ABSTRACT
In 1580 Sir Henry Sidney, had the senior Herald of the South, Clarenceux King of Arms Robert Cooke, draw up a family pedigree in the approved heraldic manner, with coats of arms from the simple medieval down to the complex ones of recent generations. Nicholas and Anne Sidney’s firstborn was named William; he was taken into his uncle Thomas Brandon’s household at an early age, and lived with him until the uncle’s death. In October he visited Poland at the invitation of a young aristocrat, but returned unimpressed; in February he and Languet followed the emperor to Prague. This visit taught him much about Bohemia, a proud and ancient kingdom where the ruling class was mainly Protestant and the populace largely Hussite or Catholic. One of the men who mourned for Sidney was his Huguenot friend Philippe de Mornay du Plessis, known as Duplessis-Mornay, who was defending Montauban at the time against the League.
