Algernon Sidney
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Algernon Sidney
Sidney, Algernon (1622-83). Famous Whig martyr. Sidney fought for Parliament at Marston Moor, where he was wounded. He refused to serve on the court that tried Charles I but joined the Council of State in 1652. He disapproved of Cromwell's Protectorate but rejoined the Council of State in 1659. He returned to England in 1677 just as the Popish plot was about to explode and joined Shaftesbury's Whig opposition. In 1683 he was tried before Jeffreys for involvement in the Rye House plot and convicted on shaky evidence. In his statement at the block, Sidney wrote that he died for ‘that Old Cause in which I was from my youth engaged’.
Sidney or Sydney, Algernon, 1622-83, English politician; son of Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester. He served in the parliamentary forces during the English civil war and was a member (1652-53) of the council of state of the Commonwealth, but he opposed the dictatorial rule of Oliver Cromwell. Reappointed (1659) to the council of state, he was abroad at the time of the Restoration (1660) and remained there until 1677, when he returned to England to attend to personal affairs. He soon became associated with the opposition to Charles II, joining Lord William Russell and others in negotiations with French agents and in vague plots for an insurrection, perhaps to place the duke of Monmouth on the throne. His implication in these conspiracies was discovered by the exposure of the Rye House Plot. After a brutal and arbitrary trial by Judge Jeffreys, Sidney was convicted of treason and executed. Sidney's liberal ideals were set forth in his Discourses Concerning Government (1698), a treatise that had great influence on 18th-century political thought, especially in the American colonies.
Bibliography
See biography by A. C. Ewald (2 vol., 1873); J. Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic 1623-1677 (1988).
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Oxford Dictionary of British History
A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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Mentioned in
Algernon Sidney Crapsey
(American theologian)
Rye House Plot
(historical event, England)
Adelaide Crapsey
(American poet)
1st Baron George Jeffreys Jeffreys of Wem
(English jurist)
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