styled 1677-98 Visct. Lisle (L’Isle); accel. 11 July 1689 Bar. SYDNEY; suc. fa. 6 Mar. 1698 as 4th earl of LEICESTER.
First sat 11 July 1689; last sat 17 Apr. 1702
b. 1649, 1st s. of Philip Sydney, 3rd earl of Leicester, and Catherine, da. of William Cecil, 2nd earl of Salisbury. educ. unknown. m. 1672 (with £10,000),1 Elizabeth (1653–1709), da. of John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, 4s. 2da.2 d. 11 Nov. 1702; will 14 Dec. 1700–1 Nov. 1702, pr. 2 Dec. 1702.3
Associated with: Penshurst, Kent; Leicester House, Leicester Sq. Westminster.
Any study of Sydney’s political and parliamentary career is complicated by the fact that two Lords Sydney sat in the House between 1689 and 1694: the subject of this biography and his uncle Henry Sydney, Viscount Sydney (later earl of Romney). The latter had a far higher profile in public life as a privy councillor, secretary of state and lord lieutenant of Kent, where he was one of the main aristocratic influences over regional politics.4 In contrast, Baron Sydney’s contribution appears to have been less marked. He left very few personal papers and there is no clear evidence that he intervened in parliamentary elections except in 1695, when his still underage son and heir, Philip Sydney, later 5th earl of Leicester, was elected for Kent.5 Sydney nevertheless had a distinctive political background. His father, the 3rd earl of Leicester, had been a member of Cromwell’s upper House but had been pardoned in 1660. His even more celebrated uncle Algernon‡ was executed in 1683 as a radical Protestant plotter. Sydney enjoyed considerable wealth despite inheriting some £5,000 of his father’s debts; his patrimony included Penshurst Place in Kent, Leicester House in London and various estates in Sussex, Middlesex, Kent and Glamorganshire.6
On 11 July 1689, as a supporter of the Revolution Sydney was summoned in his father’s barony of Sydney of Penshurst and took his seat in the House of Lords. He was introduced between John West, 6th Baron De la Warr, and John Bennet, Baron Ossulston. In a parliamentary career that lasted 13 years he attended all but one session, although rarely for more than half of all sittings. He sat most regularly between October 1689 and January 1691. During the time that he was entitled to attend, he was named to slightly fewer than 100 select committees and on occasion to the sessional committees.
Taking his seat towards the end of his first parliamentary session, Sydney was present for 17 per cent of all sittings. On 22 July 1689 he was named as one of the managers of the conference on reversing two judgments against Titus Oates and on 2 and 5 Aug. to both conferences on the attainder bill. He attended for the last time that session on 20 Sept., Parliament being adjourned until late October. The next session of the Convention assembled on 23 Oct. 1689. Five days later Sydney was excused at a call of the House. He returned to his place on 28 Nov. and attended for slightly more than half of all sittings. In a list drawn up sometime between October 1689 and February 1690, Thomas Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen and later duke of Leeds, classed him as among the supporters of the court, but added that he was to be spoken to. On 23 Jan. 1690, in the bill to restore corporations to their ancient rights and privileges, Sydney may have been one of those to protest against the resolution to agree with the committee to remove from the first enacting clause the declaration that the surrender of charters to Charles II and James II had been illegal and thereby void. It is possible, however, that the ‘Sydney’ who registered his protest on this occasion was his uncle Henry.
On 20 Mar. 1690 Sydney took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament and attended for 91 per cent of sittings. During the passage of the bill to restore the corporation of London, he entered his protest on 13 May against the resolution not to allow the corporation more time to be heard by its counsel (signing himself R. Sydney to make the distinction clear). Attending until the adjournment of 23 May and then for five prorogation sittings between 7 July and 12 Sept., he was again in the House on 2 Oct. 1690 for the start of the next session. In all he was present for 74 per cent of sittings. On 6 Oct. he voted against the discharge of James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower. On 31 Oct. he was added to the committee for regulating chancery.
Sydney attended the winter 1691 session for 48 per cent of sittings, being excused attendance at a call of the House on 2 November. On 16 Feb. 1692 he dissented from the resolution that proxies should not be allowed during the proceedings of the divorce bill for Henry Howard*, 7th duke of Norfolk. He attended the subsequent session for just one-fifth of sittings, as he was suffering from illness, but was in the House for the passage of the place bill, voting in its favour on 3 Jan. 1693. Later that month, he was present for the opening of proceedings against Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, but he was excused his attendance for the final day on 4 Feb., ‘being very sick’, and thus avoided entering a verdict. He returned to his place on 13 Mar., one day before the prorogation. Sydney took his seat for the first day of the new session on 7 Nov. 1693 and attended for 60 per cent of sittings. In the following session, over the winter of 1694, he attended for only 22 per cent of sittings and on 26 Nov. was excused attendance, presumably on the grounds of ill health. He returned in December and attended sporadically until the penultimate day of the session in May 1695.
Sydney returned to the House two weeks after the opening of the 1695 Parliament and attended the session for 37 per cent of sittings in the first session. He was present in the following (1696–7) session for nearly two-fifths of sittings but, apart from his support for the attainder bill against Sir John Fenwick‡ on 23 Dec. 1696, evidence for his activity at Westminster is scanty.
During the session of 1697–8 Sydney again attended for slightly less than two-fifths of all sittings. On 1 Apr. 1698 he took his seat as earl of Leicester, following his father’s death. On 10 June he registered his proxy in favour of his uncle, now earl of Romney (vacated on the 27th). In the intervening days, the House examined a number of bills relating to commercial undertakings and one relating to the relief of creditors, an issue in which Leicester, now dealing with his father’s debts, may have had some interest. In an attempt to settle the debts, he became involved in a chancery case to accommodate his father’s creditors and to recover the remaining balance of £6,000 from his marriage settlement from his brother-in-law, John Egerton, 3rd earl of Bridgwater.7 A decree was made on 17 July 1699 to settle the numerous claims against the Leicester estate.8
Leicester took his seat in the new Parliament on 9 Dec. 1698, attending the session thereafter for 52 per cent of sittings. He missed the first two months of the 1699–1700 session, arriving at Westminster on 15 Jan. 1700 and attending thereafter for some 30 per cent of sittings, possibly because the House was dealing with the contentious issues of the Norfolk divorce bill, and the bill to continue the East India Company as a corporation. Leicester, who had an interest in the old East India Company, had been forecast at the start of February as being in favour of continuing the Company as a corporation and on the 23rd he voted against an adjournment during the debate on the bill. He attended until three days before the prorogation on 11 Apr. 1700.
Leicester’s political position as a supporter of the court was marked in a printed list dating from the summer of 1700, which noted him as a Whig (though not necessarily a Junto associate). That summer he acted as one of the assistants to the chief mourner (Norfolk) at the funeral of William, duke of Gloucester.9 He attended the opening of the new Parliament on 6 Feb. 1701 and was present for 31 per cent of sittings up to the end of May. One rare piece of evidence of his activity was a letter sent over the summer to University College, Oxford, reminding its governing body that he had the right of nomination to two exhibitions in their college.10
Leicester took his seat at the opening of the second Parliament of 1701, attending 30 per cent of sittings in the first session. On 17 Apr. 1702 he attended the House for the final time. During that year he received payments of £200 and £500 from the old East India Company’s court of directors, evidence that he had lucrative commercial interests.11 He was certainly in a position to spend lavishly on his houses: between 1698 and 1700 he repaired and refurbished Leicester House at a cost of over £3,500.12
Leicester failed to attend the first Parliament to assemble after the accession of Queen Anne in 1702. On 7 Nov. he was reported as being ‘dangerously ill’.13 Four days later he died at Penshurst, where a monument was built in his memory. His lengthy will and codicils, culminating in a personal bequest to his wife written ten days before his death, confirmed existing legal arrangements for the transfer of the Leicester estates. He left his Welsh estate in trust for his five younger children.14 Leicester, once ‘pitied for his father’s unkind usage of him’, was now ‘condemned for giving away all the furniture of Leicester House from his son’.15 In 1718 the trustees of his estate transferred the lease of his Leicester Square house to George Walter, a lawyer.16
R.D.E.E.- 1 TNA, C 10/251/64; Verney, ms. mic. M636/25, Sir R. to E. Verney, 2 May 1672.
- 2 Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (1831 edn.), 510.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/467.
- 4 HP Commons, 1690–1715, ii. 305–6.
- 5 Ibid. v. 606.
- 6 TNA, C 10/251/64.
- 7 Ibid.
- 8 Kent HLC (CKS), U908/L8; E. Suss. RO, BAT/845.
- 9 Add. 61101, ff. 68–69.
- 10 Bodl. Tanner 20, f. 48.
- 11 BL, IOR/B/43, pp. 721, 730.
- 12 Survey of London, xxxiv. 446.
- 13 Add. 70073–4, newsletter, 7 Nov. 1702.
- 14 Kent HLC (CKS), U908/T423/5.
- 15 Verney, ms. mic. M636/52, C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney, 24. Nov. 1702.
- 16 Survey of London, xxxiv. 507–14.