ABSTRACT
Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester, was a man who eventually achieved almost all of his dreams, but only after extensive delays and disappointments. As a soldier and a poet, and as a courtier and royal governor, he followed in his elder brother’s footsteps in many ways, but he learned from his brother’s missteps, and as a result was able to navigate his way safely through the dangerous waters of the late Tudor and early Stuart courts. Robert Sidney returned to England to straighten out his debt-encumbered inheritance. Robert Sidney received his first official post in the royal government in 1589, when Elizabeth appointed him Governor of the town of Flushing in Zeeland in the Dutch Republic. The pattern of Robert’s life was set for the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign, during which he alternated residence in Flushing and in England.
