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 stables, and Sidney gave a vivid account in the opening passage of his ‘Apologie for Poetrie’ of Pugliano's enthusiasm for soldiers and horses. At the end of February 1575 Sidney rode in the train of the emperor from Vienna to Prague, whither the emperor went to preside over the Bohemian diet. While still at Prague, early in March, Sidney received a summons to return home. Reports had been circulated that he had become a catholic, but Languet proved in a letter to Walsingham, now secretary of state, the absurdity of the rumour. Sidney travelled by way of Dresden, Heidelberg, Strasburg, Frankfort, and Antwerp, reaching London early in June 1575. He visited or was visited by many learned men on the way. Zacharias Ursinus, the protestant controversialist, and Henri Estienne (Stephanus), the classical printer, who dedicated to Sidney his edition of Herodian in 1581, met him at Heidelberg. Languet spent some time with him at Frankfort (, De Vitis Stephanorum, Amsterdam, 1683, p. 67).

Settled again in England, Sidney frequented the court, where his uncle Leicester was anxious to advance his interests. Walsingham also gave him a kindly welcome, and the queen received him favourably. In July 1576 he was present at the ornate festivities with which Leicester entertained his sovereign at Kenilworth. Thence he removed with the court to Chartley Castle, the seat of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex [q. v.] His charm of manner at once captivated the earl. At Chartley, too, he probably first met the earl's daughter Penelope, then a girl twelve years old, who some years later was to excite in him an overmastering passion. Now Philip had other troubles. His pecuniary position was unsatisfactory. In August 1575 he gave a bond for 42l. 6s. to Richard Rodway, a London tailor, and later he sent a boot bill for 4l. 10s. 4d. to his father's steward with a request that he would meet it. In the winter of 1576 he was staying at his uncle's house in London, and was improving his acquaintance with Essex, whose guest he often was at Durham House. Essex saw in him a promising suitor for his daughter Penelope. In July Essex travelled to Ireland to take up his appointment as earl marshal. Philip went with him in order to pay a visit to his father, who was then lord deputy. Father and son met at Dublin, and in September travelled together to Athlone and Galway, where Philip saw much of the difficulties of Irish government. On 21 Sept. his new friend, Essex, died at Dublin. Almost his last words were of his admiration for Philip: ‘I wish him well—so well that, if God move their hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I call him son—he is so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous and worthy a gentleman as ever England bred.’ The earl's secretary, Edward Waterhouse [q. v.], wrote to Sir Henry Sidney on 14 Nov. that his late master anxiously desired Philip's marriage with the Lady Penelope, and spoke of the dishonour that would attend a breach of the engagement (Sydney Papers, i. 147).

Philip was a serious youth of two-and-twenty, and the girl a coquette of fourteen. They were thenceforth often in each other's society, and he began addressing to her the series of sonnets in which he called himself Astrophel and the lady Stella. But it would appear that Sidney's relations with Penelope very slowly passed beyond the bounds of friendship. At the outset, his sonnets were, in all probability, mere literary exercises designed in emulation of those addressed by the Earl of Surrey to Geraldine, which were themselves inspired by Petrarch's sonnets to Laura; Surrey's ‘lyrics’ are eulogised by Sidney in his ‘Apologie for Poetrie’ (p. 51). Neither his nor Penelope's friends regarded their union with serious favour, while some references in Philip's correspondence with Languet during 1578 suggest that he had no immediate intention of submitting to the restraints of matrimony. In such sonnets as can be assigned on internal evidence to an early date, Sidney confined himself to calm eulogies of Penelope's beauty. When a deeper note was sounded, Stella had become another's wife [see ], and it was her marriage in 1581 that seems to have first stirred in Sidney a genuine and barely controllable passion.

Public affairs absorbed too much of his interest to render him an easy prey to women's blandishments. Early in 1577 he was directed to convey Elizabeth's messages of condolence and congratulation to the Elector Palatine Lewis at Heidelberg, and to the Emperor Rudolf II at Prague. Both princes had just succeeded to their thrones on the death of their fathers. His friend Fulke Greville accompanied him, and Sir Henry Lee and Sir Jerome Bowes were members of his suite. Permission was granted him to confer with the rulers whom he met abroad about the welfare of the reformed religion and of civil liberty. Arrived in the Low Countries, Sidney paid his respects at Louvain to Don John of Austria, the Spanish general, who showed him every civility. While awaiting in the middle of March the arrival of the Lutheran Elector