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 a view to increasing his narrow resources, his uncle Leicester procured for him at the end of 1580 the stewardship to the bishopric of Winchester. Subsequently he begged Lord Burghley to induce the queen to grant him 100l. a year out of property seized from the papists (10 Oct. 1581). He was able on new year's day 1581 to present the queen with a gold-headed whip, a chain of gold, and a heart of gold. On 16 Jan. he was returned at a by-election, in place of his father, to Queen Elizabeth's fourth parliament as M.P. for Kent, but the only part he is known to have taken at the time in the proceedings of the House of Commons was as a member of the committee which recommended stringent measures against catholics and slanderers of the queen. On 3 May 1581 Don Antonio, the claimant to the throne of Portugal, addressed to his ‘illustrious nephew Philip Sidney’ an appeal for help in his hopeless struggle with Philip II of Spain (Sydney Papers, i. 294). On Whit Monday and Whit Tuesday, 15 and 16 May, Sidney distinguished himself as a chief performer in an elaborate tournament which was held at Whitehall in honour of an embassy from France. He was at Wilton at Christmas 1581 while the Duke of Anjou was on a visit to Elizabeth in London. But in February 1582, with his uncle and other courtiers, he escorted the duke on leaving London to Antwerp, where he mourned anew the death of his old friend Languet, who had died in that city on 30 Sept. 1581.

In August 1582, when Sir Henry was invited to resume the office of lord deputy of Ireland, he assented to the proposal on the condition that Philip accompanied him, but the proposal was not seriously entertained. At the time Philip was in Wales. Later in the year he wrote from Wilton to ask his uncle Leicester's permission to stay there over Christmas. On 13 Jan. 1583 he was knighted, but the honour was not conferred on him in recognition of his personal merits. Prince John Casimir had chosen Sidney to represent him at his installation by proxy as knight of the Garter, and etiquette prescribed that a knight of the Garter's proxy must not be of lower rank than a knight-bachelor. He was still in need of a settled appointment and a settled income; and soon afterwards it was agreed to associate Sidney with his uncle Warwick in the mastership of the ordnance. Thenceforth he frequently assisted his uncle, but the letters patent formally appointing him joint-master of the ordnance with Warwick were not issued, owing to the queen's vacillation, till 21 July 1585. In 1583, too, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of captain of the Isle of Wight, but military dignity was during the year bestowed on him by his nomination as ‘general of horse;’ and he was granted some portion of the fines paid by clerical recusants.

The need of money was the more pressing in that Walsingham had proposed to Sir Henry Sidney early in 1583 that Philip should marry his daughter Frances. Sir Henry highly approved the proposal, but deplored his ‘present biting necessity,’ which would not allow him to make any satisfactory pecuniary settlement. Of Philip's devotion to the girl, who was only fourteen, the parents of both felt assured. Lady Penelope Devereux had married Lord Rich in 1581. Philip had never ceased writing sonnets to her, and those that seem assignable to the period when his own marriage was under consideration are more passionate, if more desperate, in tone than before. It is therefore improbable that the match with Walsingham's daughter was of his own making. Nevertheless, he readily acceded to the wishes of his own and of the lady's parents. The queen at first refused to countenance the engagement, but after two months' debate with Walsingham she ‘passed over the offence,’ and the courtship proceeded without hindrance. The marriage was celebrated on 20 Sept. 1583, and the young couple took up their residence with the bride's parents, who divided their time between Walsingham House in London and the manor-house at Barn Elms, Surrey. Sidney's relations with Lady Rich were not apparently interrupted, but he stirred in his wife a genuine affection, and the union contributed to their mutual happiness.

Routine duties at court or in the department of the ordnance combined with literary study to occupy Sidney during the first months of his married life. Early in 1584 he frequently met, at the house of Fulke Greville, Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher, who had arrived in England on a visit to the French ambassador, M. Castelnau de Mauvissiere. Sidney's fame had reached Bruno at Milan as early as 1579. At Greville's house they discussed together ‘moral, metaphysical, mathematical, and natural speculations.’ On 13 Feb. 1584 the Italian stated to his English friends ‘the reasons of his belief that the earth moves.’ Bruno dedicated two books to Sidney, ‘Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante’ (1584), and the poetic ‘Degli Heroici Furori’ (1585). But Sidney evinced little sympathy with Bruno's scepticism in matters of religion. At the same time as he was debating science and