Sir Philip Sidney was another of the amazing and multi-talented men of the Elizabethan age. He was born in 1554 at Penshurst in Kent, where my husband’s family may well have been living a humble peasant existence at the same time! His family was wealthy, powerful and influential and after going to Oxford University Philip became a courtier, a diplomat and probably a spy. He was very well-connected, not least because of his marriage to Frances Walsingham, daughter of the very powerful Sir Francis Walsingham. Philip was a soldier too and received mortal wounds fighting against Spain in the Netherlands, dying in his brother Robert’s arms when he was only thirty-two
In his spare time he wrote a number of poems which sing still to us across the centuries, his most famous work being Old Arcadia and Sleep.
Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!
O make in me those civil wars to cease!—
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland, and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.Sir Philip Sidney
Lois Elsden 
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