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INTRODUCTION.
Henry Sidney, the younger brother of Lady Sunderland, who was afterwards created Viscount Sidney and Earl of Romney, by William III., the author of the Diary, and the centre, as it were, of the correspondence now published, was born at Paris, in the year 1640, during his father's embassy at that court.
The first notice we have of him is that contained in his father's, journal, in which he gives an interesting account of the last hours of Lady Leicester, who died in 1669, when Henry Sidney was eighteen years old, from which it may be inferred that he was her favourite son; whilst it is equally clear from his sister's letters that he was the brother she loved best.[1]
- ↑ "Then the writings being brought, and a thin book held under the place where she should set her name, she took the pen more strongly than I expected. She put it into the ink herself, and wrote her name to 4 or 5 several writings. Then said she to me, "My dear heart, I thank you, and I pray God to bless to our dear boy (Henry) that which I have done for him."—Blencowe's Sidney Papers, p. 274.
The following extract to her will shows this feeling more strongly. "Having received a liberty from my dear Lord and husband to dispose according to my will of such things as he has at any time bestowed upon me, or that I have bought with the money that has been in my own hands, I do therefore give to my son, Henry Sidney, the French plate, the Mortlake hangings, all my pictures, my black cabinets, my looking
