ABSTRACT
The Sidney family have had a powerful impact on the history, monuments, and letters of early modern Ireland. Most important among them, in terms of his military and administrative legacy, was undoubtedly Sir Henry Sidney. This chapter provides an overview of Sidney family activity in Ireland, and stresses the importance of his son Sir Philip in subsequent literary developments involving New English letters there. Algernon Sidney was Commissioner for Irish Affairs in the English Parliament in 1652, where he played a “major role” in Cromwell’s post-conquest settlement, “for the satisfaction of those adventurers who had lent money to Government to quell the Irish rebellion on an assignment of the confiscated lands” taken from the Irish. Sir Henry’s rule as Lord Deputy has garnered extended historical attention. A long-running debate begun in the 1970s focuses on the degree to which his reforms on a national scale were indeed truly innovative.
