[1] In 1585 he was elected member of parliament for Glamorganshire; and in the same year he went with his elder brother, Sir Philip Sidney to the Netherlands, where he served in the war against Spain under Robert Dudley.

After visiting Scotland on a diplomatic mission in 1588, and France on a similar errand in 1593, he returned to the Netherlands in 1606, where he rendered distinguished service in the war for the next two years.

[3] James raised him at once to the peerage as Baron Sidney of Penshurst, and he was appointed chamberlain and surveyor to the queen consort, Anne of Denmark.

[5] He dealt with correspondence from county agents, like Thomas Coningsby, and worked on a plan to enlarge the park of Nonsuch Palace to make it a better residence for the queen.

[6] Identified as an influential courtier, the French ambassador the Marquis de Rosny gave him a chain of perfumed gold beads and diamomds with a minature of Henry IV of France.

Jewels used in the costumes valued at £10,000 were borrowed from goldsmiths including John Spilman, and Sidney became liable for £40 for two lost diamonds.

[10] In August 1615 he went with Anne of Denmark to Bath, and was joined by his daughter Catherine and her husband Lewis Mansel who travelled from Margam.

[11] In May 1618 he wrote to Sir Thomas Lake, the king's secretary with news of the queen declaration about efforts to reduce household expenses.

She had told him that "while she lives she will obey the king in all things ... She therefore desires his majesty to take what order it shall please him, which shall please her also, for being wholly ignorant in household business, she will not any meddle with them".

[13] He was ill in September 1618 and was attended at Hampton Court by Henry Atkins and Théodore de Mayerne at the request of Anne of Denmark.

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.

Subsequent research showed it had been acquired in 1848 after passing through a number of sales beginning with the dispersal of the library at Penshurst in the early 19th century.

Sold again at Sotheby's and acquired by the British Library in 1975 (catalogued as Add MS 58435), the autograph is, as its first editor P. J. Croft pointed out, "the largest body of verse to have survived from the Elizabethan period in a text entirely set down by the poet himself".