ABSTRACT
The crucial role of Colonel Henry Sidney (earl of Romney from 1694) during the 1680s in supporting the claims of the House of Orange and William iii to the english throne is now often underestimated and merits reassessment. in May 1678 Colonel Sidney, the fourth surviving and youngest son of Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester, and Dorothy (Percy) Sidney, Countess of Leicester, led an infantry regiment in the British expeditionary force to Flanders. These circumstances provided him with an opportunity to begin cultivating a lasting friendship with the Protestant William iii, Prince of Orange (1650-1702), the future King William iii. The time was ripe for the active fostering of Anglo-Dutch relations because on 4 november 1677 William had married Princess Mary, daughter of James, Duke of york, and thereby became a likely candidate for the english throne if his father-in-law was excluded because of his Catholicism. Henry Sidney’s personal contacts with the prince were judged so promising that in June 1679 he was appointed as envoy-extraordinary to the States general of the United Provinces with a brief to maintain a defensive alliance with the Dutch against France. Sidney family connections proved crucial to this political appointment since it had been engineered largely through the influence of two close associates: his own nephew and coeval, Robert Spencer (from 1643, second earl of Sunderland), and the preceding english envoy at The Hague, Sir William Temple (1628-99), who was the grandson of Sir Philip Sidney’s trusted secretary during the 1580s, William Temple, and the nephew of Henry Hammond, formerly Rector of Penshurst, 1633-42.
