the second son of Sir Henry Sidney, was a statesman of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. He was also a patron of the arts and an interesting poet. His mother, Mary Sidney née Dudley, was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I and a sister of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, an advisor and favourite of the Queen. Leicester was a man of taste and a patron of literature, whose cultured mode of life at his country seat, Penshurst Place, was celebrated in verse by Ben Jonson, who died at Penshurst. Robert Sidney was a patron of musicians, as is proved by his being the dedicatee of Robert Jones’s First Booke of Songes and Ayres (1600) and A Musicall Banquet (1610)
