mother, Jane, duchess of Northumberland. The child's infancy was apparently passed at Penshurst. When he was nine and a half his father, who was lord president of Wales, appointed him lay rector of the church of Whitford, Flintshire, of which the incumbent, Hugh Whitford, had just been deprived on account of his Roman catholic leanings. On 8 May 1564 Gruff John, rector of Skyneog, acting as Philip's proctor, was duly admitted to the church and rectory of Whitford, and Philip thenceforth derived from the benefice an income of 60l. a year (cf. manuscripts at Penshurst). On 16 Nov. 1564 he entered Shrewsbury school, of which Thomas Ashton was the master. Fulke Greville [q. v.] entered the school on the same day, and their friendship was only interrupted by death.
Of Sidney's youth Greville wrote: ‘I will report no other wonder than this, that, though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man; with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years; his talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind, so that even his teachers found something in him to observe and learn above that which they had usually read or taught. Which eminence by nature and industry made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing, though I unseen, lumen familiæ suæ.’ A grave demeanour accentuated through life his personal fascination.
From his infancy Philip was a lover of learning. At the age of eleven he wrote letters to his father in both French and Latin, and Sir Henry sent him advice on the moral conduct of life, which might well have been addressed to one of maturer years. In 1568 Philip left Shrewsbury for Christ Church, Oxford. There he continued to make rapid progress, and the circle of his admirers grew. His tutor, Thomas Thornton, left directions that the fact that Philip had been his pupil should be recorded on his tombstone. His chief friends at Christ Church were Richard Carew [q. v.], Richard Hakluyt [q. v.], and William Camden. But, as at Shrewsbury, his most constant companion was Greville, who joined Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) at the same time as Philip went to Christ Church. His health was delicate, and his uncle, Leicester, who was chancellor of the university, wrote to Archbishop Parker soliciting a license to eat flesh during Lent in behalf of ‘my boy Philip Sidney, who is somewhat subject to sickness.’ On 2 Aug. 1568 Sir Henry visited his son at Oxford, and took him back with him to Ludlow. On the road they turned aside to inspect Leicester's castle of Kenilworth.
An earlier introduction of the boy to Sir William Cecil had inspired that statesman with an active interest in his welfare. Writing to his father on 9 Aug. 1568, Cecil sent his remembrances to ‘the darling Philip.’ On 3 Sept. Cecil wrote reproaching Sir Henry for having carried away ‘your son and my scholar from Oxford.’ Philip spent his holidays at the end of the year with the Cecils at Hampton Court. ‘He is worthy to be loved,’ wrote Cecil to his father, ‘and so I do love him as he were my own’ (5 Jan. 1569). Sir Henry took practical advantage of the affection which his son inspired in the great statesman by proposing that a marriage should be arranged between Philip and Cecil's elder daughter, Anne, who was two years the lad's junior. Cecil politely hinted in reply that his daughter, who was only thirteen, must seek a richer suitor. Sir Henry anxiously pressed the negotiation. He or his brother-in-law, the Earl of Leicester, who heartily approved the match, undertook to provide Philip with an income of 266l. 13s. 4d. on the day of his marriage, with a reversion to a fixed income of 840l. 4s. 2d. and other sums on the death of his parents. Cecil soon agreed to pay down 1,000l. and to leave his daughter an annuity of 66l. 13s. 4d. A marriage settlement was drafted on these lines, but Sir Henry mislaid it when it was sent to him to Ireland for signature, and, although on 24 Feb. 1570 Sir Henry wrote to Cecil that he would not wish the match broken off, even if his son were offered ‘the hand of the greatest prince's daughter in chrysendom,’ the scheme fell through. Philip often wrote to Cecil while the marriage negotiations were in progress, and expressed anxiety to stand high in his estimation, but no reference was made to Anne, and it is obvious that the boy and girl were not consulted. Cecil arranged next year for Anne's marriage with Edward Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford [q. v.] On 26 Oct. 1573 it was suggested that both Philip and his brother Robert should be married to daughters of the twelfth Lord Berkeley, but the suggestion was not seriously entertained.
Early in 1571 the plague raged at Oxford, and Philip left the university, not to return. He took no degree. The next few months seem to have been spent partly at Ludlow with his family, partly at Kenilworth with his uncle Leicester, and partly at Penshurst, but he contrived to pay frequent visits to the court. In May 1572 he received the
