ment in Paris, till the final return of his father to England, in the autumn of the year 1641.

It was at this period, the most eventful crisis in English history, that his active life commenced. The Long Parliament had been in session a year, and the seeds of that great revolution which was about to convulse England were fast taking root. Pym had brought forward his famous accusation against the Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the head of that unfortunate minister had rolled from the scaffold, a victim to the popular justice, or the popular vengeance. The successor chosen to take the place of Strafford in the government of Ireland, was the Earl of Leicester. Various causes combined to delay the departure of that nobleman for Ireland, notwithstanding his presence was imperatively demanded there. The Irish rebellion, as it was called, had broken out. It was general, terrific, and devastating. Almost the entire English population were massacred under circumstances of horrid barbarity and cruelty. The Earl of Leicester, then, according to Hume, in London, being prevented himself from repairing to the scene of action, dispatched his eldest son, Lord Lisle, in command of his own regiment, to reduce the insurgents. In this regiment, Algernon Sidney, then in his nineteenth year, had command of a troop. This was his entrance into military service. In various actions and skirmishes fought with the insurgents, he is reported to have behaved with extraordinary spirit and resolution. The war, however, dragged slowly along. Sid

ney and his brother awaited in vain the appearance of their father in Ireland. The king had too much upon his hands at home to prosecute vigorously the war against his subjects across the channel. He had already unfolded the royal standard against his Parliament, and the civil war had actually commenced on the 22d of August, 1642. Sidney's maternal uncle, the powerful Earl of Northumberland, adhered to the cause of the Parliament, his father to that of the king. After a year's delay, Leicester obtained his dispatch for Ireland. Preparing to embark, he received a peremptory order to remain. Another year's delay ensued; Leicester was deprived of his government, upon which he retired to Penshurst, where he remained in seclusion during the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, it seems, Lord Lisle and Sidney, from the activity and zeal displayed by them against the insurgents, had incurred the jealousy of the advisers of the king. Finding a longer service in Ireland irksome, they obtained leave of the king, with the permission of their father, to return to England.

sea.

On arriving at Chester, in August, 1643, some of their horses were taken from them by the royalists, which caused them immediately to put out again to It appears they were suspected by both parties, for on their second landing, at Liverpool, they were detained, with their arms and property, by the Commissioners of the Parliament. A letter written at this time by Sidney to one Bridgeman, a royalist, at Chester, demanding a restoration of their horses, re

veals his intention of proceeding at once to his father at Oxford, then in the hands of the king. This letter being discovered, fresh instructions were given by the Parliament to detain the brothers in custody, and they were subsequently sent up under arrest to London. The king spoke very harshly and severely of their conduct, and even intimated that the whole affair was a contrivance on the part of the brothers. This accusation, doubtless, had a tendency to fix their sentiments the more strongly in opposition to the royal cause.

Thus far Sidney had taken no active part in the struggle between the king and the Parliament; we are therefore left in some doubt as to his sentiments in respect to the merits of the controversy prior to his return to England. At the beginning, of his service in Ireland, the struggle had not yet commenced. Even after the royal standard had been raised at Nottingham, the reduction of the Irish insurgents was the common object of both parties, the Parliament as well as the king. It is not therefore to be inferred from his service in Ireland, that he was a partisan of the king. On the contrary, various circumstances would lead to a directly opposite conclusion. The character of Sidney was already formed and his opinions, always firm, even as has been charged, to obstinacy, were matured. It is not to be supposed that he wavered for a moment in his choice between the popular and the absolute party, far less that he adhered to the king, and subsequently changed sides to the Parliament. In corroboration of this opi

nion, that Sidney was from the first an advocate of the popular cause, his own solemn declaration may be cited as found in the able paper he drew up immediately before his execution.* He commences by saying, that from his youth up he endeavored to uphold "the common rights of mankind, the laws of the land, and the true Protestant religion, against corrupt principles, arbitrary power, and popery." And then adds—“I am no ways ashamed to note that from the year 1642 till the coming in of the king, I did prosecute the above principles."

On arriving at London, Sidney and his brother gave in their adhesion to the Parliament, and actively enlisted in behalf of the popular cause-a cause to which the former at least never proved recreant to the day of his death. Sidney at once volunteered his services in the parliamentary army, and on the 10th of May, 1644, the Earl of Manchester appointed him to the command of a troop of horse in his own regiment. The war between the king and Parliament was now carried on with great animation on both sides. Thus far indeed, success seemed to favor the royalists. The great parliamentary leader, Pym, was dead. Hampden had fallen in battle. Waller had been routed, and his army dispersed. Bristol had opened her gates to the victorious arms of Prince Rupert, and Gloucester was invested, but still held out under the heroic Massey, against the arms of the king. Such was the aspect of affairs during the campaign of

* His "Apology in the Day of his Death."

1643. Toward the close of that year, however, matters were a little improved. The army under Essex marched successfully to the relief of Gloucester. One or two spirited and brilliant actions fought by Fairfax and Cromwell-names then fast rising to distinctionturned the scale of battle in that quarter against the royalists. The genius and address of Vane had succeeded in carrying, with the Scottish commissioners, "the Solemn League and Covenant," in pursuance of which, early in the year 1644, an army of twenty thousand Scots had crossed the Tweed to the assistance of the Parliament. Still it must be admitted that this campaign opened under unfavorable auspices to the parliamentarians

It is at this period that we find Sidney joining the army under the Earl of Manchester, who was then levying a force in the eastern counties to oppose the victorious royalists. He had collected a body of fourteen thousand men. Oliver Cromwell, already the greatest soldier of the age, served under him as Lieutenant-General, with his own troop of stern and determined men, the nucleus of that famous army which he afterwards commanded in chief, whose proud boast it was that no enemy had ever seen their backs. We do not design, however, to trace the conduct of the war, or even of this campaign, further than as connected with the career of Sidney. It is stated that he was in several actions, in all of which he conducted himself with great gallantry. We do not, however, find any positive mention made of but one-the battle