SYDNEY, Robert (1595-1677)

Sydney’s ancestors first entered Parliament in 1429. They prospered under the Tudors, building landholdings in Sussex, Kent, Middlesex and Wales. Their principal seat was at Penshurst which, though described as a palace, was assessed at a modest 21 hearths in 1664. They also possessed other houses in the county including one of 40 hearths. Kent Hearth Tax Assessment Lady Day 1664 ed. D. Harrington (Brit. Rec. Soc.), xxxvii.-xxxix. 55, 151. Sydney’s father was raised to the peerage by James I. Sydney himself, though regarded as ‘bookish’ rather than as a man of action, had had a long public career before the Restoration. A committed Protestant (probably with Presbyterian leanings) and a veteran of the factional disputes at the court of Charles I (where he attracted the enmity of William Laud^†, archbishop of Canterbury), he managed to survive the squabbles between Parliament and the king over the handling of the Irish rebellion, acting as temporary Speaker of the Lords in the summer of 1642. However, his indecision and consequent reluctance to take sides left him increasingly isolated as the political situation deteriorated. It was a feature later castigated by Edward Hyde, (by then earl of Clarendon) as ‘the staggering and irresolution in his nature’. Clarendon, Rebellion, ii. 531. Towards the end of 1643 he was forced to resign his office of lord lieutenant of Ireland. He had been appointed to the post in succession to Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford, but never set foot on the island. Stowe 1008, f. 222. In June 1644, after an unwilling stay of some 18 months at Oxford where he rebuffed all attempts to embroil him in the king’s affairs, he quit the royalist capital. Parliamentarian troops arrested him and his entourage at Wormleighton, but his brother in law, Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, successfully intervened on his behalf and in July 1644 the House granted him permission to retire to Penshurst. He refused to seek readmission to the House thereafter. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 562.

Although Leicester spent most of the rest of the Civil War and Interregnum in retirement on his estates, his Presbyterian connections were strengthened by the marriage of his daughter Lucy to Sir John Pelham^‡. He (somewhat unwillingly) took the Engagement in April 1650 and (even more unwillingly) undertook the wardship of his nephew, Philip Smythe^‡, Viscount Strangford [I]. His wife, with whom he had a volatile relationship, was granted custody of two of the royal children, Princess Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester, from the summer of 1649 until August 1650, probably through Northumberland’s interest. With the responsibility came an income to match. Leicester, always quarrelsome particularly where money was concerned, promptly reduced her annual allowance. Money also seems to have been one of the factors in his difficult relationship with his son and heir, Philip Sydney, styled Viscount Lisle (later 3rd earl of Leicester). After one quarrel in 1652 father and son actually came to blows. Ibid. 500, 554-59, 614.

Over the spring of 1660 Leicester was appraised about the progress of the Restoration by Northumberland, who was in London to negotiate the marriage of his son. He assured Leicester that despite the popularity of a Restoration, ‘soberer people’ would insist upon conditions. Referring to the expulsion of peers from the House, he remarked that ‘until the way be clear for your Lordship to come amongst us, and that we may be assisted by your counsels, I shall have no good opinion of our business; nor, indeed, do I yet well understand by what warrant or upon what account we should meet.’ Collins, Letters and Memorials, ii. 685. Despite his doubts, Northumberland took his seat at the opening of the Convention, and shortly after, as one of those thought sympathetic to the agenda of the Presbyterian ‘junto’, Leicester was invited to attend the House by Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester. On 29 Apr. he responded by writing to Manchester undertaking to attend the House as soon as ‘it shall please God to free me of an indisposition’ which made it difficult for him to travel. He promised his support, health permitting, for the group of Presbyterian lords headed by Manchester. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 501; Schoenfeld, Restored House of Lords, 80.

Illness prevented him from fulfilling his promise until 18 May. Having taken his seat at last he was thereafter present on 50 days prior to the September adjournment (approximately 42 per cent of the whole session). Committed neither to the king nor to Parliament (Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, described him as one of the lords ‘who withdrew a little’), Leicester was greatly surprised when two weeks after taking his seat, he was summoned to court and sworn privy councillor. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 63; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 622. He also received some £3,000 as arrears due to him for his services as ambassador to France. Schoenfeld, 122. On 26 May Leicester was named to the committee for preparing a proclamation against the rebels in Ireland, and in June he was added to the committee for privileges. He was named to the committee to consider the question of peers taking the oath of allegiance and to eight other committees in the course of the session. He was also named as one of the commissioners to disband the army. Leicester was present at Whitehall when the king made his formal entry on 29 May and managed to kiss Charles’s hand, but he betrayed his annoyance at the disorderly nature of the gathering in his account of the event in his journal. Leicester’s diary records his activities in London, attending Parliament until the adjournment on 13 Sept. and his presence at meetings of the Privy Council into the following month. He sought and received permission from the king to retire into the country for his health on 12 October. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 622. He failed to return when the session resumed the following month. Perhaps he was ill; perhaps he was as disillusioned as his brother-in-law, Northumberland, who thought that everyone at court was after money and preferment and hoped that ‘some years may pass before another Parliament be called’. Letters and Memorials, ii. 701. It may have been on account of such disgruntlement that Leicester refused a request to rent his London residence to the new French ambassador in November. Just over a year later he showed similar reluctance to let the place to Elizabeth of Bohemia, though in this case he eventually relented. She died there having been in residence for just a week. ‘It seems’, Leicester mused, ‘the fates did not think it fit that I should have the honour, which indeed I never much desired, to be the landlord of a queen’. Survey of London, xxxiv. 444.

Leicester claimed to be too ill to attend the coronation in April 1661, and he was absent when the Cavalier Parliament opened on 8 May, not taking his seat until 6 June 1661. Even so he recorded the event in his journal and how the king rode to the opening ‘in great state’. Over the next two months he was present on only 13 days. He was added to the committee for the bill for reversing the attainder of Thomas Wentworth^† on 6 June, but little else is known of his activities except that it was thought that he would oppose the claim of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, to the office of lord great chamberlain. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 624; Bodl. Carte 109, f. 317. On or about 28 Nov. 1661 Leicester appears to have registered his proxy in Northumberland’s favour, though it is not recorded in the surviving proxy records for this period. PH, xxxii. 237-52. The proxy was probably given as a result of the call of the House three days earlier. There certainly seems to have been no expectation of its use in settling a particular vote, for Northumberland remarked that although he considered it ‘an honour, that you are pleased to trust your proxy in my hands … there will not be much use made of proxies in the House, for all things are likely to pass there very unanimously.’ Letters and Memorials, ii. 722.

Leicester did not attend either the court or the House thereafter. Even in February 1662 when he hoped that negotiations in the Privy Council over a proposed bill to settle Irish arrears would result in the settlement of his own claim for unpaid ‘entertainments’ during the period of his lieutenancy, for which he had been seeking satisfaction since at least January 1661, he preferred to rely on Northumberland’s assistance rather than to attend in person. Ibid. 723-4; Bodl. Clarendon 74, f. 96. In 1664-5 and again in 1670 he was involved in attempts to obtain a private act to sell some of the estates of his son-in-law and former ward, Strangford. The minutes of the 1664-5 select committee refer to Leicester (and Northumberland) being responsible for the prosecution of the bill, but since on one occasion a servant testified to the committee on his behalf and on another amendments were offered by his counsel, it seems unlikely that he was personally present. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, pp. 1, 2, 3-5, 12, 15. Similarly, in 1670 his consent to the bill was not given in person but by George Savile, Viscount (later marquess of) Halifax, who had held Leicester’s proxy since 27 Nov. 1669. Ibid. 304.

Although he complained in 1662 that his Sussex estate was worth only £1,000, Leicester was clearly a wealthy man. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 517. His daughter, Lucy, received a dowry of £4,000, and at his death he left legacies worth between £20,000 and £30,000 to his two surviving younger sons, Algernon^† and Henry, (later earl of Romney). HP Commons 1660-90, iii. 218. He was also actively engaged in developing the area around his London residence that would ultimately become Leicester Square. Survey of London, xxxiv. 428. Leicester’s detachment from public life and his history of indecisive and equivocal political allegiances makes comments by James, duke of York (later James II) all the more puzzling. According to James, Leicester together with others ‘who were for the Isle of Wight conditions’ intrigued together in the autumn of 1667, taking advantage of the opposition to Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, to demand the disbandment of the king’s guards and redress for other unspecified grievances. Since Leicester’s Civil War record was decidedly ambiguous and at the time of the supposed intrigue he was past 70 and in ailing health, it is possible that James, writing retrospectively, was referring not to the 2nd earl but to his son, Lisle. Yet given that the leading figure in the supposed negotiation held at Guildford was Leicester’s brother-in-law, Northumberland, and that Lisle was quite as divorced from public affairs by then as his father, it remains possible that York was indeed referring to the older Leicester. Life of James II, i. 426-7; Seaward, Cavalier Parlt. 96; Swatland, 209. A less surprising but scarcely useful assessment of Leicester was made by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, who marked him as doubly worthy on a list drawn up just six months before Leicester’s death.

Leicester died at Penshurst on 2 Nov. 1677. A newsletter that noted the event recorded drily that he died ‘about 80 years of age, having been a long time from the court’. Bodl. Carte 79, ff. 142-3. During his lifetime he had been involved in a variety of unpleasant financial disputes. He appears at one point to have attempted to strong-arm the French agent, Colbert, into renewing his lease on Leicester House leading Colbert to complain of ‘the chicanes played on me with this house’. TNA, PRO 31/3/123, p. 16. Much of Leicester’s post Restoration retirement at Penshurst had been spent arranging and rearranging his financial affairs according to his current favourite amongst his children. As a result his will contained no less than eight codicils composed between December 1665 and April 1675, and he appears to have made a further instruction in his younger sons’ favour shortly before his death, which was later part of the subject of lengthy legal proceedings between them. Scott, Restoration Crisis, 90-93. Throughout all this he made no secret of his preference for his second son, the radical philosopher Algernon, and made every attempt to exclude his heir, Lisle, from the estate. He could not, however, prevent Lisle from inheriting the earldom. In the event Algernon was unable to enjoy his inheritance. Henry Sydney, though, made his peace with his brother and survived to be ennobled as earl of Romney.