offence to Lord Lisle, who was anxious to stand well with the government. Sidney himself took the chief part, and was much applauded. Tradition asserts that the play was ‘Julius Cæsar,’ and that Sidney played the part of Brutus; but there seems to be no evidence for this assertion (Blencowe, p. 269; Ewald, i. 198).
When the army restored the Long parliament, Sidney returned to his place in the house, which at once elected him one of the council of state (14 May 1659). As before, his main employment was in foreign affairs. On 9 June 1659 four commissioners were appointed to be sent to mediate between the kings of Denmark and Sweden, viz. Sidney, Admiral Edward Montagu (afterwards first Earl of Sandwich) [q. v.], Sir Robert Honeywood, and Thomas Boone (Commons' Journals, vii. 677, 698, 700). They arrived at Elsinore on 21 July, and had several interviews with the king of Sweden. Sidney, who describes Charles Gustavus as extremely able but extremely choleric, acted as spokesman for his colleagues, and replied with dignity and firmness to the explosion of wrath with which the king received the terms of settlement the English and Dutch ambassadors endeavoured to impose. ‘Even the enemies of this government,’ wrote the French ambassador in England, ‘praise the high-spirited manner in which Colonel Sidney answered him’ (Blencowe, p. 166; Collins, ii. 683; Thurloe, vii. 732; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 160; Ludlow, Memoirs, ii. 117). Nevertheless the negotiations dragged. Sidney distrusted his Dutch colleagues; the unauthorised return of Montagu and the fleet to England robbed his words of weight; while the ambition of the king of Sweden and the weakness of the king of Denmark were almost insurmountable obstacles to peace. His own government left him without instructions and without information of the revolutions of public affairs in England. Sidney watched with anxious eyes the breach between the parliament and the army in October 1659, condemning, in his letters to his friends, the stiffness and severity of the former (Blencowe, pp. 169, 182). He was given liberty to return if he chose, but the interests of England seemed to him to require his stay till peace was concluded, and his personal sympathy with the Swedish cause worked in the same direction. At last, in May 1660, largely, as Sidney persuaded himself, in consequence of his efforts, the treaty was brought to a conclusion (ib. pp. 171, 179, 218; Collins, ii. 687–95).
The restoration of Charles II, although Sidney was not excepted by the act of indemnity, obliged him to remain an exile. Since parliament had acknowledged a king, he was willing to submit to him, and, if trusted, to serve him faithfully. But he was not willing to live in England under suspicion and in constant danger of arrest, nor would he purchase pardon and favour by protestations of penitence. ‘When I call to remembrance,’ he wrote to his father, ‘all my actions relating to our civil distempers, I cannot find one that I can look upon as a breach of the rules of justice or honour; this is my strength, and, I thank God, by this I enjoy very serene thoughts. If I lose this by vile and unworthy submissions, acknowledgment of errors, asking of pardon, or the like, I shall from that moment be the miserablest man alive, and the scorn of all men. … I had rather be a vagabond all my life than buy my being in my own country at so dear a rate.’ To the argument that his scruples were extravagant and overstrained, he answered: ‘I cannot help it if I judge amiss. I walk in the light 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 grievous to me except sin and shame’ (Blencowe, pp. 188, 195, 233). His father, who was anxious for Sidney's return to England (which Monck had promised to further), complained that his son's ostentatious justification of the execution of Charles I, and the contemptuous things he had said of the royal family, placed an insurmountable barrier in his way. Sidney replied by disowning the words attributed to him by report, though admitting that he had publicly justified the king's death, and avowing that when asked to write his autograph in the album of the university of Copenhagen, he had chosen as his motto the famous words, ‘Manus hæc inimica tyrannis.’
In July 1660 Sidney left Denmark, his negotiations being ended, and the hostility of the Danish court rendering his stay there somewhat dangerous. The question whether he should be handed over to Charles II as a regicide was already being debated, and he had been grossly affronted by the queen (ib. pp. 205–27; Collins, ii. 695). Travelling through Hamburg and Augsburg, he made his way first to Venice, and in November 1660 to Rome. There he was received with unexpected favour by Roman society. Cardinals Azzolini, Barberini, and others treated him with great courtesy, and he was an honoured spectator at many of the festivals of the church. In the summer of 1661 Prince Pamphili, the pope's nephew, lent him a villa at Frascati, and he gave himself up to study. ‘I find so
