REPUBLICAN, STATESMAN, AND SOLDIER,
Was the grand-nephew of Sir Philip, being the son of Robert, second Earl of Leicester, who was the son of Sir Robert Sidney, Sir Philip's second brother. He was born at Penshurst in 1621, or 1622. His mother was Dorothy, daughter of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. He was trained for military life, and accompanied his father when appointed Lord Lieutenant to Ireland. When the civil war broke out, he joined the Parliamentary Army, and served under the Earl of Manchester and Fairfax, and subsequently under his brother, Lord Lisle, in Ireland. In 1648 he was nominated a member of the Commission for the trial of the King, in which, however, he took no part. During the Protectorate he retired from public life, and lived at Penshurst, but, on the restoration of the Long Parliament, he was nominated a member of the Council of State. At the King's restoration he was absent on an embassy in Sweden, and did not return to England till 1677, when he obtained permission from the King to do so, together with a pardon of all his offences. Notwithstanding this he is said to have joined the rebels against the Government, and being accused in 1683 of complicity in the Rye House Plot, was tried and condemned to death, which sentence was carried out on Tower Hill 7th December, 1683. Much controversy has existed as to the justice of this sentence. "Sidney's Discourses on Government" were first printed in 1698, and again in 1772, with his Letters, Trial, and Memoirs, by Thomas Hollis, Esq.
[See "Biographia Britannica" and Histories of the Period.]