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Sidney’s Life - Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government [1698]

Edition used:

Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1996).

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Sidney’s Life

Two old English aristocratic families were united in Algernon Sidney’s birth in 1623. His mother was a Percy, the family of Northumberland earls famous for its spirited devotion to honor and the military arts—and for rebelling against kings . In Richard II and Henry IV Shakespeare portrays Sidney’s ancestor Harry Percy, called Hotspur (referred to in the Discourses), who overthrew one king and warred against another.

The Sidney side of the family was more learned and scholarly, but it too had its fighting spirit. Today the Sidney name is best known through Algernon’s great-uncle, the poet and courtier Sir Philip, who died thirty-seven years before Algernon was born. Algernon Sidney admired and emulated his famous forebear for his intellectual attainments as well as for his soldiership on behalf of Protestantism, in which cause he lost his life in battle.

Sidney spent his early childhood at Penshurst, the family estate in Kent.16 In his teens he lived for six years in France with his father, the Earl of Leicester, who served as ambassador there. At home and abroad, Sidney was given the liberal education, grounded in the classics, that was characteristic of the age at its best.

Sidney’s father was a scholar in his own right. His extraordinary library contained thousands of volumes, including philosophical, political, historical, and religious writings, ancient and modern. In France he was a close acquaintance of Hugo Grotius, the Swedish ambassador and political philosopher whose views figured prominently in the earl’s notes, along with those of Roman and English political writers. Their names appear frequently in Sidney’s Discourses. Years later Sidney was reported to have called Grotius’s Law of War and Peace the most important of all books in political theory.

Sidney’s quarrel with Filmer in the Discourses was about whether men deserve to be rulers merely by being eldest born. Sidney argued for merit, not birth, as the title to rule, and he thought republics most likely to honor merit. Although he was himself a hereditary aristocrat, Sidney experienced the question personally in his own household. His older brother, the future Earl of Leicester, was as dull, lazy, and immoral as Algernon was precocious, energetic, and honorable. Their father acknowledged the difference by substantially disinheriting the brother and giving as much as he could to Algernon. The latter successfully defended his father’s will in a lawsuit using many of the same arguments against favoring the eldest born that he used against Filmer on the political plane.

Sidney entered the military, served in Ireland, and returned to England in 1642. The country was agitated by civil war. For eleven years King Charles I had been governing without Parliament. He had raised taxes without any Parliament’s consent. The king was finally compelled in 1640 to convene Parliament, which attempted, in response to Charles’s usurpations, to subordinate the king in crucial respects to the nation’s representatives. Sidney made his choice for Parliament—a choice to which he adhered throughout his life—and, as fighting broke out, took up arms against the king. In 1644 he fought in the battle of Marston Moor, where an eyewitness reported that “Colonel Sidney charged with much gallantry in the head of my Lord Manchester’s regiment of horses, and came off with many wounds, the true badges of his honor.” The wounds were severe.

In 1646 Sidney was elected to the famous Long Parliament. He firmly opposed compromise with the king, but he did not support the radicals’ purge of parliamentary moderates in 1648, which created the Rump Parliament. Appointed one of the commissioners for the trial of Charles I, Sidney took little part in its proceedings. He had reservations about the lawfulness as well as the prudence of the trial, which was pushed forward by Cromwell and the army. But he never disputed the accusations against Charles. He later called his execution “the justest and bravest action that ever was done in England, or anywhere.”

In Parliament Sidney was especially active in foreign affairs. By 1652, helping to direct the war against Holland, he had risen to a leading position. When Cromwell’s army broke up the Rump of the Long Parliament in 1653, a bill was about to pass that would have made elections far freer than they had been. Cromwell entered Parliament with his soldiers, expelled the members, and locked the doors. Seated at the right hand of the speaker, Sidney refused to leave until hands were placed upon him threatening him with forcible removal. Thus began Cromwell’s reign, which Sidney regarded as tyranny.

At some point during the next six years of forced retirement from politics, Sidney wrote his first surviving work, “Of Love.” We do not know what events in his life may have provoked it. Sidney admits that love “hath with more violence transported me, than a man of understanding ought to suffer himself to be by any passion.” Yet he celebrates the love of man and woman as “the fullest and most absolute happiness that our natures can be capable of, in comparison with which all other worldly pleasures are vain and empty shadows.” His argument is built on a quite un-Machiavellian trust in the ordinary appearance of things. He is sure that beauty and goodness are “convertible terms,” since “nature’s works are not like hypocrites or sepulchers, beautiful without, and rottenness and corruption within.”

The glory of divine rays do show in faces, but much more in minds: Who can then without barbarity (I think I may say impiety) deny to suffer himself to be ravished with the admiration of such an excellence of a created beauty, as is an image of the uncreated?

This contrasts strongly with the bleak description of life by Sidney’s contemporary Thomas Hobbes as “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”17

In 1659 the army dissolved the Protectorate, threw out Cromwell’s son Richard, and restored the Rump Parliament. Sidney resumed his seat and his position of prominence. He led an important delegation abroad to mediate peace between the kings of Denmark and Sweden. (One of Sidney’s parliamentary colleagues who refused to join the delegation gives us a glimpse of his character: “I knew well the overruling temper and height of Colonel Sidney.”) Sidney’s diplomatic approach was to cut through the endless ceremony and prattle by the use of strong language and gunboat diplomacy to force a peace on English terms. His blunt style horrified the European diplomats, and his workable plan was scuttled by the English admiral on the spot, who sailed away with his fleet. In the end a treaty was signed on terms favorable to England, for which Sidney deserves some credit.

While Sidney was concluding the treaty in 1660, the English Commonwealth collapsed and Charles II was restored to the throne. Sidney was willing to follow the authority of Parliament and obey the king. But the king demanded more: Sidney must condemn his own actions under the republic and beg forgiveness. He could not bring himself to do it. He wrote to his father:

When I call to my remembrance all my actions relating to our civil distempers, I cannot find one that I can look upon as a breach of the rules of justice or honor; this is my strength, and, I thank God, by this I enjoy very serene thoughts. If I lose this by vile and unworthy submissions, acknowledgement of errors, asking of pardon, or the like, I shall from that moment be the miserablest man alive, and the scorn of all men.

Sensing how this momentous choice of voluntary exile would be viewed by his father and others, Sidney continued in a vein that shows his self-knowledge and his stubborn sense of honor:

I know the titles that are given me of fierce, violent, seditious, mutinous, turbulent. … I know people will say, I strain at gnats, and swallow camels; that it is a strange conscience, that lets a man run violently on, till he is deep in civil blood, and then stays at a few words and compliments. … I cannot help if I judge amiss; I did not make myself, nor can I correct the defects of my own creation. I walk in the light that God hath given me; if it be dim or uncertain, I must bear the penalty of my errors. I hope to do it with patience, and that no burden shall be very grievous to me, except sin and shame.

Sidney wandered about Europe for almost twenty years “as a vagabond through the world, forsaken of my friends, poor, and known only to be a broken limb of a shipwrecked faction.” Charles’s agents and assassins pursued Sidney for years. He survived two serious attempts on his life.

Yet exile was not entirely grim. At first he lived in Italy, where he was kindly given access to a beautiful country villa whose description, he said, “would look more like poetry than truth.” He lived there for a time “as a hermit in a palace,” flirting with the solitary and contemplative life praised by the ancient philosophers:

Here are walls and fountains in the greatest perfection. … My conversation is with birds, trees, and books: in these last months that I have had no business at all, I have applied myself to study a little more than I have done formerly; and though one who begins at my age cannot hope to make any considerable progress that way, I find so much satisfaction in it, that for the future I shall very unwillingly, though I had the opportunity, put myself into any way of living that shall deprive me of that entertainment.

During this idyllic interlude Sidney no doubt undertook some of the wide philosophical and historical reading that is manifest in his Discourses. But anger at events in England gradually led him back into political activity.

In the end I found that it was an ill-grounded peace that I enjoyed, and could have no rest in my own spirit, because I lived only to myself, and was in no ways useful to God’s people, my country, and the world. This consideration, joined with those dispensations of providence which I observed and judged favorable unto the designs of good people, brought me out of my retirement.

Plunging back into the political life, Sidney worked vigorously, through both conspiracy and writing, to restore the English republic. An inscription he wrote in the visitor’s book at the Calvinist Academy in Geneva plainly reveals his mood: SIT SANGUINIS ULTOR JUSTORUM (“Let there be an avenger of the blood of the just”).

Of all the republican exiles, Sidney was the most determined to act and the least delicate about the means to be employed. Religious scruples did not hinder him as they did some of his colleagues. First he tried to organize them to undertake an invasion of England to be led by Holland, then at war with England. Partly to promote this enterprise, Sidney wrote the book-length Court Maxims, Discussed and Refelled, recently discovered in England but still unpublished. This work, an imaginary dialogue between an English monarchist and a republican, is a vigorous attack on the regime of Charles II, with strong encouragement to resistance against the tyrant. Many of its arguments reappeared later in the Discourses.

Turned down by the Dutch republican leader De Witt, Sidney approached Louis XIV of France, who was also at war with England. Louis reports in his memoirs that he offered Sidney a small sum, with the promise of more only if Sidney could show “that he was really capable of doing what he promised.” Louis’s aim was to keep England weak by keeping it divided, not to build up an English republic. Quarrels among the exiles, inflamed by Sidney’s overbearing manner, prevented action in any event.

In the wake of this second failure, Louis granted Sidney permission to settle in the south of France, where he spent eleven years, until his return to England. Living as an aristocrat, he was known as “Le Compte de Sidney.” He seems to have fathered an illegitimate daughter there.

Sidney was finally given permission to return to England in 1677, for personal purposes. Not long after his arrival he was detained by unexpected financial troubles, spending several months in debtor’s prison. He pursued his lengthy but finally successful lawsuit to obtain the inheritance left to him by his recently deceased father.

Sidney soon found himself back in the thick of politics. In 1679 he and William Penn cooperated on a project to secure greater freedom of religion in England. Sidney discussed with Penn the constitution of Pennsylvania, although Sidney ended by arguing that Penn’s frame of government, “worse than the Turk,” was “not to be endured or lived under.” Sidney also worked closely with Whigs sympathetic to republicanism, such as Henry Neville. With their help and Penn’s, he tried to get into Parliament, standing unsuccessfully for election several times.

On the basis of considerable evidence Sidney and many other Whigs believed that Charles II, urged on by his Catholic brother, the future James II, intended to convert England into a monarchy on the model of Louis XIV’s France. Catholicism would become the state religion, and Parliament would be dispensed with.18 (In an early stage of this quarrel, Parliament impeached one of Charles’s ministers, the Earl of Danby, who worked to expand the king’s prerogative and to make him financially independent of Parliament. Sidney alludes to this event in the Discourses, III.42.)

In the late 1670s and early ’80s the Whigs pursued a legal strategy to check the monarchy. They mobilized the electorate all the way down to the common people. They wrote books and pamphlets exposing the crisis. They captured a majority in Parliament and attempted to exclude by law Charles’s brother James from the succession to the throne. In 1680, at the height of the exclusion crisis, Filmer’s Patriarcha was published.19

Historians have sometimes been inclined to discount the republicanism of Sidney and other Whigs. The contest between Parliament and king has been portrayed as a quarrel among rival elites from which the people were largely excluded. However, the Whigs really did have strong roots among the common people. In many parliamentary electoral districts there was virtually unlimited manhood suffrage—a condition that disappeared from post-1689 Britain until the late nineteenth century. The Whigs strongly supported this increasingly democratic electoral politics, and their arguments for equality and liberty gave it a theoretical foundation.

At this time Sidney (and many other Whigs and Tories) received money from France’s ambassador, Barillon. The French were secretly providing monetary support to Charles II, but also to leading opposition politicians. Their policy was to keep England weak by playing Parliament and king off each other. Sidney’s honor in this affair has been impugned by many, including most notably Sir Winston Churchill. In Sidney’s defense it must be said that he was willing to take French money only to the extent that doing so coincided with his own ends, which were entirely honorable. The French knew well what they were supporting: Barillon called him “a man of great views and high designs, which tend to the establishment of a republic.”20

In 1681 Charles II defeated the Whigs’ exclusion strategy by dismissing the last Parliament of his reign. He let it be known that he intended to rule thenceforth without it. At this time Sidney may have co-authored Just and Modest Vindication of the Proceedings of the Last Two Parliaments.

Sidney and his fellow Whigs believed the situation was desperate. Legal opposition had failed. To borrow the language of the American Declaration of Independence, here was “a long train of abuses and usurpations” evincing a design to reduce England “under absolute despotism.” The leading Whigs, Sidney among them, began to plan a revolution. There was to be an armed insurrection, supported by an uprising in Scotland. The assassination of King Charles, definitely planned, may have been approved by Sidney. Parliament would then settle the affairs of the realm. Organizing the plot took time, and before the conspirators were ready to strike, Sidney and many of the other principals were betrayed. (The political philosopher John Locke never worked closely with Sidney, but he was part of the same conspiracy. Locke saved himself by fleeing England the moment the conspiracy was discovered.) On June 26, 1683, Sidney was arrested on a charge of treason.21

Sidney resolved to do nothing at his trial “which doth not agree with the character of a gentleman and a Christian.” The trial was conducted by the brutal Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, who did not conceal his intention to convict, within the law or without. The indictment itself contained important errors and alleged many things against Sidney irrelevant to the law, which said treason was “to design, intend, or endeavor” any action that might tend toward the king’s death or “any restraint of his liberty”; the jury was not composed of Sidney’s peers (fellow freeholders); Sidney was unlawfully denied permission even to examine the indictment. The most egregious wrong was in the want of legal evidence. Two witnesses were required for conviction. The prosecution produced but one, Lord Howard, who could only testify to having heard Sidney and others discussing arrangements to contact Whigs in Scotland; he could not report definite plans to make war on the king, as the indictment alleged. Sidney was also able to discredit this testimony by exposing Howard’s treacherous character and showing that he had contradicted himself. The other “witness” produced was a few manuscript pages, seized when he was arrested, of Sidney’s Discourses, “fixing the power in the people,” as Jeffreys summarized it. The general and theoretical argument of the part of the Discourses read at his trial, privately written and never published, was of course no proof of a design tending toward the king’s death or deprivation of his liberty. Sidney was well prepared for the trial, and he forcefully pointed out these and other defects in the prosecution’s case, but to no effect. He was convicted and condemned to death.

While he was confined in the Tower, “some propositions” were made “for the saving of my life, but I did not think them reasonable or decent.” Here again we are reminded of Socrates’s honorable conduct in prison. But unlike Socrates, Sidney did request permission to go into exile. This was denied. In his last letter, privately written to a friend, Sidney faced death calmly and courageously, without any flourishes. One who attended his execution reported:

When he came on the scaffold, instead of a speech, he told them only that he had made his peace with God, that he came not thither to talk, but to die; put a paper into the sheriffs’ hand, and another into a friend’s, said one prayer as short as a grace, laid down his neck, and bid the executioner do his office.

He died on December 7, 1683.

In the paper that he gave to the sheriffs, intended for publication, Sidney set forth the injustice of the trial and strongly affirmed his political principles. The paper concluded with this prayer, expressive of his spirited and political Christianity:

The Lord forgive these practices, and avert the evils that threaten the nation from them! The Lord sanctify these my sufferings unto me, and, though I fall as a sacrifice to idols, suffer not idolatry to be established in this land! Bless thy people, and save them. Defend thy own cause, and defend those that defend it. Stir up such as are faint; direct those that are willing; confirm those that waver; give wisdom and integrity unto all. Order all things so, as may most redound to thine own glory. Grant that I may die glorifying thee for all thy mercies; and that, at the last, thou hast permitted me to be singled out as a witness of thy truth; and even by the confession of my opposers, for that OLD CAUSE in which I was from my youth engaged and for which thou hast often and wonderfully declared thyself.22

We allow Sidney the final word, from his Apology in the Day of His Death:

I had from my youth endeavored to uphold the common rights of mankind, the laws of this land, and the true Protestant religion, against corrupt principles, arbitrary power, and Popery, and I do now willingly lay down my life for the same.23

Sidney’s Discourses was the theoretical counterpart to his practical schemes. If those schemes had succeeded, the book might have served as a manifesto for the revolution. They failed, and the book remained unfinished.

There is no doubt that Sidney was guilty of treason, just as Socrates was guilty of impiety and of corrupting the young—as those crimes were understood by the governments who executed the two heroes. Socrates was vindicated when readers of his Apology were persuaded that Athenian law was defective in light of a higher standard of justice.24 Likewise, Sidney’s real vindication does not come from the exposure of the trial’s many illegalities. Rather, it lies in his implicit appeal to a higher standard of justice, one that regards rebellion against tyranny not as a crime but as a benefaction. This is the argument of the Discourses.

THOMAS G. WEST

  • University of Dallas

August 1989

[16]For the facts of Sidney’s life, see Houston, Algernon Sidney; Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677; Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Blair Worden, “The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney,”Journal of British Studies 24 (January 1985), pp. 1–40; “Algernon Sidney,”Concise Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), vol. 3, p. 2742; and George W. Meadley, Memoirs of Algernon Sydney (London: Cradock and Joy, 1813). Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from these sources.

[17]Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 11. Quotations from “Of Love” are taken from A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts … of the Late Lord Somers, ed. Sir Walter Scott (London, 1809–16), vol. 8, pp. 612–619.

[18]Richard Ashcraft has persuasively revived the case against Charles II in Revolutionary Politics and John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), ch. 1.

[19]Ibid., ch. 4 and 6.

[20]Winston Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times (London: Harrap, 1947), vol. 1, pp. 149–150.

[21]Ashcraft in Revolutionary Politics, ch. 7 and 8, refutes the older view that there was no significant Whig conspiracy. He argues that killing the king was part of the overall plan.

[22]Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, 3rd ed. (London: Millar, 1751), p. xxvii. The “old cause” was the cause of the English republic.

[23]Ibid., p. xxx.

[24]Thomas G. West, Plato’s Apology of Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 150.