SYDNEY, Algernon (1623-83), of Penshurst and Sterry, Kent, and Leicester House, Westminster.

Algernon Sydney – who rendered his surname with two ‘y’s – was born into an aristocratic family established at the heart of government since Tudor times and with kinship ties to a major part of the English peerage.34SP63/344, ff. 17, 19, 34, 83. He was named after his maternal uncle, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, from a proud, ancient and frequently rebellious northern line, but by this period largely resident at Petworth, Sussex, within relatively easy visiting distance of the Sidney home at Penshurst, Kent. His extensive education, conducted in England and abroad, nurtured his precocious intellect. It also cultivated the independent spirit, the self-confidence, the moral seriousness and the international outlook which – as he fully appreciated – had enabled and inspired earlier generations of Sidneys and Percys both to serve the crown and to defy tyrants, and to fight for the cause of Protestantism on the European stage. His great-uncle Sir Philip Sidney was a consciously-acknowledged role model, while his father Robert Sidney†, 2nd earl of Leicester, to whom he was closer than was his elder brother, Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle, was a well-read diplomat.35Scott, Algernon Sidney, 43-50; Carswell, Porcupine, 2-7.

Thus far the characterisation of Sydney has remained more or less constant since his execution in 1683. In other respects, however, his reputation has altered. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the manner of his death rendered him a whig martyr, while his posthumously-published writings, influential in America and France as well as England, were taken to proclaim him a classical republican of rational and secular cast. The discovery in the twentieth century of additional correspondence (including from 1659-60) and of his Court Maxims, composed in 1665, led to a rekindling of interest and to a series of re-assessments, which have taken somewhat divergent paths. Most analyses tend to affirm more forcefully the European influences that informed his life, but while a majority now emphasise his religious language and motivation, and on occasion explicitly his Calvinism – putting him alongside, albeit not identical with, the similarly re-imagined Edmund Ludlowe II* – others regard him as a ‘free-thinker’, whose spiritual beliefs – such as they were – had relatively little impact on his political thought.36Scott, Algernon Sidney, 1-27, 37; Worden, ‘Commonwealth Kidney’, 1-40; Worden, Roundhead Reputations (2001), 122–80; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘England’s Cato’, HJ xxxvii. 915-35; M.P. Winship, ‘Algernon Sidney’s Calvinist Republicanism’, JBS xlix. 753-73.

Education and military service 1632-46

One difficulty in assessing Sydney’s pre-Restoration political career lies in the fact that, aside from his correspondence, his surviving writings were composed later, and may thus not reflect his reasoning and motivation in early life. Nonetheless, they serve to suggest that some of his youthful experiences made a lasting and critical impact. Following what was to be the first of many formative sojourns abroad, a likely early tutor was Henry Hammond, appointed rector of Penshurst by the earl of Leicester in August 1633. A Greek scholar with a predilection for platonic theology, his habit of citing Paul and Tertullian the most among New Testament and patristic sources used in his writings was subsequently replicated by Sydney.37Scott, Algernon Sidney, 27-8; Carswell, Porcupine, 9. The fact that after 1643 Hammond became identified with the royalist cause does not render his lasting influence implausible in a family whose parliamentarianism and religion in the 1640s was as nuanced as that of the Sidneys.38‘Henry Hammond’, Oxford DNB; Worden, ‘Commonwealth Kidney’, 6. During prolonged periods in France with Leicester from 1636 Algernon almost certainly encountered the Huguenot theologian Jean Daillé at the Charenton chapel outside Paris; both he and Hammond frequently cited Daillé, a liberal Calvinist. Unlike his intellectually less gifted elder brother, it seems that he did not also spend time at the Protestant seminary on the Loire founded by another influence, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, the resistance theorist and friend of Sir Philip Sidney.39Scott, Algernon Sidney, 27-8, 53; Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 261-2. But the Huguenot strand in his life was to be long-lasting and significant, notably reinforcing his attitude to aristocratic independence, albeit accompanied by a notably different Arminian thread stemming from his father’s friendship with the Dutch natural philosopher and Paris resident Hugo Grotius, whose work was to become another seminal source.40Scott, Algernon Sidney, 17, 19, 27-8, 57. Meanwhile, Algernon, who progressed rapidly with French, eventually matched his father’s facility with languages, and may possibly have polished this in 1641 during a brief trip to Italy.41HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 83; Worden, ‘Commonwealth Kidney’, 4; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 55-8.

Fittingly for a younger son of such a lineage, Sydney was none the less apparently destined for a military rather than an academic career. There are early signs of his combative temper in reports from February 1640 of a stand-off between the Sidney brothers and Leicester’s predecessor and rival as ambassador to Paris, John Scudamore†, 1st Viscount Scudamore, a notable supporter of Archbishop William Laud and no friend of Huguenots.42HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 232. In March 1640 Algernon’s uncle, Northumberland, sought to obtain for him a command under the prince of Orange, although this came to nothing.43HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 238. In May 1641 he was at Penshurst, but following the appointment of his father as lord lieutenant of Ireland in June, was by January 1642 named as a captain of horse under his elder brother Lisle for service in Leinster.44HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 403; HMC Ormonde, i. 124, 128; CJ ii. 407a. Ireland had been a major focus of Sidney family ambitions for decades, but the circumstances of 1641–1642 made it a daunting and dispiriting assignment for both Leicester and his sons. Although family friend and fellow officer Sir John Temple* was to report in January 1643 from Dublin, around which the brothers had been stationed late in 1642, that Lisle and Algernon ‘deserve very well of the public here’, in fact their record was dogged with controversy.45HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 416; HMC Ormonde, i. 136-9, 143-4. Perhaps while Algernon was absent in England, in May 1642 his troop, under Captain-lieutenant Mason, committed ‘great misdemeanours’ around the shipping point in Anglesey; local residents sought reparations from Parliament.46CJ ii. 591a; HMC Ormonde, i. 133-4; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 435. Lisle was more clearly implicated in atrocities in Ireland, and the conduct of both brothers, along with fellow officers, occasioned a court martial in March 1643 on charges of cowardice at the battle of Rosse.47Scott, Algernon Sidney, 83; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 420, 426. That June Algernon wrote to his mother expressing his ‘desperation to leave Ireland and his equal concern to avoid the war in England’, which had now been raging for ten months. Although he lacked the means of earning a good living, such was his experience that ‘nothing but extreme necessity shall make me think of bearing arms in England’.48Scott, Algernon Sidney, 83.

Yet while the desire to escape Ireland may have been straightforward enough, Sydney’s sentiments about service back home were plausibly shaped and complicated by the circumstances of summer 1643, which saw much political and military uncertainty. Late in 1642 Leicester had obeyed a royal summons to Oxford, but he had remained there ‘in a tortured state, refusing to take any part in the king’s affairs’.49‘Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester’, Oxford DNB. In August 1643 Northumberland, wavering from his commitment to Parliament, had just been implicated in the plot of Edmund Waller* and retired to Petworth entertaining – as did others in his circle like Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* – thoughts of defecting to the king.50‘Algernon Percy, tenth earl of Northumberland’, Oxford DNB. Arriving in Lancashire from Ireland with other officers at the end of August, Lisle and Sydney were suspected of a disposition to do likewise, partly on the grounds of an intercepted letter from the latter proposing to take complaints of theft by ‘royalist marauders’ directly to Charles. Detained before they made any move, they were taken to London under guard by order of Parliament.51CJ iii. 233a; Add. 31116, p. 149; Harl. 165, f. 167v; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 433. The immediate upshot is unclear, but Northumberland’s return to Westminster at the end of September, when the alliance with the Scots proclaimed in the Solemn League and Covenant appeared to offer a more realistic chance of parliamentary victory than seemed possible a few months earlier, evidently paved the way for the Sidney brothers also to hitch their colours to the parliamentary mast.52Scott, Algernon Sidney, 84.

For a short period Algernon Sydney returned to military duty in Ireland, being quartered around Dublin in January 1644.53HMC Ormonde, i. 148. On 25 May, however, the Committee for Irish Affairs was instructed to consider how £400 might be advanced to him towards his arrears of pay so that he could take up a new commission under Edward Montagu†, 2nd earl of Manchester.54CJ iii. 507a. At the battle of Marston Moor on 2 July a transformed Colonel Sydney displayed conspicuous ‘gallantry’ and ‘came off with much honour’. Severely wounded in the process, he was then despatched to London for a cure.55J. Vicars, Gods arke overtopping the worlds waves (1645), 273-4 (E.312.3). When in January 1645 his appointment as colonel of a regiment of horse in the New Model army was announced, he was characterised as the man ‘who lost so much blood, and ventured so far at Marston Moor’.56Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, no. 89 (21–28 Jan. 1645) (E.26.7). He featured high among the list of cavalry officers confirmed on 18 March, but when General Sir Thomas Fairfax* signed his commission on 2 April Sydney tendered his resignation. 57Perfect Passages no. 21 (12-19 Mar. 1645), 168 (E.258.38); Firth and Davies, Reg. Hist. 143. Citing his ‘lameness’ as the cause of his reluctant decision, he anticipated a more suitable, and perhaps seemingly more attractive, alternative.58Scott, Algernon Sidney, 85-6. During the second week in May he was approved as governor of the garrison at the important Sussex port of Chichester, close to Petworth; Northumberland, the county’s lord lieutenant, headed the signatories to the commission issued from the Committee of Both Kingdoms and was almost certainly the driving force behind it.59CJ iv. 136b, 137b; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 440; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 43-4. It was no sinecure: replacing Anthony Stapley I*, who had had a troubled tenure, for the remainder of 1645 and into 1646 Sydney had to juggle the demands of combating the clubmen and uncooperative elements on the Sussex committee with successive orders to despatch contingents of his troops to areas of conflict elsewhere in the county and the country.60CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 486, 541; 1645-7, pp. 132, 148, 151, 173, 182, 227, 229, 348, 355. As a reliable ally, however, he had Sir John Temple*, elected as a recruiter MP for Chichester in the autumn of 1645.

At least partly in response to a petition from Sussex presented to the House by Stapley in late January 1646, at some point in the ensuing year the Chichester garrison was dissolved on grounds of uselessness and expense.61HMC Portland, i. 347; VCH Suss. iii. 88. Some time after the end of February and conceivably before 15 April, when Sydney was referred to the Committee of Accounts to state his accounts for service in England and Ireland, he lost his command.62CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 355; CJ iv. 501b. In the meantime, and after prolonged wrangling, his brother Lisle had been appointed (21 Jan.) and commissioned (9 Apr.) as lord lieutenant of Ireland. Sydney, who was mentioned in a resolution of 3 July as colonel of a regiment made up of Eastern Association troops which was to embark at Chester, may have been envisaged as one of his brother’s subordinates at the outset, but factional disputes at Westminster, the controversial nature of Lisle’s appointment and the reluctance of many soldiers to sign up for Irish service delayed the whole enterprise.63CJ iv. 600b, 603b.

Westminster and Ireland, July 1646–Dec. 1648

In December 1645 a writ was issued for a by-election at Cardiff to replace William Herbert I*, killed at Edgehill fighting for the king. This was renewed in January 1646, but no poll seems to have taken place until 17 July, when Sydney was returned, thanks to his family’s landed interest in Glamorgan, and with the aim of increasing Northumberland’s influence in the Commons. On 23 July, as MPs dealt with the aftermath of the surrender of Oxford, Sydney was among those nominated to a committee to receive complaints about persons formerly in arms for the royalists who had now submitted to Parliament.64CJ iv. 625b. It was to be his sole appointment in the House for many months.

There is scant evidence of his activities in this period. In September Sydney participated with his brother in the funeral obsequies for Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, held in London.65SP16/514, pt. 1, ff. 130v, 134v, 135v. On 18 November Lisle commissioned Sydney, who was designated lieutenant-general of horse in Ireland, as governor of Dublin. According to their father this was with the sanction, or even on the order, of the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs.66HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 441, 565. On 4 January 1647 he was voted £2,000 from fines on delinquents collected by the Committee for Compounding and a week later was finally given leave of absence from the House to go to Ireland.67CJ v. 41b, 49b.

By the time the Sidney brothers disembarked in Cork on 21 February, Lisle’s commission had less than two more months to run and the Presbyterians, bolstered by the renewal of peace negotiations with James Butler, 1st marquess of Ormond, had taken control of the direction of Irish affairs at Westminster.68HMC Egmont, i. 357, 375; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 87; Juxon Jnl. 147; P. Little, ‘The Irish “Independents” and Viscount Lisle’s Lieutenancy of Ireland’, HJ xliv. 941-61. Despite grand promises, Lisle proved ineffectual in handling a challenging assignment, giving ammunition for complaint to the lord president of Munster, Murrough O’Brien, 1st earl of Inchiquin, an ally of the Presbyterians. Early on 8 April, ‘the House of Commons being very thin, and few of my son’s friends being present’, according to the earl of Leicester, John Glynne* moved that Algernon Sydney be replaced as governor of Dublin by Colonel Michael Jones, who was originally designated his deputy. Sir Henry Vane I* seconded it, and although Sir William Armyne*, an Independent member of the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs, opposed it and ‘defended’ Sydney, ‘it was carried against him and resolved upon Jones’. Indignant about the ‘strange proceeding’ that had deprived his son despite his record and in absentia, ‘without ever hearing him speak for himself, Leicester did register hearing that a motion to give Sydney ‘some recompense’ had passed ‘without any opposition’, but the Journal recorded only a resolution that ‘in due time’ the House would ‘take into consideration the merit and services of Colonel Algernon Sydney’.69HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 565; CJ v. 136a. As the expiry of Lisle’s commission loomed, there was a desperate attempt to set up a commission for Munster in which Sydney and other Independents would balance out the power of Inchiquin, but time ran out, and the brothers left Ireland on 17 April.70HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 566; Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 80; HMC Egmont, i. 389.

On their arrival in England, Sir John Temple and others in their party proceeded to London to present to Parliament their narrative of what had transpired, leaving Lisle and Sydney to follow in more leisurely fashion.71HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 566; Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 80. By the time Lisle and Temple reported on 7 May they were well received, despite Presbyterian dominance in the House; thanks were voted to them and to Sydney, perhaps partly in an attempt to head off confrontation.72CJ v. 166a. In the context of unrest in the New Model, however, party conflict continued. In his first outing as a teller on 25 May, and only his second recorded contribution to Commons proceedings, Sydney, partnering Denis Bond*, was defeated in an attempt to delay proceedings against delinquent ironmaster George Mynne by a majority of more than two to one marshalled by leading Presbyterians Sir William Lewis* and Sir John Clotworthy*.73CJ v. 182b. Later that day, this time with Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, he told for a much larger minority against Lewis and Harbottle Grimston*, when the latter secured agreement to a Presbyterian plan for disbanding Fairfax’s regiment at Chelmsford and encouraging recruitment for Ireland.74CJ v. 183a.b Recognition that the Sidneys’ own military role was at an end may have been implied in the suggestion of the comptroller of ordnance that their wagons be purchased, or at least borrowed (29 May).75HMC Egmont, i. 409.

With assistance from fellow Independent Thomas Hoyle* and from members of the Committee of the West, on 2 June the Sidneys and Temple launched a counter-offensive, laying plausible charges against newly-elected Member, Sir Philip Percivalle*. It was alleged that Percivalle, a long-standing adversary in Ireland, an ally of Inchiquin and a major source of Presbyterian intelligence of the Sidneys’ doings there, had been despatched by Ormond to negotiate with the king at Oxford and that he had subscribed to the agreement for the cessation of arms in Ireland. According to Percivalle, Temple took the lead in the attack; Algernon Sidney contributed the information that Percivalle had been responsible from effecting the cessation and ‘had proposed to the soldiers afterwards to come to England to fight the Parliament, and that was an abominable thing’.76Add. 31116, pp. 621-2; HMC Egmont, i. 357, 376, 389, 395, 430-1. They secured a debate lasting several hours and the referral of the allegations to a sizeable committee, to which representatives of both parties including themselves were named, but were unable to obtain Percivalle’s suspension from the House.77Add. 31116, pp. 621-2; CJ v. 195a; HMC Egmont, i. 411. Indeed, the committee did not meet, and the matter dragged on inconclusively.78Harington Diary, 54; HMC Egmont, i. 416, 423, 426-7, 431; CJ v. 203b, 210b, 245a.

There was no resolution before 26 July, when an angry mob drove the Independents from the House to seek refuge with the army. Percivalle noted that Sydney and Lisle were among them.79HMC Egmont, i. 440. Sydney did not appear again in the Journal until well after the ending of the Presbyterian coup. On 2 November – with Temple, Evelyn of Wiltshire and others – he was added to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs.80CJ v. 347b. Later that month, with the latest round of negotiations with the king at Carisbrooke Castle in prospect, and representing a moderate strand of Independency promoted by Northumberland in the Lords, Sydney and Evelyn narrowly carried a vote for proceeding on the basis of the Four Bills, a development of the Newcastle Propositions (27 Nov.).81CJ v. 371a. Their opponents on this occasion, Henry Marten* and Harbert Morley*, marshalled the more radical strand.

No more successful than preceding efforts, the negotiations failed, and Sydney again became invisible in the House. Precisely what he was doing in the next few months is unclear. It is conceivable that he spent some time discharging duties connected with local office in Glamorgan to which he had been appointed earlier in 1647.82Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 302-3; A. and O. However, it is evident that he also pursued behind the scenes the family interests in Ireland and their attendant rivalries. On 4 March 1648 he and Colonel William Jephson*, a fellow member of the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs and an ally of Inchiquin, were summoned to the House, where they promised to obey its injunction not to proceed on ‘a matter of difference’ between them – perhaps relating to the recent defection of Inchiquin to the royalists.83CJ v. 479a, 480a. In May, when other members of the militia commission for south Wales were pre-occupied with royalist insurrection in the area, Sydney re-appeared in the Commons. On the face of it, it seems odd that on the 27th he was a teller in favour of settling Presbyterian government in the church not just for three years but ‘so continued until the king, Lords and Commons shall alter it’, and that he was ranged against the incongruous pairing of Sir Henry Vane II* (an Independent for whom he was to evince profound respect) and Presbyterian Sir Walter Erle*.84CJ v. 574a. Possibly both Vane and Sydney were advocating what they considered the courses most likely to clinch a political settlement; Sydney’s proved to be the minority perspective on this occasion.

As royalist insurrection erupted in England, the outcome of the vote was academic. On 17 June Fairfax commissioned Sydney as governor of the strategically vital Dover Castle and as commander-in-chief of all the forts raised for its defence.85HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 443. Over the summer he was in regular communication from his base with the Commons and the Derby House Committee over Kentish affairs.86CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 185-7, 189, 217; CJ v. 633b, 652a. In October, the risings having been suppressed and peace talks having resumed, he was confirmed in his post at Dover on the initiative of the House of Lords (13/14 Oct.); reporting the fact, one newspaper described him as ‘a gentleman of much merit’.87CJ vi. 51b, 52a; Moderate Intelligencer no. 187 (1219 Oct. 1648), 1690 (E.468.17). That at this point he was still associated with his uncle Northumberland’s hopes of concluding a treaty with Charles is indicated in a letter of 4 October, in which he counselled an old client of the family that, since negotiations were proceeding well, it was a good time for those facing sequestration – in this case George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham – to make overtures to Parliament.88CCSP i. 441; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 90. Given Northumberland’s custody of the royal children, there may have been some truth, moreover, in his later claim that he ‘had done many personal and most important services, as well to the royal family, as unto such as depended upon it’.89Sidney, Apology, 1.

Within weeks he was back at Westminster, however, as Parliament considered the king’s final answer to peace proposals – surfacing in the House on 2 December, the day the army arrived in London to insist on its rejection. Sydney’s alliance as a teller with Richard Knightley* for the minority who advocated bringing in candles, and thus prolonging what in the circumstances was bound to be a confrontational debate, is hard to read.90CJ vi. 93a. At first sight it might seem the action of an out-and-out radical Independent, determined to provoke a show-down on behalf of the army, but on closer examination the motivation of all involved was evidently complex. Knightley was to be excluded at the purge of the House four days later, as were the majority tellers, Sir Anthony Irby* and John Bulkeley*, and Irby was such a hard-line Presbyterian that he reportedly rejected the religious element of the king’s answer. In a delicately-poised situation, strategic manoeuvring was required. In the case of the characteristically impatient Sydney, a push to bring matters to a head was probably not intended to benefit those driving army policy.

Rump Parliament: Dec. 1648–Apr. 1651

Once the purge had been perpetrated, all but the most radical army grandees recognised the desirability of comprehending as broad a base of MPs and peers as possible in the actions which followed. Although neither Sydney nor Lisle were apparent in the Commons chamber for the rest of December 1648, Lisle was named on the 23rd to a committee to consider how to bring the king to justice and on 6 January 1649 both were appointed commissioners and judges for the king’s trial.91CJ vi. 103a; A. and O. Leicester’s understanding that Sydney alone attended ‘sometimes in the Painted Chamber, but never in Westminster Hall’ is confirmed by the clerk’s book, which records him as present on 15 and 19 January to hear the testimonies of witnesses in the private space of the Chamber, but not otherwise, and not at all in the public space of the hall.92HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 580; Sydney Pprs., ed. Blencowe, 54, 236. According to Sydney’s account to his father, shaped by the altered circumstances of the autumn of 1660, but seemingly frank in all but one particular, he had been ‘at Penshurst when the act for the trial passed’ – perhaps a tactical retreat to ponder his response to the purge – ‘and coming up to town’, heard of his nomination as a judge; this must have been within four days of publication, since he wrote to his father from London on 10 January.93Sydney Pprs. ed Blencowe, 237; Carswell, Porcupine, 67. After listening ‘to what those would say, who had the directing of that business’, he ‘did positively oppose [Oliver] Cromwell*, [John] Bradshawe*, and others, who would have the trial go on’. His adduced reasoning – ‘First the king could be tried by no court; secondly that no man could be tried by that court’ – displays a combination of aristocratic distain, knowledge of history and understanding of natural law; it also, like his public pronouncements the next month, had ‘many witnesses’.94Sydney Pprs. ed Blencowe, 237, 239. Plausibly for a scion of the Percys and a fearless thinker, he advocated a parliamentary deposition – the unspecified ‘intention’ to which he alluded, but which he forbore to elucidate.95Sydney Pprs. ed Blencowe, 282–4. He may have continued to press for this privately as long as seemed productive, but acknowledging his powerlessness, he publicly withdrew, ‘to keep himself clean from having any hand in this business’.96Sydney Pprs. ed Blencowe, 237. ‘Unexpectedly’, according to Leicester, he and Lisle arrived at Penshurst on 25 January and stayed a week, ‘so as neither of them was at the condemnation of the king’.97HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 580.

In the meantime, Sydney had been named on 15 January to a Commons committee to consider a petition from the City, an appointment which, judging by his attendance that day in the Painted Chamber, he could have fulfilled.98CJ vi. 118a. He next appeared in the Journal after the king’s execution, being nominated with Lisle to work – under the potentially very moderate chairmanship of Bulstrode Whitelocke* – on the bill for the abolition of the House of Lords (6 Feb.) and – among a much larger group of MPs – to remodel commissions of the peace (8 Feb.).99CJ vi. 132b, 134a. The precise date on which Sydney registered his dissent to the vote of 4 December to continue treating with the king is unclear: his appointments would place that before rather than after the regicide, but whatever the case, he is unlikely to have done it without voicing some kind of critical comment.100Worden, Pride’s Purge, 63. When Henry Ireton* proposed that members of the new council of state subscribe an oath expressing full approval of the judicial proceedings against Charles and the abolition of the Lords, Sydney placed himself among those who, like elected councillors Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Vane II, raised objections. His observation that ‘such a test would prove a snare to many an honest man, but that every knave would slip through it’ provoked an indignant reaction from Thomas Grey*, Lord Grey of Groby, and a ‘hot debate’; it also gained him, he said, lasting enemies in the shape of Cromwell, Bradshawe, Thomas Harrison I*, Lord Grey ‘and others’. Apparently to his surprise, the maverick radical Henry Marten came to his assistance by pointing out that Sydney had not said that ‘every one who did slip through was a knave’, but this looks symptomatic more of Marten’s intellectual superiority over those ‘enemies’ than of any general disposition to ally with Sydney.101Sydney Pprs. ed Blencowe, 238-9; Worden, Rump Parliament, 180-1; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 29, 93-4, 96.

It has been argued convincingly on the basis of Sydney’s post-Restoration political thought that his experience in government under the commonwealth, especially under the last months of the Rump, ‘were politically the most formative of his life’.102Scott, Algernon Sidney, 102. However, the retrospective nature of such commentary, the rarity of its references to particular events, and the paucity of contemporary verdicts from others, has left room for different placings of Sydney in the constellation of leading MPs and in relation to specific policies. In 1654 government secretary John Milton spoke of him in the same breath as Whitelocke, Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*, Walter Strickland* and William Sydenham* – Sydney was ‘an illustrious name, which I rejoice has steadily adhered to our side’. While this hints at a certain brand of moral uprightness, tolerant piety, social conservatism and pragmatism at some remove from either religious or ‘irreligious social radicalism’, the context is insufficiently precise as to fix him in a party.103J. Milton, Works (1933), viii. 235; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 106. Some scholars have seen him, alternatively, as an ally of radical figures like Marten or Sir James Harington*.104Pocock, ‘England’s Cato’, 918-19; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 16, 94. Nevertheless, the overall pattern of Sydney’s contribution to the Rump, gauged by committee memberships, tellerships, and periods of activity and inactivity places him more than anywhere else alongside his Kentish neighbour Vane II, Whitelocke, Strickland and others of their kind – committed to a the republic since that was the option available and imbued with a degree of religiously-motivated integrity.105Worden, ‘Commonwealth Kidney’, 25-6. That Sydney may not always have been at one with any of them was a function of his independent, impatient and imperious personality.106Worden, ‘Commonwealth Kidney’, 7.

For nearly two years after his return to the Rump, there are only occasional glimpses of Sydney actually in the Commons, although he was quite possibly more active behind the scenes. In a thinly-attended House on 5 March 1649 he joined Sir William Masham* (an ally of Hesilrige over the oath) as a teller in favour of a pardon for John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, a recusant long imprisoned on treason charges, while later in the month he was named to a committee to investigate complaints about Sir Henry Cholmley’s* dereliction of duty while in command at Pontefract Castle (27 Mar.).107CJ vi. 156a, 174b. In May he received two important nominations to committees to consider arrangements for taking the accounts of the kingdom and (under the chairmanship of Vane II, and especially significant in the longer term) for future Parliaments and elections; he also reported from the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs the arrears of pay due to officers who had served there, prompting the House to refer back to this body Sydney’s own accounts for that service.108Supra, ‘Irish Committees’; CJ vi. 204b, 206b, 207a, 210a, 240a. Although his attendance at the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs may have been steady – he signed one of its orders on 26 June, for instance – his contribution to proceedings in the Commons itself became even more sparse and diffuse.109SP63/344, ff. 17, 19, 34, 83. It consisted of marshalling support for his kinsman Henry Neville*, whose election to Parliament had been challenged (11 Oct.); taking MPs’ subscriptions to the Engagement to the commonwealth (12 Oct); considering relief for creditors (21 Dec.); preparing an additional act for identifying and selling royal goods (14 Mar. 1650); investigating dean and chapter lands (18 Apr.); conveying Parliament’s thanks to Fairfax as he laid down his commission as general (25 June); supporting Vane II in the latter’s unsuccessful attempt to veto the choice as his successor as treasurer for the navy (10 Oct.); obtaining a clear majority for a clause in the assessments bill relating to hospitals (21 Nov.); and preparing a response to the Spanish ambassador (31 Dec.).110CJ vi. 305b, 307b, 337a, 382a, 400b, 431b, 482a, 500a, 517a.

An obvious explanation for this patchy record would be the distraction of Sydney’s duties as governor of Dover Castle, which the council of state continued to view as highly important. However, although from time to time the council addressed letters and instructions to him there, and received information and representations in return, there were also injunctions to him to repair to his charge to cope with disorder within and outside the garrison (4 June, 6 Aug. 1649; 2 July 1650), at least one period when he was in London but not evidently in Parliament (around late Nov. to mid-Dec. 1649); a submission made apparently in person to the council of state (7 Feb. 1650); and an otherwise blank fortnight between his being summoned by the council (29 July 1650) and being given leave to go out of the House (14 Aug.).111CJ vi. 146a, 455a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 67, 75, 130, 172, 174, 263, 265, 348, 412, 439, 469, 470, 507; 1650, pp. 64, 101, 163, 228, 251, 255, 531, HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 466. It seems plausible to assume that he was about Westminster quite often, but either chose not to engage with the more run-of-the-mill business of the House or was not regarded as a useful committee-man. He was certainly sufficiently conspicuous – and perhaps assiduous at the Committee of Irish Affairs – to obtain an order for payment of the remaining £1,809 13s. 8d. of his arrears for Irish service (3 Oct. 1649).112CJ vi. 282a, 302b. In September he purchased land in Lincolnshire from the trustees for the sale of fee farm rents.113Scott, Algernon Sidney, 97.

During this period he also had many family concerns to promote, alongside his long-running and time-consuming commitment to managing his father’s estate business and lawsuits.114Scott, Algernon Sidney, 62. While his aunt, Lucy Hay, countess of Carlisle, was in the Tower on charges of royalist conspiracy, and his mother had charge of the youngest royal children, Sydney supported his widowed eldest sister Dorothy, countess of Sunderland, who faced sequestration, and assisted with the troubled affairs of his sister Isabella and her young and dissolute husband, Philip Smythe†, 2nd Viscount Strangford, who owned a house at Sterry, near Dover.115Carswell, Porcupine, 71-80. Unlike his elder brother, who cultivated Oliver Cromwell, in practice Sydney spent much time in royalist circles, and while his principles were clearly less pliable than Lisle’s, his claims in his later Apology to have assisted royalists and even members of the royal family seem both plausible and liable at the time to have coloured his approach to the republic.116Sidney, Apology, 1.

By the autumn of 1650 it was his opponents in the commonwealth regime who troubled him most. In October, after a summer of deteriorating relations between Sydney and local authorities in Dover and Sandwich, arising at least partly from perceived deficiencies in supplies reaching the garrison from the Committee for the Army, articles regarding his conduct of the governorship were lodged against him. Having investigated them, initially a council of war and the council of state ruled that there should be no further proceedings, but in November a second round of accusations emerged.117CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 393, 399, 435; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 97. A court martial was sitting when, on 14 January 1651, a petition from Sydney to Parliament prompted the setting up of an investigatory committee of MPs, including on the one hand Vane and Viscount Lisle and on the other the potentially hostile Marten, Wauton, Harrison I and Lord Grey.118CJ vi. 523b. Eight days later it emerged that a simultaneous order to suspend actions set in train by the court martial had been ignored. An attempt by a parliamentary official to secure Sydney’s goods – in particular a locked chest – before they could be seized and examined by the court martial was thwarted by officers at the castle, including, apparently, former New Model agitator Major Lewis Audley*. The officers were summoned to Westminster to explain their action and in the meantime Harrison was despatched to take charge in Dover.119CJ vi. 526b. On 29 January, as Lisle reported to Leicester, ‘divers officers of the army came to the Parliament with a petition desiring that no appeals from the martial jurisdiction to the Parliament may be admitted, particularly in my brother’s case’. Lisle thought Sydney had ‘had very hard measure, and I know of no reason nor grounds of it but his relations to a sort of people who are looked upon with a most jealous eye’.120HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 487; CJ vi. 529a.

The incident had the hallmarks of a potentially damaging confrontation between the army and Parliament. The ‘difference between Colonel Sydney ... and his officers’ was referred on 1 February to the council of state, and in the meantime Sydney, who remained suspended from his governorship, kept up a presence round the House, where there were friends to take up his cause in defence of the principle of parliamentary supremacy.121Whitelocke, Mems. (1732), 487. On 13 February Sydney was nominated with Lisle and Whitelocke to a committee to review the future direction of the admiralty and navy.122CJ vi. 534a. The ‘business concerning Colonel Sydney’ rumbled on during March and April, but both Parliament and the council of state ordered before the end of March that his goods and horses be restored, and the charges against him were eventually dropped.123CJ vi. 554a, 562b; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 118; Worden, Rump Parliament, 249.

Rump Parliament: Apr. 1651–Apr. 1653

The cost was the loss of the governorship, but freed from his responsibilities – and the income which went with them – Sydney began to assume a greater role in Parliament than before. He started, appropriately enough, with appointment to a committee addressing a petition from Northumberland (25 Apr. 1651).124CJ vi. 567a. An early pre-occupation was with the possessions of royalists and delinquents: added on 21 May to a committee investigating the whereabouts of goods belonging to the royal family, he was twice a teller in divisions on the bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates.125CJ vi. 576b. Partnering Sir Arthur Hesilrige he just failed to ensure the inclusion of royalist financier William Craven, 1st Baron Craven, in the bill (12 June), but with John Goodwyn* managed to secure the appointment of John Baker as surveyor-general (8 July).126CJ vi. 587a, 599a. Over ensuing months he collected further committee appointments relating to sales and was nine times a teller in divisions on the matter, twice with Carew Ralegh, and both with and against Hesilrige and Sir John Danvers; he won only one of them – when he and Vane I marshalled a sizeable majority against selling Somerset House (27 Nov. 1652) – but only narrowly missed securing a majority to keep Wallingford House (29 Dec. 1652).127CJ vii. 112a, 115a, 148b, 156b, 157b, 191a, 218b, 222b, 238a, 245a, 250b, 277bo.

Alongside this, Sydney was occasionally engaged in wider money matters. Despite not being recorded as a member of the committee for excise, at least twice he signed its orders (4 Sept., 29 Oct. 1651).128Bodl. Rawl. C.386. In an unlikely pairing with Harrison, he unsuccessfully tried to block an appointment as excise commissioner (6 Jan. 1652), and he was nominated to committees to reorganise the treasury (27 July) and inspect the public revenue (27 Nov.).129CJ vii. 63b, 159a, 222b. He appears to have been keen that Parliament should keep a tight hold on the purse-strings of army finance, successfully marshalling support for a vote that MPs could be named treasurers at war (31 Dec. 1651).130CJ vii. 58a, 61a.

On the other hand, despite his appointment as a governor of Westminster School and almshouses, and despite revealing to his father in February 1652 a startlingly sympathetic and vivid awareness of the plight of slaves in the West Indies, Sydney’s visible engagement with the reform of abuses, social legislation and commercial development which interested some other Rumpers was relatively limited.131A. and O.; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 61–2. He was nominated to the committees discussing law reform (26 Dec. 1651) and salaries for judges (12 Nov. 1652), and was twice a teller in successive divisions on penalties in a bill to provide work for the poor (17 Feb. 1653), but this was a modest record.132CJ vii. 58b, 215a, 260a. He successfully opposed one scheme to drain fens in Lincolnshire, conceivably because it adversely affected his own newly-acquired property interests in the area (9 Feb. 1652).133CJ vii. 118b. A solitary nomination to a committee of the House on religion came on 10 February 1652, when Sydney was included among MPs to consider the proposals of submitted by leading ministers John Owen* and Thomas Goodwin.134CJ vii. 86b. On 10 March, Sydney was among the MPs and commissioners for propagating the gospel in Wales required by the Committee of Plundered Ministers to write to petitioners hostile to the ‘propagators’, seeking clarification of their criticisms. The petitioners doubted whether this letter was ever composed, but Sydney was among the MPs who made up a sub-committee on 21 May to report back. 135A. Griffith, A True and Perfect Relation (1654), 5-8. Sydney had been involved marginally in Welsh religious affairs soon after entering the Commons, serving as a trustee for the rectory of a Glamorgan parish, transferred from a ‘delinquent’ to the use of a preaching minister.136SP28/331/32, no. 82.

Irish affairs remained a constant thread, although until 1653 clearly involving more work outside than inside the Commons chamber. On the committee delegated in October 1651 to discuss the bill settling land on Roger Boyle*, Lord Broghill, who had just defeated Inchiquin in Munster, on 6 August 1652 Sydney was given joint care with John Weaver* of the bill for plantations in Ireland.137CJ vii. 23b, 162a. It was a key appointment, although it could not guarantee that he could shape an important and wide-reaching bill as he wished: within a week, partnered by his kinsman Neville, he was convincingly defeated by Marten and Sir William Brereton over the inclusion in it of provisions for the land of former royalist commander and Irish peer, Henry Moore, 3rd Viscount Moore.138CJ vii. 163a. By December, however, he had emerged as the committee’s sole chairman, and in the final months of the Parliament was much in evidence in presenting the bill’s later stages.139CJ vii. 228b, 241a, 242a, 267a, 274b, 278b, 280b; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 212.

Although still not a conspicuous committee-man, from 1651 Sydney evidently maintained a significant presence in the House. At the elections to the council of state on 24 November he was a teller.140CJ vii. 41b, 42a. Two days later, in three divisions in which he partnered Strickland, he secured a resolution that no-one should chair a committee of Parliament or the council of state for longer than one month at a time, unless re-elected – a provision presumably intended to promote confidence and effectiveness – or alternatively to challenge dominance by his opponents.141CJ vii. 43b. Among his fairly frequent tellerships, in July 1652 he and Harbert Morley took on Cromwell and Harrison in trying to prevent a petition from the lord general’s ally, and allegedly corrupt lord mayor of London, John Fowke, from being read in the Commons; it took the Speaker’s casting vote to get Fowke’s case heard.142CJ vii. 154b. Among various high-profile committee appointments were those to review the powers of the Committee for Indemnity (27 Apr. 1652), consider petitions submitted to Parliament (27 Aug.) and refine the arrangements for the union with Scotland (7 Oct.), a project particularly associated with Vane II.143CJ vii. 127a, 171b, 189a. On 8 October Sydney was one of the twelve MPs selected to meet with the deputies from Scotland and, largely under Whitelocke’s chairmanship, he attended a majority of the meetings of the Commons committee in October and November.144CJ vii. 189b; SP25/138.

On 25 November Sydney was elected to the council of state, coming joint ninth in the poll, his elevation probably owing much to the eclipse of the nexus around Henry Marten.145CJ vii. 220b; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 505; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 94. He was present at two thirds of the meetings during its term, and was the seventh most frequent attender.146CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. xxxiii. As was often the case, his service in the Commons and the council was complementary, with membership of the conciliar committee for Scotland and Ireland (2 Dec.), for example, underpinning his work on the Committee of Irish Affairs.147CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 2. It was apparent also with regard to the navy. Back in October 1650 Sydney had displayed his support for Vane II, whose grasp of maritime affairs he greatly admired.148CJ vi. 482a; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 94. With Vane back at the admiralty helm in the autumn of 1652 after a period of retirement, Sydney had been on a Commons committee to encourage merchants to provide ships for the navy (4 Nov.) and one of the four tellers in the election of judges of the admiralty (26 Nov.).149CJ vii. 210a, 221b. Appointed on 18 December to a four-man conciliar committee to prepare articles of war for the fleet, he was presumably responsible for the article debated in the House on the 24th which proposed punishment, if necessary death, for those who injured or wronged at sea ‘the known friends or allies of this state’, and for which he failed to find sufficient support among MPs.150CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 39; CJ vii. 234b. Perhaps this was an abortive attempt to address the contradictions of the war against the Dutch, which Vane – and almost certainly Sydney himself – had initially opposed, but now sought to bring to a successful conclusion.151Scott, Algernon Sidney, 94-5; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 137.

As early as 8 January 1652 Sydney had been nominated to a Commons committee to consider the relationship of MPs to the representatives of foreign powers.152CJ vii. 64b. In the final months of the Rump foreign affairs became his other major preoccupation on the council and in Parliament. Regularly on conciliar delegations to treat with ambassadors, he was often chosen to report to the Commons, relaying details of dealings with agents from Portugal (5 Jan. 1653), France (7 Jan.; 1 Mar.), and Spain and the Empire (27 Jan.); he also reported from the Commons committee which meet with a messenger from the states of Holland and Friesland (24 Mar.).153CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 9, 62, 77, 83, 112, 140, 157, 178; CJ vii. 243b, 244b, 250b, 251b, 263a, 271a. Having been on the committee which gave an audience to the ambassador from Hamburg (28 Jan.), he took charge of investigating whether the Hanseatic port would supply commodities necessary for English shipping (9 Feb.).154CJ vii. 252a; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 155. Meanwhile, he supported his brother Lisle’s prospective embassy to Sweden, presenting his official instructions for parliamentary approval, pursuing funding and representing to MPs the personal circumstances adduced by the ecumenist preacher John Durie for declining to accompany the expedition.155CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 130, 198, 221, 250, 254; CJ vii. 262a, 269b.

Writing to him in January 1653 seeking favours, Sydney’s kinsman Edward Somerset, 2nd marquess of Worcester, who had been imprisoned in the Tower for his royalist plotting in Ireland, praised him as a person of ‘knowing and ingenious hands’ and as ‘industrious and capable’.156A.W. Collins, Letters and Mems. (1746), ii. 679. Sydney’s influence, on which the marquess hoped to capitalize, was evident to others too. By this time Cromwell and other army grandees had him in their sights among those parliamentary opponents now grown dangerous because of their steering of the ‘bill for the new representative’ in a direction which empowered civilian at the expense of army rule. When on 20 April the bill was under discussion and the lord general arrived to dissolve the Rump forcibly, the primary targets of Cromwell’s anger were apparently Bulstrode Whitelocke, Vane II and Alderman Francis Allein*, but Sydney, who ‘sat next to the Speaker on the right hand’ and was thus in a prime position to manipulate the debate, was next. According to his own account, he initially declined the order that he leave the chamber ‘and sat still’, but succumbed when Harrison and Lieutenant-colonel Worsley (Charles Worsley*) ‘put their hands on Sydney’s shoulders as if they would force him to go out’.157HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 615; Hatton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxii), i. 7; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 102.

Under the protectorate ‘tyranny’

The circumstances of the dissolution and the manner of his own ejection from Parliament led Sydney to view Cromwell and his rule as protector as a tyranny even without the distorting lens of the Restoration.158Pocock, ‘England’s Cato’, 919; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 113. Unlike his brother Lisle, who accommodated himself to the new regime, he ceased to hold local office, and he did not appear in Parliament again until the return of the Rump.

Although by this time Lisle had become estranged from their father Leicester, it seems that political differences did not at first divide the brothers, and a shared interest in bringing to a conclusion the foreign policy in which Sydney had invested so much may even have persuaded him into some political activity. Early in September 1653, apparently acting on Lisle’s behalf, Sydney ‘came to visit and sift Whitelocke’ at the latter’s home in Chelsea to establish whether Lisle or Whitelocke was to lead the projected embassy to Sweden, both being reluctant to undertake what was likely to be a dangerous, uncomfortable and expensive mission.159Whitelocke, Diary, 290. Lisle was the one to stay at home, but, elected to the council of state in December, he remained engaged by foreign policy that winter and contacts made by Sydney may still have been live and useful to him. A letter from Dutch ambassador Hieronymus van Beverning to Colonel Sydney at Leicester House, dated 23 January 1654 (new style), and letters from Colonel Sydney in the Netherlands in August and October that year, once assigned to Algernon, are now considered likely to have been to and from his younger brother Robert.160TSP ii. 19, 501, 522, 649; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 118n. However, there seems room for doubt regarding at least the January letter, which appears to rest on much prior interaction in negotiations between sender and recipient.161TSP ii. 19. Equally, there is considerable scope for confusion between the brothers. In 1651 Robert, described as Lieutenant-colonel and Colonel Sidney, was involved in a duel in Flanders with Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, an incident potentially transferable via rumour to Algernon, busy in Parliament at the time.162Mercurius Politicus, no. 46 (17-24 Apr. 1651), 749 (E.628.3); Whitelocke, Mems. (1732), 492. In Dutch service, in the late 1650s he was the Colonel Sydney who supplied intelligence of royalists to Secretary John Thurloe*.163TSP vii. 508, 568.

In 1655 Sydney moved from Penshurst to London, perhaps the better to deal with the tortuous financial affairs of his sister and brother-in-law Strangford. The trust into which he entered, according to different readings either to discharge their considerable debts or to profit at their expense – for example by land sales – engaged significant time and effort in the later 1650s, and was to dog him for the rest of his life.164Scott, Algernon Sidney, 121-3; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 500-1; Carswell, Porcupine, 96, 132, 139. During this period he also had an irrevocable falling out with Lisle. One catalyst, according to a letter from the latter to Leicester in 1656, probably in June, was the dashing of Lisle’s hopes to build bridges between the earl and the protector by the staging at Leicester House of a play ‘of public affront to [Cromwell], which doth much entertain the town’. While there is no direct evidence for the legend that this included Sydney himself in the part of Brutus in a deliberately pointed performance of Julius Caesar, it is clear that Lisle regarded Sydney as responsible for a gross misdemeanour and that the incident provoked an outburst of hitherto apparently largely repressed resentment from a scorned elder son

that the younger should so domineer in your house that ... at all times I am uncertain whether I can have the liberty to look into it or no, for it seems that it is not only his chamber, but the great rooms of the house, and perhaps the whole, he commands.

Moreover, ‘his extreme vanity and want of judgement are so known that there will be some wonder at it’.165HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 499; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 114-15.

Whether this period also saw Sydney participating in the republican campaign conducted by Vane, James Harrington and Marchamont Nedham against the protectorate government is difficult to call: similarities between their writings and his later Court Maxims are suggestive, but perhaps ultimately no more than long-term cross-fertilisation.166Scott, Algernon Sidney, 115-17. Comments to his father in July 1660 imply that he was personally capable of retiring to a ‘private life’, and had tried to do so, but that ‘under the government of the Cromwells’ this had proved impossible owing to the suspicions of those ‘unto whom I am thought an enemy’.167Sydney Pprs., ed. Blencowe, 189. Having moved to Sterry in 1657, that summer he was under surveillance by Thurloe’s spy network following information that he was often visited by a suspected royalist who carried mail across the Channel.168CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 4; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 121n.; Worden, ‘Commonwealth Kidney’, 8.

Returned Rump, 1659–1660

Once the protectorate of Richard Cromwell* was overthrown and the Rump again sat in Westminster, Sydney returned to public life, entering on the most intense period of his parliamentary career. He surfaced within a week of the beginning of the session, being added on 13 May 1659 to the committee investigating prisoners of conscience – for him a rare visible connection to the question of toleration.169CJ vii. 650b. Named as a teller for elections of MPs and of non-MPs to the council of state (14, 16 May), he was appointed to the committee to prepare the bill for constituting the council, to which he was himself elected.170CJ vii. 653b, 654a, 655a, 656a; SP25/91, f. 7. He was to attend only five of its 20 meetings – mostly at the end of June – but this record was not unusual among members.171CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. xxiv. His return to prominence under a new regime was confirmed instead by membership of committees to bring in an act of indemnity (14 May), review legislation passed since the Rump had last convened (21 May) and provide a financial settlement for Richard Cromwell (25 May).172CJ vii. 654b, 661b, 665a.

In the weeks he remained in the Commons, Sydney returned to familiar pre-occupations. He was named to committees to investigate the contents of royal palaces (23 May) and to recruit seamen (22 June), as well as among a small group to amend the excise bill (18 June).173CJ vii. 663a, 689a, 691b. Bolstered by his position on the council, he resumed the reins of Irish affairs. On 7 June he and Hesilrige joined to defeat radicals Edmund Ludlowe and Marten and to block the appointment of Miles Corbett* as a commissioner for the Irish administration.174CJ vii. 674b. Subsequently he reported to the Commons from the council the drafts of instructions for those who were appointed (9 June, ?23 June, 1 July).175CJ vii. 678a, 678b, 692a, 699b, 700a.

In the meantime, a period had been put on his Commons service in the form of an appointment as ambassador to the Sound to mediate peace between the kings of Sweden and Denmark. When it was first discussed at the council of state early in June, Whitelocke was named to head the delegation, but he ‘endeavoured to excuse himself by reason of his old age and infirmities’, confiding to his diary that his unwillingness stemmed above all because he would be accompanied ‘by those who would expect precedency over him who had been formerly ambassador extraordinary to Sweden alone’ – an eventuality anticipated ‘[knowing] well the temper and height of Colonel Sidney’.176Whitelocke, Diary, 518. Yet Whitelocke’s reservations say as much about his own pride as Sydney’s: the latter, who as has been seen, shared much of the former’s perspective on policy, later expressed some regret that Whitelocke was not party to the expedition and continued to regard him as a reliable contact at Westminster.177Whitelocke, Mems. (1732), 680; Diary, 523; HMC 5th Rep., 314b; Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 169-73, 176-80. A revised commission, consisting of Sydney, Edward Montagu II, general of the fleet, Vane II’s brother-in-law Sir Robert Honywood* and navy commissioner Thomas Boone*, was agreed by the Commons on 9 June.178CJ vii. 677a; SP25/91, f. 23. Refining the details of their instructions took longer, and it was not until 1 July – the day that Sydney made his final report to the Commons on Ireland, and indeed his final recorded appearance in the chamber – that the Speaker was authorised to sign their commissions.179CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 390; 1659-60, p. 1; CJ vii. 695b, 699b-700a.

The envoys had embarked on their journey by 16 July, when they reported to the council, and arrived in Elsinore, Denmark, on the 21st.180TSP vii. 699, 710. They soon encountered the usual diplomatic frustrations – attending on elusive princes and running out of credit, as reports to the council and to Parliament revealed.181TSP vii. 724, 731, 732, 736; CJ vii. 757b, 768a By 11/21 August Montagu, having concluded that a treaty between the two kings would not be effected over the ensuing winter, decided to return to England with the fleet. Writing to the council of state to explain his solitary dissent from what became a majority decision by the four commissioners, Sydney, in a manner which displays why his confident high-handedness might be unpalatable, offered four ostensibly robust reasons why this was a bad decision, including the contravening of previous orders and the breaking of ‘the agreement made at The Hague, ratified by Parliament’.182TSP vii. 731; Clarke Pprs. iv. 297. But by 3/13 September, when he wrote to his father from Copenhagen, he confessed to being in ‘a place that few persons would desire to know’ and that this uncertainty of affairs, makes me uncertain of my concernments here, and my return home’; his consolation was that, whatever the outcome of the mission, ‘we shall have this fruit of our journey, as to be able to lay the foundation of a near alliance between the United Provinces and England’.183Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 163, 167-8. He had not, he told his father in another missive from ‘this ugly northern part of the world’ (27 Oct./5 Nov.), underestimated their task: ‘before I undertook this [embassy], many difficulties did appear unto me, and I have not found them less than I expected’.184Collins, Letters and Mems. ii. 683-4.

The unreliability of postal communications from England which kept Sydney for some time in ignorance of his mother’s death, also compromised up-to-date political news. By 3/13 November, when he wrote to Whitelocke, hoping he would drive affairs in a desirable direction, he felt

in the dark as to those actions among you wherein I have the nearest concernment both as an Englishman and as one that, for these many years, have been engaged in that cause, which by the help of God I shall never desert.

He expressed surprise and dismay at Parliament’s rejection of what he regarded as the ‘modest’ army petition of 5 October – of which he had evidently heard by a round-about route – but even more at the army’s subsequent ‘contrary course, destructive unto themselves and dangerous to the long-defended cause’ – by which he presumably meant the ‘interruption’ of Parliament.185Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 169-71. Although given the ‘liberty to come home’, a sanction of which it had been already decided Boone would avail himself, Sydney and Honywood decided to stay on, having no

other reasons, than the care of the public interest, and not daring to take upon ourselves (when it was referred to our discretion), the leaving of a business in which the whole nation may receive an extreme prejudice.186Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 171.

Already, Sydney was thinking ahead, and rashly nailed his colours to the mast

If the government in England doe continue on the good old principles, I shall be ready to serve them; if it returns to monarchy, I desire nothing but liberty to retire, finding myself a very unfit stone for such a building.187Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 173.

On 25 February 1660, responding to ‘the certain news of your being restored unto the exercise of your trust’ obtained only two days earlier, Sydney and Honywood wrote to congratulate Speaker William Lenthall* on the re-convening of the Rump on 26 December.188TSP vii. 825. In this, as in other details, they were behind the times.189Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 176-80. On 15 March the Long Parliament, restored on 21 February, agreed with the council of state to renew their letters of credence.190CJ vii. 878a. The next day, in absentia, Sydney was listed as sitting in Parliament.191The Grand Memorandum (1660, 669.f.24.37). He continued to report to Secretary Thurloe into April and perhaps also May.192TSP vii. 881, 887.

Restoration, exile and political retrospective

Apprised of the Restoration by the third week in May – relatively promptly – Sydney, evidently feeling insecure, penned a letter to the king, leaving it to Northumberland’s discretion when to deliver it.193Sydney Pprs. ed. Blencowe, 187. In June, with a peace made and diplomatic powers ‘extinguished by the coming in of the king’, Sydney expected to leave Stockholm and return home, although, having received rather vague assurances from friends, he was ‘uncertain’ of his welcome.194Collins, Letters and Mems., ii. 688-91. Returning to Copenhagen, letters from England failed to reassure him, and while Honywood set off home, in July Sydney decided to ignore his father’s advice to do the same and instead to await some sign of encouragement from the king. After ‘wavering between the opinions expressed by some of my friends’, he opted for ‘voluntary exile’ on the ground that

unless [the king] did by some act of favour or trust, show that he is reconciled to me, as unto others, that have, as well as I, been of a party contrary to his and his father’s, I shall be ever suspected, and often affronted, and upon every little tumult that may happen, be exposed to ruin.195Collins, Letters and Mems., ii. 691-4; Sydney Pprs., ed. Blencowe, 189-90.

The flaw in this reasoning, however, was that his staying abroad multiplied those suspicions, as rumour-mongers had free rein. By the end of August even his father had been alienated and had ended his efforts to intercede on Sydney’s behalf: ‘I have heard such things of you, that in the doubtfulness only of their being true, no man will open his mouth for you.’ Especially damaging was the report that, when entering his name in the subscription book at the University of Copenhagen, Sydney had written a comment which translated as observing that the execution of Charles I was the ‘justest and bravest action that was ever done in England or anywhere else’.196Sidney, Works (1772), 8-10, 15; Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 126-7.

Despite the intermediary efforts of Sir John Temple, Sydney proceeded to dig himself deeper into a hole from which escape became ever more unlikely.197HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 506, 508, 512-14. In what became a seventeen-year exile he compromised himself further by sojourns in Rome and with fugitive regicides including Edmund Ludlowe in the territories of the Swiss Confederation, and he lived under the constant surveillance he had tried to avoid, suspected of participation in insurrectionary plots.198Sidney, Apology, 1; Collins, Letters and Mems., ii. 695-705; HMC Egmont, i. 616; CCSP v. 376, 487, 493; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 671; 1664-5, p. 149; 1665-6, pp. 318, 342; Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, pp. 977-8. The execution in 1662 of Sir Henry Vane II, who had not been a regicide and whom Sydney eulogised in his ‘Character’ and elsewhere, appeared to confirm the wisdom of putting himself beyond the reach of retribution, as well as the undesirability of living under the regime which perpetrated it: as he remarked to his father, ‘where Vane, [John] Lambert*, Hesilrige cannot live in safety, I cannot live at all’.199Sidney, Works (1772), 25 and passim; ‘The Character of Sir Henry Vane Jnr’, V.A. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), app. F.

That and other experiences clearly hardened his political attitudes: in 1663, in confirmation or in ironic, defiant echo of the reputed action at Copenhagen, he wrote in the visitors’ book at the Academy of Geneva, ‘let there be a revenger for the blood of the just’.200Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 127; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 170-81. Exactly how far and in what respects the writings then enabled by his enforced leisure represented a shift towards greater radicalism than in his Long Parliament and Rump days, is almost impossible to gauge – especially in a man ‘capable of speaking in several political languages’.201Scott, Algernon Sidney, 169. The hostility to Cromwell which he asserted seems to have been real enough during the protector’s lifetime, even if the rhetoric was not matched by the degree of subversive action that might be inferred – and seems to have been claimed – to follow from it, while his celebration of the ‘glorious’ achievements of the final months of the Rump doubtless derived directly from his notable participation in them.202Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 126. But the hostility to monarchy in general, and Stuart tyranny in particular, displayed in his Court Maxims, composed in the mid-1660s, and in his later Discourses, compromised as those are by the whig editorial lens through which they survive, is harder to trace backwards: it was evidently not manufactured solely by events from 1660 onwards, but it was equally clearly shaped by them.203Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 122-46; Scott, Algernon Sidney, 186-206

Final years

In 1666 Sydney exchanged a peripatetic life in central Europe for a more settled existence among the aristocratic Huguenot grandees of the south of France, where among much else this otherwise austere man may have fathered an illegitimate daughter.204Scott, Algernon Sidney, 222-44; Carswell, Porcupine, 149-61. Having failed to avail himself of a pass to come to England issued in July 1673, he took advantage of another issued in May 1677, and returned home that September, his compromising writings as yet unpublished.205CSP Dom. 1673, pt. ii, p. 459; 1677-8, p. 136; Securing his inheritance from his recently-deceased father and pursuing lawsuits against the Strangfords and others were immediate concerns.206Sidney, Apology, 2-4; Carswell, Porcupine, 162-83.

The following year, amid the Exclusion crisis, his attempt to gain election to Parliament for Guildford as a whig was thwarted by the court interest, while in 1679 his candidature at Bramber was supported by local Quakers but pre-empted by his youngest brother Henry Sidney†, later Viscount Sidney and 1st earl of Romney.207Sidney, Works (1772), 35; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Bramber’, ‘Guildford’, ‘Henry Sidney’. A third attempt to resume his parliamentary career as a Member for Amersham saw him returned by one indenture on 18 December 1680, but another indenture gave a majority of votes to his rival, and his election was in due course declared void by the elections committee.208HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 538; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Amersham’. In the aftermath of the Rye House plot, on 25 June 1683 Sydney was committed to the Tower. Arraigned of treason on 7 November, he was tried and found guilty, although it was widely considered that conclusive evidence of his involvement in conspiracy had not been found.209CSP Dom. 1683, pt. i, pp. 335, 347, 364; pt. ii, pp. 57, 70, 78, 89, 127, 145, 170, 190, 233, 342-3, 412; Sidney, Works (1772), 35; Apology, 4-5; Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 129-30.

At his execution at Tower Hill on 7 December Sydney declined the normal invitation to speak, but impressed onlookers by his dignified bearing. A manuscript ‘Apology’ which he had handed to his valet and putative son-in-law Joseph Ducasse was soon circulating widely. Having ‘from [his] youth endeavoured to uphold the common rights of mankind, the laws of this land, and the true Protestant religion, against corrupt principles, arbitrary power, and popery’ he claimed to ‘now willingly lay down my life for the same’. He denied involvement in the popular demonstrations which had prompted his arrest and asserted plausibly that aspects of his trial had been irregular. Drawing parallels, as had MPs in the early Long Parliament, to England’s sufferings under Richard II, and in language sometimes reminiscent of Ludlowe, he hoped for deliverance from God’s judgement, and affirmed his faith – ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ – providing food for the myth of martyrdom both among the religious nonconformists who had most visibly supported him in his recent political outings and among a wider whig and increasingly secular public.210Sidney, Apology, 1–32; Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 145–180.