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The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Blair Worden
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Extract

Centenary commemorations can have their ironies. If we look from 1783 to 1883 to 1983, we see a rise in the status of centenaries, and a decline in the status of Algernon Sidney. This is, I think, the first time that a centenary of the Whig martyrdoms has been publicly observed. But it is not the first time one has been noticed. Soon after the first centenary, a play in London by the Irish clergyman Thomas Stratford about Sidney's fellow martyr Lord Russell, apparently a theatrical disaster of some magnitude, remarked on the passage of “one hundred years since godlike Russell bled” and portrayed Sidney as “Brutus of England,” whose “pulse beats with rapture at the sound of freedom.” Eleven years later, in the north German town of Kiel, the eighteen-year-old Barthold Georg Niebuhr—who was to exert so strong an influence on Ranke—celebrated as a “consecrated day” the “anniversary of Algernon Sidney's death.” (He got the day wrong, but that was an error common enough during the process of sanctification that raised Sidney's virtues above the chronological detail in which they had found reflection.) Niebuhr noted gloomily that, although Sidney's name and his “brilliant talents” were widely known, “perhaps there are not fifty persons in all Germany who have taken the pains to inform themselves accurately about his life and fortunes.” I doubt if there are fifty today.

Type
Research Article
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 1 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1985

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References

1 Stratford, Thomas, Lord Russel: A Tragedy (Dublin, 1792)Google Scholar; Brookiana, 2 vols. (London, 1804), 1:123ffGoogle Scholar. I owe the latter reference to the kindness of Paul Langford.

2 See, e.g., Ralph, James, The History of England, 2 vols. (London, 1744), 1:785Google Scholar; Hume, David, The History of England, ed. Stebbing, H. (n.p., n.d.), p. 842Google Scholar.

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5 Karsten, Peter, Patriot-Heroes in England and America (Madison, Wis., 1978), p. 61Google Scholar (quoting Robert C. Winthrop). I became aware of Karsten's useful book only when my own work on Sidney was substantially complete. There is some overlap between his argument and mine, but I hope not too much. For Sidney's American reputation, see esp. Bailyn, Bernard, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)Google Scholar; Bailyn, B., ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 1: 29, 34, 80, 508Google Scholar; Colbourn, H. T., The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965)Google Scholar.

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7 Toynbee, Paget, ed., Letters of Horace Walpole, 16 vols. (Oxford, 1903–1905), 10:135Google Scholar; see also, in the index, s.v. “Algernon Sidney.”

8 “Memoirs of the Life of A. Sydney,” in The Works of Algernon Sydney, ed. Hollis, T. and Robertson, J. (London, 1772), p. 45nGoogle Scholar.; cf. Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 2 vols. (London, 1780), 1:93Google Scholar.

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10 Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 1:187Google Scholar. The best introduction to the hallowing of Sidney in the eighteenth century is Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthmen (Cambridge, Mass., 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also her “Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning Government: Textbook of Revolution,” in Absolute Liberty: A Selection from the Articles and Papers of Caroline Robbins, ed. Taft, Barbara (Hamden, Conn., 1982), pp. 267–91Google Scholar.

11 I would like to express my indebtedness in what follows to Jonathan Scott, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who is writing a doctoral thesis on the life and thought of Sidney. I have profited both from the stimulus of his conversation and from his generous readiness to share his discoveries with me. A relationship that might have been a rivalry has proved a happy and fruitful partnership.

12 A good case for January 1623 is made by Haydon, Brigid, “Algernon Sidney, 1623–1683,” Archaeologia Cantiana 76 (1961): 111Google Scholar. There is no satisfactory biography of Algernon. The best is Meadley, G. W., Memoirs of Algernon Sydney (London, 1813)Google Scholar; the fullest is Ewald, A. C., Life and Times of Algernon Sydney, 2 vols. (London, 1873)Google Scholar. There is a good account by C. H. Firth in the Dictionary of National Biography.

13 See my “Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution,” in History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, Pearl, Valerie, and Worden, Blair (London, 1981), pp. 185–88Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 184; Collins, Arthur, ed., Letters and Memorials of State, … faithfully transcribed from the originals at Penshurst, 2 vols. (London, 1746), 2:700–701, 703–5Google Scholar. See also Dictionary of National Biography, “Sir Robert Dudley, 1574–1649.”

15 Sidney, Algernon, “Apology,” in The Works of Algernon Sidney, p. 3Google Scholar.

16 Firth; cf. Ewald, 1:284.

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22 Blencowe, R. W., ed., The Sydney Papers (London, 1825), p. 260Google Scholar; Ewald, 1:282, 315; Letters and Memorials of State …, 2:691Google Scholar.

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24 For the election, see Underdown, David, “Party Management in the Recruiter Elections,” English Historical Review 83 (1968): 242Google Scholar.

25 Journal of the House of Commons, November 27, 1647, May 26, 1648; cf. State Papers collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1767–1786), 2:421Google Scholar.

26 Ewald, 1:324. For Algernon and the trial, see also Underdown, David, Pride's Purge (Oxford, 1971), pp. 166n., 188Google Scholar.

27 Ewald, 1:324.

28 HMCR, De Lisle and Dudley MSS, 6:460, 466, 482Google Scholar; British Library (BL), Additional (Add.) MS 21, 462 (Baynes Papers), fols. 7, 189 (a reference I owe to Henry Reece); Public Record Office (PRO), Chancery Papers, C7/325/2 (a reference I owe to Jonathan Scott).

29 In that capacity he is likely to have espoused the “de facto” arguments used by the Commonwealth to encourage subscription. By the time he wrote the Discourses he was to be firmly opposed to de facto reasoning.

30 Worden (n. 13 above), pp. 188–90, 195–99. For Algernon's activity in Parliament from his election to it until the dissolution, see Journal of the House of Commons, January 4, 11, April 8, May 7, 25, June 2, November 1, 22, 1647; March 4, May 26, July 29, October 14, 1648; January 15, February 6, 8, March 5, 27, May 8, 10, 15, June 22, August 17, October 3, 11, 12, December 21, 1649; March 14, April 18, June 25, August 14, October 10, November 21, December 31, 1650; January 14, 22, 31, February 13, March 28, April 16, 25, June 12, July 8, October 1, November 24, 26, December 23, 26, 31, 1651; January 6, 8, February 10, March 30, April 9, 27, July 15, 20, 27, August 6, 11, 27, October 7, 15, November 12, 18, 25, 26, 27, December 24, 30, 1652; January 1, 4, 5, 25, 28, February 17, 24, March 1, 22, 24, April 5, 13, 14, 15, 19, 1653; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD), 1652–53, passim; PRO, State Papers (SP) 25/131-3 (Committee for Trade and Foreign Affairs), SP 82/86(ii) (Navy Papers), fol. 211, and SP 25/138 (Committee for Union with Scotland).

31 For Sidney, and Harrison, , see also Journal of the House of Commons, October 10, 1650, July 15, 1652Google Scholar.

32 HMCR, De Lisle and Dudley MSS, 6:499Google Scholar; Ewald, 1:277–78; cf. Milton, John, Defensio Secunda, in The Works of John Milton, ed. Patterson, F. A., 18 vols. (New York, 1931–1938), 8:234–35Google Scholar.

33 Ewald, 1:359.

34 Ibid., pp. 282–84.

35 Ibid., pp. 271, 277, 321.

36 Sidney, , “Apology” (n. 15 above), p. 3Google Scholar; Ewald, 1:273. Compare Monck's attempts to lure Algernon's brother Robert back to England (Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS 77, fol. 378). (At that and many other times in his career, Robert has been mistaken for Algernon by editors and historians.)

37 Sidney, Algernon, “Court Maxims, Refuted and Refelled,” MS formerly at Warwick Castle, now in the Warwickshire Record Office, p. 6Google Scholar.

38 Ewald, 1:278.

39 Ibid., 357–58.

40 Blencowe, , ed., The Sydney Papers (n. 22 above), p. 259Google Scholar.

41 HMCR, De Lisle and Dudley MSS, 6:506Google Scholar; Sidney, , “Apology,” p. 4Google Scholar; Ewald, 1:388–92; Bodleian Library, MS Eng. hist. c. 487 (Ludlow, Edmund, “A Voyce from the Watch Tower”), p. 1004Google Scholar.

42 Blencowe, , ed., The Sydney Papers, pp. 258–60Google Scholar; cf. Ludlow, pp. 963–64, 977–80.

43 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” p. 172Google Scholar.

44 Sidney, , “Apology,” pp. 31–32Google Scholar.

45 Cameron, W. J., New Light on Aphra Behn, University of Auckland Monograph, no. 5 (Auckland, [1961?]), esp. pp. 47, 73, 79Google Scholar; Burnet's History … (n. 18 above), 1:404Google Scholar; Lister, T. H., ed., Life and Administration of Edward, first Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols. (London, 1837–1838), 2:388Google Scholar; PRO, State Papers Holland, vol. 171, fols. 122, 136, 145, 168, 186; vol. 172, fol. 186; vol. 174, fol. 72v; Cragg, G. R., Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 12–13, 75–83Google Scholar.

46 Ludlow, pp. 1065–66, 1079–82, 1111–12, 1115, 1123, 1127–28; Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1872–1970), 5:376, 487, 491, 493Google Scholar; Oeuvres de Louis XIV, 6 vols. (Paris, 1806), 2:203–5Google Scholar; CSPD (n. 30 above), 1664–65, p. 149; 1665–66, pp. 318, 342; 1667, p. 118.

47 On that work, see Ludlow, Edmund, A Voyce from the Watch Tower (pt. 5, 1660–62), ed. Worden, A. B., Camden Society, 4th ser., vol. 21 (London, 1978), pp. ix, 15–16Google Scholar.

48 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” pp. 210–11Google Scholar.

49 See ibid., pp. 149–57.

50 For the passes, see CSPD, 1673, p. 459; 1677, p. 136. Sidney's financial and family problems, and the motive for his return, can be studied in a number of documents (including Chancery papers in the PRO), which have been enterprisingly discovered and skillfully interpreted by Jonathan Scott.

51 See Houlbrooke, M. E., “Paul Barillon's Embassy to England, 1677–1688: A Study in the Diplomacy of Louis XIV” (M.Litt. thesis, Oxford University, 1971), esp. pp. 36, 119, 122, 125, 129–30, 145, 211Google Scholar.

52 Journal of the House of Commons, December 8, 11, 1680; January 4, 1681.

53 Nash, Gary B., “The Framing of Government in Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 23 (1966): 183–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Janney, S. M., The Life of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1856), pp. 192–93Google Scholar; Dunn, M. M., William Penn: Politics and Conscience (Princeton, N.J., 1967), pp. 32ff., 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Sidney, , “Apology” (n. 15 above), p. 4Google Scholar; Bodleian Library, Carte MS 216, fol. 86; Jones, J. R., The First Whigs (Oxford, 1961), p. 204Google Scholar. Sidney seems to have had strong links with radicalism in London, where plans for rebellion were well advanced in 1683.

55 The evidence is too complex and substantial to be discussed here. Much must depend on one's reading of Ford Lord Grey's Secret History of the Rye-House Plot (n. 19 above). Although obviously a tainted source, its account of Sidney's behavior seems to me to complement other evidence very well, both factually and psychologically.

56 Sidney, Algernon, “Letters … to Henry Savile,” in The Works of Algernon Sydney (n. 8 above), p. 40Google Scholar; cf. his “Trial,” in ibid., p. 13.

57 Ibid., “Apology,” p. 16.

58 The account given here of Sidney's thoughts during his imprisonment is derived principally from the nine letters of his written from the Tower and now in the East Sussex Record Office (RO) (Glynde MS 794 [Hampden Papers]).

59 Bray, W., ed., Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, 4 vols. (London, 1895), 2:199–200Google Scholar.

60 Reflections upon Coll. Sidneys Arcadia (London, 1684), p. 5Google Scholar; A Defence of Sir Robert Filmer, against … Algernon Sidney (London, 1684), p. 16Google Scholar; Lord, G. de F., ed., Poems on Affairs of State, 1 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1963–1975), 1:xxxviiGoogle Scholar (cf. 3:459–62). See also CSPD (n. 30 above), 1683–84, pp. 150–51.

61 “Memoirs of the Life of A. Sydney” (n. 8 above), p. 37; Sidney, , “Trial,” pp. 31, 64Google Scholar, and “Apology,” p. 12.

62 See Cameron (n. 45 above), p. 47; and observe the character of the later part of Sidney's “Court Maxims …” (n. 37 above). Many sentiments, details, and even phrases of “Court Maxims …” reappear in the Discourses.

63 Sidney, , “Of Love” (n. 23 above), 8:612, 617Google Scholar. Compare Worden (n. 13 above), p. 186; and, for the transmission to Algernon's generation of the family tradition there described, Sidney, , “Trial,” p. 44Google Scholar; and Letters and Memorials of State … (n. 14 above), 1:146Google Scholar. See also Sidney, Algernon, “Discourses,” in The Works of Algernon Sydney, pp. 211–12Google Scholar (where Algernon's reference to the “histories” of Spain recalls the commonplace books of his father and grandfather); BL, Add. MS 31, 984 (Whitelocke's “History of his Forty-Eighth Year”), fol. 13r-v.

64 East Sussex RO, Glynde MS 794, no. 9.

65 Sidney, , “Trial,” pp. 43–44Google Scholar.

66 Ibid., p. 13.

67 See App., 1.

68 Ashcraft, Richard, “Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government: Radicalism and Lockean Political Theory,” Political Studies 8 (1980): 429–86Google Scholar.

69 Burnet's History … (n. 18 above), 2:289Google Scholar; cf. State Tracts (London, 1689), p. 173Google Scholar, with Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 437Google Scholar (where there is one small and interesting difference). On the dating of the pamphlet, see the preface to Reflections on a Pamphlet, stiled a Just and Modest Vindication (London, 1683)Google Scholar. For another view of the authorship problem, see Ferguson, James, Robert Ferguson the Plotter (Edinburgh, 1887), p. 386Google Scholar.

70 See Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 318, 384, 481Google Scholar.

71 Ibid., pp. 187, 193, 335; cf. pp. 188–89, 288, 403, 460–62, 488ff.

72 Ibid., pp. 12–13, 203, 210, 266–67, 350 (cf. p. 8), 417, 488–89, 495.

73 Ibid., pp. 346, 377, 416, 418, 440, 465–67, 490–91, 503; cf. Grey (n. 19 above), p. 55; Sidney, , “Trial,” pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

74 Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 466Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 485.

76 Ibid., pp. 479–80.

77 Ibid., p. 47.

78 Ibid., p. 404; cf. p. 421.

79 Burnet's History … (n. 18 above), 2:352Google Scholar; Foxcroft, H. C., Supplement to Burnet's History of My Own Time (Oxford, 1902), p. 98Google Scholar.

80 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …” (n. 37 above), pp. 71, 128–30Google Scholar, and “Discourses,” pp. 58, 165, 205, 222, 335, 484.

81 Quoted by Erskine-Hill, Howard, The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London, 1983), p. 341Google Scholar.

82 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 37, 205, 213, 226–27, 455–56, 506–7Google Scholar.

83 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” pp. 57–59, 106Google Scholar, and “Discourses,” pp. 210, 425–27, 430–31, 464–65.

84 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 464–65, 484–85, 499, 503Google Scholar.

85 Ibid., p. 479.

86 Ibid., pp. 7, 124, 188, 198, 214–15, 223.

87 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” pp. 60–61, 64Google Scholar, and “Discourses,” pp. 118, 134, 225, 276, 386, 459.

88 Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 479Google Scholar.

89 Ibid., pp. 126, 169, 178, 233.

90 Ibid., pp. 134, 137, 155, 218, 298, 300, 320.

91 Ibid., pp. 119, 172–74, 178.

92 Ibid., p. 406; cf. pp. 124, 262, 265, 404; and Raab, Felix, The English Face of Machiavelli (London, 1964), p. 222Google Scholar.

93 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” pp. 97, 122Google Scholar, and “Discourses,” pp. 98–99, 304–5, 404, 417, 419, 494; cf. Grey (n. 19 above), p. 55.

94 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 151, 405Google Scholar; cf., e.g., Ewald (n. 12 above), 1:336.

95 Ashcraft (n. 68 above). Not normally one to understate his case, Ashcraft surprisingly regards Sidney as “a somewhat isolated figure in the radical movement” (p. 459).

96 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York, 1965), p. 75Google Scholar; Laslett, Peter, ed., Patriarcha and Other Political Works of Sir Robert Filmer (Oxford, 1949), p. 39Google Scholar.

97 Compare App., 2.

98 Locke, p. 316; Tyrrell, James, Patriarcha non Monarchia (London, 1681), p. 43Google Scholar.

99 Quoted by Schochet, Gordon S., Patriarchalism in Political Thought (Oxford, 1975), p. 275Google Scholar, where the significance of Locke's statement is discussed.

100 Locke, p. 317.

101 Ibid., p. 423; cf. pp. 372, 387, 429–30, 443, 475.

102 Ibid., p. 476; cf. Tyrrell, pp. 42–43.

103 Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 481Google Scholar; cf. pp. 192–93.

104 For Whig pamphleteering, see Furley, O. W., “The Whig Exclusionists: Pamphlet Literature in the Exclusion Campaign, 1678–81,” Cambridge Historical Journal 2 (1957): 19–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The lapse of licensing legislation in 1679 doubtless added to the publishing fray.

105 Furley, p. 29.

106 Daly, James, Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought (Toronto, 1979), pp. 124, 143–46, 149, 161–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Goldie, Mark, “John Locke and Restoration Anglicanism,” Political Studies 31 (1983): 66–71, 74, 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is true that, after 1688, Sidney's concentration on Filmer came to seem a puzzle (The Whole Works of Walter Moyle [London, 1727], p. 57Google Scholar; Burnet's History … [n. 18 above], 2:401–2Google Scholar; The Independent Whig, 2 vols. [London, 1732], 1:xxxixGoogle Scholar). But the fall of Filmer's star is a story separable from that of its earlier brightness.

108 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 5, 16, 34, 42, 53, 100, 109, 246, 279, 383Google Scholar.

109 Ibid., pp. 5, 18, 42, 53, 134, 262, 356, 417; Tyrrell, preface and pp. 1–2; The Historical and Miscellaneous Tracts of the Reverend and Learned Peter Heylyn (London, 1681), esp. p. xvGoogle Scholar; Edmund Bobbin, preface to SirFilmer's, RobertPatriarcha (London, 1685)Google Scholar. See too the preface to Filmer's, The Power of Kings (London, 1680)Google Scholar, where Patriarcha, the date of whose composition has exercised historians, is said to have been “written about the year 1642.”

110 Patriarcha and Other Political Works … (n. 96 above), p. 54.

111 Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 494Google Scholar.

112 Schochet (n. 99 above), esp. chap. 4.

113 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 104–5Google Scholar.

114 Ibid., pp. 20, 45, 73, 364.

115 Ibid., pp. 43, 49, 52, 53, 69, 70, 271.

116 Ibid., pp. 339, 436.

117 Ibid., p. 500; Journal of the House of Commons, February 6, 1649.

118 Sidney, , “Apology” (n. 15 above), p. 8Google Scholar; Ewald (n. 12 above), 1:283–84.

119 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 426, 428–29, 431, 437–38Google Scholar.

120 Burnet's History … (n. 18 above), 2:352Google Scholar.

121 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …” (n. 37 above), pp. 30, 210Google Scholar, and “Discourses,” pp. 28, 62–63, 102, 398 (cf. pp. 56, 106–7, 205). Sidney emphasizes the point even at a cost to the clarity of his antimonarchical argument. I hope to say more about Sidney's belief in the rule of the virtuous, and about other aspects of his political philosophy, in a contribution to the forthcoming The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, which is to be edited by J. H. Burns.

122 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 119, 205Google Scholar.

123 Something of that battle can be seen in a review by Owen Ruffhead of the 1763 edition of the Discourses in Monthly Review 29 (1763): 243Google Scholar; Letters of Lady Rachel Russell (London, 1773), p. xGoogle Scholar; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (n. 8 above), 1:188Google Scholar, 2:537–38, 543–44; The Works … of Francis Blackburne, 7 vols. (London, 1805), 4:291Google Scholar; Meadley (n. 12 above), pp. 27–28; Blencowe, , ed., The Sydney Papers (n. 22 above), pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar; Ewald, 1:35; Karsten (n. 5 above), p. 127.

124 Burnet's History …. 2:252Google Scholar.

125 See my “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” Studies in Church History 21 (1984): 208, 231Google Scholar.

126 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” pp. 44, 83, 86, 91Google Scholar (but cf. Journal of the House of Commons, May 26, 1648).

127 Sidney, , “Of Love” (n. 23 above), 8:617Google Scholar. That essay is the best source for Sidney's Platonism. For the anticlerical, “household” religion of Algernon's father, see HMCR, De Lisle and Dudley MSS (n. 21 above), 6:1–2, 559–60Google Scholar. That doyen of Civil War Platonism Peter Sterry was chaplain to Algernon's elder brother Philip (see de Sola Pinto, V. , Peter Sterry, Platonist and Puritan [Cambridge, 1934], pp. 40–41, 43, 46, 54–55Google Scholar).

128 Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 3Google Scholar.

129 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” p. 194Google Scholar (cf. p. 101), and “Discourses,” pp. 229, 299 (cf. pp. 4, 27, 33, 52, 59, 60, 64–65, 100, 110, 383).

130 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” pp. 41–42, 89, 92–93, 109, 193–96, 203Google Scholar. See also App., 3. Penn's cooperation with Sidney perhaps seems less surprising if we recall Penn's own use of humanist learning in his radical political arguments.

131 “Memoirs of the Life of A. Sydney” (n. 8 above), pp. 39–40; Sidney, , “Trial” (n. 56 above), p. 65Google Scholar, and “Apology” (n. 15 above), pp. 29–32.

132 Blencowe, , ed., The Sydney Papers, p. 259Google Scholar.

133 Ibid., p. 260; East Sussex RO, Glynde MS 794 (n. 58 above), nos. 1, 6; Burnet's History …, 2:404–5Google Scholar; Ewald (n. 12 above), 1:172.

134 Compare Worden, , “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” pp. 207–8, 210Google Scholar.

135 Sidney, , “Discourses,” p. 64Google Scholar, and cf. “Of Love,” pp. 617–18.

136 Sidney signaled his inclination to Stoicism (which was not unqualified) in his allusions to Seneca's Thyestes (see “Discourses,” pp. 53, 159, 329; cf. Margoliouth, H. M., ed., The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols. [Oxford, 1971], p. 58)Google Scholar.

137 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” p. 117Google Scholar.

138 Sidney, , “Discourses,” pp. 52–53, 55, 63–64, 290, 318, 320–21, 327, 330Google Scholar; cf. HMCR, De Lisle and Dudley MSS (n. 21 above), 6:523Google Scholar; Worden, , “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” pp. 223–24Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., ed., The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977), p. 323Google Scholar.

139 Sidney, , “Court Maxims …,” p. 2Google Scholar.

140 Compare Kenyon, J. P., Revolution Principles (Cambridge, 1977), p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note too the embarrassment to the Whig leaders caused by the refusal of Russell, a much more moderate figure than Sidney, to disavow, before his own execution, his belief in the subject's right to resist a tyrant (Sensabaugh, G. F., That Grand Whig Milton [Stanford, Calif., 1952], pp. 92ff.Google Scholar).

141 Penshurst parish register (excerpt reproduced in the guide to the church of St. John the Baptist, Penshurst); Meadley (n. 12 above), p. 277; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (n. 8 above), 2:541Google Scholar.

142 Sidney Redivivus (London, 1689)Google Scholar; Ludlow, , A Voyce from the Watch Tower (n. 47 above), pp. 17ff.Google Scholar; cf. Karsten (n. 5 above), p. 29.

143 Locke (n. 96 above), p. 171.

144 Sidney, “Discourses,” preface.

145 Kenyon, esp. chap. 1; Goldie, Mark, “The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument,” Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1983): 486–87Google Scholar.

146 The Whole Works of Walter Moyle (n. 107 above), p. 58.

147 Toland, John, Paradoxes of State (London, 1702), p. 4Google Scholar, and The Art of Governing by Partys (London, 1701), pp. 111–15Google Scholar; cf. his Anglia Libera (London, 1701), pp. 48–49, 83, 87ffGoogle Scholar. It is fair to add that Sidney was not necessarily opposed to monarchy, provided it rested on consent. See also App., 3. I hope to discuss Sidney's republicanism more fully elsewhere.

148 Sidney, , “Trial” (n. 56 above), pp. 31–34Google Scholar, and “Apology” (n. 15 above), pp. 5, 12, 26.

149 Sidney, , “Trial,” p. 44Google Scholar; State Trials, 6 vols. (London, 1730), 5:96, 103Google Scholar (proceedings against Sir John Fenwick). See also Karsten, pp. 27–28; Gentleman's Magazine 3 (1733): 650Google Scholar (excerpt from the London Journal [December 22, 1733]).

150 The document was first published in Familiar Letters written by the Right Honourable John Late Earl of Rochester and several other persons of honour and quality (London, 1697)Google Scholar, where it appeared alongside a letter to Algernon from his father, with which an interesting editorial liberty was taken (cf. Blencowe, , ed., The Sydney Papers [n. 22 above], p. 211Google Scholar, with the correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement between November 1917 and January 1918 cited by Karsten, pp. 139, 226). Much of the document resembles remarks in Sidney's letters at the time of the Restoration, and no doubt the “letter against bribery” drew on an authentic manuscript. But topical allusions in the “letter” show that whatever document it was that the publishers used could have been written only at the outset of Charles II's reign—too early for the attacks that the published version contains on the corruption of court and Parliament. The exclamatory posturing of the document is not Sidney's (a nineteenth-century biographer of Algernon thought the style “at first so unlike Sidney's” [Blackburne, Gertrude M. Ireland, Algernon Sidney: A Review (London, 1885), p. 98]Google Scholar). Again, the published document is suspiciously inconsistent about the number of people to whom it is addressed. The ruthless editorial tactics employed elsewhere by Sidney's admirers of the 1690s (see Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower) compels vigilant skepticism in such matters.

151 The Familiar Letters … of 1697 were republished in 1699 and 1705. The “letter” appeared in the preface to the French translation of the Discourses (Discours sur le Gouvernement, 3 vols. [The Hague, 1702])Google Scholar, where it was used to strengthen Sidney's claim to deepen the picture of Sidney as an embodiment of respectable constitutionalism. It reappeared in A Collection of scarce and valuable Tracts … of the Late Lord Somers (n. 23 above), 8:6–7Google Scholar; and was reproduced by Hollis, in “Memoirs of the Life of A. Sydney” (n. 8 above), pp. 16–30Google Scholar; and by Macaulay, Kate in her History of England, 8 vols. (London, 1763–1783), 7:491Google Scholar. Sidney's nineteenth-century biographers made much of it.

152 Kramnick, Isaac, Bolingbroke and His Circle (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 135Google Scholar; cf. Karsten, p. 32.

153 Cato's Letters, 4 vols. (London, 1733), 1:195–97, 204Google Scholar; 2:28, 76, 328–29.

154 Gentleman's Magazine 7 (1737): 26Google Scholar; 9 (1739): 91, 422, 648; cf. 2 (1732): 905 (from The Free Briton [August 17, 1732]).

155 Ralph (n. 2 above), 1:457, 736, 789; 2:5, 59, 1023–24; Hollis's editions of the Discourses (London, 1763, 1772)Google Scholar. See also Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (no. 8 above), 1:210–11, 448–49Google Scholar; Monthly Review 29 (1763): 241Google Scholar; North, Roger, Examen (London, 1740), p. 410Google Scholar.

156 Sherburn, G., ed., The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1956), 3:303, 328, 341Google Scholar. There are eighteenth-century transcripts of the documents at Chatsworth.

157 Robbins, , The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthmen (n. 10 above), pp. 46, 287–88Google Scholar; Karsten, pp. 38ff.

158 Observations on a late Pamphlet … by Sir John Dalrymple (London, 1773), app., p. iiiGoogle Scholar; cf. Scotchman, no. 3 (February 1, 1772), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 1:186–87Google Scholar; Karsten, p. 40.

159 “Memoirs of the Life of A. Sydney” (n. 8 above), p. 45 (for Milton); Donno, Elizabeth S., Andrew Marvell: The Critical Heritage (London, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower. James Harrington's eighteenth-century reputation had a comparable fate (see Smith, H. F. Russell, Harrington and His Oceana [New York, 1971], pp. 146–48Google Scholar).

160 Burnet's History … (n. 18 above), 2:405Google Scholar; Sidney, , “Discourses” (n. 63 above), pp. 9, 157, 186, 195, 205Google Scholar, and “Of Love” (n. 23 above), p. 619; Thompson, James, The Seasons, ed. Sambrook, J. (Oxford, 1981), pp. 128, 361Google Scholar; Salmon, T., A Critical Review of the State Trials (London, 1735), p. 482Google Scholar. Sometimes Sidney became an eighteenth-century Cicero (see Cato's Letters, 1:196Google Scholar; Gordon, T., trans., The Works of Sallust [London, 1744], p. 29Google Scholar). (There is no reputable authority for the story that under Cromwell Sidney baited Cromwell by acting the part of Brutus in a private performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but some such theatrical episode took place [see HMCR, De Lisle and Dudley MSS (n. 21 above), 6:499].Google Scholar)

161 Cato's Letters, 1:163ffGoogle Scholar. For Brutus as a “pattern,” see also the preface to Molesworth, Robert, An Account of Denmark (London, 1694)Google Scholar.

162 Elwin, W. and Courthorp, W. J., eds., The Works of Alexander Pope, 10 vols. (London, 1871–1889), 3:459nGoogle Scholar. (a reference I owe to the kindness of Maurice Goldsmith); Gordon, T., trans., The Works of Tacitus, 2 vols. (London, 1728–1731), 1:11, 26–27Google Scholar.

163 Hume (n. 2 above), p. 842. Hume's account of the trial is much more sympathetic to Sidney than the protests of its critics might lead us to expect.

164 Observations on a late Pamphlet … by Sir John Dalrymple, p. 13.

165 Macaulay (n. 151 above), 6:466–74, 491–99. The authority of Sidney as an educational pattern is witnessed by Gentleman's Magazine 43 (1773): 187Google Scholar; and Meadley (n. 12 above), preface and pp. 26–27; cf. Toland, , The Art of Governing by Partys (n. 147 above), pp. 164–65Google Scholar; A Collection of Tracts by the late John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, 2 vols. (London, 1751), 2:26–27Google Scholar; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 1:318Google Scholar; and the account of eighteenth-century images of Locke in Dunn, John, “The Politics of Locke in England and America,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, J. W. (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 45–80Google Scholar.

166 Letters of Lady Rachel Russell (n. 123 above), p. 81.

167 Dalrymple, J., Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 2 [3] (Edinburgh, 1788), p. vGoogle Scholar; Meadley, preface; Russell, Lord John, Life of William Lord Russell (London, 1853), pp. xix–xxiGoogle Scholar; “Character of Algernon Sydney,” Notes and Queries (May 29, 1852), pp. 516–17Google Scholar.

168 Compare Lister, ed. (n. 45 above), 2:13–32.

169 Butterfield, Herbert, George III, Lord North and the People, 1779–80 (London, 1949), p. 351Google Scholar; Robbins, , The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthmen (n. 10 above), p. 396Google Scholar; Karsten, (n. 5 above), p. 131.

170 Thelwall, John, The Tribune, 3 vols. (London, 1795–1796), 3:333Google Scholar; Robbins, , The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthmen, p. 367Google Scholar; Dickinson, H. T., Liberty and Property (London, 1977), pp. 197–98Google Scholar.

171 Burgh, James, Political Disquisitions, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1775), 1:191Google Scholar; cf. Jura Populi Anglicani: or the Subject's Right of Petitioning (London, 1701), p. 281Google Scholar; State Tracts, 3 vols. (London, 1705–1707), 3:281Google Scholar; Kramnick (n. 152 above), p. 173; Gentleman's Magazine 9 (1739): 648Google Scholar (from the Craftsman [December 22, 1739]); Pole, J. R., Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (London, 1966), pp. 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

172 Karsten, p. 113.

173 [Thelwall, Cecil], The Life of John Thelwall by his Widow (London, 1837), p. 193Google Scholar; cf. Cestre, Charles, John Thelwall (London, 1906), pp. 97, 202Google Scholar.

174 Parker, Harold T., The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries (Chicago, 1937), pp. 172–77Google Scholar.

175 Moorman, Mary, William Wordsworth: A Biography, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957–1965), 1:205Google Scholar. See also, Smith (n. 159 above), p. 188.

176 Moorman, 1:144, 208, 256, 290, 570; Fink, Zera S., “Wordsworth and the English Republican Tradition,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 47 (1948): 107–26Google Scholar; de Selincourt, E. and Shaver, C. L., eds., Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Early Years (Oxford, 1967), p. 125Google Scholar; Owen, W. J. and Smyser, J. W., eds., Prose Works of William Wordsworth, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1974), 1:288CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 2:35.

177 Southey, Robert, Poems, ed. Fitzgerald, M. H. (Oxford, 1909), pp. 395–96Google Scholar (“History”), 429 (“Epitaph on Algernon Sidney”); Karsten, p. 117 (for Shelley).

178 Patten, L., ed., The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 13 vols. (London, 1971–1981), 2:175–76Google Scholar; 3, pt. 1:209; 3, pt. 2:52; 4:79, 215, 217, 266; 10:65; Coburn, K., ed., The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 3 vols. (London, 1957–1973), vol. 2, no. 3118Google Scholar.

179 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, ed. Watson, G. (London, 1975), pp. 198–99Google Scholar; The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6:164nGoogle Scholar.

180 Compare Karsten, p. 133.

181 Meadley (n. 12 above), p. 214; cf. Carrel, Armand, History of the Counter-Revolution in England (London, 1846), p. 177Google Scholar.

182 For the discovery of the Levellers, see Godwin, William, History of the Commonwealth of England, 4 vols. (London, 1824–1828), 3:163–77, 333–41, 549–60Google Scholar; Thelwall (n. 170 above), 3:226ff.; Maseres, Francis, ed., Select Tracts relating to the Civil Wars in England, 2 vols. (London, 1815), 1:xxii–lxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Robbins, , The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthmen (n. 10 above), p. 19Google Scholar. For the dethronement of 1688 in favor of 1640, see esp. Forster, J., The Statesmen of the Commonwealth of England, 5 vols. (London, 1840), 1:lxxviiiGoogle Scholar.

183 Blackwell, Thomas, Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, 3 vols. (London, 1753–1763), 1:142Google Scholar.

184 Karsten, p. 49; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (n. 8 above), 1:318Google Scholar. Sixteen forty and 1688 could be made to seem allies rather than competitors (see, e.g., Select Tracts …, 1:vGoogle Scholar).

185 Quoted by Hamburger, Joseph, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (Chicago, 1976), p. 247Google Scholar; cf. Karsten, p. 138.

186 Francis Jeffrey, reviewing History of the Early Part of the Reign of King James the Second, by Fox, , Edinburgh Review 12 (1808): 272–78Google Scholar; for Jeffrey's authorship of that anonymous review, see Houghton, W. E., ed., The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1966–1979), 1:443Google Scholar.

187 Karsten, esp. chap. 6.

188 Smith, Goldwin, Lectures and Essays (New York, 1881), p. 286Google Scholar; Russell (n. 167 above), pp. xiii–xiv.

189 Hallam, H., Constitutional History of England, 2 vols. (London, n.d.), 2:368–71, 395–96, 413–18Google Scholar.

190 Hamburger, p. 247.

191 Macaulay cannot, however, resist Sidney's “Stoic” death (see Macaulay, T. B., History of England, 4 vols. [London, 1972], pp. 172, 202Google Scholar).

192 Ewald (n. 12 above), 1:xi, 257, 261; 2:17; cf. Bisset, Alfred, History of the Commonwealth of England, 2 vols. (London, 1864–1867), 2:137Google Scholar.

193 Blackburne (n. 150 above), p. 13; for her fear of demos, seep. 238; cf. Karsten, p. 129.

194 Smith, Goldwin, Lectures and Essays, pp. 286–87Google Scholar, and The United Kingdom, 2 vols. (London, 1899), 2:48Google Scholar; Karsten, p. 73.

195 Worden, “Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution” (n. 13 above).

196 See, e.g., State Tracts (1705–1707) (n. 171 above), 2:639Google Scholar; Gordon, , trans., The Works of Sallust (n. 160 above), p. 29Google Scholar; The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, 4 vols. (Farnborough, 1969), 2:333Google Scholar; Ralph (n. 2 above), 2:1023–24; Blackwell (n. 183 above), 1:141–42; “Memoirs of the Life of A. Sydney” (n. 8 above), pp. 14, 18–24, 31; Burgh (n. 171 above), 2:377, 380; Scotchman, no. 3 (February 1, 1772), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; Thelwall (n. 170 above), 3:303; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (n. 8 above), 1:187Google Scholar; Coleridge, D., ed., Notes, Theological, Political and Miscellaneous of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London, 1853), p. 196Google Scholar; Meadley (n. 12 above), pp. 88–89; Southey (n. 177 above), p. 395; Edinburgh Review 20 (1812): 413Google Scholar; Russell, p. 39; Ewald, 1:369–70, 398; 2:4, 325; “A Treatise of Love by Algernon Sidney,” Nineteenth Century 15 (1881): 70Google Scholar; Colbourn (n. 5 above), p. 44; Bailyn, ed. (n. 5 above), 1:22. (In one view of the seventeenth century, Tiberianism began in 1653 rather than in 1660.)

197 See the sources cited in n. 165 above.

198 Sidney, , “Discourses” (n. 63 above), p. 10Google Scholar.

199 My suggestions here about the relationship between Sidney's manuscript and the printed Discourses are more moderate than those that I advanced in my edition of Ludlow, 's A Voyce from the Watch Tower (n. 47 above), pp. 26–27Google Scholar.