faith which had alienated the girl's family. In 1577, Sidney met her as the wife of his friend, William of Orange, at Gertruidenberg, and at that time stood godfather to her second child, who was called Elizabeth, doubtless in honor of the English Queen (Collins, Sidney Papers, 1746, i, 192). When he departed, he received from her a chain of gold and a fair jewel (op. cit., 193).
8. Henri de Béarn, later Henri de Navarre. Fulke Greville is authority for the friendship between Jeanne's son and Philip Sidney, saying that Henri “having measured, and mastered all the spirits in his own Nation, found out this Master-spirit among us, and used him like an equall in nature and so fit for friendship with a King.” (Greville, op. cit., 31).
9. Philippe de Mornay. As the intellectual leader of the Huguenots, he was in Paris at the time of the Queen's death and himself barely escaped at St. Bartholomew (cf. Mémoires de Mme. de Mornay, translated L. Crump, 1926, 131). Five years later, when as envoy from Henri de Navarre, he spent eighteen months in England, he was on intimate terms with Philip Sidney, who stood godfather to his little daughter June 1, 1578 (idem, 170). Sidney translated de Mornay's work on the Christian religion during the last years of his life; and after Sidney's death the Frenchman sent to Walsingham a letter which testifies to the reality of his personal loss (Philippe de Mornay, Mémoires, 1624–1652, i, 730, sub January, 1587).
10. Lambert Daneau In 1571 Daneau, who later became a professor at the University of Orthez on Jeanne's foundation, dedicated to the Queen of Navarre his translation of Hesiod (Paul de Felice, Lambert Daneau, 1881, 151). In 1583 he dedicated to Sidney his Poetica Geographica.
18 He is credited with five changes of religion in all. After his last change to Catholicism, early in 1562, Théodore de Bèze referred to him as “Julian” (Baum, op. cit., 166, sub 26 Feb.) and he was also likened to the apostate by Archbishop Grindal, who in October, 1562, wrote hopefully to Cecil for news of Antoine's death, actuated by a Christian desire to mention it as “God's judgment on him” in connection with a coming sermon at Paul's Cross (Cal. State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, 1547–1580, 209). A Huguenot piece, reprinted by Tarbé (Recueil de poésies Calvinistes, 1866, 93) and dated as early as 1561 accuses Antoine of basely serving the Queen Mother, and like to be crucified for his pains: he is compared to a long line of Biblical scoundrels including Achab dominated by Jezabel (Jezabel was Catherine de Medici's pet name among the Huguenots: Sidney calls her that himself in his Discourse. … To The Queenes Majesty, 1579, in Works, iii, 52). For satirical epitaphs upon him and other vituperative sallies see Cantique sur la Mort des Tyrans (1563), les Tyrans Gaulois (1563) reprinted by Tarbé (op. cit., 93) and Recueil de Rasse de Nœuds, No. 22560, f. 116. In England his reputation was not helped by the announcement that he was setting Jeanne aside to marry Mary Queen of Scots (Camden, Historie, tr. Darcie, 85); though no such match seems to have been seriously planned (Ruble, Antoine de Bourbon et Jeanne d'Albret, 1886, iv, 82), the rumor was persistent. The Huguenot contingent also made much of Antoine's “euill dispositiö towardes harlots” (Serres, Commentaries, translated by Timme, ii, 202), and there is no doubt that Catherine de Medici manipulated him from May, 1562, to the time of his death, through “la belle Rouet.”
19 The date of Jeanne's departure for Vendôme (March 28) fixes the time on the backward end. (See Note 10) A forward limit is provided by October 16, the date of Antoine's wound, though it is possible to extend this to November 17 when he actually died. A study of events within this period shows that the desires which lay closest to his heart were:
1. To wed his sister, Marguerite de Bourbon, contrary to the wishes of the Duc de Guise, and in accordance with his own. Marguerite's husband had died on February 13 (Ruble, op. cit., iv, 207), and on April 28 as on May 11 Chantonay reports violent disagreements between Antoine and the Duc de Guise which demanded the interference of the Cardinal de Lorraine (Arch. nat. K, 1497, nos. 26 and 30). This affair is not likely to have moved Antoine so deeply, however, as one more closely tied up with his personal ambitions.
2. To win “la belle Rouet.” Chantonay mentions her for the first time on May 23 (Mémoires de Condé, ii, 43). She was well established as Catherine's “principal instrument” on June 17 (Arch. nat. K, 1498, no. 5). The conquest does not seem to have been delayed, as she bore to Antoine a son who later became Archbishop of Rouen (Bouchot, Les Femmes de Brantôme, 1890, 181 and Choutard, Jetons, i, 33).
3. To capture Bourges (taken September 1) and Rouen (taken October 26). Antoine's interest in these projects can scarcely have been much greater than that of the other Catholic chiefs.
4. To secure from Philip of Spain the Kingdom of Sardinia, an ambition which took his constant thought for the last eleven months of his life. In payment Philip demanded the sending away of the Chastillions and the Catholic education of young Charles the Ninth, matters arranged with comparative ease in January and February, 1562, and therefore out of our reckoning. The later requirements of Spain were not so easily complied with, involving, as they did, the setting aside of Jeanne d'Albret and the conversion of her young son to Catholicism. We have already shown the difficulties of Antoine's struggle with Jeanne (see Note 13). The tussle with Henri de Béarn, though he was only eight, proved almost as troublesome. Antoine began on February 23 by sending away Henri's Protestant tutor, and bringing in Jean de Losses as governor (Arch. nat. K 1497, no. 11) and promised Chantonay that he would conduct the lad to Mass shortly. But before she left, Jeanne directed to the lad what the Cardinal de Ferrara called “a long and severe remonstrance” (Négociations, 136) to the effect that he was to hold his ground about religion. She must have made a great impression on Henri, who as late as May 19 was still holding out against his father despite punishment and adjuration (Arch. nat. K 1497, no. 33). Ultimately, however, Antoine had his way. And the Collar of St. Michael was a factor for him. On June 3, Chantonay was at last able to report (Arch. nat., K 1498) that Antoine had taken his son to Mass on June 1, and that there the lad swore fealty to the Catholic Church, and received as his reward the accolade and the Collar of St. Michael. Bordenave (op. cit., 115) supplies what seem to be further details about this very occasion when he says that once being forced to go to Mass, Henri fell ill; for on June 17, Chantonay again writes to Spain (Arch. nat. K 1498, no. 5) that the Prince of Béarn “has not yet attended Mass”. We have no later word on the subject. Being with his father constantly, the young Prince without doubt became a Catholic some time in the summer of 1562. Since a “reverse” commemorated a plan actually brought to a triumphant conclusion, in contrast to an impresa which concerned itself with a project in the future, (T. Blount, The Art of Making Devices, 1646, Chapter xv), our jeton, if it refers to the conversion of Henri de Béarn, must have been struck after he had received the Collar of St. Michael, and Antoine had at last found out his way.
In this connection one should consider Çuñiga's letter to Philip II, dated September 29, 1572, (Arch. nat. K. 1530, no. 72) which reports the Queen Mother's triumphant smile when she saw her son-in-law before the altar at the festival of the Investiture of the Order of St. Michael. Mariéjol (Catherine de Medici, 1920) infers that Forneron (Histoire de Philippe II, 1881, ii, 331) whom he cites, places Henri among the new knights. This is not, however, implied either by Forneron or by the despatch itself. In any event, Henri de Béarn, as one who had slipped back, would have been required to renew his vows.
20 For the details of Sir Henry's reception see d'Aumale's Histoire de Condé, i, 358 as well as Cal. State Papers, Foreign, 1561–1562.
21 In a minute dated merely “Mai,” Antoine explained to the Queen Mother that he had sent Sir Henry about his business in order “to keep ambassadors from meddling in our affairs beyond reason.” (Fonds français, 15876, 60).
22 Wallace, op. cit., 21.
23 Cf. Venetian Despatches, filza 4, f. 47 verso.
24 For Jeanne's oval medallion portrait with the words Ioanna. Regina. Navarrie, 1572 see Delaroche, Trésor de Numismatique (1834–37), part i, plate XXV, No. 10. For the companion piece bearing Antoine's bust in profile see Mazerolle, Les Médailleurs du XV Siècle au Milieu de XVIIe (1902–1904), iii, Plate XX, no. 389.
26 Cf. the reference to the “fewe promysed Medialles” extended as lure to Dametas; Sidney, Works, iv, 176–7.
26 At all events, the jeton is not there now. The present Viscount de L'Isle and Dudley assures me that the counter has not been at Penshurst within his memory.
27 Sir Henry Sidney took part in the tournament held on January 3, 1551/2; cf. Feuillerat, Documents relating to the Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary (1914), 56, 84. He doubtless appeared on other occasions for which there are no records. Cf. Astrophel and Stella, xli, the tournament sonnet, in which Philip says “from both sides I doe take My blood, from them that doe excell in this.” (Works, ii, 259). For Sidney's own career as a runner at tilt, vide infra.
28 Cf. his letter to Languet dated December 19, in Works, iii, 81.
29 Camden, Remaines (1605), 165.
30 A Coronet device “used on his Majesties Part in the late Warre” is included in Blount (op. cit., 1650 edition) as number 43. It takes the form of a hand with a sword and the word Aut Inveniam aut Faciam, which is robustly translated as “I'le find or make 'em quiet.” (!) The omission of viam here marks the source of the device as the impresa of the Remaines rather than that of our portrait. Interestingly enough, the motto in exactly the form employed by Antoine, but accompanied by the corpo of the sun shining through clouds, served several persons at the court of Louis XIV, including the Sun Monarch himself (cf. Le Moyne, De l'Art des Devises, 1666, 80; and Menestrier, op. cit., i, 89, 228 and 278, as well as La Devise du Roy justifiée, 1679, 133).
31 Evidently by 1580, when (on the strength of his supposed Protestant sympathies) the Duc d'Anjou took over the sovereignty of the Low Countries, he felt no compunction in helping himself to another device of Antoine: the sun dissipating the clouds which brood over a sea with the word, Fovet et Discutit. (Antoine's medal as executed by Etienne de Laune is shown in G. F. Hill's Medals of the Renaissance, Oxford, 1920, and in Schlumberger-Blanchet, op. cit., ii, 69 and plate XVII). The device thus appropriated became a favorite of Anjou's. He used it on medals dating from 1580 (Delaroche, op. cit., i, 20 and Lucks, Sylloge numismatum, 1630, 283) to 1582 (Delaroche, op. cit., i, 21). For the lavish employment of the device in the entertainment of the Duke at Antwerp in February, 1582, see the description of the gold and silver coins with “ ‘Chaseth and Cherisheth,‘ Monsieur's ordinarie posie” (Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 1825, ii, 366 ff), the shew of the Rhetoricians, the shew of the Elephant and the Castle, and the triumphant arch set up at “St. Johnsgate beaten downe the yeare before” (idem, ii, 374). Sidney was one of the noblemen sent by Elizabeth to escort Anjou to Antwerp at this time.
32 A single bough, diagonally placed is found in Paradin, Symbola Heroica (1557) with Vis est ardentior intus. Boughs crossed in the form of an X and accompanied by a tinder box and the insignia of the Golden Fleece appear in Ruscelli (op. cit., 1566, 106) with the word ante ferit quam fiamma miscet; boughs similarly crossed appear in Paradin (op. cit., 52) with the word Flammescit vterque. And flaming logs, arranged camp fire fashion are found in an amorous impresa (Hadrianus Junius, Emblemala, 1565, no. 40). None are so close to Sidney's arrangement as the Medici device.
33 Symeoni, Dialogo dell'Imprese (Lyons, 1574), 41.
34 Daniel, translating Giovio, Worthie Tract, Cm recto, writes:
“the son of Lorenzo, Pietro bore great Billets of greene wood, set one vpon the other, which seemed to cast forth flames and smoke from the fire within, signifying that his inflamed affection was the more vehement, for that the wood wherewith it burned, was yet greene.”
35 Certain portions of the design may be dismissed as merely conventional and stylistic. Such are, for instance, the three sections (only one complete) which show panoplies of various types. Also of no particular significance are the heads of the singularly mournful amorini which fill the triangular spaces between the bottom of the panels and the rim design. Probably conventional also is the design of the trefoil and the oak leaves which constitute the border. In this instance, however, it is possible that some reference is intended to the oak which crowned the victor in the Pythian games “because the laurel as yet was not.” (Metamorphoses, i, 445; cf. Rendel Harris, The Origin of the Cult of Apollo, 1916, 24).
36 The four islands under his feet may stand for the world in general. On the other hand it is possible that places sacred to Apollo are meant: Delphos, Claros, Tenedos, and Patara, to name his temples, with the addition of Delos if two islands are intended under his left foot instead of one.
37 Nowhere have I been able to find Apollo with a candle. Is this, perhaps, our artist's inexpert or careless painting of a torch? Cartari, Le Imagini de i dei de gli antichi (1581), 121 puts a torch into one hand, and a lyre into the other. A variation is represented by the Apollo Leukates who has a bow in one hand and a torch in the other (A. B. Cook, Zeus, A Study in Ancient Religion, 1914, 348, N. 8).
38 Cf. Metamorphoses, ii, 41–42. Following Ovid, Cartari (op. cit., 24, 26) shows Apollo with rays about his head, though elsewhere (469) the same authority gives him the laurel crown with which he appears in Peacham, Compleat Gentleman (1661) xiv, 162. Sidney probably knew nothing of the coins of Rhodes which show a radiate Helios (Cook, op. cit., ii, 1, 253–254).
39 In line with Tibullus, who says:
Bacchus alone and Phebus aye are young
Though both of them have beards both white and long.
The translation comes from the English version of Cartari by Richard Lynche, The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction (1599), 29. Cf. also Natalis Comes, Mythologiae sive Explicationum fabularum libri decern (1583), iv, x, 366.
40 I am deeply indebted to Mr. H. M. Hake, the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, who made it possible for me to examine the details of the shield when the portrait was out of its frame, and under a strong light and magnifying glass in his office. Only under such circumstances was it possible to determine the details of (A2), (B2), (B3) and (B4), which even the enlarged photographs which were prepared under the direction of the Gallery do not make clear.
41 Sidney was probably unfamiliar with the classical method of suggesting a chariot by means of a single wheel with a seat poised above it (cf. the vase drawings pictured in Cook, op. cit., i, 213 ff.).
42 To the left of the spear shaft (appearing as a shadowy line in the enlargement) is the second barb, which makes it unlikely that a shepherd's crook was intended. Before I saw this detail under the glass I thought there might be a reference here to Apollo who “learned to bee Admetas heardeman” what time he “became a Shepeherd for love” (Sidney, Works, iii, 387). Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii, 677 and Tibullus Elegiae ii, 3, 11.
43 If the object in Apollo's left hand were the baculum silvestre, this “flower” might be explained as the “splendid staff of riches and wealth” given by the god to Hermes (Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, translated by Evelyn-White, 1914, 526); for the gift is described as “of pure gold, with three branches.” However, Hesiod elsewhere calls it a “staff,” and Apollodorus (The Library, translated by Sir James Frazer, 1921, ii, 11), a “golden wand.” And whatever else our god may be holding in his left hand it is clearly not a staff!
In appearance, the “flower” is not dissimilar to the lotiform lightning fork of late Assyrian art which makes its appearance as the Greek thunderbolt on vases of Ionia (Cook, op. cit., ii, 1, 771). Since Fire in general was often regarded by the ancients as a flower (idem) and the Sun was associated with the Lotos in Egyptian religion, it is not remarkable that the lotiform lightning fork becomes associated with the Fire God. Pindar speaks of the “ruddy lightning” (Olympia, ix, 6).
43a The contour is nevertheless clear in enlarged photographs of this section. Unfortunately the outline of the smaller vase is not evident in figure 5 accompanying this paper.
44 Cf. Cartari's statement that “the auncients shaped [him] with a very youthfull countenance, beardlesse and young-yeard” (tr. Lynche, 28). Natalis Comes (op. cit., 4, x, 356) calls him iuvenis semper.
45 Harmon, whose translation in the Loeb Classical Library (1925), Lucian's Works, iv, 339 ff. is cast into the English of Mandeville by way of suggesting to the modern reader the antique sound of Ionic Greek to the Attic ear, holds that the work is indeed that of Lucian.
46 The translation is by Herbert A. Strong, The Syrian Goddess (1913) 74 ff.
47 Harmon, op. cit., iv, 391; and John Garstang in Strong, op. cit., 75 N.
48 Saturnalia, i, 17; in the edition of In Somnium Scipionis and the Saturnalia issued at Lyons in 1560, pp. 261–2.
49 Cook, op. cit., i, 585.
50 But because of their connection with the altitude of the sun, the eagles, ordinarily associated with Zeus, are retained.
51 Vide infra.
52 He expresses it in the title of this very Chapter 17: “Omnes Deos referri ad Solem. Et quod ex variis Apollinis ostendatur nominibus, ipsum eundem esse Deum quern Solem dicimus.” He expatiates upon the idea in the next six chapters.
53 Works, iii, 365. The passage occurs in the section of the translation assigned by Feuillerat to Sidney (ibid., iii, ix).
54 Giordano Bruno has an interesting passage on “the principal God Apollo, who with his own and not a borrowed splendour, sends his darts, that is his rays, so many and from such innumerable points, which are all the species of things which are indications of Divine goodness: intelligence, beauty, and wisdom, according to various degrees from the simple comprehension to the becoming heroic enthusiasts.” The words come from Gli Eeroici Furori (translated by L. Williams, The Heroic Enthusiasts, London 1887, ii, 37). In this book which was dedicated to Sidney in 1585, Bruno makes use of imprese to explain philosophical concepts. Elsewhere he speaks of the “universali Apollo” (op. cit., i, 72). It would be interesting to connect this Apollo of Bruno's “high emprise” (op. cit., i, 79) with the undertaking of Sidney which is hinted at in Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam.
55 The British Museum Catalogue lists 8 of the 12 Italian editions, a French translation by Verdier (Lyons, 1581), a German translation (Frankfort, 1692) and 3 Latin versions.
56 In the Latin version of 1581, the Macrobian Apollo is illustrated on p. 52 and the four urns appear on p. 56. The Italian editions, two of which were issued in the same year at Lyons alone, make use of the same pictures. It is interesting to see that whereas Capella states clearly that the contents of the vrnulae are not visible to the eye, Cartari's illustrator shows flame gushing furiously from the Vertex, sun, moon, and stars amiably poised over the top of the Risum, etc. Lynche's English translation has no pictures.
56a In the edition of the Satyricon issued by Plantin with the notes of Grotius (1599), book I. p. 7.
57 Cf. Lynche, op. cit., 42: “Out of these vessels, sometimes from one and sometimes from the other, would [Apollo] call such working virtues as thereby men here below received their health and life, or their diseases and death.” Thus are produced “a generali healthinesse and euerease” (op. cit., 43) or “noisome vnsoundnesse and infirmities.” In Cartari's Italian edition of 1566, the passage occurs on xixb–xxa.
58 Cartari accounts for the crow and the swan, both sacred to Apollo, by saying that they typify Darkness and Day, or the world without sun, and with it.
59 Perhaps there is some affinity here with the Tree of the Sun. A tilt in which Callophisus [the Earl of Arundel] and the “Redd Knight” [Sir William Drury] were challengers had among the defenders a nameless participant who called himself The Knight of the Tree of the Sonne, and issued to Drury a challenge which has been preserved among the Landsdowne MSS. (99, f. 259, 96). The title hints at a concept which may figure here in (B3). The date of the tilt in question is probably 1581; but cf. E. K. Chambers in Malone Society Collections i, 2, 181.
60 Martial, Epigramma viii, 21, 7 gives their names, Xanthus and Aethon; the scholiast of Euripides' Phoenissae also has two but calls them and . Illustrations which show two are to be seen in Geoffrey Tory's Champfleury (1529) at p. 74 in the Grolier Club reprint; in Alciati, Emblemi (1589), lv and lvi at pages 222 and 225; and in Lebei-Batillus, Emblemi (1596), li, at 92 recto.
61 Commentary on Eclogue v, 66.
62 Panegyric on the Sixth Consulship of Honorius; in the Works as translated by Platnauer (Loeb Classical Library, 1922), ii, 76.
63 For Sidney's knowledge of Claudian's De Torpedine, see my article in Studies in Philology xxviii, 168.
64 Bolzanus, Hieroglyphica (1567), 168 A.
65 Op. cit., iv, x, 365.
66 Cf. also such a compendium as Ferro's Teatro d'Imprese (1623), ii, 653.
67 They scarcely resemble ravens (sacred to Apollo from the time of Martianus Capella, cf. Bolzanus, op. cit., 169C and Natalis Comes, op. cit., iv, x, 365) any more than they do the sparrow hawk (Cartari's sparviere uccello, associated with Apollo by Homer) or the cock given to Apollo by Pausanias (Bolzanus, op. cit., 173A and Cartari, 1566, xvib).
68 In the tilt of the Four Foster Children of Desire, given on May 15, 1581, Philip wore “armor part blewe, the rest gilt & engrauen”; cf. Henry Goldwell, A briefe declaratiō of the shewes etc. (1581) A vj verso. In his Will, Sidney left his “best gilded Armour” to his “very good Friend, Sir William Russell.” (Works, iii, 373).
69 Perhaps the man responsible for the cuirasse and braçonnière which the stiffness of the torso suggests that Sir Philip is wearing under his satin mandillion. Almost identical is the bodice line in the armor portrait of Sir James Scudamore painted in 1619 and reproduced as Fig. 96 in Bashford Dean's Collection of Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1930). The likeness between the bodices in the two pictures is the more interesting as Sir James wears a suit of armor made for him at Greenwich about 1585 (Dean, op. cit., 18) and our portrait belongs, as we shall see in the next section, to 1584 or 1585.
70 Since plumes fitted into a holder in the back of the helmet just above the couvrenuque, we are looking at the top or bowl of the casque, just above the visor. In this area, vertical designs were often employed, parallel to the line of the crest (cf. both the Scudamore suits in the Metropolitan, illustrated figs. 93 and 94 in Dean, op. cit., as well as the Hilliard's well known miniature of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, in tilting gear). An effect not unlike that of the alternating bands on the Sidney headgear may be seen in the casque of the Duke of Sessa (1560) where there are three panels done in relief and two most elaborately chased (Dean, op. cit., fig. 80).
71 Camden's Remaines tell us that the Earl of Essex so carried his mourning motto, Par Nulla Figura Dolori, on an occasion which, thanks to Peele's Polyhymnia, we may date as November 17, 1590 at a time when Essex was in mourning for Sir Francis Walsingham, his father-in-law who had died the preceding April.
72 Sidney's motto in the tilt of May 15, 1581, Sic Nos Non Nobis was carried on the scarves of attendant gentlemen. Cf. Goldwell, loc. cit. The words covered eighteen letter spaces, which must have represented about the maximum for legibility. As Goldwell specifies that the legend was upon the breast as well as upon the back of each man, I am inclined to think that the motto was divided. On the significance of this device see my paper in Philological Quarterly, x, 160–162.
73 Von Wedel, who in 1584 visited Whitehall and saw the shields there, says that they bore “fine mottoes” (cf. Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners, Brentano's 1928, 320).
74 Peacham, who particularly admired the Sidney devices in the Shield Gallery, intended to publish all the imprese there represented, but was dissuaded by the “charge” (cf. op. cit., chap. xviii). Though the devices had disappeared by 1660, the gallery was still known as the Shield Gallery. Pepys mentions it in his Diary, sub June 22 and September 3 of that year.
76 Hentzner, Travels (1757), 29, says that the devices were “on paper, cut in the shape of Shields, with Mottoes.” Manningham gives a number of the mottoes (Diary, published by the Camden Society, 1868, 3–5).
76 Aubrey, Wiltshire, 88 N. (quoted Chambers, Elizabethan Drama, i, 143 N) says that a similar collection hung at Wilton, the home of Sidney's sister, adding that these shields were “of pastboard painted with devices and emblems which was very pretty and ingenious.”
77 Cf. the device portrait of the Countess of Pembroke in the National Portrait Gallery (no. 64), assigned to Gheeraedts. There the posy wreath and “No Spring till now” appear in the upper right hand section of the canvas.
78 Rarely was all of the armor worn in the parade of the lists. It followed the knight on sumpter horses, and was donned just before he went into the yard for the running. (Viscount Dillon, Tilting in Tudor Times, 1906, 15). The Scudamore portrait (Dean, op. cit.), shows Sir James in full armor with the exception of gauntlets and plumed helmet; the “scarf of his colours” is in place, and he holds the huge tilting lance. He is practically ready to run, whereas Sidney is in costume for the parade except that, for the artistic reasons explained above, he does not carry his display shield. It should be noted that Sidney holds, not a seven-foot lance, but one of the shorter “tilting staves.”
79 Daniel, op. cit., H iiij recto; the story follows of the false diamond and the false lover, with a meaning so completely covert that one marvels it was ever guessed.
80 So writes the Mareschal de Tavannes in his Mémoires (1657), 62. He speaks of imprese as “obscurément interpretez à diuers sens, intelligibles ou couuerts, selon la fantasie des autheurs.”
81 Daniel, op. cit., Avi. Cf. also Estienne, L'Art de Faire les Devises (1645), 27 and P. Menestrier, La Science et L'Art des Devises (1686) 14.
82 Because of this, the Italian imprese books by Giovio, Contile, and Ruscelli provide biographical explanations of great interest. Camden (Remaines, 158) gives his devices apologetically “without commenting vpon them as the Italians use,” though he endeavors to supply an occasional clue. In our inability to match circumstance and impresa lies the secret of our dismissing these devices as learned “fripperies of the tiltyard.” In determining their value we shall be much safer if we accept the estimate of the Renaissance. Nicholas Whyte, sent to Tutbury to observe the imprese which Mary Queen of Scots was busily embroidering, wrote anxiously back to Cecil: “I notice this sentence [en may fin est mon commencement, employed with a Phoenix] which is a riddle I understand not. ”Considering that the Phoenix was Elizabeth's favorite badge, he might well have wondered; and though the device really belonged to Mary's mother (the only difference being that the Frenchwoman wrote gît for est), Cecil knew enough of covert ways to look below the surface. Again, one of Mary's early biographers, William Stranguage, admits that she was removed from the jurisdiction of the Earl of Shrewsbury because “suspicions were laid hold on, as if the plot of getting her libertie had beene begun, out of certaine Emblemes sent by some unto her. Those were Argus with many eyes lulled asleepe by Mercury … with this little sentence eloqium tot lumina clausit. Another was Mercury striking off the head of Argus keeping Io. A graft or cyon engrafted in a stocke and bounde with bands, yet flourishing and written about it, per vincula cresco.” (Historie of the Life and Death of Mary Stuart, 1624, 158). No wonder that with such exciting possibilities as these, Drummond wrote to Ben Jonson on July 1, 1619, a full list of a score of imprese embroidered on Mary's bed at Tutbury Castle. Even after her death, her devices continued to get people into trouble. Historians have been puzzled over the introduction of an “emblem” into the trial of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, on April 14, 1589. The account in State Trials (London 1730, i, 156) runs as follows: “There was a Picture shewed that was found in my Lord's Trunk wherein was painted a Hand bitten with a Serpent shaking the Serpent into the Fire about which was written the Poesie Quis contra nos? On the other side was painted a Lion Rampant with his Chops all bloody with this Poesie Tarnen Leo.” The serpent may be understandable in the light of poor mad John Somerville's announcement on October 25, 1583 that he was going to London to shoot the Queen through with his dagg, for she was “a serpent and a viper” (he was condemned to death on December 16). But the Lion with Tarnen Leo I have found among the devices of Mary Queen of Scots, for whose sake, Arundel's father, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, met his death. The Scottish Queen used the corpo of a Lioness with a Whelp and the motto Unum quidem sed leonum (Palisser, op. cit., 236).
83 The Vicar of Trinity Minories and St. Botolph Aldgate, the Rev. J. F. Marr, tells me of an interesting local tradition to the effect that the body was kept in Trinity Minories (part of a monastic precinct, and sanctuary) in order to prevent its seizure by creditors of the Sidney family. It should be remembered, however, that from July 21, 1585 Sidney was Joint Master of Ordnance with his uncle, the Earl of Warwick, and that the Office of the Ordnance occupied a number of the buildings once tenanted by the Sorores minores inclusae, the Clares who gave their name to the present Minories Street.
84 B. W.'s Commemoration, an appendage to Whetstone's Elegy (1587). The poem, which is rare, is quoted in full by E. M. Tomlinson, History of the Minories (1907), 126 ff.
85 Von Wedel's narrative in Von Klarwill, op. cit., 332.
86 The “salvage man,” of whom Welsford finds trace as early as 1208 (The Court Masque, 1927, 81 N), was a favorite figure in masques and shews for centuries. Hall's Chronicle, passim, testifies to his popularity in the revels under Henry VIII. More recently, the Hombre Salvagio had appeared at Kenilworth in 1575 (Nichols, op. cit., i, 492) and at Hawstead in 1578 (idem ii, 115 N).
87 “Irishmen” had enlivened the revels of 1557, at Christmas; cf. Feuillerat, Documents relating to the Revels at Court in the Time of King Ed. VI and Queen Mary (1914), 48, 183. For gentlemen in female wigs, cf. the appearance of Eve in the tilt of May, 1581 (Goldwell, op. cit., B2 verso).
88 Von Klarwill, op. cit., 331.
89 Idem, 335.
90 The heading of the list (given here in full since to the best of my knowledge it has never been printed) makes it clear that Von Wedel was mistaken in fixing the number of knights on each side as twelve (Von Klarwill, op. cit., 335).
Hastiludi$mM apud West$mM die solis. 6. Decembris. 1584.
coram Regina, inter Nuptos decern et tot Caelibes.
Therle of Cumberland
Lord Thomas Howard
Lord Wiloghby
Sr Philippe Sidney
Willm Knolles
Robert Sidney
Anthony Cooke
George Giffard
Robert Knowles
Thomas Radcliff
Thomas Knyvet
Edward Poyntz
Foulke Greville
Edward Denny
Henry Bronkard
Henry Nowell
John Tyrell
Rauf Bowes
Ashmole MS. 845, f. 168
91 The fact that Sidney took part in this “extra” running on December 6 indicates that he would omit none of the regular tilts. His prowess seems to have been notable. Churchyard's Epitaph (1587), reprinted in Butler's Sidneiana (1837), 38, says that he
Ranne faire at Tilt, like Mars his Sonne with couched Launce on best
And good report of people wonne, that passed all the rest.
And in John Philip's Life and Death of Sir Philip Sidney (1587) published in the same collection (p. 26), the dead hero is made to speak as follows:
In marshall feates I settled my delight
The stately steede I did bestride with ioy,
At tilt and turney oft I tride my might,
In these exploits I neuer felt annoy.
My worthie friendes in armes did oft imploy
Themselues with me to breake the shivering speare,
And now my want they wail with many a teare.
For Sidney's own references to tilting, see Works, ii, 258–9, 263, iii, 127, 123.
92 Announced for Twelfth Day but postponed to January 22 was the Callophisus tilt of 1580/01; cf. Cal. Salisbury MSS., xiii, 119; Feuillerat's Documents of the Revels under Elizabeth (1908), 337; and Segar, Booke of Honor and Arms (1590), 95.
93 In 1570, there had been three days of tilting during this season; cf. Ashmole MS. 837, f. 245, Holinshed's Chronicle (1808), iv, 259, Stowe's Chronicle (1580), 1151 and Segar, op. cit., 94.
A suggestion that there may have been a Shrovetide tilt in 1585 is found in the Belvoir MSS., i, 160 in the letter of T. Screwen to the Earl of Rutland: “the Earl of Warwick and Sir Philip Sidney seemed jealous that you had lent your horse to the Earl of Cumberland.” On the other hand Screwen may have had in mind Cumberland's participation in the race for the Golden Bell offered annually by the Earl of Pembroke. (Cf. Aubrey, Wiltshire, loc. cit.).
94 His personal affairs, unconnected with political events, may be ruled out as unlikely: his brother Robert married on September 23, 1584; his three-year old niece, Katherine Herbert, died on October 15, and his nephew and namesake, Philip Herbert was born on October 16 in the same year; Sidney's own little daughter Elizabeth was born, possibly as early as September, 1585 (Fox-Bourne, Life of Sir Philip Sidney, 1891, 471) and christened on November 20, two days after Sidney had reached Flushing. The fact of Sidney's marriage on September 21, 1583, enables us, further, to exclude the likelihood of a love impresa.
95 Sidney was presumably in London at the time as he writes from Court on May 23 in acceptance of Temple's book. (Works, iii, 145).
95a Cf. Sidney's letter on this point sub December 20, 1583, Works, iii, 144.
96 State Papers Domestic Elizabeth, clxxi. Wallace says that Sidney took a great part in the reënforcement of various fortifications “whether as an officer of the Ordnance or as the representative of his father-in-law does not appear” (op. cit., 306).
97 Preserved in MS. Cotton Galba E vi, f. 241 (July 8).
98 Parry, who had been in the government secret service since June, 1580 (Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham, 1925, ii, 399) had played the spy in England since January, 1584. Immediately after Edmund Neville's disclosures the doctor was sent to the house in Seething Lane which Walsingham shared with Sir Philip. There Parry spent the night on February 8, 1585 under surveillance (Read, op. cit., ii, 404).
99 On January 22, May 15 and 16, and November 17, 1581.
99a Though early suspicions had concerned Henry III also (Works, iii, 144, Sidney to Rutland), distrust centered finally on Philip and Guise.
100 State Papers Domestic Elizabeth, Sidney to Lord Burleigh, sub May 15, 1585.
101 For Sidney's connection with Scotland in 1585, see Wallace, op. cit., 320–323.
102 Belvoir MSS. Lord Talbot to the Earl of Shrewsbury, July 14, 1585.
103 Walsingham regarded the appointment as settled, to judge by his letter of August 26, in the Hamilton Papers. It is now known, however, that there was a first plan to give Thomas Cecil the governorship of Flushing and assign Sidney to Brill (cf. Wallace, op. cit., 332 N).
104 Wallace, op. cit., 183.
105 Langueti Epistolae (1633), 176–178; the letter is in reply to Sidney's of October 10, 1577 which will be found in Works, iii, 116.
106 Frobisher was a favorite of the Earl of Warwick. In his first expedition, Sidney's share amounted to £25 (Bourne, Life of Sir Philip Sidney, 1891, 153); in the second he ventured to the amount of £50 and persuaded his sister to invest as well; in the third, he not only increased his own stake a third, but advised her to do the same (idem. 156). The fact that as late as April, 1579, Sidney's name appeared on the list of those who had not yet completed payment of their subscriptions to the Frobisher ventures, indicates a lack of money rather than a diminution of enthusiasm (Wallace, op. cit., 196).
107 Works, iii, 133.
108 My italics.
108a Letter to Languet in Works, iii, 117.
109 Cf. Sidney's letter to Languet sub March 10, 1578 (Works, iii, 121). On this point see Bourne's Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney (1862), 191 and Wallace, loc. cit.
110 C. C. Stopes, Henry Third Earl of Pembroke (1922), 314. Mrs. Stopes gives the reference to Close Roll 23 Elizabeth, vii, 1153.
111 J. A. Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney (1886), 109.
112 G. B. Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages (1928), 83.
113 Wallace (op. cit., 286) says that Sidney purchased a portion of Sir Humphrey's lands on July 7, 1583, but cf. Note 110. Symonds (loc. cit.) says that Sidney received the grant direct from Elizabeth.
114 Martin Hume, Sir Walter Raleigh (Knopf, 1926), 15.
115 Symonds (loc. cit.) and Sir Sidney Lee (D.N.B. xcii, 226) say that Sidney transferred 30,000 of the 30,000,000 acres which he possessed; Wallace (op. cit., 286) says that he made over all of his holdings. See State Papers Domestic Elizabeth clxi, no. 44, for the indenture between Peckham and Sidney.
116 Works, iii, 145, sub July 21, 1584. Gilbert died on Sept. 9, 1583 aboard the Squirrel.
117 Divers Voyages concerning the Discovery of America and the Islands adjacent to the same, 1582. Parks says that Sidney “did his duty by his fellow collegian but little more,” (op. cit., 8); he does not, however, adduce any proof.
118 Cf. Gaffarel, Histoire de la Floride Française (1875), 518 ff.
119 Sir Sidney Lee, Elizabethan and Other Essays (1929), 259.
120 Lemoine, who had landed with his chief, René de Laudonnière, at Swansea on November 11, 1565, proceeded to London, and according to Sir Sidney Lee never again sought his native France. However, an examination of the Return of Aliens shows no trace of him in London before 1581. At that time he is established in the parish of St. Anne's, Black-friars, has a servant, one child, and a taxable income of £10 a year; in the records he is called “Mr. James Morgayne.” Cf. op. cit., ii, 252, 253, 354, 417. He was dead in 1591 when De Bry issued his famous plates of the environs of La Floride which had been prepared from Lemoine's drawings.
120a Greville, op. cit., 118.
121 Idem, 117.
122 State Papers, Colonial Correspondence, Ralph Lane to Sidney, August 12, 1585.
123 Greville, op. cit., 91.
123a Slate Papers Domestic Elizabeth, sab September 13, 1585.
124 Hume, op. cit., 46.
125 Idem, 50.
126 Von Wedel, from whose description I quote, was permitted to see them by “a certain Master or Captain Rall” [sic] on November 18 (cf. Von Klarwill, op. cit., 323).
127 d'Ewes, Journals of all the Parliaments during Elizabeth's Reign (1682), 339.
128 Idem, 341.
129 Bourne, Life, 445.
130 Wallace, op. cit., 319.
131 Idem, 318.
132 Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, xii, 41.
133 Op. cit., 71.
134 Wallace, op. cit., 331, feels that Greville's “affection for his friend caused his memory to play him false here,” noting that up to August 26 he had reason to believe the appointment to Flushing was secure and that our first hint of his plan to join Drake comes in Walsingham's note of September 13. See notes 103 and 123a.
135 Bourne, Life, 470.
136 He had made the trip with Sir Humphrey Gilbert (Bourne, loc. cit.) and as early as March, 1574, had been associated with Grenville, Peckham and Raleigh in a petition that they might “at their own charges” voyage to “discover sundry rich and unknown lands” (Hume, op. cit., 15).
137 Wallace, op. cit., 295 N.
138 Greville, op. cit., 73.
139 Idem, 75.
140 Stowe, Annales (1631), 709.
141 Cf. the letter from John Stanhope to the Earl of Rutland dated from Nonsuch, September 21: “This day Sir Philip Sidney was with her Majesty who received it for a truth that he never meant to go.” (Belvoir MSS.) The meeting between the two may have been delayed for purposes of discipline. On the other hand, Sidney stayed at Plymouth long enough to make an address to the crew, urging them to serve Drake loyally and well (Greville, op. cit., 76), and we know from a letter of Leicester's that on September 20 the Queen was ill (State Papers Domestic Elizabeth, cxxxxii, sub September 21).
142 Notably Zouch, Fox-Bourne, and Philip Sidney, the author of The Sidneys of Penshurst (1901) q.v., 101 N.
143 Greville's account of the times when he himself went without leave indicates the variability of her moods in such matters. When he departed with Walsingham, “unknown,” he was on his return “forbidden her presence for many moneths” (op. cit., 147), a circumstance which did not prevent his repeating the offence to join Essex in France. This time she refused to see him for six months, but herself gave it out that he had gone “on a secret imployment of Hers” (!). However, on two other occasions when he departed with “bill assigned,” he was nevertheless “stayed by Princely Mandate” (op. cit., 147–148).
144 Discussed at length by Wallace, op. cit., 161. On the probable source of the legend, see Mona Wilson's Sir Philip Sidney (London, 1931), 319–320.
145 Wallace, op. cit., 187.
146 Idem, 198 ff.
147 See letters from Languet dated November 14, 1579, January 30, and March 12, 1580, in Epistolae Langueti.
148 See Certain special notes, by Molyneux in Collins, Sidney Papers, i, 295–296.
149 Dyer to Walsingham, March 27, 1583, State Papers Domestic Elizabeth clix.
150 His first letter of petition is dated January, 1583; he received the appointment on July 21, 1585, having probably some small office in the Ordnance in the meantime, but not the position he craved.
151 For the extant letters which have to do with money difficulties see in Sidney's Works those dated August 2, 1580; and September 26, October 10, November 14, 18, 26, and December 28, 1581.
152 Letter to Languet, March 7, 1578 (Works, iii, 119).
153 Langueti Epistolae, 209.
154 Ibid., 179.
155 Ibid., 243.
156 William Oldys, Diary (edited Yeowill, 1862), sub August 6, 1737.
157 Aubrey, Brief Lives (edited Clark, 1892), ii, 247.
158 My italics. The lock preserved at Penshurst Place is exactly this color.
159 Jonson as reported by Drummond says nothing of coloring beyond the fact that Sir Philip's face was “spoiled with Pimples & of high blood & Long.” The detail of complection, mentioned by no one else, would not concern a tactful painter.
160 Cf. Ashmole MS. 837, 131a for the description of the “scarfes of his coullors” worn by the Prince [Charles] of Wales in 1619; and idem (1316) for the scarfs of Lord Compton in 1620. One of these Stuart scarfs appears in the portrait of Sir James Scudamore (cf. Dean, loc. cit.).
161 At the wedding tilt of Ambrose Earl of Warwick, he and Sidney's other uncle, the Earl of Leicester, wore scarfs of black and white as challengers, while the defenders' colors were red and yellow (cf. Nichols, op. cit., i, 53).
162 The Director of the Gallery tells me that he sets great store by the nose and chin line in the identifying of portraits.
163 We may be reasonably sure that he had never heard of our portrait.
164 Memoirs of the Life of Sir Philip Sidney, 1808, 333.
165 Hunter is scornful of Zouch's interest in the details of tournaments and such.
166 Chorus Vatum, B.M. Adi. MS. 24, 490, 7: Virtus secura sequatur. Hunter's source (which is Harleian MS. 3917, 2) I have examined in vain for trace of the motto in the portrait.
167 Op. cit., 36.
168 Idem, 111.
169 While the present paper was in page proof, I received through the courtesy of Mr. Raymond Holland of Averell House, New York City, an excellent photograph of the portrait of Sydney until recently owned by Lord Sackville of Knole. This picture, described as the work of an English artist about 1580, shows Sir Philip with very light hair, and a blond moustache of exactly the type in our portrait and the Lant drawing. Over his gorget Sidney wears a plain linen collar not unlike that in the Chandos picture of Shakespeare. In the upper left hand corner is his phaeon badge, and underneath, in crude contemporary lettering: S r Philip Sidney.
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